Weeks 2 and 3 combined....

It's like BOGO free. Who doesn't love that?!

School has been progressing very nicely. I love starting early so I've got lots of time to work out the kinks. Figure out what will and won't work with each kid.

 For example I decided not to have Ava continue with the S.O.S. Spanish. It's just proving too difficult for her. The grade recommendation is 3rd-6th....as a 3rd grader she fits within their parameters but she was already struggling to keep up after only 2 lessons. So I've dropped it from her schedule and we'll pick it up when she's a bit older.

 That's the beauty of homeschooling if something isn't working you can just put it away and give your kid a chance to mature or scrap it entirely and try something new. Like typing. Typing Instructor is new to our homeschool and they are both doing exceeding well with it. I myself am enjoying them in the headphones.

 She's cute AND it's quiet..... what's not to love???

Devlin in 6th grade is doing very well with the Spanish. Maybe next year I'll move him into a classroom setting at YMV.

Devlin is also enjoying his switch to Teaching Textbooks.

Here he is doing the daily book work. Once that's completed he enters his answers into the computer which grades it for him. He has 2 attempts before he's considered wrong and even then the computer will show him step by step how to do the problem so he can figure out where he lost his way...

He's done fantastic so far. I'm really glad I switched from Horizons :)


Science continues to be a favorite subject. We spent some time last week doing a mini co-op with our friends who are also doing Apologia's Swimming Creatures. We got to go make a mess at their house! I loved it!

One of the things scheduled was to begin an Ocean Box (diorama) I was pleasantly surprised that Devlin wanted in on that. Here they are with Stage One boxes....they will add creatures to them as we go along.

This week we started studying whales. In addition to our notebooking....

we also went on the computer and listened to some whale songs....they thought that was "cool"

I would find it "cool" if Devlin would clean off his desk.

Sonlight LA continues to annoy. The workload is in no way suitable for 6th grade even with their suggested addition of Grammar Ace. I had to run out Tuesday and pick up Wordly Wise. He is less than thrilled. As am I, but for different reasons. He's tickled to death that he can breeze through LA because the assignments are so easy. I'm pissed that I was forced to buy something that isn't suitable for his grade level. When I found out we were going to be forced to purchase LA along with the Core I asked if the LA would span the grades the way the Core was designed to do...I never got a clear answer and now I know why. Adding the LA to the Cores made them more grade specific and I think that's too bad....before they did that History wasn't really grade specific. Now that the LA is included, which is so obviously not for a 6th grader, the Core sold as usable for 4th-6th grade it really isn't, it's for 4th grade. What a terrible sentence that was. I'm going to leave it like that and blame Sonlight's LA.

Here he is doing his spelling. He's doing 4 different workbooks for LA...bless his heart.

Ava and I continue our adventures in First Language Lessons 3. It's like this program was written just for her. They always know the right little thing to add to keep her interest and invariably it's artistic in nature. She loves nothing more than drawing a picture....

She's also read so many books in the past 2 weeks that I have lost count. It's at least 8.

When she's not reading she's painting....

or practicing soccer....well trying to anyway....so far it's been standing around either in the rain or waiting for the rain.

I still hate the dread Moccasin Trail. Devlin however continues to be completely enamored by all things Indian related. He's convinced he 'counted coup' in his video game and he's taken to practicing his piano like a squaw...

I'm so proud.

Being home has given them some down time and they are back to playing with each other more. This week Ava inspired Devlin to try some water colors

Looking good my son.

We got a membership to the Virginia Living Museum today that I'm hopeful will enhance our aquatic studies. We went today as a family and had a splendid time. Here they are pretending to behave for the camera.

I'm so thankful the God has allowed me to school my children at home. I would sorely miss them if they were away at school all day. They are 2 of the coolest people I know and it's great to be able to watch them learn about...well....everything.

The post I was going to write this weekend...

