Slow Day...

Today is starting out a little slow. I know that we will complete our school work for the day, but it is going slow at this point. Later today and into tomorrow we are supposed to have a significant about of snow....hopefully we don't get all that they have predicted. Church has been cancelled for Wednesday night and we may end up canceling lessons tomorrow.....could be a productive week in the house if we don't have to go anywhere.

I know that I have posted pictures that Daniel has taken, but wanted to share that this weekend we picked some to print out....and let me just say wow! They are GREAT. He loves taking pictures and we are so proud of how well he is doing.

Johnathan was really excited that he was able to meet two of the guys from Harvest that write a lot of the music that he likes. We are working had on some new songs to share for worship with church in March. He is doing awesome and we are excited to see how the Lord continues to bless in the area of music for Johnathan.

Now Nattalie....she is growing up so fast. She loves playing the mandolin, but I have to say that she is really enjoying learning different things about being a homemaker. She is taking on a lot of responsibilities of picking up and cleaning....and she is beginning to experiment in the kitchen. What a joy it is to she her learn and embrace these new found joys with her. And what a great joy to mom.....now I will have a helper with dinners. Praise the Lord!

Ok...well back to school and praying that we are able to finish our work for the day and of cour learn a lot from it!!

Men's Weekend!

John and Johnathan headed out of town today for a men's conference. Johnathan is so excited that he gets to go and spend this time with dad. I pray that have a great time together.

Natt, Dan and I went walking around the mall after we got John and Johnathan on the road. We had a good time just looking at stuff. Tonight we will go to small group...looking forward to that. Then off to my parents house to have a belated birthday celebration...yeah me ;)...just kidding!

This week was not our best at getting our school done, but we know when that happens we will have a busy week next week to get back on track......hard work here we come. We still love everything that we are using this year! This years biggest challenge is that Johnathan is not liking that sometimes he is still working when everyone else is already done. I explained to him that his school is only going to get harder and take more and more time, but studying hard is so worth it!!! Next year he even has an extra subject than everyone else.....glad we are learning the concept about time and hard work this year!!

Also, thinking about adding Spanish for everyone starting next year. I know there are a lot of different programs that are good, but tell me what you like beat and why. Thanks in advance for your help!!

We will call today.....Musical Monday

We got up and cleaned and picked up house as normal and then instead of hitting the books first we worked onour instrument practice. Johnathan and I spent over two hours together on music tonight. Johnathan is beginning to put together music for each night on Wednesdays for the youth, but also together he and I will be leading music for worship twice in the month of March....we worked so hard to put it all together. I am so proud of how hard Johnathan is working with his music....is he doing great. Also....his voice is starting to change....I am excited about this because we will be able to harmonize a lot more together....so fun!!!

Also, not to forget the other two. Nattalie is truly enjoying her mandoline and she is doing a great job! She has a great love for music! She even picked up her flute again to she how much she still remembers....awesome stuff! Daniel is still working hard with the electric guitar.....and of course he has a great passion for photography. He is doing such a good job. Let me tell a funny story......a friend of ours took one of the pictures off the blog and it using it as the background on her phone and also one of Daniel's friends is sending it out in a picture message to his friends. They all love it and they are so amazed to find out that it wa taken by Daniel. He is so excited that people love his pictures. What a gift!!

Thank you Lord for such blessed and talented children....we are so blessed!!!

Fantastic Friday and Relaxing Saturday

Friday was an awesome time......the kids went with Grammie and Pop to outdoors show at the Iowa event center and they have tons of stories of all the fun that they had.

John and I enjoyed dinner and then Winter Jam concert with April and Dylan.....what a great evening. And yes John and I are getting old because for the most part we couldn't understand what they were singing.

Today has been a relaxing day to just catch up on our busy activities yesterday. Stayed up way to late last night, but it was well worth it!!!!

Thanks Grammie and Pop for spending the day with the kids and April and Dylan thank you for the great night out!!!!

Wow...we are ready for winter to be done!

Got up early o head to deliver the paper this morning.  Yesterday it was above freezing for a little bit, but then before evening it dipped way down.  Everything that started to thaw then re-froze.  Wow....everything was like a sheet of ice.  Wow, I am really learning a lot about driving on those crazy roads being up so early with the newspaper.  Its nice that there are not that many people on the road that early!

We headed to church today for all the music.....had a great day!  Unfortunately before we left is was snowing....yuck!  The boys are hoping that there is not much because they don't like it when there is a lot to have to walk through for the newspaper!

So....the iPad was successful today.  The kids are really enjoying working on the iPad with the math and spelling.  Nattalie did just a few minutes with the spelling yesterday and it showed with her test today.....so awesome.  They are enjoying spending the time working on all of it.  What a blessing when learning is disguised so well.

In light of the new snow I thought that I would post some pictures Daniel took when we had the new snow last week.....he is doing such a great job!

These were all taken at Water Works Park.....what a beautiful sunset we caught that day!!

Monday is here again!

Wow, the weekends always fly by! The kids and I worked very hard on school today. Some of our studies today includes the solar system and everyone seems to really enjoy studying this. Also, we are excited to add some new things to our daily routine. I recently got an iPad and this is going to be a great tool for our home schooling. I have found some great math, states and spelling practices for th kids to spend time with each day. I am very excited to see how this will help them to improve in these two subjects.

Today the weather has been interesting. When we started our paper route it was snowing and then about 5 minutes later it turned into sleet.....then back to snow again. Weather like this is not good for the roads....very slick out there. Also, during the day today it warmed up a little and allowed things to begin to melt, but we have very cold weather on the way. This winter has been easier than last winter, but we are all ready for the spring!

