Resting....

I'm resting alot and taking naps :) No more regular contractions like the other day....just some pains here and there. I'm anxious for my ultrasound next Wednesday to hopefully get an idea of how much she weighs.
With only a little over 4 weeks left of schooling, we have tapered off...I think I crammed about a year and a half's work into our daughters schedule this past year!! She needs a well deserved break. I do odds and ends with our 4 year old right now....keeping up with his reading mostly and reviewing numbers and spelling. They are getting in a lot of coloring lately :) Something they do while I have my feet up in the air. I've also been getting in alot of reading since I have to rest. I've gone through the book Creative Correction by Lisa Welchel and I'm going through Grace-based Parenting right now by Dr. Tim Kimmel. I've had my eyes opened to a few things that I do which I am eager to adjust.
We are also preparing to do some major organizing to clear up some space in the bedrooms. (or should I say I will be directing while hubby organizes!) Hopefully our ideas will work out well....I guess we'll see this weekend :)

Contractions

For the past hour and a half I've been recording contractions....yikes! Hopefully this is just false labor pains. They are very light, not lasting too long, but have been coming anywhere from 3-5 mins. I'm now up walking around to see if I can shake them. I think it is probably a good time to think about packing the overnight bags etc. and getting things organzied for the hospital. I've been hoping for an early delivery but this is just a tad too early :) I'd like to get to the end of November!

Appointment

Went for another appoinment today. Blood pressure still very high!! I was put on the monitor for 20 minutes to check baby and she was very active and I even had a contraction recorded :) All my blood work from last week came back fine. He just said REST!! I need to put my feet up and lay on my left side during the day. I also went from measuring 32 weeks to measuring 35 weeks ( I am currently 33 weeks) He said blood pressure problems were suppose to decrease rate of growth...not increase :) So I get an ultrasound next week to measure growth and see how baby is doing. I always love getting a 'peak' at who is growing in there :)

So funny

Last night at supper I sat down and asked for someone to bring the utensils. Our 4 year old went and got everyone pencils! Oh we had a good laugh :) I guess they sound similar enough huh?

Improvement!

I get so excited when I see big improvements in the kids schooling! For the past several days our son has grown leaps and bounds in reading!! So far our reading has consisted of sounding out each individual word and then repeating the word as a whole word (m -a - p map). I started getting him to sound out the words in his head and then say the word aloud. But recently I have had him look at a word and just say what he sees altogether....no sounding it out. WOW! He really caught on and there is very little pausing to sound out a word. We are going through the book Succeeding at Reading by Keepers of the Faith. We do timed drills as well and today he was up to 14 words a minute!
It is so neat to watch him out in public sounding out words. We went grocery shopping the other day and after a couple days of learning about the phonics sound 'sh', he was standing at the meat section and said "Mommy, that says 'FRESH'. Daddy and Mommy we both excited to see his excitement at reading such a big word!
What a gift it is to be able to watch these little minds grow and provide the enthusiasm and encouragement to help them along!! I just love it!

Next year's schedule

I've been working on our next years school schedule...wow! I thought it was hard scheduling one child but 2 is a whole other story :) I think I finally have something I am happy with. I may change it the more I think about it but so far I have our daughter doing most of her independant seatwork in the morning while I work with our son and then in the afternoon I concentrate on our daughter.
Our new subjects added this year are
*bible memorization class (with sticker chart),
*character studies (we will cover respectfulness, obedience, truthfulness, cheerfulness, and kindness....see how many we get through!),
*reading/book report for our daughter (so far reading has been aloud to mommy but now I will have her do silent reading and book reports on her own)
*homemaking class for our daughter...looking forward to this! It is a 6 year course filled with some great ideas so for next year I have chosen Needlepoint, Scrapbooking, Letter writing, household cleaning, and sign language.
Now I just need to work on getting charts and booklets all put together and planning the individual subject material. No sweat! *smile*
Now to go relax for a bit....and give my brain a rest.

Appointment woes

Today I had a check up and all seems well with baby but not mommy :) I'm measuring right on schedule and she has a good heartbeat, but my blood pressure was HIGH! The end of my last pregnancy resulted in an early induction because of blood pressure. Today, I had to go have some blood work done and they want to see me next week again. With 8 weeks to go I'm not sure what my options are just yet if my blood pressure doesn't come down. I've been put on chair-rest (as opposed to bed rest) I am to sit with my feet up for much of the day. Over the next couple days, I'm going to try and get the last 6 weeks of schooling all organized for the kids so there will be little for me to do and there will be no more grocery shopping or outings for me :) Did I mention I'm soooooo thankful hubby is home during the day.....the Lord worked that out well!

