Round 'Em Up an Herd 'Em Out!

Tomorrow is the day we leave on our trip! All week has been a mad scramble to get ready! You might be wondering what in the world we needed to do to get ready. Well, for one thing, we live in sunny FL. We are in shorts and tank tops nearly year round and only have like about 2-3 days out of the year when it is actually cold enough to need a jacket. But we are headed to Arkansas where it is going to be cold. Even to those of you who know what cold is! We needed some winter type clothes before we headed up there. To that end, we have been making frequent trips to the thrift store.

Also, we had doctor appointments for kids who have been coughing for way too long. Two out of my three kids are now on antibiotics. There have also been Christmas meals to attend and shopping to get stuff to make the special recipes to bring to those and the time in the kitchen cooking the special recipes.  Not to even mention all the loads of laundry and packing and dropping off critters to be babysat while we are gone. Making special Christmas gifts to bring for family and then wrapping Christmas gifts. Whew! No wonder I'm so tired!

So when you are heading out on a long road trip with three kids and a dog, it's good to have a game plan for the drive. Our game plan is to listen to audiobooks. In particular, "The Lord of The Rings" trilogy. I've been trying to get my family to read these books for years. So this is my chance to finally get them to enjoy them as much as I do! It may or may not increase my kids' reading comprehension, but it will certainly make the drive more enjoyable. My husband says that audiobooks put him to sleep when he is driving, so we will only be able to listen when I am driving. I may have to do most of the driving just so we can listen! LOL I don't plan on there being any roadschooling happening on this trip. Unless it happens accidentally!

Meanwhile, In Our World This Week!

Last week I shared about how we are fighting colds in our house. Things haven't gotten any better so yesterday I took RoboBoy to the doctor. He's been complaining that his ear hurts and is all plugged up. Sure enough, the doctor confirmed that he has an ear infection. I will be taking the other two to the doctor next week. They couldn't get them in any sooner than that. Praying that soon the dueling coughs will stop in our house!


We have also been working to save up and get prepared for a trip to Arkansas to spend the week of Christmas with my family. The plan is to drive with 2 teenagers, 1 pre-teen and a dog! It's doubtful that MyHero and I will have any remaining sanity by the time we arrive at my parents' home. It's a little over 18 hour trip, which we will break up into two days of driving.


In the meantime, I've been trying to get in as many hours of work as I can. With gas prices being what they are, it's going to take all that we can save up to make this trip! Praise God that I am able to help contribute to that! I can't remember if I've mentioned on here that I work from home as a contractor for Time4Learning.com. It's the perfect job for a homeschooling mom. 

One of my responsibilities is to author two blogs for them. On one of them, Time4Learning Community Blog, I share the writing responsibilities with two other lovely ladies. The other one, Parenting In An Electronic Age, I author on my own.

In my last post for the Electronic blog, I actually wrote about teaching kids to write! If you are quaking at the thought of trying to teach your kids how to put together compositions that make sense, then you might want to check this post out. I give several suggestions for motivating kids to write including having them take a blog writing course. You might also check out some online writing ideas.

The other way that I have been able to bring in a small bit of income has been via my crochet business. I have been crazy busy working to get orders done before Christmas. I believe that I have all my Christmas orders finished, but am now working on some very special "Look Alike" crocheted dolls for a friend of mine. She asked me awhile ago to make these dolls to match each member of her family. I will eventually post pictures of them. Right now they are bald and Fashionista says they look like monkeys. I'm going to have lots of fun personalizing each of these dolls to match the person they are to look like.

Fighting the Creeping Crud

I love this season! Love having our Christmas decorations out and seeing homes lit up with Christmas lights. Love getting cards from friends and loved ones in the mail, watching Christmas movies and spending time with MyHero and our kids.

Unfortunately, this is also the season for colds! It seems that there has been an epidemic of colds in our area and we haven't been spared. My kids have all seem to have come down with the creeping crud. RoboBoy sounds terrible with a croupy sounding cough and Fashionista isn't sounding much better.

When they are sick like this, it makes it very difficult to get them to do school work. I can understand that. When I'm sick, I don't want to do much of anything either. This might be a good time to relax and watch educational videos together or have them do some math games.

It's MyHero's and My Anniversary!

Nineteen years ago, my beloved and I became one! Even though we have had our trials just like any marriage does, I wouldn't trade those nineteen years for anything! Our love has only grown stronger as we walked through those struggles together and with Jesus Chist leading us.

We had a very difficult time having children in the beginning. In fact it took us 4 years to conceive our first born. I firmly believe that God opened my womb after I completely surrendered my fertility to HIM. After having three babies in quick succesion, I yanked back control of my fertility. I do regret doing that, but know that God is bigger than even that. If He really wanted me to have more children He could easily have circumvented the preventive measures we had taken as humans.

Our children have grown and filled my days with homeschool math and other homeschool curricula. We always knew as a couple that we would homeschool our kids. It was never an option to do anything else in our minds. Even before we ever had kids.

