Vacation

I have not been able to log into my account using my computer so I have not posted for a while, I was finally able to get on using a different computer. So I will update on what has been going on.

Week before last, I decided I wanted a vacation, so since we do homeschool and I don't have to worry about taking the kids out of school, we packed our bags and headed to St. George on Thursday morning to see Liz and the new baby.
We had a good drive down, the kids watched movies the whole time and I listened to a book on my mp3 player. Sarah was content to just sit and watch the scenery, I am glad she is such a good baby. We got to Lizzy's house at about noon. At the parks down there, they have these fun water pads there that the kids can play on along with the normal play ground. My kids loved it and got soaked, which probably felt great since it was about 90 degrees down there.
Then we went to beaver for a night to visit my sister Melynda and her kiddos. That night Von was taking Caleb on an overnight campout so we went with them for dinner, but not the sleeping in a tent. Of course we had to go to the cheese factory for icecream and we went to the park again.

I have been wanting to hike to timp cave for a while and since it will be closing soon for winter, I decided it was a good time to go. I didn't know if the kids would be able to make it all the way but they were real troopers and didn't complain at all. I had to walk as slow as the kids because I had to carry Sarah in the backpack. We all had a good time but my legs were killing me the next few days.

All these fun things and we forgot the camera for all of it :(

Sick

So I have been sick for 5 days now and don't seem to be getting over it. The kids have been slacking of on their school work because I just don't have enough energy to make them do it. Its days like these that made me not want to do homeschool in the first place. I just have to remember the days when it does work out and that I won't always feel this crappy.

Bowen hates to write in his journal but he does like to type so I decided to set up blogs for each of the kids to use as their journals. If you would like to see them, crysania's is crysaniaclub.blogspot.com and bowens is bowen2000.blogspot.com.

Food Storage

Since the Hurricane in Texas I have heard a lot of testimonials about the importance of food storage and I just want to add my two cents.

I have felt the spirit telling me that getting prepared for an emergency is an important thing to do. Our prophets have been telling us for years and years to get a years supply. It doesn't matter if you never experience an emergency, following the council of the prophet is what matters.

When we decided to buy our new house one of the big factors in helping me decide to get this house was the food storage room. In my old house I did not have anywhere to put my food storage and it was something I knew that I needed to do. As soon as we moved in I started getting as much as I could, it has taken me almost a year to acquire most of the food we have, but I am finally starting to feel as if we will be ready for an emergency.
If I can get this much stored in one year, I know you can too.I have been trying to incorporate my food storage into my everyday cooking. One of the first things I did was to start putting wheat flour into all my baked goods, including pancakes, waffles, cookies, and scones. Things that I made all the time anyway. Not only is it healthier, it will get you to start using all that wheat you will have stored. I also started using dry milk in any recipe that called for milk. There are lots of little things you can do you incorporate your food storage. Check out this blog www.everydayfoodstorage.blogspot.com it has tons of good recipes that use food storage.

This is council given in 1976 about food storage, and it still applies today:
Start by taking an inventory—take a physical count of all of your reserves. This would be a great family home evening project. We need to know where we are. Every family should take an inventory—get all the facts.

Second, decide what is needed to bring your present reserve levels to a year’s supply. Then make a list and prepare a plan. Consider first, what are the basics?—wheat (or grain from your locale), sugar or honey, dried milk, salt, and water. Most of us can afford such basics. Buy them from your monthly food budget allowance. The Church discourages going into debt to buy for storage.

Now that you know where you are and where you need to be, the third step is to work out a time schedule for when you will reach your goal. I suggest that one year from today we ought to have a year’s supply of food.

Please, listen to the council of the prophet and do what you can to get a years supply of food.

