Advent Planning Updated!

Advent is a little over a week away.  I am busy pouring over all my resource books, like A Year With God, to find just what I want to do with our family this year to enrich the season.  Here are just a few of our favorites.

Advent candle--have to look for an evening prayer to go with this.
Jesse Tree--Several years back, several home school families got together and made ornaments.  One mom provided a list with the scripture for each day and a suggested ornament theme.  Each family chose the day, or days, and made 20+ ornaments of all the same kind.  It was so much easier to make 20 of the same as opposed to one for each day on your own.  If you ever have a chance to do a co-op project like this, DO IT!!  I love all of our ornaments.  Each family used a different medium:  glass, clay, cardboard, wood, cloth, you get the picture.  I will attempt to post pics as we go through Advent.

Advent calendars--Yes, I buy each child one of those silly, chocolate filled calendars you can buy anywhere for a buck.  They love 'em.  I also have a window cling tree that gets an ornament each day of December through the 25th.  Then, I have this one which has magnets you attach to the magnetic back with all the nativity people and animals.  I admit, I also fill each day with candy.  The children rotate days, so every 6th day, you get the candy and hang the magnet.
Reading--Christmas Mosaic by Cay Gibson  I discovered this jam-packed gem a few years back and love it!  I dig into all her suggestions and start putting holds on all the books at my library.

There are also so many beautiful feast days sprinkled throughout the month of December:  St. Nicholas, the Feast of the Immaculate Conception, St. Juan Diego, Our Lady of Guadalupe, St. Lucy and so many more.  Not to mention our first baby surprised us 5 weeks early on December 14.  He was an early Christmas present that year!  Now he will be turning 15!

I love Advent, and I try to make it an exciting time for my children.  Teaching them to focus on our newborn Savior, as opposed to our shopping obsessed culture, I believe, will benefit my children for years to come.

November Gratitude pt 3

Oh my, I am really bad at this, aren't I???  :)  Now I have another whole week to post.

Day 9:  Beautiful, blustery, blowing snow!  My littles were SO excited!
Day 10:  Had a bunch of errands to do and Jake, (my almost 15 yr old son) volunteered to come with and stay in the van with the 3 little boys!
Day 11:  My girls had their groups:  Lizzie had All Things Girl, Susanna and Abbie had Little Flowers.  I got to sit and chat with some of the moms. 
Day 12:  Jake was able to buy his very own Xbox 360 with his very own money.  Happy boy :)
Day 13:  Mass at 7:30 am with Lizzie and Alex.
Day 14:  No out of the house activities--get to stay home with my kiddies--big and small.  I love that.
Day 15:  Read a pile of train books to my 2 little guys, Matt and Jason, quite early in the morning.  Nice and quiet for once.
Day 16:  My oldest and dearest friend took me out to lunch for my upcoming birthday.  She is so good to me.
Day 17:  Yet another great religion discussion with Jake.  His chapter was on Christ's kingship, very ironic, considering it will be the Feast of Christ the King on Sunday.  I learned a lot right along with him.  Praise God!!

"Behold, you will conceive in your womb and bear a son, and you will name him Jesus. He will be great and will be called Son of the Most High, and the Lord God will give him the throne of David his father."  Luke 1:31-32

Blessings.

November Gratitude part 2

Here it is, 3 days later and I must play catch-up again!
Honestly, I have so many things to be grateful for, it is difficult just choosing 1!!  So please, be patient with me if I list more than 1.
Day 6:  Shopping with 2 of my girls.  Successful trip for one girl and we didn't spend much!  (my #2 for that day is the Packers winning their 8th straight game this season!  I do love football)
Day 7:  Spending an hour and a half discussing his religion class with my almost 15 year old son, Jake.  What could be more meaningful to a homeschooling mom??  "Nothing gives me greater joy than to hear that my children are walking in the truth."  3 John 1:4
Day 8:  Zoo class today.  The kids are really looking forward to it and I am glad I finally signed them up!  AND, my little baby, Alex, is 7 months today.  What a happy little guy he is.  Such a blessing and a joy.
"We always give thanks to God, the Father of our Lord, Jesus Christ."  Col 1:3

God bless!

