I really don't like taking breaks from our lessons.  I find I actually get bored! Can you imagine?  I love being with my guys and learning with them.  I gives my day structure and I get things done.  When left with all day to do what I want, I find myself getting little accomplished.  I was relieved to start at our lessons again yesterday.  It was a bit of a shaky start, but we got it going again.  We are finally in module B in chapter 10 of Volume 2.  We'll only be there until tomorrow and then we'll move on again.  I spent way too much time in Module A, but I felt I needed to do some back tracking first.  I've been doing quite a bit of my own side reading on this time period and I'm getting quite the eye opener.  Really, I never learned any of this stuff when I was in school.  No European history at all!  I feel like I'm starving to catch up on all of it.  The school system is doing the students a disservice by not spending more time on this.  It really makes you connect the dots as to why things are they way they are.

I've got all these projects I want to get done over winter before the gardening season kicks in again.  I want to get our basement in some kind of order and neat.  We just sort of threw boxes down there when we moved in.  My hubby has been dragging a bit up to the attic, which I don't think solves anything except it's out of waters way IF our basement should get any water in it.  So the boxes just get moved around and not really dealt with.  I want to get down and dirty and DEAL with it.  I also want to get things hung up on walls and some curtains put up.  Start to make this place look like our home.  I still am using the curtains that were here (not my taste) and the walls are still a bit bare. (hence, where some of the boxes came from). 

I'm already looking at gardening catalogs and dreaming about the upcoming garden I want to plant.  This puppy is going to be big, 100x62 ft.  Oh Yeah!!!   A bit of it will be used for planting fodder for the animals such as turnips and maybe some feed corn and lots of sunflowers.  I figure that will be not quite half of it.  The other half we will grow for ourselves and to sell.  My ds is open for business to sell his eggs.  This is exciting.  We also brought over a "friend" for our goats to breed with.  We are hopeful to have some kids by early June.  This guy is a big one!  If I remember, I'll take a picture to see the comparison.

Speaking of goats, gotta go and check up on them.

It was a wild week from Thursday night into Monday evening.  We managed to catch that ice storm which came through Thursday night into Friday.  I prayed heavily to have us keep power through the night and God answered my prayer, but He does have a sense of humor and our power went out Friday afternoon until Monday evening.  I guess I need to be specific in my prayers!  I took loads of pictures and it's hard to choose which ones to show here.  I must say God's art work was intensely beautiful.  Everything looked like it was made of glass.

We did survive the ice without power, but my wonderful husband had to put gas in our generator every hour and forty five minutes around the clock.  This generator has a small gas tank and we were thankful to have it since temperatures dove into the minuses with screaming winds.  Without it we would've been in deep trouble.  All this did put a damper on my last minute Christmas baking and such since my oven is electric, microwave, dishwasher, well pump, etc.  You get the picture.  We were trying not to tax the generator and just let it work the things that were important such as the furnace, well pump, and a rotation on the freezers and fridges we have.  We used lights at a minimum, so instead we used our oil lamps and candles in the evenings.  So what did we do for fun?  Hmmm, well we read books aloud, I made a hat on my knitting loom thing and made a couple of fleece scarves.  Hubby just managed the generator and oh yeah, fix some burst pipes in one of the barns. Ugh.  One thing after another.  I just tried to keep busy.  I was thankful to God for showing us our weak spots in times like this.  It was an eye opener.  I thought we were pretty well prepared for emergencies, but we saw how we lacked.  So I tried to keep my spirits up by giving thanks to God and my hubby pumped up.  It is a bit daunting to tend that generator when it's -20 degrees outside with 30 mile an hour winds every 2 hours.

It all came to a stop by Monday evening and we had our power restored. Yeah!  The first thing I did was take a shower.  We avoided showers so as not to tax the generator with the well pump.  I did manage to get caught up a bit for Christmas.  I didn't sweat it since I knew we weren' t having any company that I knew of, but I wanted to be ready just in case.  We did end up with a lovely Christmas nonetheless.  On Christmas Eve, we went to church and sang songs and held candles.  Then we asked a lady from church to join us in our eating of Chinese food on Christmas Eve.  Then we went home and opened our presents.  It was really nice.  The next day I made a breakfast cake for us, the boys went into the hayloft to shoot their new BB guns and my dad came for a visit and stayed for dinner.  We had a joyus holiday after all.

I give praise to God for all the blessings he has bestowed on us this year.  It's been quite the adventure and never dull, but we are so thankful for all of it.  God is good and wonderful and a provider of all things we need.  Happy Birthday Jesus.

Well, my kitchen is done for now.  It is so beautiful. Enjoy the pictures below.

       

      

Next year the floor will get redone along with some new windows and I will get to decorate.  I will add some curtains soon though.  It's so nice not to have my kitchen parts all over the house and a complete countertop and tools put away for now.  Whew!

The boys were busy making a gingerbread house.   They like that sort of art class and they pretty much built it all by themselves and ate it by themselves!  I bought one of those kits.  No I'm not that adventuresome yet to actually make one from scratch.  Someday I'd like to try.

