SO glad to have that off my chest!

The news is out now! We're expecting baby #4 sometime in mid-May. My official due date is the 18th, I think, but I know I'll be scheduled for a c-section earlier than that, but who knows when the baby will actually come. Marc-Adam taught me to never be so sure of the plans that I've made. :)

I've known for almost 3 weeks now. The first few days it was terrible not to be able to tell anybody. I really wanted to wait to announce it until after our trip because we were planning on telling my parents and the kids while in Disney World. So we told my in-laws just before we left, and then broke the news to the kids and my folks the first night we were there. I actually got it all on video. The younger two kids didn't really care obviously (Zachary has yet to say anything about it), my parents got excited, but Stephen, who had been up since 3am that morning and had only an hours nap jumped up and yelled, "WHAT?! I already have to listen to him cry *pointing at Marc-Adam*! Now we're having another one?!"

Dork.

Not the reaction I was expecting. Especially since he's been saying for months that he wanted another baby. He's since apologized for acting like that and is acting more excited, but it would've been nice to have him really excited on the video. I feel bad for his future sibling to have to watch that.

But who knows....it might win us $10,000.

I'm baaaack!

Howdy! We're back from our fabulous vacation. Actually we were back on Friday, but I didn't feel like getting to all the e-mail and blogs again, so I had to convince myself to do it today. I have a bill that needs to be paid online anyway. So, I'm spending some time catching up with what's been going on with all of you while I was playing myself silly in Disney.

We had a seriously fantastic time. We came back exhausted and overstimulated. Friday night, we were all in bed asleep by 9pm. ALL of us! The kids loved it (even though the lack of normal sleep made Stephen terribly irritable) and we did everything we wanted to do. There were far more people than we had expected, but we still didn't wait more than 20 or 30 minutes for rides or shows. The weather was fabulous, except for one whole afternoon on Monday and for about 15 minutes on Tuesday. I did discover that my hair revolts against Florida weather and water. It looked terrible all week and there was nothing I could do about it. I did have a hat that I wore until the showers on Monday afternoon. At some point during that rain, my hat got wet and shoved into a bag, so that when I took it out, it looked like a hat that should be worn by one of the bears in Country Bear Jamboree. I left that hat in the trash in Florida. It made me sad.

I'll post pictures soon, but we got pictures with so many characters (no autographs though, because I didn't think about that). Just off the top of my head, we met Tigger, Pooh, Darby, Eeyore, Rafiki (the kids didn't even know who that was), Spiderman (at our trip to Islands of Adventure), the Cat in the Hat, Thing 1 and thing 2, The Grinch, Curious George and the Man in the Yellow Hat, Buzz Lightyear (twice), and Woody. There's more I'm sure, but that's all I can think of. If you aren't already thinking about or planning a trip to Disney, you should start NOW. Seriously. It's a lot of work, especially with really young kids, but it's so worth it. We're already planning another trip for 2010. Except then, we'll have 3 more people...my mother and father-in-law are joining us....and the new baby.

Due May '09.

:)

Unintended bloggy break

Tuesday afternoon I sat down at my computer to write some e-mails and to blog only to find that I had no internet connection. I quickly fired up the troubleshooting software to find out what the heck was wrong only to find that I also had no phone lines. I called our company to report the problem only to be told that they were experiencing an extremely high call voulume due to damage done by Hurricane Ike (also known as the hurricane that just keeps on giving). Yesterday afternoon, I saw that a large telephone pole had fallen (a few days AFTER Ike passed through) and there were all kinds of phone trucks and phone guys working on it. So I'm guessing that was my problem. My original plan of action was to just ignore the problem. At least until after we got back from Disney. I figured if it were a system wide problem, it would be fixed by then, and if not, well, then maybe the call volume wouldn't be so high and I would be able to get through. But it looks like it's going to get fixed. I may call my house soon to see if my machine picks up meaning that the line went through.

