happy new year... late

for the holidays, we traveled to Arizona. our whirlwind tour included, the grandparents' house in phoenix, roller skating (the kids' first time), motorhoming, the grand canyon (and many sites along the way), snow play, cracker barrel, scott's birthday, a children's museum, mission san xavier, a wedding in tucson, cave explorations, hiking, waffle house, celebrating the new year, and bowling. did i miss anything? it was only an 11 day trip!



fun facts:

• we left our home at 11:30pm and dropped off gifts on our way out of town. thankfully, the grandparents had already agreed to entertain the kids while we slept once we got there


• when we got to phoenix we realized ky had brought no shoes! luckily the cousins had just visited and left some hand-me-downs (including appropriate shoes for the wedding!) - thanks kim!


• jojo whacked his head on the roller rink floor and now prefers ice skating which only bruises his buttocks and legs!


• we brought home 4 children - nobody fell into the canyon!


• 36 candles left burning too long can melt an ice-cream birthday cake!


• hanging tons of pool noodles in a 15'x15' area gives hours of entertainment


• there are missions outside of california


• dave got married!!!


• there were crazy-horrible, anti-earth-worshipping people who cut stalactites from a cave to take home as souveniers (gasp!), BUT the people who cut/covered stalagmites and laid the path for us to tour the cave on were good, hard-working people serving our nation through a wonderful government program


• we had to do new year's at 10pm instead of our usual 9pm because we were on mountain time

all i want for christmas is my 2 front teeth!

jojo gets to sing it this year. he lost the first front tooth just before thanksgiving and the second one yesterday at Bible study. (what are they doing with those kids???)

he is also missing one of his bottom almost-front teeth, so he's looking pretty fun!

the big 70!

grandpa joe celebrated his 70th birthday with a huge sombrero! we took him to the whole enchilada for birthday dinner. the food was yummy and there was ice cream to celebrate (not the dreaded flan i thought may be coming!) hooray for celebrating 70 years of my dear dad's life! happy birthday grandpa joe!

thanksgiving 2009

grandpa, cousin shawnie & auntie tiadra came over to spend some time eating with us. we (i mean they) relaxed and watched football & throwball (american football). i spent most of the time in the kitchen - but i love the traditional thanksgiving meal! although it was just the 8 of us, we had all the yummy foods we love at thanksgiving time - turkey, mashed potatoes, candied yams, green bean casserole, corn, rolls, cranberry sauce, olives and jello! shawnie brought some pilgrim & indian decorations. we talked about the first thanksgiving and what they had to be thankful for. then what we had to be thankful for. everyone was really full so we had to wait a few hours before having pumpkin & apple pie! lastly, we painted handprints on our thanksgiving tablecloth and wrote what we're thankful for to remember for years to come. it was amazing to see just how big our kids hands have grown over the past few years and it was fun to look back on what they were thankful for. sy said he was thankful for "God" both when we went around the table at our mealtime and when we painted hands later. either he's really spiritual or... he's got the sunday school answer down already - and he's never been to sunday school! only time will tell. :)

to the beach... ALONE!

i had the opportunity to enjoy the beach for 3 hours by myself. it was incredible. i took a blanket and some books i've been reading, my journal and some snacks and headed to newport beach. it was a cool day and i was wearing pants and long sleeves but i was sooo happy to go! the beach truly soothes my soul. i am amazed at how my body reacts to just hearing the waves. the ocean air is nice too, but i've been spoiled by living close enough to the ocean that we get that air in the mornings sometimes. anyhow...

i've been reading through seasons of a mother's heart and i was finishing up a chapter about times of refreshment and restoration. i was wishing i could have one of those times, when mom emailed that she had some free time to come over for a few days and give me some time to myself! i have a hard time taking these times even though i know that everyone needs them, i just don't make the time because everything else seems more important. i especially have a hard time leaving the kids and trusting that anyone on earth could possibly care for them as i do! BUT this time, i was reading about being renewed, i was feeling burnt out, and then i had an offer for childcare from the person i'm most comfortable leaving them with for extended periods! apparently, it was time for me to have some time for me!

i was able to read my Bible and read some more of the seasons book. i spent time praying and singing hymns. i had brought my hymnal along and that was a good read in itself.

