The things I have done.

I was tagged by Mimi.

Bold the items you have done:

1. Started your own blog.
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a Praying Mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Been to the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa at the Louvre
20. Slept on a train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb.
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud- and mom has the pictures to prove it. :)
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Tied a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a Bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee
100. Visited Italy

Ab-Fab Sweetie Dahling

Here are the rules for receiving the fabulous award:

1. You have to pass it on to 5 other fabulous blogs in a post.
2. You have to list 5 of your fabulous addictions in the post.
3. You must copy and paste the rules and the instructions below in the post.
   

Instructions: On your post of receiving this award, make sure you include the person that gave you the award and link it back to them. When you post your five winners, make sure you link them as well. To add the award to your post, simply right-click, save image, then "add image" it in your post as a picture so your winners can save it as well. To add it to your sidebar, add the "picture" gadget. Also, don't forget to let your winners know they won an award from you by emailing them or leaving a comment on their blog.

Mimi tagged me a long time ago to do this blog, but it has taken me forever because she already tagged everyone I know that blogs. So I am sorry, but I am not passing this on, but I will try to post my fabulous addictions.

1- I am addicted to many new thing I try. When I am losing weight, all I can talk about are the new meals I am cooking, and the new dress size I have reached, and how much I exercised that week. When I began being an instructor for a Coupon Company, I was addicting to being the best. I ended up having workshops every night of the week, and sometimes two on Saturdays. I burned out pretty quickly. When I began Flylady, I was addicting to sticking to my routines until I burned out. I don't do things halfway, and so I usually don't have the stamina to keep up with them.

2- I am addicted to TV. I don't watch it a ton, but I have tried to stop watching it completely, and I just can't. I especially have a hard time when I get hooked by a series.

3- Chocolate.

4- Facebook. I am loving seeing what all my old friends are up to.

5- Learning. I love discovering new things. I have loved homeschooling, because I am learning so much. When I was going to college, I really did wish I could stay there forever until I had taken every major there is. I would love to learn more about just about everything.

Faith and Hope

I've had something on my mind for a while now, and I have resisted posting because I didn't want to offend people close to me. I can't get it off my mind, so I have decided to go ahead and get my thoughts down.

Lately, I have felt like people have been judgemental of my dedication to my religion. I have some fantastic friends who have different views than I do. Some are wonderful, and tolerant, and some are very kind, but treat me like because I center my life around my religion, I am not capable of thinking for myself. It seems to me like the "popular" opinion has become to doubt everything that comes along. I think most people do believe in God. I think many people deny that there is a God simply because it seems that that is what Hollywood is doing, and it seems to be hip or cool. I am really annoyed by this.

I know that I have a Heavenly Father, and I know that he loves me. I also know that he loves every one of his children, and he would love to have every one of them enjoy the blessings that come from living a righteous life. I also know that he cannot bless them if they will not follow the commandments. It amazes me how many people try to find happiness everywhere except in living the way they should. I had my independent years where I had to find out everything for myself. I rebelled against the way my parents raised me thinking it was "old fashioned." I went through a lot of misery. I knew that all I had to do was live the way I knew I should, but I was afraid of what my friends at the time would think. I spent some time being unhappy. I thought I was mature because I was making up my own mind, but I realized that a lot of times, maturity comes when you humble yourself to realize you can learn from other people. Especially wise parents who tried their best to raise you the right way.

I think for most of my life, my religion has been a guiding factor in my life. It is not just a place I go to meet people, it directs just about everything I do in my life. Is this because I am not smart enough to make up my own mind? Is it because I am simply a follower, and I think that "acting" like I am being righteous will make me look better to other people? Nope! It is because I have faith, and because I have hope. I have never regretted following the counsel of the prophet. I have definitely regretted NOT following his counsel. I had a friend once who said, "If I die, and find out everything I believe in is not true, I would not regret they way I have lived for a second." I do believe in my religion, but I also believe the life that I live because of my beliefs is a much happier life.

I believe that happiness does come when we follow the counsel of the prophets. If the prophet stood up and said that every Tuesday we should wear a green shirt, I would be happy to follow the counsel. I wouldn't understand it, but I believe in President Monson as a prophet, and for me that is enough. I don't need to fight against his counsel every time. I do work to gain a testimony of the things he asks us to do, but I don't need to decide each time if I will or won't follow his counsel.

My life is happier because I am a religious person.

Christmas Gift Exchange

In our family, we started a new family tradition a few years ago.

