All I can say....

read what Lori says about homeschool, I think we will all agree.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Help Needed

Good morning wonderful blogland ladies! Have you ever visited the Homeschool Nations blog for your state? Does your state need someone to blog for your state? Pop over to the Company Front Porch  (scroll down on the right side) and find out. I maintain the blog for my state. They only ask we post once a week about homeschool in our state. Check it out and see what they need. Thanks,

 

The rest of the story.....

I did not make my goal of getting in bed at 10:00, the kids did not even get in the bed by 10:00. I sat up a few minutes after they got in bed. (Even though they are older, I still like to stay up a while and wait until they are asleep to go to bed) So, at 11:15pm I went to bed, better and earlier than the night before, and read a couple of chapters of my book and then I was out in sleepy land. I did not get up before the blessings either. But, I am making baby steps here!!

Yesterday was pretty fruitful, I cleaned up all the stuff that was off the counters and under the sink cabinet and all the leftover tools, etc that migrated their way into the piles of stuff. The extra table was put away and I was able to finally mop the floors. It was so nice to go to bed with out all that stuff  left out. That means the kitchen and dining rooms are clean. Today is a day to tackle the family room and get some order in that room. I have some piles of books that need to be put somewhere. I can see the light at the end of the tunnel(for this week anyway). Then on Thursday and Friday, I can focus on some outdoors work, I need to cut all the rhubarb and get it in the freezer and find a rhubarb dessert to make for Saturday night. I cannot wait to see our friends from Oklahoma that are coming. The blessings and I have not seen them since they left two years ago but my sweetheart saw them last year when he was in OK.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Why do I need to go to bed earlier?

I could allow myself to stay up late every night and sleep in until the blessings wake in the morning, but I do not want to. Why do I need to go to bed earlier? I think it is important to rise early in the morning, now I have tried getting up with my sweetheart at 4:45am and after a few months he told me to stay in bed. I am just not awake yet, and their was no quality to our time. Then, by 10:00am I was exhausted, I would be falling asleep listening to blessing #1 read. Also, by waking earlier than the blessings I can have time to take a shower and be ready for my day and have time to spend with the Lord before my day gets busy. I also can have some me time. So, as I journey to learn to go to sleep earlier I will keep you all posted. It is a difficult thing for me to do. I could easily go to bed at 8:00pm but if I stay up until 10:00pm I am wide awake and just lay there.  So, tonight I am heading off to bed at 10:00pm and will allow my self a little reading time and plan to have the lights out by 10:30.  I should be ready to go to sleep then as I was up late last night.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Habit training (myself)

I stayed up too late last night. I did my color wash on the kitchen wall, I am pleased with the look over all, the whole room needs to be painted next spring, I just do not have time to do it now. I would like to paint the dining room while my sweetheart is gone hunting in a couple of weeks. (I am still vascilating between two colors) Back to my habits. When my sweetheart is not here I stay up way too late at night. I am going to have to set a bed time, lights out time for myself.

Today's to do list:

• School work -- we are on a "lite" schedule this week


• Cleaning the kitchen cabinets


• Cleaning the floor under the stove and pushing stove back into place


• Today I can put things on the kitchen counter, so I will do that as well


• Keep the laundry moving all day


• Mop all the floors


• Put card table away (it is holding items from kitchen counters

This is the bare minimum that needs to be accomplished today. There is so much to do here. We have friends from the lower 48 who will be in town and they are coming to dinner on Saturday. Oh, good, a deadline, I always work better with a dead line. Then on the 6th, my sweetheart has  a friend coming up to go hunting.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Ice cream, finally

We use Apologia elementary science, Astronomy. We (I) got stuck when one of the assignments was to make ice cream. I needed to get rock salt, bought it and we just never got around to the actual making of the ice cream....until tonight! What a way to end the first day of school. And we can finally finish the last two chapters of that book and I can order the next book. Blessing #1 has requested Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day, I was hoping he would chose Botany!, we are doing that starting in the summer next year. I get to choose then. We did take pictures with a disposable camera so I will post when the owner of that said camera #2 finishes it out.

I must run, I am doing a quick color wash faux painting technique while the kitchen is ripped apart. Tomorrow I will clean the cabinets and put things back on the counters and move the stove back into place.

May the Lord find us faithful.

We made it!

We were able to have our school time today! I am very thankful to have the new family room set up! We had our school time in the family room today. We were comfy and cozy and able to accomplish a small amount of work today. I am going to have to get used to the whole notebooking thing and so are the blessings. Gotta run, lunch in ready and then we are out the door for errands and piano.

May the Lord find us faithful.

