Open House Post

I think that the Homeschool Open House idea by Tiany is a fantastic idea.  So, here goes my post......

• Intro-- We are a Christian family striving to raise blessings that will serve the Lord in complete surrender. I have a teaching degree but have not worked outside of the home since I had my first blessing 9 years ago. That said, I have three blessings, 9, 7, and almost 6(5 1/2 if you ask her!) We have homeschooled from the beginning, it was a natural flow for us. This post gives my intro from one of my first posts here at hsb. 


• What does our day look like? My goal is to rise before the blessings and shower and spend time reading the Bible and praying. I do not always meet my goal but I try and seem to be getting a little better. Once the blessings wake up, we have breakfast and I check email and read blogs or post on my blog. (I love that whole adding /friends to the end of your blogs url and reading all updated blogs on my friends list, a real time saver) For all non-hsb blogs I subscribe to blog lines and read them all in one place as well. Double time saver and that will come in handy when we get back to a full school schedule.  After breakfast the blessings get ready for their day and have three chores each to complete. Then we sit down together for Bible and prayer and then get into the school work of the day. I am not so concerned with teaching my children things but teaching them the Word of God, teaching them to be Christ like, I am more concerned with their spiritual education.  We have completely switched to Ambleside Online beginning with this summer. I do how ever use Mystery of History for history and Apologia Science as well. I am really looking forward to getting into this school year and we will get back into the school routine after my Mom's visit next week. I try to spend as little money as possible and use the library as much as possible, as well as the internet. I think the internet is my most used school tool.


• Schedule-- I cannot seem to schedule to the minute or the hour. We have a routine and things happen in a fairly sequential order, just not a timed down to the second thing.


• Where do we school? At this time we school in the dining room. When we are able to get a different couch (right now we have a huge sectional and only one real way to arrange the room) I have a plan to get a table and have our school time in there with the couch since we do a lot of read alouds. That way everything  and everyone can be in one room. (This is my dream and I am unsure when it will come to pass) So, for now we school mainly at the dining room table.


• My must share tip-- This one is for the Mom's, continue to educate yourself.  I am not suggesting going to college  but self education. (One of my goals for my blessings is for them to learn to learn. I do not have a goal of teaching them every thing there is to know. Just for them to know how to learn. ) Take up a hobby, research educational methods and philosophies, sew, knit, crochet, bake, etc. Always be in the habit of reading and learning something. Keep busy so that when your blessings leave your home you are prepared as well as they are prepared for the next step in their lives.

Well, I think that is it for this post. I could go on and on about home education for many posts but I will stop here for now.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Rainy day

Why is it that I want to do nothing on rainy days? I have had a blah day. I have managed to keep the laundry moving and I cleaned the family room but I spent a lot of time doing nothing in particular. But, I am an evening person and it is just getting to be evening.
I did make a huge pot of caribou soup with lots of veggies and pearl barley and white beans. The blessings ate that soup and I was able to freeze enough for another meal for us and one for my sweetheart to take when he works out of town next time.  I really want to start cooking double portions when making something "freezeable" to stock the freezer. Problem: we don't eat alot of "freezeable" meals in the summer, it is more meat on the grill some potatoes or pasta and salad. So, as cooler weather sets in I will start looking for freezer friendly meals. I do not think I could do the once a month cooking but making a double portion once or twice a week to build a freezer of healthy meals will really help once we get full force into school once again.

So, I guess I did do something today.

May the Lord find us faithful.

 

Catch up post

Here is my catch up post containing information for the past week!

Okay, first, here a picture of a raspberry plant still in the pot from the greenhouse with a bundle of berries, we are going berry picking tomorrow afternoon or evening.

Second, our Beatrix Potter tea party:

It was much simpler than planned but I remembered two things: 1. The kids loved it and 2. Even though I did not do as much as planned and I could not do it "the way I wanted it" we actually had the party and had fun.

Our menu was simple:

• cheese


• crackers


• ham


• grapes


• broccoli


• cantaloupe


• carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese frosting


• lemonade 

Blessing #1 is ducking out of the picture. He had to attend the party because it was lunch time. (Don't tell him but he had fun! ) I had requested quite a few Beatrix Potter books from the library and read one aloud during luncheon.

The tea party was on Tuesday afternoon. I cooked and prepared food all day for our camping trip. Wednesday I was sick!! But I managed to get some things loaded onto the camper and finish laundry. By bed time Wednesday everything was loaded and ready to go. We got up Thursday morning and drove to Valdez to fish for pink salmon. We did not bring any home (the fish were pretty much spent and just waiting to die so the were not biting much at all) but everyone caught a couple and enjoyed camping. It is absolutely beautiful in Valdez. All the pictures I was able to take(before the camera went for a dunking and was out of comission) were taken during a cloudy time and it does not look that great. Valdez is called the Switzerland of North America or as one sign I read said "Switerland-- The Valdez of Europe. (Ya'll must come up here and see it!!)

