To my friends!

May your Christmas be filled with blessings.

Your homes filled with laughter and love.

I pray that each of you will have a wonderful holiday.

Be Blessed! Merry Christmas

Christmas Happenings

I have not been around lately. So much to do. I can't believe Christmas is already here. I'm really not ready. Can you believe I am actually venturing out tomorrow to finish up my Christmas shopping? The last Saturday before Christmas and I am going out. UGGG!
We just got back from a great anniversary trip to Atlanta. Yep. Eight years now. It's been great. I remember when we went on our honeymoon. I spent the drive time addressing our first Christmas cards. I was so excited to sign my new last name. I remember everything was magical. It was a lot different going back with five kids. LOL
I got to meet an online friend and her family which was a lot of fun. I will upload the pictures from our trip soon... ok, well it might be after Christmas! :)

As I rushed off to dance practice with the girls last night I thought about the fact that we have not even taken time to drive around and look at Christmas lights. That's one of my all time favorite holiday traditions. I will remedy that soon. Maybe Monday or Sunday night. Tuesday night we will be going to my mom's to open presents. Wednesday night we will go to my granny's for the big family get together. We will probably leave after that to go to my inlaws house in Central Florida. Christmas day will be spent there and probably most of the next day.

Tonight the girls are dancing at a nursing home, then we will go to my mom's church for a Christmas party, then to my friend's house for our church Christmas party. Yes, I really do plan on accomplishing all of that. LOL

I hope you are all well. I will post once more before Christmas!!

Be Blessed!

She comes back with this??

Ok so I have been away for over a week and I come back with this! I had to laugh at it though because it is so true. I still think about all my old boyfriends all the time. Not in a bad way, just sentimental like.

I have watched all the Jane Austen movies I can online on Netflix this week and put the ones I could not on my que. I'm just in one of those old fashioned romance type moods. LOL

Your Love Life is Like Casablanca

"Kiss me. Kiss me as if it were the last time." For you, love is never finished. If you've loved someone once, you'll always love them. You're an old fashioned romantic... even if your relationships don't end up as romantic as you'd like. Your love style: Traditional and understated Your Hollywood Ending Will Be: Complicated and ambiguous

What Movie Is Your Love Life Like?

I am Thankful

I will be super busy over the next few days getting ready to visit friends out of town for the holiday. I wanted to take a moment and be thankful!First I am so thankful to Jesus Christ who died on the cross so that I could live in heaven forever. I am thankful that He knows my name. He knows everything about me..and still.. HE loves me! I am thankful that I am free to proclaim His name as loud as I can to one and all and I don't have to be worried that those words will be my last because I am breaking a law.

I am thankful for the brave people who came before me. First the ones who founded this great country for religious freedom! The ones who were brave enough to walk into a new land and set up camp so that they would be free to worship the God of the Bible the way they believed He should be worshipped. I can not even imagine the first years of our country. How unbelievably scared and lonely some must have felt. They moved on through those years though and became pioneers of something great! Then, for the ones who fought to free our country from the oppression of England. To give us even more freedom! To the men who died. To the families who suffered. And of course to the men and women who still fight today so that we can keep the freedoms those brave men fought for so long ago!

I am thankful for my husband. OH! I am so thankful for him! When he walks in that door at night my whole day is complete. He makes me laugh. He is strong and brave and protecting and... AMAZING! I am thankful for these beautiful children God has blessed me with. I look at them and can not believe that God loves me enough to bless me so much with them! I am thankful for my mom, my brother, my grandparents, my aunts and uncles, my cousins... I am thankful to be part of a great family where I am loved and accepted and supported. I am thankful that my parents and grandparents have given me a godly heritage. They took me to church. They prayed for me. They raised me up!

I am thankful for my friends. Oh, I could go on and on about what great friends I have. I have my Tuesday chicks! I have my church family. I have my friends who live in other states now. I have my friends from highschool and single days. I am blessed with the best friends. Girls, who know that my DH and kids rank highest and support and understand that. Girls, who understand when I don't call them every day. I love you guys! Thanks for putting up with me!

I am thankful for the friends I have met online. Ladies who are willing to share their wisdom and insight with someone who does not have a clue. I am so grateful for all the ideas you guys put out there. It helps me so much!

All in all I am so blessed! To each of you I want to say..

HAPPY THANKSGIVING!

Chat by the fire...

If I had my way I would have a fireplace in every room of my house.... of course living in FL that seems silly. :) Anyways, I thought I would just sit down and "chat" with you all about these coming weeks. It could quiet possibly bore you to tears so, pretend the snow is falling softly outside and the logs are crackling. Grab a blanket and snuggle in. If you fall asleep I won't mind.
Tonight Adrian has a t-ball game. It will be freezing but hey, that's why they call it fall ball! Maybe I will make Hot Apple Cider when we get home. Dinner will be corn dogs and cheese fries. Nutritious and delicious. LOL I think we will stop by Walmart on the way home so I can pick up some groceries and a couple of gift cards I need to mail out for Thanksgiving.
Tomorrow Dh will go up to Publix to hand out gift cards with some of the other folks from our church. It's just a community project we have been working on. After that we will head out to see if I can get a battery for my camera, tights and leggings for the girls, and a presser foot for my sewing machine. Mine has disappeared. Then Adrian has his last t-ball game at 3pm. Some friends are coming and we plan on grabbing dinner afterwards.
Sunday the girls are dancing in the morning service and then in the evening they will be going to another church to dance.


