Friday, July 31, 2015

Simply Living...For Him: 10 Days of Simple Homeschool- Why I Have Simplified

Simply Living...For Him: 10 Days of Simple Homeschool- Why I Have Simplified



Finally found a Simple Christian :-)



Some very good article and I am currently enjoying her e-book. These ideas speak to my heart as the solution I need to address some of the damage done by our bout with allergies (one dc simply couldn't concentrate enough to learn while we were hunting down those allergens she was sensitive too. Even now, I can tell when she has been exposed to something by her reading and math skills for the day. Now we have some lost time to make up for....)

Thursday, July 30, 2015

The Simple School

I suppose I am now what is called "the homeschool vetran" My oldest is 23 and has never been enrolled in a traditional school of any type. Does this mean I've been homeschooling for 23 year? or is it 18? Anyway....

I have been through a depressing amount of homeschool materials, spent WAY too much money. I often say the only thing I miss about Southern California is a little homeschool curriculum store I used to go to a couple times a year where you could pick up the books and look at them before buying them. Truth is, though, going to our church library (where most of my not-currently-in-use curriculum are) is pretty much the same thing.

Want to look at Abeka grammar?
Or Easy Grammar and it's compaign Daily Grams?
Or A Child's Lessons in Language?
Or Rod and Staff?
Or ....

Sigh.

(No Bob Jones though. The catelog alone is too boooorrrriiiinnnngggg to even read. and the one or two texts I have actually seen in person were worse. I think I have 1 BJ science text there somewhere, just for a sample.)

The same can be pretty much repeated for every subject.

But you know what? No curriculum is perfect. They all have their flaws. I have even thought about intentionally switching it around every year just to minimize these faults!



When I am getting unhappy with whatever we are currently doing (and mamma boredom plays a big part in that unhappy, unfortunately) I go through the same process.
  1. Get excited about some new thing I've never heard of, or some old thing I never paid a lot of attention to for some reason or another. 
  2. Look at the price tag.
  3. Multiply this by how many kids that I would have to buy it for.
  4. Cry
  5. Research other options that are similar, less perfect, but cheaper.
  6. Either drop the whole idea, wait till tax time and see if I still want it, or exchange work at my mom's for some cash.
Lately (the last couple of years) I have been kind of looking at the philosophies that are less 'schoolish,' more natural.

I first noticed when diligently following a preschool skill book with careful lessons designed for each week of a child's life that  the book was trying to replace a normal, natural home with formal lessons. For example it told me to make a sampler book of different textures (2 hours and $20 or so in materials) to teach my child with. "OoooKkkk. My child (6 months old) has touched and explored all these textures over the last week in just the course of everyday life. Why should I do all this extra work to mimic 'normal home life' when my child is already experiencing 'normal home life?'"

It didn't take long to realize that preschool curriculums are trying to give children locked in preschool classrooms the experiences they are missing at home.

So why should I go to extra work and money to duplicate a poor copy of the original when my child has the original?

It has taken a long time, but I am realizing how very much of "normal school" is the same thing. There is very little, actually that we don't cover in the course of normal, day to day, year in year out life.

There is some, though.

So, in the last couple of years I have been shifting my focus to something more "organic" more natural. More simple?

I went through the house, my parent's house, the church library, and the kindle and made a list of all the books I would like my kids to read before they "graduate" (another artificial concept, actually). I realized that this list covered absolutely every subject completely and thoroughly except the maths and grammar. And it simply didn't provide enough practice for penmanship, typing, spelling.

And the books on this list are things I, my Hubby, or my parents have bought as an adult for our own educations; books we find fun and interesting, as well as memorable to read.

So, why should I spend hundreds of dollars to buy boring textbooks every year to cover the same information in the interesting books I already own?

The children have been working their ways through this list for the last year or so, and so far, it's working well. I need to tweak it a bit for the younger ones.

Now I am focusing on those language arts.

So, what about picking a sentence and posting it on the wall over the weekend. On Monday all the younger ones (7-12 or 14) will copy it and we will discuss the parts of speech and how the words relate to each other. We will also discuss the spelling rules behind each word.

On Tuesday I'll have them copy it again and maybe color code the words?

