'Tis the Season For . . .

Christmas parties,

making gingerbread houses,

and cookies,

and reflecting on Santa Claus.

After attending our church Christmas party a couple of weeks ago, which featured an appearance by Santa Claus, all the kids were talking about who it was that was "dressed up" like Santa.  G. Diddy came home and asked me "Mom, is Santa real."  Being a cautious mother I answered with a question (He is only 7), "What do you think?"  His answer, "Yes, but you'll tell me when I get older if he's not,  so I know if I need to buy my kids presents or not, right?"  Luckily my back was to him at the time because I had to try hard to stifle my laughter at his too cute answer.  That answer so beautifully captures the innocence and belief of children, and I have been enjoying it over and over for the past couple of weeks.

Ringing in the Season

This weekend was a busy, but festive one for our family.  Thursday, H. Man, I. Mac, their Grandma and I rode the train down to Salt Lake to see the Mormon Tabernacle Choir Christmas Concert.

It was 10 degrees outside when we arrived downtown and the walk to the Conference Center was quite cold and miserable.  The performance was well worth it though.

The guest singer for the evening was Natalie Cole, and the guest narrator was David McCullough.  They both did a fabulous job.

The boys favorite part of the performance though was the Chrismas Around the World number.  They performed six different Christmas songs from around the world with dancers in costumes from those countries, and then at the finale they pulled a giant Christmas Tree out of the floor with a huge cable.  It really was breathtaking.

 

My favorite number was an organ solo of Good King Winceslas performed by Richard Elliot.  He started out with a slow, classic rendition of the song, and then on the second verse he began to weave it together with selections from the Nutcracker Suite.  It was amazing.  I am hoping that a video of it comes out on U-Tube soon so I can see his hands and feet up close.  It didn't seem possible for one man to produce so much sound at once.

The evening was truly magical.  Music is one of my favorite parts of the Christmas Season.  Nothing seems to capture the spirit and magic of this time of year like music can.  It was a great way to hasten the Christmas spirit for each of us.

Friday, Saturday and Sunday were each filled with activities and celebrations as well, but I will have to post more on those events later,  as we are off to do more celebrating today.  I love this time of year!

What I've been up to lately . . .

I was realizing today that it has been a month and a half since my last post.  I used to apologize when I went a while without posting.  I have now come to terms with the fact that I am an inconsistent blogger, and I'm okay with that.

One of the things that consumed all of my free time last month was the fact that I got it into my head to make our family Christmas Stockings this year.  Now this may not seem like much of a feet to those of you who are blessed with the gift of "craftiness".  However, my crafting resume consists of . . . well, nothing.  I have attempted a few craft projects that were sponsored at church activities, but they always turned out as complete failures, so I never saved a single thing.  I have never sewn anything, unless you count tying quilts, which I have done a few times (with help).  I am just not blessed with this gift, nor do I usually have a desire to be (which may account for some of my deficiency in the area).  So why then was I possessed with the bug to make Christmas Stockings this year; 7 of them?

For one thing, our old stockings got ruined by a flood in our basement 2 summers ago, and for another we needed a new stocking for Little C. and for the new baby that is on the way.  I tried to find stockings last year, but have you ever tried to find 6 (now 7) stockings that match, but have a different design on each one?  I decided last year that it couldn't be done.  At least not in a price range I could stomach.

When I was little my mom made my brothers and I stockings with personalized felt designs on them.  I always loved my stocking and thought it would be neat if I could do the same thing for my kids, but I never got up the gumption to try it until this year.  I guess the old saying is true, necessity is the mother of invention.  I scoured the internet and found several different stocking designs that I liked and thought that I could possibly recreate (mind you, none of these came with patterns).  I then had my kids pick their favorite.  Next, I traced the designs off the computer.  Then I begged the help of my mother, who luckily is a gifted seamstress (unluckily she didn't pass any of it on to me).  We headed to JoAnn's to try to find the right materials to make them all come together.  After several hours of work, here are the fruits of my labors . . .

