the first day of school is always fun, sin’t it? the anticipation the night before of waking up to freshly sharpened pencils, new books, new notebooks, and new things to learn are always high on the student’s mind.

rowan had a hard time falling asleep last night. maybe it was the “last-day-of-summer ice cream cone” he had eaten just hours before? or maybe it was the anticipation of TheAlarmClock i gave them for this year’s school. i set the alarm for 8:00 a.m. which i think is way too late, and of course, they were awake in their beds by 7:30 waiting for that buzzer to sound. i think by the end of the week, that buzzer will become TheirEnemy.

this morning, we had breakfast as a family, started bible class together promptly after breakfast, and then proceeded into history, spelling, math and concluded with grammar. it was a full, busy morning – but we all had fun!  i wonder how long until the groaning starts?  i’m optimistic, but also realistic.

the chalkboard provided a loose schedule for our days, and the first of our weekly memorization work (click on pictures to enlarge). this week, we start with a creation recap memorizing the 9th question of the Westminster Shorter catechism. the bible curriculum we’re using is called God’s Great Covenant and i’m so excited to use an actual covenant-based curriculum!  the first unit is four or five weeks of creation and since we’ve done TheCreationStory oh-so-many times already, we’re doing that whole unit in the first week, and continuing on with Abraham next Monday.

the units that we’ll be covering throughout the year are all about the covenant between God and his people. just like the storybook bible that we’ve been using for years (The Jesus Storybook Bible) says, “Every story whispers His Name” and i’ve always loved that teaching view of the bible to our children. all the stories of the Old Testament point to, and whisper the name of, Jesus, our Messiah. we want to continue telling the Big Story about God and His people to our children. they were baptised into a covenant family, not just our family, but the family of the people of God.

There is an Old Testament Part II that covers the second half of the Old Testament (Samuel to Malachi) that we’ll continue with next year.

yes. That’s my beautiful, artistic “earth”.

Rowan thought it was missing a little something, so he added clouds.

After school, we went out for lunch! The boys chose Eat-N-Park because of guaranteed dessert (free smiley sugar cookie – oh, they’re so smart!).

My favorite part of the first day of school! Everything in order and neat and fresh!

Sawyer’s recap of the day – makes a momma proud!

Ahhhhh….now THAT, my friends, was what I call SUMMER! Hot, humid, sunny, grilling, pools, the ocean, ice cream! SUMMER!

The boys and I were the guests of our friends at the Pitsburgh Zoo this weekend. It was perfect weather for zoo-walking…not to hot, not too cold. It got crowded towards the end, but we had the playgrounds all to ourselves at the beginning since we decided to walk the zoo backwards – a brilliant suggestion by my friend Nikki, who guested us there with her son, Danny.

We’ve always loved the zoo but don’t get there as regularly as we’d like to. It’s been exactly one eyar since we were there last, and we always love seeing our favorite aquarium animals…especially the polar bear!

Saturday morning, we headed over to Lowes for one of their free kids workshops. I signed Kenny and the boys up for this workshop over a month ago and almost forgot to go!  If I hadn’t glanced at our calendar that morning, we’d have forgotten all about it! The boys built their own little school bus/chalk holder. I got to go shopping for an hour. Today, Sunday, we found a lost chicken that was fox-attacked but survived. She hid in our garage all night…it was a pleasant surprise to find her again this afternoon as she is one of our original chickens, our last aracauna, and practically a pet. The boys call her Bettis (Bett-o for short) because of her thick neck. She is wounded, and Kenny is treating her wounds (salt water…she’s doing fairly well eating and drinking!).

Tonight, we’ll close out summer officially. Maybe one last trip to the ice cream stand….

I’m ready to begin school, just not yet ready to close out summer. It’s been too good of a season!!

when kenny and i worked together in town, we frequented the very close restaurants nearby for lunch. one of our favorite dishes at a local middle eastern eatery was this salad and we’ve tried to make it ourselves several times. i think last night’s version was the closest yet, so i’m writing it down and sharing it with you!