When I was growing up, we used to draw names for Christmas gifts. We would each have a sibling or parents name, and we would pick a night and we would all go down to a store. I think it was called Grand Central, and later the name was changed to Fred Meyer. It was similar to today's Wal-mart. We would divide up into two groups, with Mom and Dad each being in charge of one of the groups, and we would go through the store finding gifts for each other. I remember many times when we would see the other group, and we would rush to run away from them so they wouldn't see the gifts we were buying. Everything was covered with coats in the cart anyway, but we would still run. Many times there were complications and we couldn't split up the groups so we divided all the givers and receivers, and so Dad would devise a game plan so we could pass some kids off from one parent to another so we could all get our gifts in one night. We would all go home, and mom and dad would help us wrap our presents and put them under the tree. My parents never put out the gifts that they had bought for us until Christmas Eve. In our house, Santa was a very minor part of Christmas. Our stockings were filled by "Santa," but we always knew the rest of the gifts were from our parents, they would just wait until Christmas Eve to put them out. Now that I have my own kids, I see how smart they were. The presents that we bought for each other were usually the only presents that made it under the tree until Christmas. I can't remember if the tradition of drawing names stopped for a while, but I know that we drew names after I got married.

After I got married we began drawing names for Christmas presents, and I think we tried many different things until we finally decided that each sibling/couple would buy for another sibling/couple, and each child would buy for another child. We exchange our family gifts at our family Christmas party. We did this for several years but soon some of our families became large, and some only had a couple of kids. A few years ago, as we were getting ready to draw names, some of the siblings asked to not be included because it was a little hard on the budget, and many others agreed that finding the money for the gift exchange added to the stress of the holidays. We all hated to have this fun tradition be a strain to anyone and so we started the tradition that the gifts all had to be homemade, and there had to be a $5 limit on kid gifts, and a $10 limit on couple/sibling gifts. I have to tell you that at the beginning, I was terrified. I am not a crafty person, and I am not that creative. When I have an idea, it is usually a pretty good one, but coming up with those good ideas is very hard for me. I was worried that the kids would be getting a 2 year olds crayon drawing, and they would think Christmas was lame. I do have to say though, that I really love this tradition now.

This is my Dad at 21. Isn't he handsome!!

This year we drew my sister, Mimi's, name. Mimi loved watching our home movies when we were growing up, and I had been wanting to burn our home movies onto DVD for her for a very long time. We bought the software a while ago, and I finally sat down and figured out how to work it. It wasn't very smooth, and we had a lot of trial and error before we got something I was happy with, but I was really happy when we were done. It was so overwhelming, but so great to spend that much time with our movies. I found many that I had never seen before. All of my grandparents have died, and so it was great to go back and watch all the movies of them. My favorite movie that I downloaded was a pretty long clip of all of us girls (there are 6 of us) and my brother playing baseball in the back yard with my dad. While we were playing, my Grandparents came out and started playing with us. I just sat there and cried as I watched it. It was wonderful to completely immerse myself in the movies. I had to watch each clip several times to get it ready to put on the DVD. It felt like I was watching a familiar movie. One where you know the ending, and you know the character development of each person. I watched the movies from the last year before my Grandma died, and I felt the panic as I watched it, and I saw us all having fun, but not savoring every last moment with her. I learned to love myself like I love one of my kids. I wanted to be able to talk to that little girl, and reassure her, and tell her she was a pretty neat kid. I loved putting the DVDs together for my sister, knowing she would love watching them, as much as I loved putting them together. I really loved putting something of myself into them. I know that I could have gone to the store, and picked out a present that my sister probably would have loved, but it felt great to give her something that came from me.


Mimi also had drawn my name. Mimi is an incredible gardener. She loves to make things grow, and her cute little yard is amazing. A few months ago, I read on her blog about her indoor herb garden she was growing, and I thought about how I needed to have her help me. I have wanted an herb garden for forever, and I even have a little spot in my backyard where I plan to put one when we get our yard in next year. Mimi had these cute pots she had planted her herbs in. Well that was my present. She was so excited when she talked about her herbs in her blog. I asked her if she had any left, and she told me that she had some seeds, and so she could start a new herb garden. She transplanted some of the herbs, but she ran out of pots. She even gave me all the cute little pots!! I love my herb garden. I am sure that I would have loved an herb garden that I started on my own, if the herbs lived, but I love this one so much more because it has part of Mimi in it.

My kids each LOVED their gifts too. Allen got a collection of Perler beads that glow in the dark, and some candy. He carried his Perler beads around all night last night, and then got them out first thing this morning. Michael got a very cozy pair of pajamas that he put on right away. Makenzie got a pink, heart shaped rice bag that she microwaved several times last night, and had to take to bed tonight, and Morgan got a blanket that is kind of a mix between a blanket and a scarf. It is perfect to keep him warm, but not trip him as he runs around the house. He loves it and has to sleep with it.

