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why I am still homeschooling..

Written by Joy
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This week, I have been asked several times why we have chosen to homeschool.    Well, we didn’t start out homeschooling the kids from the beginning.  Our oldest went to public school until the 4th grade.  There were a few issues and our only option at that time was to homeschool him.  However, after several years of homeschooling him and our oldest daughter, we quickly came to realize that this is what God had intended for us to do all along. Since then, we have added two more children to our family and homeschooling journey.

Some of my favorite verses about teaching your children come from Deuteronomy.  You see, homeschooling is not all about reading, writing and arithmetic.  Yes, those academic courses will help my children get a job in the future.  My goal though is to teach my kids to love God with all their heart, soul and might.  As Christians, we are to glorify God through it all, no matter what.  This is our job as parents and what is my most important goal ever in teaching our children.

Deuteronomy 6:4-9

4 “Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 5 You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might. 6 And these words that I command you today shall be on your heart. 7  You shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise. 8 You shall bind them as a sign on your hand, and they shall be as frontlets between your eyes. 9  You shall write them on the doorposts of your house and on your gates.

We are beginning our 10th year of homeschooling and I will have a 9th, 3rd and 2nd grader.  We graduated one from high school last year, who is now attending a local community college.  As of right now, we will continue homeschooling until God tells us to do differently.  While it wasn’t our intention to begin with, we are very intentional with our homeschool now.

2012, homeschooling, , , , ,

saying yes to the little things..

Written by Joy
8 Comments
saying yes to the little things..

My kids.  I love them with all my heart.  Will do most anything for them.  Lately though, I have caught myself saying no to them a lot.  You can tell by the looks on their faces, that hurts them.  This week though, I have tried my best to be more of a yes mom.  I want my kids to remember that I closed my laptop, put my phone down and that they did have my undivided attention.  I only have them a short amount of time and I want I to make the most of it.

So what did we do this week?  My daughter made me some jewelry (with a little help from me).  I now have this awesome red diamond bracelet, as well as a white diamond ring.  And yes, I did wear it all day!

 

Next, I got a little pampering from my kids.  They begged to paint my fingernails and toenails.  I even got a little lip gloss on my lips.  In fact, they have done this 2 days in a row! (fingernail polish washes off very easily)

Next up was a game of Battleship with my youngest son.  This was a Christmas present that he had asked for.  We have started games before but had never finished one until the other day.  Guess what?  I LOST!!  My 7 year old son beat me!  (N0, I didn’t let him win either!)  I told him we were going to have to have a rematch soon.  I have to redeem myself!  {grin}

Not to be outdone by brother, the Care Bear checker board was brought out.  We had a great match going back and forth, but in the end, I won.  Not by much though!  I only had 2 Care Bears left on the board!

Do you play any board games with your children?  I would love to get some more ideas for games for our family!

2012, family, ,

Garden Challenge at The Homeschool Village

Written by Joy
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Garden Challenge at The Homeschool Village

 

It is once again time to link up with The Homeschool Village’s Garden Challenge.  Growing up, we always had a garden.  It was fun times for me, as I loved watching plants grow and produce wonderful goodies we could eat.  I am so happy that I am now able to pass my love of gardening down to my children.

This year we had a lot planned and time has just gotten away from us.  While we haven’t planted everything that we had wanted to plant, I am thankful we still have a little bit of time to get some vegetables in the ground.  Some of our seedlings have grown, while I let others die by lack of water.

Our tomatoes will be planted this weekend.  I can’t wait to pick our first tomato!

I did manage to get the green bell peppers in a bucket.  However, they do need thinning out.  I need to get a couple of more buckets to put the others in.

Our broccoli came up beautifully.  Then we left on our trip and didn’t pick it when we should have.  By the time we made it back from Denver, it had flowered and was to late to salvage.  So we are going to chopped up the plants and turn in back in the soil, hoping it will rot and help fertilize the other plants.

I am most surprised by our asparagus.  I didn’t think it was going to come up and yet I have 2 that has survived!

Our sunflowers have grown nicely.  I also need to get these in the ground this weekend, too.

What has surprised us the most this year is our herbs!  They are growing like crazy!  My husband has already clipped them back once and dried the herbs out.  We have been using them to cook with, fresh and dried.  The food just seems to taste so much better with home grown herbs.

