good lookin' goat

I remember at the County Fair walking into the goat building and telling Rory that I was on a mission to "find the cute goats." We walked the loop of that building, and I was hard pressed to find a cute goat. They are odd, odd animals. Most disturbing are the really tall kind that are the top milk producers. I can't remember their name but they didn't have ears. And I can't remember it that was because they were clipped or if they were born that way, but either way it was terribly unnatural. And their heads were very small for their bodies. They were far from the cute goats I was looking for.

Well, we didn't find them at the fair, but I did eventually find the cute goats. They're ours. And just between you and me, I am sure they look exactly like the ones we saw at the fair that day. Except these goats are our sweet Darcy and Precious. And we love them so much. They are probably our favorite farm animals, right up there with Velma and Vernon, our very first farm cats. Sheep are interesting and show very little personality it seems. But goats are just awesome.

I took this picture recently and when we came in I zoomed way in to discover that Darcy the Goat is in fact smiling for the camera. Come on! Not only do we think Darcy and Precious are darling, but we also find them to be quite photogenic. Plus,we are expecting baby goats sometime in February from both of them. Can you imagine the cuteness?!!

a pretty winter

These pictures were all taken last week. This week has been nice and balmy and a whole lot of our snow has melted. It feels better outside, but it's not nearly as beautiful. It's supposed to snow overnight, so we'll likely be coated in fresh white by morning.

This is Hattie's favorite place to be. She loves watching her brother and sister and yelling, "I-are! Eh-Eeh!" Also she can climb up onto anything now which makes life a little more intense. Thankfully she is proud and usually alerts me to her new position by clapping her hands and loudly announcing, "Ididit!" That's my cue to come from the other room to figure out where she is now precariously perched.

I've also figured out a good mom trick. Typically Ivar wants to stay inside and Elsie is up for going outside. But they both need some time outdoors so I have started telling them, "you just have to be outside for 10 minutes. I don't care if you stay in the warm room (heated a bit for the water spigot) in the barn and play with the cats the whole 10 minutes and then come back in." The mom trick is that the kids usually find something they're interested in like visiting the goats and sheep, riding their bikes in the barn, building baby snowmen, looking for possum prints or pulling each other in the sled. Those ten minutes never end up just ten minutes. But those ten minutes get them out the door.

Thankfully the ice didn't do any damage, so these pictures are still lovely to us. And the picture below is of a huge black walnut we had taken down because it creaked so badly. We were glad it came down on our time...look at how hollow that tree was!

And on a sad note, a coyote got into the chicken yard and ate one of our best layers! (Not Henny or Penny, Kathy!) Goldie (in the lower right) apparently didn't go back into the coop one night. We didn't see her but a coyote did. We've been hearing them each night and man coyote howls are ominous! The dog left tracks in the snow and some grey fur on the fence so we are pretty certain we know who to blame. But the very next day Rory put up an electrical mesh fence around the chicken fence, a motion-censored flood light and an animal cam. These chickens have never been so safe.

Other than that, January keeps marching along. I woke up with a terrible bout of Vertigo this morning. I am always so surprised when it hits because you never really plan it. It knocked me out a lot of the day, but finally this afternoon after a round of the awesome head exercises, I got everything set right in my inner-ear and life could carry on as usual. So I made spaghetti and cleaned the kitchen. And my "as usual" felt really good to do because I was healthy again. Funny how a sick body can throw everything back into perspective. There are so many things to be grateful for, especially a healthy body.

what our home school looks like

(Because I always try to be an honest blogger, I will tell you that I picked up the room a bit before I took these pictures...)

So beginning on a really practical level, I have a table set up in the living room with a stool on one side and two chairs on the other side. The table can be taken down over the weekend if we'd like. I have all of my teaching materials in the laundry room in a cabinet and bring a bin to the table each day with whatever books and supplies we will need. For now I love this set up. We don't have a natural room to house our homeschooling stuff, and I sort of refuse to turn one of our living rooms into a classroom...I think it has something to do with mixing work with home.  I love that I can pack up our school stuff and put it out of sight in the off time. I know this will change with more kids and more supplies in the coming years, but I hope to be strategic with built-ins and cabinets that we will likely add to the fireplace room. I want our stuff concealed so when we're not doing school it still feels like our home.