I have gone on long enough, but I was just thinking how much I love our new tradition, and how it hasn't turned out anything like I thought it would. I thought at best, it would be a way to save money, but it has really been a life changing experience for me. It sounds so cliche, but it is really true.

Husband Tag

Husband Tag (Kell)

I got tagged by my sister, so here is a little information about my hubby.

1- Where did you meet? We met in college. I heard about hubby before I met him. The first day I moved into a new apartment for summer, my new roommates and I all sat on the floor in one of the back bedrooms and shared all the juicy details on our latest crushes. One of my roommates had liked hubby for a very long time, and so the first time I met him (at FHE), although I thought he was incredibly good looking, I knew he was completely off limits (We even elected my roommate to be MOM and hubby to be DAD of our group). Two weeks later, another roommate moved in and she had also had a crush on hubby for a long time. Thankfully, the one I actually cared about moved out halfway through the summer, and the other roommate moved on to many other guys. We got to know each other, and the rest is history.

2- How long did you date before you got married? 10 months.

3- How long have you been married? 12 years.

4- What does he do that surprises you? I guess it doesn't surprise me anymore, but my husband is brilliant!! I'm not just saying that because I am biased, he has the IQ score to prove it. He is such a goofball. Most of his brainpower goes into making clever jokes, or coming up with new and unusual words to songs. He never thought he was all that smart, and he was even put into resource classes when he was younger. I don't think he even knew how brilliant he was. He is so goofy (see above picture) and adorable it comes as a shock to most people. I definitely got the whole package.

5- What is your favorite feature of his? I love his hair. Everyone loves his hair. It is gorgeous and curly. Everywhere we go, people comment on it. His co-workers have told me that they hold daily discussions about it. He, of course, is very embarrassed by it.

6- What is your favorite quality of his? I love that he is such a great father. He is definitely the favorite parent. He often will just stop whatever he is doing and tell me what fantastic kids we have. He is fun, and loving and our home is always a happier place when he is home. His mom raised one of the kindest most compassionate families I have ever met.

7- Does he have a nickname for you? He calls me babe. I love it! It makes me feel special.

8- What is his favorite color? When you ask him this question, he struggles to come up with one. Often it will change. I think his favorite color most of the time is Orange. He grew up in the desert, and he loves the browns, rusts, and oranges of the desert. I personally hate orange. I was trying to be kind, an find an orange that I could live with to paint the bedroom. I have not been able to do it. Our bedroom is still unpainted.

9- What is his favorite food? I really don't know. He likes almost everything, but he is also picky about things. He will eat whatever I put in front of him, but he rarely really loves it. He has worked in restaurants, and is a fantastic cook. I know he appreciates eating whatever he doesn't have to cook (He is definitely the cook here) but I think he likes experimenting to get just the flavor he likes. Whenever we go to a restaurant, he almost always orders something he has never tried before. I always order the same thing, and he always makes fun of me.

10- What is his favorite sport? I don't know. We had a volleyball court at our apartment when we were dating, and we had a lot of fun playing. He will watch football, but it definitely isn't an obsession. He is left handed, so many sports didn't come as easily for him. We had a ton of fun watching the Arizona Diamondbacks win the world series a few years ago, and we have also followed the Utah Jazz.

11- When and where was your first kiss? End of August 1995. My sister was visiting me, and Jayson and I had been flirting all night. I told my sister to go take a walk so we could make out in the apartment. She still hasn't forgiven me. (Sorry Mimi!)

12- What is your favorite thing to do as a couple? This is so lame, but we love to watch TV and movies together. We have a couple of series that we follow. Hubby was gone for a week, and I tried to watch The Office and it just wasn't as funny without him. We have a Netflix account, and we go through movies pretty quickly. We definitely get our moneys worth.

13- Do you have any children? Yep, we have 4.

14- Does he have a hidden talent? He can create amazing new witty lyrics to any song. It always rhymes, and will make you laugh almost every time. At the end of my first pregnancy, I was huge, two weeks overdue, and annoyed by everything. He was always coming up with new songs, and I was always wishing he would stop. My mom came out to help us, and she kept pointing out how funny his songs were. Once I stopped being annoyed, I was pretty amazed. He also has an amazing voice!

