This Page

Having a semi-quiet night here at our house. Thanksgiving we had about 10 Bible College boys over for dinner and then we did it all again on Saturday night for my relatives. I have to report that is was a Pioneer Woman Thanksgiving, I served up PW's mashed potatoes (addictive, but not for the calorie/fat shy) and her Stuffing. PW is responsible for daring me to try my wings and cook a little..I am not much of a cook. I do best, I've discovered...with recipes that are more subjective in follow-thru. It's definitely a Jenn thing, thank goodness PW's stuffing is a creative/forgiving sort of thing. The subjective thing is why I suck at making boxed brownies...

Josie went to bed last night, trying out a dream experiment. She really wanted to have a great "Warriors" adventure dream. For those of you who are not familiar with "Warriors", it is a series of books about cats. Lots of hidden depth in those cats, the author has spun out a whole long book series about them..who would have thunk it?

Back to my story...So, Josie goes to bed determined to dream about Warriors, so she tries to fall asleep thinking about the cats, envisioning the forest where they live, and softly saying a mantra to herself about Warrior cats and dark forests.

She dreamt she was in Barnes & Nobles sitting in a chair, reading a Warriors book.

bee-dump-dum...

I, on the other hand, dreamt I was running with 5 kids through yards in our neighborhood to catch a flight at the airport. I made it, sweaty and panting...with 10 minutes to spare, but was told I missed the flight. Dang subjective watch that I can't read!...(another post)

I will skip the rest, but I woke up in the morning to Sky telling me that I had to be at the Church meeting in 45 minutes, we were serving on Children's meeting and the meeting was early this week because of a special conference. Um, I can't get out of the shower and teeth brushed in 45 minutes, let alone get to the meeting hall. Funny how my dreams and real life dilemmas/anxiety all kind of mesh.

I am on a chick-lit run...just finished Million Dollar Dilemma, which is a Christian story, and was really a fun read. Loved it. I just started The Secret life of Mrs. Claus, which is very readable and fun so far.

My girls just finished Wesley the Owl, it is on my list to read next.

Hope you all had a Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.

Labels: Wordless Wednesday

Well, I've been spinning my wheels, but not getting much done... I am realizing that all of the taxi-mom driving I am doing is getting to me, and-the house is falling apart.

I've been quiet in blog-land because I was planning on getting a head-start on my Thanksgiving day house-cleaning..uh, but, it's a Jen thing...I've puttered around, but no cleaning has occurred. I'm on a Grace Livinston Hill run right now, so that doesn't help either.



I took the kids for an afternoon at DisneyLand on Monday, we only went on two rides, one of those being the Monorail on the way out of the park! I could not believe how crowded it was! Josie has a cold, and was sort of miserable, so I didn't mind needing to leave.



Sunday night we had our usual Bible college dinner, but we had the sisters over instead. It was a nice change. I've noticed that the brothers come over and just 'hang-out', but the girls like to have some kind of game planned. In this picture they were playing a hand-clap-banging-cups kind of game. They had a rip-roaring time, I just watched...too much thought and coordination involved for me!

I have to tell you that The Teaching Company is having a sale on most of their courses. If you haven't seen their catalog, you should go over and take a look. I have my eye on several courses, but I think I will have to be content with one. So much learning to do...so little time and money!!

And, we rented The Illusionist from netflix, and it was really good. Rated pg-13, there is one scene you will want to forward through if your kids are watching, but the rest was o.k. It is set in Vienna in the early 1900's and is one of those movies you have to work at to figure out. Really well done, I haven't seen a movie I liked as much in a while.

I'll see you bloggy friends, the other side of the holiday!! Happy Thanksgiving, and happy feasting!!

The boy-wonder had a birthday. I cannot believe he is nine years old!
He requested a dragon cake again, I made a blue one last year. You can find the directions to this surprisingly simple cake at Family Fun magazine..go *here for the directions. It had to be simple or I would not have attempted it. I did try to coax him into a cake from my favorite cake place, but no- he wanted me to make it. I was frosting it as the guests arrived..it's a Jen thing...