Here is blessing #3 with Percy, a poodle we were dog sitting. We had fun with two dogs and traveling, actually both dogs did very well.

 

 

 

 

       Blessing #2 inherited blessing #1's hip waders this year, she was thrilled.

 

Here is my sweetheart walking to meet us to start fishing, the tide was coming in thus all of the seaweed.

   

One last picture of my son fishing with the beautiful fog covered mountains in the background.

Have a great day and I will be around to commment on your blogs soon.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Here I am!!!

I am here today for a quick post (maybe I can post again this evening) we are off to piano and to do a little something for a friend. Then home to clean, clean, clean and tackle a small mountain of laundry.

We went to Valdez this weekend for a little kid fishing. They did not catch alot but they had fun fishing and playing on the rocks and camping in the camper. I will post a couple of pictures hopefully tonight as well. Our camera took a dip in the water and is not working yet, we are hopeful it will work when it dries out completely. There was a little flicker of life yesterday when my husband tried it. I do not want to be without a camera.

Happy Monday and enjoy the week.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Three posts in one day, now get up off of the floor

A while back I was reading my regular blogs and read about this Beatrix Potter birthday tea party idea and decided to participate. So, here are my party plans:

• I just requested about 10 books from the library either about Beatrix Potter or by Beatrix Potter, including one video.


• Color choices: I hope to find some watercolorish greens, oranges and browns


• I think I have a table cloth here that will work well with that theme


• Food: Chicken salad sandwiches, carrots(of course), spinach and broccoli and maybe peas from the garden(if enough), fruit (berries) and yogurt parfaits, carrot cake cupcakes with cream cheese frosting, lemonade to drink


• We also have a really cool tea party set that we will use that day, it is green and purple


• We will read Beatrix Potter books and watch the video from the library

That is all I can think of for now. I really recommend renting or buying the movie Miss Potter about her life. I am not sure as to the correctness of the whole movie but not knowing much about her life the movie was great.

May the Lord find us faithful.

 

 

Amish Friendship Bread

 

 

My husband brought this Amish Friendship Bread Starter home last night from church. Now, I do not know that I believe that the starter is only made by the Amish but I do know that it makes a tasty treat. The nice thing, I do not have to wait as long to make the bread as she had already started it going for me, so I only have half the wait. I will let you all know how it tastes. It should be ready to bake on the 23rd.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Thursday

My name is Melissa and I have stayed home for two days now! That felt good to get that off my chest. Actually, I am very happy to have been home. I feel as though things have run smoothly. I at least feel calm. I have a long "to do" list that I would like to accomplish this summer and I am working through that slowly. Today is a declutter some hot spots that always seem to accumulate clutter when we are running around like crazy. My stint at home will end this evening when my husband comes home, we are going to work on something as a family and I am unsure as to what tomorrow may bring.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Happy Birthday

We have started a birthday tradition this year that I think we will hold for many years,we no longer do the whole "birthday party" thing. We have a family day instead. The birthday person chooses breakfast, lunch and dinner and determines the theme of the day. Today was all about football. The blessings have also started opening their presents first thing in the morning.

 

Here is blessing #1 first thing this morning.

The biggest present was these Steiner binoculars: My husband got a really good deal on these. Then we had a late breakfast and my sweetheart and the birthday boy we off for the afternoon. They went shopping and out to lunch.

I stayed home to catch up on laundry and clean the house and made this:

 

Then, I made the requested dinner, homemade pizza

 Here goes the first bite!

Here he is practicing shooting his bow.

Here he is with his cake getting ready to blow out the candle (yes, he is wearing a football shirt)

(This cake is a little better than the turtle cake)

Getting a big breath,

Okay, that is enough birthday talk. I cannot believe I have a 9 year old!!!!!

Now, here is a shrimp picture

Alaska  has five species of shrimp, I think this is a spot shrimp. My husband caught these a about a week ago.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Guilt Blogging

Okay, Okay, Jenn has reminded me that I have not posted in a while. So, here is a sample of my day yesterday:

9:09 am  left house with three blessings and lunches packed

9:15 am stop at insurance office to pay bill and update some information

9:22am pull into chiropractor parking lot and fill out paper work for blessing #2

9:30am walk into chiro. office

10:15am walk out of office, drive to town, pay another bill and head to piano

11:00am piano

12:10pm leave piano and head to church

12:20 pm get kids eating lunch and work on project at church

1:40pm pull out of church and across the street to friends house ; then back into church parking lot to take a burden off of her and get the camp food out of church and loaded onto bus

2:50pm leave church for the last time and head to wal-Mart

3:30pm leave wal-mart and go to Fred Meyer to grocery shop(we do not have a WM supercenter yet)

4:14pm leave Fred's and head to Sam's club

4:55pm leave Sam's and finally head home

5:30pm unload cold groceries and make sub sandwiches for dinner

After dinner we get a call from a widow in our church (my husband(a deacon) takes care of things around her home which she is selling) so we decided to help her move some items out last night instead of today which is blessing #1's birthday.