A Kitchen Sink

I just used my kitchen sink for the first time since Friday afternoon. I left home at 5:30 pm to go to the church to empty, cull clutter, and organize two rooms with three other ladies from church. (We did not finish until 3:30am). But, it is finished and very lovely. After my sweetheart and the kids ate the pizza I had made for them, he started pulling off the other side of the kitchen counter and took out the sink. I am thankful that we did not eat out once during this entire weekend. We cooked and ate on paper plates and thankfully my husband had plastic forks in his hunting gear. The counters are finished and the grout sealer is drying, the dishwasher is running, and I am so thankful to have my sink back!

School starts here tomorrow, so I won't be around much tomorrow.

May the Lord find us faithful.

New look but not finished yet

Good morning to you all!!! I was able to trudge along and get a new look that I have been wanting to have for a while. Last night I got it all together and tonight I gave it a test here and it drives although it is stuck in first gear. I will fix more when I can, I do know that I have a links area on each side. There are a few other things that I will also work on later, like getting a different font color for the title. But I am thrilled with the results so far. I had to keep my large weather sticker but it was not centered at first and I figrured that out all by myself!!  I have to add a new mouse to my shopping list. Mine is not working well, even after I cleaned it, and all that cutting and pasting was not fun with a wonky mouse.

I did get quite a bit of my "mess" cleared away today, but there is still a bit to go. It will get finished by tomorrow. Will we ever start school back, good thing we carried on during June!

May the Lord find us faithful.

MIA today

This will be my only computer time until say after all ya'll in the eastern time zone are all snug in your beds. I have to be responsible and clean up all this mess I have made in the dining room and hallway and get it cleaned up. I don't want to do it!!!!!!! But, I am going to use my timer and take water breaks and other breaks to do things like, laundry! I really hope to get the worst over with today. Any one want to go do something today, it is really sunny here..... OKAY, I will go to work, but I am playing on the inside!

May the Lord find us faithful.

My original title was "Quick hello", this was not quick!!!!

Greetings from the cool North! Sorry about that heat ya'll. We had a few "hot days" last weekend but we have definitely cooled down this week.

A quick Alaska update:

1. Check sun rise and set weather underground sticker on the right sidebar to see how much possible day light we have right now. It is probably fairly much the same as what most of you in the lower 48 have in the summer. Yes, we are finally getting dark at night. I am not sure but I think it is getting dark somewhere around 10:00pm. Could be a little earlier or a little later. Okay, I checked, and it  9:44pm, not too bad for a guess. I actually had to drive in the dark for the first time since probably April or May when I took my mom to the airport, that was wierd.

2. We do get quite hot in the summer here in the interior. I have seen it 90 degrees before. (90 is rare but it can happen) We ususally end up being somewhere between 70-80 degrees and that is just perfect. We are now beginning to experience "fall" weather here. As I mentioned yesterday it has been overcast for a couple of days and we are getting color on the trees. All that said, it means nothing, we could be warmer again tomorrow. Who knows? Then again, it is August 22nd, we have had a really nice and fairly warm August.

So, I just say......

"Here moosey, moosey, come hop in my freezer" or maybe he will sheep hunt first so I had better add "Here sheepy, sheepy, come hop in my freezer" By the way, sheep tastes better than almost any other meat I have ever had.

Also I am counting down until October 3rd, I will be able to purchase a camera on that date!!!!

One last thing, one portion of our kitchen counter has been re-tiled. My sweetheart grouted last night while I was at Bible Study. I have to give it a good cleaning and tomorrow night I can seal the grout! Then I can clean off my other kitchen counters, it is cluttered over there right now!

I will not even mention the piles, many many piles of homeschool and miscellaneous "stuff" that I have spread all over the kitchen an dining room.................

May the Lord find us faithful.

Color

As I look out the window this morning, I am reminded that fall is in the air. A little yellow is beginning to fill the landscape, the fireweed has "gone to seed" and today is a grey morning. Am I sad? A little but not really. I will miss hanging the laundry on the line and checking on the garden while I am out there. I will miss the kids running in and out and spending their days outside riding bikes, jumping on the trampoline, playing in the sand box and all the other various activities that have filled their summer days. I will miss going out to cut fresh lettuce for a salad.But, I do look forward to snuggling on the couch reading a good book together with a warm fire in the wood stove, spending more time "together" inside will be fun (if I ever am able to conquer Mt. Homeschool that has come out of the homeschool closet and all over the kitchen and dining room), and just plain enjoy the slower time that winter brings to us here.  I am looking forward to putting  new meat in the freezer to get it completely filled, we have more fish in there than meat, but that should change here soon. But never fear, it isn't happening yet, it can't, I have three zucchini out there that have to get a little bigger before the first frost!

May the Lord find us faithful.

