A Time For Every Season....

I'm trying to get the kids to memorize the 10 commandments. I found this video that the kids love!

I was standing in the shower tonight and I realized that without any planning, John had been away a few days this week working for various clients. He made almost 1,000 to put towards our trip to Oregon.  This was a huge blessing because we planned the trip to Oregon prior to deciding to build the new house. All our money is set aside for our new home build and the vacation money wasn't really in the budget. John is so handy and resourceful, it shouldn't surprise me that the Lord would drop these jobs in his lap. As I started to thank the Lord I realized that for the last 4 years John has had a stable job, in fact he just signed his contract for next year and he now has 10 year - which means if lay off's happen he isn't out the door!  What a difference 4 years makes. The first 6 years of our marriage consisted of John working for 10-12.00/hour and the last two of those 6 he was going to school and finishing his degree. We depended a lot on his small jobs to make ends ...

Here is what our Fall 2013 plans look like so far. We're working a lot this June on Reading, Writing and Mathematics. Then in July we'll be vacationing in Oregon, so not much seat work will take place, but I'm sure lots of hands on learning will inspire creativity. We plan to show the kids the Oregon Zoo, OMSI, the coast, go blueberry picking, and then head to Seattle to visit more family and friends. My mom is even going to be brave and take the kids to Grants Pass to see my Nana and all my aunts and uncles! Then when we get back we'll pick up more school the beginning of August. I'm hoping to get ahead so we can have a long break around October or November when we hopefully will move into our new home! Then the adventure will begin with raising chickens and finding snakes and scorpions  - yuck! I'm sure enticing them with school work will get even harder! I hope we can wrap everything up in a 4 day week and then leave Friday's for trips and Mrs. Kelly! W...

It has been a great month - Drew finished up ACA mid May and we've  been playing and relaxing ever since. I've also thrown in two days a week with a reading specialist and two days a week with a tutor/sitter, just to make things fun! I confess I am a homeschooling mom who can't have her son read to her one on one, so I hired a tutor. Drew's reading struggles stems from his vision issues and the rest seems to be confidence. I've been working with him on reading for three years and I've determined that I can teach him tons of things, but sitting down listing to him read is not one of them. So I gave up and hired a tutor - judge me if you want. Having a tutor has been such a blessing. The tutor encourages and never gets interrupted (phone or other children), its great! Gabe even gets a few hours this summer working on handwriting and reading, As for the rest of our summer, the kids have been swimming in our community pool. attending VBS, going to junk Art cam...

 I think she might just like shopping a little too much - what do you think?