Thanksgiving Point Animal Farm

I took the kids on a field trip to the Animal farm Tuesday and they had a good time. They have the horses there that the kids can ride and Bowen was terrified because a couple years ago he was riding on a pony and got bucked off, so he has been afraid of ponies ever since, but I convinced him to go on one again. So after it was done and he got off I asked him if it was fun, you should have seen him, he was white as a ghost, he said no he did not have fun. Here is a picture of him you can tell he is just holding on for dear life.
Crysania has always been afraid of heights, I think she would have liked it better if she could have gotten a smaller horse. Elijah was the only one that really had fun. I don't think we have any potential cowboys in this family.
All of them liked the wagon ride, and they had fun looking at all the animals.

(Homeschool) A day in the life of

I know a lot of you out there don't like homeschool or mabey you just don't understand it. This is a post for all of you who have questions about homeschooling, whether you think I am crazy for doing this or if you are just curious about what we do all day.

First I have a check list for each child with all of the things that are required each day and then also weekly requirements. It looks like this
Every Day
Read with Mom
Write in Journal
Read scriptures
Math
Typing
Read 20 Minutes
Spelling
Group activity
Weekly
History/Geography
Science
Art/Music
Life skills (Sewing/Cooking Ect)

So each kid is responsible to mark their chart everyday. When they are doing school they know that all they have to do is look at their chart to figure out what they are supposed to be doing.

We start off the day together reading aloud. I have found that this is the best way to get the kids in the mood to start school, since all they have to do is sit and listen to me. Each child gets to pick their own book, we usually have a chapter book that we are reading as well as picture books. Right now we are reading "The trumpet of the Swan"
After reading they get started on their individual assignments and I sit in the room with them and help them if they have any questions. They usually have a snack around 10:00 and then continue with their work. Most of the time they are done with their individual work by noon.

After lunch we will do the weekly stuff together as well as the group activity, which will be anything from cleaning the rooms together to playing board games or other educational games that I come up with. By 1:00 they are done with school. If they get done with everything before one and they are bored, we have tons of educational computer games that they play.

We also have a playgroup every Friday at the park with other home school families. I also want to start taking them on field trips every once in a while. Tomorrow we are going to Thanksgiving points Animal farm.

When I finally decided to keep the kids home this year, I was terrified. But now that they are here and we have a schedule set up, I am really starting to love it. I enjoy knowing everything my kids are learning, I like having the freedom to change the curriculum if I need to. I enjoy observing my kids and understanding their different styles of learning. For example, Bowen has the best memory, he can remember facts and details about everything. The other day we were reading in our history book about archeology and it mentioned king Tut and Bowen went off for five minutes telling me all about King tut and who discovered him and where. But Bowen hates to write and will complain for hours about writing in his journal. Where as Crysania has a hard time remembering details but she writes the best stories and loves to make up her own little worlds. Her Journal entries are very entertaining to read even though her spelling and grammar are awful. I like knowing the kids strengths and weaknesses so the I can help them build their school around their own needs instead of the needs of 30 other students.

I am not saying that homeschool isn't hard, there are days I just want to send them away so I can have some sanity. But over all I am glad I made the choice to homeschool.

6 puppies and a kitten

We are bursting at the seams with animals!!!
Xena had her puppies last Saturday. Six beautiful little puppies, the kids are so excited especially Crysania. There are 2 boys and 4 girls, so if you know anyone who would like to buy a beagle puppy let us know.

We also finally gave in to the kids begging to get a cat. Denali's cat had kittens so we decided that they could have one. We haven't decided on a name yet but the kids are leaning towards Puss (as in Puss in Boots). But we are also thinking about Bageera (the pantherer from jungle book) or Darth Vadar, but moroni doesn't want an evil cat so we probably wont do that.

Lego Homeschool

Last night Elijah had gotten out the Legos and was wanting me to help him build one of the guys in the booklet, of course I was too busy making dinner and dealing with the other kids so I told him I would help him during school the next day. So today we built him this really cool flying lego robot. He loved it!!!
Bowen got out his building toys as well and tried building a giraffe but it didn't work out to well so he built an X-wing instead. They had fun building stuff for several hours. How many schools would let kids do that?
Here is Crysania working on her typing program. She did her regular school stuff while the boys were building.

