triple school points!

I have been meaning to get this posted FOREVER.... actually I have many posts like that. This post just happened to be the lucky one today.

I try to do the kids spelling words all different ways and cheap ways and fun ways and this is one of those ways.

We have this neat little portable desk thing that Discovery Toys once carried. I used to sorta sell Discovery Toys once. The key word is sorta. Mainly I bought Discovery Toys. It was an issue. Anyways, this came with neat story magnets which we still use. I was tempted to get rid of this little desk thing since we really weren't using it much, but then I found this use for it. One of the sides of the top which slides in and out is magnetic. The other side of the desk is all flat with a spot for a cup, but... goodness... I digress. Yet again. So, I found someone just giving away these scrabble tiles.

I put magnets on the back, and store them in the desk and use them with this for spelling. The kids love it. They look more like the real letters as opposed to those plastic colored letters and it just works well. They all store in the desk and we can even do spelling easy in the car.

The other fun thing... well sorta fun. Relative fun, is using the 100 pocket chart. One of the lessons in the Alpha book in Math U See is to write from one to one hundred each day for the lesson. Both of kids totally fell apart when they got to this. They feel that this is torture... SO much writing!!! Well, I know the point of the lesson and so I just did it a slightly different way. I was able to do this since I knew that both of them could actually write all the numbers that it was much more about making sure they KNOW all the numbers and how they go together to 100. So, I snag the pocket chart and pretend that a "number pirate" was caught at our house.

I do the voice when I tell them the story and the whole nine yards. The number pirate was caught but not before he had removed EVERY number from the number chart in an attempt to steal them. The kids them have to put all the numbers back in the chart. In order.

The love it. They have always been able to prove to me that they do know the order of the numbers and how they go together. It works great!!!

So those are things that work for us in school!

Can I have my triple word score now? :)

this and that

So, it is VBS week at my church which equals craziness for me and mine. My problem is that I can't leave the curriculum well enough alone. I decide to take it to a whole new level. I complicate things for myself. It works well on the drive to crazyville.

The kids are finally playing some baseball games, but we still have quite a few to make up with sporadic rain constantly coming as well.

Can I let you in on a little secret? I LOVE watching my kids play ANY sport. I am learning tons of things watching them and I find such joy in watching them have so much fun.

I have been busy with life during the summer which means that I run with kids here and there and there and here.

I have lots to do and not enough time to do it all in but it will all happen at some point.

I have temporarily set up shop outside fixing the neighborhood kids bikes. It is hard being a single mom in the military. I am so glad I am not one, but at least I can fix a few bikes and help them out.

I have been reading... big shock there.

I also found the most interesting video for crazy bibliophiles.

forgiveness and baseball

Today I have felt the need to beg for forgiveness like I haven't felt in a long time. I had really let someone down in my life and I felt horrible.

This little person that I really let down was my son.

The boy of mine is an amazing kid... well he is to me and really that is what matters.

He loves sports and one of his favorite sports is baseball and we are well into that season, but because of the amazing amount of rain that we have had here five of his games have been canceled. He has only been able to play one game. ONE.

Everyday that he has had a game scheduled it has rained that day, or it has rained hard the night before and the field is flooded. He sits disappointed day after day knowing that with each pitter-patter of rain drops the season for one of his all time favorite sports is quickly flying away.

Yesterday and today were glorious, gorgeous days. The sun was bright, the sky was clear. We even checked the weather radar and we were in the safe zone. The games would happen today! The weather had finally smiled down on the little boy and he would get to swing that bat and throw that ball around with his friends.

The Girl had her game first at 10am and we went to that and had such fun, then the boy's game was at 1pm.

John wasn't sure that his game was at 1pm. During the girl's game he had overheard someone from the Boy's team commenting that they had to be back in just a half hour... at 11:30. So I double checked the schedule and checked it against the large white board that I use for all of our activities on the fridge. It said One O'clock in that nifty little square that I studied once more.

I made some lunch... fixed water bottles... did some gardening.

Finally I made sure the Boy was ready and we headed out. He ran across the field ahead of me with his batting helmet and bat and glove. He was SO excited that he was finally going to be able to play a game again. He had honestly waited weeks to be able to play a game.

On my way over, as I lugged the water and the camera and the snacks, I noticed that his team members were on their way to the parking lot.

All of them.

I stopped one family and confirmed that yes, his game WAS OVER. I am sure my eyes about fell out of my head... and my heart dropped.

What really did me in though was seeing my little boy, just moments ago so excited, now running towards me with his face crumpled with tears.

He ran towards me and I hugged him tight. I was a bit indignant. How could this have happened?! I was SO careful. Was my schedule paper a misprint?! I started looking for his coach, a good friend of mine, to figure out what had happened.

