Go and Check This Out

If you haven't already been by there today, you need to head on over to Shalee's Diner and see what she has posted today. It will bless your little heart!

I Just HAD To Do This One

I know, there are all kinds of these little "Blogthings" out there to do, but ya'll, this one was about CAKE...I HAD to do it. I just HAD to! Besides, it said something nice about me. Much nicer than this one!

You Are a Chocolate Cake

Fun, comforting, and friendly. You are a true classic, and while you're not super cutting edge, you're high quality. People love your company - and have even been known to get addicted to you.

What Kind of Cake Are You?

Reason Number 473 Why Exercise is BAD for You...

Have you heard the old joke about why you never smile while riding a motorcycle? You know, 'cause you get bugs in your teeth! Well, that goes for running too. Although honestly, I don't have too much trouble NOT smiling when I'm running. I usually don't smile until I'm all finished, 'cause THAT is something to be happy about! However, I think perhaps a pair of goggles may be in order...

Yesterday morning, while I was out for my morning run, a bug flew in my eye! That's right, directly into my eye...and stuck there. When I closed my eye and tried to wipe it out, it started burning like fire. When I finally, removed what was left of the carcass from my eyeball, it was an ANT. Yes, a flying ANT. And you know what the burning was??? The little sucker stung me!!! Right on the eye! I have an ant bite right on my tear duct! I really should be on Oprah for this one, don't you think? I mean really, has anyone in the history of the world ever been stung by an ant on their tear duct??? I don't think so!!!

The strange thing is, it really doesn't hurt. In fact, as soon as I removed the ant itself, it stopped hurting. And it really doesn't itch too much either. It does a little, but not so much that I can't keep my hands off of it. The really funky thing about it is that I can feel it when I blink. It feels like there is something in my eye...all the time. It's really just annoying, not painful or anything, but really, really annoying!

So, I'll just wait here for Oprah's people to call, and I'll be sure and let you all know when the episode of "500 Reasons Why We Shouldn't Exercise" or "When Weird Things Happen to Normal People" airs. 'Cause really, I could be featured on either one...sigh.

This and That, and a Little Bit of The Other...

I know there is someone out there who noticed I was gone...and missed me. I don't know who you are, because I was not only missing from the blogosphere, I was also cut off from my email. So all those emails I know you sent asking if I was okay, and when oh when would I be back to blogging about well, nothing....are still floating out there in cyberspace somewhere. Yes, you guessed it, Mr. Computer crashed again...sigh. I lost everything. All the pictures I had taken since the last crash are gone. I knew I should have backed them all up on flashdrives, but I wanted to organize them first...stupid, stupid, me.

Anyway, I'm back up and running...for now...but I'm totally okay with some computer company sending me their latest and greatest laptop for review on this here blog! If any of you major computer companies are reading this, feel free to compete for my affections. Cause they are for sale, my friends. Oh yes they are.

Now, back to business. I do have a little bloggy business to take care of. Wendy Darling bestowed the "Nice Matters" award to me some time ago and I have been way too slow in not only thanking her, but in passing said award along!

"This award is for those bloggers who are nice people; good blog friends and those who inspire good feelings and inspiration. Also for those who are a positive influence on our blogging world. Once you've been awarded please pass it on to 7 others who you feel are deserving of this award."

So, now I must pass this award along to 7 of my fellow bloggers...this is always the hard part. I have about 30 feeds in my bloglines right now and quite frankly, I don't read anyone who isn't nice. I mean really, why waste my day with angry people? And I know that many of those I read have probably already received this award, although I couldn't tell you who for sure. So, I'm just going to name those 7 bloggers that I read that I know actually work at never saying anything mean or nasty, and who truly believe that being nice matters...'cause it does. It sooo does!

So, this award goes to Barb, Kelli, Real Estate Girl, Cheri, Dee Dee, Shalee, and of course, The Preacher's Wife, my first-ever bloggy friend and one of the nicest people on the planet! So, there you have it. If you don't regularly read these blogs, you should. And if you do...well, you already know! Thanks again to Wendy Darling for giving this award to me and thanks to all of you who are out there writing nice things for nice people to read!

Now, our second order of business is a little bloggy giveaway! I will be hosting a giveaway here for a really neat book of family devotions titled "Catching Fireflies" by my friend, Marcy Lytle. I am going to put all the details in a separate post for you to link back to if you choose to enter the giveaway. I'll put the post up this afternoon with all the details and I'll make it a sticky post and keep it at the top of the blog until the contest is over. Make sure and check it out because it looks like a really neat book!

