What's new?

So since beginning to homeschool I started another blog that is all about our homeschooling journey.  I was intending to keep this one as well, to continue with that was going on in our family.  BUT unfortunately I just can't seem to keep up on both!  So I might occasionally come back and post something, but if you really want to keep up to date you can go to my Freedom Knights Academy blog.  There you will get to know what we are doing on a more regular basis!  I would love to have some followers so if you would like just hop over there and follow that blog as well!  Thanks!

Preschooler, Toddlers and Homeschooling, OH MY!!

That is what I feel like lately!  Oh my goodness there have been some rough days around our house!  Dealing with two straight weeks of sickness, and then stress, and then rainy weather, its enough to make this momma go batty!

To start out the baby was sick, then I got sick and then the older boys got sick!  That lasted a total of TWO weeks!!  Then we had a week of all of all of us feeling better and now the baby is sick AGAIN!!  Then we had about two weeks of cool, and rainy weather, then it warmed up (which is possibly why we had all the sickness), and now its warming up again but also a bit rainy.  OK enough of my little rants about sickness!

What have we been up to... well lets see, since the baby has stopped napping in the morning that leaves us with a new challenge in our schooling.  I am having to find things to keep him busy while we "try" to focus on some education!  This is not easy for a very active little boy!!  He gets into everything and if he is bored he starts to cry.  (But as I am writing this he is very quietly sitting and playing with a toy, go figure!)  Anyway, although it is nice that he takes a good nap in the afternoon, I kinda liked that morning nap as well.

 I have been scouring the internet looking for ideas to keep a little toddler busy, but since he is still so young (only 14 months), its hard to find age appropriate things.  I have found some great ideas though, that hopefully given the next few months of training he will be able to do.  Like putting pipe cleaning through a colander, using crayons to color, bean scooping, and other things like that.  I also found a great recipe for edible finger paint, I can not wait to try that!!  Yesterday I was reading another blog, Sprittibee, that was touching on this very topic!  She had a TON of fantastic ideas that I look forward to trying.  She also links to a ton of other bloggers who also have a bazillion ideas!

Suffering Through Trials

Yesterday was an all out pity party kinda day!  Through out the entire day I felt stressed and down because of things that I couldn't do.  I was really tired and didn't feel like making lunch for my kiddos, we needed to run errands anyway and I thought it would be just as easy to hit the drive thru.  Unfortunately our budget doesn't allow for those spontaneous trips to the drive thru.  That got me thinking about how our summer was so blah!  I wasn't able to do things with my kids that I normally would get to, like take them to the zoo or the pool.  

Then last night we began a new small group in our new church, we went for the first meeting and we were the only ones that brought our kids!  Everyone else had babysitters or something.  We unfortunately do not have a babysitter nor can we afford a babysitter!  UGGHHH!!  

Then today I was reminded about Paul in prison writing to the church at Colossae, he is rejoicing in his suffering!  WOW!  Talk about perspective!  I know that my family has much more than most of the world, for that I am so grateful and feel so blessed!  I feel blessed that I can freely homeschool my children, I can freely worship my God without fear of persecution, unlike the Christians back in the day!  So after all of that pity-ness yesterday, I am feeling refreshed today, with a whole new perspective!

Yes I am still frustrated with our financial situation, and yes I am still frustrated at not being able to go and do things with my children that they are asking to do.  BUT I am so blessed to know that this is not the end and that I have so many blessings in my life!  

Colossians 1:24

Now I rejoice in my sufferings for your sake, and in my flesh I am filling up what is lacking in Christ's afflictions for the sake of his body, that is, the church

Colossians 1:27

To them God chose to make known how great among the Gentiles are the riches of the glory of this mystery, which is Christ in you, the hope of glory.

James 1:2-4

Count it all joy, my brothers, when you meet trials of various kinds, for you know that the testing of your faith produces steadfastness.  And let steadfastness have its full effect, that you may be perfect and complete in nothing.

1 Peter 4:12-13

Beloved, do not be surprised at the fiery trial when it comes upon you to test you, as though something strange were happening to you.  But rejoice insofar as you share Christ's sufferings, that you may also rejoice and be glad when his glory is revealed.

Life on a Budget

Yesterday I stumbled upon a post from Dave Ramsey's blog, I guess there was some conversations taking place on his Facebook page, basically it was "You know you are on a budget when...".  Reading through those comments I was cracking up, because most of them were true to me and my family!  So I decided to make my own list of "You know you are on a budget when..."  So here it is

You Know You are On A Budget When...

