Wordless Wednesday’s

Monday Musings for 1/21/2019

So over this past weekend, my husband has spent a large portion of his time rearranging our living room and trying to get things better organized.  With three days of our week devoted to music, this means we have a lot of instruments in our home.  We need a place to keep them as well as places to practice.  Since there are 6 of us who play instruments and four of us play more than one, there are quite a few instruments in our home.  So watch for me to be sharing how the living room looks once we get everything situated the way we want them to be.

Also we are just really getting back into our homeschool routine, which means either my children or I want to change some things up.  For our sixteen-year-old daughter, we are going to be adding French, which we found on the Schoolhouseteachers.com website.  I love the ease I am able to find what I am looking for on this site.  If you want to read a review I wrote for Schoolhouseteachers back in January of 2017, click here.  This site provides everything a homeschooling family could need or want.  Be watching in the next few weeks because I will be sharing when the Home School Review Crew goes live with the reviews of this program for this year.

And speaking of the Home School Review Crew, I am pleased to say I will be participating on the Home School Review Crew again this year.  So be watching for upcoming reviews.

So what is going on in your world today?  I would love to hear from you.

Tasty Tuesday – August 28, 2018

Today for dinner we had steaks cooked on the grill, carrots, wild rice and grilled pita breads.

Another meal we had was homemade Alfredo sauce over pasta.

Stay tuned for upcoming reviews for Grammar Planet and Roman Roads Media.

Thoughts for Tuesday, June 26, 2018

Last week our oldest son completed his Certified Nursing Assistant training on Friday. Now all he needs to do is pass his state certification exam. But in the meantime, he had orientation on Friday and starts working on Saturday.

Last week our youngest son helped with Vacation Bible School. So my primary role last week was that of driver.

 

So what has been going on in your world?  I would love to hear from you.

 

Tasty Tuesdays – Mother’s Day Edition

Sunday we had a Mother’s Day feast. It included ribeye steaks, Shrimp-kebobs, grilled vegetables, salad, watermelon, and pineapple along with wild rice.  Because it was Mother’s Day, my children and husband did most of the work.  Here are some pictures

 

And here are some of us actually at the table.  For what it is worth, I prefer to be the one behind the lens.

This past week saw our refrigerator stop working, so we have been working on solving that problem.  This week finds us having our end of the year band concert this coming Saturday so we are n heavy preparations for that.  Then on Sunday, our church is having a graduation picnic, and our second son will be recognized for that.  So stay tuned next week for part 2 of our Homeschool Diploma post.

So what is going on in your world this week?  I would love to hear from you.

If you want to read what other members of the Home School Review Crew are up to, click here or on the graphic below.

Monday Musings for May 7, 2018l

So last week was an interesting week, to say the least.  During the week our air conditioner for our house twice.  The first time, the company came out and replaced a capacitor and it seemed to fix the problem on Monday.  By about 3:00 pm on Tuesday afternoon, the unit stopped working in the exact same way again.  So the company had to come back out on Wednesday to fix it again.  This time they replaced the motor in the outside unit.

Because we live in southeastern Texas, not having an air conditioner is a major issue.  It is not something we want to have any time in the near future.  Fortunately, since they came out the second time, it seems to be working fine.

This past weekend was also the weekend my husband had to take his annual physical fitness test for the army reserves.  He passed with no problems, I am glad to report.

It was also the week we received our books from Memoria Press.  We planned on starting them the day after we received the books, but life happened with the air conditioner.  When it is hot and humid, schoolwork tends to be a lower priority than staying cool.  So this week we will be diving into the course full-force.

We also received from Silverdale Press a course that our 17-year-old son and I will be doing together for another review for the Home School Review Crew.

So how are things where you are? I would love to hear from you.

if you would like to check out what other members of the Home School Review Crew are writing about this week click here or on the graphic below.

Weekly Wrap-Up

So two weeks ago at church, our pastor talked about the story of Jacob and Esau and the “red pottage”.  Esau had come in from the fields and was famished so he asked Jacob to share the food Jacob had prepared.  In exchange, Jacob asked for the birthright.  Our pastor referred to the “pottage” as “red stuff”.  Then it transferred into a discussion of the “red stuff” actually being red lentils.

So this past Saturday when our family went grocery shopping last Saturday, while we were in Sprouts we found the “red stuff” – as in red lentils.  So this week we fixed them for dinner.  Here are two pictures – one of us cooking the lentils and one from when they were finished cooking.

This was also the week we reviewed HelpTeaching.com’s Help Teaching Pro and you can read that review here.

Also, we discussed selections for another upcoming review from Memoria Press to determine which one our 15-year-old daughter would want to do.  The choices were either Logic or a composition course on Aesop’s Fables.  After reading the descriptions of the two courses and then looking at the sample pages for the logic course, our daughter decided she preferred the course on Aesop’s Fables – so we will see whether we get selected for that product or not.

