We have been reassessing our goals and priorities again at the beginning of this year and I have been wondering if many others have set down and developed a goal for their personal/family life or for their homeschool.

We wrote a family goal, which included a few personal goals for my husband and I.  We try to look at it each year and adjust parts of it to more closely reflect where we are and to address any shifting in priorities, that have come about over time.  We took some training a few years ago which has really helped us to clarify our overall goals.  Here are a few of the things we learned:

1.  If you don’t have a goal, then how do you know if your are achieving that goal?

2.  Writing down your goal helps to clarify it in your mind.  It also keeps it visible, to remind you.

3.  Everyone who is part of the family/group/organization needs to be involved in the development of the goal.

4.  If everyone has ownership of the goal, they are more likely to be a part of the effort to achieve the goal.

5.  Goals should be reviewed and reassessed regularly.  Circumstances may change and the goal that you wrote last year, may not reflect your life/homeschool/etc. this year.

6.  When you need to make a decision, walk through some questions to determine if the decision is leading your toward or away from your goal.  How can you reach your goal, if your decisions all lead you away from your stated goal?

7.  Remember that just because something seems to be leading your toward your goal, it may be leading you away from your overall goal in other areas.  Strive to keep balance among all the facets of your overall goal.

8.  Try to determine what indicators you may look for to determine if things are not going in the direction you want.  Be aware of these indicators and monitor them to see if changes are necessary, so you don’t get off track.

To set your goal, brainstorm what you want your situation/life/homeschool/etc. to look like in the future.  Write out the goal in sufficient detail to clarify your thoughts but not so detailed that you get bogged down in writing it.  If it is too detailed, you will obsess over how to write the goal.  Then determine the steps that you need to take to get to that goal being achieved.  Once you have identified these steps, you can start implementing actions to lead to those goals being achieved.

You can use goal setting and decision making in a number of homeschool settings:

1.  Determining whether to take part in an extra-curricular or away from home class.

2.  Career direction – ie. Does a part-time job enhance my education for the career I am planning to enter.

3.  Deciding on a college, etc.

I look forward to hearing your comments and ideas.

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I just want to state up front that we are not big into celebrating "Halloween".  That just happens to be the name of the event we attended.  This event is always a week to ten days before the end of October.

Every year the local Natural Resources Conservation Board hosts a Halloween Hike in our county park.  Each year there is a different theme that they follow and they perform 6 skits at various areas along the trail.  This year's theme was Fairy Tales and in a previous year when we attended, the theme was Television Shows.  As the actors perform their skits, they weave in education about the park, natural resources, animal habitat, endangered animals, etc.  This is the second year we attended and we thoroughly enjoyed it and learned a lot.

Fairy Tales used this year were:

1. Shrek   (overdevelopment)

2. Cinderella  (natural beauty)

3. Snow White (wise use of energy and other resources)

4. Three Little Pigs (protecting habitat)

5. Ugly Duckling (endangered species)

6. Hansel and Gretel (using maps, compasses and GPS)

They have groups of 25-30 people leave the railroad depot approximately every 10 minutes (you sign up for a slot ahead of time).  The night before, they host a pumpkin carving contest and then the jack-o-lanterns and other luminaries light the path through the park as you hike to the various skits.  It took us just under an hour to complete the hike and when we returned to the depot, there was hot chocolate, hot apple cider, popcorn and cookies waiting.

Perhaps you can convince your local conservation board to start up something like this.  I know a lot work goes into this each year and it takes at least 40 volunteers, but what a huge educational outreach they make all in one night.  I like that it is family oriented and not a drop off your kids here and pick them up here 2 hours later.

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Is it just me, or does it take a few weeks to find your groove when you start a new school year.  Because I took the time to do more planning the week before we started, I felt that we got off to a good start and stayed on schedule the first couple of weeks.  We had a few trips (1-2 days) planned over the next couple weeks, plus a playdate with another homeschooling family, so we have had to adapt our schedule to those, but they have worked out fine and we are keeping up with the basics and have a little catching up to do in some of our secondary subjects.

I don't have a good enough (read: rigid) schedule that my laundry is always caught up, that the house is always drop-in clean or that meals are planned well in advance and on the table in a timely manner.  I am working on that.  But first, I am trying to declutter my house some more so that cleaning it will be easier for myself and the children.  Our lives have become increasingly busy in the last two years and I haven't quite adapted to this new level of activity.