The greatest success of our first year of homeschooling has been Ivar's reading. Ivar was two months shy of age six when we started Teach you Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons and it fit him perfectly. He has taken to reading with ease and I think this is due to a number of factors but mainly because he was ready. I have a theory that teaching a kid to read is a lot like potty training. If you do it too early, the parent is going to end up frustrated, annoyed and forced to deal with a lot of drama. But if the child truly is ready, it will go smoothly. So I like that Ivar was almost a solid six before we began. I will likely wait to teach Elsie at the same age, unless she shows signs that she's really ready. (Again, so similar to potty training!

And here's the kicker: Teach your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons is AWESOME. I love this book so much. I looked at a few teach-your-child-to-read curriculums. Some were phonics based, some had cute music that explained the vowel sounds. Some were really colorful kits and exciting. But all of those were super expensive. For real I chose this curriculum because it was one book (requiring no extra supplies) for $19. The title seemed self explanatory enough and as I told Rory, "we'll know by Christmas if it's working. If it's not, we may need to lay down some money for one of those big curriculum sets." But here we are. Ivar is on lesson 76 and he is knocking our socks off.

The method is fascinating, if you're into this sort of thing. The lessons have their own orthography which means the letters look different, silent letters are written smaller, vowels that say their sound have a line over them.  There are clues added to the regular 26 letters to help a child learn to read. Throughout the book these clues are gradually eliminated, but Ivar has made these transitions without trial. Honestly, if you have a struggling reader, no matter if they are in public or private or home school, I'd try this method with them. It's a different approach, but amazing to watch unfold. And it truly takes 15-20 minutes a day (we don't do the handwriting). Amazing.

So that's reading. Math is pretty basic. I chose Ivar's math book because the whole book is in color and I know the boy loves a good worksheet. (And it came recommended.) It's the kindergarten book from the Critical Thinking Company and it lays the foundation for all sorts of math concepts. I use his workbook as my launching point for what I want to teach him and create math games to supplement his lesson. I like this book and will likely use it with Elsie. And, it was $40 for an entire year's worth of lessons. Elsie has gone through a number of math workbooks that I found at The Dollar Tree in September. They have a lot of number writing and counting and most importantly, stickers in the back to put on each completed page.

We've done a few unit studies on: Maps and Globes, Minnesota Geography, Birds and now we're onto Dinosaurs. The library helps supplement these lessons as well as a whole lot of coloring sheets. Ivar recently told me he would like more art projects, so I'm trying to do that as well. That's sort of my sweet spot so it shouldn't be hard to add more in the mix but it does take planning (and mess making)!

Rory and I take turns with bedtime and when it's my night I read from a few different Children's Bibles. But when it's Rory's night, he reads from his own adult Bible one chapter a night. It is amazing to hear the kids' questions and to hear his explanations to their questions. I would have thought they were much too young for the actual Bible, but they are definitely not. I am amazed and the conversations I hear coming out of that room at bedtime. We also have had our kids memorize Psalm 1, Psalm 100 and are just beginning Isaiah 55:8-13. This is done in the morning and evening.

Then we read a chapter book together. We are nearly through the Little House series and the kids love it. A few friends mentioned they wish they had kept a running list of the read alouds they had done with their kids through graduation so I am going to try to share our list on this blog as we go. We have read a few others besides Little House as well. I recently discovered the podcast Read Aloud Revival (you can listen right on the website, and it's not just for home educators...it's for all parents!) and it has been such a joy to me and renewed my enthusiasm for bedtime reading. I used to dread reading aloud at bedtime to the kids because I was so tired myself. But I just started moving their bedtime up earlier so I could still be "done" at the same time, and I sincerely love this time together. It's fun to see the shift in my own heart. Plus, the books we are reading are ones that I am eager to pick up again too.

Other than that, the kids have gym and we still do play dates. We frequent the library and more than anything, they play. And that's maybe the very most important thing happening in this house this year. My kids LOVE to play with each other. The sibling bonding I have seen this year is incredible...it amazes me to think Ivar would be gone from 8:30-4 each day if he wasn't home with us. I truly cannot imagine it. That is so much family time for us, and I love watching him take care of Hattie and be a friend to Elsie. It's a joy and a gift and again, one of the most important things happening in this house each day. They play so hard and it's very gratifying to see.