Weekend up date

We spent our weekend at home, which was refreshing. Friday night I was supposed to go scrapbooking but no one was there so I came home and started emptying the "stuff" out of the closet where most of our school supplies are stored. That said, my kitchen and dining room are a mess. Saturday afternoon we loaded up a new to us canoe that has been given to us and we took a few paddles around the pond near our house. After dinner I kept pulling and sorting, we now officially have too much stuff. Then, my sweetheart began tearing out one section of old kitchen counter top. Like I said my kitchen and dining room are a mess. Sunday was church and that is about our whole day there. Today my sweetheart is on counter duty. So, by the time I go to bed tonight I should have one section of new counter top. What a time not to have a camera.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Lightweight vacuum

My mom recently purchased this lightweight vacuum for her home. She must have been impressed becasue she bought us one while she was here. The kids can use it with ease as it is small and the handle telescopes so even my shortest blessing can use it with ease. She loves to vacuum and this is just her size. We bought it at Wal-Mart and it is the Eureka optima. It has been used many times a day since it came to work in our home!

May the Lord find us faithful.

Slow on the up take

I have been a bad, bad blogger. Things here are going fairly well, we had some typical rainy August days but it cleared up yesterday evening and there is not one cloud in the sky today. I cleaned all of the windows on the outside (love that Windex outdoor window cleaner) that the sun was shining on and I will get the last two windows this afternoon when it is sunny on that side of the house. I also called to start the process to order glass for a replacement for a window and I am very thankful that it had already been processed and should be in by mid- September. We have had a horrible time with the window company and as soon as we can afford we will be replacing the windows in this house. May be years, they have only been in our home for about 4 years. We had replaced the old wooden windows with these and the company has horrible warrenty customer service. But the local glass company handling the warrenty work is great!

We were planning to start school 4 days a week again on Monday but my husband had to tweek his schedule and he will be off on Monday next week instead of Friday. So, no school on Monday. Maybe we will go Tuesday-Friday? Not sure. I still have to go through and declutter and reorganize our school shelves and make our notebooks. (Okay I must get side tracked here, I just love Keri, I went over to link to her wonderful notebook post  and this notebook post and then I saw this post first and I have to talk about this one. First of all this lady is one organized and together lady.  I am very thankful that she is a visual person and takes all those great photos and willingly shares them with us.Keri, just speaking the truth here!! These nature notebooks are wonderful. I am so thankful to have all you ladies here at hsb that willingly share what they are doing so we can learn and say WOW, that is where I have been trying to go but just needed one idea to help me step that direction.) End of rabbit trail.

Any way, I am going to take care of some basic homekeeping today and then begin ripping it all out and gettting rid of what we do not need and storing what we will need later but not now.  Then when it is all put away properly I will make notebooks! Then a possible monkey wrench, we bought tile in the spring to retile the kitchen counters. My wonderful sweetheart has decided since he has four days off in a row that he might do that this weekend. So, I may be messy here by later tonight! Plus, I am supposed to go scrapbooking tonight. I may just go fellow ship for a while and leave the scrapbooking supplies here. Maybe I will just organize some pictures. Only time will tell.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Tag Rules:

1).The player starts with 8 random facts about herself.

2).The person who is tagged must post, on her own blog, her answers and post the rules first.

3).Then the player must pick 8 people and tag them.  Also leave them a note on Message that lets them know that you tagged them.  You can write who you tagged on your blog also!

8 Random things about me:

1. I never thought I would leave my hometown. I was always a little jealous of those who had "roots" there and I wanted to put down the same roots. Didn't happen, our roots are definitely now deep in Alaskan soil.

2. I do not give good first impressions when meeting in person. People think I am a snob. I am not, I am just quiet until one gets to know me and I am then, loud.

3. I like to be by myself sometimes, but before I had children, I would not eat in a resturant alone.

4. I am changing though, this spring, I attended a local homeschool curriculum fair with just me and my blessings, I have never done that before.

5. I would keep my best friends daughter(she gave me the name Marmey), if they would let me have her, we became close when they lived here and I miss her profoundly. (She missses me too!) I will get to see her in March.(You too Pa-Pa!)

6. At one time I my life I did not think I wanted any children. Glad that did not last long!!

7. I do not drink coffee and I am slowly making myself drink hot tea and some day hope to like it. (I am from the south, tea is iced and very sweet)

8. I am not a very exciting person as you can tell. My husband is the "life" in this house. I have to make myself do fun things some times for the blessings.

I am not tagging anyone else, if you want to play leave a comment here and I will read your 8 random facts.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Just dropped my Mom off at the airport

It is after midnight and I just came home from leaving my Mom at the airport. The blessings all had a tough time crying when they went to bed knowing Nana was not going to be here when they woke up in the morning. We had a good relaxing visit with Nana. We went to the fair and did some shopping and did a lot of staying home and playing inside and out. We attempted to pick raspberries but there were none in walking distance so we just took the dog swimming and had a good walk, my Mom got to see the golden eagles that live near our home.  We are all awaiting the next time we will get so see Nana.