Labels: family

Demi is my dreamer. For years he has been intrigued by wishes in different forms. He asks me about wishes, which forms of wishing works best...(praying, a dandelion, a falling star...) and in general is busy figuring it all out.

Lately he has been asking about four leaf clovers. Friday as I was busy working on something, he began on the questions...I encouraged him to go look for some, confident that search would keep him busy for many, many minutes. I was pretty sure he would be busy for a long time because I've never found a four leaf clover... Not even ten minutes later, he came running in with one!

"Good job, baby- now go buy mommy a lottery ticket..."



Sunday nights at our house, we have the Bible college boys over for dinner and just to hang out. They live in a really strict dorm environment, with inspections and cafeteria food. They like to come over and unwind.

Sometimes they really unwind....

We had some kind of fantasy role-play game going on all evening...complete with kidnapped princesses, knights and grenades.


Here is one company about to launch an attack on the enemy's lair...





The grenades were my favorite part, they were a blob of legos. Someone would pop off the 'pin' (a lego) and then throw the remaining blob into the room...it would "explode" and legos would go flying.


My little ones took no prisoners...







Here's a shot of the general chaos of the game.

Notice our friend Jesse on the couch trying to read.

This game was raging around 10 p.m.

I'm wondering what the neighbors thought...

We have a lot of fun at our house.

Labels: family

The Homeschool Blog Awards are going on right now. You can go on over and vote for your favorite blogs until November 21st. It's a good place to go visit and find some new favorite homeschool blogs, too.


Frog and Toad are Still friends grades O Magazine's Christmas gift list. Skewers it..you'll love it.
(hat tip to Melissa!) I don't know why I bother to read lists like that, and the one in Real Simple magazine-makes me feel like I must be missing something, or that I am much, much poorer than I thought.

*Yesterday, while I was having our meeting with our charter school teacher..Meg and Josie were busy in the other room experimenting with stop action animation. They did a little story with the play mobile figures that live permanently in my living room. It came out really, really cute. I will share it if I can figure out how to get it into imovie. The photo above is from the last scene.

*We are heading today for the skateboard park...homeschool's cool, don't you know!

We are making our slow way through Noeo Physics II curriculum. My honest assessment; the jury is still out. We enjoyed week 1, it had a good mix of reading from two different living-type science books and experiments. Week 2 was taken from the experiment book only-and seemed un-inspiring and not supported through other reading. We decided to skip week 2 and move into week 3, which again seemed to have a nice mix of reading and experiments. You can see from the photo above, that the subject was heat energy.

This week I have been working with the 3 youngest students on narrative writing. I do admit that my big shortcoming as a homeschool-mom is not demanding a lot of writing output from my younger kids. The above photo shows the kind of writing I usually ask for at the younger ages. Because 2 of them are boys, and the act of using a pencil seems to be particularly tiresome for them...I admit I let them off pretty easy. I rely much on verbal questions and answers, and on verbal narration (the child telling back the story or lesson in their own words, or even borrowing some of the words of the author).

For our new charter school program, I need to turn in a writing sample for each of the kids. Amie's was easy, as a first grader- she needs to draw a picture and write one or two sentences. The two boys however, need to turn in one to three paragraphs of a narrative work, with pre-writing. I have to say, it was hard work getting one complete paragraph from them. I was very pleased with the product they turned out..but I don't know if it will satisfy the assignment.
Meg and Josie write almost everyday for fun, they are working on novels..their assignment was a no -brainer, my only difficulty was in reinging in the length...

Fun links;

There is a book give-away over at Faith and Family blog. Go on over to enter the drawing.

Here is a *Fun memory game to memorize yoga poses

Life after blogs: What's next..

Flash kids Writing Skills workbooks - we are using these to boost writing skills

Labels: snapshot

My friend, Starlene, over at From California to Singapore tagged me for this meme. I did this one a year or so ago, It is 7 weird or random things about me...so I will try to give some that are different from last time, here goes;

Labels: memes

Signs of the worsening economy are beginning to manifest themselves. This letter went out from Lampstand Press a few days ago, Lampstand Press publishes Tapestry of Grace Curriculum. I am a big fan of TOG, we are using it this year and I plan to keep using it throughout our homeschool adventure.

