Where did July go?

So, it's been so long again. You'd think that summer would be a down time for a homeschooler, right? Well, we don't take summer off, so it hasn't made much difference....

Anyhow, at least we have a break from some activities. But we did start new lessons as well. Kep and Tes began horseback riding lessons. We've been learning to groom and lunge and lead etc. Tes finally got to ride the horse this week, but I forgot to bring my camera!!!

So here's a picture of her lungeing.

Tes is also taking tap dance lesson for the summer, while her ballet lesson is on hiatus. We're not sure if we'll continue tap and ballet or just ballet or just tap or whatever come fall....

The kids also went to VBS hosted by our local Church of Christ. They were the nicest people!!! I've been finding out that many VBS's are not taking kids who don't go to that church (hello? ever heard of ministering to the lost??) or charge quite a bit of $$. I understand that these things can be costly but this is church after all and didn't Christ say something about welcoming all??? well, I was very fortunate to find a wonderful group of people who were putting on this VBS at somebody's house! They provided EVERYTHING and asked for NOTHING in return. They literally welcomed anyone and everyone AND thanked US for coming! What a wonderful blessing it was, not only for the kids, but for me! All three kids got to participate! Yes, even Reagan who is not even 3 y.o. On the last day, the students were given certificates of completion.

Also during summer I'm trying to really start teaching 2 kids at a time. It's taking a lot longer than I expected...but we are studying less subjects during the summer, so I thought this would be a great time to adjust.... I can't imagine how it'll be with 3 kids!!! hmmmmmmmm.

Speaking of school, I should get started!

June is about to end...

I can't believe it's been that long!!!

Well, back in March, I took on a project that took more time than I'd expected.

Devin and I decided to put a book of his ancestry together for his parents' 50th wedding anniversary. Initially we had thought that a nice little binder of names and stories and maybe some pictures. HA! A BOOK?! Obviously we didn't know what we were talking about! After we began researching, the name list grew larger and larger. We had NO idea how many names there were in our famiy tree. So for the months of March, April, and May, most of my computer time was devoted to the genealogy. It was a great fun and a great excuse for not updating my blog ;-) but really!! I thought of updating but we were keeping the genealogy stuff a surprise, so I couldn't publicly announce on-line! During this time we also had Kep's birthday party and my old friend Carol (she's not old, our friendship is old) and her husband's visit to Eureka, just to mention a few big events. I was trying to finish the cross stitching for Carol BEFORE she came, but unfortunately, that didn't happen. But I AM done with it now! I'll take a picture as soon as I frame it and post it here!

Did you know that headstones are this BIG?! This one belongs to James Madison Shelby.
In May, we traveled to Texas to see Devin's parents for their anniversary. We got to see many of our family members and got to spend some quality time, albeit short, with them. We, especially me, love so many things in Texas, by the time the plane from Austin landed in Denver for a short lay over, I was already missing Texas. We are DETERMINED to move there one day, hopefully not too long in the future!! While in Texas, we traveled to Athens and Comanche to visit Devin's ancesters' grave sites.

There's a little church called Shelby Chapel, which was named after Devin's great-great-great grand father (James Madison Shelby). It's in Athens.



There's a museum in Comanche where artifacts of town pioneers are kept. We are sure there are things that belonged to Devin's ancesters, but the museum only opens for 2 hours on Saturdays. If you want to go, call and check their hours first!

After we got back from Texas, Tes had just a few weeks to get ready for her first big ballet recital. After many rehearsals, it all came together last week!

<- This is the theater where the recital was. And this is Tes's class performing->

Oh, and before the recital was the end of year picnic for the homeschoolers!!

Christian Home Educators of Humboldt county holds an annual picnic to celebrate end of the school year. Though we continue to study during the summer, we joined the celebration! There was also used textbook sale where people can exchange, give away or sell their old stuff.

At the picnic, they even give certificates to all the kids! The parents get to request what to put on the certificate. It could be anything from learning the alphabet to completing Calculus to being nice to sister to learning to sit quietly.

