What gets you moving?

If you read my previous post, you'll remember that I created a schedule (well, most of it, still have a few parts of the day to work on). I am so tickled that I am still doing it! I'll be honest, schedules have always been hard for me. I have always been a fly-by-the-seat-of-my-pants kind of gal. One quote kept coming to me, several times in the span of a week or so. It was by Elisabeth Elliot--"Do the next thing." God really spoke to me that I was wasting too much time because I didn't know what the next thing was. The schedule is helping me know what that next thing is!

Last week we pretty much did our schedule until about 2 pm! Praise God!

I love worship music, rarely listen to anything not Christian. I have about 17 songs that I work out to on my ipod*. I go through about 5 or 6 in one session. I know I'm going to need a bigger repertoire! My question for you--what's your favorite exercise or work music? Any songs that just get you moving?

I think I forgot to tell you about my new ipod. My amazing husband surprised me with a new one (after I lost my pink one! It made it all the way to OH and back and THEN disappeared!). He had it engraved for me! What a sweetheart! If you're reading this, honey, I love you!

More summertime fun

We started our year about 6 weeks or so ago. We have been doing well at it, still tweaking it, but don't we do that all the time! So far we are enjoying our choice of topics and books.

I've started a schedule using Managers of Their Home. I have most of our school time accounted for, just waiting on a couple of books to come in. I have implemented the first 3 hours of the day and it's getting easier. I'm hoping to extend it more this week. I've done from 5:30 am - 8:30 am (quiet time, EXERCISE!, sort and fold laundry, computer time, breakfast, and morning chores for the kids while I shower!). I am feeling like I'm accomplishing so much more in those 3 hours than I did all day before!

I also incorporated some items into a "circle time" structure...we're still working on that. We still need a name for it, as the boys say "circle time" sounds like Kindergarten--any ideas? It consists of many of those subjects I wanted to do, but often pushed til last and then never got to (got any of those?)--poetry, memorization, today in history, oh and Biblical Art of the Day. It's pretty neat, I have it linked to my dashboard (Mac) and it brings up a new piece everyday. When you go to the site, it shows where it came from in bible (cool way to incorporate even more of God's word in our studies!). We're also doing Draw the Proverbs and we are reading Wisdom and the Millers (about Proverbs). A big goal for me this year was to focus on God's word in our school time. For so long, I have skimmed over it, but now I want it to be the main goal in their education. If they don't know and love and fear God, I have not succeeded...

Amidst all this, the kids are still enjoying some downtime and summer fun.

Playing dress-up, not sure what style they're going for...

Want to play a game of I Spy? What do you spy in this picture?

I'll give you a hint: it's white.

Having some fun pool time! Dad is so wonderful to take the kids in the pool in the evenings so I can get some downtime and maybe some work done. What an amazing husband!

Speaking of--here's my sweet husband!

Don't you love the hairdo?

This poor hummingbird was trapped in our garage yesterday, so J used his insect net to capture it and we put it in the butterfly pavillion to feed it. (the red you see is the nectar mix).

Planning for 2009-2010 (Part 2)

Now that I have plans in place for 2009-2010, I am devouring all the sites and books I can find on Charlotte Mason, nature studies, homemaking, and drawing closer to God . I thought I'd share some of the books I'm reading and websites that I'm stalking following and ebooks I've downloaded in this quest. I have found some wonderful books and unit studies and ebooks and nature journals.... WOW! The list goes on and on. I tried to pick some of my favorites. It feels good when your books and sites seem to form an unending circle, they all seem to end up related to one another somehow. It gives you the feeling that God is smiling down at you encouraging you that you are going in the right direction. What a feeling!

I hope you enjoy searching these books and sites. I remember feeling so overwhelmed the first year I tried to incorporate bits and pieces of Charlotte Mason. I was barely dipping my big toe at the time. This year I am ready to DIVE in! I wish I had seen some of these sites early on in my search for simplicity, Charlotte Mason, and a closer walk with God. I hope you're as blessed as I am through these books/sites. (I'm giving links--just remember to COME BACK!)

BOOKS:

A Sane Woman's Guide to Raising a Large Family by Mary Ostyn (This link makes it in both this section and the websites.)