15- How old is he? 35, almost 36

16- Who said I love you first? I think he did, he thinks I did. When we first started dating, I wasn't expecting it to last very long. Hubby was kind of known for going through a lot of women quickly. I tried to keep it really casual, and I would often ask myself if I loved him, and I would always answer that I didn't. One day, I realized that I couldn't say I didn't love him anymore. I couldn't necessarily say that I did, but I couldn't say that I didn't. I told him, and he counts that as me saying it first. He actually said the words, "I love you," first.

17- What is his favorite type of music? According to his iTunes, it is Alternative, Pop, and Rock. Of course they classify U2, Erasure, and Depeche Mode as Rock.

18- What do you admire most about him? His ability to love unconditionally.

19- Do you think he will read this? Eventually. He rarely reads my blog.

I tag Nicole.

Birthday Outfit

Makenzie's Birthday was yesterday, and so she wore her "most beautifullest" outfit. Usually I let her wear whatever she wants when we stay home, and she often comes up with an outfit like the one above. Yesterday, we went out in public. She loves pink, and stripes, and hearts, and balloons, and checks, and so why shouldn't she wear all of them together. It is also the best way to maximize the pink factor.

I am not sure if I should start quelling her fashion sense, or if I should just rejoice that she is with us all day, and so her individuality won't be humiliated out of her by her peers. I know I need to break the news to her somehow. I don't think a prospective employer would take her seriously in this.

My Creative Husband

Here is another blog I started just after Halloween. Time to get it published. :)

My husband comes from a very artistic family. His whole house was decorated with his mom's and dad's paintings. When they found a picture that one of the kids painted that they liked, they put a frame on it, and put it on the walls. Hubby tells stories of his mom creating the ice planet, Hoth (only the Star Wars geeks will know what I am talking about) from a very large piece of styrofoam. It was a main feature in their house until it eventually disintigrated. They played on it with their Star Wars toys until there was nothing but a huge mess left. My husband's twin brother created his own cake topper for his wedding. He has twin brothers whose entire apartment is filled with toys and models. They are all very creative.

When we first moved into our home, we had some lovely mauve and gold wallpaper. When we ripped it down, it left a good layer of paper stuck to the walls. Hubby grabbed the box of crayons, and let the kids go to town. It was a lot of fun. (I do have to say, I worried that my kids would still be coloring when the paper finally came down. For the most part, it hasn't been a problem.)

I love how they all have their coats on.

Poor Allen has no fat on his body. He is always freezing!

One outlet for my husbands creativity is Halloween pumpkins. There have been many years when the stress of the holidays takes over, and I unwisely suggest we skip the pumpkins. Yea, Right! I have learned to love pumpkin carving, and I try to plan a little more wisely so he can have his creativity, and I can have less stress.

My kids have complete faith in my husbands pumpkin carving abilities. Last year, they saw a Charizard pumpkin that they just had to have. (For those of you who don't know, Charizard is a pokemon.) Hubby was up very late the night before Halloween to make their dreams come true.

This year, hubby told us to get online and get some templates for him to carve when he got home. My kids, once again having perfect faith in my husband, found a Thomas the Tank engine template for him. He made this one with power tools. I think we still probably have pumpkin guts on our ceiling. I think he is amazing. Unfortunately, the "glowing pumpkin" pictures turned out too dark.

Little Morgan could not stop giggling the whole night. He was so excited about his Thomas pumpkin!

Here is another amazing pumpkin my hubby carved. My little Star Wars fans were in seventh heaven.

And a couple of my creations. I really don't have an artistic bone in my body. I was pretty pleased with my pumpkins.

Big huge thanks to my sister-in-law and my nieces and nephews for growing our pumpkins. We had many shapely gourds to carve this year. :)

Math Curriculum

I have been wanting to write about my math curriculum for a very long time, but life has been busy. When I first started homeschooling one of the first things someone told me was that I would end up buying materials that would not work for my family. She told me to just get used to the idea, because it was going to happen. We don't have a lot of money, and most of the time curriculum materials are not cheap. I became very paranoid that I would end up spending large amounts of money on worthless materials, and so I did not buy anything. I started reading all kinds of books about cheap ways to homeschool, and going back through all my college books (I was an Elementary Education major) and decided to just figure out everything on my own. It worked for some subjects, but I found I did much better with someone else telling me what to do.

We started our Math curriculum by buying the big workbooks from Wal-mart, and going through them. I found out that my kids hate sitting and doing workbooks, and that having a curriculum that has a focus on workbooks was not the answer for us. I tried getting a Scope and Sequence from a math curriculum and just following that, and Math was still very boring. I tried looking at the Disk the district gives you showing you all the objectives for the year and teaching that way, and the objectives were so obscure it turned out to be really pointless. Finally I stumbled on a curriculum on a message board. It is online, and it is free. The big pull for me was that I could try it out, and see if it worked for our family before committing tons of money. The mentality behind the curriculum took a while to get used to, but I really love it now.