So that's our basic day in a nutshell, halfway through year one. If you've ever contemplated home schooling, I highly recommend the Minnesota Association of Christian Homeschool Association (MACHE) conference held in April at the Excel Energy Center. (Thursday is a day for first time or wondering about homeschooling parents). Our first year I thought I would see a lot of long skirts and doily headpieces (I had my own stigmas to overcome!) but when we walked in, we saw a whole lot of typical mom's and dad's. Lots of Merona cardigans and jeans. My kind of people. :)

power balls

Have you made these yet? The actual recipe I found was called Trail Blazer Bites, but we have renamed them Power Balls. And contrary to the enormous picture above, they are actually just the size of a one inch cookie scoop. I love having these on hand...they're sort of a mini Lara bar and perfect when you want something sweet.

Power Balls
1/2 cup almonds
2 T. roasted flax seed
1 cup pitted dates
1/3 cup peanut butter
1/2 cup rolled oats

Put everything in the food processor and pulse until all mixed together. In the batch pictured above I tried using less dates but they were sort of dry and I think deserve the full cup. And some recipes call for 1/3 cup mini chocolate chips which would be awesome but they're great without.

The kids love these which is awesome because they think they are cookies. So we limit two a day for everyone and still they don't last very long...

grateful for good people

When Hattie was born she was given an extra measure of joy. I am certain of it. We love that her name is Hattie Joy because she lives into her name. I told Rory recently that she's like joy incarnate. She brightens up our house and lights up our family.

Hattie was born with craniosynostosis. It means a few of  the sutures (the joints between the bones of a baby's skull) fused prematurely. So far there have been no side effects of this premature fusing, but we are being seen on a steady rotation by a few different doctors at Gillette Children's Hospital who are all keeping a close eye on her cranium and making sure it grows at pace with her brain. We love our doctors are feel grateful to have such good care.

The first time we brought her to Gillette's Rory and I got sandwiches in the skyway after all of her appointments and Rory said to me, "aren't you just so grateful that a place like this exists?" A children's hospital is a powerful reminder of the gift of health and the road that some must walk down, though they would never choose that road if they could avoid it. And yet, there is this building packed full of qualified, gifted, world-renowned doctors and nurses ready to care for each kid who comes through the door.

Yesterday our craniofacial doctor said that he wanted us to meet the pediatric orthodontist for an introduction. He explained how incredible this doctor is, the top in her field, recognized around the world for what she has contributed to pediatric oral care. So we walked to that part of the hospital and sat in a dental chair waiting for her to arrive. I think because of his glowing review I was expecting a woman with a cape to descend from the ceiling. But instead this very normal looking woman, a woman who looked like she could be any of my friend's mom, walked in and introduced herself kindly as the doctor we were to meet. I was so caught off guard...surely I've stood behind her at Cub Foods. Maybe she even went to my church once. She just looked so...normal.

Driving home we were stuck in traffic and I looked in the other cars and wondered what job they were coming home from. I knew the doctors and nurses we had just seen were likely in their cars, driving back to their families, their normal lives. But in that hospital they are positively heroes, and I just feel so grateful for each one of them.  I want to say, "thank you for getting yourself through med school, and then choosing pediatric neurosurgery as your emphasis. Thanks for taking it so seriously that we get to come to you for care." I can't explain the overwhelming gratitude I feel when we are there.

I watched people in each car, driving home after whatever job they just came from and I said to Rory, "You know, there are two stories to be told each day. There is one story that is trying to tell us that we all at odds with each other, that at any given moment someone is ready to go toe to toe for our differing beliefs. That story feeds on hate and a few crazies in the mix. But there is another story like the one we just experienced at the hospital where it feels like everyone is for us. And we're for them. And I don't care a lick who they voted for and they don't care who I voted for. We're just good people trying to do good in the world. And you know, that story is likely the story we each could tell 95% of the time, with a crabby clerk or jerk thrown in the mix every few months or so. But majority of the time there is good. And it's such a better story to tell."

I believe that. I think we're fed many storylines in America that promote and encourage division and disgust with the other. But when we're actually working side by side with "the other" it turns out we can get along just fine. Most people are for me. I'm for most people. I think most of us are.

Just remember that while reading news feeds and listening to headlines. There definitely are wackos out there. But try to remember that there are way more wonderfuls.