Family Weekends

Let me introduce our fabulous Yellow Lab...who's more white than yellow...with very cute freckles on his ears. This is Stewie, my husbands Hearing Dog. Hearing dogs are service dogs. When this incredible dog is not alerting my husband to sounds he likes to just be a lab. A lab with a tennis ball obsession. A little OCD in service dogs is good.

Stewie is the best dog ever. Really. Except for the OCD issue.

He is also the fittest dog you'll ever see. He runs about 15 miles a week with my husband. Why? Because Larry can't hear oncoming traffic. Stewie alerts him to those sounds. Look how trim and lean he is. Great muscles and strength. And this dog loves to run with Larry. But when the run is over, Larry is wheezing and Stewie.......runs to find his tennis ball and wants to play. OCD.

See the intent stare on the tennis ball? OCD.

He is also the same way about responding to sounds. Good dog.

We did manage to get in some homeschooling today. Yes, I know it's a holiday but my week is incredibly full and the husband was home today to help with school work. This is Morgan in her thinking cap. I'm not sure what the glasses were for. Nutty girl.

Tae worked on the letter Cc today. He wrote all of his word wall words that began with Cc and by the end was reading them by himself. I love when their little brains explode!

Letter Cc work.

A magic wand makes school work go much faster.

See? Brain exploding. Tae learned to do the Monkey Bars all by himself this week.

Then he managed to climb over the wall. Stewie chased a tennis ball.

More exploding brains. He learned to ride his bike without training wheels.

Big sister stood by to catch the wreckage.

She also made sure he didn't drive into the street.

After a hard day of exploding brains, Tae felt a need to wash my windows.

Thanks little man!

Looks like his moustache from yesterdays face painting needs some washing too.
Hope your weekend was just as enjoyable.

The Changes We've Made and What's to Come

I have been reflecting on the past year and all the changes we've made in the way we live. If I have to be honest, we made them out of financial necessity. But we've discovered that living with intention has brought our family together and made us realize our place on this earth. Some of these adventures worked really well, others-well-we are still learning. While our budget has been cut back drastically in our efforts to get out of debt, I don't feel like I'm missing anything. In fact, I feel all the richer (in spirit) because of it. We've done a lot this year. A lot.

In the Garden

We found resources to supply us with free manure for our garden. One of our neighbors has a horse farm and always has free manure. We used all 5 yards that we took away. We could use another 5 yards to top dress our perennial gardens.

We planted raised bed gardens this year and used cheap straw from the feed store to cover the aisles in between and cut down on weeding. If our crops grow like we hope, we may need to expand the garden next year. I didn't have room for potatoes and onions this year. We have 2 rain barrels made out of recycled plastic that we use for watering and two compost bins that our food scraps and yard waste go into. We also used the composted chicken manure for fertilizer. We are hoping to reduce our produce bill by growing much of our own food this year and preserving as much as possible.

We planted 36 Tomato plants

12 Broccoli

8 Eggplant

12 Peppers-green and red

6 Chili peppers

12 Romaine Lettuce

12 Spinach

12 Leaf lettuce

12 Corn

8 Cucumber

6 Zucchini

6 Summer squash

Pumpkins

Loofah gourds

Birdhouse Gourds

Peas (didn't do well)

Sunflowers

2 Apple Trees

1 Cherry Tree

Dill

Tarragon

Basil

Rosemary

Lemon Balm

Sage

Marigolds around plants for pest control

We went apple picking last fall and picked 65 pounds of apples that I made into pies and preserved applesauce. We will go back again this year until our own fruit trees start producing.

Around the Home
We no longer use paper napkins or paper towels and instead use cloth napkins and rags for cleaning. I purchased dish towels at Job Lot for $0.25 each and cut them in half and sewed an edge on them for really pretty napkins.

They work well, and launder easily.

We eliminated all chemical cleaners from our home. Not only is this healthier for us and for the environment, it has been a huge money saver.