     

It was actually kind of fun bringing my ideas to fruition.  There were some set backs, and none of them turned out as perfect as they were in my mind, but I made them with my own two hands, so I feel a sense of accomplishment in that.  The baby's stocking is all cut out and ready to assemble, but I ran out of steam, and my back couldn't stand hunching over the kitchen table any longer, so it will have to wait for next year.  I realize they are not professional looking, but the kids sure were excited when we hung up their stockings this year, and hopefully they will be for years to come . . .

Snow Day!

We started school today, but the prospect of snow was in the air and it was hard to keep the boys on task. They kept running to the window to see if it was snowing yet.  Once the snow started to fall, we of course had to take a break to try to catch some of the first snowflakes of the season.  The snow wasn't sticking yet, so we were able to squeeze in a little more work.  Once the snow started to stick though, I knew there was no use resisting.  I could make them sit and listen, but their minds were on the snow outside, not on nouns and adjectives.  Why fight it?  We called it a snow day, donned our winter gear and headed outside for some of this . . .

There's nothing quite like the first snowfall.  I'm glad we could take the time to enjoy it.

Another Reason to Homeschool

Whenever I get into a conversation with someone about the fact that I homeschool our children, I inevitably hear something along the lines of, "Oh, I could never homeschool, it would be too much work." or "too overwhelming", or "I'm not organized enough." I've always thought those arguments were irrelevant, not because they weren't true, but because the benefits of homeschooling far outweigh the price we have to pay to do it. Today, however, I had a conversation that changed my perspective completely.

I was talking to a friend who has nine children, seven of whom are in a K-9 charter school, the other two are in High school. She was expressing the stress she experiences daily trying to help her children complete all of their homework. She described a typical evening having to stay up until midnight or later trying to correct problems, or answer questions, or generally keeping her children on task. Now, I probably see the pros of homeschooling and cons of public schooling a little more exaggerated than some, but I have often thought that homeschooling would be a little more difficult for someone with 7+ kids. It dawned on me however, as she was talking, that rather than making her life harder, homeschooling would actually make her life simpler. Yes, she would be responsible for teaching her children every day, but she is already doing that.  What she wouldn't have to do anymore is; worry about the expectations of 9 different teachers with completely different teaching styles, help her children to remember to finish their homework each day, get all nine children, up, fed, dressed, with lunches in hand, and back packs filled with all the necessary paperwork by between 7:00 and 7:45 each morning (after having stayed up until midnight the night before), not to mention all the social and emotional dramas that have to be dealt with on a regular basis because of events at school.

Granted, I only have 4 children to worry about at the moment, but we wake up the kids at 6:30 each morning so they can exercise, eat, dress, practice piano, and read their scriptures before we start school at 8:30. We then "do school" until noon, when we eat lunch and have an hour break. Some days, if we have had a late start, or a heavier load, we will then do some work from 1-2, or we will go to the library, or on a nature walk. We clean the house together from 2-3 and then we are all free to do whatever we like for the rest of the day. No "homework" (we've been doing that all day),  no lessons to practice, nothing but play or reading (for fun), or riding bikes, or drawing, or whatever we like. Fridays we don't do our "normal school". That is our field trip, or service project day so we have even less to worry about then. We are looking forward to adding another child to the mix in a few months, but rather than worrying about how we can keep homeschooling with one more little one, I realize that as our family grows, our kids age and are more able to work independently on their own education, and help more with their younger siblings and other duties around the house. Rather than segregating them from their family all day long, they work with each other all day and learn valuable lessons from doing so.

I will admit that my house is probably messier at 2:00 p.m. than it would likely be if I had no children filling it up all day long, but think of all the fun, and love, and learning (mine and theirs) I would miss out on if they weren't. There is a peace and joy that I get from homeschooling that I can't imagine I could find if my kids were only my own from 4:00 p.m. until bedtime every day. I still think the benefits of homeschooling far outweigh the price we have to pay to do it, but I am beginning to see that the price we have to pay may not be too high after all.

