I can’t believe it’s been what seems like ages since my last post.

Since then, I’ve had an anniversary (7 years of a beautiful happy marriage!).

We’re also back in Florida again…this time for some official business with my husband that I’m not at liberty to discuss, but it’s work related.  The kids are with us, and meanwhile we’re having a great family time also.

There’s a beach here at the place we’re staying and I take the girls down to the beach and the playground every morning.  Nyomi decided this morning that she didn’t want to go down to the beach anymore for a while because “it’s too sandy and I just get too tired”.

It’s been a long summer break.

However, we’re officially back in school now.  We began our school year early, the second week of July.  (We’ve been on break since April).

I’m finding our second year of homeschooling to be easier in terms of knowing what to expect…but I’m also finding it a bit more challenging because with each increasing grade I realize the groundwork that I’ll need to cover exceeds the year before…and as much as I love teaching, sometimes I do get nervous, I’ll admit.  It’s only 1st grade, but I do want to make sure she’s learning all that needs to with no gaps in her learning.

That’s just a personality thing.  I like to cover all my bases.  It can be irritating to some people, but that kind of  reassurance makes my life flow smoother to me.

I’ve been following the guidelines for each grade’s curriculum from  a certain book…If I get a moment to locate the book later, I’ll post it.

And about little Zoe…she’s nearly 8 months old now– standing up hands free for seconds at a time, clapping, giggling and laughing, playing shy and coy, flirting, fussing, and loving.   Yes, she’s growing fast.  And I’ll have to post a picture of her soon too.

Okay, off to bed…

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We’ve taken periodic breaks from school this summer but are still officially homeschooling off and on throughout so we don’t completely forget stuff…

Nyomi has been doing lots of reading (mostly Beverly Cleary books and one classic “A Little Princess”).  We’ll start our study unit on butterflies as soon as we get the butterflies ordered, that is…and we’re mostly just spending lots of time outdoors at parks, visiting with friends, visiting museums and the library for special programs, puppet shows, and classes.   Nyomi also just had a birthday a few days ago and is now 6 years old!  We’re really excited about this upcoming year of adventure.

Zoe is now 6 1/2 months old and is crawling, flipping, and pulling herself up to standing positions.  She’s growing quickly, as they do and I’m having a blast watching every minute of it!  She gets into everything her eyes can see.  Already I can see that she’s a handful, but I wouldn’t have it any other way

My husband is wonderful as always.  We’ve been having interesting discussions lately about politics and this upcoming election.  I’m still undecided about who to vote for, but it is becoming clearer.

Christian Ladies Connect is getting back on track with new conferences, with our latest starting no later than June 23.

Prepare ‘08 is the theme for this summer’s Christian women’s convention, and is completely and virtually online.  If you’re interested in registering you can do that here:

http://christianladies.net/prepare08/signup.html

Okay, on to get some sleep…

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This weekend we attended CHEF (Christian Homeschoolers Education Fellowship) Convention in Birmingham.

It was really nice, though not nearly as crowded as last year…so there ended up being less vendors in the curriculum hall…but it made for a quieter and less crowded events and workshops. More for me.

I really enjoyed many of the workshops. I especially liked Kay Ness who did a few workshops on the neurodevelopmental aspects of learning math and reading. She has a very scientific background, which I think really helps to explain learning pathways to the non-scientific person like me. She had a few good pointers that helped me understand how to really teach math — what I should or shouldn’t expect my daughter to learn at this age and how to actually go about teaching her. It just made a lot of sense to me. I like my info bottom line, cut and dry, to the point…and she had that really meat-y information I was looking for.

Some of the other speakers were inspirational, fun, or entertaining…all of which made the whole conference a well rounded experience for me.

What I really liked about this year’s conference (besides getting a chance to meet so many cool homeschooling families across Alabama) was that Integrity Music was there, and their children’s worship instructor (Annette Oden) facilitated a children’s worship workshops and Nyomi got to participate. They got to practice a few choreographed worship songs and perform the following morning during the main assembly. IT was beautiful! The children were so free to worship, jump, praise, and dance. Those kids made me proud. It was the highlight of my daughter’s time there and she had a blast!

It was so good my husband bought the 52 week children’s worship curriculum (SPK 52), and I plan to use it in our homeschool this coming school year.