On Wednesday I'll dictate the sentence to them. By this time they should be able to spell every word correctly, form each letter right, and understand how the words fit together. I will be able to see where each child is struggling and customize their work to help them.

No busy work.
No unnecessary review.
Just what each child needs.

Hmmm. We'll give it a try and see:-)

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Is there a Contraception Conspiracy? - Natural Womanhood

Is there a Contraception Conspiracy? - Natural Womanhood



Women are dying to not have babies.



Literally.



The Pill is a level one carcinogen, right up there with cigarettes. 80% of all breast cancers are linked to either the Pill or abortion or both. (Note; 20% of breast cancers, the more aggressive ones, are linked with excessive exposure to radiation, as in mammograms. This is the type of cancer my Mom had. Not the garden variety, easier to treat type.)



And a note on pregnancy saftey;



Studies have shown that staying home to have your baby is safer. So we as a culture, insist women go to the most dangerous place to birth, insist she submit to whatever intervention her doctor says she "needs" (even if its just because he wants to go home or on vacation and not because there is actually any evidence she or baby are having problems. And, yes, there is a lot of evidence that well over half of c-sections are unnecessary. C-sections are dangerous, open stomach surgery.), and then justify the Pill and Abortion as necessary for a woman's safety because birth is so dangerous for her.



Big Pharm gets paid mega bucks every time a woman uses artificial birth control.

Big Pharm gets paid mega bucks every time a woman has an abortion (antibiotics, pain killers, plus the added availability of baby-parts for research)

Big Pharm gets paid mega bucks every time a woman has a medicalized birth.

Big Pharm gets paid mega bucks every time a woman has a heart attack or gets cancer because of her birth control Pill.



Big Pharm controls the  FDA, funds medical schools, and finances the news. And they are the second biggest contributor to political campaigns (after the teacher's unions).



Conspiracy? What makes you think there might be a conspiracy?

On Days That I Doubt: My Struggle With Choosing to be a Stay-at-Home Mom - Sisters Raising Sisters

On Days That I Doubt: My Struggle With Choosing to be a Stay-at-Home Mom - Sisters Raising Sisters



A woman can't do anything more important than to stay home and raise her children.



It's not that women aren't capable of doing other jobs.



It's that there IS NO MORE IMPORTANT JOB on planet earth.



There just isn't.

Monday, July 27, 2015

High price tags and ugly secrets – how surrogacy preys on poor women :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)

High price tags and ugly secrets – how surrogacy preys on poor women :: Catholic News Agency (CNA)



Why isn't this slavery?



When "breeding slaves" from the pre-civil war era is mentioned we shake our heads and tsk at our ancestors.



Why isn't this the same thing?



It is trafficking in human bodies; the surrogates reproductive organs and the whole baby.



If it's illegal to sell your own kidney, why is it legal to sell your womb?

If it's illegal to sell your gardner, why is it legal to sell your baby?

If it's illegal to sell your own body for the first part of the reproductive process (sex) why is it legal to sell it for the last?

Money, Money...

My mom was the church Secretary/Treasurer (do you get the idea she was a busy person?). She had kind of shown me all she did to pay the church's bills occasionally over the years, but really, she was the only one who knew everything that needed to be done.

While she was sick and just after her death, my dad (our pastor) did the bill paying.

Last Wednesday the church voted to assign me as the head S/T and my oldest as my assistant. This only makes sense, because I am the one she kept up on how she did things. Besides, other members have tried the job in the past and "No thank you very much!"

And it's too much for dad since he now does his own finances (which mom used to do also) and that is too complicated and overwhelming on it's own.

So now I have added another job.

Thankfully she was very good at keeping things logical and orderly in the books.

Sadly, we are 2 months behind in actually recording stuff. (She was only really sick for a month or so, mercifully.)

So, today we are having "Jackie Day" (taking a holiday off school to celebrate my 4th daughter's birthday) so guess what I am doing? I'd rather be painting a bathroom or working on finishing my laundry room, but this is more urgent/important. We are almost at the first and I need to have everything caught up before adding another month to the list!