So that's why I wasn't around this week. TOMORROW, I'm getting on a plane headed to the place where dreams come true. I'm so excited. Really, I just want the Cap'n Crunch Chicken Fingers at Planet Hollywood. I've been craving those for a few weeks. Anyway, I don't know if I'll find a place to get to the internet during that time, so I probably won't be blogging this coming week, either. But I'll be back at the beginnning of NEXT week with all the pictures and details of our excitement. Oh, and please pray for safe travels and good weather. It's supposed to be thunderstorming every single day we're there. Boo.

Oh, and speaking of excitement...someone came to look at our house yesterday (only the SECOND person ever) and liked it so much they wanted to come look at it again today. YAY! Maybe maybe maybe we'll get an offer while we're on vacation!

Have a great week, y'all! Stay out of trouble! Love all around.

Random ramblings

The next few days should be hectic. I've got to get the house spotless, in case someone wants to come look at the house while we're gone, and get all of us packed and ready for the big trip. I actually have to get all that done by Wednesday evening, because Thursday we have stuff going on and we've decided to stay with my parents Thursday night (in addition to Friday night that we had planned on so we could get up early to get to the airport). Today, I had some dental work and I've been so tired this week (I think all the hurricane stress sapped me more than I realized). So instead of working on getting things done during nap time, I passed out on the couch for an hour and a half. Thank goodness for DVR because Stephen was able to watch whatever he wanted so I could get that rest. But now I have 2 days to get it all done...and I don't know where to start. So all day today, I kept finding myself just wandering through house trying to find something to do that would make me feel productive and that I thought I wouldn't have to do again before we leave.

I'm so happy to finally be able to put my focus on the trip now, but I'm also thinking about what comes after that. I'm anxious to get started with school, and I'm toying with the idea of starting to potty train Marc-Adam. I know. He's not even 2. Starting our homeschool year and potty-training at the same time. Bucket full of crazy. But he just seems so ready. He tells me when he's 'gone' and when he needs to be changed. He goes and gets all the stuff I need for each diaper change. When the kids holler for help in the bathroom, he runs in ahead of me saying, "Wipe! Wipe!" He flushes the toilet and tells the contents "bye-bye". He's so interested in the boys' undies and he's always trying to take his diaper off so he can sit on the potty, but I won't let him, because he wants to sit there all.day.long. My heart's just not in it yet, and I certainly didn't want to be hauling a potty training child on a plane and then to Disney World. That would just suck all the fun and relaxation out of the whole week.

As I'm typing this, I'm half watching an episode of John and Kate Plus 8. They're on a plane with the 8 and things are quickly falling apart. Kate's crying, as are what sounds like at least half of the children. I'm glad we're not taking 8 kids to Disney World.

Getting back to normal...well, maybe not

Ahhh....things should be getting back to normal very very soon. I'll unpack everything that got packed up in case we had to make a quick getaway. Food will go back into the pantry where it belongs and the weather will clear up soon. I'm so glad this thing has finally passed and hopefully it'll be another 25 years before we take another direct hit.

And now that that excitement is over, I can let you in on a little secret that's got me REALLY exicted. 6 days from now, my family (including my parents) will be sitting on a plane heading for Disney World! The kids know we're going, but they think it's 16 days and that next weekend we're going to Dallas. That was my cover for the packing and planning that they're going to be seeing over the next few days. Then, next Saturday morning, we'll wake them up at 4am and tell them, "We're going to Disney World TODAY!" I bought them Leapsters that they have no idea about to help them stay busy and calm at the airport and on the plane. I think they'll all just be beside themselves. Stephen's been asking for some kind of video game player for a while and I'm pretty adamantly opposed to owning video games of any sort. But I caved for the Leapsters just so they can have something new and fun for the plane ride. And then in the future, we'll use them for situations where they might need to be entertained for a few minutes while I take care of business.

There are lots of surprises in store for the kiddos on this trip. Our days are pretty jam-packed but it'll still be relaxing and fun and leisurely.

We're praying off any more bad weather...for here AND Orlando. It looks like things are clearing up and the Atlantic is almost empty of anything that might cause us problems.