Next week promises to be busy as well. We are doing a Bible study on Monday nights with three other couples. Tuesday we have Bible study and the men of the church are getting together that night for their Bible study since it will be the second week of December before they meet again. On Wednesday we are leaving for North Carolina. I'm so excited. I love going up there for Thanksgiving. We won't be back until Sunday evening.

We are then turning around and leaving again on December 13 to go to Atlanta to celebrate our anniversary which will be the 15th. We are taking our kids to redo our honeymoon. How fun! We will visit Lake Lanier, Stone Mountain, The Coca Cola Museum... all sorts of fun things. And the funnest thing of all will be meeting an online friend while we are up there. This is my Christmas, anniversary, and birthday present!

Christmas will be short and happy this year. We have one visit scheduled to the inlaws around Christmas time but I don't know the dates on that. I don't even know what we are getting the kids. Hence the need for a presser foot for my sewing machine. LOL I have lots of fabric and patterns so Im sure I can whip some stuff up with my mom's help.

Well I hope you enjoyed our fireside chat. Oh, your sleeping. I will tuck the blanket around you and grab a book. We can talk more when you wake up! Maybe this time I will even let you talk. :)

Be Blessed!

Homeschooling: What does my day look like?

1 Corinthians 14:40, "Let all things be done decently and in order."
I know the verse above is talking about something different, but that verse has really helped me to learn to manage my school a little better.
I do have five children. My youngest is in a very curious, independent, "NO!" place right now. It's something we spend a lot of time during the day working on. I know it's only for a season and that if I stay consistent he will be blessed as will I. Some days are harder than others. But in our family school is not only books and learning, but also teaching and training. I mentioned before that I think to have a successful homeschool you must have discipline for yourself and your children.

In light of that my kids are where I can see and hear them at all times during our school day. But how do I do that when the age range is so huge? Is it really possible to "do" school while a two year old is underfoot? What I am about to say is really working out for our family. It does not mean it will work for yours! The first thing I had to give up was an expectation that my family could look like Joe Homeschool Cool. NOPE! I share this with you for ideas. That's where I get most of my stuff.. other homeschoolers who have tried and erred for me! :)

After breakfast, chores, and either a walk or dancing to praise and worship music, we have circle time. After circle time Karly starts her corrections, Kelsie practice piano, and I begin to work with Tamara and Adrian. It takes about 30m to do math, reading, and HW with them. During this time Jonathan is in his spot. This is a corner of our homeschool room where he has a quilt on the floor. He can play with whatever toys he wants on this quilt as long as he stays on the quilt and plays quietly. It took much training to get him there and he has times where he forgets. But they are less frequent!
After school with the little kids Kelsie works on her corrections, Karly practices piano, Tamara, Adrian, Jonathan, and I read aloud. Right now we are reading through a big A.A. Miline Winnie the Pooh book.

Next I feed Jonathan lunch while Adrian plays with blocks and legos and the girls practice their dance. After Jonathan has lunch he and I will read and play together for a few minutes before he lays down for his nap. Usually I let the other kids have lunch while I'm doing this. Then we do table chores. Next, I pull out playdoh, paint, or markers for Tamara and Adrian and let them CREATE! I go through Karly's school work with her. It takes maybe 15m-30m. She finishes up while I work with Kelsie about 30m-45m. When they are done we do our Bible study and then Tamara and Adrian lay down.

Karly and Kelsie are then free to work on projects of their own choosing for about half an hour then they take books and lay down.

It's quiet in my house for at least an hour every day. I NEED that!

At night after dinner and clean up we usually do either history or science, one of our read alouds, and our Bible study.

And that my friends is our homeschool in a nutshell!

I hope I did not bore everyone to death. Like I said before our homeschool is ever evolving. It may not look like this next year. Who knows?

Be Blessed!

Homeschooling: Learning Together

3 John 1:4, "I have no greater joy than to hear that my children walk in truth."
We do a lot of stuff together. In the morning we have something called circle time. During this time we read the Bible, memorize scriptures, poetry and other information, and read a story out loud. We are memorizing Proverbs right now. We are just finishing up chapter 1. Our poems and stories come from the book: The Children's Book of Virtues. In the past we have memorized the books of the Bibles and the names of the disciples. Our Bible reading is in Matthew. I read a short passage and then the children draw a picture to illustrate it.

Most of the time in the afternoon before we rest we will do a Bible study together. Right now we are working through Kay Arthur's How to Study the Bible for Kids and Stormie Omartian's Power of a Praying Kid.

On Wednesday's we will read books on a certain subject together. In October we read books on fall. This month we are reading books about Thanksgiving. After that we will do a craft or as I said before color on pages from Dover's website.

At night we spend time doing either history with the Mystery of History volume 1 or science with Christian Kids Explore Biology. This involves reading books about the lesson for that week, doing any projects or experiments that go with it, and generally just soaking up all we can. Sometimes we will have a Latin lesson, but that' s been on the back burner a bit lately.

Another thing we do at night is read alouds. We read a different book every night. Right now we are reading Dangerous Journey, Making Brothers and Sisters Best Friends and books/movies about Martin Luther. After that we read the Bible using Balancing the Sword and pray and the kids are off to bed!