This weekend my sister is coming to help with some long-put-off decorating projects that I promised my daughters and we are going to go through several totes of kids clothing that I had kept for her kids.  If she doesn't want them  then they are going to go to an outreach center that a friend's church has opened.  It will be good to get them out of my storage area, as it doesn't appear that I will be having more kids (my youngest is approaching 8 this winter).  Next project after that is to sell some of the books that are overtaking our house.

Perhaps when we are staying indoors more this winter, I will have more time to attack these projects with a vengeance.  I have the makings of a menu planning system, but have not implemented it.  My sister came up with the system and it works pretty well.  She did say that she was getting tired of the recipes she originally put into her system and is looking to expand her choices.  I have used the card system (SHE's) and Flylady, and I think that my daily routines are the thing I need to get back to using.  Hopefully, I can get back into the routine of doing those things.

Will post back on my progress, when I get a chance.

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Today we started a small lapbooking coop with 3 other families.  We may have a few more families join us, that weren't able to make it today.  Today we showed the kids what we planned, as all of us are new to lapbooking.  Then we sent them off to play while the moms discussed the numerous folds and types of books we could use. 

We set up coop dates, once a month and also decided on a general topic/theme for each monthly meeting for the next three months.  We decided to have them make a book about themselves for our next meeting as some of our kids are just meeting for the first time.  The next month they will do a layered look book on a favorite book (making it a book report).  June will be a lapbook on their favorite animals.  We'll take off July and August for vacations and in September we'll cover our vacations/travels of the summer.

We are really looking forward to this.  In fact my 2 daughters are already wanting to make one tonight.  I told them after supper they could work on one, so we need to clean up a bit and get our supplies organized.

We will post pictures as we get them finished.  I would love to see what the rest of you are doing with lapbooks and notebooking (we have been doing this for history and science).  I think the kids will have more fun with the lapbooks, but the notebooking will work for those times when we can't devote more time to them.

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http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/DandelionSeeds/90383/

There is more information at the link above.  This precious little girl is undergoing her 13th surgery in 18 days battling a mysterious infection that is eating away her flesh (and bone I think?).  Dandelion Seeds is asking people to commit to pray for a specific time and she has a list at her blog to cover this little girl in prayer.

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Last weekend I attended a 48 hour Creative Memories scrapbook retreat.  I did some planning prior to the event, mainly sorting photos among my 3 children and then picking out background papers for the theme.  My husband had a meeting that day and didn't get home till around 3:15, and I didn't get left till 3:45, which is okay because I was still packing for it.

It was a 2 hour drive from home and was held at a church camp, with dorm rooms.  I arrived about 5:30 p.m., it started at 3:00 p.m., so by the time I got settled and ate my meal, it was about 7:00 when I got started scrapping.  I slept about 5 hours each night, but that was enough for me to keep going.  Got to bed around 2:00 a.m. each night.  It wound up at 3:00 p.m. on Sunday afternoon.

I am so pleased!  I completed 85 pages (minus journalling).  I have never gotten so much done as that.  I guess when you make most of the decisions before putting it together, it actually goes much faster.

I did purchase a neat product there called Memory Manager.  It helps you organize your digital photos and you can even journal in the program and then send the photos and the journalling to either Creative Memories Photo or another photo printer.  All you have to do is pop them in your album when they come back.

I  just installed the program tonight and spent some time just learning my way around it.  One thing I did was to set up sort boxes and folders within those boxes.  My hope is to sort amongst my kids for each year, then print the photos from those albums and I'll be half way to getting my pages made.

If anyone else is using Memory Manager, I would love to hear your comments and how you are using it.  I am not a CM consultant, but I do love their tools!  Happy Scrapping!!!

Kristi67

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Eat Fat, Lose Fat                                                Sally Fallon

Marmee’s Kitchen Primer                                    Martha Greene

Clean and Green                                                  Annie Berthold-Bond

The Naturally Clean Home                                   Karyn Siegel-Maier

How to Dry Foods                                              Deanna DeLong

Homemaking                                                       J.R. Miller

His Chosen Bride                                                Jennifer Lamp                

Treasury of Homekeeping Skills                          Martha Greene

The Joy of Obedience                                          Susan D. Zakula

The Virtuous Woman                                           Pam Forster

God’s Priceless Woman                                      Wanda Sanseri

The Mission of Motherhood                                 Sally Clarkson

Becoming a Titus 2 Woman                                 Martha Peace

Women: Living Life on Purpose                            Kym Wright

Life Skills for Kids                                               Christine M. Field

The Heart of Anger                                              Lou Priolo

The Hope Chest                                                  Rebekah Wilson

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Have any of you heard of the book Love and Respect by Dr. Emerson Eggerichs?  I had not heard of it until our pastor announced an all-day seminar at our church.  Dr. Eggerichs does 2-day seminars and we watched a DVD of the presentations by he and his wife, Sarah. 

