Evan's 9th Grade Year

Evan's first year of High School! We started school this year in the summer to get a jump on things before we took a trip back east. If you'd like to see pictures of our summer trips just leave a comment asking to see Evan's blog. (It's password protected, but we'll share with you if you ask.) He took most of the pictures, and has done a great job blogging about it all.

I on the other hand, have been reading and reading some more about high school! Here's the line up.

Bible: Long Story Short with the girls and working on memorizing Philippians. Evan also has 5 books to read and write about, roughly 1 per quarter. Right now he's reading Practical Happiness by Bob Shultz. The others on his list are What He Must Be if He Wants to Marry My Daughter by Voddie Baucham, Humility by C.J. Mahaney, Knowing God by J.I. Packer, and a biography of someone from church history.

Evan is also doing a study of great books that corresponds to the time period of history he's studying. We're back at the beginning with ancient history, and of course the Bible is the great, Great Book. He's starting off the year reading Genesis through Job as his first "Great Book".

Math: Evan really likes Teaching Textbooks. This year he will be studying Algebra I.

English:
-Spelling: Spelling Power is proving to be a great fit for our family. I bought it with Evan in mind, since spelling is a weakness for him (like me). But everyone is doing well with it and liking it.
-Grammar: Evan is finishing up Easy Grammar Plus. It seems we have a tendency to not finish grammar books around here! I also have him doing a short lesson a day out of Easy Grammar Ultimate Series 9th grade. It's a one page summary of grammar rules to practice.
-Great Books: I'm planning on having Evan read through 10 great books. We're starting with the Bible (Gen-Job), then the Epic of Gilgamesh. I know Evan is looking forward to reading the Iliad and the Oddessy, but other than that there is some flexibility within a longer list based on what he's interested in and what's available.
-Writing: Each of the Great Books will have a paper due at the end. This along with the papers from his Bible class, and the numerous notes and outlines he'll be taking in History and Science should be enough writing for this year.
-Other books: Since I'm not following a curriculum per say with English, I'm having Evan read a couple of other books for reference and guidance: How to Read a Book by Mortimer J. Adler, Elements of Style by William Strunk and E. B. White, Study is Hard Work by William Armstrong,
and sections of The Well Educated Mind:A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had by Susan Wise Bauer

History: He's reading The History of the Ancient World by Susan Wise Bauer. After reading each chapter he takes notes on the events and dates. He'll use the Timetables of History by Burnard Grun and The Annals of the World by James Ussher for context and reference when writing papers.

Science: Evan is doing a class with friends also. They are using the Apologia Biology book. He is also taking a class on anatomy and physiology through our school called Body of Evidence by Answers in Genesis. The Apologia biology book doesn't go into human biology much, so I was glad that our school was offering the class.

Foreign Language: If we can get our Rosetta Stone program to work again, he'll continue on with Spanish. I think we're just having some technical difficulties.

Art and Music Appreciation: We spend a couple of hours each week looking a different composer and listening to his music while doing some art. I'm hoping to focus on painting this year.

Electives:
-Logic: We're going through the Fallacy Detectives by the Bludorn brothers. At church, the youth group is doing a study of logic and how it applies to us a Christians.
-Eagle Scout Project: Evan is on track to finish up his work to earn the Eagle Scout rank this year. Our school requires two semesters of community service. His project will count as one full semester.

P.E.: One of Evan's boy scout merit badges is Personal Fitness. He has to make a 12 week exercise plan and evaluate his conditioning before and after he initiates his plan. That along with the hiking, jogging, backpacking, walking, tree chopping, fence building, and tree climbing he does with his friends and family are his P.E. plan so far.

Not Quite Right

When I was five or six I remember telling my mom that I really liked a certain drink. Only, I couldn't remember what it was called. It was kind of like milk, but thicker and creamier. She could only guess it was buttermilk. It looked right and as I took a big sip I was so disappointed. It was July, and what I was remembering was Egg Nog.

We usually make pancakes once a week. Now that we're gluten free around here, the recipe from this cookbook is our favorite. But Evan mentioned that he missed buckwheat pancakes. Remembering my story, I asked him if he was sure. Yes, it was buckwheat. Well, buckwheat is not really wheat at all. And it's gluten free. So this morning I found a recipe for buckwheat pancakes and made them up. I thought they were better than what I remember buckwheat tasting like. However, Evan realized he'd made the same mistake after all. Looks like I'll be eating a lot of buckwheat pancakes over the next few weeks!

The Week In a Nutshell

Last weekend Sean and Evan went on a backpacking trip to Yosemite. They came home sweaty and tired, but they had a great time! I gave Evan a day off school to recover, then we were back full time to school. Here are a few highlights.

The week was full of art and writing. We normally do an art class on Tuesdays, but this week, the kids didn't seem to want to stop drawing. I think the colored pencils were out all week. I found an interesting website that teaches drawing portraits. I almost have all the supplies so we can get started. The first videos came this week and while I know we won't be able to draw quite as well as the instructor, I'm going to try and keep it fun so the kids can learn some more techniques.