Sort of before on the laundry room. This is the original wall put in by the manufacture of our mobile. We have this papered wall board throughout it won't hold paint. So we've been a long time in figuring out to use primer (duhhh) to make it stick so we could redo it.

Half way point (where we are now, except cleaner, lol. I just threw everything in there to get it out of my kitchen that day). LOVE the bright yellow. Hate that I can't add any natural light :-( Still need to put in shelves and actually fasten that bar to the wall. It won't hold anything but hangers without falling like that.

Friday, July 24, 2015

I Was the Other Man: An Insider’s Look at Why Gay Marriage Will Never Work

I Was the Other Man: An Insider’s Look at Why Gay Marriage Will Never Work

We must stop indoctrinating boys in feminist ideology - Telegraph

We must stop indoctrinating boys in feminist ideology - Telegraph

The Spice(s) of Life

Did I mention my Mom, in addition to being an artist, writer, and musician, was a cook?

She loved to experiment and was always thrilled to find a new spice or spice blend. And the hotter the better. (Seriously Mom? What exactly did you think you were going to do with four GALLONS of dehydrated peppers?!)

Dad, not so much. He is a very simple cook (honestly, I wasn't even sure he knew how to cook until a couple of weeks before Mom passed. His idea of "taking care of dinner" when Mom was sick, my entire life, was to order pizza.)

I take after Dad and my brother (who lives out of state) takes after Mom in our cooking. For Dad and I, a little salt, pepper, onion powder is generally all that's needed, and if I do need more, I want to blend it myself, not use someone else's ideas of the right proportions.

The result is, Mom had a massive spice rack (3' X 1 1/2' X 6") packed completely full, plus spices stashed in other places throughout her kitchen. It worked for her, and that's great :-)

Doesn't work so much for Dad. He was feeling a bit overwhelmed any time he looked at that rack. You could almost see panic in his eyes.

So yesterday I pulled out everything, shelf by shelf, that I knew for a fact he would never use (i.e. 8 different "Mrs. Dashes" blends). If I was unsure, I put it aside and asked him later.

Than I pulled out from those I removed what I knew I would use (i.e. coarse sea salt. Four different kinds of coarse sea salt).

The rest, a full 2x3' box, I took to a friend of Mom's who also loves to experiment with her cooking.

What a difference it made in that kitchen! It now looks so inviting!

And Dad looked so much less stressed when he looked at it :-)

All in all, a good day's work:-)

Monday, July 20, 2015

Saturday, July 18, 2015

Are Christians finaly getting the message?

Public school puff-piece blows up in conservative ministry's face - The American Vision

Seems a preacher calling Christians to sacrifice their kids to PS in the name of evangelism has backfired on him. Good for his readers!

Seriously, If my church was engaged in an evagilism program was was costing us 85% of our workers, I would strongly sugest we find a different program. And I SURE wouldn't let MY kids participate!

Yet there are still Christians who are saying we need to send our kids to PS in order to "save the world!"

Get a clue people. I hasn't worked for the last 150 years. What makes you think it will work now? Do you know what the definition of insanity is???!!!
Expectant Faith: Patience doesn't mean idleness — JACOBJOLIBOIS



Ok, confession. I have been feeling like a move may be in our future for a year or so. I haven't talked to anyone about it but Mom, and now she is not available.



So you get to be my new confidant.



I have pictures of a major move, a major change. And what do I do to prepare while I patiently wait?



I am decluttering.



Big time.



We have a 1400 sq ft home, plus 96' store room, 12x12 shed, chicken coop (empty), milk shed (being used as storage a the moment), a 12 passenger van, 2 sedans, and a 28' camp trailer all being used for storage.



Christmas decorations, keepsakes, out of season clothes, craft stuff, Hubby's trains, school records, etc.



All justifiable



All hard to move any distance.



So this is a big part of what is behind most of my Simple Living enthusiasm.



I want to be ready so when God says it's time, I can pick up and go.

Understanding our circumstances through God's goodness

How to Live a Rich Modern Life Without Debt - The Simple Dollar

How to Live a Rich Modern Life Without Debt - The Simple Dollar



This is also how you free yourself up to follow whatever God wants you to do.

Stuff-Focus

Stuff-Focus



Exactly!



except...



except...