We now make our own all purpose cleaner, laundry detergent, dish soap, bath soap, dishwasher soap, floor cleaner and window cleaner. The basic ingredients are very cheap and the kids really enjoy making the cleaners with me.

The Pantry

I learned how to stock pile my pantry by hitting deals, store sales and replenishing only those supplies that are low. I can now shop about once every three weeks. My last bill for 3 weeks of shopping was $169.00. I shop for produce weekly and have my milk delivered from a local dairy so that price is not included in my grocery bill.

We really got a good handle on using coupons combined with store sales and I can now save an average of $50-$60 in coupons alone when I shop. Looking for freebie coupons have allowed us to get many items for free. Shopping carefully has allowed us to save over $1200.00 since February. It's been great for our budget. I shop with only canvas tote bags never using the plastic bags any longer. I'm still trying to find a way to eliminate ziploc bags but am having difficulty with this.

We decided to switch to all organic, pastured meat. It is more expensive but we've been making more vegetarian meals and creating meals that can be used at multiple sittings like chili, lasagna and Shepherd's Pie that all help to stretch the dollar. This meat above was bought at Stop and Shop. The pile to the left is all the fat we cut off. This was a 7 pound roast when we started, after cutting out the fat-it was down to 5 pounds. Not much of a savings there. We've been more conscious of where our food comes from too after watching films on the milk industry, meat and chicken industry and especially the ill effects of genetically modified food/seed from the Monsanto company. We are trying to make better choices for our family.

Organizing

In order to save money we needed to create a household notebook to keep all of the everyday information we use. Some areas of this have worked well, like my garden section, plastic keeping envelopes that I keep stamps, church tithe envelopes, address labels etc in. We also have a section for recipes, pool care and homeschool. The other sections I created for coupons and grocery shopping didn't work out because I do this in my office where I can spread out the papers and coupons. I need to look at this book again but because it's in a 3 ring binder I can easily change out what works and what doesn't.

We bought 2 plastic shelving units to keep our stock piles and supplies all in one place. I make sure that it stays clean so I can see what I have and what I need.

All of our closets were organized to help us see our supplies. This is the closet in my office and has mostly craft and homeschool supplies.

We also bought 2 very nice bookshelves for all of our homeschooling books. Each child now has a shelf for all of their own books and we can easily find eveything. This was one of the best things we did to help us organize.

Homeschooling

We streamlined our homeschool day to only include one subject per day. It has helped tremendously with stress and staying organized.

We saved a ton of money this year by ordering the kids curriculum from Amazon. Some of the books were used but in great condition. We saved $483.65 by buying closeouts and used curriculum. The rest of this money was then placed in our homeschool budget.
Having a homeschool budget allowed us to take many field trips this year. In years past this was not possible for us. Careful planning has made for a very enriching year.

Home Cooking

We bought a food dehydrator and use it frequently. I have dried herbs from the garden, apples and fruit that were too ripe for the kids to eat but makes wonderful fruit snacks and we are going to try some Turkey jerky soon. It's been a money saver because these foods are now not getting thrown out. We also bought a Cuisinart ice cream maker and make ice cream once a week. Since we can control the ingredients that go into this, we know the kids are eating healthy.

I mostly bake my own bread with whole wheat flour. I still buy some bread but am hoping to cut that out as well. I've been buying organic flour and the smell of fresh bread in the home is just delightful. Unfortunately, the kids like to be taste testers so it never lasts for long.

I've been doing more canning/preserving and using things from my yard to cook. This year I made Wild Violet Jelly. All 6 jars are gone and I made extra to give away to some of our homeschool moms. It was was delicious.

We took our first adventure in raising chickens and building a coop after watching http://www.chickenindustry.com/ and seeing how our meat chickens are brought to us and how the eggs are massed produced. We order our meat chickens from another homeschooler instead of buying them at the store. We know that they are farm raised without the use of antibiotics and growth hormones and the price isn't much different than the store.

We have 4 laying hens right now and 11 more babies in the brooder that will hopefully start laying this fall. They grow so fast.

Yes, Patrick loves his chickens.