I am going to paste the letter here on the blawg, for anyone who did not get the letter (I did not receive it) and because it is next to impossible to find it on their website, so I cannot just link to it.

Sky and I had a serious discussion after I read the letter, and we decided to go ahead and pre-order Years 2 and 3 in print, because I like to use the printed version in my binders-and we don't really know when the Digital version will actually be released. I really feel bad for the company, and I am very grateful that they let the customers know what is going on..and I am grateful that they are planning to publish it in some format, so that homeschool families can still continue to use it.

Here you go;

Dear friends,

I'm sure that you, just like the rest of the nation, have read about the financial crises that began to unfold on Wall Street a few weeks ago. The prediction was that this devastation would trickle down to Americans across the country as capital assets began to lose their value, and mortgages were in jeopardy. Unfortunately, Lampstand Press is experiencing in real time what you are hearing in newscasts.

For some time we have known that we would need some additional investment to finish what we've started, and were very grateful to have had an investor who was willing to provide what we expected to need. Unfortunately, just as we were about to receive this vital investment, Wall Street's woes made it impossible for our investor to follow through, leaving us trying to another source of funds at a particularly bad time. Credit, investors, and capital have become impossible for us to find.

Things have looked rather bleak at Lampstand Press and we actually began making plans to shut down, even as we prayed for other options. Over the years we've received many calls and emails from people who tell us that Tapestry of Grace has borne fruit in the lives of their families and that homeschools have been revolutionized. After much prayer and counsel, we feel that our current experience is best expressed by these verses in John: Jesus said, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the vinedresser. Every branch in me that does not bear fruit he takes away, and every branch that does bear fruit he prunes, that it may bear more fruit." (John 15:1-2) We believe that God is pruning Tapestry, not cutting it off altogether.

If we are right, it means there has to be some way to keep providing you with this God-honoring homeschooling curriculum. Over the last month, we've seriously considered a long list of increasingly radical options, including moving our whole operation to an economically depressed area so that we could qualify for targeted investment money. We've put everything on the table, but God has not provided any outside source of financial supply as of today. After ruling out every other alternative, we've come to the conclusion that the only way to complete the Redesign project is make a fundamental change to the way we produce Tapestry year-plans.

The problem we face is very simple--we don't currently have the kind of capital we need to continue business as usual. Our business has always been seasonal, and thus it involves carrying inventory and fronting printing costs through the winter, when, of course, very few people are buying curriculum. Also, we have struggled to keep up with the up-front costs of printing. Each time our sales go up (and they keep going up) we sell out of our existing supply of Tapestry, which means we have to find the funds to reprint thousands more copies in order to supply even one more order. We are ready, willing, and able to keep redesigning Tapestry, but we just don't have the capital we need to print thousands of volumes a year in advance and warehouse them until the orders come in, nor to keep open a bookstore that stocks every resource book that we recommend.