I got some good used science curriculum at the used book sale. Then in the curriculum hall, I ran upon some good grammar material (Shurley Grammar). I purchased it after another homeschool mom gave me raving reviews on it. I also got a few books on motherhood, biblical womanhood, and all those topics that mean so much to me in this phase of my life. Not just the typical self help books, but books that show me the good ol’ ancient ways of womanhood that WORKED. I want the real deal. I want real advice that worked in the past and will work today for every woman who loves God. I don’t ever want to go back to the “good ol’ days”, but I have great respect and reverence for the way women honored their families back then. There was none of the selfishness that modernization has brought upon today’s typical pop culture family. I could write a whole post on that…but I’ll save that for another time.

You know, I have pictures galore on my camera…but I’m having a hard time getting my camera to sync with this PC.

Once I get it working on my laptop I’ll have pictures of Nyomi dancing on stage during the worship session. That was fun

While we were away at CHEF this weekend, Nyomi received her new Strawberry Shortcake dolls (which her daddy ordered for her when she lost her other one in our luggage at Delta the week before last). She still misses the old one dearly, but is beginning to enjoy the new doll, although it does look a little different from the one she had before.

Update on Zoe: she’s a strong baby! She’s now 5 1/2 months old, scooting, flipping over, pulling my hair, squeezing my nose, shoving her fist in my mouth, and verbally fussing or happily squealing depending on her mood. She’s eating pureed pears, apples, carrots, squash, sweet peas, sweet potatoes, and of course her rice and oatmeal cereal. She’s still nursing. It’s sad to know that it won’t be long before the use of my beloved nursing cover and sling will be over as she’s getting older. I so enjoy the feeling of having my baby receive her nourishment from me. Breastfeeding is so intimately beautiful. I’ll really miss these days when they’re gone…which is why I want to purpose to live in the moment as often as I can and enjoy Zoe being a baby. I have no complaints — she’s a really good baby. Nevertheless, I know she must grow up. I’ve learned with Nyomi that they grow really fast, and when they do I must transition along beside them. I am learning to embrace Nyomi’s maturity and her growth, knowing that it is a process in life that is inevitable. Part of me just wants to reject it…almost as if I am afraid of her growing up. Each time I look at her it seems that she’s grown another inch and it almost scares me– but I have to constantly remind myself that yes, she will get taller and wiser and older, but it just means that I as mom will need to adjust to her next stage of life and parent her from a new perspective with each new phase of her growth.

Motherhood…

Speaking of that…there is another transition that I feel happening within my spirit about the direction of my business/ministry. As I’ve been praying about direction for Faith Media the Lord has shown me a few things already…

It seems that I’ll either be completely phasing out tech help to work at home moms or adding on a new business venture that will be a family based business - a publishing company. Ebooks, audios, and curriculum will be in the works…

Meanwhile, anything that compromises my position as wife and mother will have to go out the door. My time is so valuable and precious, and tech coaching isn’t exactly my cup of tea these days. I love teaching it, but just don’t have time for all the one on one stuff. I have SOOO many more projects and dreams and visions that need to be brought forth and I can’t hold it within the box of my degree (tech degree = life calling/career). It’s really not true.

Women’s ministry is still definitely very important to me, and is part of my calling. Therefore, Christian Ladies Connect will continue on. MOre word about this year’s summer convention soon.

What about my programs on internet marketing, podcasting, etc.?

I don’t know. Times are changing and in order to truly sell reputable online courses I’d have to continue to revise and update my video courses which is something I actually dread doing for my Podcasting Basics 101 (bootcamp). I put so much time and energy into creating it only to watch new methods of podcasting unfold and new services and companies online which offer different platforms (that make even more sense to me than what I’ve offered in the course). I’ve also seen companies go obsolete and disappear online after I’ve created a course based on how to use their services. That’s really bad. Internet marketing…same thing. What works today may not work tomorrow. Today’s Google algorithm may get me that much-needed traffic…but next year the algorithm may change and I may be back to #4 or 5 instead of #1 under a key term in Google…and to be honest, I don’t have a team of experts working for me in Faith Media to help me keep on top of the internet marketing game, and I obviously don’t have time during this phase of my life to stay on top of Google or any other search engine marketing for new strategies, etc., nor do I have the desire to. So that phase of my business is over.

It hasn’t been reflected on my website yet, but is something I’m redeveloping with time.

Okay, time for bed…

I’ve got to get some rest and think about my goals for the upcoming 2nd half of this year 2008.

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In a few days we’ll be heading for Orlando and I cannot wait.

We haven’t been on a ‘real’ family trip in ages and this will be absolutely fun!  Finally Nyomi’s at an age where it will matter, although Zoe won’t remember a thing.

We’ll take lots of pictures for her, though.

