Top 10 Reasons I Homeschool

My daughter asked me today why I chose to homeschool my children.  This made me think about all the reasons that would make sense to her and might actually seem important to my children.  Here's what I came up with...

1.  I don't like packing lunch, a picnic is totally different.

2.  I like spending the day in my pjs and so do my children.  (We did this today in fact)

3.  It is important to me that my children know how to do the laundry, the dishes, and other household chores.  I can make these part of school if we are at home doing school.

4.  I like to take 4 week long vacations whenever I can, I don't want my children missing school to do it, but I don't like to travel during the summer when everyone else is traveling.

5.  I feel it is important that my children understand the Pluto debate.

6.  I don't want to miss the times when my daughter says things like, "That's a magic cloud that turns into a flying moose when it rains."

7.  I like Disney World in November.

8.  FIELD TRIPS whenever I want, usually days when I don't want to do the dishes.

9.  School everyday, even sick days, but not if the snow is good, then we ski.

10.  More ice time!

admiring

There are people that we admire, there are qualities in people that we admire, and there are actions that people take that we admire.  Sometimes we look at people and think "I could never be that way, that strong, or that calm."  Or we watch people reacting to a terrible situation and think "Would I react that way?  Would I have the inner strength to be like that during that situation?"  Or we see someone do something, something noble and brave, or maybe it's just thoughtful and kind.  Then, we ask ourselves why we didn't think of it first, or if we would have been able to do it at all.
I hope that I can have a moment, or a series of moments in my life where my children can look at me and think something along those lines.  I want to be the kind of Mom that makes my children want to be better human beings.  I want to be the kind of wife that makes my husband feel loved and I want to be the kind of friend that people remember at the end of the day.  I want this so that my children will want to be this way, so that I can raise them to think of others first.  I want them to be admirable, maybe not all the time as that might be too much for any mere human, but more often than I am.  I want people to see God's glory through them.  I don't want people to think that my children do not know love, or how to love, or indeed how to be loved.  I want people to feel that my children are loved, not only by me but by something more powerful than me. 
To strive to be deliberate, that is the goal.  Actions should be measured with whether they matter, whether they help, and whether they teach.  What do our actions teach our children?  What does our attitude teach?  How can we modify both to teach what we want?
I don't have the answers, but I am learning and sometimes we learn from the people that we least expect to learn from and that is wonderful.

New Reading Game

We started playing a fun game a few days ago to help with reading.  I also use it for handwriting practice.  It works like this, I write a sentence like "I like to eat hamburgers for dinner."  I cut the words apart and jumble them up, then my daughter has to read the words and put them in the right order and write it down on her paper.  I do about four sentences a day and she has to do those first, then we start making jokes.  We jumble all the words from all the sentences in a pile and pull out the first four and she reads them to me.  It's really funny, especially if you are five.  Today she got "dogs like eat balloons" and laughed for ten minutes.  I am not sure why that was so funny, but she read all the words herself so I don't really care.  Some of our other favorites were "brother mine sits fuzzy."  Now we all sit fuzzy whenever we can.

basil chile salmon

I made some more salmon last night and it was a huge hit.  Here's what was in it.

1 fresh red chile, not bell pepper
1 cup fresh basil leaves
3 cloves of garlic
1/4 cup olive oil

Chop everything up to make a salsa like concoction then cover the salmon with it.  I cooked three salmon steaks, about 1 lb of salmon.  Place everything in an oven safe dish and put it in the oven for about 30 minutes on 375-400.  I turned my oven up about 15 minutes in to bake the biscuits.

ten reasons to be a dad

These are from my husband's point of view, mostly for my brother.
I am guessing that he would say there are many more good things about being a Dad, otherwise he wouldn't have become a one again and again and again!

1.  You get a mini-me.

2.  After working hard all day you get to be deafened by screams of "Daddy's home!!!"

3.  The look you get when you say "Wow, I slept great last night."

4.  There's always someone to eat your pizza crust.

5.  Free ice time!

6.  Hugs.

7.  Children are a great excuse to play.

8.  Sneaking out to have ice cream with your kids.

9.  The security of knowing that if anyone broke into your house at night they would break a bone or bleed before they got to anything valuable.

10.  Knowing that your children are your real valuables.

top ten reasons to be a mom

This is mostly for Trish, because she might need it right about now.

These are the best things I can think of right now about why you might want to be a Mom, remember it's after 10 pm, I have 4 children, and I don't really sleep...

