We've Moved.

Still no internet yet, hence lack of posting. But at least we're 98% settled in. It's pretty swell.

We're Moving.....for real this time!

If all goes well, we will be closing on our current house tomorrow and moving to Little Elm on Monday! We looked at at least ten houses in this area, mostly Highland Shores, but the only one we really liked was pulled off the market two days after we offered on it. Stink! We thought about stalking the house and sending menacing letters to the owner to get her to sell, but figured that might not go over too well :). Nothing else in this area really stacked up, so we started looking in Little Elm for two reasons: houses are newer, and the market there isn't so great, so the houses are cheaper. We found the perfect house for our family and are super excited!!! The one feature I really love about the house is the kid area is completely separated from the common areas by a long hallway. The kids also have a large playroom flanked by their bedrooms. Not that I don't want my kids around me, but it will be nice for them to have a place to go (or a place for me to send them to) when we start to grate on each others nerves! The one thing I don't like about the house: no trees! Well, there is one tree out front, but it's small and scrawny. I'm going to miss the trees and the shade at our current house.

I will say I'm a little anxious about the move. I've lived in the FlowerPlex most of my 30 years (lived in Sherman and Fort Worth for a year a piece, that's it). I know where everything is here; I know all the back ways to avoid traffic; I know the places to shop, the places to eat, etc. Little Elm is only 20 miles away from here, but it's still moving somewhere completely foreign to me and that's just a little scary! I told Justin he's going to have to buy me a GPS device so I don't get horribly lost with two children in the car. I already scoped out where the Library is, so we are good on that count at least! It also means finding a new church.

I'm still going to do childcare, at least until William goes to school. Coincidentally (aka God planned it), Justin's mom got a teaching position in Prosper ISD, which is not too far from Little Elm, so I already have a contact for getting childcare clients! In fact, I might already have one or two!

The view from the breakfast room this morning

Massive wind + crappy tree = Reason to bust out the chainsaw!

We are hoping it didn't do any major damage to the roof and are super glad it didn't break any of our windows on that side. We are also grateful that we weren't actually in the house when it happened. We had a showing scheduled from 6:30 to 7:30, so we were at Justin's parents' house when the storm blew through.

Upper/Lower case matching center

Chicka Chicka Boom Boom!---Summer '09 Week 1

This week's book is Chicka Chicka Boom Boom by Bill Martin, Jr. and John Archambault, illustrated by Lois Ehlert. A great introducation to the alphabet, Chicka Chicka Boom Boom takes kids on a wonderful letter adventure with silly rhymes and a coconut tree!

Here's a link to Totally Tots Activities: ABC Introduction

Reading:

I made a Chicka Chicka Tot Book for each of the kids. My goal is to have the kids find one picture each week of something beginning with the letter of the week to glue on the Tot Book; this way we can use the book for phonics practice in the future.

All of this is review for Kayleigh, so I am going to challange her to start spelling out words with the letters in her Tot Book. We will also practice writing her name.

Math:

Shape Coconut Trees--using a rectangle and trapezoid for the trunk, diamonds for the leaves, and circles for the coconuts. Decorate with letter stickers for more alphabet reinforcement.

William will be working on numeral recognition and counting for number 1-5. I am going to have him color a coconut tree and use buttons as coconuts for his counting practice.

Kayleigh will be working on addition using a coconut tree mat and buttons.

Memory Verse: EXODUS 20:12 "Honor your father and your mother."

Fun Pre-School Stuff!

If you have toddlers, you need to check out this website: Totally Tots! I wish I could come up with this stuff on my own, but I can't and I am so glad someone else can!

We are going to use their ABC, Memory Verse, and Book Ideas over the summer, along with The Frances Study Guide. Kayleigh fell in love with the Frances books by Russell Hoban right around her third brithday. She is Frances, made up songs and all!

