Tag Archives: Ace

And we’re off

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and, so far, in one piece. This week I’ve been to the doctor twice and Wal-Mart twice. Not too bad. I wasn’t anticipating the doctor trips but I overestimated the Wal-Mart trips.

I took Josiah in to the doctor on Tuesday for congestion. Turns out he’s got an ear infection.

Somehow, Ceili Rain gouged or had her eye gouged and has a big scratch on the side of her eyeball (no where near effecting the vision…she hasn’t even acted like it bothered her…tough being the fifth kid). This happened Thursday and as the day progressed it began to look worse and I just didn’t feel I could wait until Friday(per the doctor’s orders) to take her in. So we trekked it to after hours. By God’s providence, there were very little actual sick children in the office. The doctor looked at her eye for five minutes and then told me his story about travel ordeals while going to Ireland…very interesting and made me want to go (but not use the airline he had used). So, she came home with an eye antibiotic. I’m very grateful that the cut wasn’t close to the cornea or pupil. I can’t really say when she did it or had it done to her (by a sibling who can’t say that he actually did it because he’s two and doesn’t talk much, is this a run on sentence? Are you cringing mom?). If I can get her to turn her head, I’ll post a picture for all those who like gruesome pictures!

And, I forgot to mention that Liam climbed onto the changing table, got down scissors I use to cut up wipes, and proceeded to chop up things in Zoe’s room…with the help of Ace. They didn’t get big things like clothes (except some ribbons for one of Zoe’s dresses) or bedspreads or curtains. This was while trying to get Zoe taught up before leaving. Mama was not happy!

All that to say, with antibiotics, tylenol, motrin, thermometer and what ever other drugs we can squeeze into our overstuffed van, we’re off! Oh, and no scissors thankyouverymuch.

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Antioxidants…Yumm!

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Grow your own pomegranates!!

Our tree was getting a bit droopy and while most of the pomegranates still are not ripe, we needed to get some off the tree in hopes they’ll ripen off the vine and to get the others a chance to grow. This looks to be one of our best “crops” this year. As we’ve never really done much to cultivate or help them grow, I use the term “crop” loosely. We do cut back from around the tree and Mark prunes the branches back.

One is the loneliest number…

I’m thinking Josiah thought we were doing some sort of weird Easter egg hunt.
Pick pomegranates. Check.
Bury pomegranates to make more trees. Check.
Unfortunately, plastic buckets do not make fertile ground for pomegranate trees!

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Eat Your Vegetables and other Sayings

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Zoe, Ace, Liam, L & J talking a couple of weeks ago.

L (or J or Zoe…can’t remember which): Is your mom older than your dad?

Zoe: Yes.

Ace: Cuz she ate her vegetables.

***

Liam’s decided he wants to be bigger than Ace and he told Ge while visiting Granddaddy in the hospital. She told him that he would be. Ever since then, two weeks later, that Ge said he was going to get bigger. He’s holding on to that hope and eating more vegetables and fruits! Whatever it takes.

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I got a tooth lost!

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That’s Ace-ease for “I lost a tooth!” He’s had a super wiggly tooth for awhile and every once in a while he would let Mark fool with it. But it was very sensitive…at least for my super sensitive boy and he would want to quit shortly after working on it.

Yesterday, he finally came up and announced it needed to be pulled. He then asked me to wiggle it to see. Choking by my gagging reflex and not looking, I obliged. It was, indeed, very wiggly. However, since I don’t do feet or teeth, I told him he’d have to wait until dad got home. Mark walked through the door and it was, “Hi Dad! My tooth needs to come out!” So, after Mark got settled in at home they traipsed off to the bathroom and Ace squeezed my hand while Mark did a little tug…out it came. A few tears but lots of smiles left.


Liam was super excited and now, since he wants to grow big like Ace, he now wants to lose a tooth like Ace.