Our Homeschool Week

We completed our 7th week of school this week and I have to say it was one of the most productive weeks we have ever had.  We took the week off last week since we were half way through our semester to clean house and so that I could can our tomatoes and other vegetables before it froze.

Maybe the break was just what we needed to give us the energy to accomplish what we did this week.  We have made a curriculum switch this year.  Because I am having a baby in March I felt like I needed something that spelled it all out for me and the kids a little more this year.  I decided to give Sonlight a try because they are very literature rich and seem to mesh well with the Charlotte Mason approach to education.  We have been very happy with the move so far.

I. Mac and G. Diddy are working together doing Core 1+2 which is a one year condensed introduction to world history.  It has been fun working together with the boys and we have been learning a lot together.  Here is some of what we learned about this week.

History: We read about the Mycenaeans, the Trojan War, and about the Canaanites and Philistines.  The boys loved the story of the Trojan horse.  The book talked about how no one is certain whether the story is fact or fiction.  I. Mac was so interested to know that he said he couldn't wait to get to Heaven so he could ask Heavenly Father if it really happened or not. . .

Geography: Our focus this week was on Southern Europe.  I. Mac particularly is getting really good at locating different countries on the map.  We studied specifically about Albania, Bulgaria, and Greece.  It is sad to realize how little I know.  The nice thing is that through homeschooling I am gradually filling in the gaps in my own education.  I didn't know that Albania and Bulgaria were communist countries from the 40's until the 90's.  It is always interesting to note that when a country becomes communist, one of the first things they do is outlaw religion.  It also baffles me that there are so many countries who have tried the communist/socialist "experiment" throughout history and in every case it has ended in complete failure.  The majority of the citizens are reduced to abject poverty and a few elite live in luxury.  Why is America so anxious to give away our freedoms and try this same failed system again?  It's chilling to think about.

Literature:  We read a couple of Aesop's Fables this week.  Our favorite was probably "The Travelers and The Purse".  We also read two poems by Robert Louis Stevenson.  He is one of our favorite poets.  We finished reading Ginger Pye this week.  This was deffinately a favorite.  The boys fell in love with Jerry and Rachel and Uncle Bennie and were anxious for the safe return of Ginger.  It was one of those books that we were sad to see end.

Independent Reading:  G. Diddy and I. Mac have both been working on lessons in The Writing Road to Reading, using Teaching Reading at Home as a guide for their spelling and reading instruction.  For those of you who don't know, I. Mac is dyslexic and has struggled so much with learning to read.  It has been hard for him, but we just switched to WRtR this year and he seems to be improving in leaps and bounds.  They finished List H this week.  I. Mac began reading The Matchlock Gun for his "Free Reading"  and G. Diddy is reading The Big Balloon Race.  The fact that I. Mac is reading a book like this is proof that his reading is improving dramatically.  I think he is really feeling good about his progress too.

H. Man is doing Core 6 this year.  It is the first year of a two year study of world history.  It has been nice, because so far he and his brothers have been studying the same time period.  Here is some of what he accomplished this week.

History: He study about Ancient Greece, their alphabet, the olympics, their Gods, and about life in Athens vs. Sparta.  Athens and Sparta interested him most.  He decided he definitely would not have wanted to live in Sparta and started a new game of Civilization where he was the city of Athens.  He is also reading an Historical Fiction called Theras and His Town, about an Athenian boy who is taken to Sparta after his father is lost at war and has to adjust to life as a Spartan.

Current Events:   I have started having him read a news magazine with the intent of having him do a weekly report on something of local, national, or international significance.  The problem was that too much of it wasn't making sense to him because there were so many terms he didn't recognize.  We are a politically active family and have many discussions about government and politics, and H. Man is a very bright boy, so I assumed he just knew the things we knew.  But we finally picked an article to read and discuss together, and I had to explain things like ACLU, NRA, McCain-Feingold, Labor Unions, etc.  Even if no reports are written and all we do is read and discuss an article each week, I can tell this will be a very fruitful endeavor.