All is well

It's 1:42pm. The worst is over. The weather is still really nasty and it's almost creepy outside. But we're safe. The house has no damage. Let me repeat--we are safe, and the house has no damage. I'm feeling a bit overwhelmed right now at how blessed we are. We're still out of power, but my in-law's have it, so that's where we are right now. We just had a nice, hot meal that my mother-in-law cooked instead of the spaghettios and boiled eggs we had planned. We drove around for a little bit before we came out here just to see how the town looked. There are downed limbs, trees, power lines and rooves all over the place. The tin roof of one business in town is literally wrapped around the power pole in front of the building. Another business lost it's roof completely. It's laying in the parking lot. One light pole was literally twisted and broken in half.

At one point in the night, about 4am, I was surprised to hear what I thought were cars going by in front of our house. I realized that that must be a lot of cars and therefor it couldn't be cars. It turned out to be the wind. I got up to go look outside and it was bad. Our large live oak in the backyard was twisting and turning. It was scary. Just by listening to the storm inside the house, we had no idea how bad it was outside. I was expecting creaking and moaning and bumps and thumps. I never heard any of that and so we all actually slept pretty well, even though we were up early because it was so hot. The lights went out about 4am. I realized last night how well our house is built. It's a sturdy little house.

Sweet Hubby just texted me to tell me we have power now (he went back to get some stuff out of our fridge).

We didn't even lose a single limb. There's lots of little leaves and branches along with a couple unfortunate animals (ew), but other than that, we're no worse for wear.

I can't even describe the relief.

What's the right way to pray during a time like this?

So it looks like the storm has indeed moved to the east a little and last I heard about our area, we may only be getting 60-75 mph winds. In which case, it still might be a little scary, but we might not even lose power. That's better than the eye passing right through us. I heard that some transformers are built to go out in 75 mph winds because those winds are strong enough to down power lines so if the lines do go down, there won't be live wires all over the place. That's smart. I wondered about that.

During all this I've been praying, but it feels a little sticky . Obviously, stranger things have happened, but let's face it, this storm isn't just going to go away. It's not going to just disappear from the gulf. So when I pray for us to not get a hit, I feel like I'm basically praying for it to be sent upon someone else. That just feels wrong. I don't want a direct hit or danger in my household, but I certainly don't want to wish it on someone else. So I've just started praying that no matter what happens, that my family is safe and that there is minimal damage to my home. Really, I just want this to pass fast enough that we can go on our big trip next week without having to think about whatever we're still dealing with after this storm. That's the goal.

Batten the hatches

We're home. And I couldn't help but get my ol' 'puter hooked back up.

We're staying put during Ike. That's all we can do. We filled up our gas tanks this morning and I went to Wal-Mart (I was there before 8am and it was already a madhouse). I tried to get as many supplies as I could within our budget, but I'm a little worried about our food supply if we're out of electricity for more than a couple of days.

We actually got plywood for the windows since they were talking about 80-110+ mph winds here where we live (and we live pretty far inland). That was several hours ago...I'm hoping things have changed a little bit. Before they were talking about the eye (where the strongest winds are) would be coming straight up through our little town. But last I looked, they said it had moved east and the eye would be passing about 30ish miles east of us. Whatever happens, we'll be boarding up and all camping out in Marc-Adam's room tomorrow night. My in-laws are coming to hunker down with us, too. It should be an interesting night with 3 small kids, 4 adults and 2 dogs in a 10x11 room. But I guess people all over the world live like that every day. We can do it. I told my father-in-law that it might not be pleasant, but safe trumps pleasant.

I might check in once or twice tomorrow morning, but otherwise I'll get back on to let you all know what's going on as soon as we have electricity.

If you are in the path of this sucker, stay safe and take care.

Edited to add: This is the song that I've been singing in my head all day. It's been my prayer today.

Just so you know

I'm at my parents right now. I'm going home today, but it looks like Ike is headed straight for us. Our little town so far from the coast could be getting hurricane force winds. We're in the process of deciding now what we're going to do--stay or leave. Whatever we do, we've already unhooked our CPU at home, so I won't be around for a few days, so I'm posting now to let you know what's going on so you don't worry or wonder where I am while this thing is hitting. I'll get back to the blog as soon as I can.

Love all around.