As for homeschool, I need to sit down this weekend and add up the remaining days we have left.  I think we’re actually done already but I just want to make sure.  I plan on having about a month long break with some intermittent 2’s facts practices, but just taking a good, long break from it all so I can regroup and get back organized for our new semester.  My plan is to make some major changes in the way we do school next quarter - adding some classes to the mix and reevaluating whether I should drop some.  I’ll sit down with Nyomi and get her opinion.

Today was fantastic!  We are finally doing some home renovations.  We bricked in the bottom half of our home, and spent the evening at Lowes hardware picking up lumber, cement, and paint for our big renovating project this week.  It was a blast walking around lowes with Hubby and kids while we made plans about how to increase the value of our home.  However, the thought of the clean-up efforts we had back home waiting for us was a bit of a downer… there’s so much debris (mixing sand/mortar, blocks, bricks, plastic wrap, bags, wood) lying around the yard from this morning’s team of 15+ workers who came to lay blocks on our home.  We’ll have to double up our efforts to just to clean up…but I think it’s all worth it.

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My little Nyomi has officially “graduated” her Kindergarten class tonight at our homeschool Awards Ceremony.

It was a nice event with a good turnout.  SO many of our homeschoolers are talented achievers and will grow up to be monumental successes one day.

I’ll try to post some pics of the graduation this week.

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This week’s been awesome.  yesterday we went to the park.  It was SOOO beautiful outside.  The weather was about 79 or 80.  It’s a nice break from the turtlenecks and sweatshirts.  I was a bit worried about how the pollen might affect Zoe, but I did take a little cover for her carseat so I thought we’d be fine and we were.  It was really nice and fun to run into a co-op classmate of Nyomi’s. Nyomi got an unexpected playdate at the park and I got some mommy time to catch up with another adult.  It was fab.

This week actually started off painfully slow, but has picked up speed. I’d been asking the Lord to “anoint my time” when I read the scripture about “redeeming the time for the days are evil”.  At first it seemed that we never got anything done.  Nyomi would complain at the end of every school day that she didn’t get to play the games she wanted or didn’t get to do something she really wanted to.  I couldn’t udnerstand why — after all, we had all day…or so I thought…until I realized we’d been doing school practically ALL day most days.  I couldn’t understand what was happening to our time.  School seemed to drag out into this long session that never ended and it was frustrating for both of us. Well after getting up extra early this morning I realized the problem was timing and scheduling.

We finished homeschool in 2 hours this morning and covered 4 subjects!  I was pretty impressed.   So was Nyomi.  She loved it because she’d been up since 6:30 AM.  We started school around 7:55 and 9:55 she was done.  She had the whole day to herself and love every single second of it!  Now, that’s what I call a cool school day.

Zoe’s been enjoying her new food.  Rice cereal has been a pleasant beginning for her.  She’ll start on oatmeal cereal tomorrow.

Wow!

Only 13 more days of our school left and we’re officially on vacation.  Then I’m starting year round school with 2 week breaks off and on throughout the school year.

It’s kind of weird because Nyomi is graduating from her kindergarten class at her group co-op next week, but she’s been in 1st grade since January and is half way through her 1st grade curriulum even now.  By September when her co-op starts up again she’ll be doing 2nd grade work.  The beauty of homeschooling is, it’s okay!  I’m okay with that.  We’re still learning our math facts in Math-U-See, but I expect we’ll be at a mastery point with most of our facts by August or September — but no rush.  Math is something I want her to grow to love and never feel pressured about.

Okay, well gotta start an early school day again tomorrow.

I’m loving this schedule so to bed I go…

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Today…organizing, teaching, cleaning, exercising, business…Here are my updates

• organizing my desk drawers
• laundry: cloth diapers, folding and putting away last night’s laundry, still a pile on my daughter’s bed
• exercising: worked out to Leslie Sansone’s Walk Away The Pounds - did a 1 mile walk
• teaching: bible: Noah’s ark, science: butterflies, math: place value,  grammar:capitalization, handwriting, sentence structure
• family: visiting my parents, taking the kids out to see grandma and grandpa
• organizing: sorting old mail
• cleaning: dishes again and again, kitchen table, bathroom sinks, bathtub.  Giving baby a bath, washing her hair, giving oldest bubble bath, untwisting my hair for a shampoo
• business and ministry: networking with newest resident expert at Christian Ladies Connect, checking on WAHM University’s stats progress

Busy day indeed.

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Tonight I realized just how blessed I am to have such beautiful, intelligent, and loving girls! I am honored to be a mother and I will always and forever cherish these moments God has given me to love them.