My goal is to do one letter and book a week and a memory verse every two weeks. We have been negligent in the memory verse department since I switched to boxed curriculum. I'm not going actually plan out anything, since our time for school will be hit or miss while the move (or moves) is going on.

I don't think we will be continuing with the box stuff; too many activities assumed a large class and there really wasn't much learning going on, at least that was my opinion. The crafts were fun, so was the music, but I can figure those out on my own and save $40 a month.

WE'RE MOVING!!!!!

Yes, that's right. Despite the "buyers" market, we have a contract on our house and got more than anyone thought we could! Whoopi!

One problem....we don't know where we are moving to! Yes, I know, we have a contract on a brand new home in Frisco, which would be quite lovely, except that it's in Frisco. Once we got the contract on our current house, we decided to check out some homes in Highland Village just to be sure Frisco is what we wanted, and now Frisco is more the back-up plan.

Here's a little background.....

2003--We decide it's time to buy a home. We find a development out in Aubrey and start making some plans to buy there. We end up deciding to buy in Lewisville.

2006---We find a development in McKinney. Our first house goes on the market and sells in a month. We decide with two kiddos it would be nice to live close to family and we buy our current house.

Fast forward to a month ago. We decide now is a good time to move up in house/neighborhood with interest rates being so low. Find development out in Frisco and this time we actually enter a contract and pick out all the fun stuff (although for our budget, there really wasn't much picking).

So the trend seems to be: we want to buy a new home, but can't afford that here, so we look elsewhere. We then decide that new isn't as important as proximity to our families and our church home....we really don't want to leave our church right now, there's too much at stake.

We have a couple possiblities out in Highland Shores and few more in other parts of Highland Village. Coincidentally (and I really don't believe in coincidences), the house two doors down from Justin's parents is back on the market. It was for sale back in 2006, but priced a little out of our budget.....everytime we drive by one of us says, "Gee, wouldn't it be cool if that house came back on the market" and now it is.....eerie.

So here we are in limbo land, a place neither one of us enjoys! The inspection for our current house is tomorrow and hopefully nothing huge will come up and break the deal. Then I have four, yes, four weeks to pack up this house. Should be fun!

Happenings! (a.k.a. why there is a serious lack of blogging)

• Hopefully selling our house in the next month or so! We are super procrastinators and don't do any decor or landscaping until we want to sell :); it has been a busy four weeks or so. We found a new neighborhood in Frisco we really like and have a contract to build. It's exciting! Still, if our current house doesn't sell for what we want, we are totally fine with staying put. We really don't care either way.....it is a good opportunity for us to get closer to Justin's work and buy new, which is why we decided to go for it.
• End of the school semester is next week. Enough said.
• Trying out some of those boxed preschool curriculums. So far I have sampled curriculum from The Learning Box Preschool and Adventures in Learning. The Learning Box is heavy on crafts-- I'm not a big craft person, so it was a little annoying for me, but the kids loved it. Adventures in Learning is a little less craft intensive---usually one craft for the day, whereas The Learning Box would have two, sometimes three. The one big perk in my book is that the company gives you all the craft supplies and packages them by the day. Huge time-saver! And yes, I am willing to pay a little extra if it saves me the time of shopping for all those things! If I had to choose right now, I would stick with Adventures in Learning; it is less time-intensive and I would have the option of adding more to it if needed, i.e. a phonics curriculum and activity centers.

And we have a decision.....

With next fall creeping closer and closer, the schooling decision has been keeping me up at night. What is best for our kids? What is best for our family? Is there really a right and wrong answer? A couple weeks ago, after much introspection, observation and evaluation, I came to the conclusion that full-time homeschooling is just not an option for us. It would not be what is best for our children, nor what is best for our family for many reasons; the main one being the dynamic my relationship with Kayleigh. I'm not ashamed to admit we just need some space.