We are really getting into our Volume 2 chapter 10 lessons.  We are reading through The World of Columbus and Sons, The Child's Story of America and any other relevent books for this chapter.  We just finished putting together the tabernacle model.  That was fun.  I'm so in awe when I see Christ in the Old Testament and how each item points to Christ and that God has a plan and nothing is overlooked.  It is neat to see how specific God is in His plans and we need to trust His directions.

We have our tree up now, even after it fell over a few times.  I think our tree stand is shot.  I may have to cave in and go artificial next year.  Seems we have allergies to the real trees, everyone but me, of course. Oh well, it's really not that important.  I've found that I dont' know where to place my Christmas decorations.  I seem to be lacking in space for them.  My house does't look that Christmasy this year.  I will be starting on my baking projects and putting together baskets for random gifts.  Yesterday we went to the resale shop to get some baskets and I bought six small baskets for a penny each!  Big spender I guess   I"m going to spray paint them and make them nice for gifts.  I've got nice canned items to put in there and baked goods coming up along with some candied nuts and regular candies I'd like to try.  My teeth hurt just thinking of it all!

Oh! I almost forgot!! We finally got our first eggs this week!!!!  Yeah!!!!  Also, a duck laid eight eggs and we gave those to the neighbor, he likes duck eggs.  So our tally for the week is 6 chicken eggs and eight duck eggs and counting!  Finally it's happening around here.  We were very excited.

      

    First egg on Monday                A bit smaller than what to expect

    

Today, 2 chicken and 1 duck                    3 eggs today

                      egg

Have a Merry Christmas

Ok, I'm nervous.  I shouldn't be though.  I will be starting Trek at our new church hopefully in January.  This is the middle school program of AWANA.  The Lord and I have been going round and round about this and well, HE won.  I'm actually excited about doing this, but then again, I'm sticking myself out there.  I'm going to have to get my organized self out of the box I packed away a few months ago and get busy with this.

Another thing laid on my heart is to begin a Keepers at Home group at my house.  I don't have details yet, but I have a pretty good idea of what I want to do with it.  I really dont' expect to get that one going for a while yet.  That one will take some organization, too.  I want it to be like a bible study on what the Lord has to say about homekeepers and our role in the family.  I also want there to be an activity to go with it such as bread baking, gardening, soap making, etc.  You know, learn some skills that most of us don't do but would maybe like to know or just to have fun for a day.  I very excited about this one, just needs more polish on it.

ANTHER item simmering on the stove is a homeschool group.  There aren't any here, go figure.  Homeschoolers are crawling all over the place and no group.  Hmmmm.  Our church has a gym and the room so this is also someting I want to start hopefully after the first of the year.  Sometimes we need to get together and lift each other up and give a place for the children to socialize (Ewww I hate that word!) but you catch my drift.  Maybe even have organized gym time.  We'll see on that one.

This week will be a busy one.  We will hopefully continue lessons for Monday and Tuesday.  Wednesday we have some friends coming to stay for a couple of nights and the boys are very excited about this.  They will be with us for Thanksgiving.  Then Friday we'll go get our tree, which will be sweet since it's just down the road and any tree for $20 bucks.  For a change we won't have to travel a great distance to obtain the "perfect" tree and pay a mint for it.  Then Saturday our church is having a Thanksgiving dinner for the community.  I'll need tons of prayer on this one.  I'm only helping to prepare food and I'm not going to get in the middle of anything else.  AMEN!  (this event is not very organized and we will have no idea how many people to expect, GASP!)  Sunday, rest.

Farm news:

Hubby and boys have been busy winterizing the animal areas and such.  Making sure waterers stay unfrozen, which is a chore by itself.  We moved the goats in with the calves and now I can see them if they are in the right area.  I love those goats! 

We have a duck in the basement because it was being picked on literally, buy the others so we brought it in to heal and hopefully make an entrance in the near future.  I never thought I'd have farm animals in my house!  We also have a new dog.  He's an Australian shepher and a pretty good dog, except for the occassional chewing.  He's 6 months old and potty trained, just need to work on the chewing part.  IT's not real bad, but not acceptable.

I'm getting anxious for our chickens to start laying.  I'm tired of buying them else where and they aren't laying so great either.  I may have to go back to getting them at the store until ours start to crank them out.

Happy Thanksgiving and hug a turkey!  See my MEEZ in the sidebar!  Too funny.

I love the smells of fall, burning leaves, apple smells in the basement, and squash smells in my storage area.  I love the crispness of the air even though it makes me feel cold.  I love to see my breath float up.  I love a hot tea after being outside for a time and have become chilled.  I love the sound of the leaves as I walk through them or rake them.  Even though I mourn the end of garden season, I'm also glad to put it to bed and give it a rest.  I do love fall.