Replace "self-actualization and happiness" with "serving God and doing His will."



That's what life is really all about; not "me, me, me" but "Him, Him, Him"



Seriously, why am I not reading all these "anti-materialistic" articles on Christian blogs? We are the ones that are supposed to be focused on things other than stuff, status, and accumulation.



So here it is:



If your focus in life is getting more stuff or increaing your soical standing or standard of living, than you are engaged in idolatry. You are worshiping your stuff.



That's not to say it's wrong to have things or even be rich. I know many people God has blessed with prosperity because they needed those resources to accomplish His will in their lives. My parents for example. They have more often than not been the sole financial support of the churches my dad has pastored. They simply couldn't do that if dad didn't have a secular job that paid REALLY well. So, yeah, they have a nice house and several cars, and most anything they want, but they focus their energy and money on supporting God's work. More often than not extra money and their own property goes to whatever the church needs at the moment. Their "stuff" is a thank you gift from God.



But God doesn't call most to that type of work.



When we have so much stuff we can't do God's will, we have too much stuff. It is interfering with our walk with Him.



That means if our houses are too cluttered for us to be hospitable as the Bible tells us to be, or if we are enslaved to a 9-5'er in order to pay for the mortgage on a house big enough to hold all our junk, we are putting stuff first.



It even means if we are so committed to so many "good" activities that we don't have time to have supper with our own children (that God has intrusted to our care) we are putting our importance ahead of His will ("I am so important I just have to busy every second" vs "Teach God's words to your children every waking moment." Duet 6)



Pray about it and see if God is, in fact, calling you to re-prioritize your life.

How to Downsize and Get Rid of Clutter

How to Downsize and Get Rid of Clutter



So need to do this, not just to my house, but now my mom's stuff! Sigh.



I have been praying for years for a bigger house. Turns out the way God has answered that is to lead me to the minimalist movement. The more I declutter, the bigger my current house gets! Who'd 'ave thunk it?

Thursday, July 16, 2015

5 Reasons NOT to Send Your Kids Back to... | Exodus Mandate

5 Reasons NOT to Send Your Kids Back to... | Exodus Mandate:



EVERY CHRISTIAN PARENT AND GRAND PARENT NEEDS TO READ THIS ARTICLE!!! Here are some exerts.



"Bible-based education is mandatory for Christian parents....



Americans are not forced to pay for Mormon schools, or Muslim schools;
why should we be forced to pay for neo-Marxist schools (remember, all
education is religious in nature)?  And why should any Christian
contribute to such a system by sending their children to such schools at
the expense of others?...



As Hodge pointed out, the result of non-Christian education is anti-Christian education.  Government schools must be anti-Christian. 
They can be nothing else.  Therefore, to send a child to a government
school is to have them trained in an anti-Christian environment for
14,000 instructional hours.  To get that much instruction from church a
child would have to attend two hours a week for one hundred and forty
years!...

There’s enough here for an entire series of posts (so many posts… so
little time), but for now let me simply say that the “the Lord told me”
line of argumentation has serious theological problems.  We must make
our educational decisions with an open Bible.  “The Lord told me” is no substitute for ‘the Bible says!’  Please don’t make a decision about your child’s education without consulting (and obeying) the Scriptures....



One wonders what the schools will have to do to our children before
we are willing to acknowledge the folly of our choices.  In the
meantime, I will continue to watch, fight, and pray, and try to convince
as many of you as I can to liberate your children from Caesar’s
indoctrination camps.,,,




I have quoted John Wesley ...“Let it
be remembered, that I do not speak to the wild, giddy, thoughtless
world, but to those that fear God.  I ask, then, for what end do you
send you children to school?  Why? That they may be fit to live in the
world? In which world do you mean, — this or the next? Perhaps you
thought of this world only; and had forgot that there is a world to
come; yea, and one that will last forever! Pray take this into your
account, and send them to such masters as will keep it always before
their eyes. Otherwise, to send them to [a government] school (permit me
to speak plainly) is little better than sending them to the devil. At
all events, then, send your boys [and girls], if you have any concern
for their souls, not to any of the large public schools, (for they are
nurseries of all manner of wickedness,) but private school, kept by some
pious man, who endeavors to instruct a small number of children in
religion and learning together.”"



