Co-op

We are starting our fourth year of Co-op this year. The kids are looking very much forward to it after the summer break. This year however, co-op is changing some in how and when we meet. All of the families love co-op but a lot of us were starting to feel burdened with the teaching and meeting once a week but we didn't want to give up the fellowship and friendships of the group.

So we decided to meet once a month and have a field trip once a month. During our meeting time we broke up the schedule to include a devotion time, workshop, PE, book club and lunch. We also are starting at 9:30 instead of 9:00am I mention this only because over the years we all laugh and joke because we all have a hard time showing up at 9:00am ready to go. LOL That is one of the many small reasons I love homeschooling is because I could not imagine getting my kids up and out the door by 7:30 or 8:00 am to catch a bus for school.

For the month of September the field trip was bowling and for book club we read "The King's Equal" by Katherine Patterson.


My kids LOVED bowling!!! It was so much fun and best of all it was free! The bowling alley was promoting homeschool leagues and invited homeschoolers to come bowl free for an afternoon. It even included pizza and soda.

Great afternoon with great friends!

Joshua's Burn

As I share this story I am so thankful for how "minor" (in the long run) that this incident turned out to be. I know it could have been much worse. Joshua was cooking up some ramen noodles on a Sunday afternoon. He has been cooking for a couple of year now. He usually uses a small pan and makes just a serving for himself. When they are done he will scoop out the noodles and leave the pan full of water on the stove to cool. Well this particular day he made some for his sister as well, so he used a bigger pan and then for some reason he decided to dump the hot water into the sink. As he was trying to lift the pan to the sink, he didn't lift it high enough and the water came pouring down his bare stomach (he didn't have a shirt on). Jay and I were in the other room and heard the screaming and we both came running. I yanked Joshua's shorts off and Jay was checking to see how hot the water had been. It took awhile but we got Joshua calmed and laid him down upstairs on our bed. We kept putting cool rags on his belly and then also Aloe.

The interesting part about this whole story is I that Jay and I were gauging our reactions off of one another. He is always accused of over reacting and running to the Dr. for every little thing. I stay calm during the "crisis" (and then tend to lose it afterwards). Well Jay didn't seem to think we needed to race to the Dr. I thought maybe we should but didn't say anything. Joshua calmed down and fell asleep for a little while. So for the week we kept lathering it with aloe and watching it. By Saturday the blisters were starting to pop and I decided to take him to Next Care. They sent me to the burn center right away, OK now that freaked me out so I called Jay (he was at a conference) went and picked him up and we headed to the Maricopa burn center. Let me just say it is a great place that I never want to visit again.

This of course confirmed for Jay and I that if one of us thinks "Dr. visit" than we go! I say all that though to say this. Joshua's burn was 2ND degree, no infection so he was able to be treated and released. It just looked really bad because of the blisters popping. So they did scrape away all the dead skin. But we weren't "horrible" parents that didn't take care of it because I was feeling guilty! So they sent us home with bandages and goop to put on it and scheduled a follow up visit (which was great and they just told us to put lotion on it and keep out of direct sun light for a year and there should be minimal skin discoloration)


I did learn however that if anyone ever gets a major grease burn they should go get treated right away because after you clean off the grease it will continue to burn for up to 24 hours! (So glad we do not cook with grease or oil)


The other thing I wanted to share was at the end of our visit Joshua got to go to "Andrea's closet and pick out a toy. This was a little storage closet FILLED with all sorts of games, toys and books. He was able to pick whatever he wanted. I came home and looked up the website and was so touched by it. Be sure and check out their website.

Well here he is:
This picture was taken right after the scraping of the dead skin. I need to take another picture of what it looks like now because you can barely see the marks now, praise the Lord!

Las Vegas

Jay qualified for a trip to Las Vegas with Salad Master. It was a regional training meeting and for us it also meant two nights in a hotel for just the two of us, all expenses paid!!! Whoo hoo! My dear friend Nikki offered to keep all 6 kids for both nights. That was a blessing in itself! ;)

We had a good time. Now mind you Vegas is not my first choice of vacation spots (nor really my last) The smoke kills me and the forms of entertainment are ummmmmm....... but like I said we had a nice hotel room to ourselves and the training meetings were well done and the food was all good! So all in all it was a nice little get away!

Our Little Monkey Jadon

Jadon is such a wonderful blessing to our family! He is just adorable in every way and he makes us laugh and smile everyday. Of course he is busy as can be and into everything but he is slowly getting out of that phase! (Mama is counting the days)hehehe.

Here are some pictures of him I just wanted to share.....

This is the escape artist trying to get out of the pack n play.

He always wants to be just like the big kids. In the morning when we do our devotionals he sits at the table with us. He has started raising his hand to talk just like the others. We call on him and he just smiles and thinks he is big stuff!

Of course he is always peaceful when sleeping! He plays hard and sleeps hard! LOL

My Birthday

Another birthday.....this time mine....I have almost completed another decade and this one has really got me thinking and reflecting a lot over the past 10 years. As next year is the big 4-0. So much has happened in the last 10 years and I have really enjoyed my thirty's. I have grown or I should say matured in so many different areas of my life. As a family we have experienced so much love and loss. Five of my six children were born, my mother-in-law died from cancer so life has changed a lot! I truly love the life my Lord has given me even with all it's ups and downs. I wear so many different "hats" all on a given day and my favorite one's are Daughter of the King, Wife and Mother. I love being a stay at home, homeschooling mama with all my heart. Even in the craziness of it all! And believe me there is a lot of craziness on any given day trying to run a household and homeschool 6 kids!
I don't know how I feel exactly about getting closer to 40, I guess I will find out the closer it gets this next year! LOL

No picture of me, as I was still in my jammies but Joshua made me breakfast, Savannah bought me the flowers with her own money and everyone got me the game "Sequence". I enjoyed my birthday with my favorite people, my family.

Monthly Review

Ok so there is no way I am going to be able to do a weekly recap of our schooling. It is going to have to be done monthly. Our first month of school was a success and we got a lot of work accomplished. We have had to juggle around our schedule to find some times that work for us but I think we have it mainly worked out. However, with just one of me and 6 of them there will always be juggling! LOL The nicest part right now is that Jadon still takes a morning nap. He usually wakes up between 5:30 and 6:00am and therefore is ready for a nap by 9:00am. This allows us to get quite a bit of school work done before he wakes up at 11:30ish.
So this past month we focused just getting back on track and into the swing of things.
We finished our "All About Me" lapbooks, started Astronomy, and went to our first co-op.