We're off and running on our volume 2, chapter 10 this week.  So far so good.  I got my shipment from Rainbow Resources (Yeah!) and now we can start to have some fun with the activities.  This chapter is going to take awhile.  I plan on taking our time and digging into the Reformation and Early America settlement and the start of the nation.  Rainbow Resources had lots of old documents that have been printed on parchmentlike paper to look authentic.  I got things like, Declaration of Independence, Constitution, John Smith's map of Virginia (pretty cool), Bill of Rights, Mayflower Compact, etc.  I thought these would be fun to study and read aloud and compare then to now.  Also what we've done for comparision is to compare from Exodus the laws we've read so far to whether or not they could be applicable to the U.S. today.  It is amazing to see how many still do or should.  We also saw how Jesus said the two most important commandments were to love God with all your heart and your neighbor as yourself.  The 10 commandaments fall into one of those two categories.  The first four go under the God column and the rest go under loving your neighbor.  Very interesting.

Today the boys carved a potato to simulate what it may have been like to make stamp letters before the Gutenburg press was invented.  They seemed to enjoy this and then we used mustard for ink so we could still throw the potatoes to the chickens.  Other activities planned are to build a paper model of the Mayflower, build a replica of the tabernacle, salt and flour map of the 13 colonies and I don't know what else.  I have so much planned I'm scaring myself.  I just want to make sure they understand what foundation this country was built on and be able to defend it.  It's also fun to see how God sets things up and how man ruins it all.   I'm so excited to finally be doing this chapter.

Our election lapbooks turned out great .  Wew really enjoyed doing this and I felt it was worthwhile to go as deep as I did.  Sometimes I had to bang my head against the wall, like trying to explain the difference between primary adn general elections.  Whew! that was a tough one for them to wrap around.  We also went into the suffrages.  I thought we might get to the branches of government, but we might be able to do this toward the end of the current chapter we're in.

Tomorrow we will be sitting in on another Colonial Williamburg computer field trip.  Tomorrow's theme is Yorktown.  How perfect is that?  God is gracious and good and gives the perfect gifts.  These are really good field trips.  Homeschoolbuyers co-op has this available to purchase at a very good price.  Check it out.

Farm News:

Nothing to report new really.  The animals are growing each day.  It's pretty cold and yucky lately but they don't seem to mind.  Still waiting for the eggs to come!  A friend brought over some venison for us to try so I made venison stew tonight.  It was great.  I've also got some venison stock going on the stove.  I guess you can use this in place of beef stock if you want.  I still have tons of apples to put away and I want to can pumpkin butter and apple pie filling.  I'm already dreaming what to plant next season.  I'm kinda glad to be in the house now.  I plan on organizing things that I've put off from moving (winter inside projects)  I also want to find curtains for my kitchen, which is almost finished with new cabinets and appliances.  I will post pictures when it's done.  The floor and walls won't get done till next year.

I'm so glad to be here.  God has indeed blessed us.

We began our election study last week and it's going pretty well.  I'm learning so much!   I think the boys are, too. I'm finding this election to be a disappointment but nevertheless, we will learn about the process and keep our eyes on the tallies on election night.  I think they are just excited to be able to stay up late!

Our computer course is plugging along although we had a bit of trouble for lesson #6 and getting the turtle to do what we wanted.  It's a  matter of figuring out how to get the turtle where we want it.  We are managing the commands pretty well, but having trouble logically thinking out the instructions to input in the command center.  Ben is marvelous at all this and I feel he will do very well.  Aaron is doing great too, but not as enthusiastic about it.  The advantage of doing them separately is that by the time we get around to Aaron having his lesson, I've figured out the directions better and it moves more smoothly.  I may have to study this lesson a bit more later today.

Writeshop is also moving fine and dandy and Aaron is still not liking it very much.  This week we are going to be writing about circus performers.  We had to do one minute drills on description words on different circus performers.  He had some serious trouble and even for the word circus couldn't write a thing after the minute was up.  He said it would be a bit easier if he had ever been to a circus.  How true.  Maybe it's hard to imagine something if you've never had the experience.  I can conjure up many images, but I've been to a circus once as a kid.  Didn't like it very much, too much going on at one time and couldn't focus on any one thing because so much was going on!  I have never thought to take them to one.   I smell a field trip coming on!

Farm news:

Our calves are here and they are marvelous.  Blossom is such a beauty.  Stella will take some getting use to.  She is not the cleanest calf I've seen.  How is it that Blossom stays clean and pretty and this other one isn't?  Go figure.  Blossom is the Jersey (brown) calf and Stella is the white, well almost white calf.

                                                           

Ben was funny this morning.  "I guess we're going to have eggs soon!"  Me said "Why do you say that?"  "Well the boy duck was sitting on top of the girl duck and had her by the back of the head!"  "Ouch!" me said.  I guess we'll see. 

This is Somersault and Cartwheel.  I have no idea where the boys came up with those names.

I love goats.  No doubt about it.  Peaches is a dreamboat.  What a love she is and she is so happy and lovable.  I've asked hubby if she could move into the house.  Well I bet you can imagine what the answer was.  Oh well.  Flower actually let me pet on her today.  The first time since we sold off Pepper.  She has been a bit miffed at us for that and back to her old untouchable self.  I think I can now officially call myself a goatlady.

Below is a picture of our beautiful daughter holding a day old Pepper.