Chickpea and Tomato Salad

1 16-oz can chick peas, drained

1/2 white onion cut into chunks (larger than minced..a little bit larger than diced)

2 tomatoes, stripped of seeds, diced

4 T. tahini

2 T plain yogurt

1 T olive oil

juice of 1 lemon

salt, pepper

In a small bowl, mix tahini, yogurt, olive oil, lemon juice until a thin, runny-ish consistency (we’ve found that if the tahini is thick, you’ll need to add more yogurt and/or olive oil until it’s thin…just play around with the levels of ingredients).  Add salt and pepper to taste.

In a larger bowl, toss diced tomatoes, onion, and chick peas. Pour tahini sauce over top and serve!

i have to admit, i’m a sucker for fun family gatherings, events, or parties. who isn’t?  ask your kids: if every day could be a party, would they disagree?

it’s back to school time in this country as the majority of schools start their school year this week. we start lessons on monday and i’m already thinking about how to start with a bang…which translates into PARTY!

i love hearing other family back-to-school traditions and how they spend their last day of summer vacation together, or what they do to commemorate each first day of school. this is our third year, and the only thing i’ve done is take a picture in years past! here are our first two years’ pictures (‘08 and ‘09).

this year, i’m a bit more on my ball, and as well as taking a photo of all the boys, i’m making their favorite breakfast (we’re still choosing the perfect coffee cake or cinnamon roll recipe). also, we’ll be taking them out for lunch, as lunchtime marks the end of our school day. unfortunately, their favorite place to eat is chuck e. cheese. let’s hope their taste in dining matures quickly!

next week, i’ll post pictures of our first day…here’s to a great school year for all of us!

This weekend, we returned (semi-) relaxed from a fabulous beach vacation. It was the first beach vacation we had as a family and was the highlight of our summer!

This was our beach. We had the perfect location as our beach access was private and our house on a cul-de-sac. We loved being able to keep an eye on our kids so easily as they were pretty much the only ones running around our umbrellas and to the water in front of us.

The boys didn’t sit still once when they were at the beach. We arrived at the beach mid-morning, stayed until lunch, walked back to rinse off, shower, hot tub (the kids all loved the hot tub – they all got in for about 5 minutes after their outdoor showering from the beach) and eat lunch. We’d return to the beach in the afternoon for a few hours and then return home to again, shower, rinse, hot tub and then happy hour!

After a very busy day of kid-watching at the beach, walking back and forth to the house in North Carolina heat (LOVED IT!), showering and cleaning and dressing the kids three times…the grown-ups were ready to relax. So as the coals were readying on the grill, or water heating up on the stove, the kids were given a snack and allowed to watch some cartoons while the adults kicked up their feet. By Thursday evening, we looked forward to this time of day the most!

This picture didn’t make it into my facebook photos. It’s their natural posing. I should frame this one for our wall.

We had near-perfect weather: High 80s, plenty of sunshine, only one day of rain, and mild winds (after the first day). The water was warm but the waves and tide were strong. Since returning, we’ve learned that this past week at the Outer Banks was one of the busiest for the lifeguards!

I am so thankful for this week we had to spend at the beach as a family and with other families. I’m so thankful we had all summer to look forward to it, and now a full week to get ready for school to begin in earnest.

do you remember this picture?

well…we think that one or two of our chicks believe that violet is “mom.”

there are one or two chicks who refuse to go into the to coop at night and instead hang out with violet grazing. we believe that she roosts in the barn, near violet.

this picture was taken this morning, before the chicks were let out of the coop. obviously that chick spent the night outside the coop. with the sheep.

i wonder if she’ll bawk or bleat?

for the first year living up here, we did nothing except try to plant a garden (didn’t happen) and had a baby (adam!).

that was a lot for us, so we took it easy the fall and winter of our first year. but plans started picking up the following spring and we dove head-first into homesteading our little plot of land out here in the rolling hills of western pennsylvania!

that next spring, we ordered and DROVE to ohio to pick up our 15 egg-laying chicks. they were still wet when we picked them up (from hatching!) and we brought them back to our home, set them up with a warm brooder box in our laundry room and watched them for hours (kenny even got up twice in the night to check on them!).