The solution to the problem that seems to have emerged is equally simplestop delivering Tapestry through printing presses. This letter is to inform you that we are exploring a shift from printing year-plans to electronic delivery. If it succeeds, with God's help, we would be able to redesign Tapestry of Grace Year 4 on the same basic schedule as the previous three years. The only difference is that it will only be available digitally. While for some people this may at first seem like a real inconvenience and an added cost because you anticipate printing the entire year-plan at home, please consider that printing really unnecessary in order to use all of the content that you are used to receiving in print. The typical user mom reads Tapestry background materials from the printed manual, and then prints out only the worksheets or maps that she needs for her specific students from the Loom disc. Delivering Tapestry on disc instead of in print is really only a small change for most users. Change is often disheartening at first, but please consider this: there are many clear advantages to a digital version of Tapestry of Grace. A few of these include:
-All of Tapestry becomes searchable, constituting an instant index feature.
-Tapestry becomes highly portable: just take your laptop and disc wherever you're traveling! No more bulky manuals to lug around.
-Tapestry volumes on disc take up a tiny fraction of the space that printed manuals do in your home.
-The Loom files and the year-plan PDFs will all be on one easy-to-use disc.
-We will be able to offer Tapestry at a lower coast to all customers. This makes us dance and sing, because it has been the increases in printing costs and overhead that has partially been to blame for our price hikes in recent years.
-Shipping costs will also be much reduced for you and for us. Indeed, for those who buy via a new download system that we envision in the future, there will be no wait or cost involved. Shipping issues and expenses will be eliminated altogether.
-You will now be able to print out all the Reading Assignment Charts that you wish to! This has been an often-expressed desire, which we can now satisfy.
-It will be much easier to keep book lists and assignments current. Indeed, one exciting option with a digital delivery system is the opportunity for us to support Tapestry for years to come in an easy and straightforward manner by creating interactive, Internet-based Reading Assignment pages (like the PDFs on the online Loom) that receive digital updates automatically at the click of a mouse via the Internet.
-Electronically delivered Tapestry pages will be immune to damage, and won't need page protectors . Also, if you lose any part of your manual, you'll be able to just print out a replacement copy for yourself!
-If you have PDF writer software installed on your computer, you can easily add digital notes and/or highlighting to your electronic version, just as you do in your printed version, but your Tapestry original files will truly remain pristine in all circumstances. Flexibility is still our middle name, however, and if you wish to print Teacher's Notes or any other pages of your week-plan, you will be able to do so (without a PDF writer), and mark them up with your own notes, creating your own customized teaching notebook.
In the future, we conceive of re-mastering Tapestry so that customers can buy it for specific learning levels. So, for young families, we anticipate selling at a reduced cost the Tapestry materials one needs for just the early years, and then giving parents the flexibility to add in Tapestry materials for older students in later years. This will lower the entry price point, giving moms of younger students only what they need to complete Tapestry studies in the grammar stages with the ability to add upper level materials in later phases of their homeschools. Thus, digital Tapestry can grow with the family, and expenses can be spread out over the years, instead of needing to be a one-time, up front purchase that then lasts for years.
When available, and again, in the future, we will be able to interlink Tapestry sections with our other supplementary products. So, we envision that you will be able, from the week-plan, to click on, view, and/or print associated maps, evaluations, writing helps, etc. that relate to the material in each week-plan.
Also, we will be able to link to online resources, like Project Gutenberg free copies of literary and primary source works, core books that are free online, etc. In looking at the landscape of publishing, we see that more and more books are becoming digitally available at very inexpensive prices. While we bemoan the passing of printed books, the new world with which we are all confronted may soon make these as much of a luxury as hand-written manuscripts became as the printing press came into use in the 1400's. As far as we are concerned, our preference will always be for printed books, but there is no denying that an optional for digital resources will make Tapestry more affordable, portable, and available to a greater number of homeschoolers as time goes on.

Labels: curriculum

Labels: Wordless Wednesday

I am currently browsing through some posts over at Conversion Diary- mainly her posts on prayer.

But first, if you are mom to younger children, and feeling overwhelmed and under par- you have to go read her post right here**admitting I can't do it all...
I really wish I would have had this insight when mine were little. I did mostly (by default)tend towards letting things go, but I lived with the guilt and feelings of being found wanting.- Actually, I go to bed many days feeling weighed and found lacking, still. But, I digress- if this sounds familiar to you, be kind to yourself and go read this post- and then chew on it for a few days...

The post that grabbed me was this one-The danger of being overloaded*, which I found linked to over at Rocks in my dryer.

I am going to briefly quote Jennifer over at Conversion Diary, she writes;

...when someone asked St. Francis de Sales how much one should pray, the Doctor of the Church replied that you should pray a half hour each day, unless you're busy. If you're busy, you should pray an hour.

"What a pithy quote!" I thought. "You should pray more if you're busy -- love it. That St. Francis de Sales, he sure does have some great sayings!" And then I promptly forgot about it. Or I tried to, anyway....

This is from her post AREWP day 11, which I found by linking around from the first post ...By the way, "AREWP" stands for "A reckless experiment with prayer"- gotta love it!

My prayer tonight is to not be someone who just files "pithy", truth-filled quotes or advice away in a box...

Labels: devotional