LDS Media

I got sent a letter the other day asking me to take part in an LDS Media survey. It was really about the benefits of the different media outlets and how I use them as a missionary tool. Wow folks, I want you to know I absolutely need to do more. There was a list of about 10 ways where I was asked to check all that apply about how I share the gospel. I could only check 3. I guess I get so caught up in my own little world that I don't branch out enough. I know we all have that issue but right now that doesn't make me feel any better. When I think about all the ways my life has been blessed because of my membership in The church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints I wonder how I can not share the gospel. And yet, somehow I manage to keep it myself so often. Not because I don't to share my testimony or because I don't have one, but mostly because I don't often put myself in positions to share. And so I will start here. The following paragraph will contain just a portion of my testimony. I will be happy to share more with anyone willing to listen.

I know that Jesus Christ is my Savior. I know that He came to earth as an infant to his mother Mary and his earthly father Joseph. I know that the things He taught are relevant still today. Most importantly I know that He atoned for our sins, that he willingly gave His life for us in the most unselfish act all mankind will ever witness. He had the power to stop His crucifixtion and chose to follow through because He loves us. I love Him and want to be with Him and my Father again one day. I'm so thankful to know that I can be. I know that Joseph Smith is the prophet of this dispensation. He was a great, though imperfect man. He was chosen as a boy to lead this church and did so with integrity, courage and strength. If I could have just a portion of his courage I should never fear. I know the Book of Mormon is the word of God. I know because I read it and then got on my knees and asked my Heavenly Father if the things contained therein were true and beneficial to my life. My prayers were answered with an undeniable "YES"! I know that all who read it with pure intent, seeking to know for themselves, will recieve the same answer. I love my Savior and my Father in Heaven with all my heart and am learning to put Them first in my life. I know I'll never prefect it, but I can sure try! I give you these things humbly, openly, in the name of Jesus Christ, Amen.

Shooting Sports!

Haley has joined a 4h club where they will learn to safely handle and shoot guns. She is so excited! I tried to convince Jenna to join as well, but no go. She's not interested. Oh well, to each their own. But at tonights meeting they chose officers and Haley was chosen as President. I'm not sure she knew what the job would entail when she volunteered but she was so cute up there leading the meeting. Haha! Already she has assignments and is all about doing it correctly. The parents got sent to the other room though to talk out some other issues so I only got to watch her for a few minutes. The club leader is making them be very formal so they have to use proper terms like "Madame President", "make a motion", "2nd the motion", "table the motion", and the like. The kids were too cute trying to remember all the right things to say and all the right ways to have a proper meeting. I loved it!

The parents were another story. Let me just tell you, I found out just exactly how much I do NOT know about proper gun care, safety, and shooting. We were charged with listing all the things needed for the range. Half of the things on the list were things I never heard of! Other things I wouldn't have thought of in a million years! Lol! You know who needs to join this club? Me!

Politics!

Politics these days seem like a never ending battle. When will the people in our country come to their senses and pull ourselves out of this incredible recession? Ever? Not as long as Obama is office, of that I'm certain. We seem to be following the trends of the rest of the world. Loss of freedoms, higher taxes, higher spending, more entitlements meant to keep us in submission (who fights against the one who feeds them?), higher expenses. At the grocery store this morning spent more money than usual by almost half! Holy cow people! To fill my tank with gas I have to make two purchases. I drive a Suburban with a 26 gallon tank. Most stores set their pumps to accept a maximum of $75. My truck takes $90! And that was last week! This week it's sure to cost me $100! I think I'll go on stike. Well, I would if I could. How do go on strike against the cost of essentials? Stop eating? Hmmm, maybe I should try that. I just might lose a few pounds!

Good times...

