Journey to Excellence

It was another abnormal and fun week in our homeschool. For the biggest homebody family in the world, we have been anywhere but home the past few weeks. Bothwell Lodge We had a school day on Sunday when we tagged along with Dawson on a field trip. For Dawson's college History Before 1877 class he had to tour a historic site. He chose a place we have wanted to visit for several years: Bothwell Lodge in Sedalia, Missouri. Bothwell Lodge is a mansion that was built by John Homer Bothwell between the years of 1897 and 1928. Mr. Bothwell, in Dawson's opinion, was the Gatsby of Missouri in the late 1800's. And I think he was right. He was an eccentric guy who created a retreat for himself, some family members, and about 30 of his closest friends. It was always a party at Bothwell Lodge. The furniture in the lodge all belonged to Mr. Bothwell, and his personal library contains an exquisite collection of first edition books. I cannot even imagine the valuation of his li

Are you comfortable with silence? If you're home alone, do you like silence or do you need regular background noise? Do you seek out times and places to be silent? What's your favorite place to find silence/be silent? LOVE silence! I can sit in my house all day without anything turned on and my mom and I have been known to drive the 14 hours to Florida, and back, and never turn on the radio. It's not that I enjoy silence, it's that I need silence! I retreat to my bedroom several times a day for it. It would be my favorite place to go, but there is nothing better than a silent drive. Even my kids know and can expect silence on car rides. October 28th is National Chocolate Day. Can't let that go by without a mention now, can we? Will you celebrate? How? Let's say you can have one of the following this very minute ... a cup of hot chocolate, a strawberry dipped in chocolate, a bowl of plain chocolate ice cream or a slice of chocolate pie ... what's you

It's back! Well, Leslie has had her Tuesday Coffee Chat prompts up and running for over a month now, but I am just now getting back on board. My kids went to the midnight release of Halo 5 last night, and it's a rainy morning, so I am letting them sleep in a bit today. This gives me a great excuse to sit in bed with my coffee and my dogs and ponder today's question ... The long work day is done, you arrive home and the first thing you do ..... ? Oh, this is an easy one. I am just imagining our typical Wednesdays. We do schoolwork all day, then drive 30 minutes to Eli's speech therapy in the afternoon, drive home and drop Brynne off at softball pitching practice for an hour, run home to get ready for our hosted enrichment class, pick Brynne up from pitching and pick up one of the kids for class, come home and host class for an hour and a half. Then when the last kid walks out the door to go to his/her own home .... I go straight to my bedroom and put on m

This past Saturday night was pumpkin carving night. We had appetizers for dinner, snacked on caramel apples, and got to carving. It was such a mess. But several hours later we had these. Yum. We finished up our costumes today and are ready for some trick-or-treating on Saturday. Hopefully the rain has moved through by evening.

Before I launch into what we did inside our home in the way of schooling this week, let me tell you about the amazing educational experiences outside our home ... Renaissance Faire I posted on Monday about our trip to the Renaissance Festival for Dawson's 19th birthday. Eli and Brynne watched a video about the Renaissance Era on Friday to get ready for that "field trip". If you have ever been to the festival then you know what an educational experience it is. Plus the clothes are super cool. Dr. Ben Carson - A More Perfect Union The highlight of our week happened on Thursday when we had the opportunity to meet Dr. Ben Carson. I have been a huge supporter of Dr. Carson for a couple of years and thought many times that a man like him should run for president. I am so glad that he is because he, in my opinion, is exactly what our country needs at this time if we have a hope and a prayer of getting us moving back in a positive direction. Dr. Carson has relea

October 21, 2015, is Back to the Future Day . Did you see the movie? The sequels? In the second film, Doc takes Marty into the future to prevent Mary's future son from making a mistake. They leave 1985 and land on a 'skyway' on October 21st, 2015. So tell us, what were you doing in the fall of 1985? Oh, yes, I have seen the movies and made sure my kids have seen them, too. In fact, we just might watch one of them today if we can find the time. I can remember the fall of 1985 as if it were yesterday. I was a freshman in high school. It was Homecoming time. I can remember candidate poster parties, band parades, dancing on the pompon squad at half-time of football games, and most specifically "snagging" the boyfriend I wanted. He was a senior. I remember us going to play in a parade, and I had laryngitis. He flirted with me all day. After we got home I was standing in my living room with my friend and he drove by my house. I screamed and fell to the floor. He

On Sunday Dawson turned 19 years old. (Crazy talk.) Each of the kids gets to pick something fun to do for their birthday. Last year Dawson chose Incredible Pizza. This year it was the Renaissance Festival. The last day of the festival was on Sunday so the whole family, plus a few friends from Oklahoma, loaded up for a trip to Kansas City. It's always a lot of fun to people watch at the festival. We had a great time picking out our favorite outfits. In fact, we decided that if we ever go back we are totally coming in costume. Why not? Eli and Brynne hung out with Dawson and his friends, so Rick and I got a rare afternoon doing adult things with Kyndal and Collin. We utilized our time by throwing sharp objects at targets. This is what was going on with Dawson's group. Once we hooked back up Eli and Brynne shot some arrows. We finished out our day enjoying the "joust to the death" (there was even blood! awesome!) and enjoying the music of

When we left you last week, we had just returned to Pensacola after a fun-filled trip to Atlanta, Georgia. Rick travelled back to Pensacola with us to spend our last couple of days of vacation, and we had a lot planned! We continued to accumulate school hours with some fantastic field trips! On Sunday we drove in the other direction to Mobile, Alabama, to tour the USS Alabama. We have driven by this WWII battleship many times over the past few years, but it is either in the wee hours of the morning or late at night. As we are focusing our history lessons on WWII this year, this was the perfect opportunity for us to tour it. And what a fantastic tour! (In fact, we had plans for a second field trip that day but spent so much time at the Alabama that we didn't have time for it. Plus we were dying to fit in lunch at Felix's Fish Camp Grill, which did not disappoint!) Before we left the memorial site, we also climbed aboard the USS Drum submarine. Pretty cool.

We had a great week of school last week! We were in sunny Florida at Grandma and Papa's house. School, you say? Yes! There are many things that we do when we go there to vacation that we count as school hours. Have you ever boogie boarded in the ocean? That's P.E. (and the sore bodies of both kids the next day proved that they had received a good workout). Have you ever driven through a new state or explored a new city with inquisitive kids? That's history and geography! And the field trips! Even eating at a historic restaurant counts as school. We spent Sunday through Thursday in Pensacola relaxing, playing, and hitting the beach. On Friday we drove from Pensacola to Atlanta to stay at the Omni Hotel at the CNN Center. Rick flew into Atlanta and met us to share in the rest of our vacation. Once we checked into the hotel we headed out the door to walk to dinner at The Varsity. It was about a mile-long walk, but downtown Atlanta is beautiful so we enjoyed our strol