Allrightythen

So do you all remember several months back when I was posting almost every day about our woes with Stephen? He suddenly went a little crazy and was having tantrums at all hours of the night and having awful behavior during the day. I was sleeping in his room for weeks and I finally gave up and told him that if he needed to be in the same room as me, then he would have to be the one sleeping in my room on the floor. Since then, he's been coming in in the middle of the night to sleep the rest of the night on a palette on our bedroom floor. I wasn't happy about it, but as long as I got to sleep all night in my own bed, I was willing to go along with it. I eventually got him a clock for his room and told him he couldn't come in until 1am. It worked great and that's been our arrangement for several months.

One night last week, though, he went to bed really late after a long and hard day. He ended up staying in his own bed until about 6:30am. When he got up to come into our room, I was awake enough to tell him that if he stayed in bed 1 more hour he would have stayed in bed all night long (6:30am is still middle of the night to us). He said, "Okay!" and happily went back to his room and slept for another hour and a half. He was so proud when he woke up and called everyone. He told me that afternoon that he was going to stay in his room all night that night, too, and I was all "Yeah, sure." But he did, and he has every night since. He even invited his brothers to go into my room and tear up his palette with him (he was very particular about his palette being right and straight).

So that problem worked out all on its own without any coaxing or worrying on my part. And I think his mood's better during the day, too. Which makes life easier on EVERYONE, because if Stephen ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

And on a sidenote, I went back through my archives to find the link for the post I linked above and it's really interesting because I don't remember most of the huge issues that I posted about. I remember that we had a hard time overall, but not specific situations. Things were so bad back then that I would pray every day for God to help us all forget some of the really awful situations (mostly because of how I hated how I handled some of them). And I have forgotten. I don't think Stephen remembers either. He's got an amazing memory and brings up good and bad memories from long ago and he's never mentioned anything from that time. God is good.

Oh y'all....

This is scaring me.

Normally, I would be slightly worried about this. And no time is good. But now is just so not a good time to be dealing with a major hurricane. Not now. Just.not.now.

Right on!

More political stuff. I'm just really hyped up with the RNC being this week....feel free to skip this if you're tired of me posting it. At least I'm not blathering on about my own opinions...I'm just posting other people's that I happen to agree. :)

This is just fun to watch. Be sure to watch the last minute of the video.

I want to be best friends with her

I'm going to try not to get all political on you, but you'll have to bear with me over the next couple of months as the election draws near. I probably will be posting more and more about it because it's important to me and I hope it's important to you, too. And I hope that maybe even a respectful, civilized discussion and/or debate can come out of it.

So anyway, I didn't get to watch Sarah Palin's speech last night. But I got to read about it. I heart Sarah Palin. I was underwhelmed by John McCain's pick for VP at first, but the more I read about her and the more I hear what she has to say, I'm getting really excited about the prospect of having her as our Vice President.

And what Obama's been saying about her makes me like her even more. He keeps on talking out of both sides of his mouth. Blech.

So happy!

A while back (oh a year or so ago, I guess) I was so disappointed when one of my favorite homeschool blogs "shut down". The author needed to do other things, I guess. I don't remember if she ever said why she was shutting it down. But then a few days ago, I happened to stumble back again and she's writing again!! YAY!

In addition to writing about homeschooling issues, she also writes a lot about politics (some, including me, would argue that homeschool issues and politics go hand in hand). And the lady knows her stuff. Here are a few of her articles that I think are can't miss when it comes to the upcoming election. I hope you find them interesting and informative, too:


Above My Pay Grade?
Obama and Infanticide
Obama on Education Reform
The Audacity of Home
The Politics of School Choice
Worth a Second Look?

That's just a few. There's still more. I love her blog!

Home again, home again, jiggety jig

Well, I'm so so pleased to let you know that my cousin and her husband were able to bring baby Alex home yesterday. We are all so relieved that he's better and finally where he belongs...home with his wonderful family! Thanks to all of you who kept Alex and his family in your thoughts and prayers. I appreciate it and I know his mama and daddy do, too.