So, at about 10:44 last night we made it home. Got everyone in bed and I began setting up the decorations for the days festivities and wrapping birthday presents. At 11:45 pm I was able to make it to bed without a cake baked or my house straightened or anything. So, as I am writing this my sweetheart and blessing #1 are leaving to go to Wal-Mart so I am logging off and getting busy cleaning the kitchen and mopping floors and keeping the laundry going through the washer and out to the clothes line. I will post pictures either tonight after all the festivities are finished or tomorrow morning.

May the Lord find us faithful.

 

 

Where have I been?

Maybe I should stay away more often, Jenn gave me the Rockin' Girl Blogger award. I have to say a big thank you to Jenn.

I am going to have to sleep on my choices and make my list tomorrow. Now on to our update. Our friends are leaving tonight on the red eye flight so we said our goodbyes after the Wednesday night prayer service at church. My youngest cried and cried, my middle blessings cried as well, but exhibited more self control. We had fun visiting with our old friends and are very glad they came to visit(we are glad they still have family here to come visit!) I hope to now enter the calm part of summer. The rest should be very easy to be spent at home and not running all over Alaska, which is big and makes me tired. Plus, I have tons of clutter to cull and organize what is left and get this house ready for winter. Books and toys are overflowing in this house, so something has to go, personally, I vote toys but that will not go over too well with the younger set in this house. Therefore a compromise has to be made. I have some thoughts in mind, now just to get them out of my mind and into practice.

My Mom is coming next month and I am so looking forward to her visit. In fact we do just that, visit. It is a peaceful, joyful and fun time. We all enjoy Nana being here.

I will actually blog tomorrow, believe it or not, two days in a row!

May the Lord find us faithful.

Sunday Seven

I usually do not post a Sunday Seven, but I am feeling especially thankful today.

1. My wonderful husband, we have had fun just being home the past two days. He has been gone fishing and returned home Friday night.

2. My wonderful children. I enjoy them and usually others do as well, we are working diligently to teach and train them.

3. Our Pastor is getting better!!!! He has been out and about more and more. He says he had his best day in 5 months this past Friday.  I Praise the Lord for this!

4. My mom is coming next month and I am looking forward to spending some time with her.

5. Sunshine and rain

6. Floors to sweep, laundry to wash, dishes to wash and meals to cook. We have shelter, food and clothing.

7. I am truly thankful that I have the priviledge to stay at home with our blessings and the added ultimate priviledge that my husband has seen fit that they stay home to be home educated.

Also, I just found bloglines through a fellow blogger and I love it, I save time now, it has been great! I still use the adding friends to your blog address and check out the hsb bloggers that way, so I am really saving time there as well.

And finally,  the arctic cam. That is a view of down town from a little lower elevation than down town so there isn't much to see. The river is the Chena River. But, one day I will go stand out there and let you all know when so you can see me live from Fairbanks. Deal? I will probably do it before snow falls and I go into hibernation.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Arctic Cam

The local newspaper has an arctic cam that shows a view of Fairbanks and gives a weather update. Check it out and keep it in mind for winter time viewing.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Sunny and 79

Well, it is a hot one today! I am going to go make some sweet tea and watch my husband load the boat to head out for Valdez.

May the Lord find us faithful.

This past week in pictures

First, here is the main centerpiece that was put together for the event I helped with on June 19th. We had a couple of other things but this was the big guy.

 As you can see, we had a tropical island theme.

After I rested up from all the planning, shopping, preparing, cleaning up, etc.  We moved on and got to spend some time with our friends that are visiting from out of town. They are still here so we will still get to do more, but on our first day together we went to our old hang out, the playground and the kids played and we chatted. Then we went to Pioneer Park, a place with shops, a couple of museums a train, carousel, putt putt, etc.  Here is a picture of the kids walking together that I thought was cute.

Then, today was blessing #2's birthday, she turned 7 today.  Here she is at breakfast, she requested cinnamon rolls.

Here is dinner, as you can see, she chose green for all decorations, she wore a green shirt and had a turtle cake. She requested pizza for dinner (she loves bread!!!) She even chose only green vegetables to eat with dinner, spinach and broccoli!

 Here she is blowing out her candle, I am not a cake decorator but I manage to put cakes together for the blessings. The cake was a chocolate over kill. Chocolate cake, chocolate frosting(Pa-Pa, that is the chocolate frosting Tom likes!) and the the turtle is chocolate cake with buttercream frosting.

May the Lord find us faithful.