http://tripletsrajoy.blogspot.com/

SO....Where have I been?  Good question.

I've been debating whether to keep this blog or not.  I have had several technical difficulties with it.

I originally wanted to have 2 blogs.  One for family stuff and one to track and record all the homeschooling stuff we do.  However, my kids really don't start homeschooling 'for real' until this fall.  So it really leaves me with not much to say on this blog.

So here is the deal... I'm going to abandon this blog at least for now and only post on my family blog.  http://tripletsrajoy.blogspot.com/ .  IF...I find when I really start homeschooling that I need another blog to record things I will come back here.

So now this is what you need to do:  1. Update your friends list and add me to your list.  2. Do you use Google Reader...Add me.

My family blog is usually updated with pictures and funny stories.

So if you haven't caught the address yet...here it is one more time.

http://tripletsrajoy.blogspot.com/  I'm only a click away.

Thanks to all my readers!  Chelle

Well I really enjoyed this time of being a secret sister and having one.  It was a lot of fun.

I also need to thank my Secret Sister for the box I received today.  She sent my kids a Curious George pen each, truffles (which melted but will be fine once they congeal again), and the cutest bunny magnetic paper tablet.  Thank you so much!  You really have been great!

I hope we do this again.  It was great.

Today is a VERY special day!

Happy 13th Anniversary to me!

I'm very blessed to have a wonderful husband!

Well here is a doozie of a question.  I don't want this to cause fights or anything (not that that many people read this blog anyway).  But I would like to know your thoughts on this subject.  Don't worry I have NO intentions of getting one!!!

Divorce.

I believe that when someone gets a divorce that if they ask God for forgiveness then the slate is wiped clean including if they have been remarried.  And therefore, they should still try to live righteously and "start anew".

My MIL believes that when someone gets a divorce , then gets remarried then they committ adultry and continue to live in adultry.  She believes that they can ask God to forgive them, but if they remain married then they are still remaining in sin.

I have searched the Bible (last night) and I really can't find anything that supports either case.  I have found that (even though it's a hard concept for me to swallow) that indeed at least one act of adultry is committed.

Matthew 5:31-32 "It has been said, 'Anyone who divorces his wife must give her a certificate of divorce.'  But I tell you that anyone who divorces his wife, except for marital unfaithfulness, causes her to become an adulteress, and anyone who marries the divorced woman commits adultery.

That's really hard for me to understand.

But this is the situation:

#1 We both can agree that God does not like divorce, and that it was intended to be a sacred bond.

#2 We both can agree that adultery in committed.

#3  Where we difer is when someone remarrys are they continueing to live in sin or not?

I found something fascinating on the internet that doesn't prove what God thinks, but it is something to think about:

" Although the act of consummating a 2nd marriage generally involves adultery, remarriage itself is not an adulterous state.   If it were considered to be adultrous in the Hebrew Scriptures, then the couple would be executed by stoning.  Yet the Hebrew Scriptures indicate that couples were free to divorce and remarry."

I would really like your thoughts on this and pass this on to anyone else who might have an opinion.  I'm searching and I just want to understand.  Thanks!  Chelle

I am sick to my stomach!  I missed the enrollment period to get into the co-op that I want to get into.  It is a slim possibility that they will extend the interview process over until Monday.  Of course we were planning to leave on vacation on Friday for a week.  This is so important to me that I am willing to delay when we leave, however it will make it extremely difficult on us since we need to be there on Tuesday.

Oh please pray for us with this situation.  I am so nervous!

Chelle

I have been extremely busy!  I have hardly been on the computer at all. 

I've been working on my TN shoebox swap.  It was due on Friday, but with me having the flu the first week and two consignment sales the next 2 weeks, I am running late.  I'm pretty excited about it.  One good thing is that we live in the capitol.  So we were able to go visit several of the sites and take pictures.  We learned a lot and I have a ton of things to put in this box.  I want to make a nice scrapbook- but time is of the essense, so we will see.

We also have to get ready for vacation next week.

So just so you know me being off the computer at the present moment is a good thing.  It means I am getting stuff done.  That is not always the case but this time it is good.

Those of you praying for me...THANK YOU!  I've been doing very well this week getting things accomplished.  I even cleaned and organized the whole downstairs.  That has been a challange, because the kids stuff is usually EVERYWHERE!  Now if I can make sure they don't dump buckets we will be in good shape.  We will be starting some kind of allowance system this week or next to try to keep order and teach responsibility.

I am SO proud of Austin!

I was making some flash cards for the kids. Mainly for Ashley b/c she has a hard time with rhyming. I want to show her how the rhyming words have the same ending. As I was making them Austin came in the room and started reading all the cards. He read over 200 of them on Thursday night. So I decided to start making the words more difficult. He would get frustrated on some of them and say, don't tell me and he would work them out.

He would sound them out like this: "t...rrr... when 2 vowels go a walkin' the first one does the talkin'...ay...tray"

He even sounded out the words, cheat and wheat and lunch and wish.

I was so excited, I told Austin that I was so proud of him. And he said, "I'm so proud of myself!" How precious is that?