How to Create Your Own Unit Study by Valerie Bendt

Charlotte Mason Study Guide: A Simplified Approach to a "Living" Education by Penny Gardner

Teaching Children: A Curriculum Guide to What Children Need to Know at Each Level Through Sixth Grade by Diane Lopez

Handbook of Nature Study by Amanda Comstock (pretty much every CM site/book talks about this book!)

WEBSITES:

Living a Blessed Life --God has blessed me with Amy, one of my dearest friends. She has a wonderful heart for God and His people. Her blog never ceases to hit it's mark on where God is working in my life!

Owlhaven (Mary Ostyn)

The Pioneer Woman (Great recipes and homemaking, photography, homeschooling, and even some giveaways!)

Copper's Wife and Preschoolers and Peace (on Mondays they review curriculum for different subjects, very CM!)

Katie's Homeschool Cottage (This is where I got our CM insect study.)

Higher Up and Further In

Charlotte Mason in America

Handbook of Nature Study

EBOOKS/Downloads:

Insects: A Unit Study using the Charlotte Mason Method and More (fantastic list of CM books and videos on insects)

Ourdoor Hour Challenges: Nature Study Close to Home (great ideas and easy "worksheet" style nature journal pages to get you started)

Eric Carle bundle (by Grace Bound Books, bought at Currclick)

PS...this post has been saved as a draft since June!  I just noticed it and decided it might be time to publish it!

Ta da--The sunroom is finished!

I can't believe it's basically done.  We've been waiting all summer and it is now useable!  There's a few odds and ends to do like finish the fireplace, decorate, and we haven't touched the half bath at all.

Here it is--the finished sunroom!

The next 2 pictures are from "my" spot on the sofa.  Mama always gets the corner spot!  This is where I hope to spend many snuggly Saturday mornings with the kids, drinking coffee, reading books to them....  (I'm also hoping to spend lots of quiet reading time there too!)

And this is Baba's reaction!  He hasn't seen it in any of the final stage.  He LOVES it!

We have chicks!

The boys have been begging for chickens and my sister's roommate's sister (got that!  LOL) has ducks, chickens, and goats.  She offered us a couple.  The boys each got a cochin bantam/Japanese bantam mix (one hen and one rooster).  I'm not sure what the girls' is...

Shaoey loves on her chick and has been carrying it around nonstop!   Jacob even came to me this morning telling me that Shaoey was in her room reading to her chick.  How sweet!

The person who gave us the chicks also gave us a dozen eggs to try.  They are tiny!  We boiled them for breakfast.  They definitely had more of a flavor to them than the store bought ones.  

I called another dear friend who's children raised quail.  They had an old rabbit hutch style cage that they're letting us use.   It is in need of some fixin' up, but that's part of the fun.  The boys spent all morning taking off the old chicken wire and scrubbing it down with steel wool.  What an amazing difference (you can see the difference on the door--the top and right have been cleaned--much better!).  Troy's going to pick up some new hinges and chicken wire to finish fixing it up.  The chicks should be in their new home by the weekend!

We also had some visitors this morning.  The boys wanted to "take them out," but Shaoey wouldn't hear of it!  

Then and now... 3 years later

On July 25, 2006, we saw the face of our sweet Xi Duo for the first time.  We had been logged in for a couple months and in June we had made the decision to switch to the Waiting Child program.  I remember our agency posting that they had received unexpected referrals.  Their post said that there were only 4 referrals and 100 families on the list and to not be surprised if you didn't get a call.  I remember standing in the kitchen visiting with my Aunt Rose when the phone rang.  I saw AWAA come up on caller ID and just thought there was a question about our special needs application.  Never in my WILDEST dreams did I think that would be THE day!  Allison asked how I was doing and we made a bit of small talk and then she popped the question--they had the file of a little girl andthey wanted to know if we were interested in seeing it...HER.  I was laughing and crying and beside myself with joy!  When I got off the phone with Allison  (saying yes we wanted to see her file!), I called Troy.  I was crying to the point that he thought something was wrong or someone had died!  

I was finally able to get it out that we had a daughter!!! 