We did not have a large group of people, but it made for good discussion.  Some portions the men and women watched together and other portions the men watched in another location in the church, while the women stayed and watched their portion.  The core ideas are that women need to know that their husband loves them and men need to know that their wives respect them, or they aren’t communicating at their highest levels.  An example of just how easy it is to say something and have it be misunderstood:

She says: “I don’t have anything to wear.”

            What she means is “I don’t have anything new to wear.”

He says:  “I don’t have anything to wear.”

            What he means is “I don’t have anything clean to wear.”

When we miscommunicate with our spouse, things can escalate and spiral out of control.  We need to work to get back to real, clear communication when this happens.   It is based on the passage in Ephesians 5:33  -  Nevertheless, let each individual among you also love his own wife even as himself; and let the wife see to it that she respect her husband.

There are various ways to get the information.  There is the book, also a workbook, audio cassette and CD.  The entire seminar is on DVD as well.  I would highly recommend it to any couple that is married, or engaged to be married.  Another friend who went to the seminar and I agree that it is a great engagement/shower/wedding gift and we’ve each planned to have one on hand for such an occasion.  Each point he made in the seminar was backed up with numerous bible verses illustrating the point.

If you have read the book, listened to it, or went to the seminar, I would love to hear your comments.

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1. Make an appointment with yourself and keep it –  I know many of you schedule the important things in your life:  quiet time with the Lord, time with your spouse, time for schooling and time for completing the many tasks required to run a homeschooling household.  If you’ve been lamenting the fact, there is never time to scrapbook, then make it a priority by setting aside time to work on your project.   When my children were very small, they all took two hour naps in the afternoon.  Rather than try to catch up on housework (never-ending), I devoted those two hours to working on our scrapbooks.  If I got interrupted, that was okay, but I had an appointment with myself and worked on them at least 4 days per week.  This allowed me to complete baby books for my twins and their sister (who is just 23 months younger); by the time they were two years old.
2. Attend a crop, weekend retreat, overnight crop or other workshop -  Simply the act of registering and paying to attend one of these events motivates you to get organized and complete some pages.  Many times these are the only times I get a significant amount of pages completed.  I went to a 24 hour crop and completed 33 pages.  In the last two weeks, I attended two 6 hour workshops and completed 11 pages and 12 pages, respectively. 
3. Get together with a friend -  It is always more fun to crop with someone else, so if you don’t like to pay to crop, then call a friend, your sister, your mother, or your neighbor and crop while your kids play together in another part of the house.  Earlier this year, my three sisters and I completed a 150 page (two album) scrapbook for our parents’ 40^th wedding anniversary celebration.  We all worked on our respective pages, but we completed approximately 75 pages during the last 17 hours when we were all together.  You garner creative ideas and techniques and it didn’t cost you anything. 
4. Set up a scrapbooking space in your home -  It may be a spare bedroom, a dedicated scrapbook/hobby area, an under-used closet or storage area, or a small corner of your bedroom, or alcove underneath the stairs.  By thinking creatively, you can create simple, effective storage solutions to hold all your supplies and provide you with a workspace that you can use when you find snippets of time.   I scrapped while my children napped in an unfinished bedroom.  I kept it off-limits to the children, so I was able to keep my supplies and work in progress out where I could work on them when time permitted.  You can sort pictures while you watch your favorite television show.  Another idea is to do your journaling while you are waiting for your children to complete an assignment.  You can crop photos when you have 10 minutes before you leave for an outside activity.  There are pockets of time throughout your day, just be aware of them and use them to your benefit.
5. Plan a whole album -  There are many names for this, but the basic technique is the same.  Lay out at least a dozen pieces of plain cardstock.  Sort your pictures onto these by topic or page theme.  Next crop the photos into basic shapes (rectangles, squares, circles or ovals).  Next sort any memorabilia that goes with the pictures onto the cardstock/photo piles.  If  you decide to mat photos, choose the colors that coordinate with your photos and lay the matting paper/cardstock on the piles.  Next you stack the pages on top of one another and store in a storage box (an album box works great for this).  When you are ready, you have made most of the decisions and can quickly assemble the pages and add any embellishments you desire.  I know of people who regularly complete entire albums in a weekend doing this.  What a great way to get caught up!
6. Assemble page kits – This involves a technique similar to the album technique listed in #5.  Sort your photos and coordinating cardstock, then add stickers, die cuts and other items (brads, fibers, etc).  Store in individual bags or other storage container.  You can grab a couple to complete when you have an extra half-hour, or grab several as you head out the door to a crop.  Again, you have made most of the decisions, so the page will come together much quicker for you and you don’t have to agonize, wasting precious time (that you paid for) trying to decide what color of background paper you want to use.
7. Make borders -  Utilize some of your abundant stash of stickers and put together borders on strips of cardstock.  They will be coordinating with the cardstock, thereby making your choices for colors.  There is nothing faster than adding a premade border to you page, cropping your photos and affixing them to the page.  All you have left is to complete your journaling.  Along the same lines, use border strips to do your titles.  These really free up a lot of time for you to assemble the page.  Several of my friends do this and makes their time really productive.  I have not done it on the same scale as them, but what I have done has helped me complete more pages in less time and I am all for that.  After all, I have 4 ½ years worth of pictures to catch up for 3 kids and myself.