This is my daughter’s pineapple sage that she choose to grow last year.  We couldn’t believe that it came back up!  We thought it had died during the winter.  We never used it last year, but I have read that we can make some tea from it.  We plan on trying it out this year.

Our rosemary bush has also grown since last year.  I am thankful for a warm winter, because this bush never died back.  It stayed green all winter long. I love to use fresh rosemary when I back a while chicken.  I break off a couple of small pieces and stuff it in the chicken with a lemon or an orange.  It is delicious!

I haven’t put the strawberries in the ground yet and I haven’t planted any cucumbers, squash or okra.  That is on my to-do list this weekend.  Our flowers are also growing.  The roses are blooming and the morning glory, marigolds, daisies and zinnas are all coming up as well.

It seems like our garden has changed a little since I last checked in, but we are making progress with what we have planted.

How is your garden doing?  Have you picked any fruits or vegetables yet?  Be sure to link up with The Homeschool Village and tell us about it!  you just might win a gift!

 

2012, family, , ,

an amazing Easter weekend with blessings #803-816

Written by Joy
an amazing Easter weekend with blessings #803-816

We had the most amazing weekend.  It was a weekend of celebrating the death and resurrection of Jesus.  It was a weekend of celebrating family.  God has been so good to us.  He has been so good to our family. We are alive and healthy.  We are together.  Yes, it was a good weekend.

Blessings have been so plentiful to us.  We have so much to be thankful for.  I haven’t shared them in a long time and thought it was fitting to share after the weekend we had.

Starting on Friday, we woke to it being my birthday.  I am 37 years old and thankful that God has given me the life He has.  We woke to it being a cloudy day, but headed to a birthday breakfast at the Waffle House.  I was told the day was mine and I could do whatever I wanted.  I was also told that the housework was off limits to me.  It would be taken care of.  So I definitely had a day off.  Supper was chicken wings and chocolate cake.  I couldn’t of asked for a better day.  But the day did get better when the kids asked about Good Friday.  Telling them of Jesus’ love and why he died on the cross and them understanding, truly made it the best day ever.

Saturday morning came early.  My son had a basketball game at 8:00 am.  My daughter cheered at 9:30am.  after a wonderful morning of seeing them have fun, it was nice to come home to do nothing but relax and be with one another.  Something my family and I have learned is family time is most important in the world we live in.  While we do enjoy activities outside of the house, it is even nice being able to come home to one another.  We want to make sure out children know we love them and more importantly, God loves them.

My favorite day of the weekend came next.  Sunday.  The day the tomb stone was rolled away and it was empty.  Jesus had risen just like it was foretold. We woke up  and started getting ready for church.  Oh what a glorious day it was!  The song and worship service was amazing.  The preaching was just beautiful.  I love our church and how they try so hard to make sure everything is scriptural and encourage us to hold them accountable if we find they missed something.

We then came home to a wonderful lunch and we hid eggs for the kids to find.  It was amazing to have all of my kids outside together, laughing and joking with one another.  We don’t have our kids for very long and I am doing my best to soak  up all the time I have with them.

Yes, blessings have been abundant for me and my family.  We are truly blessed.  While I spoke of a few blessings above, I want to share a few more.  I have missed sharing and hoping to get back on a more regular schedule.

803- My health

804- My families health

805- Having my brother stay with us

806- my children’s laughter

807- family time together

808- celebrating another year

809- chocolate birthday cake 😉

810- seeing my children learn something new

811- a massage and adjustment

812- hugs and kisses from my family

813- a chance to go to the 2:1 Conference (Thanks See The Light!)

814- birthday cards sent with love

815- An awesome blog makeover from Honeycomb Design Studio

816- Celebrating the death and Resurrection of Jesus Christ!

 

Luke 24

The Resurrection

24  But on the first day of the week, at early dawn, they went to the tomb, taking the spices they had prepared.

2 And they found the stone rolled away from the tomb,

3 but when they went in they did not find the body of the Lord Jesus.

4 While they were perplexed about this, behold, two men stood by them in dazzling apparel.

5 And as they were frightened and bowed their faces to the ground, the men said to them, “Why do you seek the living among the dead?

6 He is not here, but has risen. Remember how he told you, while he was still in Galilee,

7  that the Son of Man must be delivered into the hands of sinful men and be crucified and on the third day rise.”

2012, , ,