After I reached that conclusion, I began researching other options, two specifically: Coram Deo Academy and Liberty Christian School. I have a dear friend who works at Liberty and thought I could get a job there quite easily, allowing the kiddos to go there and me to make some money. While I liked that option, I really preferred Coram Deo, since it offered the chance for Kayleigh to "go" to school and to also homeschool part-time. To pay for Coram Deo, I would need to continue with childcare; two childcare kiddos would pay for both my kiddos' tuition and supplies, so if we wanted/needed extra money, I would need to keep more. In essence, either option would require me to work 40-50 hours a week, which is something we do not desire for me to have to do--want to do, ok, but not have to do.

So, we talked about it all a couple nights ago...at 10:30 pm, which must be the magic time for good conversations! We came to the opinion that while a private school education might be different than public school, it is not necessarily better, especially in this area where we have some pretty darn good public schools. Therefore, at least for us, the cost of private school, both monetary and family (i.e. me having to work full-time), is just not worth the different educational experience. We also believe that having involved, committed, Christ-following parents can compensate for the negative aspects of public school.

That being said.....Kayleigh will be starting Kindergarten at public school in the fall! We do plan to "afterschool" in history, science, and Latin to start out, and she'll go to the kid's program at church for Bible. I really want to find an American Sigh Language class for kids her age; she talks with her hand all the time and even makes up signs, so I'm thinking this could be an interest of hers.

I'm going to continue doing childcare until William is in school, and after that we are planning on me working part-time. This way I can have the flexibility to be a room mom, go on field trips, etc., and be the keeper of our home.

Of course, this is not a forever decision as we will be re-evaluating periodically, perhaps transferring to private school later on, but for now I feel at peace about the decision and am sleeping much better!

Isn't he just the cutest little boy you've ever seen?!

Same smile!

Some dear friends found some pics of Miss Kayleigh from Dec 2004....was she really this little? Looking at her now, it's kinda hard to believe! I love this smile!

So, I read the new this morning....I shouldn't read the news...it's not good for my blood pressure!

Two articles stand out to me:

This one--http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/nationworld/stories/030908dnnatstemcell.1a06e392.html

It's about embryonic stem cell research. Apparently, it's not ok to clone for human reproduction, but it could be ok to clone human embryos in order to harvest their stem cells...a particular scene from the Matrix pops into my mind. My question is....why does the scientific/political community insists on exploring this possibility, when research has found adult stem cells and cord blood stem cells to be just as effective?

And this one--http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/education/stories/031209dnmetschoolsintrouble.3d77079.html

It's about education. DISD is looking at lengthen the school year for some of it's lowest performing schools and offering significant bonuses to bring highly-qualified teachers to those schools. Noble plan, but the sad truth is if the parents of these children refuse to be involved and make education a priority, no amount of extra time and great teaching will change anything. Lengthening the school year could actual increase the drop-out rate--who wants to go to more school when you already are apathetic about the amount of time you currently spend there? Then there's this quote:

President Barack Obama said this week that he wants kids to spend more time in school with longer school days and school years. He said the "challenges of a new century demand more time in the classroom."

I get it...in a high-tech global economy its hard to keep in front of the pack, but there is more to life than academics. If you ever get a chance, read Nation of Wimps by Hara Estroff Marano--here's a link to the article that inspired the book: http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/pto-20041112-000010.html. Why do we insist on pushing our children to be the best and the brightest? According to Marano, we feel inadequate in today's market and fear our children falling behind and having a lower standard of living than we currently experience. We want them to have a bigger house, better car, cooler job than we do. Therefore, we push, not realizing our concern for our children is actually concern for ourselves, our image, our peace of mind. Kids don't worry about this stuff, at least they don't until we tell them they should.

What I've been up to....well, besides running after kids and reading books for class....

• Rearranging the living room, which now functions as the playroom; the playroom is now only used for school purposes. This ensures all the kids are in one room, making it much easier on me to interact with/keep an eye on them!
  
• Getting all the tax info for my business together...yuck! I think I need to change my system.
  