I hope that you will glean something from this article and perhaps would like to share other ideas you have along these lines

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We returned Monday afternoon from 8 days on the road.  My husband attended a 2 day meeting and we all attended a conference related to our farming. It was a rather long trip (about 18 hours of driving one way), but we spread the driving over 2 days on the beginning and the end of the trip.

We drove as far as St. Louis the first night, stopping by to meet several members of a homeschool loop I am on, for a picnic.  It was great to put faces with names of the many people that I "talk" to on  a daily basis.  We had to laugh, when we found out that our perceptions of others didn't match reality (read hair colors), others thought I was blonde (I am far from it).  At any rate, the time of visiting went all too quickly and we headed just south of St. Louis to find a hotel room outside of the rush hour traffic on Tuesday morning. 

We left Tuesday morning, hopping on I-55 which we drove on all day till we arrived in Jackson, MS around 6:30.  I-55 took us through Missouri, Arkansas, Tennessee and finally to Mississippi.  We had forgotten our paper with confirmation number, etc. so we had to drive several miles to a couple different hotels to determine which Holiday Inn we were at.  There was a Holiday Inn every 2 miles.  Thankfully they called around and found ours.  We checked in, got a bite to eat and took an evening swim.

The following day, while dh attended his meetings we visited the Museum of Natural  Science.  On loan there, is the T-Rex named Sue that was found in South Dakota a number of years ago.  If I remember correctly, it was found by a group of homeschoolers.  I will have to research that a little more.  The entire dinosaur fossil is 42 feet long.  In fact, I couldn't get a digital picture from directly in front of it, as it was too long.  I was able to get a full length picture on the landing.  If I can get it figured out, I will try to add a picture. 

Later on that week, we visited a museum of Agriculture Aviation and Forestry.  A large part of the museum complex was an outdoor display of buildings, as they were in the mid 1800s.  The kids enjoyed the various buildings including the blacksmith shop, the cotton gin and the general store.

On Friday and Saturday, we attended portions of the conference with my husband.  Friday evening there was a banquet and the keynote speaker was Bill Kurtis, host of A&E's Cold Case Files.  He was very interesting to listen to and talked about a lot of his experiences in journalism and television.  Saturday we attended some of the speakers.  One of the speakers ,we met briefly on Friday evening and he challenged the kids to a tug of war with him on Saturday noon.  The speaker was billed as the World's Strongest Man.  We were able to get his autograph and talk to him briefly when he finished.

My son asked if he was going to have a tug of war, so he took a brief break from signing autographs and did that.  Of course, we had to add dad and mom to make it more evenly matched.  The kids had fun with it.  This man also bent steel rods with his bare hands and rolled up frying pans before our very eyes.  Amazing!  I got some pictures of that too!