I got home from my appointment and our little one had finally gone down for his nap. I went to check on him (before going to put my feet up!) and what a character....always something! He fell asleep coloring in bed...drool on his paper and crayon in hand. What a boy!

Homecoming Sunday

Today was our Homecoming or Old Fashioned Sunday at church. We have our morning service followed by lunch and activities. This year the horses returned and as always, the kids have a ball riding and petting them. (A couple in our church owns them and takes the kids around the field) Thank you to Nana for bringing her camera because I did it again.....got half way to church and realized I didn't bring mine. It was a cold day today, so much of the time was spent inside. I think Fall has finally arrived for us!! It's been so warm up until now :) Hopefully, if mommy's car sickness isn't too bad we will go for a ride up through the mountains to see the changing colors soon.

Hubby's birthday

Today is hubby's birthday. He has been working from the house pretty steadily for the last 2 weeks but today he has been out of the house all day. The kids are busy making cards for him, we are not having a cake or party since he is seriously dieting, so we are just going to hang around the house tonight and spend some time with the kids and just relax for the evening.
I did want to give him a big birthday wish though....

My dearest love,
I'm so thankful for you. I don't praise God or thank Him enough for you. Life can get so busy and many things I take for granted, including you. You are such a dedicated and loving husband and father. I'm thankful for what you do for us, without complaint, and with determination. I'm thankful for your love for me and the children and how you look forward to our growing family. I'm thankful for your desire to serve the Lord and your desire for our family to faithfully serve the Lord. We have had a wonderful 11 years together, growing together, loving one another, experiencing life together. God has blessed me tremendously with such a faithful and loving man and friend. You have made life such a joy, filled with wonderful memories, and such an anticipation for the future. I love you with every bit of my heart. I hope you enjoy your special day!
All my love,
your wife

Advice

Homeschooling one child can be a lot of work and I often wondered what I was going to do when it was time to do several at a time. How do these mom's do it?? Well, you do get the hang of it and it will come in time....just takes a little while to get into the groove, but there was some very sound advice I got about a year ago which I have definitely taken to heart and have seen the rewards from it. One of the best things you can teach your kids is how to work independently...how to be self-taught. Our daughter who is 6 does very well at this and it frees up alot of time for me to teach our 4 year old. There are some concepts that need to be taught of course....but I am training her how to thoroughly read through instruction, how to approach questions she doesn't understand...etc. Today I gave work to our 4 year old to have him complete all on his own. I went through the instructions with him and he finished all 3 pages and was so excited when he had completed them by himself (he had to show it off to daddy too!) Thankfully I have another year before I add child #3 to the mix....that will take independent work AND much organization!!!!!

Homemade diaper bag

Yesterday and today I worked on and completed my first diaper bag. There are a few things I will do differently next time, but overall I'm happy with it. I like the colors and pattern but want to do just a little something extra on the front....just not sure what yet. It has 2 bottle pockets on the outside and I made 4 pockets on the inside. Here are a few pics :)

Weekend pictures

Looks like we are going to have lots of rain for awhile. I can always tell when a front is coming through because I get headaches now. But the weekend was nice and the kids were able to get out and play. Daddy was teaching our girl how to jump rope, our boy is learning how to ride a bike using brakes and not his feet! (He got a nice warning, if I saw him use his feet anymore to stop, I'd take his shoes.....barefoot breaking isn't pleasant :) Our little guy was just enjoying running around. Here are some pics from the weekend.

I love statistics :)

Research proves again the success of homeschooling! Here are just a few statistics just published about a 2008 study done across all 50 states, Guam and Puerto Rico.

Academic achievement from grades K - 12
National Percentile for Public School in ALL subject areas - 50%
National Percentile for Homeschooling Students in all subject areas - 86%

Percentile scores based on Money spent on education per child
National Percentile for Public School ($9,963 spent per child) - 50%
National Percentile for Homeschooling (over $600 spent " " ) - 89%
National Percentile for Homeschooling (under $600 spent " ") - 86%

Does a teacher certification make a difference?
National percentile of homeschool parent WITH certification - 87%
National percentile of homeschool parent WITHOUT certification - 88%

Is there a correlation between student scores and parent education?
National percentile for public school students - 50%
National percentile for homeschool/no parent has college degree - 83%
National percentile for homeschool/one parent has college degree - 86%
National percentile for homeschool/both parents have college degree - 90%

Critics have for a long time insisted that parents must need to be teacher certified in order to teach their children.....proven wrong!
Homeschoolers are still achieving higher than their public school peers, scoring 34-39% higher than the norm on achievement tests.
It's not the amount of money you spend on a child's education....it is how and what they are being taught.
You CAN teach your children successfully!! This only touches on the performance part of schooling....there are so many other reasons to consider homechooling based on God's design for our children's education to start with.....
I hope all parents will prayerfully consider homeschooling their kids.....no matter if it may be a few years down the road, or you already have school age children.