November gratitude journal

I realize November started a few days back, but I think I can do a quick catch-up of some things I am grateful for!
Day 1:  Mass at 8 am with my family.  Yep, 8 am, 7 kids 2 adults.  WOW!
Day 2: Friends who offer to feed my kids dinner and then drive them to their youth group rosary prayer group.  Without the generosity of others, I don't think my 2 older kids would make it to this.  And we know how important it is.
Day 3:  Saint painting wooden peg people.  I have wanted to do this for a long time and now a new family in our Little Flowers group hosted a get together in her home.  How fun!!  2 of my girls and I painted St. Therese, St. Patrick, St. Francis of Assisi, St. Elizabeth Ann Seton, St. Matthias, and St. Agnes.  They turned out so cute.  I will be running out to buy our own supplies!!! :)
Day 4:  Our oldest son is in a Catholic youth group.  We had 2 extra teen boys for dinner, then my husband drove them and 4 other teens to their youth meeting.  What a fun, safe environment for these teens on a Friday night.  God has blessed us.
Day 5:  My two little boys (aged 4 and 2) had been playing quietly on the floor with their wooden train set.  So much fun!!!

Well, hopefully I will be able to keep this journal up.  It's not difficult to count the blessings, but having time to write them down!!!!

God bless.

Learning to Read

So far in my homeschooling journey, I have successfully taught 3 children to read. I realize that compared to most "teachers" that this not a very high number considering they usually teach 20 or so kids to read at one time, but as a mom I feel a little proud of this accomplishment. I am now teaching my 4th child to read. She is doing fairly well and is enjoying Catholic Heritage Curricula's "Little Stories for Little Folks" so much. She really feels as if she has accomplished something when she has successfully completed one of her "little pink books" as we call them around here! She loves reading about Nan, Ann, Tom and Pat and their adventures, and sometimes, misadventures!


I don't think I will ever switch to another phonics program to teach any of the rest of my children to read. "Little Stories for Little Folks" is just a perfect fit for our homeschool and for my children.

Faith & Family Live! : 40 Days, Again

I am trying for the first time to follow Faith and Family's suggestion of packing up 40 bags of "stuff" from around the house during the 40 days of Lent. Being 8 months pregnant, makes it a lot easier. WHY???? #1 A new person will be moving into our house soon and it would be nice to have a space to put him/her!! #2 With 6 kids we have a lot of stuff that we really don't need. #3 Mama nesting has kicked in. Why God has allowed us (ok, some of us) to remain lazy during the first 8 months of pregnancy and not do this necessary cleaning, I will never understand. So, yes, my nesting instinct has kicked in and given me motivation, although my mobility is practically zip!!! Praying you are all having a successful and purging Lenten season!!!!

Faith & Family Live! : 40 Days, Again

For his Godmother

2 months to go!!

I realize I am never going to be a professional blogger. It has been several months since my first (and last) post!! I have so many things I would just LOVE to post about. My life, of course. My wonderful, amazing, sometimes frustrating life. But it gets in the way of me having time to actually sit down and type something out that anyone would consider an interesting read.
I have 6 children so far. In two months, we will add another to that. How exciting, hey?? We do not know the gender of this baby. We have always waited until the birth to find out. So few surprises in this life we have. I homeschool my children. Our oldest will be a freshman in high school in the fall of 2011. We are busy making a lot of plans, curriculum-wise for him here. Next I have a 6th, 4th, and Kindergartner. Schooling them all and chasing a 3 1/2 yr old and almost 2 yr old takes up most of my time.
I will try in the future to keep up with this blog. Thanks to any who actually 'tune in' on a regular basis and find nothing!