Tonight Freddie took both boys and the 3 oldest girls to watch a horse show in Jacksonville. So here I sit with just my 2 babies! Two of the sweetest girls on earth. I never get the opportunity to spend time with them like this so tonight we drank chocolate milk and had toast (Gracie's idea!) and watched nick jr til I thought my heart would explode. Ella followed me around the house and Gracie chatted endlessly. It reminded me of two other of the sweetest girls on earth. They think they're all grown up now, but I know better. One of them chatted nonstop and the other stuck to me like static cling. Then came another of the sweetest girls on earth. Thank goodness Faith knows she's still a kid! That girl is endless happiness all bundled up in one little person. Next were two boys who rival the greatest men the world has ever known. These two captured my heart in exactly the same way the girls did. Totally and completely. And now I'm back to my last two little darlings. So precious and growing up way too fast. I wonder if Heavenly Father wanted us to have moments like this. Where you are overjoyed at your blessings and yet somehow sad that it can't last forever. I think maybe that's the joy of eternal families. Even though these are moments that we can't get back we have all eternity to spend making new moments, enjoying them and wishing they could last forever. But I'm glad they can't. Because if they did, my little miracles could never have miracles of their own. And that is a joy I would never deny them. So I take the moments when I can. And right now....I can!

Lazy Day!

Such fun plans we had for today....and then it rained and it poured all day long :( Oh, well. Sometimes that's not a bad thing. Everyone stayed inside and played the wii, played with toys, read books, and layed on the couch. Turned out not so bad after all. The house though is the one that's suffers the most. It really looks like a tornado of 7 kids ran through it all day. I've never been so thankful not to have company in all my life! Usually, it's on days like these when my visiting teachers will just happen to drop by. Thank goodness they've both raised large families and can feel my pain! I have always wondered though, why no one ever just "drops by" when the house is clean? Murphy's Law I guess. Anyway, I finally decided to lay down a few minutes since I've had a headache all day, when Freddie came home. He was just gonna finish up a few things he needed to do for work on his computer. And then his phone rang.....and then again, and again, and again. Oh boy, there goes my few minutes to myself. But I love it. I wouldn't change it for the world! Maybe it doesn't sound like such fun to anyone else, but to me, this is heaven. I have a gorgeous husband, gorgeous kids, and a place to call home. Rich? Yes, I am!

How I Homeschool

Since I talked about why in my last post, I thought this time I'd address how. Everybody wants to know how! I get asked, "How on earth do you do it?" more times than I can count. So here's a run down of a typical day in the life of my homeschool.

I get up at 6am to take Jenna to seminary. A class that lasts 50 minutes. Since I live so far from town, I wait for her to finish before coming home. Luckily, right across the street is Anytime Fitness. So I get my workout in early. No excuses! When Jenna and I get home just before 8 I usually have to wake up the kids because they are all sleepyheads! Next, I start laundry. Sometimes I was lazy the night before and have to fluff up a load that needs folding. Don't tell! the kids are helpful (kinda!) and make their own breakfast. They also make a huge mess doing it! After breakfast, I send the kids to get ready for the day. No pj's! Then we do morning chores. My goal is to get school going by 9am. Sometimes I actually make it.

We all gather to say the pledge, have family prayer and do calendar with the little kids. Even Gracie gets involved in our "circle time" and has so much fun! I could use a little improvement in this part of my day, but I'm working on it. There are just SO many good options to choose from. A person could spend a lot of time in "circle time" if they wanted to!

Jenna and Haley are enrolled in FLVS, a virtual school where they take all of the required classes to graduate. They have a teacher for each subject and are required to have monthly phone calls with each one. They also have audio lessons, especially for language courses, and a DBA (Discussion-Based Assessment) with each teacher per module, or unit of study. I'm required for the monthly call only. Piece of cake!

The other 3 kids each have a crate I got at walmart for $3! Yay, me! All their supplies are kept in their crates. Books, pencils, notebook for extra writing, journal, crayons, a folder to hold cutouts and things like that. I also have an extra supply crate for things that are available to everyone. I'm trying to implement even more ways to stay organized. This is another area where I could use some work, lol!