Here is Makenzie playing the String Game with Attribute Blocks.

This is Allen playing the same game with numbers.

The curriculum is called the Comprehensive School Mathematics Program. It is also called Cemrel Math. I grew up believeing the motto "You get what you pay for," but in the case of this curriculum, it just isn't true. This is truly an amazing curriculum. My favorite things about it, is that it is fun, and it is hard!! My kids math skills have improved a ton, and they don't even realize it. They are having fun reading and making up stories, and solving spy puzzles, and at the same time they are learning about geometry, probability, all the math basics, string theory, and probably a ton of other things that all just seem like playing to them. My first grader has been exposed to multiplication, and negative numbers. My second grader is beginning to learn more about decimals, and my fifth grader is learning about binary, base 3, base 4 etc systems. I had a telemarketer call me trying to sell me her several hundred dollar math curriculum, and as she read through her list of all the different things her "state of the art" curriculum was covering (in her pompous voice, confident that she would blow me away with all they were offering) I told her I already had a curriculm that covered everything she was selling, and it was free!!

This is Allen working with the Minicomputer, it is a type of abacus that does a great job of visually introducing many concepts. The name minicomputer also sounds a lot cooler than "abacus."

My kids were not math whizzes when I pulled them out of school. My fourth grader did not even know his multiplication tables. His math class was working on long division, and he was still counting everything out on his fingers. He was so lost. Here a year and a half later, he smokes me on many problems. My third grader is a very "out of the box" thinker, and this curriculum gives him a chance to be creative in math. I have also learned that he is brilliant when it comes to math, but he needs to be able to look at things in a different way. My little first grader is really good at math, and she looks forward to learning about all the "fun things" her older brothers are learning. She was so excited to learn about "Eli the Elephant" (the curriculms story for negative numbers) because she had been hearing her brothers talk about it.

My favorite things about this curriculum is that fact that it is free, that it is fun, and there isn't a ton of writing involved. Most of our lessons are done at the kitchen table with our math manipulatives, and our whiteboard. Most of the lesson involves us interacting with each other for the entire lesson. Many of the lessons have worksheets with them, but they are fun. Often the kids are solving a puzzle, or being detectives as they finish their worksheets. Most of the manipulatives are printable things from the website, and many concepts are presented as a game. (My favorite is the String game. They also have the number line game, and minicomputer golf)

This is one of the string pictures we made with Michael's lesson. The curriculum uses string pictures quite often. I think they are great teaching tools.

There are a few challenges that come with this curriculum. You need to print out quite a bit of stuff. I print out all the teachers manuals, and workbooks. (You really need a color printer for many of the materials) The lessons are also time consuming for the teacher (me). My first graders lessons take between 15 minutes and a half an hour to teach, My third grader is about a half an hour to 45 min, and sometimes my 5th graders lessons will take about an hour to teach. This definitely isn't a curriculum where you give your child the book, and they do all the work on their own. The kids do have a workbook day each week, where the lesson with the teacher is about 5 minutes and the rest of the time is spent doing a workbook. The workbooks are the main assessment tool. There are no tests. There are some minor pieces of the curriculum missing (posters and things) but I haven't had a tough time creating them on the computer. The curriculum was created for a classroom setting, but it hasn't been difficult to adapt it for homeschooling. The way that they approach math is also very different. Starting the curriculum in any grade below the 5th grade seemed to work okay, but when I tried to start my son at the 5th grade level, the language and skills were too advanced, so we had to start at the 4th grade level. The curriculum also only goes through the 6th grade. I have been looking at different curriculum options for my son, and I think we will be able to jump to a different program.

In spite of the challenges, I love this curriculum. If I had to pay for it, I would, but I don't have to. I love teaching math. I get to teach it everyday. I am pretty lucky. :)

I started this blog over a month ago, and kept waiting to get it perfected so I could post it. I think it it time to give up on perfection, and let go of the guilt, and just post it!

Links
Here are a couple of links that have helped us with our Math curriculum- And best of all, most of them are free.

CSMP Site- This is the site for the curriculum

Learningthings.com- One of my favorite Math Manipulatives sites. They seem to have things at a better price than anywhere else. Many of the "Education" stores in the area get their items from Learning Things, and the jack up the prices.

internet4classrooms.com- This website is one of my favorite. It is so packed with stuff. It has a breakdown of each of the grade levels, each objective the students should learn, and then a plethora of websites to teach the objective. I love the games they have to practice math skills.

