Horseback Riding Badge

So Cassie is an American Heritage Girl :) Today we went to a horse ranch with her group so they could work on their horsemanship badge. 3 hours of loads of girls, siblings and horses. Oh and gorgeous weather. Gorgeous. Love spring. So nice to just get out with the littles and enjoy the weather. A few pics from our fun day!

Cassie on the horse. In the car she thought she'd be a tad scared because horses are SO much bigger than goats but once she was in the ring with him she wasn't scared at all! In fact she put her foot in the stirrup and sprung up so fast the lady kept saying over and over that she acted like she had been on horses her whole life.


Cassie watching with her new friends.

Frankie with the BIG boy Breeze. He was so so tall. He was sweet at first. But there were these little girls who kept jumping and tapping his nose and bugging him that he was ornery by the end of the day and tried to nip fingers.

Who knew that Adric of all of them would love on the horses the most? That little pony just took to him. He didn't care too much for all the other kids but just kept sticking his head all the way out and loving on him the whole time Adric sat there.



Even Hartley hopped up and watched his big sister ride the horse around. Now of course he called them dogs :) "Dooog" So then I worked with him and he would say "hhh hhh hhhorrr". Right Hartley horse! Proud mom - of course until he turned and actually looked at the horse and said..... "doooog".

Always something for everyone to do at a farm. Pinecones? Definitely a great score.

And a couple cute baby doll pics.

So a family outing to the horse farm today and then off to Cub Scouts, Boy Scouts and AHG meeting tomorrow.

The Declaration of Independence

If you haven't read this, or haven't in a long time, as we celebrate Independence Day this weekend in the US, now's the time. Click on it below and it will take you to a readable transcript. And hey, while you're there, take a peek at the Constitution, read yourself the Bill of Rights. Have you done it since High School?


Hope everyone is enjoying the freedom to assemble together with our families and celebrate this day. We're off to the July 3rd celebration at our church complete with food, fireworks, fabulous southern gospel band, fun crafts and fellowship!

Truly Excited About School

There is a moment in whatever it is where you have that "ah ha" moment. Yeah yeah I quote Oprah. Don't hold it against me. For the last 5 years I have homeschooled. We did fine. The children have learned to read. And add. The have good handwriting. They're learning grammar. We've been getting the job done. But that's what it's been. Getting the job done. And that is okay. But it's not what I always wanted for them. Getting the job done isn't enough for me. At least not right now while I'm not pregnant or sick :)

I have some friends that school with a strong Classical leaning. They are inspiring ladies to say the least. Go check them out. Dell and AmyKate truly amaze me in what they do with their lovely families with ease. Over the years I have watched and listened to what they were doing and always felt that there was no way I could school like they do. But I was always in awe of their use of living books, their children's writing, and general passion for learning.

So I went and got The Well Trained Mind from the library. I started to read and was absorbed. It was almost obsessive! I read. And read. Then it lived in the bathroom. Yeah maybe library books in the bathroom is bad form. I never thought about until this moment. *blush*. Every chance I got I read that book. Here's a link to a page that gives the basic premise. Classical Education ala WTM. It was as if the heavens parted, a lightbulb went off over my head, and everything just fell into place.

I could do this. I could teach my children the way I wanted to. I didn't have to just get the job done. I "got it". I had already started Tapestry of Grace (love love) which is a classical curriculum but I started adding in more suggestions ala WTM like copywork, narrations, memorization in younger ones, her writing suggestions for older ones, and more. My children are thriving. She explains the three stages of learning and how to teach children based on their developmental stage. Blew my mind in the clarity it brought me. I could WHY to teach my 6yo one way and why I have to teach my 10 yo differently. I understood how to teach writing. That was a biggie. I have developed this love, no PASSION, for books. I've rethought Science. And am actually thrilled about it instead of dreading change like I always do. I hate change. I do. And I am now revamping lots of things! Yeah it really was an "ah ha" moment.

But more than anything, I am excited. Which makes them excited. I am thrilled to understand how all the pieces of what we're doing work together and how that works as they get older. It's not just a day by day thing. I see our future goals more clearly now.