I found her and she smiled and waved to me. I met up with her and told her that I had double checked the schedule and all of that... she was puzzled and sorry and she pulled out the schedule and I pointed to the neat square where it said 1pm on Saturday the 13th. The problem that she quickly pointed out was that today was the 6th.

THE SIXTH!!!

That was when I just looked at my son and he looked at me and I apologized about 100 times. I am not exaggerating. He had been waiting for weeks. I was looking at the wrong square everywhere. All day.

I brought him home and I apologized again and again and again. He seemed fine with it and really bounced back, but I felt horrible.

I offered to camp out and read as many books as he wanted. I offered to bake him cookies to take to his Sunday School class. I offered to paint him a picture of a Tiger for his room. I needed to do something for him to "earn" his forgiveness... which is silly, but I just felt so BLASTED GUILTY!

Finally I tossed them in swim suits and they played in water at the house, then I took them to the pool over on base where the water was freezing and they complained. It was not the best day here people... but we muddled through.

The good thing is that even when I mess things up that he has been yearning for, and I do mean yearning for, for this long... he was so quick and willing to forgive me.

There are many things that I would like to "fix" in my child's behavior, but frankly, I was proud of him today. I really missed the mark big time, but he got over it quickly and moved on quickly. Frankly, he moved on faster then I was able to move on.

He has four games this coming week. I told him that I would make sure that nothing else interfered with his games. I will hold back the clouds blast it!

i want to learn... please?

My Mother's Day gifts this year spoke volumes to me. I was floored and delighted and almost in tears.

John took the kids out to shop and after he convinced the Girl that her present did not have to be the very best and most amazing gift in the entire world they were able to move on. They purchased their gifts and wrapped them for me and presented them to me during the afternoon.

I opened my Mother's Day gifts with absolutely no idea of what I would get. They each bought me one item and then they bought me one thing together.


My boy bought me a sweet hummingbird feeder. He has shared my love of attracting birds to our yard and this is something that he has wanted for sometime. He also knew that I would LOVE it. I do love it! It is currently hanging in our tree in the back yard and we are awaiting our little humming friends.My daughter gave me a very nice gardening book and this is ALWAYS a welcome sight in my home especially since I am a bit of a gardening addict. I have already read through much of the book and have learned quite a bit. I am excited about what else I will learn from my book.

The gift from both of them was large and rectangular and heavy. It felt obviously like a book and since I lurve books I opened it eagerly!

When I pulled back the paper I saw this massive history book.


This book is very large and is filled with maps and articles of what has happened in our world in the past.

I opened it up and my husband said, "Now you need to hear why they wanted to get this particular book for you." He had this funny grin on his face.

BOTH of my children were sitting on the floor at my feet and at this moment they both chimed in together, "We bought it for you so that you can use it to teach us more history!" They looked up at me with beaming faces, full of anticipation. My eyes grew wide and I realized that I was just given one of the biggest compliments of my entire life.

I have a great love of learning and I love learning more about history. I homeschool our children and I love bringing history alive for them. We use Sonlight history and they think that the history portion of our day is one of the best parts of each day. They often talk me into doing more then one day of history at a time.

I have succeeded in one of my goals in homeschooling. I have instilled in my children a love of learning. I know that I do not do everything right. There are many times when I question myself and what we are doing here in our little corner of the great homeschooling world, but on Mother's Day I got one of the best gifts. I got a great progress report as a homeschool teacher. Now... let's see if we can work on my progress report for organizing a house...

downtown

Recently the whole family went on a field trip with the homeschool group to downtown. We visited the Old Courthouse where some very famous cases were heard and where new things in architecture were discovered. We went to the arch to hang out for a bit and I took MANY pictures.

These are two of them. Normally my camera is trained on kids and on nature, but on this day it was the architecture that really caught my eye.

I did mess with the shadow and steeliness on the Arch and I think it turned out quite nice. I was tempted to drag the contrast further, but decided that this was a happy medium. I did like the darker look as it was very dramatic but I like the dark swirls that I was able to still see in the clouds in this picture.

This picture was taken from across the rotunda into a well lit stairwell. I was impressed with how well this turned out for a couple of reasons. I only have the one basic lens on my Rebel and it often just doesn't do the job I want it to do when taking pictures from a distance like this. When I got the picture into edit I had found out that it surprised me on this one. I cropped it in a little but did almost nothing else to it. I really like the curving stairs here... grace.

I have more pictures to share with you, but many of them have my children or other children in them. I can't share them. Bummer.

Click the pictures to make them larger.

I linked this post to a wonderful blog that I admire greatly for her spirit and for her photography. She was having people link their pictures of beauty in unexpected places and I thought these fit. Check out her blog your eyes will thank you!

mark of a mom

This morning I wore gray pin-stripe dress pants and a black t-shirt to church. I looked so springy. Ahem. I did see other mom's completely dressed up in their cute dresses looking the beautiful sweet part of Mother's Day. Honestly, I have very few dresses and since I am away from home right now, I do not have any of the dresses with me that I own.

