Saturday, July 4, 2009

How do you Homeschool on your own while selling your house and moving across country?

The real answer is with Grace of God with a healthy dose of constant prayer and support from family and friends. What that looked like daily is still to fresh and raw for me to get into right now. I have not blogged steadily for months now because I was faced with one of the biggest challenges of my adult life. In the last six months I have completed the following:

  • Packed up my spouse to live 1500 miles away
  • Homeschooled as a single parent
  • Suffered from stomach virus with kid (oh ..that is a story)
  • Decluttered and staged our primary residence for sale in a slow market
  • Sold said home in under 14 days!!!!!!
  • Nurtured my son through the turmoil of moving and missing his father
  • Dealt with less than honest contractors
  • Uprooted my son from everything and everyone he knows to a new face pace environment
  • Had one ER visit because of stress attack
  • Learned that another close family member is living through a life threatening disease
  • DS graduated from Kindergarten
  • Prayed with five friends who have lost jobs, homes and businesses
  • Moved the entire family from Central Texas to Washington DC metro
  • Moved into a new home, with a new climate

Bless the military moms who do this every day with multiple kids because there were days when I didn't know if I could take just one more thing. I wasn't my best a lot of days because I don't ask for help like I should. There are days when I wasn't the best mom or wife, sometimes I yelled or cried or both. Some days I could not see beyond the next thing to do on the very long and every growing "To Do" list. There were days when the look on my child's face …begging me to spend some time with him cut my soul, but I had to get things done for all of us. But God sent his angels and his grace.

People just helped where they could. Packed boxes, came over and played with ds or just listened to me on the phone. Through it all I learned to praise God and understand that I can't do it all, that's His job. I learned a lot about myself and a lot about what is important. In the coming months I will share some of that but right now we are just enjoying life as a family.

So you are now all caught up. Just in time to start planning for the next school year.


Happy 4th of July



For those keeping count our country is 233 years old today.




Saturday, June 20, 2009

Change is good....





Can you guess what these places have in common?

Sunday, May 24, 2009

Make Way For Ducklings....Part 5

Life hatched right outside our front steps in our neighbors yard.








Saturday, May 23, 2009

100 Days

My primary reason for creating this blog was to capture our first "official" year of homeschooling. It would be a way to have an electronic dairy of our work and share that with others. It has been an amazing journey learning how to blog and meeting fellow bloggers. It has fulfilled the primary function as a record keeping tool. As I was scrolling through my entries over the last year I was shocked how much work we have done in our first year. This blog helps me appreciate how far we have come in our homeschooling journey.


Over the last 100 days I have not been updating as frequently as I use to because real life demands have left me with very little if any free time. Those who know me personally can testify to the life changing challenges God has presented to our family. I have been documenting those changes offline and will share them later as life slows down. I praised God for his mercy and blessings through it all.

The core lessons from the last 100 days are that:

  1. God is faithful.
  2. Change is constant.

I have gained so much from this experience and will be forever changed by it. My prayers at the beginning of the year were to become more a woman of faith, strengthen my marriage, help me appreciate what I have and become a better parent. Granny always said "God will answer all prayers, but not the way YOU want them answered." All of those have been strengthened, flex and stretched to the point of almost breaking. But we are still here and doing great.

At this 100 day mark I just want celebrate being here!

Saturday, April 25, 2009

FIAR: Katy and the Big Snow Lapbook






Lapbook Resources

Homeschool Share

The Homeschool Mom (THM)

Enchanted Learning


Friday, April 24, 2009

Lapbook In Progress- Do Unto Otters (A book About Manners)


While searching for a a book on manners we found this little treasure. TS loves, loves this book. He started reading it on the way home from the library and has read it everyday for a week. It makes him laugh and think.

I am working on turning this into a FIAR lapbook type project.


Laurie also published an Amazon.com Exclusive: E-mail "Otter-quette" from Laurie Keller




Video


Thursday, April 23, 2009

FIAR: Night of The Moonjellies Lapbook





Lapbook Resources

Homeschool Share

The Homeschool Mom (THM)

Enchanted Learning