I have not dropped off the face of the earth!!! I'm still here!

Nothing major has happened since I last posted...except for Life!  I have been busy with our homeschool and keeping the house running smooth.

I did get caught up in some coupon websites that took up way to much time....but for the new year, I have given several of them up and have decided to follow just two.  That is two from ten/twelve I was following each day.  Very overwhelming.  I was trying to save our family some more money, etc.  Well it just was not worth the time I was spending each day to justify continuing.

Thanksgiving
The children are doing great with school.  We took a week off at Thanksgiving to spend with Dad while he was home.  Prior to Thanksgiving(about three weeks), I injured my back.  We are still not sure what I did but it put me behind on everything for almost a month.   It was not fun.  I am doing better with that, I just watch everything now to make sure I don't do it again.

We had friends over during the Thanksgiving week and really enjoyed our visit with them.  It was nice to just relax and enjoy the fellowship since we don't see them often.  Both couples live in other states and they were here visiting family.

Allen and I sometimes do the "Black Friday" shopping, so for the last few years my Mother comes and stays with us on Thanksgiving night so someone will be here with the children.  We did not have major shopping to do, we were going to both Christian Book Stores and that was about it.   I think we were getting up around 5:30 or something like that.  Well, we woke up to the fire alarm going off and smoke in our house around 3:30 ish.  I immediately turned the furnace off and we all started looking around.  We could not find the fire or where it was coming from, we checked plugs, Allen walked around the house outside, checked the attic, this went on for almost 30 mins.  So Allen finally called the non-emergency number and they told him he had to call 911.  He called 911 and told them everything so they said they would send someone out.   After awhile a police officer came and he looked everywhere we had and he could not find anything.  He said that the fire department could come out and use the infrared but that it would not work unless the source was hot or something to that effect.
As a family we prayed and was asking the Lord to help us find out where the source was and what was going on.  I turned the furnace back on just to see if it was involved and as soon as I did the smell and smoke was back very strong.  We turned it off, including the breaker.  We then decided that it was the furnace and since it was off that there would not be a fire.  Mom told us to go on with our shopping, she and the children would be fine.  That was a crazy and memorable morning we wont forget soon.
Later in the day Allen got up in the attic to look at the furnace and a possum had gotten in the furnace and was dead, that was the problem.  We are all thankful that he found that and was able to take care of the problem, because it would have caught fire and the story could have been a lot different.  Thank you Lord.

Christmas - December
We did a different approach to Homeschool in December.  We still kept a few basic subjects, but we did a Unit Study about Christmas.  It was one I had found on line years ago.  We had never done it, so we thought we would try it this year.  It turned out real good.  We all learned new things and Makaela had fun doing some of the projects.
Our family stayed in town this year for Christmas.  We decided to take it easy and enjoy our time together.  Now Allen and I did several projects around the house during his time off, we did not get them all done, but we accomplished more than we thought.  The children enjoyed spending time with us and Grandparents over Christmas.  We ALL had a wonderful Christmas and enjoyed our gifts.
I'm really enjoying one of my gifts, actually Allen Sr. and Makaela are too.  Allen and the children bought me a clothes steamer.  It is wonderful, Makaela has already learned how to use it and does her own clothes.  I think that is wonderful.  She knows how to iron, but this is so much easier and I personally like it better than ironing.

NEW YEAR!!  2011 - 2012
We went to church like we usually do for New Year's Eve service.  We had quite a few visitors that night, but it was a good service.  That was the start to our new year!!

Christmas 2010 - Illinois Snow Pictures!

I finally got around to finding my snow pictures.  We had fun and enjoyed the snow while we were there.  Had to pack a lot of visiting and seeing all the family in to our visit.

Dad and Makaela trying to make a snow man. 

Allen was not really wanting to be out in the cold.  

Our little snowman!

Makaela making a snow angel 

"Who can I throw this one at?"

A Family Valentine's Dinner.

 Last night we had our Valentine's Dinner at home as a family.  The children had fun helping me decorate the table with things from around the house.  We made dinner and had it ready when Dad came home from work.

I used some of my scrapbook paper for our place mats.  

 We used candy for our center piece, since we did not have flowers.  

 Later after dinner and dessert, we played a game before bed.  Had a wonderful and relaxing evening.  

 Fun times and memories!

Catching up and on the move!