I nearly swallowed back tears as I tucked my oldest into bed tonight. She is growing up so quickly, but I am honored to see how that her love for the Lord is profound. My prayer is that she’ll continue to follow in the paths of the Lord all the days of her life.

Here’s a little sign she made for the door of her “prayer closet” the other day

The writing’s a bit small. It says “Nyomi’s pray spot”. Pretty neat for beginning phonics.

And my little one?

Now 4 months old, she’s beginning to sit up better and getting quite hungry for some “real” food these days.

And what have I been doing most of the week besides keeping busy until Hubby is back home?

Taking sheets of cardstock…

…and piecing them together with tape to form a gigantic timeline to be used until…well, maybe until she graduates!

At any rate, I pieced together at least 10 of these sheets and it should be big enough to house every single major event in world history covered in our texts.

And today, what I did I do?

I went shopping. I finally came to the conclusion that I would just love my body for what it is right now. I still plan to start my work out regime but meanwhile, this is Body after baby…and I just have to love it and work with it, lovingly…not hating it, but appreciating the “new” aspects of me. Also, I just have to be patient knowing that I JUST had a baby. So I need to take a chill pill. I’ll be okay. I’ll get back into my size 7 jeans again one day. Go up a few sizes was perfectly okay and well worth it to have Baby Zoe.

So I headed out to TJ Max and bought a few bigger pants and blouses that would cover baby belly until I’ve done a few tummy crunches. The clothes are quite chic and I feel beautiful in them, so I’m okay with me and the new bod for a little while…but believe me, I am still determined that it’s not permanent!

So that’s all for now.

long week…great day…and tomorrow’s Easter!

It’s a blessing to be finally celebrating again the resurrection of our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ. I look forward to fellowshipping with other believers tomorrow on this glorious day.

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I spent the entire day putting together Nyomi’s history spine.

Where exactly did the day go?  I stepped out for one minute to run an errand and the hours just flew!

Well… I finally decided to adapt some of the methods used by HOW (Heart of Wisdom) into my own homeschool.  I won’t be purchasing the $100-something kit nor $65 ebook at the moment…maybe later in the future.  But the research I did on their methods was worth the time.  I got a few ideas by searching the site and realized what I could do differently to help Nyomi learn history systematically this year.  We’re going to have a blast learning together.   Our first unit will be on ancient Egypt (that is, after this week’s theme on the Resurrection).

Zoe’s fast asleep now…so I guess I should be in bed too huh?

Ok…to bed I go.

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Yesterday and today were fun!

I really put business on the backburner this time and haven’t connected with my subscriber list yet…but it was worth it to get those extra hours of schooling in and not to feel the pressure of a client meeting or any thing while we had school today. It was great!

Surprisingly, our school day took an unforeseen turn. We ended up spending at least 3 hours on just bible study 2 days in a row…by no fault of my own. I initiated the morning worship and memory verse with a bible story on creation (yesterday) and Adam and Eve and the fall of man (today). Little did I know that it would turn into a huge marker board event:

I just started doodling around with drawing as Nyomi read through the 7 days of creation. Before long we were really getting into it! Bible study for Nyomi is now officially fun.

So that was yesterday: The Creation.

Today we discussed the fall of man. It was interesting to see how God’s initial plan for mankind failed due to their decision to listen to the wrong voice…

WE talked about all of this and Nyomi really seems to understand what’s happening in scripture. It’s really coming alive to her now!

I think what God is showing me is the way to connect with my daughter: visually. Her learning style is definitely a good combination of auditory/visual/kinesthetic…but I think a great deal of it is hearing but it surely helps to solidify it with visual aids.

Here’s the markerboard presentation I doodled around with today (about the fall of man):

Here you’ll see I attempted to draw Adam and Eve (okay this was a really funky drawing!)

Do not laugh.

Anyway…

It’s pretty funny. But we were serious during the lesson, I promise.

Those little stick things off on the right side — those are trees God made.

I promise they are supposed to be trees.

The one in the middle is the tree of the knowledge of good and evil.

The arrows at the bottom —>

Those are the rains that came up from the earth like a mist and watered the ground.

Okay, and the yellow figure on the far right that says “GoD”…well, that’s supposed to be God blowing breath into Adam…but it’s really weird looking…

You get the point though. As she reads, I draw, and it makes for the visual aid and an exciting session.

Despite the fact that I can’t draw.

We had fun

If I can get my Olympus voice recorder to download my mp3’s by USB to my PC… (okay, that was a mouthful of acronyms)…I’ll be sure to post an audio up this week of our homeschool recordings. I have a few sessions of this bible study recorded, plus a video of Nyomi reading, and i was hoping to share.

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