Whew!

Just a quick update for now. C is finished with her 4th softball season. Her team won the first game of the tournaments, and lost the next two, so her team finished in 4th place for the season and the tournament. In the very last inning of the very last game she was injured. C is the pitcher for our team, and was hit in the ankle bone by a line-drive grounder. Although it is bruised and swollen, she refused to sit out, and finished pitching the game. Our team pizza party is this Sunday, and the entire softball league's annual potluck/coach softball game is the following week.

C was also busy with Bible school, and her enrichment classes at the college. Those are finished now, too. E participated in Bible school again, too.

My husband's transmission went out in his truck, so he has spent the last 2 weeks riding his bike to work. It will be quite awhile before we have enough spare money to work on getting a new transmission, or fixing this one.

We're close to meeting our goals for the summer with our schoolwork, and have even exceeded our plans in some areas. I'll try to make that a separate post.

The girls have learned a few extra "life-lessons" this summer, too. They are still grieving over the loss of their friend across the street. At the same time they (and me) are anxiously awaiting the arrival of kittens. Minnie, an abused stray, has decided she likes being fed and loved enough to stay here. One of our outside cats decided he liked her, too, so sometime in the next month we will be caring for newborn kittens. I've had cats all my life, but always had them spayed/neitered, so this will be a new experience for me, too.

And what would an update be without letting everyone know how the newlyweds are doing? They seem to be enjoying life, spending money like it grows on trees, and behaving just like any other newly married teen couple. I've had some interesting phone calls...."How do you make green beans?" "Mom, Lance is at the store, and he called me to ask you where the instant mashed potoatoes might be?" "What does it mean when the directions says to grease a cookie sheet? And what IS a cookie sheet? All I have is those big, flat pans you bake cookies on." (ROFL!!!) You get the point. This child stood in the kitchen myriad times talking to me while I was making dinner or baking, and obviously didn't notice a single thing. She's catching on, though, and at least she calls. : ) I'll be nice, and not even post in public the checking account drama....

As for myself, I'm fine, just glad to have some down-time finally, to prepare and organize for the new school year. Both girls are already ahead for their grades, but there are still boxes of books I need to put in order, and figure out some semblance of lesson plans for 5th grade. I might even stick to them for 2 weeks this year....

Feeling a Little Better Today

My apologies for the long-winded, depressing post of yesterday. I thought about deleting it, but decided I will leave it up for now, and not even go edit the typos. : ) We will soon return to the regularly scheduled homeschooling topics.

In Loving Memory

Immediately after my post yesterday my neighbor yelled across the street for me to come over RIGHT NOW. Entering his house I found his daughter, and our dear friend, had died in her sleep. Kristi was only 33 years old, and leaves behind her 12 year old daughter, and her father, Mark. (also a dear friend)

Kristi was such a dear to my girls. They spent many happy hours with her at her house, not only playing with her daughter, but with Kristi, too. We'll never forget the night C kept her up until 2 a.m. making homemade Mother's Day gifts for me. The picture above was taken that night. From the top is Kristi's daughter, Kristi, and my 2 daughters. As always, no matter how badly she was feeling, she has a smile on her face. We will miss her, and all our visits so much.

The Best Kind of Day

See that picture above in my header? The girls and I went out there yesterday for a few hours between C's Astronomy class at another session of College for Kids Enrichment classes, and her softball game last night. We:

fed the geese,




looked at pretty scenery,





played in the river,




and found lots of interesting rocks.





We also found tons of tadpoles and baby frogs, but those were a little difficult to get a picture of. My favorite picture of all, though, is this one. That's my right hand in the photo, and I was afraid it wouldn't turn out well, but I love it! : )




I hope you all can have great days like this sometimes! : )

Schooling Year-Round

This is our second summer of schooling year-round. I've had several people ask us why we don't take a break in the summer like public schools. There's really only two simple reasons.