2 year photo

I've seen so many changes in our boy recently since turning 2 years old. He is saying alot more phrases now, he is completely self-feeding, drinking from a cup (or juice box) on his own and doing really well!!! We finally got his 2 year photos back and he is looking so grown up...aaahhh. It's hard to believe he's not going to be the baby in another 2 months.

Spelling

Our boy did great with his spelling words today. We are reviewing short vowel words a, e, i, o and tomorrow is u. He is almost to the point where I don't have to constantly remind him to LEAVE A SPACE BETWEEN YOUR WORDS!! *smile* I had to let that out....it must have been my 100th time saying it to him :) I only had to remind him a few times this spelling test. I gave him a lot of new 4 letters words to write and he did wonderful sounding them out. We are down to the last 7 weeks of school. Our daughter has already advanced to grade 3 math. I didn't want to wait until our next school year since she was ready. She is almost through the first half of Horizons 3 Math and doing so well!! The toughest part for her is word problems. It's just something we will have to keep working on until it clicks :) I'm excited about starting written book reports with her next school year. I have a few good books in mind for her Christmas presents :)
Here is our boys spelling work and a picture of him. Notice his special holding place for his eraser....typical boy!!! (I didn't even notice when I was taking the picture)

Children's Choir

Here's a video of the Children's choir. Our daughter is in the back row, far right and our son is the front row, far left. Their cousin is in the front, far right.
It was such a sweet thing to watch. They all did a great job!
(Thanks to my sister-in-law for the video....my pregnant mind is so foggy I forgot our camera)

Chores that teach

I've been needing alot of help around the house lately since bending and standing for long periods of time are too difficult. Our daughter who is 6 can do alot around the house on her own which I am thankful for, and I'm even more thankful when she does it willingly without being asked. She helps alot with laundry, dishes, and clean-up and our 4 year old has been getting more involved as well. There are certain chores I like him to do because they are very teachable ways to involve schooling with housework.

One of my favorites for him is shoe organization. If you were to see our pile of shoes, you would think 10 people lived in the house. Everyone has Sunday shoes, running shoes, and sandles which is at least 15 pair of shoes always on the go. By the end of the week, our organized lined-up shoe mat is one big heap! I get our 4 year old to organize the shoes (teaching matching pairs) and I can change it up to have him order them from biggest to smallest, smallest to biggest, organize in groups (all Sunday shoes, all sandles, all running shoes)...etc...teaching how to sort.

Another favorite is tidying up the bookshelf of kids' books. Again by the end of the week, our organized vertically stacked books are thrown in one on top of the other. This teaches more problem solving than anything. Watching him yesterday was quite funny. He has to figure out how to keep the books standing upright while he reaches for more. Usually the books he has already stacked fall over when he lets go. I allow him time to figure out methods of keeping the books stacked upright on his own ......until sometimes the tears start flowing cause it's just not working!!! Yesterday he was talking to the books telling them how frustrated he was getting that they were not co-operating. Many times he would tilt the last book to keep the rest from falling but yesterday he was having a tough time. When I saw he was getting too frustrated I showed him a heavy toy that was near him and how he could use that to help keep the books in place while he was stacking.
He also helps with folding the laundry into each person's pile and other little things around the house. I'm trying to get them more involved around the house. I am the type that likes to do things myself because it will get done the way I like the first time! But I know they need to learn things so it's just a matter of patience and time on my part :)

Weekend

Schoolwork is done, some organizing going on, I really need to clean the house but just too pooped at the moment :) Just one of those lazy days. Already had a nap before noon! Not too much excitement over here today....

Hubby is going to be having a birthday in a couple weeks. I was excited about making a cake but he doesn't want one. He is FINALLY motivated to lose some weight and I don't want to tempt him!!!! He is down 11 pounds so far and I'm so proud of him. I on the other hand I have been gaining what he is losing...oh I don't know how I'm going to make it another 10 weeks. So I think we'll skip the party this year.

I never got a call back about my gestational diabetes test, so I am assuming all was well! Thank you Lord :) Well, off to put my feet up and order, eerr...I mean guide my kiddies through some household chores to help Mommy *grin*