Easter Pics

We snapped a few pictures for Easter. Goodness I love these people!

A family pic snapped after church:

This has to be my favorite picture of the entire day. Such love there.
My big boy and little boy:
Adric reached his hand up without any prompting. It was such a sweet loving move on his part. I will always love this picture because of it.
Look at this gorgeous dude!

The kids:
What 956 of the other pictures I tried to get of them looked like:
Hope you had a blessed Sunday last week. We did.

I think I can.. I think I can

Start blogging again that is. There's so much to talk about. Way too much to sit down and ramble about in one post. But I see changes coming to my blogging (IF I actually do blog of course. We all know that it's one "okay I'm going to start blogging again" post after another LOL). But I see changes coming if I do blog. One major one being talking about our homeschooling as well as homesteading. As of late I have been so inspired in the area of schooling and am excited to share what we're learning and doing. But for right now I'll throw up some pictures.

Wanna see our humble abode?

There it is. It's cute. And cozey. And country. And I love it.

Our Hospital Stay....

I've been missing this last week or so. You know you were thinking I was going to get back into the blogging almost every day thing again. And I am. Unless we're in the hospital with the baby that is!

Early last week Cassie and Adric had a little bout of something or another. They both had little fevers. But it all lasted just a day or two. Adric was sick for only about 12 hours! But because of the baby, my great mom came and took the fevery children away from the house until they were well.

Thursday Garrison had a little of an off day. He slept most of the day. But Friday he was feeling fine so I just figured, hey, normal baby stuff. But then Saturday mom came over and we were going Goodwilling. But Garrison wasn't feeling so great. He was fussy fussy. He would fuss when I picked him up instead of being comforted when I picked him up. I realized he was hot. So I took his under arm temperature. It was 101.5. I immediately called the on call nurse for the pediatricians and she said "Take him to the Emergency Room right now". Sigh. Just what every mom with a 5 week old needs to hear to make her a worried mess.

So we went.

And it turns out that with babies that age, it's a 100% "Better Safe Than Sorry" policy. Because newborns can go downhill so fast when things ARE serious, they treat things like they are serious until they find out they're not. So they take a spinal tap, blood and urine to culture all three to rule out any sort of bacterial type infection.

Ahh spinal taps in little babies. Not the best thing to watch. But I'm not one to be squeamish, so I watched all his procedures. Did you realize that little itty bitty babies have litty itty bitty veins? Yeah, 2 HOURS, 4 sticks, and 10+ people later, Hartley got his IV in. And he was a tad too dehydrated from his fever to get spinal fluid. He'd need ANOTHER spinal tap later. Great...

I did get to go in an ambulance. They transferred us from our local hospital to the Children's Hospital in Nashville. Mandatory 48 hour stay. There they did another spinal tap, got all his IV antibiotics going and by 2:30AM we were in a room. Poor Clay. He probably got to sleep at 3:30 and his alarm went off at 5 to go to work.

So I spent the next two days in the hospital. Let me just say, it's like Grand Central Station in the hospital room of a baby. All.... night.... long..... And let me also say that antibiotics make my baby Hartley gassy. And that gassy Hartleys stay up most of the night fussing.

Oh and they also give you meals if you're breastfeeding the baby. Nice. And you get to order off a stacked huge menu. Nice again. And let me give you an idea of how good the food is. I ordered PORK LOIN in the hospital. Twice. And it was fantastic.

But after 2 days, the cultures came back fine and we were discharged! I've spent the last week glad for a baby with no fever, trying to get the children back into normal life, and get my sleep schedule better again.

To all my friends and family that prayed for Hartley and sent well wishes, it was more than appreciated. Love you.

Back to regular blogging tomorrow.

Red Shirt Fridays

Red Shirt Friday is a symbol of unity of support for our solders who have given their lives and their freedoms so we might enjoy ours.

Red Shirt Friday is not just to give thanks to the thousands that have died for us. It is also for the millions that have served our country, our serving our country now, and to the millions that have supported our brave military.