Dog update: she is doing much better, actually she is her old self again. She had no blockages and we have no explaination as to her problem but she is still finishing her antibiotic. We are thankful she is back to being a crazy 2 year old lab!

I hope to do some things that need to be accomplished for the remainder of this week and begin next Monday with getting back into the grind of school work. We got new living room furniture last night and I will be able to use a table in the family room (I think, we will give it a trial anyway). I would like to be in the family room for school where we can read on the couch and still have the table for table work. I have storage issues to work out but that will come this week and the weekend to get it all sorted through and some organization put into practice.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Wednesday check in

Greetings to all! I am ready to get back over and read the rest of the open house posts. I have been busy visiting with my Mom and not had much time on the computer. Maybe I will check some out after every one gets into bed tonight. Tomorrow, if it is not raining, we will be heading out to the fair for the afternoon! The blessings have been looking forward to this with great expectations. I will not have photos to share as our camera will power up but it will not take a picture. 

Oh yeah, an update on our Pastor: HE preached this past Sunday morning!! This coming Sunday is his official welcome back Suday. I stopped over at their house after church, he has a small outdoor fireplace and he was sitting outside, which means he is ready to accept visitors, he is definitely doing much better but still has a long way to go. He has his humor back and that has not suffered a bit! I can see all those heads shaking of those of you who know my Pastor! He has grown some wonderful looking vegetables this summer and his garden has been a wonderful therapy for him. I do pray for he and his wife as their son and his wife will be moving out of state on Monday. They will be driving to their new home in the lower 48.

May the Lord find us faithful.

May the Lord find us faithful

I just had a question in a comment from Ben and Tammi under my homeschool open house post, I cannot link back to them so I will answer here hoping they come back to read again. I chose May the Lord find us faithful because of the song (where I heard that exact wording) but mainly because I want the Lord to find me faithful, I wanted my blog to be for God's glory only. It actually is the title and ending to each blog and I also use it as a signature on my emails as well to remind me to be faithful. How can I murmur and complain when this blog was meant to be a witness and a testimony of His faithfulness to me? I hope that answers the question and I would like to know more about your ministry so we can pray for you all as you labor in Spain. Thank you for asking.

Dog update, we took Emmy(our chocolate lab) in to the vet. She had a temperature but x-rays show no blockage so she is on an anitbiotic and something to settle her stomach. We will take her back Monday for either more x-rays or if she is feeling better, just her updated shots. I pray she is better by Monday because we love our dog, but mainly for financial reasons.

I am trying to type this but it is difficult because I am laughing at my Mom, hiding from blessing #3. They are so funny. Also, my Mom is freezing, it is 58 degrees but it has been raining and cloudy.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Sick dog

Well, I am getting ready to leave the house with our chocolate lab and to take her to the vet. She has been on the couch for about three days, now anyone that knows labs (she's two years old) knows that is not normal. We believe she got into the garbage and has some foreign object stuck somewhere. I sure hope that she is fine and it "passes" easily.

On a happier note, my Mom is here for the week and the blessings get to stay home and have some "Nana" time. It is rainy and grey today so I think they are going to do some cleaning up and then watch a movie.

Have a wonderful day.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Friday

I got our bedroom put back together last night after cleaning the carpet earlier this week. I need to get busy today but I do not know where to start. So, I will get busy after dinner and get some things cleaned.

Enjoy your weekend.

May the Lord find us faithful.

Thursday crunch

I am loving the open house! I will visit more "homes" hopefully this afternoon.

But, a huge question..... How does the refrigerator get so dirty? Seriously, it stays closed most of the time and the food just sits in there? That has to be the nastiest place and I clean it often!!! Can you tell that is what I am doing this morning? I have washed the vegetable and fruit drawers and the shelf that they slide under. I think that is the worst part, I hope so. Those things are drying and I will go tackle another shelf when they are dry. Then I have to put my bedroom back together from cleaning the carpet. Yesterday, I cleaned out the pantry and added an extra shelf on the bottom. Much more orderly and clean. And, we finished getting all the jackets and non-perishable food and kitchen items out of the camper and put away in the house. My Mom is coming Saturday night so I have a few things outside to do to clean up from summer messes and I still have to de-clutter the school stuff. I will probably do that as soon as my Mom leaves if not begin while she is here. That is a biggie that has needed to be tackled since the spring.

Well, I am sure my items are close to being dry. May you all have a wonderful day enjoying the open houses.

May the Lord find us faithful.