We started The Institute for Excellence in Writing's Continuation Course this year. The first assignment was to write a story based off pictures. The kids were working late last night trying to get it done. They were laughing at each others stories and frustrated at all the details of the assignment at the same time. Writing has been particularly hard for Evan. Sean and I were proud of him for sticking it out and learning that it can get easier with practice.

Emily will be taking beginning piano with our friend Jenn this fall. She came up to me at church and exclaimed, "Guess what, mom?! I'm taking piano with Jenn, and Riley is taking piano with Jenn, and Maggie is taking piano WITH JENN!!!" She is so very excited to be taking piano with Jenn, whom she loves. It's even more fun for her knowing that some of her friends are doing the same thing as well. Jenn and I agreed that their recital will be a hoot!

Chicken Coop Condo

For their birthdays this year Amy and Emily asked for chickens. Yes, chickens. Not a Barbie or a My Little Pony, but chickens. Problem was, the chickens needed a place to live. Backyard construction projects are Sean's forte. He likes to build. He needed to build quickly because baby chicks don't stay chicks for long.

Sean designed a big sturdy coop. It took him several weekends to build. Evan added muscle to the heavy lifts. They even added power so that the heat lamp and cooling fans could be plugged in without runing extension cords from the barn.

The result of their efforts is our new "home addition" to house our new "babies."

We selected a small pasture near the barn so that the chickens would be safer (we saw a bobcat out there two nights ago!).



Sean framed up the chicken coop on 4x4 posts. Its heavy duty.



The finished project has eight little doors on the end to make egg collection easier.



There is a cute little door for the chicks and another service door for the little people to take care of the chicks.


Our new additions. There are four Buff Orpingtons, three Golden Campines, four Andalusians, and one that might be a Sussex - but we don't really know. Amy can tell the 12 chicks a part and knows them all by name.


Last week we adopted four grown hens and a beautiful rooster to the mix. They are separated from the chicks for now because, well........ chicks are food to chickens. So the chicks need to grow so they won't be food. The hens are already providing big brown eggs for our family.


We are looking forward to the added eggs once the chicks become hens and lay their own in about five months. I'm sure there will be extras to go around!

Evan and PaPa Hiked the Grand Canyon!

Last week Evan and my Dad hiked the Grand Canyon "rim to rim!" They started at the north rim and hiked through to the south rim, camping four nights in the canyon during the process. All told they hiked over 25 miles with a 5,000 foot elevation change!

The Kid's Bathrooms

The girls are very happy with their muted purple bathroom. It's actually the same paint that we had at our old house in the guest bath. We had a bit left over and this way they can use all my old decorations.

And we got a few new ones as well. I found the cute green accordion hanger at a garage sale and the flower print at a different one.

Evan went for the more sophisticated jungle theme. A friend of ours had the same cute jungle theme in their bathroom so we gave them our towels and bath rugs.

The jungle stuff that we had in the kids bath at our old house from Africa goes really nice with the new updated theme. And lucky for Evan, jungle is really popular right now so it was easy to find new towels that went well and were a little more masculine.

Sean found this great bamboo screen for the window.

We put the mirror from Emily's bedroom in his bath. I think it looks really good!

Up next, the dining room...

Update...

Evan came back from camp taller. He's outgrown all his shoes, so he said I could have his Teva's and we'll buy him some shoes instead!

Amy's math book arrived. Poor girl, she'd much rather just ride horses all day! Yesterday some friends came by and helped us set up a Picadero (a square pen used for horse training). Amy should be able to work with her horse a bit more independently in the near future.

Emily definitely has some allergies going on. We're looking into getting her tested. Because I'm pretty sure her food allergies are delayed, the regular skin prick test might not show much. But she responded really well to going off of wheat. And I found a great lotion. Thanks, Jess.

We're still working on meal plans, but Sean did find a way to get all three trash cans up to the road!

Enjoying Life in the Country

Driving new toys...

Baking cakes...

Decorating cakes...(With a neighbor's flowers)

Painting fences...

Shooting squirrels...

A Rough Start

The week before we started school back in August, God really convicted me of my joyless attitude. I was hit with the realization that it would be more important for me to model cheerfulness and contentment to my kids when our schedule is knocked off balance than to "fight" to keep things in line.

I think there is a great value in schedules and it is worth putting time and effort into planning. So I'm not saying that these things aren't important. However, for me, I tend to place too much importance and more significantly, I tend to look for validation in how tightly we stuck to the schedule. Did I get (and my kids manage to do) everything I had planned for the day? I am so tempted to derive my worth based on what we accomplished.


God has shown me in the past, through good teaching mostly, that interruptions from outside are not to be seen as irritations, but as "divine appointments". So I am, through God's grace, mostly able to be cheerful when the disruption is from someone or something outside my family. But when the disruption is from my kids acting grumpy, lazy, distracted or my husband needing me to tend to something that I didn't plan for that day, my sin nature shines right through. And it isn't pretty.


So guess what God saw fit to send to us the night before our first day of school?

This from 4am to midnight. See that fence. That's our backyard. I edited out Amy's bedroom window, but it's right behind the fence.

