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Brent and Caleb doing their Bible study with me and Ethan looking up words in the dictionary. Please excuse our mess in the background. For some reason the rotating cupboard thing always stays open and makes for a messy look. I miss lots of picture taking because of the cluttered look but decided on this day to just take the picture. I miss school pics of my kiddos.  Below Caleb is working on Bible.  Brent completing school. I think he's working on Travel Dreams from The Thinking Tree .  Below is a page from Brent's Biology book: Discovering Nature Series ~ Summer by the Sea  This year Ethan will use How to Make Money by The Thinking Tree. Some weeks he'll complete four pages ~other weeks one or two. He also completes one or two journal pages a day. Right now he's working his way through the Library Based Boys Journal .  Lance working through his phonics/reading program: Blast of to Reading  Brent and Caleb making pizza for lunch. This is just for them two! Growing boy

My friend gave me this idea. Caleb and I came home from the post office. We mailed a package to Joshua. I noticed our shadows and thought how my friend took pictures of their shadows and I thought they came out pretty neat. I'm only sad that Joshua wasn't here to be in it (and that rascal Lance was asleep). First it was Caleb and I, then I went in the house and told the rest of the kiddos what I wanted to do. Lance was still sleeping at almost 9:00!!! Unfortunately he's not in the pictures below.  In order from left to right: Annette, Caleb, Mom, Ethan, and Brent. In the one above Ethan is being silly and has his blanket on his head.  This one would have been nice if the sun wasn't in Caleb's face.

I received The Basics of Critical Thinking from The Critical Thinking Co. to use with Ethan (and plan to purchase one for Lance too!). The target age/grade is for children in 4th-9th grade. I think it's a great Jr. High course. I plan to have Ethan complete a few pages a week. We are going to take our time with it. Now that he's in 8th grade his homeschooling load is increasing and I don't want to overwhelm him. The Basics of Critical Thinking is full color and the original owner has permission to copy for their use ONLY. I love how generous The Critical Thinking Co. is with allowing families to make copies. With that said though I pan to purchase another for Lance. It just makes things easier for me. My two boys don't like school. They'd rather be climbing trees, playing with LEGO blocks, or playing Minecraft so I really, really, appreciate that The Basics of Critical Thinking minimizes the "lecture" time. The lessons are easy-to-understand using diagr

  This is what homeschooling days looks like at our house at times.

Dear Joshua,  I got your letter!!! I was super excited and couldn't wait to rip the envelope open. I'm so glad to hear you are doing well and they are feeding you wholesome food. You know how I am with wanting you to eat healthy.  Land Navigation Training Guess what, today (Tuesday) the ALERT Facebook page posted pictures of your first week. It was nice to see what you've been up to.  I heard you all had your first PT test, had three days of Catalyst, and started your Land Navigation training. I'm so excited for you. Praying that you will understand and do well with all that navigation learning. I know it can be a lot with having to be accurate with your calculations and all. You'll do well. I know it! Physical Training Test- Josh front row on the right As for us, we've been busy. Dad with the house, screens, work, AWANA, ALERT Cadet, and so forth. Me with homeschooling, reviews, making homemade goodies, and dinners. I actually made a dinner menu, made a shoppin

I had planned to take the kiddos to the coffee shop last Friday but it didn't happen. Annette ended up being with my dad and we wanted her with us, so we went today. It was a sort of back-to-homeschool end-of-the week type splurge. And guess what? Later like around 9:00 P.M. we went to Braum's. The kiddos were happy about that. It's not everyday we splurge twice! Annette had a soccer game tonight. When we arrived at the part where she as to play it wan canceled because of a lightening storm, so we decided to go to Braum's. I even let Ethan order a banana split. He was so excited. Awe, it's the little things. I  have been splurging a lot these days. Like yesterday I had a burger and fries, so today I started back strict on my "diet". No ice cream for me. Thankfully I had packed a few low-carb cookies I made last night. I stayed up making a few goodies so I'd stay on plan. School is going great. I haven't had the kids start all subjects yet. We are a

This post may contain affiliate links. please read my disclosure. The Thinking Tree has a new journal out. It's super adorable: Bible Bunny . It's a wonderful companion book to Teach Your Child to Read, Write, & Spell: 100 Easy Bible Verse s. This is a 6x8 journal ~perfect for little hands to carry and so much more fun to work in because the children will think of it as just their size! Your little one can learn to read 30 Bible verses with Bible Bunny  and all the siblings! Each Bible verse is centered around a word like: trust, fear, hope, needs, confidence, and so forth. There are six activities per verse. Each page has a different activity. All fun and adorable. Your child will: Color a picture Read a verse (mom can help if needed) Dot-to-dots Color words Complete logic puzzles Trace and color a picture Draw a picture about the verse Copy the Bible verse Thank God or write a prayer  I love the dot-to-dots that are included in this journal:Bible Bunny.  The verse correl

I've been stalking the ALERT site daily for this picture to show up. My glimpse to see how he looks now.

We started homeschool this week. Monday I was up at 6:30, Tuesday at 6:45, and today (Wed.) 7:00, hehe, I guess tomorrow it'll be 7:15, ack! Nope, I won't let that happen. I need to get up and start waking the kids. One thing that helps us get started is me NOT getting on the computer first thing (so sad I know). Now I wait (except this morning because I really needed to blog about Josh and needed some alone time). I am having the kids start off with a half load. This way I am not stressed. I want to spend some time with each of the kiddos.  This was what the table looked like a few days ago. I'm still putting schoolwork together. Yes, I STILL don't have our school year planned out. Two weeks before school started my Mother-in-law arrived and at the same time we were in limbo with Josh. We didn't know if he was going to be able to go because of a medical issue. We didn't get the go ahead till the day before he had to leave!!! So yeah, it was a bit hectic and h