Gooooood Morning!!

I am not much of a morning person, to say the least. I am normally up before Dale leaves but we barely speak because I am basically sleep walking through a routine. After he's gone, I head back to bed to enjoy some precious alone time on the computer before the girls get up, which is between 7 and 8. I ignore the house in the morning, choosing instead to get our schoolwork accomplished. This morning however I have my house picked up, dishes done, floors swept and mopped, showers cleaned (we deep cleaned the rest of the bathrooms yesterday), breakfast done, laundry started, and I'm writing a blog post all by 8:30! I am feeling quite accomplished! On days like this I always tell myself that I should keep this up and start the day like this everyday. I have been married for 22 years though and at this point, I know it's only a dream. So I will just enjoy today!

Decisions, Decisions....

I am a planner. Yes, I know, you are in shock, right? I love making a schedule and in fact, I just finished one for us this morning that takes us through the end of April with our extracurricular activities. What a feeling of accomplishment!

That being said, you might be surprised to learn that I am terrible at making decisions. I need to mull things over and over.... and over, torturing myself in the process. Just when I think I have decided what I am going to do, and I let the whole world in on my plan, the doubts begin. The current big decision is about a trip to see my mom. We normally spend Christmas with her, but just couldn't make it this year. I assured her that we would plan a trip soon. I had convinced myself that now was the time, but there are so many factors involved. Namely, leaving Dale on his own during a very busy and stressful time, but there really isn't an end in sight to the business and stress of it all. So, do I stay home to be a help to my husband, postponing my trip indefinitely or go be a good daughter and visit my mother??? Currently, I am supposed to leave on Friday but I still seeking God to make sure this is the correct decision for the time being.

What's for Dinner??

My Saturday morning routine includes a trip to Safeway to check out their clearance items. It's a great place to score things like discounted yogurt, bread and cookie dough on a regular basis. These are some of the great deals I got recently:

wheat bread $.38 a loaf
Pillsbury cookie dough $.25 a package!
2 count pie crust $.99
A&W 10 rootbeer FREE!
large Digorno pizza's 28oz 2.60 each
Glide dental floss $.25
colgate toothbrushes $.50 each
gas rewards enough that I got my gas down to 1.68 a gallon!! (No that's not a misprint. I got 1.20 off at the pump to bring the price down to 1.68 :-)
free frosting flavoring
lots of other amazing deals...

Here's a list of what's to eat at our house in the days to come, because of some of my discounted purchases.

Main dishes-
Clam Chowder
Fish
Sour Cream Enchiladas
Minestrone
burritos
Fajitas
bbq Chicken
breakfast
stir fry
fish sandwiches
fish tacos
curry chicken
pizza

Sides-
Hot Wings
corn dogs
selected frozen veggies

Desserts-
brownies
chocolate chip cookies
sour cream heart cookies- Made these today. Yummy!
pumpkin muffins

A homeschool review

This is my first year back to homeschooling since May of 2008. Then we were doing geometry, geography, and other high school sophomore courses. Now, it's time to start over, way over. Samantha is in kindergarten. Andy went to public school until 2nd grade, so this is my first time teaching someone to read. No pressure, right? Actually we are having a great year and she is really excelling.

We are using k12 and let me start off by saying that there are things I like about them and things I don't. I like the fact that we have a daily and weekly plan. This is the first place I go everyday, because it is a clean cut list of what to do and what's been accomplished. You know I love that! The bad part about the list is that in order to check anything off you must go through several different web pages and the site runs really slow so it can be quite frustrating just to log what you've done for the day.

The phonics program is very thorough and consists of: sight word flash cards, abc memorization, individual sounds practice online and off, finger stretching sounds in words (this has really helped Samantha move forward), spelling first words, worksheets, reading first readers, rhyming, finding syllables, alphabetizing, ect. Most days we do 6-7 of these for phonics practice. Even though Samantha is a young Kindergartener, (her birthday is just 9 days before the cut off) she is amazing her k12 teachers with her reading skills and is far ahead of her age.

We are enjoying the language program. It is set in two parts, literature and language. There are several good books that came with the set and reading stories is always fun. There are detailed questions and answers and a worksheet that go along with them. The language is vocabulary, writing and poetry. The vocab is online and Samantha can navigate it herself, which is nice because there isn't a lot at the Kindergarten level that they can work on alone. There is an all about me book that the kids work on throughout the year for writing and keeping track of all their favorites (foods, books, colors, friends, days)

Their math program is online and off. A few different manipulatives come with the set. Lots and lots of practice involved here. It can get very mundane. Also the k12 standards and testing expect results beyond what they are teaching in math. For example, even though Samantha is on track and doing fine in math, she tested behind because they only have her working on numbers up to 20, but for the test, expected her to know up to 69.

For handwriting they use Handwriting without tears, which we love and will continue to use next year when we are no longer using k12.

Our elective subject is science. I don't like the format of the science program. It sometimes talks above kindergarten so you have to interpret everything. It is also only online and again you have to get through several pages to get anything accomplished, which is frustrating on their website. Having said that, my girls have really enjoyed science and learned a lot.

K12 only teaches about the calendar for a very short time, so we have our own classroom type calendar that we try to do everyday along with the Pledge of Allegiance. We definitely don't do it everyday, but we need goals right?