Beep beep, scrape, CACHUNG, BOOM! Repeat. All night long. This does not make for happy children who are able to focus and stay on task.

We found out that the construction project they are doing on the road behind our house is in "emergency mode" and they have a nighttime permit to work 4am to midnight. Sean wrote several very eloquent letters to city council, the mayor and the head of the construction company. They modified their work from 5am to 11pm. This was something that God was allowing for our good and His glory.

It has put this area of showing grace to my kids in the forefront of my mind. Since we've been living with this noise for 4 weeks now, I have a constant reminder to choose to show cheerfulness and give grace. I haven't always done what I should do or want to do. Driving out sin is hard work. But God is good and He has helped me to grow in this area that I have struggled in for such a long time.

Last week, we escaped the heat and the noise and took the kids to the beach.

And Lord willing, tonight is the last night they have a permit to work at night!

Summer Highlights

Thanks for coming back after such a long break! I missed blogging, but definitely needed the break.



We started off the summer with Evan and Sean going off to Boy Scout camp at Catalina Island. They had a blast! The girls and I got to go spend some time with a friend whose husband was away on a mission trip the same week. It was lovely. Lots of long talks, a few horseback riding lessons for Amy and giggly girls.


Sean and Evan on a long hike, pausing in front of the bay.

Evan with his group's camp staff.

Evan earned his merit badge for shooting and also made it into the dime club (five shots into the center). He has really good aim!


The whole troop with dads and even one grandpa.

The kids entered art work into the fair again this year. Evan took two first place ribbons for his photography and two second place ribbons for his paintings. Amy took two first places for her art.

Amy's watercolor.Evan standing in front of his winning photo of Emily.

In July we went to San Diego. We went to Sea World, the San Diego Zoo, the Wild Animal Park, and the Midway museum.

The Midway Museum is an aircraft carrier that has been decommissioned and opened up for visiting. Here's Evan sitting in the cockpit of one of the planes.

Emily at the petting zoo. She kept wanting to hug this goat!

The kids at Sea World, taking a break in the shade.

We took our tent trailer and camped while we were down there. The kids loved being able to ride bikes and scooter when we got back from the day's activity.

One of my goals for the summer was to go through drawers and cupboards and clean! While I didn't get to all of them (or even as much as I had hoped) I did get a lot cleaned out. And when I went through the bottom kitchen cupboard, I found out that the whole shelf was sagging and about to break! Sean fixed it for me and then built me a nice sliding shelf so I could get into the back corner without having to lay on my stomach and blindly reach under the shelf.

The finished product!

Summer's harvest of lavender.

Our Boy Scout

Finally A Chance to Blog...About a Servant's Heart

Life has been very busy, stressful, and hard for us lately. Last month Sean was gone for three weeks and the fourth he had to work overtime. I think we saw him for three days. That's why my mom came for a week! I am so thankful for my parents who love Jesus and love us.

Right now, my older kids are in the kitchen and I am not allowed to come in. I think they cleaned up. I know they are baking something. Sean said he heard the dishwasher and went to go check. There were a total of 5 dishes in it! Too funny!

I was going to write that they are such great kids, but then I realized that the truth is they are little sinners. (And don't I know it!) And God is so great. Just this morning, we were talking about serving. Last night our family had the opportunity to serve at church and watch 16 kids. We had 7 older kids from the church (including ours) who helped out. Sometimes the kids were very thoughtful and helpful while at other times they were pretty self-focused and really just wanted to go out and play. Our own kids flip-flopped between the two. But overall, the night went well.

This morning I talked to our kids about having a servant's heart. They knew that last night was a lot of kids, and they could see how helpful it was when the older ones helped out. They understood it was tougher when the older ones were just looking out for themselves. We had a great talk and then ran off to our day's activities.

So it is such a joy to see God work in their hearts to help them to decide to do something to bless and serve our family! And I am relieved since the kitchen was a mess and I still have baking to do for a baby shower tomorrow.

... They let me in, and they are making lemon bars! Maybe I won't even have to bake tonight! (But I LOVE to bake, so I probably will.) =)

*Sean's note* Yes, they managed to get five dishes in the dishwasher before they started it. Very funny to find another fifty on the counter that didn't make it in! And another yes, they were supposed to be lemon bars. But there were no lemons or lemon juice! So they substituted oranges, tangerines, and any other citrus fruit they could find in the kitchen. It should be pretty interesting when its comes out. *

Guess I'm baking after all!

Wreaths

Well, the first class went well. The girls seemed to enjoy the project and they turned out great. One of the girls said to me, "I didn't think I'd like flower arranging, but this is really fun."

Today, all my kids wanted to do more. Emily picked up a couple of silk flower bunches (for next weeks class), stuck them in a french flower bucket and said, "Look what I made!) She was so proud of herself. It was really cute.

Evan and Amy clipped some rosemary and bay leaves and made some wreaths today too. They used the same methods with the wire. Because the pieces are bigger, they didn't need to wrap bunches up first. You just put a piece in place, wrap, add another piece, wrap and so on.

Evan's is on our front door now and here's a picture of Amy with hers.