Yesterday we heard from one of the remaining two grants: they turned us down. That's okay. There's still one more out, and more importantly God is still orchestrating the whole thing. We will most likely travel in about 2 weeks, so there is no more time to apply for another grant (even if I could find another one) or hold another fundraiser. I do still have bracelets for sale, and I can still make ear warmers and such. All of these items can be found on the Olive Tree Promise website, or you can contact me directly if you are interested. We also still have the Just Love Coffee website if you'd like to order coffee. The donation button on the right is still active as well. Many, many of you have generously given already, and I'm not asking you to give again. But if anyone has not donated or purchased anything and would like to help out, I just wanted you know that it isn't too late, and we do still need funding.
Enough about that. I received the ceiling mounted curtain track Thursday for Vanessa's room. Hopefully we will get that up in the next day or so. Then we can measure for the curtains and get them made. Once that is done, perhaps I will go ahead and post pictures of the rooms. I almost did it Thursday until the track arrived. Then I decided I should wait just a couple more days so I could show you a better picture.
For you homeschoolers, I'm sure you will understand that getting everything done has been difficult. My time is torn between school, usual housework, monumental reorganization and redecorating, preparing for church, and adoption work. But my original schedule had about 3 weeks for Christmas break, so if we have to use some of that because we get behind, so be it. Our school year will be finished when all of the work is done -- whenever that is.
I just changed Colton's history curriculum. He finished volume 4 of Story of the World last year. I thought I'd try Mystery of History this year just to change things up. Now, I don't have anything against this particular history choice, but Colton really enjoys history and wasn't feeling like he was getting enough out of it. The fault probably lies a good bit with me, because even at this point in the year, I didn't have all parts of the program ready to go. For example, I just now got his timeline made, so we haven't been added to that for each chapter; and I had not really been giving him any of the activities along the way because I didn't have time to review everything before he needed to move on to the next lesson. So, again, nothing against MOH, but it just wasn't working for us at this time. (But thanks, Jennifer, for loaning me the book. At least I wasn't out any money on that.) So we've switched to Sonlight. Pricey - yes. But I got most of my books used, so I saved well over $100 doing it that way. If you aren't familiar with this curriculum, there are a couple of books that you use like textbooks, but then there are maybe 40 books to read that go along with the time period you are studying. It could be a fictional book like Old Yeller or a biography like the one about Thomas Alva Edison. (The course I chose was American History, in case you were wondering.) Colton loves to read, so I think he will get a lot out of this program.
Eli's school work is coming right along. So far he is following in his brother's footsteps as far as curriculum is concerned. Like Colton at that age, though, his biggest hindrance is just getting past the fact of life that he HAS to do school. When he cooperates, we fly through our work. If he doesn't want to do school, it takes forever, and everyone is unhappy. Of course, at second grade he still needs a lot of my involvement. Colton's fifth grade work needs me very little. Oh, Colton gave me a surprise this week by telling me that he was enjoying writing paragraphs for grammar! He had one "paragraph" that lasted for a page and a half because he was enjoying telling his story. He is surprisingly good for his age at using transition words and sentence variety.
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