First, we get bored. Summer is our busiest season with softball, swimming, and other "outside" activities, and it's my time to catch up on all that housework that barely gets done when we are schooling full-time. However, these things don't take up every second of our time, and both my daughters actually ask to do school some days. (C will never publicly admit that, though. LOL)

My other main reason for summer-schooling is because it allows me to fit in the extra subjects we do, and actually gets our work ahead enough that we can school 4 full days, and one short day each week during the typical 9 months of the school year.

What does our summer schedule look like? Well, it is certainly not the same as our main part of the year schedule. We only do "light" days, and only a few days each week.

For C, who is in 5th grade, we do one Math test each week. The way Saxon Math is set up, there is a test every 5 lessons. I allow her 1 missed problem on a test. (out of 20 problems) If she misses more than 1 we will stop the tests, back up 5 lessons, and that is where we will begin doing lessons and assignments. Yesterday, she took test #7, and got 100% on it. Therefore, currently, she has "tested through" 35 lessons in her math. Adding the 7 tests and 3 investigations to the 35 lessons she won't need to do equals 45 days of math we won't have to do through the school year. So, once again, she will be able to have a 4 day week in Math, as she did last year. Technically, she could even do a 3 day week at this point, (M-W-F) and still finish by next May. I'd prefer to finish a little earlier, though, so I won't do a 3 day week unless she passes at least 3 or 4 more tests.

Public and private schooled children don't have the option of testing through parts of the book they already know. Even the more advanced children will have to slog through wasted lessons with 20 or more other kids who have forgotten over the 3 months of summer break.

C also is still working through her Bible lessons. Normally we only do formal Bible 2 or 3 days a week, no matter what time of year it is. C also is working through Grammar 5. Our goal is to complete 40 pages in her Daily Gram book. She has already completed several chapters in Easy Grammar, and 19 lessons in Daily Grams. Again, I set this goal with a 4 day week in mind.

For history, we are re-reading Story of the World, Volume 1, Ancient History. We did an in-depth study of the Ancients last spring and summer, then skipped to a full year of American History for the school year. As I plan to stick to a chronological approach to history and do an in-depth study of the Middle Ages for 5th grade, C and I both thought we should do a quick review study of the Ancients over this summer. This is her favorite subject, and doesn't even seem like school work to us. (She never says it is her favorite, yet it is the one subject she asks most frequently to do.)

We haven't done any formal science since April. This week, we finally began our first book in C's Zoology series. She will be working much harder in science this year, keeping a notebook and writing reports, and also writing up formal experiments. As she chose Zoology, she has 3 full-length textbooks to finish in only 2 years, so we HAVE to work on science through the summer. I want her to take the usual 7th grade General Science, 8th grade Physical Science, and be right on track for the high school sciences. I'm somehow also hoping to add a 4th science in the next 2 years: Exploring Anatomy, which won't be released until this August. So, in order to cover what she wants, and what I want, we have to do science full-time for the next 2 years. We don't have the luxury of taking summers off.

Summer school for E, 1st grade, looks exactly like her schedule any other time, except that E gets a little MORE school in the summer, as I have more time, doing so little with her older sister. We try to do 2 pages of math a few days a week, practice reading, (which is coming along wonderfully, btw!) and work on E's, Moving Beyond the Page concepts. MBTP is aimed towards gifted children, and is a complete program that works in every area of study, except math and phonics. (social studies, science, reading, thinking skills, handwriting, etc...) It's a combination of lit/unit studies, and has wonderful hands-on for "active" learners like E. And no, I'm unsure as to whether E is truly a "gifted" child. She comes from a highly gifted family, and has the advantage of one-on-one tailored-to-her-needs learning. So, maybe she is, maybe she isn't, but I really don't care. She seems so, but I refuse to push my children more than a few months ahead of their peers, and don't receive any government funding for having such a labeled child in our school, so it's irrevelant.

So, that's why and how we school year-round. Summers are much lighter than the main school year for my 10 year old, and the same for my 6 year old. We do it because we enjoy it, and because it gives us 1 day a week through the school year to concentrate on only 3 or 4 subjects, instead of 7. Mom's gotta do housework and get bills paid sometime, right?