 I emailed the file to his office manager's email and we both opened it.  

This is what we saw....

Our beautiful baby girl!  We just knew that she was ours.  

These pictures were taken in April of 2006, just 2 weeks after her lip repair  surgery.  

She was now just 2 weeks shy of her first birthday...

After what seemed like years, but was really 4 months, we held our girl for the first time.

Our first family of 5 photo!

And NOW--

Our beautiful,

sweet,

smart,

dramatic,

and silly~

Princess Shaoey!

We cannot imagine our life without her.  She has brought so much love, laughter, and joy into our lives.  She truly is our Xiduo~much happiness.  We praise God for bringing her into our lives and knowing what we need even when we don't know it ourselves.

Our "surprise referral girls"... Lucy, Shaoey, and AnnaClaire (the 4th one was a little boy who was adopted a few months after our girls)

If you're interested in finding out more about our journey of a lifetime to Shaoey, check out our adoption blog www.journeytoshaoey.com

Catching up on our summer

Where has the summer gone?  I am behind on posting pictures from our trip as I sort of deleted my operating system on my new Mac...  :-(  I have to go back and download pics again!  But I have uploaded pictures of what we've been doing since we got home.  We are back at "school," it's TOO hot to do much of anything else.  If we're going to be inside, we may as well make the most of our time!  

The Princess all dressed up...to go grocery shopping?

I spent quite a bit of time cleaning out our homeschool shelves. 

Since we started back to school, we have started doing more nature study and nature walks.  Connor chose to draw an oak leaf he found and Jacob and I decided to photograph items of interest to us.  We saw some orange flowers up the tree and since we've been studying insects (and have studied hummingbirds in the past), we were able to discuss the shape of the flowers and what type of creatures might like them!  I love when it all flows together.   We also photographed some vine growing on our back pine tree to study later.

We went to BLR for a weekend.  Our sunroom is almost finished out there.  It should be done by Tuesday of this coming week!  We're not doing the bathroom yet, we just want to be able to move furniture into the room and use it.  We still sit out there sometimes, but not as comfortable on outside chairs.  Here the girls are pretending to have babies in their tummies!  Too cute!  Shaoey loves to talk about her birthmom.  Gives me goosebumps to think my grandbabies will be Chinese!  To think of how we've changed the look of our family tree is amazing to me!

How often do you catch a picture of brothers NOT fighting, wrestling, or otherwise hurting themselves or someone else?  I had to capture this one on camera!

Sweet Shuangshuang...she loves to pretend she's a ballerina and it just tickles my heart every time.  She is so adorable!

Ben and Me

(or should I say Jacob and Me?)

Shaoey, Shuangshuang, and LingLing (Shaoey's gerbil)

What a ham!

I have been in a season of seeking God's will for our stuff.  I know, I should always be in that season!  I truly feel like He's working in a big way in our lives.  I don't know what that will look like, but I know that stuff is not making me feel good.  It is draining and creates stress.  I never thought I'd say this, but I envy people who live in a smaller home with less stuff.  I know that's probably hard to understand, but all I can say is that God has really been pruning my heart and my stuff.  DH was down and out with a horrible virus this past weekend and I went to town on our house!  I went through the pantry, the spices, the utility room cabinets, my closet, the bathroom cabinets...you name it.  I was on a tear!  Here is just part of what I gave to Good*will, it doesn't include the stuff that wasn't even good enough for that.

Everything on the counter came out of that open cabinet over the girls!  I have NO idea how it all fit!  We couldn't find anything and I was constantly buying more because I couldn't find what I already had.  Anyone else have that problem?  And how many containers of salt does one family really need? And we really don't even use it!  We managed to pare it down nicely, combined bottles, got rid of out of date spices, and then organized it according to use.  Whew!

Miscellaneous pictures of my sweet children  being sweet and silly!

And of course all this work and play makes for some very tired little girls!  SS actually covered herself up on the utility room floor and took a nap.  God knew I needed our fourth to be a napper.  She is all GO until she drops and we all breathe a sigh of relieve and reprieve!

I hope to get back into the swing of it and start posting more often.  I still need to go back and do our NJ reunion and our Cincinnati trip!