Or what could have been titled "Sailey Homeschool Happenings Week 1"
Alas! I was to wrapped up in museum trips and laundry to make that happen.....so here we are on a Tuesday afternoon.

Week 1 went pretty well.

We are back to Sonlight and I'm back to wanting to choke who ever picks their read-alouds. We are reading Moccasin Trail and Ava and I both hate it. She thinks it's boring and I find nothing more annoying than having to read this ...

" Like when the Comanches was chasin' us, or we'd git our horses stole and have to git arrers in us stealin' 'em back agin, or we didn't dare show a f'ar and have to eat our meat raw. Fust time I eat raw prairie dog, by gor  I wisht fer my mother, and felt mean I ever run off and left her. I missed her other times, too, and I missed Johnnie mighty bad. But I was skeered to go back 'cause my pa'd of beat the living daylights out'n me"


Much like I'd like to beat the living daylights out of the person that chose this book! Devlin likes it and so we are going to struggle through it. I can only hope the selections will get better.
As an aside....if people really talked like this in the Wild West why don't they anymore? I find it really hard to believe that everyone went around twanged out and adding apostrophes to everything they said. SO ANNOYING!


Our History book is about William Wilberforce and how he helped abolish slavery in Great Britian without starting a war. We are really enjoying that. Our 5th day book is Sounding Forth the Trumpet (might be Sound Forth but whatever) It amazes me how much of this book I have been instructed by Sonlight to edit out because the authors were trying to deliver a biased viewpoint. Followed by pages of explanation from Sonlight as to the why's and how's. Why choose this book? Again baffled.

Now we move onto Language Arts. Devlin is using Sonlight's LA which we are now forced to buy with every core. I added in Grammar Ace as suggested and it's a good thing I did. I am finding the content extremely light. It hardly takes him any time at all to complete the assignments. Of course he's perfectly OK with this. Me...not so much. I'm keeping my eye on how things progress...

We started something new this year. It's a writing program called IEW. It cost a pretty penny and I'm happy to say I LOVE it! Ava had a bit of a rough start. Her artistic side was definitely showing. Happily I had Stef to text thus avoiding me blowing an eyeball. We watched the lesson, did the 'key-word outline' wrote the rough draft all on the 1st day. That took FOREVER! I'm really hoping every lesson day won't be like that. Otherwise I really like it. It makes sense and I'm excited to see how things unfold as we add more lessons in.

Her paragraph was pretty darn good. 

Devlin's was awesome! So far it's money well spent!

Devlin's trying Teaching Textbooks Math this year and so far he really likes it. It's completely student led so I really like it too! Here he is doing it on the school laptop....thanks Ray for making money and buying us things like laptops and head phones.;)

We also started Switched on Schoolhouse's Elementary Spanish.

I'm not sure how I feel about it yet since they have only done 2 lessons. I do like that the pointer finger, when low enough on the screen that you can't see the hand it's attached too, looks like a tiny penis. Makes me smirk every time.
Another new elective for us is Mark Kistler's Draw Squad. I LOVE IT! One lesson a week and really we were drawing in the 1st lesson. Even Devlin liked it.

Here's a pic of the book in case you want to check it out and next to the book is Ava's page with her little drawing's...I've already been asked when we are doing it again. So that's a win for me.

To wrap up the week Ava decided to make us some cookies. I went for the no bake option since I knew she would bore quickly and I would be left finishing the baking. She did a great job! They were delish!

The ones we made are called 'Gorilla Poops" They loved that lol.

Ava had her last summer Art lesson with Mrs.Southern on Tuesday. She's been working on a clay box that has yet to be fired so we're in a holding pattern on that. I can't wait to see it. She's always inspired to create after spending time with Mrs.Southern and I can really see her art changing and her abilities growing.

Here she is at the table painting.

So all in all it was a great week back. I pray the rest of our school year is just as good.

The online CAT test review.