C's artwork

Ok, I think April's wedding pictures have been on top long enough. She dominated all my posts in May, and since then I have been way too busy to get on my blog and update anything. Last week C had the opportunity to attend college. No, she's not one of *those* homeschooled kids; the local community college has several summer enrichment classes, and she chose to take one on watercolor paintings. Her teacher was awesome, and C completed 12 different paintings over the course of a week. I will post my favorites. Please forgive the blurriness. I had to zoom in a little too much on a couple that have her full name on them to get it "out of the picture". (ha ha)

Her first one is still one of my favorites: When it's not zoomed in it looks very realistic, and the tree is beautiful:


I chose the next one because I love the double border:



This one is my husband's favorite. I never knew he had a thing for still lifes.



My final choice for posting is a tribute C drew, then painted, of our late kitty, Goldie:



I would like to mention "Happy 1 Month Anniversary" to April and Lance today. We all really miss you, and appreciate all the phone calls, e-mails, pictures, videos, and e-cards you send us. It seems to have hit E the worst. She REALLY misses big sis!

The Wedding

Saturday was my daughter's wedding. C was a junior bridesmaid. E was the flower girl. Dad walked her down the aisle. As of right now I have no pictures of Dad walking her down the aisle, because he had the cameras in his pocket when he did! LOL

Here are my 3 girls shortly before the wedding: E took her job as flower girl very seriously. She behaved perfectly, and went so far as to stop and try to pick the flower petals BACK UP after the wedding.

The bride and bridesmaids. April chose the colors; they chose their own dresses.

Dad with his oldest daughter just prior to ceremony.

Ring on her finger:

Praying before lighting their unity candle....

JUST married!


The entire wedding party:

The obligatory photo of the newlyweds "shoving" a pice of cake into each other's mouth. They did it very carefully and neatly because Lance was worried about getting so much as a crumb on his Air Force dress blues.


My daughter, April, and my new son-in-law, Lance:

I pray that God will bless them both in this new life together.

It runs in the family....

First my mother. Then me. Now C. Too many people don't value animals, but not in our family!

Here is C with our 2 indoor-only cats: Mitsy, the grey and white kitty, is 16. Pepper, on C's lap, is 4 1/2.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY APRIL!

A is 18 today! (So I can use her name now.)

I met April when she was 6. She's not my daughter in the true sense, in that I didn't give birth to her. When I met her she was pretty messed up over her mother leaving her Dad, her sister, and her. She was fiercly loyal to her biological mother, and I was fine with that. I wasn't going to try to be her "new mommy" or something like that. After several years of her loyalty to someone who never showed up for visits, never remembered to call or even send a card on birthdays, and never even called on Christmas I started to get tired of it. I understood she loved her mother, but after years of raising her, teaching her, trying to do the best I could at parenting her, I did grow tired of it. I thought April would never see that I loved her.

When she was 12 her mother kidnapped her and her sister. We didn't hear from them for over 2 weeks. We had no idea where they were. I could barely sleep for worrying about her that time. I wasn't worried about her sister, because her sister always had tons of attention from her mother, but I was frantic about April. When we finally found them, and went to pick them up I was furious. Not at the girls, but at the situation. I started crying in the car, and told April how worried we'd been, and how much I loved her. She said she'd tried to call me, but her mother had caught her, and she'd gotten in trouble. From then on April and I became the best of friends.

Four months after the kidnapping, I left my husband for awhile. I begged him to let me take April with me, but he wouldn't allow it. When I left, April climbed in the back of the U-Haul, and bawled the entire time I packed my things. I was bawling the entire time, too, but I couldn't stay due to marital issues that were pretty bad at the time.

I moved across the country. It was like I'd never left. EVERY morning at 5, as soon as I woke up, I'd turn on my computer. I wouldn't even have coffee poured, and April was "buzzing" me on instant messenger. She would talk to me all day. We had web-cams, so we could just sit and talk like we were right there. I told her she drove me nuts that summer, but in reality it was sweet. She called me once in a panic. Her dad was at work, she was home alone, and there was a tornado warning. I had to calm her down, talk her through it till her dad got home. I tried to get her to go to the basement, but she was too scared. I think I was more frantic than she was...from 1.000 miles away all I could do was talk to her, worry, and then REALLY worry when they lost power for 3 days, and I didn't know if she was all right!