In summary, I think k12 is a little overwhelming and it also steals time that my girls would be making their own school choices like puzzles, books, our own flash cards, blocks, numbers and letters. We have to forgo those things many times to be able to check the box and accomplish a lesson. Also, many things about the program are tough for the girls to do together, even though they are only 13 months apart. Samantha is a quick learner and was advanced when we started the year, so I don't know if k12 has been better than anything else would have been for her. Next year we will have our own structured plan with things like; go phonics, mathusee, handwriting without tears, and hopefully the sonlight reading list, among other things.

A new look

If any of you have been checking in here the last week or so, thank you for you patience while I worked my blog over to find the perfect new look. I love the pictured notebook and list that goes with my theme.

We have a big day of homeschooling ahead today, so maybe later I will post a few aspects of our day. The last time I posted about homeschooling was years ago when Andy was still in high school. Since we have started over and are currently doing Kindergarten and preschool, life is very different to say the least!

Feeling blessed and refreshed!

I have really enjoyed my "alone" time with the Lord and he has surely blessed me in it! I am amazed at what God will show and share when we have our hearts open to it and are listening. I am thankful that I have a God who walks beside me. Yes, I have trials, but everyone does. We can choose to have God in our life through them or try to figure things out on our own. I can't even imagine my life without the Lord and don't care too. He gives me daily bread to make it day by day. I have to privilege of serving Him. I am so thankful for it!

Time to be quiet

It has been a bit since my last post, but do you ever feel it's just time to be quiet? Just be quiet and listen to the Lord. Sometimes even posting about my darling girls is just too trivial. I think Trina posted about this in the past, and I find myself mulling over her words and finding so much more depth now that she is gone.

Just Him and I. Trusting only Him. Having ALL my confidence in Him. Quiet. Listen...

Mother

Mother- A woman in relation to a child or children to whom she has given birth.

-A person who provides the care and affection associated with the female parent.

Sorry but these definitions are very shallow and lacking. They don't even begin to cover the sheer joy, abundant love, happiness, heartbreak, and continual worrying of a mother. That she, "Provides the care and affection," ok that just sounds cold and unattached. Which is completely opposite of how a mother feels.

She is filled with amazement when her 4 year old comes up to her and says, "Momma, you know "asteroids" is rocks that live in space?" And her heart is full to bursting when her 5 year old says things like, "Your the best mommy EVER!!!!" or "I love you infinity!!!!", and then gives a big bear hug with all she has. She is beaming with pride when her 20 year old picks up the check after an expensive meal. But then, her heart breaks and is full of fear when he moves out to the unknown. She has confidence that God sees her tears and hears her prayers, so she keeps praying, praying, praying...

The dictionary should be updated. I mean think about it, if it's this far off on a word we all know and understand, What about the words we are actually looking up for meaning? Is it that far off on the depth of all the meanings??

Out with the old... In with the new!!

Christmas was wonderful! We stayed home this Christmas instead of heading to Oklahoma to be with my family. We definitely missed them!! But, it was nice to celebrate for days here at home without the hustle and bustle of travel. We opened a few presents four days in a row, had a Star wars marathon, played tinker toys, made lots of goodies, laughed a lot and spent Christmas day with good friends, great food and fun games.

Now that we are done with all that, I am ready to make some changes. Some people call them New Year's resolutions, but I don't really like that term. Years ago I heard a "professional" state that if you've had the same resolution for 5 years with no results, then you should forget it cause you won't make the change. I set out to prove her wrong. At the time I had reached my all time, high weight wise. In the next 5 months I lost 30 pounds. HA!!! Take that little miss know it all... In any case I no longer like the term "New Year's resolution," but prefer to think of them as life changes.

A few years after this happened, I made another life change. (not at New Year's this time) I made a huge diet change for the sake of my health and lost another 30 pounds, a little to much. That was 8 years ago and I have slowly started letting things go and I am ready to get my body feeling good again.

I went shopping last night and got some new workout clothes and tennis shoes. (clearance $15 for shoes and $21 for 2 pants and a top!!) Then, this morning as I was browsing netflix I saw a show about food and how terrible the processed food we eat today is. So... back to my vitamix I go to create yummy healthy shakes for our family. I was so good at doing this for a few years, but sometimes I need motivation and shows like this to help remind me of what I want to do. I just made a shake with a spinach base along with bananas, oranges, strawberries, kiwi, a handful of pea pods and carrots. My girls LOVED it even though it was so green and ugly!

Although I don't have much weight to lose, I am so excited to start exercising, eating better and feeling great!

Huh?

Does anyone else ever feel like they live in a different universe than their spouse?

Recently we played the board game loaded questions. One of the cards told us to write one word that described our life. Instantly I knew what I would write...

We have been in the middle of a remodel since April. Dale started back to college last summer with some killer classes and tons of homework. He took this term off so we could focus on the remodel before he starts back in January. At the time we were playing the game we had out of town company and at one point while they were here, we couldn't take showers because of the grout in one shower and the caulk in another. We had one toilet out of commission most of the time. I was painting trim and a bathroom while they were here. So the word that came to mind was definitely CHAOTIC.

During that turn, Dale was the reader. So, he collected everyones answers to read aloud. When he saw mine he snickered and showed me his....calm. Like I said, I questioned whether we live in the same universe. CALM? CALM!! How could he say his life is calm??

He said, "Life is good. God has blessed us and we don't have any trials to speak of so I feel like my life is calm."

Well I just hope he never thinks our life is chaotic, cause that could be just too crazy for me.