Or as I like to call it.....
Hurry up you're running out of time!!! OMG! Are you seriously still reading the same question?!?! Hurry up!

I wish I was joking.

Apparently my kids have no concept of time and how it moves....

OK enough freaking out here's the review.....

When you go to www.shopchristianliberty.com they have a tab for on-line CAT testing. It links you to a page full of words that I chose not to read.
I should have read the words.
I thought I was going to click the link buy the test (The tests cost $25 each)
and administer it......that's not how it works.
You click the link, buy the test and wait for them to get back to you with a code for each test purchased.

Once you have the code you go to www.mytestpoint.net and enter it which brings you to the main test page.

They list each sub-group test within the test and you just need to select one to start. We started at the top and worked our way down.

Devlin began no problem.

Ava however who has extremely restricted internet access wasn't able to take the test on her computer. We didn't discover this till we had already started and I had to quickly log her out and then log her back in on my laptop. Thank goodness you have that option otherwise we would have been sunk. It seems windows wasn't able to run the spoken portion of the test because she didn't have the software downloaded to do it...or so the computer claimed.
Anyway.....

Both tests started with Language Arts, moved onto Math and then went back to Language Arts.

Remember that pesky original page full of words?? When I went back to read that I discovered not only that I had to wait for the magic code I also discovered that they are selling an older version of the CAT that's harder. DO NOT LET THAT SCARE YOU! I found that yes SOME of the questions were more difficult. By difficult I mean some of the questions are actually at grade level. How refreshing.
The only issue my two had was time management. They both did not have enough time to complete the portion where you had to copy the math questions down onto scratch paper and figure them out and then select the answer on the computer and hit next. I would estimate there were 25-28 questions to complete in approx. 30 min. I was extremely freaked out when they both timed out with questions left unanswered. Once you time out that section of the test is  automatically closed and graded and you have to move the kid on without doing something unpleasant to them because they have more test to take. Happily they both tested 'average' when their scores were revealed.  This is probably because other kids don't know how to MOVE IT either...OMG! Soooo slow!
Also worth noting about time is that the clock in the corner of the test does NOT count down. Whatever time you have left when you click on the next question appears in the top right corner and does NOT refresh until you move onto the next question. I will be purchasing a timer (or 2) for next year.

Overall they both did extremely well.

Devlin went up another level in Language Mechanics! He tested in the 6th stanine which is a huge improvement over the 4th he got a couple of years ago. His math concepts and problems section was his top scorer. YAY boy!!

....everything else was above average. (except for the afore mentioned math fiasco in which they got 5 and 6 respectively-or basically tested at exactly grade level.)

Ava did amazing in all of the Language Arts sections even though she scared the ever-lovin' out of me by taking her sweet time and BARELY completing the sections within the allotted time.


So would I do it again???

Actually I think I would. I liked that the test was harder. I loved getting immediate results. I disliked the time limits but I think I can overcome that by a.) giving them the test during the school year and b.) giving them some timed drill sheets for practice before the test next year.

*I need to add that a friend told me that you cannot go back and change you answer....this is only true after you have submitted the sub-test for grading. While the test is open(for example -punctuation) and you are answering questions you can skip a question and go back to it.

Once the entire test has been submitted you click on the report tab and viola you have your grades.


I don't think it will come as a surprise that I am glad to have that behind us. Now I have to hurry up and sort my books so I can get my schedule started for next year....more on that later.

Can it be this easy?

So we went back to Thalia Lynn Baptist Church yesterday. This time we all tried out the Sunday School before the 11am contemporary service. Each grade is divided into separate classes for school aged children. Devlin attend Planet 56 which is specifically for 5th and 6th graders. I was pleased to see that there are mostly boys in his class. I'm sure he can make a friend or two among them. In his class they talked about Stephen and they acted out a little play. He said he had a good time and declared the teacher to be 'cool'. I feel pretty good about that since he's of an age where almost nothing is cool anymore. Here is what his worksheet looks like......