Monkey

Keep praying

I haven't posted an update on my cousin's baby yet because things haven't really gotten much better, but they haven't gotten worse. It seems that everytime the clouds start to clear, there's another little setback. The docs were talking about releasing him the end of this week, but then the doctor noticed he was using his tummy muscles to breath. And she won't let him go home until he quits doing that. But the great news is that he's now breathing air room with no help and his mama and daddy have gotten to hold him, feed him and change his diaper. So there's some bonding going on. Yay!

So keep praying for Alex to get healthy and come home soon. We all can't wait to get our hands on him! :)

Homeschool fun

A friend sent this to me yesterday (thanks, Kim! And hi!). I've seen it before and I'm sure you have to, but it just gets funnier the older the kids get, so I thought I'd share it. She found it here, but it's been around a while, so I'm not sure who to credit it to. Just know that I didn't come up with it.

You Know You're A Homeschool Mom When...

• You get to change more than diapers, you get to change their minds.
• When a child busts a lip, and after seeing she's okay, you round up some scotch tape to capture some blood and look at it under the microscope!
• You find dead animals and actually consider saving them to dissect later.
• Your children never ever leave the "why?" stage.
• When your teenager decides to take one community college course, and comes home and asks you why the teacher wrote "At" on his paper. (A+)
• You ask for, and get, a copier instead of a diamond tennis bracelet for your wedding anniversary.
• Your kids think reading history is best accomplished while lying on the floor with their head resting on the side of their patient dog.
• Your husband can walk in at the end of a long day and tell how the science experiment went just by looking at the house.
• You never have to drive your child's forgotten lunch to school.
• Your child will never suffer the embarrassment of group showers after PE.
• The only debate about the school lunch program is whose turn it is to cook.
• You never have to face the dilemma of whether to take your child's side or the teacher's side in a dispute at school.
• If your child gets drugs at school, it's probably Tylenol.
• Your neighbors think you are insane.
• Your kids learn new vocabulary from their extensive collection of "Calvin & Hobbes" books.
• Your formal dining room now has a computer, copy machine, and many book shelves and there are educational posters and maps all over the walls.
• You have meal worms growing in a container....on purpose.
• If you get caught talking to yourself, you can claim you're having a PTA meeting.
• Talking out loud to yourself is a parent/teacher conference.
• You take off for a teacher in-service day because the principal needs clean underwear.
• You can't make it through a movie without pointing out the historical inaccuracies.
• You step on math manipulative on your pre-dawn stumble to the bathroom.
• The teacher gets to kiss the principal in the faculty lounge and no one gossips.
• Your honor student can actually read the bumper sticker that you have put on your car.
• If your child claims that the dog ate his homework, you can ask the dog.
• Some day your children will consider you to be a miracle-working expert and will turn to you for advice.
• Your kids refer to the neighbor kids as "government school inmates."
• You can't make it through the grocery produce department without asking your preschooler the name and color of every vegetable.
• You can't put your produce in your cart without asking your older student to estimate it's weight and verify accuracy.
• You live in a one-house schoolroom.

• Your favorite Christmas gift was a gift certificate to a book store.

• The principal can give the teacher a pat on the behind and it's not harassment.

• Your kids will actually talk to grown ups at a family gathering and are actually patient with kids half their age.

• You can take the time to look at a tiny spider on a log.

• You can listen to your child's favorite hilarious passage from Hank the Cowdog 47 times.

• Your daughter, who is practically a vegetarian, is begging her dad to shoot some starlings so she can pluck them and clean them up to make a "blackbird" pie just like the Ingalls family.

• You're almost afraid to put your hand in your purse because you not sure if your 6yo has put something that's alive (or possibly not alive, but once was) to take home to view under the microscope.

• You have a line item in your budget for overdue book fines.

• You have to add the words: "homeschool, homeschooler, and homeschooling" to your computer's spell checker so it will stop marking them as wrong.

• Your house in on the Parade of Homes List - for educational merchandisers.

• When visiting a strange town you see a parking lot full of mini-vans and station wagons and wonder if it's a homeschooling conference.

• Your friends don't want to help you move because you have so many books.

• Your school clothes have more holes in the knees than your play clothes.

I love the ones about pointing out the historical inaccuracies in movies and referring to the neighbor kids as "government school inmates". I literally laughed out loud at those. Although, neither my kids or I have actually called other kids inmates (but it has crossed my mind a few times). And I hate that the spell check thinks homeschool (and homeschooler, and homeschooling) aren't words.