It is for the loved ones that have sacrificed and continue to sacrifice for our benefit. Mothers, wives, brothers, sisters, children, and relatives.

It is for the friends neighbors, communities, organizations, states and our nation that suffer from our loss.

It is for all of the ones that are serving now and have served.

Our Homeschool 2009-2001 -Part 1

I am going to do a few posts about what we're doing this coming year. Actually our year goes from about Jan-Jan since we school year round. The Winter is when the children seem to switch to new books. But since I read many a homeschool blog post this Fall, I, being one that always gives into peer pressure figured it was time :) I'm going to break these into a couple posts. I'll post what we're using, why we like it and where to get it.

Math first. Seems there's always more talk about math than anything else. Maybe phonics, but math still seems to be the one people debate more, have strong opinions about, and doubt whether they're using the right thing, the most. We as a family use Math U See. I LOVE it. I won't say I haven't had my moments where I considered switching, but the fact that my children love it and thrive on it always keeps me on track with it.

MathUSee is definitely in the middle of all homeschool math debates for a reason. There's also a reason SO many homeschoolers use it. It's different. It's succeeding where for many children, the same old math was not. MUS (Math U See from now on in this post) is different for a few reasons. A, it's visual and tactile. It teaches learning using blocks all the way up through higher math. Being able to see and touch and build using manipulatives helps the brain visualize math. So it's good for those great at math. AND it's good for those who struggle with math. That makes it a great fit for the homeschooling family that will have children all over that map.
The blocks:
B, it focuses on the how and WHY you solve a certain problem a certain way. It's not just about learning how to do something but why you use a certain method, why you are doing what you're doing. I've learned a lot already and Frankie's only in 4th grade.
C, and perhaps the most important and controversial part of MUS, is that it uses the mastery method instead of the spiral method. Normally math is taught via the spiral method. Spiral programs introduce a variety of topics without expecting children to fully understand them. With repeated exposure and continuous review, children are expected to learn and master all necessary concepts. BUT with the mastery method, which I LOVE, a child masters a concept before moving onto a new concept. So you would master addition before moving to subtraction. So you would learn addition, then multiple digit addition before even starting subtraction. Then you would master subtraction, complicated subtraction, before moving onto multiplication, and so on and so forth. I love that my children are actually getting to cement an idea, cement what they've learned before being expected to move onto a totally new topic. They have 3, yes three, pages per lesson (each page has word problems too!). So if your child needs more than just the standard one day on a subject (like most children) they have 3 lesson pages, three days, to do the lesson. Then, it has 3 systematic review pages for each lesson. SO not only do they review past lessons and books (which people worry about) they also get more lesson practice if they need it. And of course lastly, the fact that we USE addition to subtract, that we use it to multiply. Just because we already did addition, it doesn't mean that the children don't use it every day.

Another worry is about the fact that schools use a spiral method so children aren't always in the same place testing wise, or won't have learned the same thing school children have at the same time. Don't worry! It all comes out in the wash. They WILL all learn the same things, they just learn them at different times. So while a public schooled child in one grade would have learned single digit addition and subtraction, our MUS children would have learned addition and double digit addition that year. But the next year the school children would learn double digit addition and subtraction, our MUSers would learn single and double digit subtraction. So after a couple years everyone's learned the same things. And my homeschooling goals do not include mimicking the public school system's goals, so I don't worry about it anyways.

MUS also comes with a DVD that has Mr. Steve Demme teaching each lesson up with a white board. My children just put the DVD in the computer, watch their lesson and that's it. Now I do have to teach now and then :) but Frankie especially doesn't need me at all. The DVD is all he needs. So if you aren't sure about teaching math, then this is great for you.

Check out a free demo here:
http://mathusee.com/demo.html

That was longer than I expected! Maybe I'll just stop with that for now.

String Figures

How we got to this place I don't know. On one hand we are moving more and more to being as self-reliant as we can. Cutting way back on electricity, line drying our clothes, heating with wood, growing as much of our own food as we can, and yet we are all tied to technology, bad. TV, computers, video games. Bad.