After VBS, we have been busy and just have kept things moving around here.  We have been cleaning out the garage (still working on this one), moving furniture around, cleaning a few things out as well as fixing somethings around the house.   Allen Sr. is officially back at work this week and we are getting back to our schedules.  We went to the IBLP seminar last weekend and we are headed to the Homeschool Conference this weekend.  After that I'm working on getting our school schedule done.   Almost have the school room organized a few things need working on, but it will come with time.

This will be a new experience for us having Allen Jr. home with us this year.  My plans are to Homeschool him as well.  I have a few ideas on what I want to do with him and hopefully will get more at the Conference.

I have made a few trips to IKEA over the last few weeks and hope to make one more trip in a few more weeks.  I just love their organizational/storage things.  Of course, Allen also took me to our one/twice a year shopping at the Container Store.  I think we would continually be broke if we lived closer to one of those.  I love container, boxes, gadgets, etc.

One thing we have already bought and Makaela has started on is Teaching Textbooks---we love this Math curriculum for her right now.  It may not something we use from now on, but right now it is what she needs.  She has been doing it over the summer to get use to it and see how it goes.  She should be through with it before Christmas, and we will just purchase the next grade.  She is playing catch-up with her Math anyway, during the time of my Dad's illness (Feb. - June), I let her Math go that year.  It was the last subject we need to finish, so we just picked it up in the Fall of that year.  She is doing 5th grade math right now instead of going into 6th grade on her math.  That is okay with us and she will catch up in time.  I really don't like the whole "What grade are you in?" question.  I like the idea of just going with what works for your children and their learning styles.

Well, that is what we have been up to the last few weeks.

Leaving a Legacy to our children....

During our "Weekend to Remember" one of the last things they talked about was leaving a legacy to our children and future generations.  I have been thinking about this over the last few weeks and what all that means.  Recently a friend has been working on "Heritage" information and photo's on our church history on Facebook.  It has been real interesting and fun to see the old photo's and information he has put on there so far.  I have seen several of my family members on there and it has really got me to thinking.  My Grandparents, Great Aunts and Uncles have given me and my family a great heritage and legacy in the Lord's work.   They have stored up much mercy for us and I'm very thankful for that.  I have been looking through my families photos and I'm thinking that I want to start putting together a book or something for my children so that they can look back and see where several generations came from.  I just love history, so this is great and of course will take me a while.

Well...that is not quite what I was writing about.  Back to where I was originally headed.  I want to leave a legacy with my children in the Lord.  I want them to know the Lord and have a personal relationship with him.
My husband and I are trying to raise a Godly family, which requires us of course to live by his principles.  This is a daily and weekly thing for us, we make adjustments all the time, which I'm sure most families do as well.  I just pray that with the Lord's help and guidance that we can leave them with qualities that they can pass on to their families.

What you do today will affect future generations!

A Life (Eating) Change for the better.

I recently had a check up and my Doctor ran some blood test due to some medical issues I was experiencing.  The test came back a week ago (Monday) and I was not prepared for the results.  Two of the panels were not good and require me to change some areas of my life.  In saying that, I have been very stressed and down over the last week trying to make sense of it all and figure out what course of action would be the best.  It became very overwhelming to the point I just did not care.   What my Husband was so kind to point out was that I needed to take it one day at a time and ask the Lord for help to make it through just that day.  What a blessing and a peace that has come with asking the Lord for help.  I went to our chiropractor for my free birthday adjustment  this week and while there I told her everything that was going on...she immediately told me that I need to change my eating habits and that with a routine, I could turn those numbers around.  Well, that was a major relief and something Allen had been telling me over the weekend.   So I will be starting the "Atikins" diet or what I like to call my life plan of eating healthier over the next few weeks.  I'm trying to phase out the not so good foods around here and bring in the ones that are healthier for our family and with the Lords help this will be a blessing for our whole family.

A Family Reunion, Birthday and Oklahoma.

We took a very fast trip to Oklahoma this past weekend for Allen's Uncle Don's 70th Birthday and family reunion.  We had a wonderful time and enjoyed seeing family members we had not seen in a while and meeting new ones.  The weather was crazy for awhile on Saturday, but the Lord was great and held off the heavy rains until after everyone had left.  We stayed with Uncle Don and Aunt Suzie on their Sumter Ranch in NE Oklahoma.  Allen Jr. and Makaela really enjoyed being there and having loads of outdoor fun.  On Saturday, we were able to see some Canadian Geese in their pond before everyone showed up.  Later on, the entire family got a kick out of watching a water snake on the banks of the pond.  Don and Suzie have horses which the children loved to see and visit at their barn.  On Sunday we had been loading up and getting ready to leave, I went out to put two things in the van and my Mother-in-Law called me back to the house.  I thought, that is strange, she knows I'm just putting these in the van...well, she said, "Come back, there is a skunk!"   I scurried to the porch and sure enough it was going right by our van.  Suzie took care of it with the shot gun.  That was an experience to say the least.  Glad we were able to go, but very glad we are back home.