 I bought him a train tonight, because I thought this was a big deal and deserved a reward!

Thank you for the card and the gift card to Target!  I wish I could go right now and browse the scrapbooking aisle.  They have such beautiful things there.  But I know better than to take my trio with me.

Your cards are always encouraging!  I feel blessed to have you as my Secret Sister!

YAY!  The first consignment sale is over and done with!  I'm tired!  I don't know exactly how much I made, but I do know that I made more than I spent.

I have another sale next weekend and then that is it for me and sales (I think).

Every toy I got out in the garage to get it ready for the sale is now BACK in our house.  I've had these toys out there for at least 6 months, you would think they would be safe.  But when the kids saw them it was like these toys were there VERY favorites that they lost so so so so long ago.  I wonder if I will be able to get anything out of the house next weekend.

Yesterday, I took a big stuffed bear chair to the sale.  It is cute, but we just don't have the room for it.  My daughter cried and cried all night long for it.  She said, "I'm going to miss my bear chair. Are we going to be able to visit it?".  Anyway- I'm not exagerating.  She had a nightmare and couldn't sleep and kept us up all night long.  So this morning I called the Sale Coordinator and asked her to pull the chair from the sale.  I guess I am lucky it didn't sell Friday night.  Good grief!

I ended up taking Ashley to the doctor today.  This is the 3rd weekend in a row we have visited the doctor's office.  She has an ear infection called swimmers ear (apparantly this is an infection outside the eardrum).  So she has been a pill (as they say down here in the south).  The good thing about this time is that I knew why she has been acting so bad and I could deal with it better.

I'm really looking forward to Monday!  We are taking a tour at the Purity company.  I know they didn't have Purity up north when I lived there.  So I'm not sure if this is just a local company or how far it goes out.  But they make dairy products and they have some very yummy ice cream.  So I think this field trip will be lots of fun!

Take care!  ~Chelle

Ahhhhhhhhh!  I feel much better!  Thank you for the prayers!

Today my kids are in MDO and I am trying to figure out what we will be doing over the next 2 weeks.

I signed up to exchange shoebox sized boxes filled with facts, pictures, souveneirs, etc. of the state I live in with someone who lives in another state.  I have been thinking for awhile what I would like to do, but I think I'm in a bit of a time crunch.  I know it won't turn out bad, but I had GRAND plans.  While I'm gathering information about TN, I wanted to take my kids to all these places and teach them too.  So I guess I will have to choose 5 places to go in stead of 150 (exagerating).

I'm actually procrastinating right now...I should be cleaning the kitchen...but who wants to do that?

I've got a lot of catching up to do reading blogs and emails.  How do you balance your time?  I can get sucked into the computer for hour(s).  Alright...I better go clean.

Have a great day!

I've got the flu.

I am so disappointed!  I saw my parents for 5 minutes.  They decided to stay in a hotel.  I don't blame them.  Hopefully I'll be able to see them next weekend when they are coming back from Florida.

The kids are disappointed too. 

Hmmm... no spellcheck on here?  I'm not sure if I'm spelling disappointed correctly.

Wow this week has been tough!

Last Friday I took Mason and Ashley to the doctor.  Both had ear infections.  Mason's was really bad.  They have such a high tollerance for pain that it is so difficult to know when they are sick until it is really bad.  Ashley also had a yeast infection.

Wednesday, Mason spiked a fever and just wasn't himself.  Thursday- he continued to have a fever so I kept him home from MDO.  I got the other two ready to go and Mason said, "Wait you forgot to get me dressed."  I said, "Well today you can wear your pajamas."  He said, "I've never wore my pajamas to school before."  He still thought he was going to school.  Throughout the day he told me his head hurt and his mouth hurt.  He would get so tired and would take long naps.  I also, have been having headaches that don't seem to go away with medicine.

Last night was horrible!  Mason ran around the corner and fell on the corner of the banister scraping his side.  He cried and cried and I tried to comfort him.  He is much more sensitive when he is sick.  Ashley was extremely jealous that Mason was getting all the attention.  I can not get her to understand that when one of the others is sick, they need to have extra attention.  So with Mason being sick and hurt and Ashley being needy, I just didn't need anymore stress.  Well...Austin was trying to "walk the balance beam" on a plastic gate that I was trying to fix at the time.  He fell right down hitting his groan.  The gate pinched his inner thigh and scraped or pinched his testicle too.  He cried for at least 2 hours straight.  That's when I lost it.  My husband glared at me like it was my fault and I thought may be Austin thought it was my fault too.  I just cried and cried right along with him.  I ended up sleeping with Austin to make sure he was ok and he was ok by the morning.  Greg slept with Mason and said all night long he was short of breath, burping and his heart rate was really fast.

So today I took Mason back to the doctor.  (I actually should say when I have to take one to the doctor, then all of them come with me.)  The poor little fella has the flu.  They all had flu shots, apparantly if he hadn't had one it would be much worse.  I was surprised at the burping.  I have never heard of burping being a way of the body kind of throwing up.  Anyway, all of us including me got on something called Tamiflu.  It should help Mason get over the flu and prevent the rest of us from getting it.