None more than I am. But that is for another post coming soon.

As a result of seeing this more and more, I've been trying to be more active in turning their minds away from the tv. I've been trying to remember and seeking out those simple fun games and toys that my kids can play that require little more than a string or ball.

Remember String Figures? While my childhood was the real beginning of the video game revolution (yes I spent way too many hours playing Atari, and then way too many days and weeks playing Nintendo as a kid) I still think back and there are so many simple pleasures we enjoyed as children.

We've started learning string figures. Cat's Cradle, Jacob's Ladder, Teacup and Saucer, and there's a million more we have yet to learn.

What's amazed me is how much they LOVE it! They each have their length of string they take with them everywhere constantly doing Jacob's Ladder. Here's a proud String Figurer :)
I remember Jacob's Ladder and Cat's Cradle from my childhood, but we did watch a YouTube video about it to double check :) Here's some links to some YouTube videos:
Sweet YouTube Videos by a nice young man

And here's a great site. It looks like it will take some getting used to and learning the symbols, but there are LOADS of great ones there that the kids are excited to learn.

Fabulouso String Figure Website

Yeah you know you love toys that are nothing but a scrap of yarn. You can thank me later.

Make and Share Monday & A Sweet Baby

Another entry for Make and Share Monday. Now I know that last month Kristy said she quit doing Make and Share Monday but I'm not one to follow directions. So pop on over to her blog and pester her about where her crafty Monday goodies are. While I'm working on some other crafty things, as usual I have some scrapbook pages to show. Honestly it's been beyond hard to find time to scrap this month, with the new baby and all. I also knit the baby a hat and I'll post that too :)

I was going to start with the scrap pages but man, this face..... I can hardly stand looking at it, it's so gorgeous. Here's two of the sweet things I made recently. This light blue knit baby hat and the lovely squishy baby underneath. If this picture doesn't make you ache for a baby, I don't know what to say.
Second, if you don't read with a feeder, you would have already seen my next crafty thing. I redid my blog template. I wanted to learn to do those static templates you see floating around everywhere. So here it is :)

It's been a while since I posted a couple scrapbook pages. Here's a couple of the new baby:

Everything from these layouts (and most of my blog design though not all) is from a great store called Scraporchard. The ladies there are super friendly and outgoing so if you're looking for a nice place to hang out and learn how to scrap and of course a great store filled with amazing scrap goodies, SO is on that list! I'm actually a team member there and have been blown away by just how wonderful the ladies that call that their scrap home are. I've worked at a number of digital scrapbook stores, but honestly from the minute I started on the team there I've really been overwhelmed with how good hearted everyone is. Was a HUGE added bonus for making it on their team.

If you have any questions about digiscrapping, he sure to comment and I'll answer next Monday. I'm going to start work again on some tutorials about getting started scrapping. Until next Monday...

Something I never would have imagined I'd say

"It does NOT make you look cool to not like Butternut Squash" - said to Frankie this week.

Who turned off the heat?

in the South? It's cold. We went from 77 last week to not getting over 40 yesterday. I actually love Winter and the cold. Much better than the horrible sweltering heat. But this year there wasn't really a transition from warm to cold. I think Fall came while I was having a baby. I went into the hospital and it was hot hot and came out and the leaves were changing. The leaves are all falling from the trees, the cold is here and it's supposed to be 20 degrees tonight! The last of the squash will die off tonight.

But there's an upside to all this cold. This gorgeousness.... one of my all time favorite things...

There's just nothing like the smell of a woodstove. When I got up this morning Clay had already started the fire. Walking down the stairs to that faint smell was heavenly. Now I admit I wanted to still be sleeping (I have a 3 week old that thinks he should be wide awake until 2am) but that smell made me smile. And the heat. Oh the heat. It's just different. Central heat and air is great but it doesn't feel like heat. It keeps the house warm but there's not warmTH. Wood is warmTH. Love it. Seeing children sitting all around the stove sharing a book because it's the warmest spot in the house is just nice. Coming in from the cold to put your hands above the stove to warm them up is just nice. The sounds of crackling wood, snaps, pops of wood in the stove, is just nice. I can't wait to get the wood cookstove hooked up. You'll never hear the end of my love affair with wood then :)

And of course, I can't not post another sweet Hartley picture. He is changing so fast that in each picture I take he looks different than the last! Okay this picture makes me chuckle. He looks like a sweet happy piglet to me in this picture. Oink. Love when they're all cute and piglety and have those upturned breastfeeding noses and make little piglet grunting noises. I could eat him up. Not like pork of course. But in a "I could just eat those toes right up" kind of way :)

Love you Hartley dude.