Well we're finishing chapter 9 tomorrow in volume 2.  I'm very excited about doing chapter 10, but first, we will work on election studies and government until after the election.  I'm looking forward to that, too.  It will involve lapbooks and just a fun way of doing this topic.  I remember being in school as a child and hating every minute of anything to do with government.  It was all bookwork and nothing fun.  Textbooks and worksheets, how dull.  These lapbooks look like fun and I hope the boys will enjoy them.

SWR is going well.  Last weeks spelling tests were'nt that great since we were off for two days.  So we repeated this week and all seems much better.  The interesting thing is that the boys seem to like spelling, especially Aaron.  Last year was such a chore for all involved and this year is so different.  Maybe it's the teacher's attitude towards it, hmmm?

Writeshop is a bit of a sore spot for us.  Aaron doesn't enjoy this very much, but I think it's more that it's a new thing for us.  Once he understands the direction, he can usually pull it off.  I'm taking the slow track through it, so we spend two weeks on each lesson.  The first 3 days of a new lesson are the hardest since there's so much to get done in those days to stay on schedule.  He struggles with the brainstorming activities.  I suppose it will get easier as time goes along.  It's painful for me too, since this is an easy area for me adn I find I get frustrated which I shouldn't do.  So to eliminate frustration, I remove myself from the area while he works, but that's not what I'm suppose to do with this.  I'm suppose to be guiding him along the whole way and not leave him to his own devices.  I need work on this myself.

The computer course is going along fine.  I have found you have to read the directions very carefully and that there are no typos otherwise things won't work.  I do have to think about things a bit to understand adn I think things are implied although I can't put my finger on what that is exactly.  Ben is loving this though and I'm glad.  Aaron does too, but I think he can take it or leave it.  He needs a typing course.  Any suggestions?

Farm News

Our calves came home on Saturday.  Blossom is totally adorable and tame as a dog.  Stella, the beef calf is wild!  But she seems to not mind being lead around a bit on a lead.  The boys are working on halterbreaking both of them for easy handling.

Peaches is wonderful and such a delight.  I'm anxious to breed her, but not until December.  She, too, is tame as can be although she is following Flower around, she's the queen, and tends to bolt if Flower bolts.  But Peaches is a lover and adores being scratched on under the chin and tummy. We sold Pepper on Sunday and I think Flower is a bit miffed at us.  She wont' let us touch her much, not that she ever has.  She was coming around with Pepper in the scene, but now that he's gone, she's gone back to her old ways of being untouchable.  We need to build a stantion so we don't have to manhandle her everytime we need to handle her for something.  I know that sets her back.  If I have some veggies to give them then she may allow me the privelege of touching her a little bit. 

I've kicked the ducklings out of the tank and they are now running around the farm.  Boy do they get stinky in confinement.  Yuck!  Otherwise, I do enjoy the ducks we have.  I love watching them splash in the little tub we have for them.  They can empty it out right quick with all their splashing.

Well it's bedtime for everyone so Good Night!

Above are some photos from the Creation Museum I took while seeing the Snakes Alive! presentation.

Anyway, we went to Kentucky a couple of weeks ago and came home with a new Nubian goat that we named Peaches.  She is totally adorable and we love her.  We hope to breed her in December.  The goats are so fun.

Our lessons have been going very well considering I've added new things in this year.  The boys are loving the computer course so far adn I've not had too much trouble getting that to go.  Sometimes the lessons can be a bit confusing, but then look who they're trying to teach (see above rant) .  We have managed them and the boys are loving it.  The writing course is also going fine although I can get a bit frustrated with this.  I know writing takes time and he will succeed.  I'm amazed at our spelling so far.  Last year I had such a horrible learning curve with SWR that I almost put it down.  Well, this year is making sense now to me and I dont' seem as overwhelmed with it all.  I think I've managed to put it where it belongs in our day and not let it rule the moment.  It's only a curriculum and not law.  Our Weaver has been wonderful. I was hoping to finish chapter 9 this week but we had a minor set back so now it will be next week.  I've got three different crystal projects going around here.  Only one seems to be working as it should.

I have to recommend two websites for making lessons more interesting, at least for my boys and the fact that the libraries around our new home are marginal at best.  My library in my home is better.  Anyway, I've found these to be extremely helpful and educational. Caution, you may encounter evolution! These are not Christian sites, but still very good as long as your children understand what the Bible teaches.

www.Brainpop.com and www.Cosmeo.com

Aaron with Blossom who is coming home on Saturday

Pepper is very cute.  Anyone want to buy a goat?

Our first hay                                                                     That's me!

Our huge corn harvest! Ha!

We finally got our official "school year" off to a start on Monday.  I have to say that it went very well and I had somewhat eager students.  As I posted in my last blog, we have added some new things this year.