Timez Attack- (Free Download) One of my favorite Multiplication Games. I love the graphics, and the little alien guy is so cute. It is not a super difficult game, but my video gamers will play it for hours because it is so well made. It teaches multiplication facts 2-12. The full version of the game is $40, and I have heard it is awesome, but we have only played the free download, and we are very happy with it.

6 quirks blog

I was "tagged" by my sister to write down 6 of my quirks. This is actually my new revised version. I realized that my first one was a little more revealing than I am comfortable with. :)

1- I hate going to sleep at night. I get so little kid free time in my day, when it is night time, and I am finally doing something I want to do, I have a tough time being responsible enough to get my butt in bed and go to sleep. On the other hand, I love taking naps.

2- I chew on my lip, or make funny faces when I am concentrating. My hubby thinks it is cute, so we have lots of videos of me making these weird faces while I am concentrating on art projects or playing the piano. The ladies in Relief Society have commented on the faces I pull when I am playing the piano.

3- I love to dance. I have a tough time holding still when I am around a song with a good beat. Whenever I can, I have the radio going, and I love to shake it when I am cleaning (especially doing the dishes.) With homeschooling, it seems like whenever I have a free second to clean, the kids are usually working on something, and they need it quiet so my radio time has been cut way down. :( I hate to dance in front of anyone other than my kids though.

4- I can't clean with my hair down. It drives me crazy unless I tie it back. I always get up in the morning, and take tons of time getting ready and doing my hair, and by the time hubby gets home, it is always pulled back into a ponytail or bun.

5- When I get sick of being called mom, I make my kids call me Telulah. It used to really bug them, but now all I have to say is, "I'm getting sick of being mom," and without skipping a beat they will all start calling me Telulah. Sometimes I let them know that Telulah isn't working for me, and so we all work together to come up with a new name for me.

6- One of my favorite stress relieving techniques is to scream at the top of my lungs. I struggle with gettting too stressed out, so when I can feel that I am starting to loose it a bit, I will scream as loud and as long as I can until I am out of breath. (I only do this in front of my kids in the safety of my own home. I don't think my hubby has even seen me do this.) My kids will usually look up from whatever they are doing, but it doesn't even startle them. Sometimes they will laugh at me, or join in and we all feel a whole lot better when we are done.

I tag my hubby and kids to answer this quirks string. (I guess hubby will have to start a blog to answer this. Oh this will be fun! :)

Tough Day

I had a miscarriage in June, and these last few weeks have been tough. I have tried not to talk about it too much to people lately because I am worried that everyone is sick of hearing me talk about it. I feel like it is all I think about some days.


When I got pregnant, I felt like things were not okay. We waited for a very long time to tell anyone. I had two miscarriages about 10 years ago, so I am always a little apprehensive to tell people. I feel like I am jinxing my pregnancy. My kids still talk about the babies I lost before they were even born. I was worried that if my miscarriages affected them that long ago, they would have a tough time dealing with me losing a baby.


With this pregnancy, at each appointment it always took the doctor a long time to find the heartbeat, and there were several doctor's appointments where they couldn't find the heart beat with the Doppler, so they took me in to find it with the ultrasound. At every single doctor's appointment, I always thought that I had lost the baby, and then they would finally find the heartbeat and I would feel so relieved. It seemed like everyone was announcing pregnancies and everyone was due right around the time I was due. It was always tough to hear everyone joyfully announcing their happy news, while I was trying to keep mine a secret. I have always been horrible at keeping secrets. Finally I passed my first trimester and we finally decided to tell everyone. We knew that this would be our last baby, and so we wanted it to be a big deal. We bought big brother/big sister shirts for all of our kids and we gave them to them so they could help us announce the pregnancy. We had a big family barbecue where we announced the news to everyone.




I have had problems with my previous pregnancies, and I often get put on bed rest because of pre-term labor. I started having contractions at 3 months with this pregnancy, and so I decided to lay down for the rest of the pregnancy. I was worried about how it would affect my family, but I was willing to inconvenience everyone to get this baby here safely. My daughter would come in every night to look through our baby name book to find a name for our baby. She was so excited. She was convinced that Heavenly Father would finally send her a sister. We tried really hard to prepare her for the fact that it might be a boy. She said that she would be okay with that, but she really wanted a sister.




Here is the dog eared copy of baby names book. When I lost the baby, it was the hardest thing for me to pack up. Makenzie suggested several people we could pass the book off to. The names in this book are truly horrible, but her favorite thing to do was look through this book.