And I have to share a couple of things that I've done in the last few weeks that made me realize that I really am a homeschool mom:

A couple weeks ago, Marc-Adam found a dead cricket in our laundry room. He went and got Stephen to pick it up (obviously I wasn't taking care of it fast enough, but I was right in the middle of switching a couple loads). Stephen picked it up, and instead of throwing it in the trash or flushing it, studied it for a while, carried it around for a while, and then asked for a jar. So I gave him one. And he carried around the dead cricket in a jar. And I let him. After my mom threw it away, I realized how strange it was. But I still wouldn't have thrown it away.

Then we went to a wedding where one of the favors was actually a little toy (you've seen them, it's like a paddle with two balls or beads attached to string on each side and when you spin it, the beads hit the paddle so that it makes a noise). I kept mine, and asked other people for theirs, so that I could take them home and show the kids the power of centrifugal force.

*And I'm sure you noticed that the font has gone all weird on this post and I spent 30 minutes trying to fix it, but now I'm mad at it and I'm done. Sorry. Hopefully things will be back to normal next post.*

Believe it or not, this actually IS worth blogging about

For a while now, Sweet Hubby has been encouraging me to try my hand at cooking fish. If you know me at any level, you should know that my dislike--no, hatred--of anything that at one point lived in the water runs deep. Fish hate runs through my blood and is much a part of me as my brown hair and brown eyes. But to humor him, I've tried twice in the last 7.5 years of our marriage to cook--and eat--fish. Neither time turned out well. In fact, the last time I made it, not only did I want to run screaming from the dinner table, no one else would touch it.

But he's been working on me for a while now to try again. He pulled out the big guns last week when he reminded me how healthful and "good for you" fish is. Well that did it. I know how healthy fish is, but to know that he knows how good it is and still wants to eat it means I should take advantage of that opportunity.

So. Today was our big grocery run. I actually put fish on the menu for tonight's dinner. I actually went to the grocery store with fish in mind, and actually walked up to seafood counter (trying my hardest not to gag as I rang the bell) and placed my order. Then, I actually drove home with *shudder* fish in my car. And then. I cooked it. And y'all...I ate it.

*Pausing to let my parents and dear friends pick themselves up off the floor.*

I made tilapia. I baked it in lemon butter and Mrs. Dash. It turned out well and I ate all of it (although, very reluctantly). The kids even ate it and at one point Stephen proclaimed that I was the best fish maker in the world. It wasn't terribly "fishy" and that helped tremendously. It's that yucky fishy smell and flavor that makes me shudder and gag at just the thought (I literally had to stop typing that last sentence so I could shudder and gag at the thought of the fishy smell).

I ate fish.

And now my melodrama is over.

Watching the bus go by

So it's official. We're homeschoolers. As the school bus went by this morning for the first day of school, Stephen wasn't on it. On what should be his first day of kindergarten, I'm thinking we're going to go rent a movie, make some cookies, read a few books and just hang out. In fact, for the first few months of his kindergarten year, we're going to be doing a lot of "just hanging out". We're taking a trip the 3rd week in September and I don't want to start before then, so our target start date is Oct. 6. That's when things are going to have to start having a little more structure. We'll be starting Accountable Kids back up again, too (we quit because M-A kept tearing the cards down) and they won't be able to call the shots all day long on what they do.

But my heart is so happy that Stephen's not going to public school. All of his friends are in school now. He asked me a few days ago what kids do in "real school". I immediately told him that we can call it "public school" or "conventional school", but our home school will be "real school". We also talked about how when public school kids are learning about animals, they'll have to read about them in books....and when we learn about animals, we'll go to the zoo. And when they learn about stars, they'll read about them in books or do projects in their classrooms....we'll get a telescope and head out to our backyard. And when they learn about rocks, they'll see them in books...while we're at the museum or at a nature park to collect and compare rocks. He thought that was the neatest thing. I think he's getting really excited. (This post is not to diminish the choice of any parent that has sent their kids to conventional school. This is just our view and experience--I don't expect everyone else to feel the same way.)

