Early Christmas

We always celebrate X-Mas early at our house since we normally travel to Nina and Grandpa's for the Holidays, so here are some pics of this past weekend!  The kids exchanged gifts they got for each other and they got to open their stocking gifts!

School Week 14 2011-2012

This was a short week because of the thanksgiving holiday.  We usually take the whole week off but I knew the kids would probably be bored out of their minds without some school,  so we did math, independent reading time and read a loud time.  A9 was able to do two math lessons in three days and she read three books independently! The Magic Finger, The White Stallion and The Family Under the Bridge.  Next week A9 will be reading Fantastic Mr. Fox for co op.

We also started the next My America series Meg's Prairie Diary Book 1. We read that book in three days!  X7 did math and reading as well.  We read three different thanksgiving books and the co op book for Nov/Dec, The Stray by Dick King-Smith. 

We will be spending Thanksgiving at my mom's this year! Tomorrow is going to be a long day since I'm planning on going to Walmart at midnight for their Black Friday sale!!

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone!

All Hallows Eve 2011

This past Thursday was our Trick or Treat night here in town, I thought I  would share some pics of the kids and then later on during Light the Night at our Church... enjoy!

 X7 dressed as Captain America with blue hair!

 A9 as a purple Batllerina also purple hair!

 DH as the god of Thunder himself... THOR!

Avengers Assemble!!!

 Light the night at Church!

Our neighbors having a Halloween concert!! They kept playing the "Halloween" movie theme!

The Best Christmas Gift Ever

Last year I got my most favorite XMas gift ever.. my mini or netbook... I really thought it didn't get better than that.. until I got this year's gift.. my new Kindle!

I love to read.. I would rather read than watch TV sometimes... When the Kindle came out I thought it was the coolest thing out there since the iPod... but I kept thinking to myself if I was ready to trade books for an electronic reader.... books are magical, they have that special smell, the sound of the pages as you flip them.... I really thought I would miss all of that if I ever got an ebook reader... well, I was WRONG!! I do not miss it at all!!

I just read the entire Hunger Games trilogy on my Kindle and it was so easy, no heavy book to drag around, no bookmark to keep in place, no opening and closing... and reading the books was just as magical... I had no problems getting into the story, I soon forgot were I was reading the story from... Thank you Nina and Grandpa for my new Kindle!!!

Happy New Year 2011

Christmas Morning 2010

Christmas Morning at our house!

Merry Christmas!!!!

Merry Christmas 2010

The First Gift of Christmas

The First Gift of Christmas!!!
and our First Ginger Bread House!!
A8 worked really hard on it, with daddy's help of course!!

Merry Christmas!!!!!

My Christmas Table

I don't normally bother decorating the dinning room table during Christmas because we are never here for it. We usually go to Nina and Grandpa's house for the holidays.
This year however we are spending Xmas at home, so I thought I should do something with the table for Xmas... here it is!I didn't buy anything new, just used what I already had in a "creative" way...

I'm not sure how long those mints are going to last.. hopefully till tomorrow morning!
Happy Christmas Eve!

Christmas Vacation!

Today is our first day of Xmas vacation!! I already have everything ready for school next year so for the next two weeks I can truly relax and enjoy the holidays!

All of the kid's gifts have been wrapped, they are waiting patiently for Friday night(they get to open 1 gift on Christmas Eve!) and Saturday morning.

This will probably be my last post of the year, I will post on the new things we"ll be doing next year, next year!

Hoping Nina and Grandpa will be able to join us for the holidays!! I pray we will all have a safe and blessed Christmas and New Years!

Christmas is here!

Our Christmas tree is finally up! The kids and I helped put as many ornaments as we could on the tree... it's pretty packed! We have no lights around the deck this year because we forgot we threw all of them out last year so we could get new ones. So I guess we better go and get new ones for outside!! We want the LED lights, those are the ones we now have around our tree and our light pole in the front.

A trip to Lowe's this coming week!!!

Happy Thanksgiving 2010

I'm still recovering from my gallbladder surgery, we won't be able to go to my Mom's for Thanksgiving this year, so we are spending it at home! I'm not sure if I'll be able to eat any turkey... and no black Friday shopping for me either... oh well.

Happy Thanksgiving anyways!!!

All Hallows Eve Pics!

I finally moved all of the Halloween pics to my computer!! So here they are!!!

Cleopatra

Toothless

At light the night at our Church.

Hot chocolate and cookies!

The Youth group did a skit for light the night!

We had a great time that night, the weather was perfect, although it did get a bit breezy the later it got. The kids stayed at the church most of the time and it showed in their candy bags. They had enough candy for two days only... usually we have Halloween candy all winter.. ha ha!!

