Teamwork...

Today I'm appreciating the way my children interact when they are working together to accomplish a common goal.

Today it was "catch the cat".

I had to laugh at the way they drew up a plan and then discussed it thoroughly. They each had position titles and watchposts. They started off with the sly, let's trick her tactics:

And when she caught on to that, they decided to bring out the big guns. Yes, literally the big guns. (That's where I had to go from quiet observer to full fledged: NO WAY, YOU CAN'T SHOOT THE CAT!)

I had to admire their determination to somehow trap the cat and take notes on Cleo's behavior. And I don't think it was my imagination that Cleo seemed to be playing along. She happens to be one smart kitty. She found a safe hiding place amidst the mountain of dirty laundry.

In the middle of all the chaos. I silently thanked God for the children He gave to me, and how lucky I am that I get to see so much of their daily interaction with each other. Don't get me wrong. It seems that we're breaking them up more than not, but when they do play together I get a glimpse of the strong bonds that they will have for the rest of their lives.

Christmas 2011

Now that the holidays are over we have less of this

And more of this

We had a wonderful Christmas that allowed for many hours of family and friends. We are so blessed!

Homeschool favorite #2...

My plan is to start highlighting some of my favorite things about homeschooling. There are many. Some days they are hard to remember. But they are a few of the things that make this homeschooling "adventure" a wonderful experience. So without further ado, homeschool favorite #2:

Flexibility...
It's a wonderful thing. Days can be made to order just by rearranging our subjects. We can take field trips when we want to and not have it disrupt too much. If one of the kids isn't feeling great we can work with that too. I just find that in this fast paced world it's nice to be able to be flexible with our days, and that's why I greatly appreciate this aspect of homeschooling.

Unfortunately, I couldn't take a picture of flexibility so I'll post a cute picture of my kids in their costumes.

Homeschool favorite #1...

I have many homeschool favorites. They are the things that remind me that the days of craziness are worth it. One of my FAVORITE favorites is this:

 I just love the first squiggly letters that their chubby little hands write. It's like cuteness on paper. I also love how their face lights up when you praise them and tell them that this one is most definitely a "sticker paper".(as they ALL are) It's one of the little things that goes a long way to encourage this homeschool momma.

Don't judge a Facebook page by it's cover...

A few short years ago everyone didn't have Facebook. Only the friends we called or emailed knew what was really happening on a daily basis. Only our close friends or the relatives at our family reunions saw all of the pictures from our family vacations, or of our children's birthday parties. Who would have ever even thought about taking a picture of our trip to the grocery store? But now we do. With this new "Facebook world" we feel compelled to put "it" all out there for everyone to see. Unfortunately, for most of us the way we're represented on Facebook is the way we're perceived these days.

I find myself sitting at the computer for minutes at a time trying to come up with a good status often to just erase it all and scrap the idea. What am I trying to say? Who am I trying to impress? What idea am I trying to convey? Who do I want to laugh at my funniness? Of course I don't want to constantly be a Debbie Downer type of person. I want my statuses to be positive even when I'm having a bad day. I wouldn't want anyone to know all that about me, right?

Knowing I'm not the only one who has this issue, why do I find myself comparing my life to the pictures and statuses of others? I'm sure these people had a wonderful time on their vacation, but was it any better than the time I had on mine? Did I just determine all that based on a beautiful picture of the Grand Canyon? Did that status I read just make me feel less blessed than they are? At times that has happened, but today as I read through Psalm 144 in my quiet time I decided that I'm wrong in that. My life is overflowing with blessings and happiness, and if the only snapshot I take of it is in my head then that's all I need. A Facebook status is so temporary, it changes day to day, and for some hour to hour, so why would I judge my life by someone else's information? I shouldn't. Our world is ever changing and social networking isn't going anywhere so it's important to keep our perspective on these things. For now, Happy Facebooking!

Where did the time go?

Looks like maybe, just maybe, I'm not quite the blogger that I think I am. Once school started I seemed to have vanished into the piles of papers and workbooks. Well, I'm back and can't wait to catch you (and by you, I mean my 3 loyal followers) up on a few things that I have going...Until then, happy day!

July 4th weekend...

A great Summer weekend can be equal to a week's vacation, in my humble opinion. This past weekend was filled with family, friends, fireworks, and great food.

We started the weekend at the pool....(my crazy brothers)

Then we moved on to fireworks at a picnic with family and friends. There will, however, be no pictures of that since I was not quite up to par with the fireworks mode on my camera. Every picture I took had a crazy bright flash and everyone was squinting in all of the pictures...even the fireworks paled in contrast to my ridiculously bright flash!! Ugh!!


Next, we moved onto "Lobsterfest" at my parents' house. My mom happens to celebrate a July 4th birthday so she chose lobster as her dinner. Yum! Yum!

And we finished the weekend with a family diving contest. Sigh! I kept my dignity yet another year and simply organized the whole event. (or at least that's how I'm putting it for the sake of this blog post!!! :)
All in all it was a great Independence Day weekend. Lots of memories were made. We are so blessed to be a part of this great country...

And what can celebrate that more than a weekend spent with loved ones and a good case of "goggle face":