Literature:  H. Man and I are reading together a couple of pages of poetry each day from Favorite Poems Old and New.  We are also reading God King, which is about a young Egyptian Pharaoh who has to escape from Egypt because there are people in his government trying to kill him.  This is during the Kushite Dynasty when the Assyrians are at the hight of their power and are taking over all of the surrounding countries.  It has been a fascinating read.  This is one aspect that I really like about Sonlight. Even though H. Man could easily be reading these books on his own, they schedule Read-Alouds so we have the chance to read and discuss things together.

Math:  He did four lessons in Saxon 7/6.  He does these mostly independently with the D.I.V.E. cd's.

Latin: We are two weeks behind in Latin, so we completed lesson 5 this week.

Writing: He did two assignments in Writing Strands this week.  Writing has always been the one subject  H. Man has resisted, but he successfully completed a creative paragraph this week, and although their was some frustration to begin with, I think he felt a sense of accomplishment once he was finished.

Together as a family, we continue to do our "School Opener"  which consists of reading from the Book of Mormon (we read what is being studied in the LDS seminary for the year), memory work (we are following this memorization program this year and are loving it), and a family read aloud, which right now is The Secret Garden.  Our family read alouds, continue to be one of my favorite aspects of homeschooling.  I think it is the boys' too, because they are constantly trying to make "deals" with me, such as they won't do any schoolwork unless I read another chapter, and other creative attempts to lengthen our time spent reading together.  We also finally got out together on a Nature Walk.  Although I realized yesterday that we forgot to do science this week, it felt good to get as much accomplished as we did.  Now if only all weeks could run as smoothly as this one. . .

Outdoor Hour Challenge: Autumn Series-Cattails

I have been missing Nature Study with the kids, and finally decided we needed to make room for it again in our busy schedule.  We chose to start with the first of Barb's Autumn Series Challenges and study Cattails because I was certain I knew where to find some.  Our search didn't prove to be as prosperous as I had hoped, but we had a wonderful time nonetheless.  We went to one of our favorite nature study locations, our local river trail.

For some reason I was under the impression that I knew just where there was a large patch of Cattail growing.  We got to the spot and there were no cattails just lots of these plants.  I'm not sure what they are, but they are pretty.

We continued up the river, but never did find any cattails.  We saw lots of golden grass,

and these prickly plants,

but no cattails.  We got to a bend in the path where I told the kids we would turn around if we still didn't find any cattails.  There weren't any there, but we did find a little side path that led us right down to the water's edge.

The kids were thrilled.  Skipping rocks is better than cattails any day. . .

Once the boys depleted the supply of skipping-quality rocks, we headed back.  At the very top of the hill, quite a ways from the water, we finally found one small patch of cattails.

Of course we had to take home a souvenir of our find.

All-in-all it was a very rewarding day.  Spending time in the crisp Autumn air, playing with rocks, searching for an elusive treasure (a.k.a. cattails).  What better way is there to spend a beautiful October afternoon?

Wordful Wednesday: Six Little Words

I haven't participated in Wordful Wednesday's for a while, but this one sounded intriguing and fairly simple.  The assignment was to describe your life in six words.  It is a lot harder than you might think to sum up your life in six words, but here's what I came up with:

"Following Christ, treasuring marriage, cherishing motherhood."

If you want to participate, or see what others had to say click here.

Come Listen to a Prophet's Voice

This weekend was the 179th semi-annual conference for The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. We got to spend 10 hours (counting last Saturday's session for the women, and this Saturday's session for the men), being spiritually fed by the leaders of our church. Conference Weekend is always something that I look forward to with anticipation and am sad to see it end. This weekend was no exception. I don't have much time to expound right now, but I just wanted to share a few of my thoughts from this Conference.

