Update 2 of 3: 2nd Grade & Pre-K

Colton is SO excited to be in 2nd grade. Here is a look at what we will be studying this year.

• DiscipleLand 2 (All about the Bible...who wrote it, where did it come from, how do we use it...)
• Math-U-See: Gamma (starts with multiplication, and he is LOVING it!)
• Exploring Creation with Astronomy (already learned the planets in order as well as the names Copernicus and Galileo)
• The Story of the World: The Middle Ages (Even Eli enjoyed the Beowulf excerpt this week.)
• First Language Lessons 2 (grammar) (learned the being verbs this week)
• The Complete Writer 2 (copywork, narration (summarizing), and dictation)
• A Reason for Handwriting (handwriting practice...duh! He likes copying the Bible verses.)
• Building Spelling Skills
• The Learnables and Basic Structures: Spanish 2
• A Beka Health 2
• piano

I'm still trying to get Eli officially "excited" about pre-K. I'm only doing 2 subjects with him, even though he sometimes listens in on Colton's lessons. The plan is to do reading lessons on MWF and DiscipleLand (Old Testament stories) on TT. If we happen not to get to his schoolwork one day, though, we can easily do both subjects the next day.

Update 1 of 3: A Crazy Summer

Wow! Summer has been so crazy! I haven't had time to catch my breath...much less update my blog. So I'm going to try to make 3 updates (hopefully all today) to get you caught up.

First pictures of vacation in Williamsburg, VA...

Colton and Eli in front of the Governor's Palace

My three boys

Can I get one of these at the gift shop?

How about two?

The Cousins - Don't mess with them!

At William and Mary

Okay, it wasn't all historical...and you have to have ice cream

for lunch at least once on vacation.

A hut at Jamestown

One of the ships at Jamestown

Put those boys to work!

A Crazy Week

The last week has been a little crazy. Tim's grandmother recently broke her hip, and upon being released from the hospital, she moved in with Tim's parents. Last Monday, Tim's dad started running a fever. On Tuesday, they needed some Tylenol, and by the time I got to their house, Sondra was ushering David out the door to go to the doctor. They asked me to stay at their house until all of Granny's therapists left so I could lock up. I didn't feel right leaving Granny on her own. Several hours later David was admitted to the hospital, and we were temporarily moving in with Granny.

Wednesday, David was still in the hospital, Sondra was still staying with him, and we were spending another night with Granny.

Thursday, Sondra came home for several hours while we loaded a massive yard sale into a 6x8 covered U-Haul trailer to take to a friend's house for another fundraiser for our adoption. (It took two trips!)

Friday, I was up at the crack of dawn to go across town and set up the yard sale...VERY HOT! Spent another night with Granny.

Saturday, I was up at the crack of dawn again, crossed town again, and had day 2 of our sale...very hot...a brief drenching rain...very hot and steamy. After the sale, we help another couple load up all of our leftovers and haul them to their house for an adoption yard sale of their own. Now we will start all over planning for one more sale at the end of September. But David came home, so we got to go home to our own beds. The total from the sale was a little over $300. Yea!

Today, I'm tired and my house is a wreck from us just running in and out all week. I realize I promised you pics from vacation, but they are still in my camera. I hope to get to them very soon.

Parental Rights Amendment

For those of you who haven't been following the UN's Convention on the Rights of the Child, this treaty would seriously impact parenting in America. The title sounds nice, and they would have you believe that this is for the protection of children. Not true. This would give children the right to challenge ANY decision the parent makes (go to church, eat your vegetables, you're grounded). It would also give the government the right to impose their positions on our children and to remove our children from our homes if they don't like the values we teach them. For homeschoolers, we may not be allowed to homeschool without having some agency breathing down our necks and telling us what we can and can't teach. That totally negates one of the major reasons for homeschooling.

This treaty has already been ratified in a lot of countries, and there are a lot of bad precedents being set in those countries. If our country ratifies this international treaty, it will nullify all current state laws pertaining to families and would in essence take away our parental rights. The only document that trumps an international treaty is our own nation's constitution. This is why it is CRITICAL that we pass an amendment clarifying parental rights.

Please go to this website (ParentalRights.org). I've linked you to a page explaining "The Threat". Look also for links to "The Reason" and "The Solution". Sign up to receive their email updates as they monitor the situation. And if you have never contacted a member of Congress before, now is the time to hound your representative or senator and tell them they simply MUST support the Parental Rights Amendment and stop the UNCRC (UN Convention on the Rights of the Child). Email them once or twice a week. Ask your friends to do the same.

I never intended for this blog to become something political, but the government is threatening Mama Bear's cubs. With that said, Hillary Clinton is a huge supporter of the UNCRC. With her sitting in such a high position, the threat is very real. We can't just expect that "things will work out". We have to do something to show our concern and which side we support.

Okay, I'm done. That's it. Next time -- a look back at our vacation.