In return for all that chicken love, they give us very pretty, delicious eggs.

Things I'd Like to Change

• Learn to knit so I can create my own dishcloths and blankets
• Get Goats for milking and making cheese and soap
• Learn how to make soap-real soap
• Expand the garden so I can plant potatoes and onions
• Work every inch of our property to benefit our family
• Have a huge yard sale to clean and purge stuff I don't need
• Double my canning/preserving efforts
• Buy more fruit trees
  
• The changes we've made have not been hard. It takes research and patience to make things work and things don't change overnight. It's all been for the better for our family. I hope you decide to make some changes too.

Are You Really Homeschooling?

Someone on our local homeschooling message board sent out a link to this article.

http://www.trib.com/articles/2009/02/23/editorial/letters/a06a02a789ce5f598725756400267f95.txt

The article discusses the use of the K12 curriculum and how they are calling it homeschool. The person on my list went on to describe how she felt that online classes, distance schools, parttime public or private school aren't really homeschooling. She also went on to discuss how such companies are now exploiting the homeschoolers and calling their programs "homeschooling." This person also went on to say that none of these methods should be considered homeschooling and that she was concerned about parent's defering their child's education to someone else.

I have no comments on K12 because I've never used them or researched their methods but after reviewing them online-most say their curriculum is very advanced. The article describes some objections to kids sitting in front of a computer all day and parents being hands off in their kids education. There may be a few parents who, in the course of their kids education are hands off and find an online program perhaps an easier solution. My guess, is that most of the parents, even if their kids are on a computer in their home, is that they have some involvement with their kids. Choosing an online curriculum is simply another choice. Without looking into each families diverse style, we have no way of knowing what their home education is like. Some choose to supplement field trips or projects. Assuming that our own definition of homeschooling should apply to everyone is detrimental and undermines the very freedom of choice that homeschoolers strive for. Choosing homeschooling also doesn't mean we are against public school. All it means is that as parents we made the best educational decision for our family, that fits our family and its needs.

This person did say that homeschooling is a diverse lifestyle. I would agree. What concerned me was the continued use of labels in trying to define what homeschool is. We've been homeschooling for a few years now. I've learned a lot-mostly from my kids. We've tried tons of curriculum from packaged deals, to an eclectic blend, to expensive publishers to cheap workbooks to unschooling and probably everywhere in between. Right now we are at a place where we use text books, online classes, lots of field trips, artwork and some days we unschool. There are days that we spend all day outside working in the garden and other days we just spend with friends. Nothing is written in stone despite our "school" schedule being posted on the wall. Some days it just doesn't work. Most days, we are filled with the joy of learning.

I'm not sure that it matters what we choose. Doesn't it matter more that it works for you, your family and your children?

Since September, Patrick has been working on highschool Biology even though he's in seventh grade. His frustration reached a breaking point this morning when it became too hard for him. So we moved back a grade level and reassessed the situation and made changes. It worked out fine. Homeschooling allowed us to do that, to do what was appropriate for his needs. Homeschooling is a constant reassessment of my kids and what we're learning. It's brought a whole new intimacy to our family and the way we function.

My five year old is learning to read. He has computer games that teach him his letters, shapes and numbers but it's not all he does. He loves listening to stories and loves workbooks. It's a great joy to watch my kids discover learning. It's also a great joy to watch them struggle and either figure out the problem for themselves or to feel safe enough to come and ask for help.

Last night I had a conversation with a friend while I was at a church meeting. He was asking about homeschooling and how his wife, who is a music teacher, was impressed with homeschoolers. He asked many questions, "How does our day work, do they have to be tested, what else do we do?" He was intrigued at the conversation and said it reminded him of the one room school house days. I think so too. The one room school house was about the basics of what is important, all ages sharing their knowledge, teamwork and at the same time it was about honoring family.

Maybe homeschooling isn't about curriculum choices at all. Maybe it's about the intimacy and family ties that it creates. Maybe it's about providing a safe environment where your kids explore and create and learn to love learning again. The method to the learning isn't important. The joy is.