I'm trying not to be too ambitious about our first year. Especially with Marc-Adam being in the phase he's in. He wants to be in the middle of everything, which has made it a little difficult lately when we've tried to do some book work. I have a lot of things lined up that I want to do, but I'm really trying not to set us up for failure. Some of what we're doing this year is what we started and didn't finish before or planned to do, but never got to last year. Some of it is different, though. Here's what I've got lined up--

For math, of course we're sticking with Math-U-See. We started, but didn't finish, the Primer some time last year, so we'll be finishing that up this year. My plan is to finish it up before we start up again in the spring (after our Christmas break), so we can start Alpha then. But it'll be okay if we only make it through Primer for kindergarten.

For reading/language arts we'll be kind of doing a mish-mash of sorts. I've gotten him two Explode the Code books to work out of. The plan is to work out of those and just read, read, read as many books as we can to really give him lots of practice and give him a good foundation before we start real language arts (grammar, spelling, etc) next year. We'll also be using KONOS, which has some language arts in it...I'm not sure yet if we'll use it for LA this year, though. And for his handwriting (which is partly why we're only focusing on reading this year instead of a total LA curriculum) we have Handwriting Without Tears. I really wanted A Reason for Handwriting, but it's more expensive and the store I was at when I had handwriting on the brain only had HWT (and on sale!). I like the way it teaches to write the letters, because it's exactly the way I was teaching it before we had a real curriculum for it. Stephen's handwriting is just really not good. I've been trying to work with him on it without stressing us both out, but that's a really fine line. I'm going to try not to push it too hard. But I can't tell if I'm teaching it wrong, he's just not ready or if he's just being lazy. If I'm teaching it wrong, or if he's just lazy, I can fix that. But if he's not ready, then I'll be doing more harm than good by forcing him and making us both cry.

And for everything else (science, history, bible, music, etc.) the thing I'm really excited about is KONOS. We'll be doing the Orderliness study first. I don't know how long it will take us, but if we finish before I consider our school year over, I'm not sure if I'll start another unit. They say that each unit takes 9-14 weeks, but that you can stretch it out. Since I plan on just covering the subjects on surface level and taking it slow, I might be able to stretch it out to cover most of our school year. Through the Orderliness unit, we'll be learning about days of the week, months of the year, seasons, planets, animals, trees, rocks and classifying those last three things. There's also a study of the book The Secret Garden, but I'm not sure if I'm willing to do that yet. And we'll be studying about the character trait of Orderliness through what the bible has to say about it. There are lots of really fun activities laid out for the whole unit. I'm really very excited about it.

So maybe I'm being too ambitious. But I'd rather set our goals high and have to adjust later than to set them low and not be prepared or not do as much as we could have.

Even though we're not starting quite yet, the fact that Stephen's not sitting in a classroom right now means we're homeschoolers!! I feel like I can finally say that for real now...every other time up to this point, it's just been "We're planning on homeschooling." I'm also getting more brave about telling people. For a long time, I didn't tell anyone unless they knew me and I knew them pretty well. But yesterday morning, as all the kids "upgraded" their Sunday school classes and everyone was getting ready for school and talking about it, I started telling more and more people. I'm proud of our decision now, instead of worried about what people will say or think. I'm feeling so many more emotions than I thought I would on this day. But I'm really feeling excited and FREE!

YAY!

And for a small funny, there's this: A couple days ago, I was flipping through our Konos book to get reacquainted. I was looking at the part about memorizing the days of the week. I was pretty sure Stephen had the days of the week memorized. He always knows what day it is and if I say "the day after tomorrow", he immediately knows which day of the week I'm talking about. So I asked him if he could name all the days in order. He wanted to start with Monday, but I corrected him and said, "Start with Sunday." And he named them all, in this order: Sunday Saturday Friday Thursday Wednesday Tuesday Monday. LOL! So, just to see what he would do, I told him to start with Monday, and he got them all right (except he stumbled and almost switched Sunday and Saturday). That was just strange to me. I bet once he can see it visually on a calendar, it'll click and he won't get it backwards anymore.

Happy school year to everyone!! :)