My husband took work off to come to the doctor with me for the ultrasound at 20 weeks. We decided to take the three oldest kids in, and they were all so excited. The night before the ultrasound was like the night before Christmas. Everyone was so excited, and no one could sleep. When we got to the doctor, there were some problems with scheduling, and after having us wait for over a half an hour, they asked us if we could come in the next day. We told them no, that we had gone through great lengths to get everyone there that day, and so the doctor took us on his lunch break. As soon as the doctor saw the baby, he knew there was a problem. He let us know that they baby had died. He left, and we explained what had happened to the kids. They bawled for a few minutes, and then they haven't really talked about it since.



I had to go into the hospital and deliver the baby. Originally they had planned to put me in a room a little way off from the mom's having their babies, but the room that was available ended up being right in the middle of the maternity ward. They started me on pitocin, and hooked me up to the monitors. They told me that I could have an epidural if I didn't want to feel anything. I wanted to feel the pain. It was the only connection I would ever have to the baby. As I was laboring we could hear the cries of the newborn babies in all the rooms around us. I was very happy for those moms. I thought a lot about the lives that those babies would have. After a few hours the baby was delivered. It was a little girl. We were able to hold her, but I didn't feel any connection to her. She didn't look much like a baby. The cord had been wrapped too tightly around her, and she wasn't able to get the nourishment she needed.




There was a support group at the hospital that made these hand and feel molds for me. They made some actual molds of the hands and feet, but they said that they just fell apart. They said that they had never made molds on a baby so small before. One of the ladies that is in charge of the group has lost 4 babies, two of those babies she has carried to full term. She didn't have any living children. It definitely made me grateful for the 4 healthy kids I have.


The first month or two after the miscarriage was really tough. People were very sweet and thoughtful. I got to a point where I wasn't crying all the time, and I had more control of my emotions. I still thought about the baby all the time. I have no answers about how this baby fits into our eternal family. I have a lot of questions about this little girls spirit, and I kind of feel like I am stuck in my grieving process because I don't have those answers. I don't feel like I will get the answers in this lifetime.


A week after I miscarried, a woman in our ward had a grandson born at 21 weeks. I have listened intently to any information about this baby. It was exactly the age my baby would have been, and born just one week after my miscarriage. It was able to live, and is now home and doing well. This last month many of the women who were due around the same time I was have been announcing the births of their babies. There was one woman at church today. She is the daughter in law of a friend. She is due very close to when I was due. She was large, pregnant, and I believe she was in labor today. It was a tough day. My due date is a week from Tuesday. I'm having a tough time.
This was how I told my husband I was pregnant.
This is a hat was crocheted by one of my husband's co-workers for our baby. The hand and feet pins are from the support group at the hospital. I think they are pro life pins. They are the size of a 10 week fetus. I keep this hat in a drawer that I open several times a day, and it is always special to take a moment to think about my daughter.


Sorry this has turned out to be so long. This blog is more for me than for anyone else. I really needed to get this out.

I can't wait for this week to be over!!

Obviously, the big push to blog everyday, and homeschool didn't turn out very well. There will be no cute pictures today. I am trying to homeschool and potty train my 3 (turning 4 at the end of the month) year old. It is not working out. This is why I put of potty training him so long. I laughed at my sister when every blog for a few weeks was about potty training her daughter. I am no longer laughing. I forgot how all consuming potty training is. I know that soon this will be just an unpleasant memory, and I will probably have some great stories to swap with other moms, but right now I am just done!!

Lapbooks

Lapbooking has been something that has added a lot of fun to our Homeschooling. This is a copy of our first lapbook. (We are now working on our second :) ) I found some basic information about it on the Internet, and we just took information from the books we were studying, and put these together. It is something we love to do, but I still feel like I am just a beginner. For the cover, I let the kids do whatever they want. For these lapbooks, we just created pictures with the plethora of construction paper we acquired through the years. For the Egypt lapbooks we are working on now, we googled images and made collages. We also pulled up some fun fonts for our titles. We usually use the cover as an art lesson. Most of the lapbook is pretty planned out, so this is one section where I really let my kids do their own thing.

Here is a copy of the inside of our finished lapbook with all the books closed.

And one with some of them opened. :)

I love the vocabulary booklet!! We just took vocabulary words from the books we were reading, and then you open the flap, and write the definition. We are working on geography vocabulary booklets right now, and my kids challenge themselves to write small enough to fit a picture of the vocab word at the bottom of the little flap. My kiddos struggle with fine motor skills, and so the challenge of writing small enough to fit the definition on the little flap has helped them to have more control in their writing.