• Jumping for joy because Coram Deo is now offering an "At Home" option for $1200 a year as opposed to $4000 a year to go to campus 2 days a week! This is an answer to prayer! I was wavering back and forth on the homeschool decision; not really wanting to send Kayleigh off to kindergarten, but feeling like I/we really couldn't homeschool. (I am not a curriculum planner, don't like it, not one bit) Well, I will gladly pay $1200 a year for curriculum, schedules, records, accountability and assistance offered by Coram Deo, at least through elementary. They only offer grades 1-8 at home, so we'll have to wait until next year to try it, but I'm optimistic!
• Attending a Pure Romance party--look it up---interesting!
• Starting William on the potty-training journey, woo hoo! Here's to a diaper free house by August! So far, he has actually done #2 at least five times on the potty, score!
• Cleaning off the picnic table outside, instead of buying a activity table for schooling.
• Making plans to attend the Homeschool Book Fair in Arlington for the first time!
• Realizing I don't spend near enough time dreaming with my hubby.
• Planning a vacation to who knows where---something tropical maybe?
• Getting excited about maybe, just maybe participating in MOPS or JOY(if it's still called that) next year, even if I have five kiddos in tow!
  

Is it something or it is nothing?

Lately, I have felt this weird desire to pack up and move somewhere, somewhere different, somewhere colder, somewhere I've never been. It's weird because I am not an adventurous person by any definition of the word, nor do I like cold weather, especially snow. Yeah, it's pretty, but boy can it be messy!

The really weird thing is Justin is feeling the same way; wanting a change, wanting an adventure, wanting to make sure we can parent ourselves without having the awesome luxury of family nearby (and by nearby means 3 miles or less). Not that we feel tied down or wish to get away from anyone here. It's hard to explain....for me, it's a desire not have lived in the same area MY WHOLE LIFE!! It's also seeing pictures of other parts of the country and thinking, "The kids would love this, heck I would love this". There's also a sense that we have it too easy with all the family we have around. I hear stories from families that have done this...they talk about how the experience brought them closer, how they had to get out of comfort zones, how they discovered themselves, etc.

Then I think....is it really about location? Or is it something deeper? Couldn't we have an adventure here, in Flowerplex? I don't know what we'll do, if anything. But it doesn't hurt to dream a little!

WARNING: Blog posting may take a serious hit due to current class requirements! This class is going to kick my tush! I need another 2 hours in a day; hopefully things will calm down once Justin starts class next week. He has class two nights a week, so that'll give me some extra time once I get the kids in bed.

The latest questions fielded from Kayleigh:

• Why is it cold sometimes and hot sometimes?
• Why does the earth go around the sun?
• What does guilty mean?
  
• Why did Jesus have to die?
• What is sin?
• Do I sin? Do you sin? Does Daddy sin?

Something tells me she coming very close to accepting Christ. She told Emma today that she could pray to Jesus and tell Him that she trusts in Him. Don't know where this is coming from....it's not like I've beefed up Bible teaching around here...I'm a little perplexed, but excited!

Not to be left out.....William's new favorite phrase is "No, I do it", shortly followed by "I need help"! At least he knows when to ask for help, unlike most men I know!

Introducing.......

Life is Learning, Learning is Life

So, now all things homeschool/preschool have their place, though I can't promise it won't seep into this blog....after all life is learning! I really set this to keep my childcare parents informed of what we are learning about from day to day, but it just might evolve into something else...who knows!

It's time to start researching school plans for next year!

What I learned this year:

• I need to stop worrying about challenging Kayleigh and have some fun with her!
• It is possible to "do school" with a toddlers in the house--that's what pack-n-plays are for! William and Gracie are old enough to entertain themselves with markers and crayons, but Abbi gets to play in the pack-n-play for about 30-45 minutes while we have preschool.
• My desire to keep Kayleigh advancing is simply that, MY desire and totally a pride thing. She's cool with just the preschool that we do and reading her books at rest time.
  