 Ava of course was over the moon. She's been bugging me for a year to find a church with Sunday School. She loved it as I knew she would.  Her worksheet was similar to Devlin's. She also made this nifty item.....

...to help her remember her Bible verse. Super cute!

Ray and I went to the adult Sunday School. There are several classes to choose from in our age bracket. We just walked into the first door because we had to start somewhere. There we mostly couples in our class. They played a video about the Holy Spirit and how It is or isn't working within the church today compared to when first revealed to the apostles. Then there was a discussion time with questions asked by a leader to help guide and keep things on track. Lots of insightful stuff was covered and we will definitely be going back to that class.

After class a few people stopped us to chat and meet our kids and share their thoughts about the church and the children's program which they all RAVED about. It was nice to go into the main sanctuary and recognize people from Sunday School, it made it feel more comfortable.

The Senior Pastor was away in California attending his daughter's wedding so there was a guest preacher. I liked him OK...he was a bit too old school for me. On the plus side he's Scottish so we all enjoyed his accent. He talked about how God and His works are truly the only AWESOME things in this world and how we over use the word to describe things that pale in comparison.

All in all we had a nice time. I was surprised at how comfortable I felt after only attending 2x's. Like could this be our new church? Can is really be this simple and fast? Maybe.....

Hey you. Judgy-judgerton....

We all do it. And by "ALL" of couse I mean I do it to.....today's rant is on JUDGEMENT.

A friend who shall remain nameless posted this to her facebook feed today...... http://melissajenna.com/2012/06/30/50-shades-of-magic-mike-in-which-i-am-very-uncool/ 

To which I replied ....

 Read them 2x's and got lots of fun ideas...Ray was very glad. ;) Clearly I have different views on what pornography is. This was a fictional story with made up characters. As a married woman I didn't find anything shocking about the books at all. I' doubt I'll see Magic Mike mostly because I think it's wrong to objectify REAL people (men and women) even if they claim to a.) not mind. Or b.) not understand that they are being abused.

I was just going to leave it at that. In fact I was pissed at myself for rising to the bait at all.
 I was proud of myself for not asking "Hey are you feeling pretty good about your sinful self now that you refrained from reading a book? I'm sure you are going to heaven while the rest of us sinful readers are going to the smut library in hell."
Then I got to thinking........
I'm thinking about what sanctimoniousness bitches we are.
I'm thinking about how what one person is convicted of isn't necessarily what another would ever be convicted about.
I'm thinking about how ballsy it was for that woman to post that on her blog...she must be feeling as good about getting that off her chest as I'm going to feel when I'm done writing this.

Why are we so terrible to each other? Why do we feel more holy, godly, happy when we point out how we can't or won't do something so no one else could possibly do it too with out them being the worst?
Conversely why do we focus on this meaningless CRAP when we have very serious things going on in our lives that are demanding our attention? Attention that is being diverted by focusing on ridiculous crap like what books we read or movies we see.

Ya see here's the thing I realized after reading that blog post..... it's just a sinful to make people feel bad about themselves as it is for them to read crappy books (not that I think that reading crappy books is sinful. I acknowledge that it is seen that way by some.) It's just as sinful to ignore the really important stuff in your life by posting stuff that other people are going to focus on rather that doing what God really wants them to do. We are diverting their attention away from God's path. That's a sin and a shame.

I'm trying not to do stuff like that anymore so when I do please call me out on it s I can pay attention to the stuff God really wants me to.

THANKS :)

The Hunt Is On

So far we have tried 3 different churches in our hunt for a new place to worship.
I think here is a good place to add an aside
* It's important to go to church.*
I mean of course you should go to church but taking a few months off has really shown me that it's needed in my life and walk with God and Jesus.