1)  Asked if you have seen the latest movie you and your hubby look at each other and state, "What IS the latest movie??" or "What is a theater??"  Since its been about 9 months since have been to one!

2)  Redbox is your best friend!  Because you have a $5 a month budget for movie rentals and that lets you rent one move a weekend!!

3)  You cringe when the grandparents buy the "cheap junk" toys instead of something that is really needed or useful!

4)  Goodwill and garage sales are your new shopping mall!

5)  You make your kids buy their own Halloween costumes! (Which by the way, drastically changed what they wanted to be!)

6)  You refill the bathroom soap dispenser with half soap and half water so it lasts longer!

7)  Walking down the laundry isle at the grocery store to buy your one box of super washing soda (for the homemade laundry soap that costs a total of about $3 per batch) and you think "Suckers" when others are picking up their $15 bottle of Tide!

8)  You get excited when hubby's shirt get holes because that means more "paper towels"!

9)  Every time you put a cloth diaper on the baby you think, that's $.15 saved!

10)  When everything in your cart says "Great Value" on it!


Those are my top ten!  Quite frankly living on a budget is REALLY hard especially when the budget is really tight!  BUT its so worth the effort to know that we will soon be living a debt free life!

On my blog I have posted a few of the ways my family lives frugally.  You can check out my homemade laundry soap recipe here.

The first week of Soccer

Last week was the first week of soccer for us, man I do not know what we were thinking!!  Two playing soccer is going to make for a busy couple of weeks!  When we got their schedules I was surprised at the amount of games that will be over lapping!  Thankfully they are all in the same park and we are not going to be across town or something.

This is Little N's first year playing and it was so funny to watch those little 4 year olds "play" a game.  Not too many of them on Little N's team have played before, so when the ball comes to them they don't know what to do!

For Big E this is his third year playing (he missed last year because Baby had just been born!).  He is really catching on this year and going after the ball.

We didn't get too many shots of their games but here are a few we did get:

Little N in the blue sweatshirt.

Yeah not sure what to do with the ball!  

Baby Z being so patient playing in the stroller.

Now I think he had had enough

Yup not getting any more patient!

Big E, not sure what he was doing, obviously not going after the ball!

Isn't this a cool picture of the moon!??  

My Baby is ONE!!!

Yesterday was a big day at our house, we had a birthday!!  My little Baby Z turned one!  I can not believe its been a year, the time has gone so fast!  His birthday theme was Monkeys, because, well he is our little monkey!  Here is a little flash back of where he started:

The Baby Z was born

A few weeks old

Also a few weeks old

 And now a look at Party Central for this little guy!

The Highchair all decked out

His Monkey themed cup cake cake

The only picture we could get of him in his birthday hat

With all of his loot before opening them

In the middle of opening

At the end of opening, yeah look at his face, a little overwhelmed I would say!  

Digging into his cake!!

Yummy, yummy....

Look at that messy little boy!!

I think he had a great time, and he loved his cake!!  

Happy Birthday Baby Z!!!

Summer Fun Part 2

JULY....  July here was H.O.T.!!!!  That made me very unnerved, I was running out of ideas for my kiddos!  We have pools set up in the back yard but by lunch time it was just dangerously hot for them to even be in the pools!  So that led to LOTS of TV for us,  I am sad to say, but that is what we did for most of the afternoons in July.  Anyway I was able to connect with my inner artist and found some great art projects for my kids.  We painted rocks and made our own water color paints.   We also did some baking, and some cleaning and organizing too.  I know so fun right?!!

Little N painting one of his rocks

Working so hard to get that yellow paint on there!  

Big E working on painting one of his rocks green.  

I think he was making a turtle.

We made homemade water colors, this is Little N testing them out.

Big E trying to not smile for the camera, but I caught him!

In the middle of July we took a little day trip to Legoland, it was Star Wars Weekend!  My boys were in heaven!  Note to self about future trips...ALWAYS make sure you bring extra batteries for the camera!  YUP, they died before we got any pictures of the Star Wars characters!  Here are the pictures we did get:  

Since the boys got to go to Legoland they took mommy to IKEA!  AHHHH heaven!  Unfortunately no pictures to prove that I actually got to go!  :)

July also brought Nana and Papa to town (finally!), my boys had not seen them since Thanksgiving.  They were super excited to have them here for a few weeks.  