• William just might be reading by the end of next year...I truly thought he would be closer to five or even six, but he might surprise me....not that I intend to teach him to read by the end of next year, just keeping an open mind.
  
• I would love to find a couple homeschooling families to get together with on a weekly or biweekly basis. Kayleigh loves being around older kids, especially boys, plus it would give us adults some grown-up time and people to bounce ideas off of.
• I can plan curriculum, I just really don't want to need to.
• There's more, I just can't think of it right now!

With these things in mind, I think I have decided on the PLAN for next year. Notice the word "plan"; while, I intend to do the following, things beyond my control could arise to change said plan...nothing is set in stone till the purchases are made, and even then there's some wiggle room!

Right now, I am still planning to homeschool Kayleigh for kindergarten and will use My Father's World Kindergarten (MFWK) program along with Five in a Row. I struggled with the MFWK choice because the reading instruction is way below Kayleigh's current reading level, but I am realizing that while she reads at a 2nd grade level, she's not developmentally ready for 1st or 2nd grade Language Art materials, and I have noticed some gaps in certain skill sets. Plus, there are things outside of academics that I would like to have the time to focus on, like piano lessons and everyday life skills, so if next year is review for her, I'm okay with that.

As it looks right now, I will have my two kids plus two, possible three others. I need to check with one of my families to see what their plans are for next year. If it goes like I think it will, I'll have Kayleigh and Tre (both 5 by the end of Oct), and William and one other (either a 2 or 3 year old). MFWK will be perfect, since Kayleigh and Tre can do the full program together and William and the other will be able to join in on some of the activities. Not to mention, I'll be able to buy all that I need, including the Pre-K set from MFW for under $400, and that's if I buy new.

Well, this long and probably not very interesting to most of you!

Whew! What a Christmas Break we had! I felt like we go, go, go the whole time. It's nice to be back and in the same old routines again.

Lately, Kayleigh is asking many question about dying. Here's how the conversation goes...

K: Mommy, why do we die?

Me: We die because our bodies are not meant to last forever.

K: Well, when will we die? Are you going to die soon?

Me: I don't know when we will die, but God knows.

K: Will I die soon?

Me: I hope not, I would be sad if you died soon.

K: Do you want me to die?

Me: No, Kayleigh, of course I don't want you to die, it would make me so sad. But did you know that if you believe and trust in Jesus, you get to go live with Him in heaven after your body dies here on earth?

K: Grandpa is with Jesus in heaven, did he believe in Jesus?

Me: Yes, he did. Do you believe in Jesus?

K: Yep! Do you?

Me: Yes!

K: Does Daddy?

Me: Yes!

K: And William?

Me: Yes, as much as a 2 year old can.

K: And Ame and Abba? And Granny and Papa? What about Tre and Emma?

Me: I'm pretty sure they do, but you can ask them yourself the next time you see them.

I'm not exactly sure what got her started on the topic of death, but it's pretty neat to see her growing in her understanding of God. She's starting to pray on her own about things, like splinters and being afraid at night. She even evangelized to Emma this weeks...telling her that if she believes in Jesus she gets to live with Him forever in heaven. That same day, Emma got a splinter from the playset and was really upset about the prospect of having it removed. Over the break, Kayleigh got a little piece of a sticker in her foot and refused to allow us to remove it, she said she would pray to Jesus and He would heal it. The next morning, she woke up exclaiming, "Jesus healed my sticker!", and He must have because that was the last I heard about it. Well, after Emma got her splinter, Kayleigh told her about Jesus healing her foot, and right there prayed to Jesus for Emma's splinter to be healed. It was so cool sitting there watching it all happen!

I want my wife and kids back.

Bachelor weekend is great and all, but only if there's something exciting. I've just been working and that gets pretty dull without some munchkin distractions every now and then. And while I've been sleeping great in the middle of the bed, I've been colder than normal. I need my space heater cuddler.