This year there were 11 graduates from HS too and we also did go to the HS graduation held at a nice ball room. It was a wonderful experience. Each student's parents got to write a few paragraphs about the child and each student got to perform something (mostly piano and classical guitar).

Well, I guess that was long enough for now....

I'll promise (this time really!) to update more often!!!!!

SOooooooooooooooo, see you again very soon!!

Happy Valentine's Day!!

So it's Valentine's Day and most schools have some kind of Valentine's activity....

Well, we went to Christian Home Educators' Valentine Party! (which means no formal schooling today, not that any day is really a 'formal' schooling but you know what I mean) It was held at a church nearby. One of the homeschooling moms asked the pastor is she could use his church and he said "it's YOUR church, not mine. of course you can use the rooms!" so we did our best to give the rooms back the way we found them :) We were told to bring 40 valentines per family, so we made bookmarks with some scripture verses.... OK, I must admit, I did do most of the work, but the kids came with me to the store to buy the strings AND helped me cut some stuff out.

The kids decorated their own 'Valentine's bag' to put all the goodies. Every gift was so precious for there were barely anything that was not made by the kids themselves. And then there was this. M&M's were added by Tesla, but can you imagine what kind of time it must have taken to decorate 40 of these!!!!???!!?!? WOW!

We also brought finger foods to share! The kids had a great time eating and socializing! mostly socializing.

Then it was time for the group photo!!

You can only imagine how much effort went into keeping all the kids together and facing the same direction. This gathering was mainly for younger children, which made group photo op even more interesting. There are many older children in the group too. This Saturday is the annual Famous American day, when the children can dress up as any famous American and do a report or skit or whatever he/she wants. We've never been to one so we're looking forward to it. I also heard that there are 11 high school graduates this year! Graduation ceremony is some time in June and I've already signed up to bring some food! It is going to be so exciting!!!


Well, well that's it for now. I need to go check on the kids. They are awful quiet.......

Time traveling

It's been a relatively dry winter for us this year (note:relatively). Though it's been raining for 2 days now, it was pretty nice and dry on Tuesday, so we went out for a walk!

Our destination was Old Town Eureka. This was the main part of our town when the town first started 150 years ago. It is right next to the bay and there are many old buildings still standing. In fact there's a whole block that hasn't changed a bit since the buildings were built between 1884-1904!

While walking, I noticed a cute sign.





This belongs to a building that currently house a little restaurant/pub kind of place. It's right across the street from the pier.

It must have been beautiful in its prime! I can only imagine someone sitting by the window upstairs in turn-of-the-century outfit. I love everyday history!! California is a pretty new state and yet it's full of places that let's you imagine the past (my favorite time period is the 1920s). Can't imagine what it must be like to live back east where the history is much richer and longer. Or Europe or any other place with really long history.

Speaking of history, Kepler just studied the old Indian dynasty (Gupta) and is now moving on to the beginning of Islam. Next is China I think. He's also been reading a lot on his own. He reads over 1000 pages each month. This month he's about to finish Inkheart, which is about 530 pages long with almost no illustration at all!





Tesla got a new toy recently. It's phonics blocks. The package consists of color coded blocks with vowels, consonants, consonant blends, vowel combos, etc, activity booklet, dry erase board, dry erase marker and activity cards. She can look at the cards and try to spell the words shown using the blocks. Then she can practice writing them!



That's all for now! I better get school started!

Winter is here!!!?

So it's february and it's as warm as our summer days today! of course that only means that we're up to about 60 today :) But it sure beats the 40s. OK, so that's not much of a difference, but the temperature variance here is not much through out the year.

Not much to report, but I thought I'd stop by and write just to let the world know that we're alive. UCLA is ranked 2nd in NCAA men's basketball this week, so all is well :) But A&M is playing Texas in about 30 minutes, so we'll see how well this week REALLY is....

We're all feeling a lot better now and pretty much back to our routine. Kepler stopped going to his cub scout for a while, but we found a good den, so we are seeking to transfer. His previous den and pack were a bit too sedated for boys. They really didn't do anything boy-ish. Needless to say it was too unexciting to keep Kepler's interest. The new den we found does more boy stuff (outdoors, running, hopping, jumping, fixing bikes, you know things boys like, instead of sitting in a classroom and coloring...) PLUS he dropped wolf cub and went onto the bears which is for the third graders, so that should be closer to his interest level.