In Weaver, we are in Volume 2 Chapter 9.  This week's Bible lessons were great.  The Bible shows how God ordered government with Moses before he went up on Mt. Sinai to get the commandments.  Through Jethro he tells Moses how to set up a more organized leadership so he doesn't have to do it all by delegating.  Hmmmmm sounds familiar.  So I went into a discussion with the boys about how our government is basically ordered from president, govenor, mayor and the father of the household.  God told Moses to appoint leader over the 1000s, leaders over 100s and leaders over 10s.  I just love how the Bible can be applied to today.  Another thing covered was what the Isrealites had to do before coming before God to worship.  They had to be clean by washing themselves and garments and be consecrated by the priests.  This led to a discussion about being clean for church in body and Spirit.  To have a clean heart ready to worhip God and not be thinking of other things.  To take a shower whether you need one or not.  Does anyone else have this trouble getting their children to bathe regularly?

In the studies part we have been looking more closely at mountains and their location.  We learned more specific information on Mt. Everest and Mt. McKinley.  We've looked at different kinds of maps of our state.  We were suppose to look at the mountains in our state, well Illinois is not known for it's mountains!  Today we looked at the benefits and destruction of fire because God comes in fire.  On Mt. Sinai he was in the cloud with lightning and thunder, which we will also be taking a look at more closely.  Do we ever stop to think that the Lord shows himself in the lightning and thunder like He did for the Isrealites?

Aaron and I started Writeshop this week also.  It was a very rocky beginning but as the week drew to a close he was getting into the swing of it a bit better.  So far I really like this program.  It teaches me how to teach him to be a better writer.  It has great word banks and check lists for him to refer to to help him with his paper.  I think as time progresses we will get a better handle on this and it will be a good thing for us.  Next year Ben will start this program.  Can't wait on that one! Not!  (Ben opposes writing!)

We also started the computer science course from Motherboard Books called Pure and Simple.  We only have done lesson one which is word processing and I have to say I actually learned a thing or two this week myself.  We'll see how it continues though since we will be charting unfamiliar territory next week.  I read the instructions and have the son follow my instructions instead of them working independently.  I want to learn some of what this has to offer so I'm sittting in.

For Spell to Write and Read (SWR) we mainly reviewed phonograms and did a couple of resource pages that have to be set up each year.  We are off to a much better start with this than when we started in January.  It was tough going for me to get it off the ground.  I think this program has a tough learning curve, at least for me it was.  There's so much meat to this program and when I tested them last Friday for placement, Ben made huge improvement and Aaron just a little but he's on grade level whatever that means.  I feel much more confident teaching this than I was before.  I believe we'll get more out of it this time around.

Farm news:

     We have 6 new ducks and 7 ducklings.  Very cute.  This weekend we are going to Kentucky to pick up another goat for me to milk and play with.  I can't wait.  Her name is Peaches.  I'll post pictures when I have some. 

     The weather has been great after that major rain we had on the tail of the last hurricane.  My garden is just about done with only some pumpkins and watermelons still there.  The pool is being closed down for the year and things are beginning to look like fall.  I can smell it in the air.  Speaking of air, when I go into my basement where I have buckets of apples stored, I can smell them and it reminds me of my grandparents house.  They had an apple orchard and their house always smelled like apples, especially in the fall and winter.  I miss them.

Ok, I"ve managed to get out my books and put together my binder for our lessons.  I am going to sit down today and tomorrow to plan out the next couple of weeks.  I'm looking forward to getting back on track.

Tomorrow I will give each boy his SWR spelling test to see where to start in the program and then prepare for this.  This program is a challenge to me but I see the results with it.  It requires quite a bit of planning and preparation for the lessons.  My goal this year is to be better prepared and to stay on track each week.  Weaver will begin with Volume 2, chapter 9.  Looks like we'll be learning about mountains and what they entail and contain, the different forms and of course that God created them.  Also we'll be looking at precious gems, which come from the mountains.  I haven't looked closely at the Bible lessons but I think we are at Mt. Sinai (sp?) with Moses going to get the commandments.  We'll also be looking at weather.

This year I'm incorporating two new items.  One, is computer science, Pure and Simple I think it's called.  Forgive me if I'm incorrect.  I'm also starting up a writing program with Aaron called WriteShop.  So I'm adding two new things and trying to get back into our swing.  Monday is the day!

The one thing I'm disappointed in is the lack of homeschool support groups here.  I think there's one available, but I have no idea how to find more information.  I'm hoping ICHE will give me more of a clue.  What I really want is gym time somewhere.  Several churches have gyms so I'm thinking it may be me who starts something like this.  I'm not crazy about that Idea but I don't know what else to do.  The amazing thing is that there are so many homeschoolers in this surrounding area.  There's got to be some groups or gatherings for them.  I'll need some prayer in this area.

On another note, we've been getting rain and I kinda love being stuck inside getting things done.  I shouldn't wish my summer away since I know we'll be stuck inside a lot for the winter months.  But I've gotten more food items put away and dehydrated.  My house got cleaned.  And most important, I've been getting ready to start our normal lessons next week.  I'm not the sort who gets all excited about planning and making huge lists and whatnot.  We are definately relaxed homeschoolers and I've been so impressed with the knowledge these guys have obtained since we have moved.  Ben is asking questions left and right about everything.  Aaron doesn't do this but I know he is packing the information away inside.  They are very responsible about the animals and their care.  We've had a huge collection of insects to learn and observe here.  Birds to identify. And just the plain normal cycle of life.  This summer they have been inundated with science! Also home economics and yard care and gardening.   Animal care and husbandry.  Even the reproduction of animals to even know what AI is!   The Lord has truly opened our doors here to a vast way of learning. 