"God told me..."

"Follow your heart..."

"We can't afford it..." (in the richest country the planet has ever seen when parents in third world nations are using private school, when they don't even know where their next meal is coming from!)

"I feel..."

"I think..."

"I turned out alright"



are all mystic or atheistic attitudes.



Let me ask, if the Supreme Court declared all government funding of education unconstitutional (as they should since all education is religious by definition) would your children honestly receive no further education? run the streets for the rest of their youth?



Or would you partner with like-minded parents to come up with some sort of schoolish solution? Check the internet for a correspondence or e-school (some of the best of which are well under $1000 per year, by the way- less than you spend on clothes fashionable enough to keep your kid from being beat up)? Find some way, some how for your children to get the education they need? And since you are footing the bill, wouldn't you make sure that education didn't offend your God?



If you could educate your child without government money if the public schools were removed from possibility, why can't you now?



Because a vacation to Cancun or a new car is more important, right?



"Then if my people who are called by my name will humble themselves and
pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, I will hear from
heaven and will forgive their sins and restore their land." 2 Chronicles 7:14



This doesn't say "if the heathens..." It says "people called by My name." This is the saved. 



If we, the children of God, will call on Him, humble ourselves, pray, seek His face (and will as expressed in the Bible), AND TURN FROM OUR WICKED WAYS (such as sacrificing our children to the god of materialism) , God will hear us and restore our land. 



If you want America returned to her Christian roots, if you want our freedoms restored, if you want the socialism reversed, you MUST turn from living like the heathens. You must make your decisions based on the Bible. You must quit sacrificing your children to the god of the government.



"And he said unto them, Then render unto Caesar the things that are
Caesar's, and unto
God the things that are God's."

Tuesday, July 14, 2015

Today the hard part begins.

The last of the company who came up for my mom's illness and funeral are leaving today. This is when the hard part begins; how do you build a new normal? Especially for my Dad. They were married exactly (to the day!) 48 1/2 years. Please keep him in your prayers.

I did really enjoy seeing all the relatives I haven't seen in a long time.

The memorial service was very nice. Nearly 100 people there, and considering all but my parents and my own family live at least 4 hours, and most 8-9 hours, away, that's a lot :-)





I've been trying out the HomeRoutine app. I'll let you know how it works :-)
Still loving the Plan to Eat site. It has so simplified the menu making, recipe finding, shopping list making process I do each week. I may even be saving a bit more money:-) Check out the link on the "Go Shopping" page of my blog.



I've been looking a lot at tiny homes (houses less than 500 square feet).
  1. It makes my 1400' house with 11 people living in it seem huge! :-D
  2. I would not object, actually to doing something like this if we could get several to accommodate the size of our family (1 for Hubby, toddler, and I, 1 for my adult daughter, 1 for my adult son, 1 for my teen boys, 1 for my four girls ages 7-14). We lived in a 32 foot camp trailer for 7 months when we first moved here while looking for our house. Though it was a stressful time for me, in retrospect there were a lot of benefits. Like, daily house work took a whole half hour! And I didn't have to clean a shower or tub. Too small to actually use. We used the campground' facilities (or pool!) instead. Same for the laundry. That particular campground had two laundry rooms. For someone who is not overly fond of house work, this was great :-)
Here's today's tiny home; http://tinyhousetalk.com/diy-short-school-bus-cottage/

Today is happy Jessie day! 

 Ok, her birthday was actually last week, but with all that was going on with the funeral and all we have put off celebrating until today:-)

We will;
  1. Take the day off school
  2. Go out to lunch just the two of us.
  3. Have cake for desert (we only eat desert on Saturday's, occasional Sunday's, and birthdays.)
She'll get her presents then.

Do you have any housekeeping apps that really help you?