Our Homeschool Name Announced

Our homeschool finally has a name!! After months of brainstorming, we finally narrowed it down to two yesterday on a 3 hours road trip for a family reunion.  We are so happy and proud to announce our homeschool name:


Freedom Knights Academy!!  :)

If you saw a few days ago I had the tab "Adventures in Homeschooling" at the top of my blog.  It didn't occur to me to search and see if that was already taken, so today I did that search.  As it turns out someone else already has that as a title for their blog, so I decided to change that tab to our homeschool name.  So if you are interested in finding out more about our first year in homeschooling, you can click that tab and it will take you to my new blog.

This blog I will keep as a family blog and try to keep the homeschooling stuff on the Freedom Knights page.

Summer Fun Part 1

This has been a crazy busy summer!!  Not really sure what we have been doing, but its been busy!  We started off June with really nice weather.  So that allowed us to get outside into our pools!!  We did make it to a few parks in our area.

We made our own little water slide!  

Baby Z's first pool experience!

Big brothers were so excited for Baby to be in the pool with them!

We worked on a Ten Commandment Study this summer this is one of the crafts.

Big E with his craft.

Baby Z learned to pull himself and stand!  He was so proud!

Learning to protect his toys with the Light Saber

He really loves his swing!

Unfortunately June turned into BLAZING HOT temps and this momma had to get very creative!  There has been lots of indoor activities and homemade products.  We have made homemade water colors, painted rocks, and got our home organized for homeschooling!  :)  

My next post will cover our July Summer Fun!

The Beginning...

Well its that time!  Time to start our homeschooling adventure!  I will be documenting the trials and triumphs of our first year homeschooling!  You can see that through the Adventures In Homeschooling tab.

Ready, Set, Here We Go!!!!

Purging time!!!

In an effort to scale down our home to just the basics, and also with the prospect of a garage sale coming up we have been going through every corner of our house.  A while ago I saw someone had bought these really cool DVD cases and I thought they would be awesome.  So we went to Target and found them and decided to think on it a bit.  Well just a few weeks ago we went back and got them.  I can not tell you how amazing they are!!  We had a ton of DVD's and were in desperate need to get rid of the cabinet they were held in.  So in doing this were were able to put all of our DCVD's (with the exception of our series, like Friends and Star Wars) into these cases.  They take up very little space now and can be stored in  a drawer in the cabinet that our TV sits on.  AMAZING!!

A few of what we started with.

Almost all of the videos fit into this box.

These are what we used.  Each case holds 2 DVD's.  I actually had to go back and get a third one but didn't use all of that one.

Its almost the start of summer.  Big E has just 2 days left of school and Little N finished his school last week.  I am so excited to start a vacation!!  Here a just a few pictures of my little sweeties!

Baby Z and his big smile!

They thought it would be fun to dress alike

Curriculum

Curriculum....what to choose???  Its such a tough decision, so many choices.  What if me make the wrong choice?  Do you go with an all included package, or do we pick and choose from different companies?  OH  MY GOODNESS!!  With this being our first year to homeschool we really had no idea where to start.  I started researching online, and asking around to see what people used, what they liked, didn't like and so on.  While talking to a good friend who home schools she suggested that I first look into what style I wanted to use (Charlotte Mason, classical, unit study, ect.).  I then purchased off of Amazon Cathy Duffys book 100 Top Picks for Homeschool Curriculum.    So after reading that book I then was able to come to the conclusion that we will be doing a traditional homeschooling method.

After looking into all the choices we had that fit how we wanted to school our children we were able to narrow our choices down to two!  Pretty good considering we had about 6 that looked great!  Our first factor to narrow down was cost, we knew which ones we couldn't afford so we stopped looking at those! Pretty easy!  That got us down to about 3, and then we decided we wanted to try and school all of our children together using pretty much the same curriculum.  That brought us to 2!!  YEAH we are finally getting somewhere!  Lastly it came back to cost and then doing the easy all in one packaged curriculum.  So our final choice was Christian Liberty Press for Big E, he will be in second grade.

Big E's Curriculum from Christian Liberty Press

Some of Little N's Curriculum

Then for Little N we originally decided to just do a few work books here and there and let him explore.  BUT after thinking long and hard, I believe that he will also want to be included in the workbook process, especially since we are using workboxes!  :)  So we went ahead and bought a few Kumon workbooks, a Bright Start Workbook, and we already had a Preschool Workbook.  So I began to look and try to plan for Little N's school and realized that its really hard to come up with stuff to keep him busy.  I had found a preschool curriculum a few weeks back and just couldn't decide if we wanted to get it.  Well last night I went ahead and ordered it.  Its called ABC Jesus Loves Me and I like it because its all laid out for me, it tells me what to teach and when to teach it!  :)  We will still use the Kumon books and other books for extra practice.