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So, How Do You Do It? Homeschooling

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This is a good question. We’re still working on figuring it out but we’ve got the basics of it right now. Here’s a run down of our curriculum since that’s the first question I’m asked by other homeschooling moms:

Phonics/Language Arts: Zoe is in Abeka 2nd Grad phonics/language, Ace is K5 Abeka Phonics
Math: Both are using Saxon Math 1
History: Truthquest History Early American History for Young Students 1
Science: God’s Design for Life (Answers in Genesis)
Comprehension for Zoe: She started out with a workbook but now she’s using a software program called Reading Detective
Handwriting: A Reason for Handwriting (K for Ace; A for Zoe)

Now for all the non-homeschoolers: I’m writing this because I can not count the number of times that people have asked me if I have to report our curriculum/have it approved or use only what is issued. Each state governs public schools/education. As such each state has different laws as to what is required of homeschoolers. Some are more strict than others. I would consider our state’s laws medium to less strict. We have report attendance, sign a declaration of intent and keep annual progress reports. They will not supervise my teaching nor the curriculum Iwe choose to use…that’s part of the positives of being able to homeschool.

We could have chosen to use one set of curriculum which would have been easy but I know that not one set of curriculum will/can serve our needs academically and spiritually. Our goal is to raise up our children to bring glory and honor to God first and then the academics can follow.

As far as when I teach, we break it up. I’ve done a lot of tweaking but finally have a working schedule that I used based on Managers of Their Chores. Now, I have the times written down, but we have yet to hit each mark. Ceili Rain still is not on a workable schedule as she wakes up at different times during the night causing our daytime routine to not be set…so, we just follow the order which is what really works best for my kids.

The kids each have a pocket folder that I keep their worksheets in for the day. They each keep notebooks that we keep the completed worksheets in. We also journal and keep up with projects that we’re working on/studying. I love watching them flip through their notebooks and see what they’ve worked on and remember things that we’ve done. Tons of fun to see!

All the kids follow a schedule and I work with Liam for about 10 to 15 minutes on critical thinking skills. So, we have some blanket time for the youngers and playing with older siblings and sit time. It keeps the house to a minimal catastrophe at the end of the morning…on some days.

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Super DAD!!

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For the past six weeks (I think), we have had a friend come over with her four children to eat supper with us, once a week. Her husband is military and doing short time in Iraq. So, this was an adventure for all the kids to get together and for us to have “adult conversation” including all the interruptions and boo-boo kisses.

So, last night, Mark volunteered his Super Dad services and sent us packing. We left, with our wallets in hand (because our purses are our diaper bags…okay, I take that back, I actually have a small purse to transfer to if needed) and attacked the fabric store. We laughed and shopped until we spent all our money! And we found some absolutely adorable fabric for our sweet girls (and her boys…I’m not that brave yet).

Before I get to what my sweet husband had our kids do, I’ll just have this one little story:

I had to drop some food off to a homeschool association meeting before going to the fabric store. While driving all over town trying to find the place the meeting was, we did a u-turn and wound up behind this scooter. Not just any scooter a very tiny scooter. I mean Zoe’s dolls could have ridden it and stayed on (okay, maybe not that small but it was pretty close). And riding this scooter was a not so tiny man. He was pretty overweight. The road we were on was quite hilly and if my physics is correct: tiny scooter + large man+ large hills=put puttin’ along. And yep, that’s what we did. No joke, he had to bounce up and down to get it to go all of 10 mph going up the hill. I tried to coax my friend into going out and giving him a little push to keep him going. She tried to get me to slow down in case he started going backwards and we hit him (giving CPR while out is just not fun). Once up the hill, he had a red light. We were beside him and then we passed him…and then discussed how he was a glutton for punishment going down a major road.

So, while we were gone, what did one man do with nine kids six and under???

Here’s the answer:

Why I Love Mommy from justabunchofcharacters on Vimeo.

On another note: Granddaddy is home from the hospital and heading for a check up with his cardiologist today. He had only a minor, very minor, heart attack. PET scan on Monday showed adequate blood flow to and from the heart. Praise God!