Welcome Hartley Clay

Yes long time no blog. But there's a great reason for the couple months off. Promise!

I'm so honored to be able to introduce our sweet angel, Hartley Clay. He was born September 29th :) He was a big guy - 10 lbs. 8 oz.! He 's huge honestly. He's two and a half weeks old and is just a giant baby doll! I've been taking loads of pictures, but for today here's the first couple pictures of his life. The B&W is him at two days old, and the color at closer to a week. Funny, to me he doesn't even look like those pictures anymore! They grow SO fast.



He's such a sweet and wonderful person. His one and only flaw is his desire to be awake from 9:30pm to 2am, leaving his Mommy tired tired. But he'll grow out of it. And if I could resist the overwhelming need to lay down in the middle of the day due to his late night activities, I could probably convince him to have a mid day long wake time that would help his schedule smooth out faster. But man... that mid day laying down time... it's precious.

On an up note, I am going to be resuming real blogging here soon. I've had a blogging epiphany and just a desire to start blogging again.

Frankieism of the day

Frankie: "If I don't eat soon my arteries will become disabled and I will die".

Thankfully his mom rescued him from this life-threatening condition.

It's these moments

After a long, hard day, the kind of day where you really start to think you are the worst mother in the world and are more than ill-equipped to raise these children to love and serve the Lord, it's these moments that make it all worthwhile.

Background - early this Spring we had the money to get a beehive and start with bees. Clay's realllly into getting bees. But it turns out that Frankie didn't realize that all the trial month games on our phone that he was ordering cost well.... money. My cell phone was on my mom's plan for next to nothing. But it's not next to nothing when your 9yo runs up a $300 bill in ONE MONTH. Sigh. So bees were out. We paid my mom back and Frankie well... was in debt. Over the course of the Summer he's sloooooowly paid off $50 or so of the debt. (He's not so into paying it off). But now he wants to pay it off so that he can do odd jobs to make a little money to buy some hens for his banty roosters.

More background - Adric (5yo) has this jar lid of money. It's his most prized possession. Every penny, every nickel goes in there. It's something special I tell ya. The lid. God forbid anyone even looks like they're by the lid.

So tonight after my "insane, no-good, horrible mom" day, Adric out of the blue walks up to Clay. He says he wants to pay off Frankie's debt (the $250 debt BTW). He explains how he must have enough in his lid to pay it off. He says that it makes him sad to think that Frankie will be working it off forever and asked if he paid Clay the money if Frankie could be free of the debt. *insert mom tears here*.

So Clay has him go get his money. They count it out. $2.95. Turns out that's just how much was needed from a 5yo little brother to pay off a $250 debt. *insert more tears here*

Maybe I won't ruin these children after all.

Here's the sweetest 5yo in the history of 5yos.

Stinging Caterpillars Batman!

So after Clay took Adric on a rockin 4wheel drive trek through the woods they went out to check the corn field/pumpkin patch. Suddenly they come in saying Adric got stung by a caterpillar. A caterpillar? Seriously? After I put a paste of meat tenderizer on it because I found it before the bentonite clay, they proceed to tell me tales of the weirdest looking caterpillar they've ever seen. Spots and horns and poison hairs. Treks through corn jungles to find the allusive horned poison hair spot caterpillar. Yeah yeah guys. Men and their fish tales and all that jazz.

Then Clay shows me this picture:

And suddenly I realize how glad I am to have missed the grand adventure because I don't have any desire to get stung by that thing. It's a Saddleback Caterpillar by the way.