Church #1 St.Aidan's Episcopal Church http://aidanvbva.net/

We attended St. Aidan's last summer. I chose the Episcopal church because they are very close to Catholic. There are A LOT of displaced Catholics there. Almost no difference between the actual services at all. They are a very lovely group of people. Father Mark was very open about discussing what they believe and why. All who are baptized are welcome at the Communion table. They run a very nice Montessori based Sunday school for kids. Their adult Sunday school is FANTASTIC. Lots of deep thoughtful discussions going on there. There are also plenty of opportunities to serve the community via out reach programs. There a a few reasons why we didn't settle there. I don't think I was ready. They are too much like the Catholic church so it kinda paled in comparison. They were also and possibly still are up in arms about allowing gay men and women serve as priests. I think at the end of the day I didn't want to go from one scandal to another.

So after St. Aidan's I took a looong break. Sometimes we went to St.Gregory's but I was left feeling empty and eventually we stopped going altogether. Oddly enough my kids didn't ask one time to go back. They did want to go back to St. Aidan's but I really think I just needed time to detox. We continued to do bible reading and a children's church here at the house on Sunday's so they wouldn't be totally without.

Church #2 Thalia United Methodist Church http://thaliaumc.org/

This was my first time in a Methodist church and I was surprised that they opened much in the same way the Catholic church does with the cross preceding events and the pastor following. This church serves Communion on the 1st and 3rd Sunday's so we got to witness how they roll and again it was similar to the Catholic church. The sermon was nice...a little light for my tastes but Devlin enjoyed it. Ava went to the children's church during the service. While we enjoyed our experience at Thalia Methodist we won't be making it our home base. It was a little small for us. Ava was the only child her age in her children's church class. You can't receive Communion until you are in the 6th grade and since Ava has already put her time in that was a deal breaker for us.

Church #3 Thalia Lynn Baptist Church http://thalialynn.com/
They have a fancy website with flash running so I couldn't steal a picture.
This church has a bit of a family history with us. Ray went there as a child when he came to visit his grandmother Jane for summers. He encouraged me to try them out when I began talking to him about leaving the Catholic church. He has good memories of attending there. So this morning we rolled out for the 11am contemporary worship service. Ray came with us. This is a pretty big deal for me because he's not a big supporter of organized religion. It's actually the first time we've gone to church together that it wasn't for a Sacrament. There was a very diverse crowd. Old and young from all walks of life. The music was good. (Right up your alley Stef-Jesus Jams abound) The sermon was great. Informative and thought provoking. The people were welcoming but not annoying. In short we are going to try again next week. And when I say we I mean Ray is going back too. Devlin was looking for something a bit more traditional but is keeping an open mind. We'll let them give Sunday school a whirl and see how that goes. All in all we are pleasantly surprised. None more so than me especially because Catholics and Baptists are on totatlly different ends of the spectrum on lots of significant topics...like BAPTISIM. lol. But you know me...nothing makes me happier than a heated discussion ;)
I'll keep you posted......

Why I'm leaving the Catholic Church

It's important to say why I'm leaving the Church before I start talking about finding a new church so that's what today's post will be about. The back story is I was baptized Episcopal and raised Catholic because my mother married a Catholic and converted. Personally I am a survivor of physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. I ran into some Salvation Army folks one summer at a camp and they convinced me to accept Jesus as my Savior. That was backed up by my Evangelical grandmother who rescued me from my abusive home when I was 13. I went to Catholic school my whole childhood but refused my conformation and rather was confirmed at my grandmother's Evangelical church. I attended the Evangelical church until I left for my Wesleyan college. After college like many I quit going to church but I never quit God. I have always had a relationship with Him. All that information is well and good but the truth is GOD called me. He called me as a child and He's calling me still. He knew how desperately I needed Him and He called to me. I know it sounds corny and nutters but it's true. And I'm so thankful for it that I'm tearing up just writing the words.