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A Plethora of Little People Parading

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oh, and one gun. Zoe and Ace had friends over yesterday afternoon. For entertainment, we set up my camera on the coffee table and did a quick lesson on stop animation…here are the results:

Little People Making a Little People Movie 1 from justabunchofcharacters on Vimeo.Zoe and L’s first attempt…

Little People Making a Little People Movie 2 from justabunchofcharacters on Vimeo.And second, with me directing. Don’t you just love the little hand that appears and disappears…eerie huh??

Little People Making a Little People Movie 3 from justabunchofcharacters on Vimeo.Ace and J…after about five shots, they were done…oh, the attention span of five year old boys!!

Little People Making a Little People Movie 3 from justabunchofcharacters on Vimeo.Liam had to get in on it…he chose the gun as his subject. Fitting for him.

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Super Wy!

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We took supper over to Kevin and Tracy who you may remember from here. I had to bring my camera as I only had a few beautiful pictures of this sweet boy. He has this cute little head crinkle he does and he looks like a little old man…simply adorable.

Ceili Rain’s feet are on the right and big W’s are on the left. Yep, his feet are almost exactly the same size as my five month old. She has these petite little feet and he has these massively big ones!

Can my kids resist holding a baby??? Nah…they loved it.



“Give me the baby!!”

Why are you taking these pictures, woman!?!
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Where’s the Beef??

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We finally jumped in and did it. We purchased 1/4 share of cow. The best price we could find was a place in South Carolina. The plan was we would travel an hour away and meet them at a market and pick it up there. However, the processor labeled it wrong and as such we had to travel to a farm two hours away to pick up the beef. It just so happens that the farm, Sharon Rose Farm, had “Family Day on the Farm.” So, after rushing to a birthday party and then rushing to leave, we hit the road to travel. We would have made it for more festivities, but we took a wrong turn (if only we had a GPS, huh Grandmere) and got there just a little late. However, the owners of the farm were extremely nice and gave us a tour and gave our hot tired children water. The kids got to run around and, hopefully, learned a little about farming (school day).

The farmer uses these old Farmall tractors and he had two of them out. Liam and Josiah were enthralled. They loved climbing on them. Oh, that’s a prince or a cowboy on Liam’s cheek. I didn’t hear the conversation between him and the artist but it looked like a doozy.



She’s a tiger…look out!!


The funnest thing was meeting the baby chicks. Now, folks, these aren’t laying hens. That’s right! I just held and petted someone’s supper. He was so cute and fluffy though. I love baby chicks. I remember my grandmother hatching and incubating them (mostly laying hens for them) when I was growing up…ahhh, nostalgia. None of the kids would pick them up.

Don’t you just love the way my face “glistens!” It felt like 100 degrees in there as they were “incubating” the chicks.
Freshly weaned baby pigs. Here’s your bacon and sausage.

They also have a milk cow. In South Carolina it is legal to sell raw milk, but you have to be liscensed (and raw milk dairies, so I’ve heard, are much much cleaner than regular dairies…I’m just saying). This is their milking trough/area. Liam thought he’d just have a little seat here.

Uncle B raises free range chickens (for food) and I thought he would get a kick outof seeing all their many cages.
I think Josiah was trying to whisper escape plans…not quite sure.

Someone’s steak, burger, and other assorted meats (Sorry if your vegetarian…I’m not, obviously). Liam asked me why the cow had to die and I borrowed an answer I read from Uncle B and Aunt B, “That it had done what God had created it to do” He was very happy with that.

We were too, as we had some sirloin tip roast kabobs marinated and grilled today! Yum yum.

This is only the bottom half of our 20 cubit foot freezer. It barely took up two shelves! So, see not much room needed for the food.

We purchased the meat from Native Meats. We did not buy a box but emailed them personally about purchasing the 1/4 share cow. We got 70 pounds of meat out of 1/4 share.

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