Each child has a planner which is really just a calendar with plenty of writing space. I schedule 9 weeks at a time in their planner and write the grade they earn next to the subject on the day it was assigned. I also follow the county school board calendar since Jenna's seminary class follows it. Easy as pie! They get out their planners and get to work! Usually with some proding from me! I sit at the table with them, grade their work as they go and answer questions as they come up. Sometimes one of them needs extra help and we move to the chalkboard. I love my chalkboard! Most days everyone has finished their work by lunch! Other days we might work as late as a regular school day, but not often.

I do have to take breaks sometimes to do things like switch out laundry, fold and put it away. Rock the baby, help Gracie and do regular mom things.

I have enjoyed it more than I thought I would. I'm sure I said that in my last post, but it bears repeating! Ella and Gracie usually hang with us at the table and sometimes that makes it harder, but they are good kids. Gracie watches PBS, NickJr or Disney. But likes to help out with any crafts, story reading and the like.

Somedays I wonder what I've gotten myself into. There are times when it can be very stressful. But I've found that the more organized and prepared I am, the less stress all around. I hope to be able to give courage to someone else who may be looking for an alternative schooling option for their child/children. Trust me, if I can do it, ANYONE can!

Why homeschool?

Recently, I've been asked this question a lot. Most people assume that because two of my sisters homeschool their kids and have for years, that I must have always done it also. Not so. In fact, my children attended public school for most of their lives (except the little ones). Jenna was the one who first peaked my interest. She was struggling and I decided it was time to try something different. So we went with Connections Academy. Great program. It isn't homeschool though. It's online public school and the work load (for me, the teacher) was tremendous. In my opinion. I guess it didn't help that I was pregnant and sick. I had taken them all out of school and they all were attending CA. At the time "all" meant Jenna, Haley and Faith. Wyatt was 3 and Braden was just 1. I was NOT impressed. I re-enrolled them after the Christmas break. That turned out to be no good either. We'd moved and the school they had attended previously, which was one I liked, was too far away. This new school was run by a tyrant who thought I was too opinionated (go figure!) and didn't like me much. Needless to say, the kids suffered. So I tried again and transferred them to Enterprise Learning Academy in Duval County. Loved it! By now, Wyatt was starting Kindergarten and had the best K teacher of all time! I loved her! Jenna though was pulled out and began FLVS, online virtual school. For her, that has been a huge success. Since they service only 6-12th grades, we decided they would go to public school K-5 and FLVS thereafter. And then we got re-zoned to another school. A new school, but one I wasn't keen on them attending. It serviced K-8! Since middle school was one of the main things I wanted to avoid, I was not thrilled. By now, the economy had tanked and we were closing our business and moving anyway, so we decided that while we were in limbo we'd homeschool them all again and see how it went. This time "all" included Wyatt. Guess what....yep, I was pregnant again...and SICK! But it still wasn't as hard as I thought it would be. In fact, I actually enjoyed it. It was easier to be sick enough to make it hard to leave the house, if I didn't actually HAVE to leave! When Ella was born having them all at home made it easier to do Dr appt's with a newborn, which for me is pretty frequent. I think they just like me! Anyway, we made it through the year and decided it wasn't as hard as I'd thought. I liked it.

I won't get into many of the other reasons I chose this route except to say that I'd had enough experience with several schools to see that the public school system is broken. It's not the fault of the teachers and administrators. There are some who contribute majorly to the problem (like the tyrant principal before mentioned) but for the most part, the teachers especially are well intentioned, good people. It's the gov't. They have their hands in every piece of the pie. The pie would taste better without gov't interference. Left to their own resource, most teachers would do a better job teaching than they are now being allowed to do. We decided that fixing the school system would take more time than we had and two of our children were suffering. To me, "No Child Left Behind" meant mine. I decided that my child would never be left behind if I could help it and I found that I could!

And so, our children are homeschooled. I'm enjoying it more than I ever thought I would. It's taught me to be more organized, which had always been one of my goals. It's taught me to enjoy those little people Freddie and I brought into our lives more than I thought I could. It's taught me more about me than anything else I've attempted to date. Plus, ever heard the platitude, No Pain, No Gain? Aint that the truth!