Ok, I'm still here, just been canning, dehydrating and freezing like crazy.  My DH says I'm going to snap like a green bean if I keep up this pace.  What he doesn't understand is that I love doing this.  It's fun to me to see all my hard work lined up on the shelves and my freezer full.  The Lord has blessed us with quite a bounty when I thought we wouldn't have much due to the garden being in so late.  So... I can, freeze and dehydrate.  Praise God.

I did get out my books and such to plan for our lessons.  Yep, got them out all right.  Ok, next topic.

The goat baby aka Pepper is so cute.  It's going to be hard to sell him when the time comes.  I've decided we need goat babies around all the time.  I love them.  Our calf will be coming home in another month.  We can't wait!  We've been looking at milking machines for both goat and cows.  I think we'll probably milk by hand at first then switch to the machine.  I guess it depends on how hard it is and how much hassle either one can be.  Seems to me that hand miliking would be easier than dealing with machinery.  But the word has it that the machine would keep the milk cleaner.  I guess we'll figure it out when we get to that.

I get back to this blog more faithfully as the season winds down.  Keep checking back!  God Bless

We have a brand new bouncing baby boy!

The Lord is amazing to us.  We were coming back from lunch and church and we here this horrible bawling from the goat back by the barn.  We went a running to find her in labor.  10 minutes later we have a baby boy named Pepper.  God's timing is perfect.  We got to see the birth of our first animal on our new farm.  Mom and baby are doing well.  I'd give weight and such, but I dont' know these things! Ha!

Isn't she cute?  What shall it be?  Peaches or Blossom?  She's only 7 weeks old right now and not weaned yet.  She won't be coming to our farm until October.  We love her already.

Sunsets are amazing around here, the colors of this sunset are very true this particular evening.  There is a storm riding along the southern edge of this one making these colors I think. But truly, they are amazing here, plus being in a corn field, you can see for  miles in every direction.  Storm watching is fun too.

Sunrises can be great, too

The other day the boys and I saw an ugly creature.  Can God's creatures be ugly?  this one was!  It was a bee on steroids.  It was huge!  The insect was attacking a cicada and stinging it over and over.  It was horrifying but intriguing to watch all the same.  It seemed like it saw us looking at it from the back window of our truck when it lifted up its tail end and squirted at us!  It continued to sting the cicada, picked it up and flew off with it!  Uggghhh it was awful!  I wish I had my camera to take pictures of it, but we were leaving to go somewhere.

Speaking of creatures, I found two red hornworms.  Does anyone know what these are?  I can't seem to find any information about them.  They look just like a tomato worm only a beautiful red and they like the grape leaves (of course).  Any help on this one would be great.  I've had a bit of picking to do with regards to the tomato worms.  The chickens love them!

Our summer lessons are moving along nicely.  Yesterday, instead of doing lessons, we went to an early American museum for central Illinois.  It was very nicely done and the boys enjoyed it.  Out behind the building there was a childeren's garden that was fun to walk through.  Many types of heirloom varieties in the vegetables.  They also had a one room school museum to go into fully equiped.  I liked explaining what the switch was for and made a suggestion about incorporating it into our school.  It didn't go over very well    They did learn new things which was my goal anyway.  Over lunch I found out what three things each boy had learned that was new.  It was nice to hear them talk about the items and we had a great conversation.  This to me is learning at its best.

My garden is going crazy!  I've run out of things to do with cucumbers.  Any suggetions besides pickles since I think I've made every variety there is.  I'm manging to keep up with the zucchini and beans.  The squash will be plentiful, now I just need to figure out when to pick it.  My sweet corn looks great but the bugs think it looks great too.  Don't know if I will get anything from these stalks.  Pumpkins are forming and I found a small watermelon.  For this garden going in a month late, things sure are looking good.

Tomorrow we go to another church although we've been to this one before.  I'm looking forward to finding a place to be.  It's hard not having a church home.    Pray for us to have discernment for finding a place to go and call home.

Yes, the goat is due with a kid.  Not sure when though and we are excited about it.  Our chickens are growing and look like miniature little versions of what they will be.  One night Ben forgot to count his chickens before putting them to bed and in the morning he found one outside.  He was so mortified about it. So now he remembers to count his chickens!  We have also acquired two kittens a couple of weeks ago and they are cute.

Today we had a great connection for us regarding a Jersey calf or even a cow.  Who knows what the Lord will provide.  At this same place I was able to get my raw milk and honey.  I was so excited and happy to at last have my raw milk.  Now I can make my yogurt and actually eat the ice cream I make.  I'm also going to try making some soft cheeses.  This was indeed, a good day.