Tomorrow we should be back to our normal schedule and be at church in the afternoon for guitar and voice lessons and then second service worship practice. Speaking of worship.....Johnathan and I have been working on our music for the worship services we will help lead in March. So excited to see how the Lord has blessed Johnthan with such fantastic musical talents.

God has truly blessed our family in so many ways.....thank you so much Lord for the heathly, wonderful, and talented children you have blessed us with. What a true blessing the Lord has given us with the opportunity to home school and train the children to live their lives for the Lord!

Back Home....

Yesterday and most of today the kids were with Grammies and Pop. John and I went on a day road trip.....even though as we were driving we get tired of being in the car we had a lot of great time with each other! It was greT to be able to enjoy conversation together without kids asking questions in the background!

We are back home just relaxing as a family and wil be back to our normal routine in the morning....with school.

Then tomorrow afternoon we will head over to celebrates Pop's birthday with him.

Snow Day!

Wow, we got a lot of snow! This morning John got up with us to help deliver the papers since we had gotten over 7 inches of snow. so grateful John was with us because there were streets that were really hard to get going on! Praise the Lord we completed the route and were home almost in the same amount of time as a normal day.

John didn't go to the church today because of the snow. The staff decided to wait to have the parking lot plowed until the snow was done. That parking lot is not one that you want to get into when it has not been plowed or you may not get back out. I had decided to cancel guitar and voice lessons yesterday because of the snow....and it was a good idea.

We worked hard to finish school quickly and then the kids went outside with me to plow the driveway. Ok....that is a lot of fun! Wow, it sure is a lot faster than shoveling.

This evening we went to my parents to spend some time.....we ended up watching a movie on their new TV and blue ray player...nice!! We also found in the ads that someone had it cheaper this week than last week and it includes a surround sound....they called the place they got it from and they will be getting a refund and a surround sound.....it pays to watch the ads of competitors even aft you have made a big purchase!!

Monday Again.....

We hit the books hard today.  It was easy to stay in the books with all the snow outside.  The kids worked really hard.  This week we are learning about the tabernacle and how God had every part....down to the threads explained in the Bible.  What a fun time we are having studying this together. 

Then in Science we are starting to study the solar system.....we have a fun saying to try to remember the order of the planets, but the kids and I think that it may just be easier to memorize the planets than the saying!

Our day got away from us pretty quickly....we were going to clean out the driveway for John and noticed about 15 minutes before he was supposed to be home.  What a blessing the Rhino was to scoop the snow.  We were actually almost done before John got home....just had the end of the driveway blocked so he couldn't pull in right away.  Wow, that Rhino sure makes snow shoveling a lot easier....thank you Pop for letting us keep it for the winter!!

I am excited because I have found some great applications on my iPad for the kids as study tools.  There are these awesome flashcards, a States game that teaches great facts about all the states, and a great math facts game that even keeps records of how you are doing with each fact.  I am so excited to get the kids started on a routine of using these tools a couple times a week.  It is funny last week they were actually fighting over playing the states game.....yeah fun learning that they are eager about....Praise the Lord!!

We have cancelled guitar lessons at church tomorrow since the roads are still supposed to be pretty snowy.  We are just going to enjoy time at home and study the books! 

Tonight we just finished dinner and we are enjoying a movie together....what a great thing to do on a cold snowy night!

Finished the Week

First week back after break was a little harder to stay on task than normal. The kids are still working on finishing their story.....this week they are creating a story that is like the Boy Who Cried Wolf, but with different characters. Their stories are turning out great....we will edit and write final copies on Monday.

Math has also seemed to be a bit challenging for everyone this year. Johnathan is doing pre-algebra and it is taking him a lot more time to complete his math than he would like! He is doing good as long as he takes his time. I have to tell you that I am very happy with the curriculum that we choose because if he gets something wrong then he can watch them solve th problem.....great for me if I can't quite remember how to do a specific type of problem!! I am sure that we will continue with this math in future years.

Actually I found myself starting to think about curriculum for next year already.....wow am I crazy or what?

Yesterday we went with my parents to help them pick out a new tv......so later on today we will head over there and help them get that all set up. Fun stuff! Hopefully there will be a fun movie to watch together when we are done.

Next week is a new week and pray that we are more on schedule.....we did finish this week, but it felt like we were playing catch up all week long ;)

Back on Track with School

We took a nice 2 week break for Christmas and family time. It was awesome....we had some great fun together! Christmas was just fantastic and New Year's was good too.....well it was ok. Johnathan and I got food poisoning on Thursday night into Friday morning. Wow, we were sick. It has been so long since I have been sick! We started to feel better toward the evening so we were still able to celebrate with friends and bring in the new year. John had some time off over these two weeks and it was just great having him home with us! Yeah!

Yesterday we worked on putting the house back in order and today we are back at school. The kids did great today and I pray that they are ready for tomorrow. Tomorrow our writing in English gets harder and more time consuming. I know that they will do a good job with it, but sometimes to throw changes in is not fun!

Over the past couple of nights we have been running the kids around to spend their gift card money from Christmas. They got some great things. Tonight we ended up at the Christian bookstore for Nattalie. She picked out a great book that is a 3 in 1 and also a CD. She is actually in her room reading the book right now. What a blessing....she is actually reading without being asked to...this may be the start of something wonderful!

Just after Christmas John took me to the Apple store and I got an iPad. I just love it. We take it with us all the time and it is so handy! I know that I will be using it with the kids a lot with school. I wasn't sure about getting one, but I have to tell you that I haven't ever really set it down. Thank you John for my Christmas, birthday and all year long present!

Well, this post has been a little all over the place. Sorry for the delay in posting and I know that I will post again soon! Hope you all had a very Merry Christmas and a happy New Year!