One of the moms that I saw was just so sweet and gorgeous looking. She had her blonde highlighted hair pulled up in the back and her make-up looked flawless. She had on a layered gauzy pink butterfly dress on with a matching light pink spring mid-thigh coat. She wore lovely jewelry and had on matching open-toe sling back heels that looked like they were of some faux alligator skin. In pink.

She looked like she walked out of a very nice magazine.

BUT...

There was one slight... flaw.

(time for me to get critical on you all)

She had on a rather tacky bracelet.

It was plastic beads.

On YARN.

The beads didn't even cover all the yarn... they covered maybe half of the yarn. Maybe.

What was she thinking?

She didn't have kids with her... yet she wore the mark of a homemade mother's day gift rather proudly. She carefully took notes on what the preacher was teaching with the same hand on which this gift was on.

No shame.

The mark of a mother is no shame.

No shame in looking a peditrician in the eye and telling him that you will not be giving your child the said treatment because it hasn't been tested enough and your daughter is not a guinea pig.

No shame in running half-naked out of the house looking for a toddler who just pushed the door open and was heading for a busy street.

No shame in eating some strange food item that the little one is trying to feed you which was probably licked by the dog before being put in your mouth.

No shame in showing up in the ER with a baby with a high fever, while wearing smeared make-up and sweats.

No shame in walking out of a store with a young one in high-tantrum mode after you told him NO to another toy.

No shame in telling others that you chose to homeschoool.

No shame in telling people that you chose traditional school.

No shame in cancelling out on a party because your eight year old burnt his hand and now nothing is more important then just loving on him and his pain.

No shame in walking through a crowded place with a teenage child who is very into expressing themselves through their pink hair.

No shame in cheering on the only child on the team who cannot hit a baseball no matter how hard they try.

No shame in running through a crowded hospital, after a doctor, in a foreign country, while wearing nothing more then a napkin that covers your top third while otherwise wearing only panic on your face... over the life of your unborn child.

There is no shame allowed in mother's love.

No shame in wearing plastic beads on yarn.

No shame in the mark of a mom.

Happy Mother's Day to all with No Shame.

so the movie and some rambling

I enjoyed the Hunt for Gollum movie last night.

They did a release at 4 GMT, but are releasing it across the board on May 10th. I didn't get on to watch it until my kids were in bed and it didn't want to let me watch the movie. I clicked on "have problems watching it in HD, watch it in HQ" and I was able to watch it last night. I don't know if that option is working today or if you missed it if you have to wait until the 10th.

It was a good movie... very Jacksonish... and quite well done. There was, of course, ways I could tell that they had cut corners to work things into budget. BUT overall, I was very impressed with what people can do with a passion. Or obsession. It just depends on how you spin that word.

I have lots to show you from what I have been doing here. I just haven't taken all the pictures yet.

I have put up a greenhouse and started lots of little plants in it. Some are flowers which will go around my house. Some are veggies which will go in the organic garden at the farm. Regardless, my starters have worked this year. Every year I have tried to do starters and every year they don't make it. These made it!!! It was so exciting! They even made it for about 5 days when we were away and I was so pleased!

I have put in a rain barrel at the farm for watering the organic garden. This is great because we don't have to run the hose from the well house as often to water the garden and it is great because we can make Chicken Manure Tea for mid-summer fertilizing. What we can do is take a nice pile of chicken manure and put it in a nice cheese cloth bag and plop it right in a full rain barrel and then water with this great tea! My plants will love it and being a (regular Lipton) tea drinker myself I think this is great. I will post pictures of my rain barrel at the farm later.

I have been spending more time with the kids at the farm and it has refreshed my spirit. This farm has got to be one of the best things ever thought up and I have been so blessed by it. We can go out and do all sorts of farm type stuff. Organnic gardening, fishing, hunting all sorts of little critters, rain barrels, collecting eggs, playing in the hay loft, feeding horses and playing with baby goats and hiking all over looking for tracks and talking about all we see. Really, the farm is a working farm, it is quite redneck and very rustic and farm dogs and farm filth abounds but I am becoming so attached to this farm that I don't know what I am going to do when we leave here for another base.

When we leave here we will have been here for four years and we will have once again dug in our roots very deep.

I have problems imagining that I will ever find anything as great as this farm anywhere else.

I have to believe that wherever we go God will have even more awesome opportunities for growth for our family.

In the meantime I am here. I am here loving where I am and loving the absolutely incredible friends that I have here.

I do believe that the next place we live will have more amazing oppotunities for us that we will be ready for when we move there. I will not get lost in my ponderings of the present. I will keep my focus up. (that last part is me admonishing myself... you were just along for the read)

Do you want to know what the real problem is? I am borrowing trouble. I do not move for a year and a half.