Spring Break - YEA!

We are so happy to have Allen and Dad home with us this week.  Makaela and I are ready for a break.  I know the men are.  It has been very stressful for the past few weeks.  We are ready to just relax and spend time together.   Today is our wedding anniversary.  We have been married for 16 wonderful years.  We celebrated last night by going out to eat and spending time together.  We have several families(youth)  here visiting this weekend from Tyler and other places, so we have had youth outings, church, food, ice cream (which we are serving), etc.  It is a good way to start our week.   We also will be taking our children out of town this week for a few days.  Looking forward to that.

Scrapbooking

I'm heading to a Scrapbooking retreat with my Mom and some other friends this weekend.  I'm looking forward to spending quality time on Allen Jr.'s book.  He is graduating this year and I would like to get him current on his book.

After that, I will need to get Makaela's book current.  I'm looking into doing a book for each year for the whole family, instead of one for each of them.

Makaela is starting to get interested in scrapbooking and is doing some of her birthday's and other activities.

I'm hoping to have a fun and relaxing time this weekend.

Out with the Grades - A's, B's, C's...etc...

Since we have been homeschooling, we have struggled with giving Makaela quantative grades; ie: A, B,C, 100%, 80%, etc.  I would write some of these at the top of her page, other times, I would put stickers or  simply write "Good Job", "Wonderful work", things like that, but that is not what we wanted for her.  Well, we came across another system, where this family used a different kind of numbering system.  They used the number "5" as the highest number.  When the child had accumulated 25  "5's", they were able to pick out a special activity or reward to celebrate their achievement.
Well, we have decided to use the number "4" as our number of accomplishment.  Ever since I have known Allen Sr., he has always used the number "444" as special number for our family for which he will have to give the story some time at another date.  In short, it stands for "4 God, 4 Love, 4 Ever".  Makaela and Allen Jr. are both familiar with this being a special number for our family.  So, we are going to set a pretty good size reward when Makaela reaches 44 "4's".

Getting Started - With our new curriculum/unit studies.

We have officially started our new curriculum and we are trying out a new schedule this week.  With Thanksgiving next week and the guys being home with us, we will do some, but mostly family time and activities.  Makaela loves our wisdom booklets and is enjoying what she is learning.  Her Dad left her some papers yesterday for the week and she was so excited she did them all yesterday.  I did not see them ahead of time and did not know they had dates on them, Allen Jr. had a doctor appt., so we were taking our school work along with us and I just told her to get it out and start working on what she could without me (we have learned to do this many times, because of my Dad, with his doctor appts. or Allen Jr's appts.).   Well, her Dad was so shocked that she did it all yesterday, but he was glad she enjoyed it.  We will be working out some of the scheduling and activities over the next few weeks.  We are still doing our other curriculum's with Math, Language Arts and some History.  The rest is in our unit studies.  We have noticed over the last month or so that Makaela is showing more of an interest in the Bible and what we are studying.  In the evening we are finding that she is reading her Bible on her own and looking up scriptures.  The Lord is good and all things come in his timing.

Training our children, scripture, chores, etc.

* I wrote this post several weeks ago and finally finished it today. *
I have been reading several post on other blogs and gleaning from their post.  Some of them have been on training the children with chores, managing money (rewards for chores or allowances) and treasure jars (teaching the children the importance of laying up treasure in Heaven vs. earthly treasures).  My husband and I, in our efforts to change our homeschool ideas and our home, we have been re-evaluating what would work for our family.  Since, Allen Jr. cannot read, we have to look for other alternatives to training him.  We use a  program http://www.mayer-johnson.com/products/boardmaker-software/ for making picture symbols with words, so that he can see both and we do use some sign language.  We have an older program of this and several years ago we made our own chore system it has worked really well with both of the children, but now we need to change a few things and add some more in.  That will have to wait, because we cannot find the main cd for this system.  To replace it would be $200 +, to re-buy would be $400+, so we are going to be praying and looking for the cd over the next few weeks.  I will post pictures of our boards soon.

