Apple Orchard

Each September, we look forward to our annual  apple picking venture.  This year, we set out for the orchard following a morning soccer game.  The kids expertly gathered 75 pounds of apples and then we all enjoyed our picnic lunch, peach slushies (made from peaches grown on the farm), and apple turnovers from the farm store before heading over to the Nashville Zoo for a quick romp at the playground.
For dinner, we met dear friends for a pizza picnic at Centennial Park, next to several tailgaters, with the exciting sounds of Vanderbilt's football game coming from across the street. 

It was a full and wonderful way to spend a Saturday. 

We brought our 75 pounds of apples home and processed 25 quarts of applesauce . . . reserving a several pounds to bake an apple pie and enjoy raw.  The kids have all had good practice this week peeling apples and turning the crank on our apple mill, and our house has been fragrant with the sweet scent of cooking apples, yumm!   

Cabinets and Toys

Before our school year began, we had a few "Summer" projects to finish up.  It's too easy to lose focus of our ministry priority, to get caught-up in the busyness of life, and caught-up in "project-mode."  Some projects are necessary for the continued running of our home, others are bonus.  We most recently finished up our school cabinet organization, cleaned-up and re-sorted the toys, and did the grand clothes clean-out, pass-down,  and sort (an incredibly overwhelming job taking an entire week).  Still on the list: the girls bedroom make-over, reseeding/ over-seeding grass, setting paving stones for the garbage cans, cleaning up the garden, cleaning up the front entrance, reorganizing the carport, labeling and organizing our reader books, reorganizing the game cabinet, and coming up with a solution for printing out our pictures from the past 2 years (yikes, we've fallen quite behind!). 

We are learning.  We are learning to be okay with unfinished projects, and learning to let go of things that distract us from our main ministry (notice I said "learning").  This is all a process.  We have realized the need to outsource the things that we can, things we could do ourselves that would keep us from our primary mission field.  One of our most valuable resources is time.  Where we spend our time should reflect our priorities: God, our marriage, and our children.

Projects we may have once-upon-a-time enjoyed doing ourselves, we're having to outsource.  We have been blessed with the financial means to seek outside help so that our time can be spent in other ways.  This summer, we hired crews to help with our yard, we paid for someone to build our new deck, we had a friend help us fix bikes, and we had a team instal and paint new cabinet doors on our bookcase. . . . a project we've been wanting to do for nine years.

It was worth the wait :) 

And we now have a wonderful concealed place to store all of the kids toys!

*This picture was taken before all of Hendrick's critter tanks were put back on the shelves:

Banks

Our energetic and fun puppy is now a large but playful adolescent dog. 

Adolescence in dogs, as in humans, is a rocky time.  As is typical with an adolescent dog, Banks has more energy than he (and we) know what do do with, is forgetting commands he once knew, and is becoming very interested in the big wide world beyond our backyard.

We are determined that he will be a good dog for our family.  We know, with patience, this period will pass.  He's a sweet as can be, but he's become quite a handful.

So, back to the trainer he goes. 

Banks will be spending three weeks working with the same trainer he worked with as a young puppy, relearning commands and learning how to better direct his abundant energy.   When he returns we will be working on yard training, to avoid having to tie him out.  

We have high hopes for Banks :)

Permanence

Adoption

Adoption is permanent, just as our adoption into God's family is forever . . .

In a young life, it's hard to grasp the permanence of adoption.  Typically, especially in foreign adoption, a young child experiences multiple caregivers over a prolonged period of time.  It's hard to understand that the final placement, their "forever family," is in fact forever, after a string of temporary arrangements.

For infants in the adoption circuit, it's often hard for them to establish bonds and attach with their new family.  After not being allowed attachments due to multiple caregivers early in life . . .

For older kids, they may not understand the permanence of this "forever" placement.   Our sweet 9-year-old still struggles with this after three years home.


Family is forever, you can't always pick your family . . . but in his experience, family isn't always forever.  When encountering a stranger who enquirers about our conspicuous adoption, and then sweetly offers to my son: "I'd like to take you home with me," he responds "sure!"  As if this were another temporary stop and he can try out a new family.

He has struggled with contentment.  The grass is always greener on the other side.  He is certain life is better in other families: my cousins all play sports, maybe I should join their family; my best friend's house seems awesome, I bet I'd be happier there.  So when an offer is made by a complete stranger, or jokingly by a good friend, he takes it completely seriously . . .


Advice to others: please don't jokingly offer to an adopted child (whom you can only assume is struggling with attachment issues) to come live with you.  They might not understand the subtle . . . and this doesn't help with their understanding of permanence. 

