Achoo!! Excuse me.

I've got a little cold, so if you'll please excuse the sneezes and sniffles, I would appreciate it. :) I don't have much on my mind right now (thankfully, because it's pretty stuffy up there). I thought I'd just post some fun pictures of our summer.

Our dear, wonderful friends Mike, Laura, and Rachael came for a visit in August and we went fishing at an uncle's pond. The kids caught their first fish. It was really fun and funny, especially when Rachael chased Andrew's Bumbo seat down the hill and "fished" it out of the water. :) I just had to mention it Rachael! :D





The kids and I also went to a local park a few weeks ago and had so much fun together. It's so nice to be able to take my kids out for a relaxing, albeit hot day at the park. They are usually so good and play really well together (at least in public). ;)













Finally, I wanted to post some pictures of us just being goofy and having fun here at home. Trust me! Every day is not just a happy, fun-filled, playful, laughter-filled, relaxing kind of day around here, but we're working on it. ;D I also threw in a couple pictures of our favorite (and only) dog, Bela. If you're wondering why I spelled it wrong, don't worry. I intentionally spelled her name this way because that's the Portuguese way to say "beautiful". I did this to remind us of our sweet relatives who are missionaries in Brasil. :)




Well, that's all I know tonight!

In case you were wondering . . .

I have not been sitting around twiddling my thumbs pretending like I'm too busy to blog. ;) This is what I've been doing.

I almost lost a couple kids in these stacks of homeschool junk! Um, I mean highly enthralling, educational, and intellectually stimulating homeschool manipulatives and resources. :O

Well, I finally got it all sorted and restacked in a different location! :)

Seriously, I am so relieved to have some order again! We have had four very successful homeschool days, one zoo day, and one tomato-picking, in-touch with nature day (aka. "throw as many rotten tomatoes in the mud puddle as you can before Mama tells you to stop because you're splashing mud all over yourselves and your little sister day"). Bleh!

The kids really seem to be enjoying school so far. We start the school day with Bible-reading, verse-quoting (Proverbs 1:7 this week), hymn-learning (Blessed Assurance), state and capital drilling, Spanish vocab drilling, and reading a quick story for character-building. All this takes about forty minutes. We then work on copywork while listening to some classical music. Right now our poem for copywork is "The Moon" by Robert Louis Stevenson. It's a cute little poem. :) We're trying a different approach to math and I must admit that I'm a little nervous about how it's going to work out. It's ProfB's Math for the Conceptual Learner or something like that. I don't have it in front of me right now and can't pull the name of it out of my brain.

While the older kids are doing copywork, Hannah colors, Andrew plays or naps, and Benjamin and I work on writing his name and identifying letters and their sounds. He is so excited to get the one-on-one with me. I forget how much it means to each child to get individual attention and not just be one of the kids. :/ I really need to work on this!

We're also doing Apologia's Exploring Creation with Astronomy this year. Jesse is pretty interested in learning more about space and identifying constellations and planets. We've never put much emphasis on this aspect of science. We're all about animals and habitats! :) This should be a fun learning experience for all of us. We are also using the Simply Charlotte Mason History/Bible/Geography module this year. I am really excited about this! I don't know about you, but I never really attached Biblical history with "real" history. They always seemed so separate. This study shows how history began in Genesis and continues on to today. I'm looking forward to seeing what I missed when I was in school!

The only other things I can think of that we do are Jesse and Abigail individually read to me so I can correct any pronunciation problems and I read to all the children from the "Little House" series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. We LOVE these books and have trouble stopping at the end of each chapter. :)

Well, that was long-winded! I'll try to let you know when we have our next adventure. And how do I know there'll be another adventure? Because, when you have this many little kids, every day is an adventure! ;D