Summer Fun

Since I didn't start my blog until now I decided that I would do a summer recap. Here are some pictures of all the fun things we did this year.

This is the kids at the payson park on one of the first warm days of summer.
For the 4th of July we went to the Lee family party. We had fun hanging out and chatting with our friends, and the lighting off our own fireworks.





These pictures were taken at the Benson family annual camp out. We went up fairview canyon for two nights and had a great time. There was a huge teeter-totter made from two large logs right next to our camp that the kids had a great time playing on. Although we did have a few injuries because of it. There was also a very pretty waterfall that the kids loved to play by. We went to the resivore once with the canoe but the wind was blowing so hard only the guys had enough strength to row it. The kids (and Denali) had fun swimming in the ice cold water.

We had the privelidge of watching Melyndas kids a few times while her and Von went on fun trips to Washington DC and Salt lake. My kids love to have their cousins visit.
Bowen played Baseball for the first time this summer. This is him running to home base. He wouldn't wear his new shoes that I bought him, only his sandals. I kept trying to tell him he was going to hurt his feet but he wouldn't listen. He was really good when he was up to bat, he would get a run almost every time, but when he was in the outfield he had a hard time paying attention to the game. I thought he did really good for a 7 year old.
We had some fun swim days this summer, it is my kids favorite thing to do. We got to go to the new payson pool a few times, the spanish fork pool, and Scera pool for a Downs Syndrome party.
Thanksgiving point had two dollar tuesdays in the month of august so we got to go to the Dinasour museum one day. Bowens favorite part was the movie they had playing in a seperate part of the museum, it wasn't even about dinasours. I got some pictures of him pouting when I made him leave but they didn't turn out very well. My favorite part was the bones of the Long neck, I don't think I had ever seen one actual size before.

I just thought this was the cutest picture of sarah so I had to post it.
Now we are looking forward to our first year of Homeschool. I will let you all know how it goes.

Wheat bread

A few weeks ago at our ward auction I purchased a wheat bread lesson from a lady in my ward. Here is what I learned

One of the things I learned is that you cover the bread for the first raise and then don't cover it for the second raise. I always covered it both times. We also raised it in the oven on warm for 20 minutes instead of on the counter for an hour, that worked really good. The recipe she gave me she adds oats to, she said it helps with the moisture, I didn't even notice the oats in the bread. Usually when I make wheat bread my kids won't even touch it, but they actually at this. But they did like it a lot better the first day after that it wasn't as good.

Here is the Recipe

3 C Warm water

2 Tbsp yeast

2 tsp salt

1/3 C Honey or sugar

1/3 c oil

Flax and oats (1/3-1/2 C each) optional

3-4 C wheat flour

white flour as needed

Add all ingredients as listed

Add flour and mix until a "shaggy mass" (don't over mix)

Kneed about 5 min adding the white flour to make smooth

Cover and place in oven on warm to raise aprox 20 min

Seperate two loaves into greased pans and put back in oven to raise 2nd time uncovered

When almost double turn oven up to 350 and bake 35 min

Finally

I have been wanting to create a blog for over a year now and I have finally gotten around to it. HURRAY!!!!

It was Sarah's birthday last sunday (ONE YEAR OLD!) and we had a fun get together with our family and friends. Sarah enjoyed eating cake for the first time, and got lots of fun presents.

Melyndas family came up for the party and stayed for the Labor day celebration. We went to the parade we got to see one float, the payson band and the cheerleaders,and then it started to pour rain on us. By the time we got to the car I felt like I had taken a shower. None of us had rain jackets or umbrellas.

I thought the day was going to be a bust, but the weather finally cleared up and we got to go to the carnival. The kids had a great time.
And Sarah took a long nap.