Blog Walk Week of June 28

(Thanks to Debbie, over at Debbie's Digest for the great picture)

It's time to visit some great homeschool blogs again. I really enjoy doing this each week. It's so much fun meeting new homeschoolers and seeing how they do things. I don't have time to read all of the blogs, but I always read at least one post.  It's neat because now that we're a few weeks into the TOS year, I've already met some of these bloggers and I'm already following several of them :-)
1. All American Family
2. Growing Fruit
3. Learning to Teach
4. Codex Young Author's Publishing Program
5.Stairsteps Homeschool Academy
6. Kingdom Academy
7. Living Sola Gratia
8. Wynfield Christian Academy
9. The Cow Queen
10. Peace Creek on the Prairie

A Thankful Heart

We had a really nice time with family and friends last Sunday. We had a cook out at my Dad’s…poor thing, has to cook on Father’s day, lol! He doesn’t really mind, since he likes his cooking better than ours, LOL! It was an especially sweet time for us because my Granny was there.  She became ill in January and after several trips to the hospital was finally placed in the nursing home in March. This has been a very hard thing for me to deal with because she’s so full of life, yet unable to live life to the fullest.

She has lung disease, diabetes, and a heart condition. Life is hard for her, but she’s a wonderful testimony to me about how God can strengthen a person for the journey He has laid out for them. I would have expected her to be more upset, but she has adjusted very well. It was just such a shock because she left her home one morning and never returned. She had lived there for over 40 years and she didn’t get to ‘say goodbye.’ She had a dog that she loved so much, and she didn’t even get to say goodbye to her.

Despite all of these changes and losses, she has stayed focused on the good things. I’m reading a book by Carole Lewis called A Thankful Heart. The main verse is “Give Thanks for all things for this is God’s will for you in Christ Jesus.” 1 Thessalonians 5:18 Carole’s daughter was killed by a drunk driver so she knows how tough this can be. I know a couple of mothers who have lost children and are still able to rejoice in the Lord and I will say, I’ve never seen God’s strength any clearer than in these precious women.

Although my grandmother has not lost a child, she has lost a considerable amount in a very short time, unexpectedly. She was living on her own, driving on her own and doing great! And just a few weeks before being hospitalized she had the entire family over for our annual Christmas breakfast. Life can change very fast. Enjoy the minutes you’re in! The here and now!

I plan on giving her this book, but honestly, she’s already living with a thankful heart! I love you granny!

Stepping it up a notch!!

A couple months ago I joined Swagbucks because I wanted to earn enough Swagbucks to get myself a laptop so the kids could finish taking over this here desktop.

Well I’ve decided to double my efforts so I can earn more bucks. I’m asking all of YOU to join Swagbucks with me. When you join under me I earn bucks every time you earn bucks.

I first learned about Swagbucks from a fellow blogger who earned enough bucks to get an iPod. I decided to test drive it to see if it’s for real, or if it’s going to interfere with my regular everyday computer life and it doesn’t. It’s great, I just installed the Swagbucks toolbar and went about my everyday life (you don’t have to install the toolbar to join, but you do earn extra Swagbucks just for having it). I’ve earned over 300 Swagbucks just doing my normal everyday stuff online.

It takes alot of Swagbucks to get the good stuff (cameras, laptops, phones etc) so I decided to ask my friends to help me, and you’ll be helping yourself at the same time :-)

Come on give it a try…what do ya have to lose??

Click it! http://swagbucks.com/refer/mom244now

Blog Walk week of June 21, 2010

 

Okay let’s get ready for week two of our blog walking! This week we’re going to some more wonderful homeschooling blogs, I can already tell just by the blog names. I haven’t visited them all but I’m planning to do so before the week is out. I’m going to start in the middle and work my way out. I’ve already been to a couple…just hope I can remember which I’ve been to and not leave any out :-) I guess I could do like one of our other TOS members over at Mom Loves Books and walk backwards, lol

Looking forward to ‘meeting’ some great hsers this week!

1. Second Star to the Right and Straight On Till Morning

2. Surviving The Testosterone

3. Family Style School

4. School Around The Bible

5. 1628 The Story of The Goebels 5

6. Morris Family Madness

7. Homeschool Musings

8. Homeschooling (and then some!)

9. Heartfelt Homeschooling

10. following Him home

LiveJournal Tags: Blog Walk

Great Homeschooling Book!

