Kristen has come to live with us!!! Here we are making cookies! (Jozie, Luke, Kristin, and Sami! :) 

They must have been good! Luke is trying to talk with his mouth full! 

Jozie and Luke eating carmel apples - Luke chose the biggest one, of course! 

I don't think they even cared that Mom was there, they were so excited to spend the day with Daddy! :) 

"Pick that one right there!" Daddy was helping the process along! :) 

At times we couldn't find Luke for all the apples! :)

Here's Luke, with his hat on, ready to pick apples! :) 

Here's Jozie with her apples! :) 

Here they are with Amma in the Ambulance at the Touch a Truck day in the park. 

And, of course, Luke's favorite - Who would have guessed? :) It's Captain USA, they even got to meet the driver and get his autograph! How cool! :) 

Here was Jozie's favorite truck...her Papa Al drives a truck like this, she even got to blow the air horn! 

Hannah! Here's Jozie in the Fire Truck! :) She says Hello! :) 

Look, Josiah! Luke got on the Fire Truck! :)  

Happy Anniversary, Bob! :)

It's our anniversary today, only 5 years! :) I guess some would say we are still newly-weds (even though we have 5 kids) and at times I feel the same way! I just thought I would post today and say what a wonderful, loving husband I have and I look forward to many more years with him! :) *sigh* He is a great dad and the kids love spending time with him. We are truly blessed!

We aren't doing anything special, he has to work and I am babysitting my step-sister for the weekend so maybe we will get out next weekend.

Thank you, Bob, for being my husband! I love you! :*

Starting Monday...

Well, we finally got our school materials - I thought I would have them a week ago - so we will be starting school on Monday. I've looked it over and it should be good for both of them. It doesn't look to be so hard that Luke won't be able to handle it and Jozie will definitely benefit from the review, though I think she will have the first few weeks pretty easy. I am a bit nervous with the way Luke has been acting the last week or so - if I will be able to handle his behavior and teach him at the same time without going crazy...I guess I will find out soon enough. I am going to have to put some kind of incentive program into affect too, I think that will help him a lot. He is great when he gets praise and rewards for a job well done. I am thinking of a token type of incentive, exchangeable for dimes at the end of the week - up to $2 per week - and then some kind of special token for an extra special job well done or else doing something without being asked (those being exchanged for some other special reward; a movie rental, an hour later for bed time, extra TV time, etc). I am going to have to come up with a chart and goals for the day but that shouldn't be too hard.

I have started getting up early in the morning - around 6:30! (I usually sleep in for as long as I can!) I have prayer time with a couple of my friends in the morning before the one goes to work, that's why it's so early. After that, around 7, my mom and I have started walking. So I am hoping to get in a few minutes quite time before they get up around 8:00 or so. Though lately I have been lucky to have Jozie sleep that long and once she is up, Luke will usually quickly follow...So much for my time in the morning! I plan on having school first thing in the morning after breakfast (in the past I have learned that if I don't get it done right away, it gets put off until the next day and we end up getting behind rather quickly!). That leaves me the rest of the day, basically after lunch, to clean and do whatever other chores are necessary around the house. I'm also going to try and come up with a cleaning schedule so I don't end up a crazy lady one day every 2 weeks trying to scrub the whole house at once!

I guess I have got a lot of stuff cut out for myself starting Monday!

PS Jozie and Luke started AWANA this week and already Luke has gotten most of his Sparks Gate signed. He only has to memorize the AWANA pledge and the AWANA song and he will be able to start in the Skipper book. Jozie is almost done with the Skipper book - we started late last year so that's why she's a little behind but should catch up pretty quickly. She is just finishing with memorizing the books of the New Testament and a couple of other memory verses and she will be done. She asked this morning if they could go to Sparks again tonight. She loves making new friends and has said she already has lots of them there!

Sooner or Later...

Well, I suppose they would have found a reason to do it sooner or later, why not use a natural disaster as an excuse, and how convent that it happened right before a major holiday weekend! So much for travel, no class reunion or relatives from South Dakota or Nebraska! Hopefully it won't last too long and things will be back to normal, but who really knows what that is lately, seeing that the prices were predicted to rise this high before the end of the summer anyway, and that was BEFORE the hurricane. Hope all yall's vehicles have outstanding gas mileage, especially if you are traveling. Ours don't so I guess we will just have to suck it up and only go out when absolutely necessary.

Speaking of going out, I have to take my written drivers test here in Indiana again to get my Indiana drivers license, and we were hoping to do that today. I guess the reason that they make everybody take the test when they move here is because you never have to take the test again so I guess that's not such a bad reason, but what about all those people out there who need to take that test again? That doesn't make me feel too safe while I'm driving. It can't be such a great thing if you got your license 50 years ago!

So, be brave, be careful, and be conservative with your fuel! :)

Back to School!

Well, I am going to order our curriculum today. Both Jozie and Luke will be starting in first grade with the Learning to Read program through accelerated Christian Education (ACE). Since they are so close in age, they said it shouldn't be much of a problem starting them together, Luke just may need a little more time and energy before he is ready to start with the next phase of first grade. I guess we will just take it as it comes, he is only 5 so if he ends up in first grade again next year, which I doubt will happen - he catches on pretty quick, than he wouldn't be any further behind if we had started him in Kindergarten this year. I am just worried that it wouldn't challenge him enough and he would be board with it and he'd HATE school, and that is definitely not the way that we want to start things off with him!

This will be my first year with 2 students - officially anyway! I'm excited and scared all at the same time. I just hope that I can balance them both and teach them where they are at individually.

We have chosen ACE because when our ministry team, Kingdom Christian Center Outreach Ministries, starts up their private school again, this is the curriculum that they are going to use so Jozie and Luke will be right in line to start where they left off in homeschool. And I may be teaching so it will be a good way to familiarize myself with the curriculum for when that time comes! It is a little on the expensive side but I figure it's worth it if what we do works for our family better than something that is less expensive - though saving money is ALWAYS a good thing! :)

Indiana public schools started yesterday so we are going to have to get the ball rolling here soon. Though there are no state requirements for homeshcooling here as far as testing or reporting, you are required to teach the same amount of days that public schools do so that is a minimum of 180 days. I will have to keep an attendance record of some sort but I haven't exactly decided how I'm going to do that yet. If you have any suggestions, that would be great! I would rather use something on the computer than on paper but if I used paper it would be a hard copy and I wouldn't have to worry about loosing it...I guess it could go both ways, maybe something that I could print out and put in a 3 ring binder would do the trick. I'm going to have to start looking, I hope to start as soon as our curriculum comes.

Luke is 5 now! We had a day full of cow's milk to test and see if his allergy is gone...so far so good! :) 

We also got to see my Dad this weekend. Here's Papa playing with the kids. :) It was great to get to spend some time with him, even though we ended up going to the Knife and Gun show in Birch Run! :) It was fun and Luke got a toy gun from Papa for his birthday. 

Jozie's First Dance...Doesn't she look excited?!