And now, because I promised you more news from the Homeschool Convention, and because I just listened to Big Mama and BooMama discuss the latest fashions on their podcast...which you really must listen to, I thought I'd share with you both my expectations and the reality of the current fashion trends among the homeschooling crowd. You're on the edge of your seats, aren't you? Well, you should be because following the current homeschool fashion trends could be the difference between someone letting their homeschooled child play with your homeschooled child, or having them shun your children completely! I'm kidding of course...well, mostly.

ANYWAY, when I last attended a Homeschool Convention, the wardrobe of choice was the denim jumper and the very comfortable, if not so much attractive Birkenstock sandals. (I was wearing jeans, boots, and either a sweater twinset or a top and blazer.) I wasn't really sure what to expect since it has been 3 years or more since my last convention. I noticed immediately that denim jumpers were scarce this year. In fact I believe I counted only 12 jumpers the entire 3 days of the convention...and only 5 of those were denim! Amazing! So what was the choice in homeschooled fashion this year? The Ankle Length Denim Skirt with...FLIP FLOPS! I couldn't even count them, there were so many. And even those who dared to wear something other than an Ankle Length Denim Skirt were wearing the FLIP FLOPS! (I was wearing jeans, boots, and a top and jacket. My fashion loyalties are not easily swayed, oh no they are not.)

Okay, now to make the whole fashion story a bit more interesting for those of you who couldn't care less what homeschoolers are wearing these days...let me paint a little picture for you. Homeschoolers, as a general rule, have 3 or more kids per family....mostly more. And a majority of those have still nursing babies that obviously need to be fed. So, picture if you will, a hotel lobby filled with women in skirts that concealed every inch of their calves and ankles, but who had their, um, *parts* exposed for all hotel guests and convention attendees to see as they brought nourishment to the little darlings!

Now, I was a nursing mama myself, 4 times over, and there were times that I was forced to feed the little guys in public places. I did, however, have a nifty little cover up thingy that kept all my *parts* well covered should anyone pass by. And whenever possible I would go to the restroom to feed my babies. I have stood leaning up against many a public restroom wall and nursed a baby while making awkward conversation with total strangers. I totally understand the need to occasionally feed the offspring in public...I really do.

Oh, but did I mention that there was a designated nursing room set up for the convention attendees? 'Cause there was. There was even one speaker who hinted, to no avail, that if people needed to nurse their babies, it was only polite to go to the nursing room as there were many dad's as well as highschool boys attending the convention, and I'm afraid they all had whiplash from trying to turn their heads away!

So, the trend for this year's fashionable homeschooler is apparently, Ankle Length Denim Skirts and blouses that are pulled up to one shoulder or the other at any given time. I sooooo wish I could have heard the conversation that Big Mama and BooMama would have had if they had been there...oh yes I do!

On the Side...

I know, you were expecting part 2 of the Homeschooling Convention posts, but life is happening today, and I must attend to it! In the meantime...I found this very odd quiz at Real Estate Girl's place this morning. The questions are odd and how they come up with the results is beyond me, however...I think they nailed me. I can't tell you how many times people have said to me "I used to think you were just a flighty little girl, but...." I just tell them I prefer the word "sidetracked" to "flighty", "scatterbrained", "shallow", etc...and yes, I have heard all of those at one time or another! :)

You are most like: You are Blue
You are cool and soothing, with a hidden spontanious side. You are deeper than most people percieve, and you care a lot for those whom you surround yourself with.
Take this quiz: Which Crayola Box of 8 Color Are You?
Visit Toys For Your Blog.com for more blog quizzes

And when you are finished with that, head on over to The Preacher's Wife and read about the "Cow Plop for Charity" cause really, you just have to. And that's all I'm gonna say about that...just head on over...now...go on, get outta here!

Texas State Homeschool Coalition Annual Conference -- Part One

Well, as I mentioned in my last post, I returned this weekend from a trip to the THSC Homeschool Convention and Family Conference. I went by.myself.without.the.family. :) I didn't particularly care if I learned anything or not...it was a cheap vacation and I got to have a much needed "mommy-break".

I have not attended one of these conferences in many years. The last one I did attend was a local conference put on by the local support group, not a state conference. The keynote speaker at that last conference was Susan Wise Bauer who is best known for the book she wrote with her mother, Jessie Wise, entitled "The Well-Trained Mind". Susan spoke to my very heart. She spoke of how sad it was that she was teaching college freshman in an Ivy League University who didn't know grammar and punctuation rules. She spoke of reading the classics and using them as a basis for all education. She spoke of learning history in chronological order starting from Adam and Eve and moving on from there. She introduced new curriculum written by both she and her mother for teaching language and history. Both subjects were taught by sitting together with your child and reading and then discussing together and working on projects and then allowing your child to do some copywork and dictation. It all sounded so wonderful. It sounded exactly like the way I would love to learn. I completely abandoned my former history and language curriculum and invested time and energy into preparing to teach my boys in the classical method. I was going to teach the trivium and my children were going to go to college knowing their grammar and punctuation rules, knowing their history, (in chronological order), they were going to LOVE reading and especially the classics, they would complete their 12 year education with me with notebooks full of all the writing they had done in each of the core subjects, ready to show to the colleges of their choice how much they had learned in homeschool. Oh, and we would do it all snuggled together on the couch reading and having meaningful discussions....