Tuesday, July 07, 2015

Ted Cruz -- Supreme Court Constitutional Amendment Idea Deserves Support | National Review Online

Ted Cruz -- Supreme Court Constitutional Amendment Idea Deserves Support | National Review Online

Exposing Hollywood pedophiles

Exposing Hollywood pedophiles





Hollywood: the evangelists of secular humanism

Proposal to temporarily sterilise all NZ teenage females should raise serious red flags | THE LEADING EDGE

Proposal to temporarily sterilise all NZ teenage females should raise serious red flags | THE LEADING EDGE

Schools Implant IUDs in Girls as Young as 6th Grade Without Their Parents Knowing | LifeNews.com

Schools Implant IUDs in Girls as Young as 6th Grade Without Their Parents Knowing | LifeNews.com



While I agree this is evil, I do have to ask why parents have their children in these schools in the first place.



In America, you will not have your head chopped off (like in China) or go to jail (like in Germany) or lose custody of your child (like in Sweeden) if you choose private education for your child. You have the freedom to make that choice (at least at the moment you do)



In America, the poorest of the poor is still richer than than 80% of the planet.



In many truly poor countries, the poorest pay for their own children's education, even when there is a "free" government school nearby (see The Beautiful Tree: A Personal Journey Into How the World's Poorest People are Educating Themsleves)



Except in the case of divorced parents where one is just being selfish and evil, the only reason for a child to be in public school in the first place is because the parents chose it.



If you don't like what the schools are doing, take your kids out.



It really is that simple.

The Protohomosexual - Crisis Magazine

The Protohomosexual - Crisis Magazine:



"Religion is the opium of the people" -Karl Marx



Mr Marx was wrong. Religion is not the opiate of the masses. Sex is.



This battle for marriage was lost more than 40 years ago; when the church quit teaching the truth about marriage and accepted the world's idea that sex's purpose is fun.



"Children have a right to life. Children have the right to a father and a mother. Children have the right to be raised in faithful, committed marriages. Who are we to deprive them of this right?...



"I would like to set free the idea that we are neither homosexual nor
heterosexual but simply (now perhaps unbelievably) sexual. As male and
female, we are, all of us, oriented. We are oriented toward sexual reproduction.





"And it haunts us. We pretend the link between sex and fruitfulness is
a barbarism from a darker age. We sterilize ourselves, we take drugs to
suppress our fertility, as a last resort we get an abortion, and we
behave as if we have settled the matter. But all this is a ruse. Beneath
the fabricated sexual taxonomies and technological subterfuge there
remains the undeniable human orientation toward sexual
reproduction. The menstrual cycle, the erection, the womb and breasts
all remind us of this orientation. Even a condom cannot conceal the fact
that what you are spilling is nothing less than seed. Biology and human nature remind us that human sexuality is oriented toward children and the future....




"The traditional definition of marriage is not rooted in religion and
homophobia, but in biology and human nature. Gay “marriage” might work
for private ideology, but it does not work for society. Marriage was not
established because humans are romantic and enjoy intimacy but because
humans reproduce sexually and children need both a father and a
mother—to be conceived and reared. Everyone has the right to marry, but
that does not make any sexual or romantic relationship a
marriage—although heterosexual ideology clouds that fact."




It is barbarism to put the desires of the strong ahead of the needs of the weak. A civilized, mature society will always put the needs of the weak first.



There is no weaker than a baby/child.



A child NEEDS a mother and father. Can't, in fact, exist without them, no matter how much we like to worship our science pretend we are beyond that. The fact remains it takes a sperm and an egg to make a baby. A Mommy and a Daddy.



Study after study shows that a child NEEDS both parents to grow up mentally healthy.



So, if we are going to be a civilized society, we must do all in our power to make sure each child has his needs, his rights, fulfilled.



Divorce must again become hard to get with blame clearly put where it belongs.



And yes, marrigae should be only between one man and one woman.



(whether the government should be involved in recognizing marriage at all is a different subject:-)

Monday, July 06, 2015

Do Less and Live More

Truth is I am grieving too much right now to care about things like blogs. But I did take the time to read this article and did find it helpful.



Please pray for us in the days ahead. Not only was she my mom, but one of my best friends, my Woman's Pastor, the matriarch of our family. We have a lot of changes ahead and it's not going to be easy, especially for my Dad. They were married for 48 years.



Do Less and Live More

Saturday, July 04, 2015

Please pray for us


My mom just went to The Eternal Party.