After 2 months, I missed my husband too much to stay gone, so I came home. I will never forget pulling into our driveway. April was on the phone, watching for me. She saw me, THREW the phone across the yard, and LEAPED a good 15 feet from the porch steps to my arms as I stepped out of the van. LOL She jumped into my arms like a little kid, screaming. "Mom's home! Mom's home!"

As I write this I want to cry. I have so many memories of April growing up. I remember I thought she'd NEVER get over her first boyfriend. I remember her struggles in school. I remember her heartache over her real mother. I remember when she was 14 she and I had an "unofficial" adoption ceremony. I remember spending hours playing "Guitar Hero" with her. I remember all the movies we watched together, because we were the only 2 in the house wanting to see them. I remember all the books we've shared. All the videos I've made of her dancing; she's a complete goofball. : ) I remember the bad times, too...but won't mention them here. SHE knows.

April took her sweet time to warm up to me, but 12 years later I can't ask for a better friend or daughter. I think she's an idiot for getting married in 9!!!! days, but I'm happy she has a good guy who loves her, and will be good to her. I'm sad she isn't going to college, but she never was cut out for school. I'm happy she has found a church, and is interested in the Bible. I'm SO proud of her for being the first one ever in her entire family (biological parents, not me) to graduate high school.

She's 18 now. Free to do anything. She will soon be 1,000 miles away from me. : ( I'm going to be the typical mother, and bawl my head off through her wedding. I will bawl even more, as this time SHE is the one driving away, and I know she won't be back.

April...pookie...I love you. You are just as much a daughter to me as C and E, even though I missed the first 6 years of your life. Happy birthday.

Please excuse Rebecca from her blog for a few weeks....

She has:

1.) Spent the past week helping her husband clean out over 3,000 pounds of garbage/junk/things-hubby-brought-home-from-jobsites-that-he-thought-were-useful, and-then-never-used from the garage. After living here 8 years I realize we actually have a 2 car garage. Who knew?

2.) Also spent the past week weeding, breaking up ground, planting seeds and flowers on the south side of our house. I do NOT have a green thumb, but the girls wanted flowers, and I decided we could try. It actually looks quite pretty, and will look more so in a few months. I might take a picture and post it, but then...you all know how I am with actually posting photos. : )

3.) Finalizing wedding plans for my eldest daughter. She is only 18, but has been engaged over a year now. The wedding has been planned for June 6th, and suddenly 2 weeks ago was moved to the 23rd of May due to her fiance's leave from the Air Force. In addition to the date change, dear daughter has somehow gone from a simple, family only, wedding, to tons of people, a fancy wedding dress (after changing her mind 4 times she found a beautiful one on loan from a friend for free.) bridesmaids, millions of flowers and candles, and the whole she-bang. Always lovely to have less than 2 weeks to get all that together. I WILL post pictures of that!

4.) My husband and I are now coaches for softball. This will be C's 4th year in softball, but we have never coached before. For anything. We kind of had no choice....there are 2 teams who had no coaches, and we (I) volunteered. D is more of a coach than I am....he actually does softball stuff with the team. So far, I just print out schedules, plan to keep the stats book, and provide whatever might be needed that does not include athletic ability. : ) That's probably (definitely) for the best. I'm the least athletic person in this family, not to mention legally blind. My normal outfield mode is to duck when someone warns me a ball is headed for me.

So...I've been busy. I haven't had time for much school at all, although C 10 is plugging away at English and Grammar.

D has an MRI this evening for his back. He's already had X-rays, and been going to the doctor 3 times/week for 2 months. Hopefully they can find and fix whatever's wrong before the end of the month or we won't be able to. With A getting married, we won't qualify for health insurance anymore, and can't afford private insurance.