The reality was that my boys couldn't or wouldn't sit still for more than 5-10 minutes at a time. Their minds drifted off to far-away galaxies while I was reading classical stories to them and they could not answer one single discussion question when I was finished reading. We had to go back and re-read often to the point of my only reading the exact sentence the answer was in before they would get the answer. If I read a preceding sentence for context, or a following sentence for clarification, I would lose them entirely. My dreams of giving a classical education to my children went up in smoke. Big, black, choking all in it's path, smoke. I won't even mention my one-week attempt at teaching Latin to a 4th grader...I'm still twitching.

So, we moved on. I went back to a unit-study type of curriculum that we had enjoyed when B. was in the 1st grade and the only child I was schooling. It didn't work as well for multiple children. I didn't have the time to put into it that I had when there was only the one child to teach and the one baby to watch. With 3 children to teach and another baby to watch, it was just too much. So we reverted even further to a workbook based curriculum that we had used way back in the beginning for B.'s kindergarten. However, the curriculum has changed over the years. It wasn't as comprehensive and not as instructional. It assumed that I knew what it was asking for and could effectively pass that on to the student with no help whatsoever. It was sadly mistaken...

Enter "Switched On Schoolhouse". I took the online tutorial class to introduce the curriculum and I had both of the older boys take it with me as I wanted their input as to whether or not this was something they wanted to do. They both liked the program. They liked the built-in games, and the "tiny tutor" videos. They liked the fact that it was on the computer and they didn't have to write everything down. I liked the fact that I could tell it what days we were going to have school and it would automatically generate the lesson plans for the entire school year. I liked the fact that it automatically created report cards. And I really liked the fact that I could decide the grading scale and what percentage of their grades were based on daily work, quizzes, and tests. I could decide how many times they could try a problem before it was counted incorrect. I could decide how many points they would lose for each attempt if any. I could go on and on...but I'm getting old and the natives are getting restless in the background.

So, we jumped in with SOS for the 3rd and 5th grader. SOS starts at 3rd grade, so we stuck with the old standbys of Math-U-See and Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons for the kindergartener. It has not always gone smoothly. Along the way, I found a few things I wanted to do differently with some of the assignments, and I was able to change them with this curriculum. However, in the back of my head I was a little nervous about whether or not what I was doing was "correct" or not. I had feelings at times that perhaps my children were just retarded, and they really couldn't learn like other people's children. And I was beginning to doubt whether I really should still be homeschooling the older children or not.

Now join me for the 2007 THSC Homeschool Convention. The keynote speakers were Debra Bell, author of "The Ultimate Guide to Homeschooling" and Andrew Pudewa from "Excellence in Writing". Both of which were very entertaining. Both of which also spoke to different things that I had been doing in our homeschool and both were supporting what I was doing!!! It felt so good to hear that my instincts about what was best for my children were correct!! There are days when you feel that someone else might be better at teaching your children. It was nice to hear that I actually knew what was best for my children! It was like confirmation from God that yes, I should be teaching my children at home and no, I'm not failing them.

I will be doing some future posts on specific things I got out of the conference, but this post has only one purpose. I wrote this post to encourage those of you who are following a plan that you were sure at one time that God had called you to, but are now struggling with whether or not you are failing in that plan, or whether or not you were the right choice for the job in the first place! All you have to do, is be obedient to the call. God will take care of the rest. God was apparently speaking to me and guiding me in what was the best way to teach my kids when I didn't even know it! I thought I was fumbling around in the dark and grasping for answers. As it turns out, I was doing what the experts are now recommending. That HAD to be God...it just had to! Cause it sure couldn't have been me!

So, don't give up on whatever God has called you to do. Keep walking until HE turns you in a new direction--not when that annoying voice in your head tries to turn you. 'Cause chances are that little annoying voice in your head is not your friend, and does not have your best interests at heart...or those of your family. :)

I'm Back...almost

I'm back from my trip sans children :) to the THSC Homeschool Convention, however I have cakes to make, laundry to do, unpacking to finish, and bloglines to read...

So, while I'm back from my trip, I am not back to blogging just yet! But my friend, Heather, sent this to me while I was gone and I thought it was so funny that I had to share it with you, my bloggy friends. Be sure and listen to the whole thing, the end is the best!