We're also considering martial arts and/or gymnastics for Kep and possibly Tes too. But there is NO authentic (?) martial arts school in Eureka, so I'd have to go and see what each dojo is like, before deciding on what to do! Gymnastics would probably work great for Kepler and there is a good gym in town that has a class for boys his age.

Sorry, no pics today, but i'll try to have some nice ones in the near future.

Well, I better go and get food ready for THE game :)

I love cats...

By now I'm sure ya'll have heard about the mountain lion attack last week in California. In Humboldt county to be exact. And yes, that's where we live! The attack took place @ Prairie Creek State Park (I think that's the name...I know how to get there, but I never really paid attention to the name...) where we've hiked several times. There are many Roosevelt elks there and the hike is very pleasant and easy, so we like to go there with the kids. Well, well, we need to rethink about this now! We always made sure that kids don't go too far from us, in case of a cat attack, but I wasn't too seriously concerned. Now I know was very wrong!

I thought about arming ourselves with firearms (is that legal?) but Devin reminded me that if the cat is attacking, by the time I get the gun out, it's probably got one of us in its mouth...and that might make it rather difficult to shoot just the cat and not the person! So perhaps the pen would work better. Of course in the case of the Fortuna couple, the pen broke, so I better take a very strong pen...hmmmmm.

Kepler always likes to collect big sticks and carry them along the trail "in case of a cat attack." I guess he was much better prepared than I thought one ought to be!

I can't believe I've been gone so long!!!

This really is becoming a monthly update!! I must get better at blogging!!!

So, Christmas came and went. We had a great time opening presents and just enjoying the family time :)

Some of the other Christmas-y events we enjoyed include Ferndale's annual tractor parade. Ferndale is a little victorian town nearby. It's the town seen in Jim Carrey's movie "The Majestic" (the movie was not great, but it really does show the town if you are curious!).

Another event was Tesla's first ballet recital. Unfortunately we were not allowed to take flash photo during the performance, so here's a picture I took before the show. She was one of the elves. We should be getting a DVD of the show in the near future....

On Christmas day, the kids really had a blast opening all the presents. Tesla is one of those people who would open ALL the presents first before really looking at each one carefully. Kepler on the other hand takes time looking at each present before going on to the next present so needless to say he took 10 times longer to open everything!!

As for the new year, we started the school back on the second, so Kepler didn't get much of a break. We finished our study of the ancient history and now we are into the middle ages, though we are still at the very beginning. Here's a picture of a Celtic ax we made in class. Of course it's only paper, but we had fun making it :) Speaking of school, we found a new (to us) math program that we really like. It is called Math-u-see. Many homeschoolers are familiar with it but we had been using more 'traditional' textbook (like in a classroom setting). But you know how boring some of those can get sometimes!!! So I decided to give this a try and Kepler absolutely loves it!!! Highly recommended for all kids! It uses blocks as a teaching aid and I didn't realize how much kids LOVE to play with blocks!! I'm planning on starting Tesla soon with the first grade level math very soon!

And speaking of Tesla, we're really doing school with her too these days. She is whizzing through her Kindergarten workbook so fast, we should be done before March! So we'll go right into the first grade stuff before too long! Why wait just because she's not 5?! She seems to be ready and eager to learn!

Reagan still LOVES trains and plays with them all the time. He does make different voices for different trains and makes up a story. It's quite amusing. I don't think he'll be reading yet, but he sure loves his abc's.

That's it for now~! Devin and I have been quite sick this past week. :P We're finally up and out of the bed, but Devin had to miss his conference in Santa Rosa today(to which we were going to go so we can visit Charles Schultz museum, but that'll have to wait for another day...Santa Rosa is where Charles Schultz lived and there are not only his museum, but many Snoopy stuff all over town from what I hear...).

I don't know about including photos all the time, but if you don't mind the photo-less blog, I'll try to update more often at least to let you all know that we're alive!