1.  Hugs

2.  Getting to say "Because I'm the MOM, that's why." in your best Mom voice.

3.  Getting to use your Mom voice.

4.  Having a good excuse for your messy house.

5. Hugs

6.  Because you like cold food.

7.  It's tons of fun to prepare a meal with pucks, cars, little hands, and hockey sticks under your feet.

8.  LAUNDRY CAN BE FUN, no, not really, but you get to do LOTS of it when you are a mom.

9.  Starting your day with a smile  (not yours, theirs)

10.  Did I mention hugs?

Enjoy.

artwork

My son, the three year old, drew a self-portrait today.  He only told me that he was wearing boots.  I don't see the boots, but I will let you judge for yourself.  I don't understand the hair either.

His sister, the five year old, thought he looked lonely because he had drawn rain and he shouldn't be alone in the rain.  She added herself on the right holding her baby brother, and her older sister on the left.



When you give a 5 year old the camera...

When you give my five year old the camera you usually get images of things at her eye level (in my case, lots of pictures of my posterior), this time I got a lovely image of the car dash.

apple salmon recipe

I made this the other day and it turned out great, my husband called it a grand slam!!  I even ate a second helping and I don't like salmon, my children even ate it, and two asked for seconds.

1 cup basil chopped
1/4 cup onion chives chopped
1 large or 2 small green apples chopped
2 lbs salmon fillets or steaks (mine were skinnless)
1/2 cup olive oil

Heat the oven to 325 or so (less than 350 because you want to cook the fish slowly)
Chop everything except the salmon and mix it into a paste.  Get a nice roaster pan and put some of the basil mix on the bottom.  Put the salmon on top of the basil mix.  Put the rest of the mix on top of the salmon.  Put it in the oven for about 25-30 minutes depending on the thickness of the salmon.
Enjoy!!

weekend fun

This weekend we spent some time relaxing and staying away from the heat outside.  It was so hot that my daughter said that the sidewalk might melt her feet.  Her sister was dubious, melt, really?  The reply, "My feet are a little bit sensitive to boiling hot lava."  Yeah, that's hot.

Then we saw some tumbleweeds blowing away.  My son informed us that they were not tumbleweeds, they are in fact cuddle weeds.  Hmm, I don't think I would like to cuddle with those, they have stickers.  "But, Mom, they look cuddly."  I sit corrected.

Things could be worse, at least I have my health.  "When you lose your health where does it go?  Can you give it to someone else who needs it more?" "I think it goes to your kids, that's why you get so tired right before you have a baby."  Yep, there might be something there.

"I have a good imagination, it's just not quite as out there as my sister's."  Can't add to that.

"If she wasn't such a drama queen, we could actually see the real world, I mean, really, I'm not sure I can stand to live with her and her drama.  It's just overwhelming me."  Right, the person I feel for is their brother, good thing he got another boy to help with this.

"I can't do it, my back hurts, I'm thirsty and I'm tired."  Pause while brother stares at her, his reply came with a huge sigh.  "Yeah, you don't have to like it, you just have to do it.  I'm hydrated too, I need two more drops of water, but I'm still doing it."

"Why is your brother's room so clean, and yours is a mess?"  Eye roll, followed by huge sigh and shrug.  "It's not my fault he can't imagine enough to play with more than one toy at a time."

"A grown up elephant is called a cow."  "Well, just the girls, the boys are called bulls."  "That's dumb, why would the girls and boys be called different things, they are all elephants?"  "Otherwise they would get confused."

"If an elephant wore sunglasses would the other elephants still recognize it?"  Where does she get this stuff?

"Why don't lions need to wear glasses to see?"  "If they had glasses I bet the zebra stripes wouldn't work as camouflage."  Then there's that.

My favorite from the weekend came when my son and I were watching beach volleyball.  "Mom, the Americans won!  I was cheering for the Americans, were you cheering for the Americans?"  "I was, why were you cheering for them?"  "Because they are from our country, we probably know them!"  He was so excited I couldn't tell him we would likely never even be in the same town.

Olympics

I am enjoying watching the olympics, seeing amazing people do amazing things.  What I can't figure out is why my children have absolutely no interest in watching at all.  They watch maybe 5 minutes and then go off to slay a dragon or draw a princess birthday party.  I'm not really complaining, I'm glad they don't want to be couch potatoes but I am slightly perplexed by their total lack of interest.

Fun in school

My 7 year old was working on math today and decided to teach her brother (remember he's 3).  I gave her some simple multiplication problems and let her go.  She taught her brother for about 15 minutes and answered her math problems.  Later when I was working with my son on the work he was doing I asked him if he could find the number 6.  He said, "There is the 6.  Mom, if you have two groups of 6 that's twelve, but one group of 6 is always 6 and it gets lonely." 
Multiplication might be easy for him, but explaining that the numbers don't have feelings might break his heart.

Watermelon

We harvested our first watermelon on Sunday.  We ate it on Monday.  We talked about how yummy it was today.  Here is a picture of our watermelon.  The children are really excited and interested in the garden.