I really love Him a lot.
I've seen first hand the destruction abuse of any kind leaves in its wake. I know and love people who can not get over the trauma of being abused, maybe I am able to be open about it because that's God's purpose in my life. I'm here to honestly tell you that the repercussions of abuse are life long and devastating. I wrestle my own demons from my past but am able to give my children a home free from the horrors that I experienced. Thank God.
Given my past you can only imagine the horror I felt when the first scandal broke here in the U.S.. To think that the church I loved could harbor known child rapists was obviously abhorrent to me. And as if that wasn't enough the Church wasn't all that torn up about it. Sure they said all the right things but they don't DO any of the right things. Here's a list from Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Catholic_sex_abuse_cases_by_country. It's a world wide epidemic of priests abusing children. Here's another site for you http://www.bishop-accountability.org/member/index.jsp how utterly disgusting that that even has to exist. How many people haven't come forward because of shame or fear. And what does the Church do? It's says that those priests were very naughty and the next words out of their mouths is about how much money it's going to cost them to clean up the mess they made. I feel like puking. This acceptance and covering up of child rape goes all the way to the very top of the church http://thenewcivilrightsmovement.com/pope-directly-tied-to-abuse-scandals-in-u-s/legal-issues/2010/03/25/9138 

I just can't make this shit up! And then I read something like this http://www.cbsnews.com/2100-202_162-6389019.html and even though I think it can't be done my mind is blown again! You can't divert my attention away from baby raper priests by singling out homosexuals as if they are somehow a worse type of sinner. All have sinned and fall short of the glory of God. I feel like punching some one. And the FACT that Catholics I know and love would choose to focus on gays instead of baby rapers makes me want to cry. Please read the following announcement....
****Gay men and women are attracted to gay men and women NOT children.****

So as if that's not enough to chap my hide I find out that because I didn't get married in the church I'm not able to receive Communion and that if I do so I am cursing my self. This is some nutty stuff right?! 
Let me make it perfectly clear. 
+A priest who has used his hands and body to rape a child can stand on the Altar and hold the precious Body and Blood of my King in his filthy hands and take it into his disgusting body but I can't.+

 Are there even words to address that? I don't have them....
I've known for about 2 years that God was pointing me in a different direction. In fact I can recall the day I first realized I was going to leave the Church. My dear departed friend Dave Tomas had the misfortune of calling me that day and received the full force of my tears. Seriously I had to apologize to him later. (He was amazingly supportive by the way and he was a Catholic of good standing) I truly in my heart believe that the Catholic Church is the Church begun by Christ. I love it's rich traditions and beautiful history. I don't dismiss the reason Martin Luther split from the Church but I don't think that those reason's were as insurmountable as the obstacles we now face with the sex abuse and cover up's that are rampant in the Church. As an aside there's this http://news.yahoo.com/insight-vatican-bank-money-mystery-monsignors-100134961--finance.html because we should mention the FACT that the Church is a front for money laundering. Barf. The Church is too corrupt for me to stay. I can't support it any more...as of last week we have begun looking for a new church home. I will miss the Church. I've made sure my children have received their Sacraments just in case the Church ever cleans up it's act and they can return. I am holding out hope that that will happen in their life time. In the mean time we search....
My bestie Stef summed up how I feel in a recent facebook thread and I think I'll close with that....

Quite frankly what I find most disturbing (after the actual raping of children of course) is that the body of the church ignores the issue entirely. (Andra being the exception.) They never speak of it, never protest against it, never take any steps within their church to get rid of those committing and covering it up. Do you really think that you're going to stand before God one day and He's not going to question why you totally ignored the heinous corruption within the church?

We are Christ's hands and feet on this earth. It's our job to take back the church from that dirty, good ole boy network over there in vatican city. You need to take a page out of Jesus' book and drive out those corrupt and evil doers from the church because, quite frankly, they're turning it into a den of thieves. 

Your loyalty should be to God not to a bunch of men who clearly care more about covering their butts and hiding scandal from the world than they do about God and the people in the church. Andra's right, if this were the protestant church, hand cuffs would be dangling off of wrists and cell doors would be slamming.

