I am returning to teach. 

My husband is a public school teacher's aid.  He e-mails  from school sometimes to see that everyone is doing okay.

The other day he wrote to see how we were doing, and I gave him the upshot of our day.  Realizing I am "returning to Teach".  My twin girls have started kindergarten over the summer and ask for school quite often.  So, during this past week has been a bit of a planning period for us.  We are continuing in Konos this year with our cousins.  I pray all goes well.

I hope you can forgive me for not posting pictures still.  I am still having a hard time remembering how to do it.  I am usually alone at the computer and really need assistance.  I am a visual/kinesthetic learner.  And one day I will really get it!  I think I need to practice on it.

Have a blessed day.

Well, Summer seems over.  With all the heat and humidity and sweat that goes with it is still here. 

We have been very busy.  We had a youth missions camp that is free every year to the kids that come.  We do all the same things that missionfuge does for $250.00 a kid, we do it for free.  Well, for the children it is free.  They are sponsered by their churches.  About 5 or 6 churches are involved and the entire camp costs about $200.00 per church.  About 20 or more kids come from each church with about 5 or 6 chaperones.  That is a real blessing for all involved.  We praise God above for blessing our camp this year.

We are praying about making an offer on a house for sale near our mission church.  We hope to be moving soon.  We are trying to sale our current place.  So, if you are reading this blog please pray for us.  My husband goes back to work August 11th.  And we start back to school the first week in September.  We are very excited to be doing Konos with our cousins this year.  Hopefully it will be a great time with one another.  Praise God Praise Jesus Praise the Holy Spirit

May you be richly blessed in all you do.  Think on what soever things are lovely, what soever things are true, what soever things are of a good report.  Don't listen to false statements that enter your brain that do not edify.  Listen and read what the Lord has for you in His Holy Word.

It has been a while since my last post.  But that is okay.  I just returned from speaking at a small ladies conference.  God is so good to give us His Word to know how we ought to live Unto Him!  When we live for Him and ask Him to lead us it is in the Bible.  How we like to complicate things by adding our own renditions on the words.  Kind of like when we exaggerate a story.  God presented us with such a rich simple heritage!  Read it!  It is food for the soul.  We want fat souls for the Lord!  Stop starving yourselves, if you are.  I don't believe there is a such thing as spiritual gluttony.  Do you? 

We homeschool our children.  And God is homeschooling us.  What is the next assignment?  Ask Him.  I know I am.  And I am reading His Words to know Him and what I am to do next.  Titus 2:3-5 is a wonderful start.  Blessings to you all.

Good day everyone!  In the "back to basics" of things...

I have been reading others blogs.  I feel for all the hurts and trials that they all are facing and have faced.  So many feel alone, even when they blog to all of us.  I want to write every one of them and encourage them in the Lord!

Homeschooling is not done in vain!  It is not all done for nothing!  Do not listen to the world!  Do not listen to the flesh!  Do not listen to family who are unbelievers!  Do not listen to satan!

Please know that you have a high calling!  Titus 2 is our text for us to study and if we are older, teach the young ladies.  Ephesians 5 is a good start.  2 Timothy 2:15 & 16a "Do your best to present yourself to God as one approved,  worker who has no need to be ashamed,"  Do everything you can "As unto the Lord". 

Our home is our mission field!  We are very much like missionaries to our children.  Do not forsake this high calling!  You can do it!  If you have no one who understands your frustrations...tell Jesus.  He has gone through far more than we could comprehend.  Start with the basics.  The Bible!  All seems to fall into place from there!  God Bless you all!

Well, I am happy to be back in a well feeling state of mind.  I have been visiting different blogs around and am finding all these "m" words on Mondays.  I think it is sweet!  We were all ill for about 2 1/2 weeks.  Now we are on the upswing.  Time to get back in gear! 

Menu Mondays:  A day when you plan your menu for the week and grocery list according to the menu. 

I do this on Thursdays.  It is very hard to start the week on Thursdays.  But it does help with the grocery shopping.

Monday Meanderings:  I meander every time I speak.  Those rabbit trails can get me off focus.  But I just can't stop meandering!

Monday musings:  I wonder, I wander.  Lord, help me not to wander. 

Anyway, I don't know why I wanted to write all of that!?  But I do find all those sayings very cute.  Creativity in blogland. 

By the by, I have found the fabric for the Charlotte Mason dress costume.  It was hiding in my hope chest!  So, maybe after the girl's birthday at the end of the month I will be able to sew it.

Thursdays are my menu planning, grocery trip planning, baking and sewing day.  This past Thursday I was able to sew a "Felicity" dress for my oldest daughter.  She wears it almost everyday!

This past Friday was my oldest son's 12th birthday!  My how my first born has grown.  Such a young man!  And always available to help me.  If I actually say "Help"  he will say:  "Hi my name is Help, did you call for help?"  He wanted for the whole family, all 8 of us, to go out to Pizza Hut and to see the new movie Horton Hears a Who.  Someone in our church gave us two gift cards for the movies.  So it was a real treat to go!  We do not go to the movies very often.  Usually, just Christmas Eve day.  And only if the movie meets my husbands approval.  It was great fun!  The Lord really blessed us with these beautiful children and we feel very happy to be the ones to care for them!