Pie Chart, Party 2009, A New Name

PIE CHART
I just noticed that I haven't updated the pie chart on the right in a while. We've had a few expenses as well as some additions lately, but the current chart still nets a good improvement. As you may recall, this chart definitely does NOT represent all the money needed to complete this adoption. But it does represent the amount we are shooting for to officially get started. We set a goal of $6000 to cover the home study, the first agency fee, and a lot of the miscellaneous costs incurred early on. We are now $605.27 away from that goal! Praise God! I think I have $5.27 in my pocket now. Anybody got $600? ; )

School lets out tomorrow, and Tim assures me that he is going to hit the paperwork hard for me...well, as soon as he catches his breath. It's been a tough last week of school. Just very, very busy. Then we should be ready to start sending things in.

PARTY-PARTY
Okay, at our age maybe we "have folks over" rather than actual partying. Whatever you want to call it, I'm launching our 2009 Party Contest. If you remember this from last year, the rules are the same. Click here to go to a full explanation on our website. This is such an easy way to make a big difference.

A NEW NAME
For the last several weeks, Tim and I have been discussing a name change for one of the girls. We've decided to change Maggie to Mattie. I don't want to go into our entire discussion here because I don't want to embarrass anyone or hurt anyone's feelings. For those of you who have adopted, you might confirm that I've heard that most of the time the husband needs a little convincing to get fully on board. Since Tim suggested this change, I took that as a very positive sign, that the girls have been on his mind lately as well as mine. I also like the fact that I can use this name to honor my dad's mother. I never knew her because she died of cancer at the age of 42 (before my parent's had even married). Her name was Bertha Matilda, and while I'm not prepared to use those exact names in 2009ish, I will certainly think of her often when I say Mattie.

5/21-22 Yard Sale

We are so tired tonight, but all in all it has been a good yard sale weekend. Counting the rainy attempt a couple of weeks ago, we have raised $782. That's better than we averaged last year, so I'm tickled! I think we confused a lot of people with the "Donations Only" concept, and I'm afraid it didn't translate very well with the non-English or limited-English customers. We'll have to work on that for next time.

I did learn that the "Donations Only" tactic works better on the Friday crowd. They are your "professional" yard-salers. They know what things ought to be worth and either offer that or a little more. The Saturday crowd either gets nervous because they don't have a clue what to offer for an item (hint, hint...why do you think I hate to price things? I don't have a clue either!) or they expect nothing at a yard sale to be more than 25 cents. Even a couch or something. So when they hear they can just make an offer, they gather an armload and offer $2. For those of you wondering, yes...I took the $2. This was sort of an exercise in faith. I simply trusted that it would all balance out in the end. And if someone wants to look me straight in the eye and take advantage of our adoption, fine. God knows, and if they have any conscience left at all, they won't sleep well tonight. It balances with the grandmothers who shared their stories and give us "a little something extra 'cause I know how hard it is (to adopt)." One dear lady even came with pictures of her sweetie to encourage us that we were doing a good thing by adoption. Another bought just a couple of little things and gave me $40. So see? It worked out.

I'm ready now to clean out the leftovers and get rid of them. Then we will start fresh later in June.

Rain, Bunk Beds, and Summer Break

We still have not had our yard sale yet. Two weekends ago, we set up in the garage "just in case" it rained any. Any? It rained most of the day. I found that even though we kept our stuff dry, PEOPLE don't get out in the rain to go to yard sales. DUH! Oh well, we made $40, and I had fun visiting with Cindy.

Last weekend the forecast called for a greater chance of rain than the previous weekend, so we decided (before even advertising) that we wouldn't even try. Yep. You guessed it. It was pretty most of the day. Granted, a nice storm came up earlier than we would have closed, but the sky turned black ahead of it. We could most likely have gotten everything put away in time after having been open a good 4-6 hours.

Another factor in skipping last weekend was that this coming weekend was looking promising...0% chance of rain. By Sunday, it was 10%. Monday 30% for Friday and 40% for Saturday. We've got to get this yard sale over with!!! : ) As each weekend has flopped, we have gotten more donations (yea!), and we can no longer walk through the garage to get into the house. We used to actually park there...both vehicles!

On a more exciting note, we have gotten bunk beds for the girls!! This is such an exciting step for us. I've noticed that we say things like "the girls' beds" and "the girls' room". I think this has made our adoption more real to some. It certainly has made it easier to talk about the adoption with some. I think that they figure if we are going to buy bunk beds just maybe we are serious about this adoption thing. Ya think?

Last thing... Colton has officially finished 1st grade! I think we have had a most productive year. I slipped a bit on getting him library books to read, but we've been reading a bunch in the last week or so, and he is doing very well. We still have a couple of DiscipleLand lessons to finish because we got behind and missed a day here or there, and we are going to continue history on into the summer because we didn't start until after Christmas (so we are a semester behind and I'd REEEALLy like to start second grade "on track"). I've already picked out what I need to purchase for next year, but the Homeschooling account is dry after purchasing classic literature on DVD-ROM and an ebook reader. (Yikes! but Cool!) We'll get to it eventually.