Our lessons have been going along ok.  I was wanting to accomplish more days a week but oh well.  They are doing so well with what we are doing plus all the new things we are learning every day on this farm.  God has indeed blessed us and put us right where we need to be.   We are still looking for a church home and I know we'll find one eventually.  We had a pastor and his wife over from one church we are interested in.  We'll continue our search and interview as we go.

My garden is doing great and starting to produce.  I've been picking zucchini (surprised?), two kinds of cucumbers and a random tomato.  I've also had some lettuce and spinach.  The spinach has bolted already so I'll try for a fall crop.  We decided in this family that we love rhubarb.  We've never had it before and this house came with quite a stand of it.  So I picked some and canned a sauce and made a cobbler from one of the jars. Boy was it yummy.  I'm planning on canning more of that!  I've also been playing with my dehydrator that I purchased.  I've been using it for zucchini, rhubarb and apples.  Tomorrow I will do more applese from our scrappy apple tree.  They aren;'t pretty to just eat but are great underneath the skins.  I have quite alist of foods I want to can this year so I'm just getting warmed up.  We went blueberry picking at a U-pick place and I think we will be going to a pick it yourself sweet corn for freezing.  I love this country living.

I really have no news regarding homeschooling yet.  Maybe when we start up in the fall I can get back on track, probably after canning is over with.  I have a feeling we will be busy over the next couple of months!

We acquired a goat on Friday and she is a cutie.  She is very shy right now and I hope she comes around to us.  We saved her life actually, she was going to be someone's dinner.   Now Aaron has his animal to take care of.  We are still looking for a Jersey calf to raise up.

Below are a few pictures of what God has blessed us with:

Ben and one of his Jersey Giant chicks

Our new goat with no name - I like Daisy

Jersey Giant chick

Our new farmhouse!

My 2400 sq Ft veggie garden.  It really looks better than this, it didn't photograph well

One of our barns.  This is the original one made of wood.

We are loving it here and getting use to a schedule.  It is difficult to choose a new church, but we are taking our time in finding a new church home.  Even though we are in a pretty remote area, we are blessed with many options. I was hoping to find a church that has AWANA for older children, but that doesn't seem to be the case around here.  I probably will have to drop that idea and the boys are disappointed in that part, although they said it would be okay if our new church doesn't offer it.  Maybe this is what the Lord may want us to do?  Start a Trek AWANA?  I guess we'll see!

I decided that since we moved to a farm in Illinois instead of moving to Tennessee, I better replace my template with something more appropriate.  This reminds me of our red barn we have and although we have an old tractor, ours is orange and NOT American made.  Hey, it does the trick.  This is more of what it look like around here.  We have a John Deere tractor dealer down the road from us, so we get to look at all the cool machinery.

Our pool is finally up and running.  Today it's pretty clear even after my big mistake yesterday.  This job is for me and the boys to take care of, but the machinery is to be mine and since I don't know much about them, I'm learning very quickly what NOT to do .  Yesterday I decided to clean out the skimmer basket due to there being lots of bugs and such in there.  Not a problem, so I accomplished that.  Then there's this basket in the pump area also full of beetles so I thought I would just unplug the pump and unscrew the cap and empty the filter.  Well to my surprise mega water came out at me !  I was able to get the cap back on thankfully (the beetles were flushed out by now as you can imagine) and replug in the filter.  Just as I did that, my older son said "OOhhhhh that's gross!!!"  so I ask what and he says "Mom!  LOok what's going into the pool!!!!!  Well it was all the nastly water from the filter and it was backwashing into the pool !!!!!  Oh Brother!!!   I've read the instructions on this equipment, albeit very limited and it doesn't say anything about this happening or what I did wrong.  Well my hubby came home and said to check for valves on both ends of the pool lines to shut off the water coming out of the pool (which we don't have) and the valve for the water going back into (I think this is on the filter)  That would at least stop the outpouring of water.  It doesnt' explain the nasty water that ended up back in the pool.  At least this morning it looks much better again.  Probably will swim in it tomorrow.  I think this was an America's Funniest Home Video moment! 

We are managing 2 days a week for lessons.  My hubby has been taking alot of Fridays off and that messes up our days.  Oh well.  I love our new piano teacher.  She seems to be able to connect with the boys really well.  Yesterday she taught them how to make oragami birds! (after lessons of course)  I also love the fact she comes to our house.  Really love that.  I've been loving this pace for us and I hope we can get into a better groove in the fall.  When I think of all the things I want to do, I have to remember what it is that God wants us to do.  He has such a way of changing plans.  

We are learning so much every day about our surroundings and things that I don't necessarily want a lesson in (the pool) but they are lessons none the less.  Aaron is learning about the different plants Japanese beetles like/love (he gets one cent for every beetle caught), where the praying mantises are, how to best climb every trees we have, managing money, and learning to use small tools to build things out in the barn, how to care for the cattle and hopefully soon he will have a goat to mind.  Ben is learning all about chickens, how to look up info on the computer about them and take care of them, building things in the barn with Aaron (he bought himself a hammer yesterday) he's loves medieval things (hence the building of weapons ei swords, shields, daggars out of wood in the barn) and both of them are learning alot about responsibility.  We have a lot to take care of now and we all need to really pitch in.