Teeth

Teeth are an important and exciting part of our lives in this stage: new teeth cutting, wiggly teeth, and losing teeth.  We can hardly keep track of it all.   We've lost teeth in the car on vacation, at the baseball field, at the beach, during wrestling matches, pulled with string . . . and our most recent, a trip and fall knocking out two. 

Maegli is proud to be sporting this new hole in her mouth - it has been a year since losing her bottom teeth.  She has been practicing the "All I want for Christmas is my Two Front Teeth" song . . . she sounds incredibly cute!  

(This week alone, three kids have lost 4 teeth, and Dabney cut all four of her first-year molars!)

2014-2015 Back to School

Thank goodness for the flexibility homeschooling offers!
Life happened, and we delayed our school start until September 15.  We didn't have a grand kickoff, this year we stumbled out of the gate and are easing into the 2014-2015 school year.

Here we go!

For our 2014-2015 school year, we are home educating 6 officially registered kiddos: 5th grade, 4th grade, 3rd grade, 2nd grade, and two in 1st grade . . . plus starting one "unofficially" with pre-kindergarten.

(Our stubborn pre-schooler refused to hold her sign :)

2014-2015 Curriculum Plan

 We've organized our books and made our plans, we're all set for the 2014-2015 school year!

Everyone:
Tapestry of Grace, year 1 (our second time going through the cycle) - Creation through Rome - history, church history, art history, geography, social studies, vocabulary, literature
Bible: "New Story Old" devotions
Art: Artistic Pursuits
Latin: Prima Latina
Chess: Championship Chess
Logic: Building Thinking Skills
Science: Apologia's Exploring Creation through Botany and Zoology
Independent Reading
Weekly memorization and recitation
Games!

5th Grade (Hendrick)
Rod and Staff, English 5
Saxon Math 5/4 and 6/5 (we're working hard to get back on grade level after switching curriculum)
Spelling Power - Spelling by Sound and Structure, Level 5
Rosetta Stone Latin
Latin Christiana
Institute for Excellence in Writing
Apologia's Who is God?
Daily Geography - 4, 5

3rd and 4th Grade (Davis and Tesfaye)
Math U See - Gamma (will transition to Saxon Intermediate 3)
Handwriting Without Tears - Cursive, copywork
Institute for Excellence in Writing
Rod and Staff, English 2 and 3
Spelling Power - Spelling by Sound and Structure, Level 3
Daily Geography - 1, 2

1st and 2nd  Grade (Burke, Maegli, Hiwot)
Math U See - Alpha and Beta
Handwriting Without Tears - Printing Power
Daily Geography - Beginning Geography
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (Reading/ Phonics) *Only a few more lessons, nearly done!!!
Spelling Power - Spelling by Sound and Structure, Level 2

Pre-Kindergarten (Kolpin)
Math U See - Primer
Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons (Reading/ Phonics)

Souvenirs

We were all thrilled to have Mike share his Japan adventure with us . . . and to bring us back souvenirs: Japanese league baseball cards, Hello Kitty stickers, candy and sweets, Japanese yen, and a very special bracelet and earrings :)

We are so glad to have him home!!!

Japan

We explored vicariously through Daddy :)
Pictures from Mike's business travels to Japan:

Spider Men on Stage

Big brother, little brother, in matching Spider Men jackets . . .
showing off their Spidey Skills. 

Our two spider men are standing on our NEW deck extension, AKA our "stage."

Another phase of our yard renovation was to upgrade the appearance of our front entrance: "Project Front Door" - which is actually in the back of our home.  Our yard, with 9 busy kids, tends to be littered with toys and torn up with various outdoor experiments and fun.  But I really do desire to be able to welcome friends and guests to our home without them tripping over bikes, dirt holes, and broken paving stones.  We wanted to find an easy solution to clean up our main entrance, making it a much more welcoming and aesthetically pleasing site.

Gone is the dirt and broken paving stones.
Gone is the need to duck under the overgrown arch trellis.  

Now we have a 11 foot x 8 foot deck extension . . . and more ideas on the horizon to further "Project Front Door"

(stain our new deck, deck chairs, clean up and paint the outdoor aquarium cabinet, paint our front door . . . )

One step at a time :)

It's taken us 9 years to do something to update our entry.
We're thrilled.

Despite this small transformation, when you come to visit, please excuse our mess, and watch out for the toys and such surrounding our entrance . . . that's just a part of our reality as a busy family of 11. 

Before and After pictures of this transformation:
(Yikes, the before was a little scary!)