I just finished Sonya Haskins’ book, Homeschooling for the Rest of Us and it was wonderful. It’s a very easy book to read, she gets straight to the point so it’s not wasting your time telling you the same stuff over and over, just in a different way.

What I like most about it was it lived up to it’s name. This book truly speaks to the majority of us as homeschoolers. We all have days that things don’t go smoothly but if we are truly honest we have many more than we’d like to admit. This book helped me realize, I’m not alone, there truly are other mom’s out there who worry that they’re not doing everything to help their children. And it convinced me that I can’t do EVERYTHING I want to do.

There were several chapters that spoke to me but two of my favorites were chapters 3 and 6. Chapter 3, Developing Positive Relationships, was a real eye opener. My 10 year old is growing up so fast and I want to be sure our relationship is prepared for the years that we’re about to face. We are so much alike and we bump heads OFTEN. I really am trying to start overlooking more things and start building him up and praising him for the good. He has so many great qualities and I seem to get stuck on his not so great qualities (because I have the same ones and I don’t want him to be like me,lol). But if I’m not careful I’ll push him away.

Chapter 6 is all about extra curricular activities. We don’t do alot of those and at times I’ve felt guilty about it. But honestly my kids don’t want to be busy every day/night of the week, and my husband refuses to allow us to get caught up in the rat race that so many families are in these days. We 3 regular evening activities each week, AWANA’s, Campus Life Bible study club, Wednesday night church. That’s enough for my family and this author agreed. We also pick and choose other activities/field trips to attend when we want to.

I would definitely recommend this book to anyone, new or old, to homeschooling.

**This book was given to me in exchange for my honest review, by Baker Publishing Group**

LiveJournal Tags: Reviews

Finished!!!!

We’ve just recently completed Awana’s! Both boys completed their books early. My 8 yr old, who is dyslexic actually completed his book in January. He could have easily finished a second book, but we found out he had dyslexia and it sort of sent me for a loop. I didn’t work with him on his Awana verses very much after that :-( He still came close to completing the second book despite my lack of help.

I’m so very proud of both of my boys!! Awana’s is very hard work but they, along with their other Awana buddies, worked very hard and done a super job!

 

 

We also just completed our spring ball season. We played with a new group but, thankfully we had the same coach we’ve had all along. Jordan loves playing ball and we plan to go at it again in the fall. He plays ball, and LoVes it, but his real dream is to drive a bandolero one day. Money is a huge issue there :-(  We’ll just keep playing ball and praying that God supplies the funding if racing is the “way that he should go.”  

While he played ball the rest of the kids found lots of other fun things to do. We played on the playground everyday and they really enjoyed that. Looking forward to fall ball!

And with the end of Awana and ball season comes the end of school! YAYYYYYYY!! The boys were excellent students this year. I gave my 10 year old the end of year tests that the public schools are required to take, and he passed both with flying colors. One of them was on our state history and we hadn’t even covered that, but he knew the answers and passed it. I don’t have to give him these tests but I do it for my own peace of mind…so I’m at peace…for a few more months…until school starts up again……………………….

LiveJournal Tags: Family

Blog Walking Week of Jun 14

One of my fellow TOS Crew members came up with a neat idea, it's called blog walking. This is to help us all get around to reading each of our crew members blogs before the year is over. So here's my list of blogs to read this week:
1. http://www.reapingaharvest.blogspot.com/

2. http://paojava.blogspot.com/

3. http://liv-laugh-learn.blogspot.com/

4. http://www.emptymelord.blogspot.com/

5. http://thefantasticfive-hockmana.blogspot.com/

6. http://refinedmetalsacademy.blogspot.com/

7. http://justamomentintime2.blogspot.com/

8. http://www.providencefarmtx.com/Providence_Farm.html

9. http://www.angela-richter.com/

10. http://pebblekeeper.wordpress.com/

LiveJournal Tags: Blog Walk

Decisions! Decisions!

Well I'm officially 'in.'  They notified me a few weeks ago that I'll be on the TOS Review Crew! Yay! I'm very excited about this. I've already met alot of fellow homeschoolers and I look forward to meeting many more. Homeschoolblogger has revamped their blog and it's easier to use and I really like the social network part. The parts I don't like are the lack of options for designing my blog AND the min space. I'll run out of space soon and I don't know what'll happen to my old posts :(  I'll have plenty of socializing on the crew forum and THL so I really am seriously considering finally making the change.  Tough decision! What to do, what to do???