I have a friend who had a bit of similar scandal. Married church member had relations with a teenage girl. Pastor found out. Instead of calling the police, the pastor sent the man to some in-patient treatment center for therapy. Church members found out and guess what? They called the police, child abuser in jail, the pastor was removed from his position and faced his own criminal charges. The church has a new, Godly leader. Did the right thing and took back their church. 

It's your church and it is in a desperate place. It's more corrupt than our government because as messed up as I feel Washington is, I pretty sure they're not covering for child abusers. If it were me, I'd be doing a little "table flipping" starting at the top and working my way down.

I believe it was Edmund Burke who said, "All it takes for evil to triumph is for good people to do nothing." True story.

The Christmas Rant

It's been almost 3 months since I blogged....
I've been busy living the life of a homeschooling mother...
There have been a few occasions when I should have gotten on here and gone ape-shit over Don and his amazing lack of ability but truly at the end of the day the last thing I want to do is get on the computer again....

It's usually smut and Words With Friends.....

Lately though.... as Christmas approaches.....I've been reading on line and hearing people say something that chaps my hide enough that I have to rant about it so I'll feel better.....because it's all about me feeling better.

OK so here it is.....


Christmas was started from a pagan holiday and has nothing to do with Jesus.
(insert eye roll here...)


So here's what I think....as I'm always right you can just think it too.....

Celebrating Christmas may well have started out as a way for the Catholic church to make it easier for non believing people to feel more comfortable joining the church but that doesn't make it any less meaningful....

YOU make it less meaningful.....

YOU use that as an excuse to change what can be a time to grow your relationship with Christ and His Father into a meaningless frenzy of stress and crap.

YOU have made it into a time of gift giving instead of receiving.

Instead why don't you read your Bible more, pray more, go to church more. Spend more time listening for HIM.
 These days the Catholic church uses this time to encourage us to focus less on the outside crap collection and more on the inside crap cleaning.

Just because we don't know the exact date and time of Jesus' birth doesn't mean we shouldn't celebrate it!

Rejoice for unto to us a Savior is born!

Whatever day it was GOD gave us a GIFT that is beyond measure that we should thank Him for every single day. That being said there is no harm is having a special time during the year to really focus on the meaning of that Gift and how we can use the gift of Jesus to change us and the world.

I'll tell you something else that gets my back up.....

People who use the holiday to feed their greed. It shouldn't be used as an excuse for you to buy crap for every person you've ever known and then bitch about the expense and the stress.....
YOU do that to your self.
YOU cheapen it and make it into a commercial pig fest.

If you still believe Christmas is a pagan holiday ....

PLEASE STOP "CELEBRATING" IT!!!!!!!

Don't put up a tree----the evergreen a symbol of God's ever love for us....
Don't eat any candy canes....a symbol of the Shepard's crook....
Don't accept the Christmas bonus.
Don't make the fancy dinner.
Don't take the day off.
Don't go to all the holiday parties.
Don't accept any gifts.

Please don't take part in any of the celebrations.

Most of all please don't give any gifts....

I give gifts to the children in my life because I'm so happy.
I'm happy that I can share the love inside me by gifting them and seeing their excitement and smiles.
I gift them with THINGS certainly but more importantly I gift them with the entire advent season.
I gift them with the reason to celebrate the season.
I gift them because it's a worldly symbol of the gift that was given to me and to all of us.

The gift of Jesus our Lord, the Messiah,the Prince of Peace.

I'm in charge here!

Or at least I think I am......in fact the cover of my lesson planner carries this written reminder....

I think I'll start holding it up when the kids give me attitude.

They don't tell you when you start homeschooling that there will be days your children decide that they are going test you to the utter limits of the patience God gave you.....I get especially aggravated when they tell me what they are going to do. Don't mistake me.....I am all about them expressing their likes and dislikes. I don't want to be an overlord. But at the end of the day school is non-negotiable.   So with a small amount of grumbling here's what we got done.....

