Saying goodbye to Gidget

Today is a sad day. Our dog, Gidget, is going to be put down today. She is a little over 13 years old. She's been a part of our family for a long time. We've known she had breast cancer for a while now, but she hasn't been really showing signs of hurting until the last few months. We can't even pick her up anymore and she can't hold her bowels anymore either. So, we talked to the Vet and he thinks it is best to put her down. Chad is there now...I know this is hard for him.

For years, she was our baby until the girls came along. I have memories of all the grandparents spoiling her rotten even after we had to pay less attention to her because of the girls. So, anyhow....today was her lsat day with us and it is a sad day.

The girls wanted to take some pictures with her-so we did...Here they are.

Finishing our Study of Great Britain

Well, the last few days we have been reading about Charles Dickens and Florence Nightingale. We watched one of the NEST videos of Florence Nighingale and it was good. I had the girls color a picture of her as well as narrate a few things about her.

We've also been studying Lambs as our subject of science this week. I am reading them a book now called Smudge, the Little Lost Lamb. It is great! The girls each read a book about lambs and we made a paper plate one. That was fun!

After we finished reading about William Shakespeare and Queen Elizabeth, I gave them a choice of who they wanted to write a report about. They both choose Queen Elizabeth.

It was hard to fit everything in about Britain in one short week but we managed to hit the highlights.

The girls are doing great...except for the fact that Hannah tends to be a little lazy unless I make her do more. I explained to her today that the work is going to be harder and harder and that she needed to understand that so she will be ready for it.

Anyhow...tis the end of the week and looking forward to the weekend break as much as the girls are!

Our Study of Great Britain

The afternoons are when we travel the world in our geography study. The mornings are when we do our Reading, Math, Language Arts. It takes us about 2 hours to get that all done in the morning. Lately the girls have been getting up so late so we haven't started school until very late in the morning taking us into the afternoon finishing up.

I normally allow them a good hour break between our AM and PM school session. Our afternoon session normally takes between 1 to 1 1/2 hours. During that time I like to give them some creativity time.

Today the girls each read a book to us and I began reading about Queen Elizabeth. She was a pretty smart cookie.

I was finishing up watching Braveheart last night and I told Chad that it makes movies like that make so much more sense when you actually know where these countries are. There was a comment in the movie at one point that would have been completely meaningless had I not just realized through our studies how close Ireland and England were. I must have missed geography class somehow in school...smile!

Anyhow, we've been doing our normal beginning study on the country- learning about the flag, their religion, their currency, their type of government and language they speak. The famous people we've been reading about are William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens, Queen Elizabeth and soon we will read about Florence Nightingale. We will also be studying about sheep and doing some art around that.

I have also began reading the a Child's History of the world. So far, we really like it.

An awesome vacation!

(You can click on the pictures to see a bigger version...some of these look so tiny just looking at the photos on here.)
We had an awesome vacation last week. It was suppose to be a get away for Chad and I but we had a change of events and ended up taking the girls with us. What a blessing it turned out to be for our family. As we were traveling, we realized that this was our first family vacation that included just the five of us. We went to Pigeon Forge, TN. We stayed in a cabin that we found on vrbo.com. It was just perfect for us! Definetly was nicer to come home to that at the end of a busy day, instead of a stale hotel room.

We went to the Ripley's Aquarium, rode the sky lift, went to the Comedy Barn, The Black Bear Jamboree, and hiked up a Great Smokey Mountain trail called Laurel Falls to see a beautiful waterfall. We also walked around the Tanger Outlet mall and found some shoes that we desperatly needed. It was a busy week but we wanted to make the most of it since we weren't sure when we would be able to do that again.

We went to this one resturant thinking we could get a good steak...well while we were waiting we looked at the menus...we quickly took our names off the list...steaks were $23...so I was thinking...this resturant was not an option for us...no biggie...we found another resturant called Calhoun'....so yummy and reasonable!!!

While we were in Gatlinburg, they were having a Santa Claus convention...so we saw swarms of Santas...we got out of there before the parade started...we were exhausted from the aquarium and all the walking!

Our car started messing up a little on our trip and we were so blessed that it held on while we were gone and started really messing up when we arrived home. We also were blessed that Autumn started getting sick on the way home and she wasn't sick the whole trip. She was so sweet to wait to throw up til about 15 min after we walked in the house after our 8 hour drive.

We arrived back home Thursday evening. We spent Friday unpacking and getting things cleaned up around here.

It was nice to have a few days to just hang out after getting back in town so that we could recover. Why is it that you always need a vacation from vacation? All the packing and laundry...its making me tired just thinking about it!

My kids are reading alone!!!

I know that may not excite you...but I am thrilled. I have implemented a 30 min silent reading time for my girls. They just kinda fell right into it knowing that was a new part of our school. I am THRILLED!

Hannah who has always been above grade level in reading....was a reluctant reader and has gradually started enjoying it. She is in the little tent....reading Gooney Bird Greene! This makes me a happy camper.

Mikayla loves to read, but has just started being able to read on her own. She is back there with a stack of Dr. Suess books.

I am so excited!!! No TV....just good books!

TGIF

This week was crazy indeed. We received our new curriculum from CLE and started it the very same morning we opened the box. That night, I dug into the Teacher's Manuals and things started making more sense. The girls seem to really like it. I am flying through some of the beginning Light Units because the girls know a good bit of it but I don't want them to miss something they may need later on. I chose to do Reading, Math and Language Arts with them. Right now, we are still getting the hang of it but I think the girls are really enjoying it.

We had a packed homeschool meeting last night. It was jam packed with information for the upcoming year. I am excited about the co-op for the girls next year. We will be doing a 2 year American History study. Hopefully, we will conclude the trip with a trip to Washington DC.

We've been studying Russia lightly this week. We made pretzels yesterday...the girls had so much fun!