The rest of the afternoon was kids' activities including rock climbing walls, bouncing pits, and mechanical bull rides.  Of course, it was beyond hot!  96 degrees and heat index in the 100s.  We went back to the hotel for a swim, then out for supper.  The evening entertainment was a showcase of a number of country song-writers.  They were superb, and wrote and sang many current country hits.

Sunday morning we headed for home in the heat and got about 2  hours past St. Louis.  It was still 95 degrees at 9:30 that evening.  Unbelieveable!  We enjoyed our time traveling and seeing new sights and meeting new people.  We even met another homeschooler at our first hotel.  We hope to meet them again next year when we attend the conference.  One of the speakers for the first meeting brought his wife along and we struck up a friendship with her.  They were from Argentina and she was learning to speak English, so we enjoyed learning where she was from and listening to her tell us about her family.

We are glad to be at home again and I am slowly getting caught up on laundry.  No laundry done in 8 days and you can imagine how big that pile was (is).  Overall the trip was very educational and we are glad we were able to take the kids with us.  I think they really enjoyed it and learned a lot.  Looking forward to attending the conference in another state next year.

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I have been scrapbooking 10 years now and have tried a number of techniques over the years.  One of my favorite techniques is paper piecing, although it is time consuming, so I tend to not do very much of it.  I have done some from patterns, but for the most part, I make my own.  The first one I made was of an older style tractor.  It turned out really well.  The tractor belonged to my husband's grandfather and was sold.  The fellow restored it and put it in a number of shows.  As of 6 weeks ago, we purchased the tractor back from him and now my husband and son will work on restoring it.  My husband restored it with his grandfather in 1976 for the bicentennial, so this will be a neat project for my husband and son.  And of course I will be scrapbooking the process.

I love using chalks and use them whenever I can to embellish a page.  One of my favorite techniuqes for a quick page, is to make a border strip.  It sure does stretch the scrapbooking dollar and can also be used for titles.  By using some of my stickers on the border and the rest on the pages, I can get 2-3 pages from a sticker sheet and that really helps. 

I just purchased an eyelet setter while on vacation and am looking forward to using it.  My sister borrowed her neighbor's to try the technique and really liked it, so i thought I would jump in too.  As I am about 5 years behind in pictures, I figure that I will be able to use many techniques and nothing will be wasted. 

I am also trying to incorporate more ribbon into my pages.  I think the look is awesome and I have lots of ribbon left over from crafting projects that I can incorporate.  My three sisters and I recently  (almost) completed a 150 page, 2 volume scrapbook for my parent's 40th wedding anniversary.   One of my sisters completed their wedding pages with white ribbon over turquoise paper (their wedding color) and their black and white photos.  They turned out so awesome!  I can't wait to do mine.

I guess these would be my favorite techniques, but I am sure something new will come along that I like even more and I will add that to my collection of  things to use in my scrapbooking.

That's all for now.  I need to get my house back together so I can get back to scrapping!

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Thought I would spruce up my blog with a little artwork until I have time to sort out and post some pictures of our recent field trips.  This is great fun and I can wait to look at others' blogs to get ideas of what people are including.

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We began homeschooling when our oldest (twins) were 2 years old.  My husband had been hearing about homeschooling on Christian talk radio and provided me with information.  I knew there was no way I could do that.  After much prayer on his part, my heart was softened and I can't imagine not homeschooling and the freedom it affords us in educating our children.  Rather than put them in a preschool program, we created one of our own.  We added our third child shortly thereafter and continued on with early learning activities until it was time to begin Kindergarten.

We used Rod and Staff Preschool series workbooks with all the children the year prior to starting Kindergarten, which are inexpensive and give a solid and comprehensive skill set.  We follow that up with Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, combined with the Explode the Code series of workbooks for phonics.  After recommendations from nearly everyone we knew who homeschooled, we introduced Saxon Math to our children and have been very happy with the results.  We began handwriting instruction with A Reason for Handwriting, but have now switched all 3 children to Handwriting Without Tears.

I am very much the frugal homeschooling mom, so nearly everything we buy for school, I have been able to purchase used. 

We follow the Classical Method (ala Well Trained Mind) for our history and science studies, but prefer to have something structured within that method.  We use Story of the World as we study the 4 year history cycle and Living Learning Books for elementary science.  

We are busily trying to repaint bedrooms this summer and have moved our schoolroom into a family room in the basement.  Will add pictures when that is completed.  Hope you enjoy reading about our little Homeschool in Green Pastures. :)

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