we even had a garden that year, that was eaten to the ground by groundhog, but at least we planted and tended a lovely garden!

fast forward to this summer and we’ve found some balance to the whole “hobby-farming” endeavor. we have a new barn with an actual fenced in 1.8 acres. within that fence, barnyard politics rule…not the rules we thought to set up. the donkey is in charge of the five sheep and the two goats. the chickens keep their distance and the cat sneaks some water when the donkey isn’t looking (and then makes her way back out of the pasture fence).

the bees died out this winter and we didn’t get more, we tried to get 10 chickens in our freezer, but only consumed two (gave the rest away). the best laid plans…and all that jazz.

our garden is booming this year thanks to a very patient and green-thumbed kenny. the beans were a huge crop, the limas and edameme are just about to pop, and the tomatoes are all lovely and blight-free this year! we have a cutting garden again (zinnias!) and we had fresh lettuce and broccoli and herbs and will be picking some beautiful butternut squash (for soup!) soon. not to mention the decorative gourds for the dining room table fall decor (that i won’t be spending money on!).

we’ve been eating farm fresh eggs for years now, and i can tell you they are superior and worth the effort o keep hens just for that. last night, we had our first dinner of roasted herbed whole chicken that were raised, killed, and cooked by our own hands and it was good…but not WOW! the drumsticks were tough (probably because the donkey love to chase these chickens and they got a LOT of exercise!), and the breast meat, although large in quantity, were just as tasty as the herbed butter we cooked them in. what was satisfying was the fact that we can now, if we ever need to, raise and harvest our own chicken.

i am glad for the opportunity to learn and teach this way. i’m learning just as much as our boys are, and that is satisfying enough!

it’s august, and planning for the school year is in full force. as i sit and look at the mix of curriculum we chose for the coming school year, and as i plan the calendar for our local homeschool group’s field trips and co-op class schedule, i am having flashbacks of entering our first year of homeschooling, just two short years ago.

i had a packaged Kindergarten curriculum that we bought that summer and i had been reading through it each night in preparation for the september start date we decided on as a family. just 6 months prior to this, i remember feeling really hesitant about schooling the boys at home, and i dragged kenny and the boys to two local school interviews (montessori and a private lutheran school).  a month after those tours, i agreed to kenny’s suggestion that we go to the state’s large homeschooling convention to get a feel for curriculum, talk to other families that homeschool and then we could come home, make our decision on where the two older boys would be the following year: at school, or at home.

it didn’t take long after the convention to decide that homeschooling would be the perfect fit for our family, and i haven’t regrettted that choice once. however, i was terrifed that first year. and if you’re reading this post just entering your first year of “official” homeschooling and are terrified yourself, i hope to be of some comfort to you.

that summer, i circled the “school starts today!” date on our family calendar that hangs in the kitchen for all to see (that year it was a chicken calendar, last year it was a goat calendar, this year, we have a sheep calendar) and rowan and sawyer counted down the days. when the morning of school arrived, they were ready to start as soon as they woke up.

but i wasn’t.

i told them that we’d “do school” once adam was down for his afternoon nap as he was still a toddling baby and i wanted to be able to focus all my attention on teaching. lunch came and went, and adam was down for his nap. the two older boys sat eagerly at the kitchen table begging for school. and i looked for every excuse to delay our start of school. i washed a few dishes, swept the kitchen floor, sharpened some pencils and i think i even cleaned a toilet. i don’t know why i had found myself so nervous teaching a 4- and 5-year old basic kindergarten material? i remember the minute i decided “it’s now or never!” and i began.

the jitters never returned, and we did our lessons daily, went on a field trip or two that year, ending official school in march as the weather began the warm. the year was a success, and i never felt once that we had made the wrong decision.

that doesn’t mean there weren’t hard days. or weeks! i’ve blogged through some of our worst times, but as i regain focus on the “why” behind our homeschooling, i begin to lose the fear of doing the wrong thing. one statement i hear from a lot of people when they hear we homeschool is:

I could never homeschool my kids. I don’t have the patience!

to that i respond: “admitting it is the first step in recovery!”  i am probably one of the least patient people i know. if impatience weren’t allowed in parenting, then I’d never be allowed to become a parent. it’s the number one thing i pray for when i begin each day: patience. i know the joke about praying for patience. i don’t believe it. i believe that God has come through time and again, and will continue to grant me patience in the everyday parenting that i get to do. when my patience is thin, He’s there (usually in the shape of kenny who is there to pick up my slack, give me a break, take over for an hour or so…). we get through, the boys continue to learn, and we grow ever closer as a family, enjoying the many moments we get to spend together, and not separated by classrooms and hours.

1. my “little” brother is in town. he spoke at a conference in TheBigCity and now he’s spending a few days up here in the boondocks. Rowan, Sawyer and Adam are monopolozing his time by climbing on his shoulders, coloring him pictures and cards, and planning out his entire schedule. Yesterday, they took him to Playthings Etc their favorite store ever, and the swimming pool, where we were only one of two families there (warm and sunny! where were all the people?). today they plan on getting in 18 holes at the local mini golf ice cream stand. They love their uncles.

2. we spent yesterday morning processing two of our meat chickens. kenny didn’t let the boys watch the actual “act” but they were there watching the plucking, the disembowling, and the cleaning without being grossed out at all. i was proud of them. we have two gorgeous chickens in our fridge right now, and we’re roasting them tonight with fresh rosemary and butter, corn on the cob, and a big ol’ salad. the farmer friend who helped us stated that the birds looked great – not overly full of yellow fat, which means they had a good eating life (free-rangers!).

3. if we put all the expenses we’ve had since getting these chickens, it comes to approximately $16 a chicken. totally not worth the money, time, work…but it was worth the experience!

4. the boys have been collecting butterflies all summer (running around with a net, catching the “pretty ones” and then giving them to kenny who puts them in a jar with rubbing alcohol until they are done moving). we have a pretty good collection now, and “uncle dan” has added to our interest by finding monarch butterfly eggs and baby caterpillars on our milkweed from our front yard. we now have a gallon jar of baby caterpillars and one egg, lots of fresh milkweed and will be raising and releasing monarchs over the next few weeks. endless fun! if you’re interested, here’s some information!

5. if you have any advice on being at the beach with a young children, please send it my way!

6. i have that nervous feeling of “new schoolyear jitters” that i haven’t had in years. i never thought teachers got it as well!

7. here’s a great free resource for your family – whether you homeschool or not, it’s a fun little video that can help you and your students see the growth of this country.

for more quick takes, visit jennifer at conversion diary!

Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter by Seth Grahame-Smith!

I was shocked by how much I loved this book. I had been hankering for some history or historical fiction and jokingly suggested another book about vampires (after loving The Historian earlier this summer). Then I remembered this book I aw on the shelves at a local Barnes and Noble a few weeks ago. I requested a copy from the Big City Library (since it’s not in our little country library yet) and when I received it, started to browse the first few pages. I was in the middle of making dinner, and in the middle of another novel (to which i’ll return today), but I couldn’t stop reading it.

This book has history (especially Abe Lincoln and Civil War history) and vampires all rolled into one. Again, the vampires aren’t cheesy and romanticised: they’re of the violent nature, so I feel the need to warn any future readers of this book of the graphic, violent descriptions found in this book. But the parts are few and far between some of the best and most interesting storytelling (heavily aided by history!) I’ve read recently.

The author pays close attention to historical detail and cleverly adds the vampire storyline. I don’t want to give much of it away, but there are some clever and fun descriptions of historical happenings that are accompanied and/or explained by vampire lore. And that’s really all I want to say because I really think you need to read this novel. Especially if you’re a history buff. You’ll find it laugh-out-loud at times and then you’ll find yourself waiting to see how he’ll tie in vampires with historical events (i.e. Ab’s family life).

A bonus of this book are the pictures scattered throughout of vampires found in historical, actual photos (of historical people and events) with very amusing captions!