So what is going on in your life? I would love to hear from you.

Thoughts for Tuesday

So this past weekend we had a four day weekend.  Friday, my husband spent putting up about 38 quarts of potatoes. Then Saturday morning, our oldest son, our youngest son, my husband and I had choir practice for our Easter cantata.  Then Sunday we attended church which included our Easter cantata.  Then we came home and had a friend over for Easter dinner. Here are some pictures of our dinner.

We ate collard greens with ham, Black-eyed peas with ham, macaroni salad, deviled eggs and a fruit salad.

For the fruit salad, I combined blueberries, apple pears from Costco, pears from our Bountiful Baskets order, apples, and oranges, kiwi fruit. I mixed the fruit with some sugar and pure vanilla extract. It was delicious.

So what have you been cooking? I would love to hear from you. If you would like to check out what other members of the Home School Review Crew are up to, click here or on the graphic below.

Review of Parenting Made Practical’s Taming the Lecture Bug and Getting Your Kids to Think Book and Video.

 

My husband and I currently have a 15-year-old daughter, a 17-year-old son, a 19-year-old son and a twenty-one-year-old son who all live at home.  While I hate to admit it, I am guilty of lecturing our children.  As a parent, it is easy to get caught up in emotion and lecture our children.  The act of lecturing causes everyone to often lose their temper and results in no real change in attitude or action.  We, as parents, fail to reach our children and our children do not actually listen.  That is why I was so glad we received the opportunity to review products from Parenting Made Practical.  We reviewed the book and DVD of Taming the Lecture Bug and Getting Your Kids to Think and now I want to check out the DVD Navigating the Rapids of Parenting.  Parenting Made Practical offers a lot of great information and resources for raising children who love the Lord and behave responsibly.

According to their website, Joey and Carla Link have been serving families for over twenty years.  Joey Link served on pastoral staffs for over sixteen years in youth and family ministries before becoming Director of FamilyLife Resources, a non-profit ministry where he has served since 1994.  His wife, Carla Link, has a degree in social work.  They are the parents of three adult children and also have four grandchildren.  So they have a wealth of first-hand knowledge of parenting.

Each chapter in the book Taming the Lecture Bug and Getting Your Kids to Think contains real-life experiences of either the Links or other families, tips for dealing with children of various ages, as well as Scriptural references.  I like how the chapters are broken down into pieces that are easy to read and to follow.  At the end of each chapter, there is a letter from people who have successfully navigated parenting issues.

The main premise of this book is rather than lecturing/losing tempers when you are angry, you wait until you are cooled off to reasonably deal with the issue.  Using a series of questions, parents can get to the root of the actual sin that is causing the problem(s).  The Links stress the importance of being proactive rather than reactive.  As I was reading this book, I found many situations I could relate to and loved the ideas and verses used.

 

The DVD is available as either a physical DVD or a digital download.  We received the digital download.  It runs for approximately fifty-four minutes.  The printable outline may be downloaded from the Parenting Made Practical website.  It allows the viewer to follow along with the presentation and have a tangible resource to refer back to later.  I love how the DVD gives a visual representation of a situation which may happen in real- life showing how it could go either badly or much better.

 

Both the book and the DVD may be used alone, however, I truly believe they work best in tandem.  I am planning on looking at and buying more of their products such as –
    Navigating the Rapids of Parenting (Video) (for parents of kids from age 2 through college);   Dating, Courting & Choosing a Mate… What Works? (Video) (for parents of kids ages 9-college) ; as well as   What Every Child Should Know Along the Way (book) (preschool to college).

You can find Parenting Made Practical on social media at:

• Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/ParentingMadePractical/
• Twitter:  https://twitter.com/ParentingMP    Tag:   @ParentingMP
• Pinterest: https://www.pinterest.com.au/parentingmadepractical/

 

I definitely recommend you check Parenting Made Practical‘s resources out for yourself.  If you would like to read more reviews of Taming the Lecture Bug and Getting Your Kids to Think or some of the other resources offered by the Links, click here or on the graphic below.

 

 

Tasty Tuesday – Fat Tuesday

Today is Fat Tuesday – the Tuesday before Ash Wednesday. Even though our family is not Catholic, we typically partake of a Fat Tuesday meal of pancakes.

The overwhelming favorite part of this meal was the bacon, which we cooked a new way today.  I placed tin foil on a cookie sheet with the sides turned up slightly around the edges.  Then I placed the bacon on the sheet and preheated the oven the 425 degrees (our oven tends to run slightly cooler than most – so we typically bump it 25 degrees.  We let it cook around 15 minutes.  However, it just did not seem to be cooking right.  So we switched the settings to the broiler and moved the cookie sheet closer to the broiler and let it cook around 10 more minutes or so.  The bacon was ready the same time the meal was.  It was so good to everyone in the family.  Many were wanting more.

So what have you been eating that has been really good at your house?  I would love to hear from you!

SaveSave