Next Friday is our twin girl's 5th birthday.  I am planning a Peter Rabbit and friends punch party.  There will be punch.  Not punching one another.  My girls love the Beatrix Potter books.  And we just watched the movie of her life.  Renee Zelweger is the actress who plays her.  Wonderful movie!  I totally recommend this movie! two thumbs up!

We received a true blessing last night at church.  On Saturday I was able to go consignment shopping for dresses for the girls and I for Resurrection Sunday.  I want my little girls to have dresses that fit and do not look like wedding gowns!  And, you know what?  There aren't any.  We visited 6 different places.  there weren't any in their sizes!  So, I told my Lord, I will have to trust you more about this.  You see, (readers)  We haven't had to buy clothes for our 6 children in 5 years!!  The Lord blesses us through others giving.  Now, we are down to 3 christmas dresses and 1 jean dress for the twin girls.  I really want them to wear more dresses.  And yes, I know sewing is an option.  But back to the blessing.  A lady in our church, asked if we had "easter" dresses.  I said not yet, but I am hoping to visit some more shops this week in another town.  Later on in the day just before evening service, she pulled up and asked me to come to her car.  And out she pulls two sets of dresses and two sets of shorts outfits and a dress for my oldest daughter to boot!  My twin daughters were thrilled!  "thankyou Ms. Dee Dee"  they said.  They are so excited!  One set is pink and that will be perfect for next Sunday.  And the other set of dresses are green and white.  Perfect for their birthday party next Friday!  God is so good!!!!  Thank you Heavenly Father for taking care of us!  I will write more soon!  Maybe I will have pictures soon! 

I have been tagged.  I have never encountered this before.  I do not know how to link to anyone.  I am going to play because I love my sister.  I feel bad because I still do not know how to cut and paste and all that jazzy stuff everyone else knows.  So, here goes.

I have opened the book; A Charlotte Mason Companion by Karen Andreola, to page 123.

I have found sentence five and I will write the next three sentences.

"Whatever a child or grown-up person can tell, that we may be sure he knows, and what he cannot tell, he does not know.

Let us give our children a variety books to narrate. 

 Some books I have actually had to put aside as they did not foster any narration."

I think I may have found a typo in sentence 2 out of her book.  I believe it should have the word "of" between "variety" and "books".

Anyway, I think it was fun to play and I don't know how to tag Ruth.  I wish I had more blog friends.  I am not complaining.  I am just not computer literate enough for much.  Which may be a good thing. 

I still have not found the time to make the Charlotte costume.  But I still intend to try.  I did experiment with her hairstyle.  It looked right on.  But my hair color is nutbrown.  Not dark enough.  My children will not mind.  I hope my krinlin slip still fits.  Did I spell that right.  I wonder if it is in the dictionary?  Hmmmm.

Well, I am off for now.

Well, I thought how fitting it would be to share with you how a very funny idea came to me at the beginning of our school year.  I have not thought to write about it until today.

     My children and I had recently watched a movie called National Treasure with Nick Cage in it.  Anyway, several days or weeks had gone by and we were attempting to do the Simply Grammar, Charlotte Masons lessons, when I realized my children were not as excited about it as I was.  So, I stared at the book looking for something to grasp their imagination, when it hit me...Mason....Charlotte.  "The Secret Lies With Charlotte".  (all of you who have seen the movie will get it.)  The  Children howled with laughter.  I was so pleased.

     Now it is present day and I was faced with the same difficulty once more.  The lessons are so much easier to understand when I speak with an English accent.  And the children are having so much fun with it.

     The next phase is to sew an outfit from her time and wear it for that class twice a week.  Hereby I have the title "Grammar with Charlotte". I will keep you all up to date on the goings and comings of these lessons.  Praise the Lord for imagination!  Usually I am a little depressed at having very creative mind and nowhere to spend it nor the money to entertain it.  But God knows what is best for me and my life as a mom.  Amen.

Tomorrow we start back to schooling.  Tomorrow we begin schooling all six children.  My twin girls will be doing pre-school Lord willing.  Our Christmas vacation was very good.  Our Lord blessed us with so much to be thankful for!  The themed gifts for  the boys and girls went pretty well.  There is always someone who gives an extra gift or two that does not really go in the theme of things but it works out.  Every one loved what they were given.  Now today is to put the rooms back in order.  We have had such a good time visiting friends and relatives.  And now to get our house back together will be great! 

I think we will be doing the Konos unit study of Trust.  My friend really wants me to do that study with her.  So, here it goes.  The boys I'm sure are going to love it.  Boats and airplanes!  I do believe it takes a lot of trust to get into either one of those contraptions.

I guess for our little girls I will have to look at some innovative ways to teach a "sweet" story or two about boats and airplanes bring our loved ones home to our family.  Hmmmm.  Sounds like a good oppurtunity to share about true love.  Or maybe I will let them make boat cookies!  I want our oldest girl who is 10 to read Beautiful Girlhood with me this year.  She seems to have so many questions about love and life and death.  I remember thinking about those things but I don't think I ever talked with my mother about them.  I guess I already knew in my heart that she did not have the right answer.  I was not a teenager.  I was probably eight years old. 