Here is our little wheel.

Here is our graduated booklet. The template website below has several different versions, and different numbers of pages.

Here are our T books, showing off all the flaps. We just found all our images on Google images again. I would recommend the parent finds the images, or at least sits with the student as they find the images. There is some not-too-nice stuff out there!!








My kids still love to look at these lapbooks!! We had put them away for a while, and when we pulled them back out again, my kids took tons of time looking through them. I have even found them tucked away in my youngest's room from time to time.

When I told my son, Michael, that I was going to blog about lapbooks today, he ran and grabbed his Egypt lapbook and had me photo it so I could put it on here. Obviously, it is not even close to finished yet. I love the fact that it is something he is proud of. Some of my kids kind of threw together their Archaeology lapbooks, but now that the see how much they like looking back at them, they are taking more time with their Egypt lapbooks. Right now most of our writing practice comes from filling out our lapbooks.

I love the fact that with homeschooling, I can teach my kids the things I want to teach them in the way they want to be taught. And I love spending all day with my kids. I am not the best homemaker in the world, and homeschooling has made keeping up with the house even more challenging, but I have not regretted my decision to homeschool for a minute. I feel like I am dedicating my time to my very most important job, and I really love it.

Lapbooking Resources

Lapbooking Templates- Scroll Down for tons of different templates for lapbooking booklets.

Yahoo e-Notebooking Group- Lots of smart homeschoolers who share tons of ideas and resources. Links and Files sections are full of great stuff.

Free Egypt Lapbook Download- This is the Egypt lapbook we are doing to go with our unit.

CurrClick- Sign up for an account, and you can download one free item (often lapbooks) each week.

Our Spelling Program

I don't know if I just never paid attention in school, or if my teachers really sucked. Much of what I learned about Elementary Education came in college. I remember my professors presenting concepts that I should have learned, and it was such a novel idea for me. I remember when one of my professors told us that when a word starts with the 'k' sound, it can start with a C or a K. I always knew that, but then he actually taught us the rule. When a c is followed by an e, i or y, it has the 's' sound, so words like kit, and kept have to start with a k. It made so much sense to me. I remember bringing home a spelling list every week in elementary school, and memorizing all the words and then going to school and passing the test. I am sure somewhere along the line, some of the basic rules began to make sense to me because of the repetition, but it would have been so much easier to learn the rule, and then practice it again and again and connect the whole concept together. That is what I love about this spelling program. It teaches spelling by teaching the rules of spelling. It seems like a very logical place to start.

Anyway I am getting ahead of myself. I found the All About Spelling program when I was searching for some file folder games. They had a free download (and who doesn't love a good free download) and I started reading up on the program. It was exactly what I was looking for. It taught spelling starting at the rules. My kids also are "out of the box" learners, and they need a multi-sensory approach, and that is exactly what this spelling program offers. I didn't even have a clue it existed, or how great it would be for my family, until I tried All About Spelling.

One of my favorite things about the program is the price. Levels 1 and 2 are just under $30 each, and Levels 3 and 4 are just under $40. They also include everything (except the spelling tiles) in the packet. It is easy to keep organized, and review is built right into the lesson plans, so the kids really retain the things they have learned. (These are just a couple of the hundreds of cards that come with level 1.- The letter tiles need to be bought separately, but one set of tiles takes you through all the levels.)

Here is my son- The ultimate out of the box learner- learning to spell. When we first started the program, he would not write at all!! Once I started teaching him how to spell, I realized one of the reasons why he would not write was because he didn't have a clue how to sound out words. He knew a few words because he had memorized them, but he didn't even know how to start figuring it all out. Writing is still not his favorite thing to do, but he is now writing and reading. He will label things in his pictures, and write notes to us. He tries, which is something he never did before. I do love the fact that he gets lots of practice in spelling, and he is able to really get the concept down before he gets sick of writing.

This picture is totally staged, but I think it is adorable! Allen has always been great at reading and spelling. I had him start at level 1 just to fill in any gaps he might have. He has learned quite a bit.

My little writer!! I also love the fact that although writing is not the focus of the program, they do incorporate it. Every lesson ends with writing out the spelling words, and dictation, which reviews previous concepts.

He was worried that everyone would cheat off his paper. LOL!

At the end of each lesson, the kids get to put a sticker on their progress chart. I introduced several of my co-op friends to this program (One has even taught spelling and reading programs for years) and they all loved it. They had kids on many different levels and each family really enjoyed the spelling program. It has been exactly what we were looking for. We love it

All About Spelling

Here is my daughter spelling with tiles.