There were two over-arching messages that I took from this Conference. The first was the importance of personal revelation from the Lord in our lives. So many of the messages seemed to emphasize our need to learn to receive and rely upon insight from the Holy Ghost. Heavenly Father has given us a marvelous gift to allow us to know His will for us in our lives, and to ultimately help us to return to Him someday. It is vital that we learn how to use it to guide us through our earthly journey. The second main message I left with was the necessity of teaching our children. We can't leave anything to chance in the raising of our children, if we want them to be able to grow up faithful in this increasingly troubled world. The talk by Elder Christofferson in Sunday afternoon's session was one of my favorites. In it he warned us of the need to provide constant daily spiritual experiences for our children. He cautioned that "the adversary is not neutral in his approach with our children" so we can not afford to be neutral in our teachings of our children.

I also thoroughly loved President Thomas S. Monson's Sunday Morning talk. It was all about service. The main message of the Savior's earthly ministry was of love and service. If we are to be true disciples of Him, we must learn to love and serve our fellow-men. Service and love seem to be the legacy of President Monson's life as well. I feel a renewed desire to find ways to serve others around me more often and to help my children to do so as well.

I love conference. I love the opportunity it gives me to gain insight into the areas I need to improve on in my life right now. I love that the "main messages" others received from this conference will be different that what I received because of what the Spirit emphasizes to each of us as the most important things for us to learn and do to help us become what we need to be right now. I love that Heavenly Father still loves and speaks to us and has provided a Prophet to lead His children today as He did in the past. I love the peace and hope I feel as I hear the words of the Lord's chosen servants. I can't wait to re-read and ponder all that was said this weekend. Until then, if you want to listen to it, you can go here.

Lessons From the Garden

School is out! Our whirlwind Family-Reunion trip to Yellowstone is over. I'm officially done teaching piano lessons for the summer! Now that the commotion is settled a bit, it's time to try to organize our crazy life. This week we are focusing on weeding our back-yard gardens. They have been somewhat neglected in this last month's push to get everything done. The kids have been troopers, weeding every morning for an hour or two.

Today was our fourth day working in the yard and with the heat of summer finally arriving, it was a bit harder getting I-mac motivated to work this morning. I had been thinking about how, even though our yard still needs a lot of work, because of the efforts we have made this spring, it looks so much better than it did last year. I thought about how that was like life, we are never perfect, but the more we work at improving, the better we get, and the easier it gets to do what we should. I thought I would entice I-mac to work by asking him to help me think of ways that gardening is like life. Believe it or not, there is little he likes more than philosophizing about life with an interested adult. My enticement worked and he was soon working beside me, enlightening me with his insights into weeds and life. Here are some of the lessons I learned from him today:

1. We are the plants. Like plants, we need good things in our life to help us grow and become what we need to be. Some of those good things include reading the scriptures, praying, going to church and making good choices.

2. Weeds are like sin. When they come into our life they choke out the good things in our life. If we don't get rid of them they will eventually kill us (spiritually speaking). Some weeds (ie. sins) are harder to get rid of than others. It's important to get rid of them when they are little or they can be nearly impossible to get rid of later. Morning glory is easy to pull, but it grows fast and quickly chokes out the plants. I-mac thought this was like t.v. or other things that aren't necessarily sins, but don't really help us to be better. When we do them too much they cover up who we really are and it is hard for us to choose to do the good things we need to grow.

3. Weeding is like repenting. As we repent, we remove the bad things from our life. We can't do the weeding ourselves, we have to turn to the Savior for repentance. He is like the gardener in our life. He fills us with the good, and allows us to get rid of the bad. It is important to get the roots out or the weed will just keep coming back. This is the part of the repentance process where we turn from our sin and promise never to do it again.

4. The soil is like the gospel. Plants in good soil, grow stronger and bigger, and the weeds are easier to get rid of. These are people with the gospel in their life. Plants in poor soil are smaller and the weeds are really hard to pull. These are the people without the gospel.

These are just a few of the ideas that he shared. This kid never ceases to amaze me. He thinks so deeply. He often comes up with things that I never thought of before. What a blessing it is to be taught by our children.