Restful family time

We took a short trip this past weekend to East Texas.  We went for Ethan's baby dedication, Kevin and Annette asked if we would come.  We were honored to be included in their son's dedication. We are thankful to be included in their family and special occasions.   Even though we were going for just one night, it was a  relaxing time to get away.   The children love staying in a hotel room and enjoy it every chance they can stay in one.  We did not plan any other activities for the time there, other than going to church.  We enjoyed that, because we were able to see so many friends we have not seen for a while.  We just wanted to take our time and enjoy the hotel and relax.
We did not know that it was the weekend for "Canton".  We have wanted to go there several times and it just has never worked out.   I have never been there so on the way home on Sunday, Allen said lets go by Canton.  We were not going to be able to do the whole thing, but wanted to just see a little bit.  There are animals and different things there that he thought the children would like.  Well, we never did get to that part, but the children seemed to have a good time anyway.  We did buy two small Christmas gifts and a few other items.  Overall the trip was a relaxing trip and we all had a good time.


Side note:  When we go on trips, short, long, day trips, etc.  I tend to go over board and plan activities and what not to do.  Allen Sr. does as well.  Not sure why, but we do, so that is why this weekend was relaxing and enjoyable, because we did not have major plans other than Ethan's dedication and that was what was important to us.

Family Crazyness and my Thankfulness

I wrote this and then did not post it.  This happened on October 8th - 11th.
This past week has been a crazy and trying time for us.  Allen Jr. had a "permanent dental bridge" put in on September 28th., they were his two front teeth.  Just to give you a little back ground, he lost his baby teeth in the accident when he was 11 months old.  His adult teeth were damaged as well, so Allen has never had two front teeth, unless the dentist or orthodontist has put false teeth in some how.  Now that he was done with braces, etc. we were getting him some thing more permanent.   Well, last Wed. night, the dental bridge came off and he swallowed it while eating a sandwich.  My Husband and I thought he choked on the sandwich, not realizing what happened until it was too late.  We talked with the Dentist and she said to just let it pass through his system normally.  During the night he was acting sick and into the morning on Thursday he could not keep food or liquids down.  We were getting more concerned and after much debate took him to the ER.  There they did an xray and found the dental device to be in his esophagus.  They called a GI doctor to come in and he decided to try there in the ER to remove the bridge.  The doctor was unable to remove it, but did push it into his stomach.  He took care of the immediate danger and wanted to do another xray in the morning and decide from there what needed to be done.  After the night stay in the ER, they took the xray on Friday morning and it was still in his stomach.  The GI doctor decided he wanted to take it out if at all possible, so they put Allen Jr on the schedule to take care of this.  They were doing all of this by endoscopy.  When the doctor went in on Friday morning to remove the dental bridge, it had moved into his intestines too far and could not be removed  We were sent home for the weekend, in hopes that he would pass it naturally.  We were to follow a certain diet and routine over the weekend and follow up with the doctor on Monday of this week, if Allen had not passed it.  Well, we had a lot of people praying for Allen since Thursday and knew the Lord was in control (we don't always know what the purpose is, and that makes it hard sometimes to understand what is going on).  We continued our weekend and was able to have results on Sunday evening and what a relief that was to all of us.  Of course, Allen Jr did not understand everything and it was very confusing for him.  We are very thankful to everyone that prayed for Allen Jr and for the Lord's help through all of this.    We have some major decisions to make for Allen with his teeth situation in the next few weeks.  Hopefully after much prayer, we will make the right decision this time.

Update - Family

Well, Allen Jr. now has his permanante bridge in for his front teeth.  We went yesterday and had that done.  It looks very nice.  He is officially now seeing an adult dentist as well.  I will try and post pictures later of his "new" smile.

Family

"This is the first day of the rest of your life"...in High School I attended a private school and our Principal would tell us that every day. I want to live each day like this is the first day and maybe one day with the Lord's help I will get it right. I am nothing with out Him and His help.

We are starting a new school year and in doing this, it has been a time of reflection and wanting God's best for our lives. Our Son, Allen Jr. , is starting his Senior year. This is a new journey for us and we need the Lord's guidance for what is to follow after this year. I know that we have 10 -11 months to decide, but that time will go by quickly.

I homeschool Makaela and she will be attending her first "Super Friday " this year. She is looking forward to her elective classes and seeing a friend as well as meeting new ones. Makaela and I will be having morning devotions together in a more structured format than we have had in the past. I'm not real confident in this area and hopefully she will learn something.