One of the biggest challenges we faced was dealing with a child who has Asperger's Syndrome. It actually helped to finally get a diagnosis for this in addition to his ADHD. Learning about his disability opened my eyes to realize that I have the same thing. This has helped us to understand why some of our other struggles have always been a part of our marriage.

Through it all, God has been faithful! I have no doubt that He will continue to be faithful as we muddle our way through our kid's teen years and into eventually, should the Lord choose to tarry, becoming grandparents.

So Much to be Thankful For!

Tomorrow is Thanksgiving and I have SO much to be thankful for!! I could seriously go on and on and on and I know you could too. One of the things I'm especially thankful for at the moment is that I DON'T have to do any cooking for tomorrow! I'm letting Bob Evans do all my cooking for me. MyHero is going to be picking up our meal today and then all we have to do is reheat everything tomorrow.

So I'm looking forward to a day of relaxing and crocheting!! That will be good since I have a TON of crochet orders to get done! Yep! People actually pay me to do something that I love and would be doing anyway!! Yet another thing to be thankful for!

We are "babysitting" our neighbor's dog while they are out of town. This is going to be quite interesting since our dog is scared of their dog. She is bigger than him although not much taller. Segmenting them should not be too hard though since their dog has her porter here to stay in. It is still going to be quite the adventure. It may turn out to be fuel for great homeschool fiction since my daughter loves to write!

Learning the Joys of Delayed Gratification

RoboBoy's birthday was back in July. He scored around $40 in cash and wanted to get a video game. So I took him to Game Stop. We scoured the shelves but he couldn't find any games that he really wanted. So we decided to ask at the front counter for any recommendations for 11 year olds. They informed us that Scribblenauts Unlimited was ready for pre-order and would be released in November. 

RoboBoy LOVED Scribblenauts and had been reading up about all the new features available in Unlimited. It only took a few minutes of debating for him to decide to plop down his $5 pre-order payment with the understanding that he would not be getting his game for another 4 months, AND that he would need to save his money to cover his game when it did come out.

Fast forward 4 months. Yesterday, Scribblenauts Unlimited hit the stores so daddy took RoboBoy to pick up his game. He still had all his money saved along with the pre-order receipt! I know some adults who couldn't have accomplished that! One of my friends said, "I AM an adult who couldn't have done that!" It was so good to see RoboBoy enjoying the fruits of delayed gratification. 

I'm quite certain that this situation is what prompted MyHero to make the proclamation that he did to the kids this morning before I woke up. Apparently he told the kids that they needed to get their schoolwork done before he got home tonight. How do 11 through 14 year olds interpret a mandate like this?? What they heard was, "You can play all day, as long as you get your schoolwork done before I get home." Maybe he did actually say that to them. Like I said, I was still in bed.

So I got up this morning to find all three kids playing! One on the 3DS and two on the computers. Oy!! I guess RoboBoy still has a lot to learn about delayed gratification as do his siblings. I really don't think this is what they had in mind when they coined the phrase eclectic homeschooling! At least RoboBoy is learning with the puzzle games on Scribblenauts Unlimited! It's helping him to build his vocabulary and discover how to use adjectives. He is also developing his creative thinking, although I think he already does this pretty well!

I have decided not to stress myself over making my kids do school today. If they don't do it, then they will suffer the consequences. Perhaps this little experiment will teach them all that it is better to delay gratification until after you have fulfilled your responsibilities. One can always hope!

Finally, Some Cooler Weather!!

We are finally getting some much needed cooler weather here in Florida! The reason I say much needed, is because last winter was too mild here to kill all our multitudinous bugs! As a result we had almost an overpopulation of them this past summer! Eeeek! Can you tell that I hate bugs? So I'm sitting here with my socks on to keep my feet warm, wearing a pair of shorts and t-shirt. ONLY in Florida! lol

I've had to put a halt to my running for a bit. Since my last race, my left foot has been quite painful to walk on. I did try to run a couple of times in spite of the pain, but then realized that I could only be injuring it more. I have a bunion on my left foot, inherited from my dear mother. Running has not done it any favors. I had high hopes that my running would have no effect on it, but I really should have known better. 

So as I'm recovering from this injury, I have a couple of aids to help my bunion calm down. The first one looks and sounds quite silly, but the principle behind it seemed sound so I decided to give it a try.

It's a contraption called Yoga Toes.

It is supposed to stretch the muscles in your feet. The idea is that if you recondition the muscles around the bunion, it will help it to heal and the bones to go back to the position they are supposed to stay in.

The second is as much for maintenance of my bunion as for helping it to settle down. They are a pair of special bunion socks which have a divider sewn in between the big and second toes.

I slept in these last night and have hopes that they will also help retrain those bones to stay where they should. I plan to use these for running in as well. May need to get another pair or two of these. 

We had the privilege on Friday of having my dear friend's 4 year old boy with us for a few hours. It was so cute how he wanted to spend the time playing all the "big kid" games on our gaming system. I wanted to spend some time doing phonics games with him, but he would not be torn away from the "car game". Guess I'll have to leave his early child education to his mom. I know she would have appreciated any little bit of input I could have added.