(on a side note... we've been learning a new hymn each week at home and the old hymns are really like stories. i'd never noticed before that if you only sing one verse you really only get a piece of the "story" or message.)

so i was singing from my hymnal and i am also reading a book on prayer, so i looked through the last couple chapters i'd read and enjoyed a more directed prayer time.

and that was my FANTASTIC time at the beach! (where i took a photo of myself - to prove i was there!)

apple dumplings & gang

last weekend we rented "the apple dumpling gang", an old disney movie with don knotts. none of us had ever had apple dumplings, so we made some before the start of the movie then ate while we watched once they were ready. sooo good! we used this recipe and of course kik's turned out the best! he is my little artist and even his baking turns out beautiful! (the dumplings in the recipe could easily serve 2 adults or 3 kids.) we had a blast - the kids were laughing and enjoying our treats. it was a fun night!

educating classically and false religions

i am a far cry from a classical educator. i am enjoying classical conversations - CC (our new curriculum/class) but i don't completely fit in. i am tutoring the 2nd grade class and some of my kids as well as those in the 1st and k classes are definitely "classical". i've always idealized classical education because it is logical and thorough, BUT it seemed way to intense to start my BOYS in this model of education. so we've been charlotte mason-ish until this year. even now, the only classicalness you'll see is what we're getting from CC. in addition to doing our memory work (7 subjects, timeline, exodus 20) every day, mapping our geography, and practicing our fine arts for CC, we do math and spelling. we also read a chapter of the Bible every day, practice our hymn of the week (with mom at the piano - yikes!), study our IBLP character trait of the month, and read 1+ chapters of a missionary biography. most recently we've added abeka health,safety&manners, and abeka readers for our pizza hut book it goals. (those are comfortable for me as i grew up with abeka). the boys actually really like the readers and i am hoping it will lead to more reading on their part. they both read really well, but haven't really enjoyed doing it on their own. of course, if i'm honest, i really like reading aloud with them and would miss it if they were reading on their own. hmmm...
so the point of the post was supposed to address "classical education" as scott & i have discussed it in our kids' lives. so...
one negative we see in classical ed is that it introduces so many false gods and false religions to children at such a young age. our goal was to feed our children only TRUTH until we were confident they could understand the difference. this was an advantage we saw to homeschooling in general. so when the opportunity for CC came up, we evaluated where our boys were in their understanding before signing up. in our 8 weeks so far, the boys have memorized greek & roman "gods", the basis of hinduism & buddhism, and next week we'll learn a sentence about confucious and taoism. these have been single sentences not anything lengthy, but still we didn't want to introduce it if they weren't ready.
fortunately, what truly prepared them for understanding idol worship was reading through the Bible. as we've traveled through the old testament, we saw the israelites live in many lands where there was idol-worship and we saw the israelites themselves fall away from God over and over again. i remember the boys saying "again?!" then, the second week at our new church, there were missionaries visiting and they talked about idol worship. they talked about how even when people became christians they still sometimes kept their idols for a while. she looked right at my kids and dropped the idol she'd brought along on the floor and made a real point to them that the idol was just a "cast idol" and obviously had no power.
when we chatted with the boys before purchasing the CC book, we became confident in their confidence that there is one true God and we worship him alone. as we read our missionary biographies and updates from the missionaries we support, our hearts long for those who do not know to know Jesus. as we welcome into our home non-believers and those deceived by false religions, we recognized that they are deceived and long for them too to know the love and forgiveness of our God. as i answer emails from those seeking to know more about Jesus, the kids are seeing how we can turn to God's Word for answers to tough questions.
CC says we want "To know God and to make Him known" - i agree and believe our family is growing in both those things.