This is much longer than I anticipated.  I had just planned to get on here and Thank my Secret Sister and go to bed.  But I guess I just need to get it out.

So about that...After going to 2 pharmacies that didn't have the medicine in stock I went home.  I opened the mail box to 2 surprises.  The first one was blackberry jam.  I won it from being in the Make-It-From-Scratch Contest.  And the other was a big envelope with 3 packages of scrapbooking letter stickers and three darling bookmarks, and a beautiful Secret Sister card.  I really needed that smile today.  Thank you so much!

For those of you praying for my family...Thank you so much!  I'm tired and so far behind.  My parents are travelling here tomorrow.  I would love to have the place cleaned up for them.  At least get the paint off the bathroom sink nozzles (Is that what they are called?).  All the dishes cleaned and put away, the kitchen floor mopped--oh and so much more, but those are the biggies.  Then next week I need to start tagging for a consignment sale.

Sorry this is a downer today...I just don't feel great.  Good night.

So how do you post your pictures on your blog (those of you still using the homeschoolblogger.com)?

I would always get so frustrated trying to post pictures here.  I would end up having to delete pictures from another post just so there would be room enough for 1 picture.

Finally, I decided to completely type my whole post in one of my blogger.com blogs (one that I set up as an experiment) and copy and paste it into here.

Certainly there is an easier way.

What do you do?

I love these pictures. These are the first photos I have taken of them doing their homework. They HATE to do their homework! But today I bribed them with Valentine gifts. I haven't seen them get their homework done so fast since they have been doing homework.

We are to list what snack foods we give to our kids after school.  (Give recipes...etc)

Well my kids go to MDO on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  So on those days they usually have something left over from lunch that they like to eat.  Usually it is a fruit bar, Cheez Its or those little gummy fruit snacks.  On other days they LOVE popcorn!

Recipe:  Get out the Orville popcorn kernals.  Pull 3 chairs over to the counter.  Let kids take turn pouring kernals into popcorn maker.  Plug it in and watch them giggle over it popping.  Then melt butter in microwave, letting one open the door...pushing the numbers and start.  Divide the popcorn EVENLY between 3-5 bowls.  (OH BIG BOWLS)

OR

Unwrap microwave popcorn bag.  Let child put bag in, push 2:30 and start. Pull chair over to microwave.  Remind them not to get too close.  Depending on which child it is-telling them several times.  Let them open microwave.  I pull it out and open it.  Repeat process for other 2 to have their own bag.  Remind all 3 of them that the food needs to stay in the Kitchen about 20-30 times every 5 minutes.

Austin wrote a book! We had so much fun together the other day. He picked out several images on the internet of Thomas Trains and then he wrote his own story around those pictures. So I typed it up and made it into a book. I used a font that is called Zyia Learns Letters on a few words on each page that Melissa mentioned in her blog. This font is of letters made of dots, so kids can trace them. I was SO VERY proud of Austin. I don't know if you can tell in the pictures, but he did a great job tracing the letters. I thought since he really dislikes writing that if he was writing about something he enjoys then he would like it. He did get tired of writing, but the point is he did it! And I'm just proud as can be! Now Ashley and Mason want me to make them a book too. I've got their stories from them, so now all I need to do is type it up and put it together.

Hello Hello!

Wow!  All of you have given me such wonderful advice.  I'm so thankful for you!  I do plan to write out why I am homeschooling.  However, this was not a God thing.  I mean I don't have this conviction from God to homeschool.  Maybe I should, but i don't .

I'm homeschooling because...(written off the top of my head)

1.  I have already seen what public schools can do with my children.  My children were extremely brilliant, desiring to learn more.  After putting them in Mother's Day out, I realized that they no longer had that sparkle in their eye about learning.  I actually think they were being "dumbed down".   I regret this, but I felt I really desperately needed that break to send them to school 2 days a week.  In hindsight, it was the best thing because at the time I needed to take care of me.  I wasn't sleeping, and I was so extremely overwhelmed with my children.  Yes, it may have hurt my children, but I think it would have been worse if I didn't get "fixed" first.

2.  I went to a public school.  (need I say more?)  In 4th grade I saw 2 kids my age having sex on the playground.  I kept that quiet.  In 5th grade, a boy asked me to pick up his pencil, when I did he flashed me, when I yelled out I got in trouble for talking.  The BUS- oh the terrible terrible things that happened on the bus...my children will NEVER ride one without me.

3.  I have learning disabilities and ADD.  I'm pretty sure at least one of my children has ADD too.  It's sometimes hard to diagnose when a child has ADD, because they usually perform enough to get by.  So by knowing what is needed I think I will be the best teacher in this situation.

4.  I didn't learn anything in public school...except to cram for tests and forget the next day.

5.  In homeschooling, I like how you can take your time on things you don't know or skip things that you do know.

6.  I want to see that learning sparkle in their eyes.

I'm sure there is a lot more, but that is what I can think of right now.

Thank you all so much for your encouragement