Math tests went very well! I was especially pleased with Stufffie.

                                                          SUPER DUPER!!!

Not to be out done Kung-Fu knocked it out of the park! He got an 89...which is a B...not to shabby! The picture is on my ipod and I have no idea how to post it here.....sorry Kung-Fu!

We are almost done with our first Time Travelers unit.... we finished Explorers....PIRATES are next!

                                                     see ya fellas!

And we colored this nifty Mission. Because the explorers didn't just wipe out the natives with disease they also thought it would be a good idea to kill them in the name of our Lord.....

                                    What a bunch of dummies!

We also made this map that shows where each explorer explored in the New World.....

Cutting out each tiny little head and gluing them was tons of fun! no really....Kung-Fu opted NOT to color his...and that was a decision I was happy to let him make.....

We also made this cool 3D map.....we really like these. And this week they both colored with markers so it matches.....it's the little things that thrill me....

                          Love the temple and the Spaniards prancing around....

Our extremely crappy State Study continues to bore. I'm thinking this week I'll order something different. Because what we're doing it just useless. I know they aren't learning ANYTHING! 

                  

The workbook is really uninspiring....it's a shame....not just the black and whiteness of it...it's the utter YAWN factor.....

I tossed around the idea of using it to the bitter end but at the end of the day it's more important that my kids learn the geography of the US then it is for me to have more fuel to pour on the fire that is Winter Promise publications.

We skipped the 2nd assignment of Picture Studies this week because we are so sick of the 'new' picture from last week that we were ready to cry with boredom. Luckily I have some Come Look With Me books around that I'm going to supplement with. 

Kung Fu continued to enjoy the WP Language arts....color me surprised....

yes I know that some of the nouns aren't nouns and we did talk about what a noun is so relax.

Spelling tests went super...

                                           Kung Fu.

                                           Stuffie.

Here's Stuffie's letter to Jesus.....

seriously the cutest sweetest thing EVER! I can only imagine how Jesus feels.....

Mrs.Lewis the kid's music teacher is going to get the weekly Bible verse as a welcome back to music school gift.....

                           Sorry Leigh...it was music related and you like fish....except to eat.

She also drew another picture inspired by Writing With Ease.

it's Misty of Chincoteague. And according to Stuffie it looks just like her because she knows what she looked like and she wants to go see her stuffed and mounted on Chincoteage Island. We're going to go in a couple of weeks and if I find this stuffed and mounted horse I'm posting that lovely photo of death!

Kung Fu is never inspired to draw a picture after Writing With Ease.....

Apologia Astronomy is, as usual, totally awesome. We studied the Earth this week....

There were the regular pages of fascinating facts, mini-books, what do you remember? But my favorites were the pages where they can draw their own Earth...

                               Wanted earth...I'm not sure what the Earth did to cause it to be wanted but there you have it.

We did a bunch of bike riding this week because the weather is so nice.....

she scares me less and less each time we ride out....

Kung Fu got a new bike because he's to big for kids sized bikes.....

Being a man sized boy has it's perks. He already wiped out and has a nasty scrape on his elbow.  

we met up with our buddy at the AC Moore and made the last summer craft...it involved creasing....

                                        "What do you mean crease?"  Why didn't she just say FOLD???

Behold the CREASERS...it's like greasers only with FOLDING!

And that's our week in a nutshell. 

Tomorrow the public schools are back in session and we're taking the whole week off...because we can. We've got a 5 week head start and like we usually do we're going to go camping. 

I feel sorry for the kids who's mom's can't wait for them to go back to school and I feel sorry for the mom's who miss their kids while they are away. 

I'm am ever thankful that God has blessed us so we can live the homeschooling life and I hope I can be worthy of the gift he has given me in my children.