July Update

So here we are... it's July already!! Summer is going much too fast. I have been purging my house of all things unnecessary. Summer is a great time to get rid of all those things that have been gathering dust during the long winter months.

I was able to donate a big box of books, workbooks and the like to the local used books store..I have two more boxes to give them. Out with the old and in with the new!

Homeschooling requires a lot of books around, but even that can get out of hand sometimes if you are not careful.

Speaking of homeschooling, I'm done making the folders for each week for each kid for next year. I have A8s notebooking journal done for American history and I have X5s Jr notebooking journal for science. The last thing I need to do this month is plan the workbox schedule for each kid.

I'm making some changes to the boxes this coming fall. X5 had the more traditional boxes, with the shoe rack and 9 individual boxes. That is about to change! After talking to him about it, he would rather use the Iris 6-Drawer Mobile Chest that his sister has been using.

He told me he likes it better than having to bring the box with him to the table, he would rather get the stuff he needs from each drawer and then when done just put it back in the box.
This works for me since I was going to go from 9 boxes to 6 for him this coming year anyways.

He wants the black and clear model.
This weekend we are having Nina and Grandpa coming over to celebrate the Fourth of July! We have burgers, hot dogs, corn on the cob and sausages ready for the weekend, and hopefully we'll get to watch a little movie called Eclipse while the kids stay with Nina and Grandpa!
Happy 4th everyone!!!

Easter Break

We are officially done with school for the next two weeks. We ended in a good place for both kids. X5 is done with book C of the Code, when we start school in two weeks he's going to start book 1. A8 finished her math in a good place, when we come back from break we will be starting with measuring, something completely new to her...

I scheduled two weeks off, Easter week is full of activities, Shape n Race being one of them. I'm in charge of food this year again, plus filling up Easter goodie bags since we are not having an egg hunt this year.

Then there's Holy Week activities in our church, we hope to make it to some of them!

As far as school planning, I'm going to work on the book list for both kids for the Fall. X5 is going to be ready for FIAR books since we mostly worked on BeforeFIAR this year. He will be doing Handwriting w/out Tears 1st grade workbook, he will be done with the K book in a few more weeks. He has about three more weeks of math, lessons 28, 29 and then 30!! He will be starting Alpha in the Fall.

X5 is doing math & handwriting at a K level but his phonics and reading are still at a preschool level. In the Fall we will continue like this, 1st grade math and handwriting, K level phonics and reading... Many Moms continue to assure me boys usually catch up in the phonics/reading area within a few years... no problem! that's the beauty of homeschooling, I can customize everything to fit where he is at, at the moment!

A8 is going to be doing FIAR Vol 4. This Vol has a lot more activities than the previous books. The books are meant to be rowed for two weeks instead of one. There are 16 books in Vol 4. Which means 32 weeks of school. For the other 4 weeks she'll do Little House in the Big Woods and Little House in the Prairie lapbooks, each book will take two weeks. This will prepare her for what is coming in 4th grade, Beyond FIAR, which uses chapter books instead of illustrative books. We will do them at the end, the last 4 weeks of the school year.

As far as math, when we get to the end of the year she will have 20 lessons done in Beta. A8 is about 10 lessons behind in math since we started with Primer on her 2nd semester of K. Instead of 30 lessons she will do 35 till she is caught up. By the time she is in 5th grade she will be ready to start Epsilon in the Fall.

I'm getting way ahead of myself here.. ha ha!! The thing is math is tricky, if I want them both to take calculus their Senior year, I have to make sure they are on the right path now... same for Science which we will be starting next Fall with Apologia science.. but again, I'm getting ahead of myself... we still have this year to finish.. ha ha!

Happy Easter!!!!!!

2010

It is the start of a new year! I've been cleaning the house, getting school ready for this coming Monday and putting all that is Christmas away till next December... it has been a busy and exhausting weekend. The kids are still in vacation mode, going to be late and getting up late. That is going to change tonight... in bed by 9:30 and up by 9 am!!

We had a great holiday, it never really felt stressful, which is a first! My family decided to draw names this year, we each got one adult and one child to buy gifts for and the limit was $30, that made a huge difference... also, I already had most of the kids' gifts purchased... something I'm going to continue to do, to avoid the stores at all cost during the holidays. All of the bills are paid and we didn't need to use the credit card for any of the xmas gifts we bought, that is a definite stress reducer!!

Here's a few pics of our holidays... I'll be posting what's new for school this semester very soon!

A7 got a few of her favorite things... dvd, our old laptop, a Nintendo DS and a couple of games!

X5 got a few Clone War action figures and a Clone Wars Leapters2!! Couple of games and a storage bag for it!

Yes, he got a haircut... he wanted one.. I didn't, but I gave in.... regretting it big time..I miss his hair :(

Fun at Nina and Grandpa's house!!