10 Years of Homeschooling

Ten years of homeschooling down, ten to go, all involving teaching High School! I’ve been wanting to write this post since we finished our 10th year in June, but at least I am getting in 2010. When we first started in Sept. 2000, I had one student and a few littles. Two years later, my second student joined us. I’ve been teaching all 5 for 3 years. I have just 3 more years teaching all 5 of my kids. My oldest, who turns 16 in a few days, will graduate in 2013. In that year, I will have 3 in high school! One by one, they will finish our homeschool and at some point in their lives, move out on their own. We will almost have 5 teenagers at once, but our oldest will turn 20 just 11 days before our youngest turns 13. That will be in four years, and boy that isn’t very long. The time is flying by. May I take full advantage of every minute I have them with me in our home. I better go spend this New Year’s Eve with them now.
Here is our oldest in her Kindergarten year, 2000:

Good Bye Math Manipulatives

I sold our Saxon Math Manipulatives today. It was a difficult parting. A few weeks ago, the kids took a lot of the items back out of the box to keep. So many fun memories! My oldest daughter took out the Teddy Bear Counters and Pattern Blocks. What fun the two of us had in Kindergarten counting with those little Teddy Bears! My youngest took out the clocks. They wanted to keep the geo boards. But this week, I decided to go ahead and sell everything. Except the Teddy Bears. So I substituted them with Butterfly Lifecycle Counters. And gathered everything else. I am amazed that after 10 years, I still had all 100 linking cubes and all 100 counting squares! All the dominoes were there except the double nine!!! Where is it???? So they found a good home with four young children today. To a local mom who has been looking for them, hoping for a good deal. I was able to bless someone else, and make a little money, too. Good bye linking cubes and pattern blocks. Good bye little teaching clocks and hundred number board. We had good times and hard times. I’ll never forget how you helped my children learn.

Fall is Here!

I love the fall weather! I actually love spring more, but it is too close to the hot summer weather. In the fall, it is far, far away! Except for this week. It will get hot again. Then cold. There goes our fall. But we did have a few days of 70s weather. I took the kids on a surprise field trip last week, to the Pumpkin Patch. It had an awesome corn maze that the kids loved. Then we bought a bunch of pumpkins. Here are some pics:



Halloween: A Bum, Darth Vadar, A Dalmation, A Medieval Farmhand, A Raven:

Happy ReBirth to Me!

Thirty years ago (yesterday) my life changed forever! On October 9, 1980, I became a follower of Jesus Christ! What a wonderful 30 years it has been! Of course, there have been ups and downs. Most of the downs were my own fault. God is always faithful. I love Him so much. The words to this hymn have been going through my mind the last couple of days:

What can wash away my sin?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus;
What can make me whole again?
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

Oh! precious is the flow
That makes me white as snow;
No other fount I know,
Nothing but the blood of Jesus.

There are more verses, but that is all I know. Here is picture of me at a Christian Retreat when I was one year old

Summer

Summers are very hot in my town. I grew up here and I don’t remember the heat ever keeping me indoors! We played outside all summer, in the hose, at the neighborhood pool, walking to the store for a Slurpee, riding bikes. I loved summers! But now, after living away from here for so long, in quite mild weather, it is harder to take. Even my kids can’t take being outside very long unless they are in water. I dread every summer now, and that isn’t very fun. So I thought I’d list the good things I do like about summer so I can enjoy it more.

Break from school
Watermelon
Apricots
Peaches
Corn on the cob
Camping
Going to the beach
Easy summer dinners
Wearing skirts
Swimming
Garden fresh tomatoes
Sleeping in
Vacation, this year, Oregon.
Yosemite (every other year)
4th of July
My air conditioned house!