September Happenings

I am going to backtrack a bit so I can cover a few things we did this month. Labor Day weekend, we drove to St. Louis, along with friends Angela, Zach, and Brayden. We had a full fun filled day at Six Flags St. Louis. The weather couldn't have been better, and although we were very tired after returning home, surprisingly we still made it to church the next day.

I guess I need to backtrack some more. The first weekend in September, which was actually before Labor Day, was the big Balloon Festival here in Lincoln. Every year it is such a beautiful sight to see the sky peppered with hot air balloons. It also happened to be our churches annual ffffish and ffffowl fffry. Yes, they use all those f's. So we spend Sunday afternoon at church with the kids, listening to music, and enjoying time with friends and family. My folks came for the weekend and we relaxed and didn't really do much of anything. It was nice.

The following weekend, we spent a Saturday afternoon parading around in pioneer costumes for the Mt. Pulaski Sesquecentenial. Our purpose at the parade was to publicize the upcoming Lincoln Railsplitter Festival, the following weekend. Our 4-H club, The Pioneers, walked behind the float, handing out American flags and an itinerary of the weekend. It was a long hot walk, and made us thankful that we no longer have to wear the long dresses and suspendered trousers, as was customary back in the day. Oh, and I almost forgot to add that we won first prize for the best float.

Mid-September brought Skaterboy to his first day of public school, and our lessons began for Truthseeker, and Thumbody. Truthseeker has already learned vowels i,u,e, and a. We start the letter o next week, as it is the first letter in October. He is learning short vowel sounds first, and is already able to pick out which one-syllable words contain each specific vowel when I read them to him. They are simple words like: cat, big, jet, cup, etc... I am very pleased with his progress so far. Thumbody already knows most of his colors and shapes, and we continue working on those daily as well. It is so great to have Thumbody join in with Truthseeker for daily lessons, although his attention span is shorter, I don't expect a whole lot from him. He learns so much from his big brother, and can sing the entire ABC song, and our days of the week calendar song. He loves our music lessons, and sings right along with us. It fills me with such joy to see them work side-by-side with such joy on their faces.

Today we started our Apple Study. We sorted, measured, washed, and tasted the apples. We took the seeds out of the apples to use for a game tomorrow. We counted the seeds in each apple. We then graphed all our results on our dry erase board. Then we read a story about a trip to an Apple Orchard. The boys were so excited to show their daddy their graph, when he got home from work. In the end, we all found that we each had our own tastes when it came to apples. Truthseeker's favorite apple is the granny smith. Thumbody's favorite is the golden delicious, and mine was the cripp's pink, which I think must be from the pink lady family of apples.

I am hoping to give updates on our apple study all this week. And future studies as we learn and grow day to day.

Why Destination Exceptional Motherhood?

After I had my first child, I felt that it was extremely important to be the best mom I knew how to be. So I started reading books on motherhood, and taking classes at our local church at the time. Now, I am nowhere near to being the exceptional mother, but it is my goal. I feel that if a mother should have one goal in life, this would be a good one to strive for. So, through all the mistakes, and all the trials and tribulations that co-exist with the title mother, I am here, living out my purpose. I am content, and loving every minute of it. Well, most minutes anyway. Along the way I have weeded out information that I don't agree with, and filed away what I feel is essential to remember. Not that it is always remembered, I am an imperfect creature. Hopefully you will get to know me better, and have a deeper understanding for who I am, and the most important things in my life. God Bless.

For my very first blog, ever, I want to catch you up on what is going on here at home. I made the decision 2 weeks ago to put Skaterboy back into public school. It was a difficult choice, and many tears were shed over making this decision, but I am secure in my belief that this is the best place for him at this venture of his life. It all started because I being the insanely organized person that I strive to be, was feeling very overwhelmed and disorganized. Not really with the homeschooling aspect of it all, but I now had an 8th grader and a kindergartner, and added to that a 3 year old. Half my day was spent teaching Truthseeker to read, and the other half of my day was working with Skaterboy and all that he needed to accomplish. My dh would walk in the door in the late afternoon to find me finishing up with our 8th grader, totally exhausted, and the house in disarray. Add to that, dinner not even started. After 3 weeks of this turmoil, I was a wreck. Something had to change. And so being the ultimate mind-changer that I am known to be, I spoke to Skaterboy about registering him in our semi-country school, that goes through 8th grade. He was ecstatic to see his old friends again. So it was done, and he is thoroughly enjoying attending school again. However, one thing is evident, he has a hunger for learning that he didn't possess before. One I saw at home, working one on one with him, but one his former teachers neglected to see, or maybe he no longer possessed when he attended there previously. So all in all, I feel it was a good choice. He will need a high school diploma in order to go to college, and he is 4 years from that. I don't know at this time if we will send him to the public high school, we will have to wait and see. As for Truthseeker, he is doing just fine learning at home. He is learning his vowel sounds right now, and learning to write. DH and I feel he is in the perfect setting for learning, at home.