Tomrrow the hubby is taking the day off and we are going to our local fair.  People around are upset because I guess this year there are no rides.  I don't know why they don't have them but I don't mind and the kids haven't said anything.  I believe it should be this way since it is a true country fair.  We are looking forward to going regardless.  Who knows what we'll drag home!

I love this farm life!! God has so blessed us.

Well we've been on the new homestead for three and a half weeks now and we are lovin it!  There's lots to do for work and the boys are usually very busy with some chore or another.  I've been busy cleaning out gardens (slow process, they are very bad), planted a new veggie garden of 2400 sq ft! Yikes! and just putting the house together.  In a few weeks the kitchen will be torn apart for a remodel job.  Lots going on all the time and never a dull moment.

I've decided to put Weaver on hold until fall maybe.  I gave the boys a month off for the move and now I just have them doing math, devotions, and a simple geography workbook I found at Sam's and piano 3 days a week to keep their minds engaged.  I am looking forward to getting on some schedule and we are getting there slowly. I'm not even sure about fall since I got my garden in so late, I figure I'll be behind schedule for canning and such.  Have to play it by ear.  I did manage to find all my homeschool books and have found a good spot for them, at least for now.  Boy was everyone complaining about having to move all my books!!!

We got our baby chicks last Friday and are they cute!  We are now hoping to find a bottle calf Jersey milking cow, too and maybe a goat.  In the spring we will be getting a couple of piglets and some cattle for the freezer.

Gee, all this talk of the farm.  Maybe I should be on the homesteading blog site instead?  Naw.  This is learning at its best as far as I'm concerned.  It's good to get our noses out of the books and learn what is real.

God has so blessed us for this move.  It was difficult and a bit messy but we made it and we are having a ball.  I will have pictures soon. 

Today Aaron found baby praying mantises.  We have a lot of them to find, too.  The egg sacs are all over the place.  Very cool.  God's creation is all around us and it's fun to explore and learn about it.

We are nine days away from finally moving to the farm. It is not the farm below, but it is just as wonderful.  We are all excited and eager to get going.  Our packing is going well and the house is half empty.

God is so good and His timing is perfect.  It was hair raising at times, I'm not going to lie, but I tried to keep my faith that the Lord would carry us through and give us great things.  It was definately a test of waiting on the Lord. Whew! 

We started our break for about a month so I can focus on finishing packing and such and then of course the move and getting use to our new surroundings.  I figure after about a month, we'll find some little things to keep us engaged, math, science projects, just something to keep us fresh.

I'll be out of service for  awhile so I hope to have some pictures when I get back,

God Bless

Greetings!

It's been awhile and for good reason.  We've been trying to get moved and it is not going very well.  Our house has sold twice since I last wrote and we are suppose to close May 29th.  Now the pretty little farm below has been nothing but a bummer since the beginning.  So we don't know if we will end up there or not.  We also have started looking elsewhere and found another wonderful place in a different area.  I'd say we are running out of time here, but the Lord knows when the time will be.  I have complete faith that God will take care of us and plant us well.

In the middle of all this, I've continued to do lessons most days.  We are now in Vol 2 Chapter 8 with the focus on God's protection.  I ended up redoing the schedule for this one.  It just didn't initially flow for me.  So instead God decided we should break out each body system we are suppose to learn about and do a lapbook.  These have been fun.  I have to applaude being able to purchase lapbooks from either Currclick.com or Knowledgebox.com.  You can purchase ebooks for lapbooks, print them off on neat paper, and cut them out.  You still fill them in yourself and do the research but everything is right there for you.  Some ladies are awesome at lapbooks and spending the time coming up with ideas, well I'm just not good at that and I thank the Lord for these companies I can get materials from.  It's nice to break up things once in a while.

We finished our heart lapbooks and are continuing to gather our little books for the entire human body.  This one won't be finished for a while until we hit all the diffferent body systems.  We are adding to it with the entire cardiovascular system and the nervous system plus the brain.  I remember something in having to do with the eyes also.  I smell an eye dissection coming up!  Below are the pictures of the lapbooks.  I will add the heart my one son decided to make out of clay another day.  He's not finished yet painting it.

There is another page but this will not let me upload it.  Says I dont' have enough space whatever that means.  Maybe I need to clean out my picture folder.

Today we went to a park with a lake and did our lessons outside today.  It was a beautiful day early on.  Then the guys spent about an hour poking around to see what they could find in the water.  I wish I had more thought when I started to pack and not have put all my field guides away.  I did that since I thought we were ending up in a certain place.  Now I'm regretting that.  Oh well. 

Over the next two weeks we will continue to work on this chapter.  Next week will be the nervous system and the brain.  For our final week well will be doing the weaponry (catapults and such)  Sounds like fun.  This will put us a week and a half away from moving and I can concentrate on that then.

Please pray for us and that we continue to have faith in God's timing for everything.  We believe we are in God's will, but struggling with the timing.