Journey to Excellence

Eli is very active in Cub Scouts. He is a Webelos I this year. As we are in a very small town with a very small pack, volunteers are minimal. I decided to partner up with our cub master this year so that we could combine the Webelos I and II boys together and make scouting a little more exciting for the boys. Shelly was so overwhelmed with her responsibilities in the pack (her husband heads up the whole Boy Scout program, she is the Cub Master over all the cubs, and they are pretty much in charge of everything!). I love to plan, so, it only seemed natural to step up and help. This month we are working with the Webelos I boys on their Citizen badge. One of the activities included meeting with a city leader for a description of his or her job. To make it a little more meaningful we, instead, took the boys to a Town Hall meeting last night. Again, our town is so small. And, it's a pretty poor town. We have been informed that because of mishandling and oversight, our ambulance s...

This will be our last week (well, couple of days) of summer school. Most weeks this summer, starting the first week of June, we have done schoolwork for 2-3 hours in the mornings, Monday through Thursday. We have logged enough hours that we can take off a couple of weeks from our regular school schedule in the fall to go to Florida in late September and to relax around the holidays. We plan to do some schoolwork today and tomorrow and then call it quits until Wednesday, August 14th when we will officially start our 2013/2014 school year. It has been an amazingly great summer of learning and I totally plan for us to do this again next summer. We have moved along in our learning of multiplication. We have learned all of the letters in cursive handwriting. We have finished some great read alouds ( Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and Poppy ). We have completed the Summer Reading Program at the library with each child reading a large chapter book and 20 picture books. We did a crazy fanta...

In our regular life this week… Hi ... It's Grandma here. Do you notice anything in the following picture?? Yes, the windows are open because it's in the high 70's here in Missouri ... in late July!! Yes, I am talking about the weather again. (And my arthritis is flaring up, my dentures need a good soaking ... jk!) We are supposed to have unseasonably cool temperatures for at least the next week. It's amazing!! As I type this I am relaxing in my sitting room with a cup of coffee and a cool breeze blowing the drapes next to me. I couldn't be happier or more at peace. In our homeschool this week… We decided to up our math intake and have been doing two lessons of Math U See Gamma each day. The kids are working on simple algebra ... solving equations. And they have been amazed to see how algebra works in real life in the form of word problems. I have been amazed at how well they are now able to solve those problems without my help. We are also sti...

This morning I have been playing around with My Cool Realm to create a blog button (thank you for the tip, Miranda! ). And you can grab it, if you want, by copying the code under the button or the code just to your right.

There is nothing more peaceful than sitting in your sitting room, having a cup of coffee, watching the newly emerged Black Swallowtail butterfly dry it's wings in the butterfly habitat.  Our first Swallowtail, that emerged last week, was a female ... Today's is a male ... (all images from PBase as mine are still on my camera) It was such a wonderful surprise to see him in there this morning. I can't think of a better way to start my day. God is amazing!

Although we are not set to study the Ancients this year, we do have plans to tackle it in a couple of years ... probably for 6th grade. Knowledge Quest is giving away a FREE 52-page e-book on Ancient Greece! I quickly downloaded it and tucked it away for supplemental material for when we study the Ancients. Basically they have provided the first section of "A Child's Geography - Explore the Classical World" into this one e-book. Head over there and download yours today! It is a $6.95 value and is recommended for Grades 1-8.

We have a house that was built in 1918. It has the original hardwood floors and baseboards ... loads of charm! We love our house! There is a room just as you walk in the door, off to the left, that is odd. It's not a bedroom ... no closet and no door into it. It's not a dining room ... the formal dining room is between the living room and kitchen. It seems odd to have two living rooms side-by-side with no divider. It's not an office ... there wouldn't have been offices in 1918. My mom suggested that it was a sewing room, perhaps? Who knows. All I know is that it has been wasted space since we moved here. We hung some family portraits on the wall, our family canvases, added an entryway table from our old house, and hung some leftover valances. But, otherwise, it has sat there empty. You can kind of see the room behind Kyndal. It's pretty much empty. When living in a small home you need to maximize every single space and make it usable. With a medium-sized fam...

We had a wonderful family weekend! We needed it so badly! Kyndal and Collin came Friday evening and brought some movies. After the little kids went to bed, us bigger kids stayed up and watched Identify Thief. Have you seen it? It's hilarious! Melissa McCarthy is so funny! We had a full day scheduled on Saturday. Kyndal went to a job shadow at her cosmetology school in the morning, and the rest of us met her for a late lunch at Pizza Hut. We had a great time scarfing down pizza and playing silly games! At the end of the meal I gathered us all together just to tell them all (including Kyndal's boyfriend and Dawson's girlfriend) how important I think it is that we are a strong family that binds together and always turns to each other for support. The kids thought that I had a big announcement. One asked if I was pregnant .... Um, NO! and then Dawson said, "If we are moving back to Oklahoma, I'M NOT GOING!" I thought that was funny because exactly one year a...

Extreme couponing. Aren't you just amazed with what those folks can do? ... Me? If I actually take the time to clip a coupon, you can almost bet I forget I have it when I am at the checkout. I go through phases when I think I am going to give couponing a shot, and then I fail miserably so give it up .. again. The Molly Review Crew through the The Old Schoolhouse was given the opportunity to review Couponing Made Simple by Christi the Coupon Coach . I was hoping that I might learn a few new things to finally making my couponing attempts a success. Couponing Made Simple is a full how-to and why book about how to be successful at using coupons, written by Christi Bassford. The book is a very easy and informative read. It is a 123 page paperback book that I, literally, absorbed in a couple of hours. The great thing about Christi's approach is that it is couponing for real people! It's not a book on how to get hundreds of dollars of products for twelve cents (although ...

In our regular life this week… This week has been a much better week, but I have certainly felt the stresses of being a mom! Having adult children gives you that constant state of worry because you know that each and every decision made and step taken has a consequence. It's scary! It seems I have had a major-ish issue with each of the kids this week, right down to the little one. Being a mom is an amazing joy to me, but it sure does add to the gray hairs! I finally got over my yucky cold on Sunday morning. I was literally on the couch all day Saturday feeling horrid! Eli woke up with the cold on Wednesday morning and now he feels terrible. I expect we'll each have had this cold before it's over. It's been passed from person to person. We are loading up on green tea, chicken soup, apples and rest. In fact, I pretty much quarantined us to the house the last half of the week. Last night we had quite a surprise! I was fixing dinner. Dawson and Taylar were wat...