And So it Goes....

Hello! It's been a while, I know. After a lot of thought, we decided a few months ago to shut down our blog. Part of it has to do with privacy to our children as they get older. Part of it has to do with the fact that we no longer need the blog to update our ministry supporters. We also used the blog pretty regularly to share photos with our family when we lived over 2000 miles away. Now that we are closer to our families, we no longer need the blog as a means to update them. After a lot of thought and discussion we realized we just aren't a family who blogs.

My one hesitation in closing down the blog was that I didn't want to lose all the information we had already stored on it. Our blog did serve as a running scrapbook/journal for the past four years. It was easy to remember what we did, and where we were, because every blog entry had a time and date stamp. I'd love it if scrapbooking was so easy! Over the past few days I've been working on a site called blurb.com and discovering how to turn our blog into a book. What a novel idea! I've had a great time turning our blog into a scrapbook to keep.

The only thing I've been having trouble with is figuring out what to do with our stored videos on the site since they won't transfer to a book. At some point I suppose I need to download them to our hard drive, and until that happens, our site will still be up and running.

If you want to connect with us, or find out what we're up to, you can always reach us on Facebook. Thanks for reading!

Until later,
Anne

I Went Out of Town this Weekend and Came Home to Find This....

Adam is quite proud of his work, although Alex did help some.

Mary Pope Osborne

Mary Pope Osborne (at times along with her sister or husband) is the author of the ever popular Magic Tree House books. Brother and sister Jack and Annie, from Frog Creek, Pennsylvania travel around the world, or back in history, in a magic tree house. They've had many adventures with pirates, vikings, soldiers, dinosaurs, penguins, ghosts, fairies, mummies, etc. The list goes on and on. Alex began reading the series when he was in kindergarten, and we quickly became big fans. He has read almost every book in the series. Allison has read nearly half of the 43 books (soon to be 44) in the series.

Last spring we became aware of many other of Osborne's books which I highly recommend. They have become excellent resources on our homeschooling journey. For instance, there are 22 Research Guides that correlate with the Tree House books, providing fun facts behind the fiction. The Research Guides provide information about the times, places, and cultures Jack and Annie visit on their Magic Tree House adventures.

But, our most favorite of her books have been Osborne's retellings of classic tales. She has retold the Odyssey in five books that are definitely worth the read. She has collections of Greek Myths, Norse Myths, Mermaid Tales, and American Tall Tales, of which all have become a huge hit during our school day. (This year I have discovered we can renew books from our library up to 20 times!) She has retold the story of Christ with masterpieces of art. And, of course, she has done an excellent job retelling Bible stories which is worth reading to your child more than once!

My Kids Went to Narnia Today.

Sierra wanted to stay home.

The 'bowing to Aslan' picture was all their idea. I really wish I could have gotten them outside for the perfect shot since the snow is 'thawing', but Sierra only gave us about 30 seconds in that lion's costume.

Regifted?

Have any of you ever tried this trick? If you figure out how it works, tell me. I'm stumped.....

http://www.regiftable.com/regiftingrobinpopup.html

Organize Me!

When we first began homeschooling, we knew that we'd have to organize our home to fit our new lifestyle. Fortunately our home here in Cleveland has plenty of space and several different rooms that could serve as a classroom. Last fall we began brainstorming the pros and cons of each room and what we might need to organize our supplies. We discussed buying some new desks, a new table, new shelves, etc. What we finally decided to do was to wait. Truthfully, we didn't know what room would work best since we never homeschooled before. Before we made a major purchase, and began rearranging furniture, I thought I should try a few things in a few different rooms to see what we prefer.

I settled on the dining room. It has lots of natural light, as well as a decent overhead light fixture. Our dining room table is nice and big, with benches on each side. Each child has a bench, and an entire side to the table. We can easily move to the living room, to sit on the couches while we read, and then transition quickly back to the table to complete some seat work. I've positioned a chair at the head of the table where I can instruct the kids from either side.

It really has served us well, and I'm glad we didn't spend a fortune on something that wouldn't have been so sufficient. But, we did have one problem. By having all our school supplies at the dining room table, often times dinner would roll around and our dining room would look like this....

Or this...So, we knew we needed a little something to help us contain all our supplies. One Friday in December, we had had enough of dining in the classroom, so we took a trip to the Pittsburgh Ikea. We found the perfect bookshelf to place under the window that would neatly assist us in turning the dining room into the classroom and back again. Each subject has its own box, and everything is fairly well organized so we can access it quickly.

My two favorite parts...
1. The entire set up was less than $100.
2. With simple Ikea furniture, the kids assembled it themselves.
Here they are. Proud of their work.We're off to a great start this winter, mostly because we're so organized!

We Have Snow!

Lots and lots and lots of snow.

Bitty Baby

Even with the addition of Chrissa, Allison still adores her first American Girl Doll.

Let's Read

You may remember me mentioning our Christmas reading challenge here. Here's a look at our final tree.....

Pictures with Santa....

....I mean Grampa.

Allison's Birthday Gift

Along with our Disney trip, Allison received Chrissa (an American Girl doll) for her 6th birthday. She picked out the doll 10 months ago, but we told her she had to wait until her birthday before she received it. She even survived two trips to the Boston American Girl store while leaving empty handed. She has concluded that it was worth the wait. You can see a video of her opening her gift below.

Chrissa

Board Break

Tae Kwon Do

Sometimes I wonder what I'm going to do with all the photos and videos we've collected from TKD.

More Disney Pictures....

Happy Birthday, Allison!

We spent Allison's 6th birthday at Disney World thanks to a Christmas gift from my mom. I have many more pictures to post and will do so after I get a little organized. On the 4th, the day of her birthday, Orlando had some torrential downpours and very cold (for Florida) weather. However, we managed to keep Allison looking most beautiful until after she dined with the princesses.

It's Christmas Music Time....

...although we've been secretly listening to the holiday carols for weeks now.

The Greatest Thing on the Internet....

I've been meaning to blog about this for awhile. Let's face it, there's a lot of amazing things on the Internet (dancing cats, dancing babies, teenage hijinks, etc.), but several weeks ago a fellow homeschool mom suggested I check out e-mealz. Trying to find the time to grocery shop and meal plan on top of homeschooling has been a new challenge for me. However, for only $5.00 a month, some kind person will provide me with my meals and my shopping list for the week at the grocery store of my choice. Unbelievable. And, totally worth the $1.25 a week. I used to do a decent job of shopping the circulars, meal planning and hitting the sales at the local grocery stores once a week. However, now I find that task a little daunting, especially with my children accompanying me. Now, thanks to e-mealz, I'm making a weekly trek to Wal-Mart bright and early on Saturday mornings. I'm buying my groceries for the week, and we're saving a ton of money in the process.

FYI - the family plan serves 6, and it is a large 6 meals. I've actually reduced the plan to only 4 meals weekly and found that that is an adequate amount of food for our family.

Let's Read

We've begun a holiday reading contest. We made this tree and posted it on our living room wall. Between now and the end of the year, both Alex and Allison will receive an ornament to hang on the tree for each book they finish reading. But, here's the catch....Allison has to read chapter books (early reader types, like Magic Tree House books), and Alex's books have to be a little more challenging than early reader books. As you can see, they've embraced the contest well, and we only began on Wednesday. Alex's ornaments are red. Allison's are yellow. We'll update you more as the weeks progress.

Field Trip Friday

We've had simply marvelous weather again, so Friday we declared it zoo day!


This tree kangaroo has a baby joey in her pouch. You can see him peeking out to say hello!