My oldest boy is going to be reading Young Man, Be Strong by David G. Burkholder.  My husband read it last year to see if it was something that would benefit our boys.  He kept saying things like:  "Why didn't anyone tell me this when I was a boy?"  "I wish I could have read this as a boy."  So, I put the book in front of our oldest boy and said..."Please read this soon!" 

I will keep a post on our progress in these two areas.  I pray all of ya'll had a wonderful, grace filled holiday!

The "Holidays" are here!  Where's my tree?  Hmmm.  Where's the decorations?  Hmmm.  Well, I guess I'm running a tad bit late on all these things.  We did start our unit study on Christmas this Past Wednesday.  Sweden is what we are looking at.  Konos book 2.  Love/Generosity unit.  Well, I am sad to say I just don't have any spunk to do it.  The children don't seem to care either.  Wierd!  I had every intention of starting this off with such Joy and excitement!  Instead I fizzled.  We are so tired!   Okay enough crying about all that.  I need to get started on my original plan of a Christ centered unit study.  Yes, that is what we are going to do!  We might even start the Jesse tree flapbook! 

What I really want to do is get back to the Lord Jesus.  I want to enjoy Him and bring that very Joy to my children.  When Christ saved me I was joyful but also sober minded.  It is amazing to me how Christ came of a virgin, grew up, had a ministry for 3 years and knew he was going to die and set his face as a flint and died so that we could be saved!  This brings a whole new meaning to the Nativity for me and my family.  We are the barn, our hearts are the manger.  I know that may sound a bit strange to some, and yet it just makes sense to my simple brain.  If I had a better vacabulary maybe I would use a different word picture.  But as it stands now this works for me!

We found something on the web called googleearth.  This is so neat!  My husband put it on the computer.  We think it is a great tool for geography lessons.  So, we plan on using that alot!  As for our unit study, I am going to be praying that myself and my children aren't going to be sidetracked by all the little stories from around the world, but that Christ in our Home is a focused reality.  He deserves all glory and honor.  That position is not to be shared.  Nor, is it to be taken lightly. 

I wanted to encourage everyone that I can today to love one another as often as you can.  Tell your fellow christians in the church you attend that you love them and are thankful for them.  If you are not thankful for them, ask God to give you a thankful attitude toward them.  I am doing that now.  God erased my first post this evening, and I erased the second.  Because when in life we serve the Lord Jesus, persecution happens.  And it happens usually at church by the very people that should act like the christians they claim to be.  But God's Word says:  "Forbearing one another, and forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even as Christ forgave you, so also do ye."Colossians 3:12  The whole 3rd chapter of Colossians is great!  Praying for all persecuted christians and asking for prayer as well.  Be blessed everyone!

So, I have been thinking about Christmas...And I have come up with some ideas...Out with the old in with the new...we  have never done santa so I don't have to oust him, but I do want to get rid of old ways of fretting over who's house we are going to be at for the holidays and what am I going to wear!  We usually take the whole month of December off from schooling, but hopefully not this year!   We have a large family and a little budget, but we are blessed to know the living God!  And that is all that really matters!

First of all, I want to do a unit study on the symbols of Christmas keeping them Christ centered.  After all what is Christmas without Christ?  Any how, I also am working on a Jesse tree lapbbok with the children and the unit study will also become a lapbook.  These will become decorations for our home and we will add to them each year, Lord willing.

Secondly, I have been thinking on gifts.  Well, The girl's room was first to do the out with the old.  And it went great!  My husband and I believe that if we receive gifts or buy them for our children they should promote learning and also be toys to train for their future.  We do not go out and spend thousands not even hundreds of dollars on gifts for them.  We haven't needed to.  The Lord has provide for the past four years through other close friends in our church.  So, we pick themes for the rooms.  Currently our three girls share a room and our three boys share a room.  The girl's theme this year is "Homemaking".  We hope to have a kitchenette for the girls.  This promotes Titus 2.  They watch me day in and day out love my husband, love my children, I seek to be discreet, chaste, homemakers, good, obedient to my own husband, that the word of God be not blasphemed.(Titus 2:4&5 NKJV)  Their room consists of 3 dollhouses some small stuffed kittys, 1 basket of books, a little table and chairs, and their bunk bed. 

The boys room is a "camp" theme this year.  We hope to get a moon for the ceiling that does the phases of the moon.  We also found a small tent that can be used when they go hiking with their daddy.  We also found some books with critters that we recently studied in our Frontiersman, Tracking/trapping, predator and prey unit study.  One of the twin boys has been talking about wanting a lincoln log set.  So, maybe we will be able to get that as well.  Right now their room consists of a bunk bed, a small table, a desk, and a few dinosaurs.  They cleaned their room yesterday! 

As for the rest of Christmas I would really like the children to learn some more hymns about our Lord Jesus, and possibly make a nativity out of clay.  But the nativity is still up in the air.  Clay and children sounds awfully messy!