*note* Adric normally is very sensitive to things like bites. But we dabbed tape on the sting to check for poison hairs and put the meat tenderizer and he doesn't have even have so much as a bump. When he came in he had a big spot where the main sting was and a red ring around it, but getting the hairs is key and sucking out the poison with clay, activated charcoal, plantain, or meat tenderizer.

The Makings of a Great Day

Fabulous breakfast of Whole Wheat Dutch Pancakes with Amish Apple Butter and Raw Whipped Cream Sauce.

Church at home with Dad that including fun singing, laughing, a good Bible story and children inspired enough to make homemade paper puppets of the story of Zacchaeus and give Mom and Dad a puppet show (pictures later).

Lovely time hanging out on the front porch while Clay grilled. Hot but a nice breeze blowing, me crocheting a dishcloth, children sitting nicely with us, being great. Loving front porches lately.

Great lunch. A cookout with BBQ chicken drumsticks with Grillin Beans, chips, corn on the cob from the garden and stevia lemonade. With coupons I had, all that cost me $6. And let me say, I LOVE BBQ chicken legs.

Me, going to see Julie and Julia by myself. Clay even feeding the little people dinner while I was gone.

Finishing a scrapbook layout that night.

Great day.

Belly Shot

Told my wonderful Gramma that I would post a 33 week belly picture. (wanting to run and hide) But here goes.
It's hard to believe tomorrow it will August! With the baby due in September, looking at the calendar at can be intimidating. I don't know why, but we just don't feel ready yet for the baby. Usually by now we're feeling ready and it's just a countdown to labor (eek). I think it may becaue Garrison still wakes in the night. He's finally moved out of the 3-sided crib by the bed and into a playpen at the foot of the bed, but 4 out of 7 nights he wakes and cries and wants to climb in bed. Every night I lay there thinking about having a newborn and that boy crying LOL! !! But 4 out of 7 night is better than 7 nights a week. So hopefully by the time the baby comes he will have stopped and can move out with the big kids!

This pregnancy has been pretty uneventful aside from some tiredness which I think is pretty normal. No swollen feet, morning sickness, back pain, etc. Just run of the mill, "I'm pregnant, okay what do I need to do today again?".

Anyways, so there's the picture. Doesn't everyone hate pictures of themselves?

Sunday July 12th ramblings

I am currently reading a book my friend, Chautona, is writing about a lovely lady named Willow. Go read it! She posts chapters as she writes them. Tonight though something touched me a little. Throughout the first part of the story, she would read through her Mother's journals. Journals that told everything from the garden to her feelings on having a baby. Everything. Life. In words. Then tonight she was reminded at how important her own journals would be to her family in her the future.

I scrapbook, I do. And I journal about the story or my feelings on them. I do. But so much of it is art to me too. Creating, the fun of making a layout I love to look at. Pictures I love to look at. But oh how I'd love to read my grandmother's journals. Or great grandmother's. To read about how she did this without electricity, about the great flood this year, or the sound of the rain on the roof of the farm house or...

So there's that romantic part of me that wants to journal. But I've tried before. I've started journals a million times. Do I try to do it here? Would I be able to be real enough? That is the real question I think.

In the past in my old blog, I got the most response from friends when I was honest about weight, about struggles, marriage, all of it. When I started this blog, at first it was homestead focused, and family focused. Family focused as in I was writing and putting pictures for my family to read, not posting about thing that might be too real for them. But I lost the stories, the ramblings, the truth of life.

What does that mean? How will I go from here? I don't know. I had someone the other day tell me they missed my old blog, that they really loved reading the things I wrote. It made me sad that I haven't been that here. In some ways it was because no one I knew in real life knew my other blog for a long long time. What does my sweet hubby Clay want? I know he looks at the blog, he has his family read it, gives people the link to it, maybe this should be a family blog only? So I need another blog? I'll have to ask him I think eh?

So I'm starting a new hard copy journal. And starting to journal more here. And asking Clay how he feels about the blog. And praying about it. And rambling way too long. Good night.