Friday, February 27, 2009

Mrs. E, Wrist Cyst, Mother Teresa, Mills

Oh!.....Oh dear. Whose child is this? Poor lad. No hope...no hope.
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"Mrs. E."

Oh wow! That explains A LOT.

"We're a homeschool family! dah-da-de-dum (snap-snap)"
(Sung to the Adam's Family song) - funny video

//////Wrist Cyst//////

Tyra went in for surgery to remove her cyst upon her wrist....something which she was quite excited to be rid of.

It wasn't all quite exciting though. She was a tad nervous but was well taken care of.

She did well, the cyst is now gone and she is now recovering. Yaaay Tyra! It's gone! It's really gone!


//////Books//////


We have been sick the last few weeks (which is an understatement, really) and so have done close to nothing but trying to recover.
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But! we did read one great book - it's a book about Mother Teresa's life. What a wonderful woman.
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I could feel Tyra and Ethan makes leaps and bounds in the things they came to understand about how we should treat one another and what's really important in life.
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One comment Tyra made was, "She reminds me a lot of Jesus." And so I ask, " Should we all be like that?" And her little heart thought only for a moment and clearly answered a simple but profound, "yes."
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Ethan is SO disgusted by even the mention of "bones" or "blood" and so I was glad that he could gain a new perspective on the human body as we read this book - that we can become grotesquely diseased, malformed, even to the point of having rotting sores but should that turn us away from caring for one another? Mother Teresa never turned anyone away and took care of everyone with a genuine heartfelt love and concern....maybe we should be the same way.
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One man was embarrassed by his sores and said, "Sister, how is it that you can stand the smell of my sores?" and, without lying, she said, " You're sores do smell but how can I care about that when I know what kind of pain you must be in?"
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Beautiful just beautiful.
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Ya know, that's exactly one significant reason why we home school - I want to expose them to the beautiful things of this world. There's enough junk they do (and will) naturally see as they wander the world, as we discuss recent news, as they meet more people, even as we read about certain characters and scenarios in scriptures and other books. But for right now, during their young years, I want them to learn from the beautiful, the moving, the life changing truths, discoveries, and people that have existed and do exist on this world today.
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Life is about taking the great and beautiful things of this world and making it a part of who you are now and who you will be forever.
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I don't expect my kids to turn out perfect. But at the end of it all, as most mothers do, I want to know that I did what the Lord wanted me to do for them. I gave them what He wanted me to give them. And I exposed them to the things He wanted me to expose them to - to help them remain true to who they were before they came to earth so the Lord can use those talents and interests of these little individuals at this present time, in this world's present conditions, to help the Lord's work to progress.
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//////Millie//////

I always seem to post another completely adorable photo of Millie at the end of these blogs but, I post this one for two reasons.
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A) She looks 100% better after being sick for 3 weeks!!!! And am so happy to see her happy again.
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B) It's sunny outside and fairly warm(er).
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We love seeing the first signs of spring. There's so much natural excitement in a child's heart as they see the first bee of the year or the first green tuft of grass poking up out of the dirt.
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Children come alive with nature. And, after being sick for so long, it's just plain good to be alive! :)

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Thursday, February 12, 2009

Memorization, Fave Book, 9 principles, Play Dough. Sting Rays, Trains, Other

:::::Glenn Beck's 9 Principles:::::

The kids and I discussed Glenn's 9 principles and whether we agreed with them or not. After discussing and agreeing with each principle we took pictures of ourselves and sent them to the e-mail address Glenn gave out for this occasion. See my face? Major TMJ day....the kids look lively and refreshed though.


Being inspired by the book Laddie and their way of living we have begun to add a few things to our daily "learning". We discuss current news events. This last week or so we discussed the speech/article "The Action Americans Need" written by Obama himself and we discussed the article, "Grocery Stores Fight Back Against Food Prices". I receive these articles from http://www.izzit.org/.

:::::Audio Books:::::

We like to listen to audio books and the kids enjoy themselves as they play with play dough or do other "quiet" activities while the book plays.
We were listening to Fantastic Mr. Fox by Roald Dahl here.

Even Millie played with the dough the whole hour and a half.

:::::Treasure Map:::::


Our favorite library find was The Greatest Power. We read aloud The Tiger Rising and really enjoyed it, I've been reading Julie of the Wolves with Tyra. Ethan has been listening to The Castle in the Attic, Tyra listened to Wonderful Alexander and the Catwings, and our current night-time real aloud is The Giver - I've enjoyed the thought provoking discussions its stimulated.


We found a treasure in our house about a week ago thanks to "this here" treasure map. Ethan was cleaning up an area I had asked him to clean up when, all of a sudden, he came rushing over with an old leathery treasure map in his hands. We all gathered round and followed it's clues to the treasure which happened to be the greatest treasure of all - books!

There were three to be exact and each book had a piece of old leathery material within it containing one of the kids' initials on it. Julie of the Wolves went to Tyra, Tiger Rising went to Ethan and a train book went to Cedric.

What a smart pirate! ... Now, if only the kids could find this mysterious pirate - they've been looking long and hard - many times they've even claimed to see him!

:::::Orem Library::::::
We love the Orem Library. They have so many neat events there every month. Most recently we listened to the New York Symphony Soloists perform - they performed music for one of Babar the elephants stories - it really made it come to life. Ethan especially enjoyed it.

They even answered lots of questions and told about themselves and how they came to play the instrument they play....it's interesting most of them began playing a completely different instrument but eventually were led to the instrument they now play professionally.


Ethan now wants to play the piccolo - yikes! And I want to get my fingers on a cello all the more - sigh! Before they played the music to the Babar story they played music from Mozart, Vivaldi and someone else....it was so beautiful.

:::::Living Planet Aquarium:::::








We made a trip to the Living Planet Aquarium (half off on thr first Monday of the month!!!) and enjoyed the colorful assortment of fish.





Tyra and Ethan tried to touch the sting ray's but didn't quite dare - the water wasn't quite shallow enough for their short arms to reach in very far anyway.






::::::Train Show:::::



The train show at Thanksgiving Point was quite a treat (for all the kids) but mostly for little Reeky.

The contents in this picture were Cedric's dream come true - Disney's Cars and trains, oh my!




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Ethan was being so cute with Cedric - showing him around and lifting him up so he could see the trains sets a little better.



:::::Just Cuz::::: She is such a shweetie! Squoosh the cheeks - squoosh the cheeks! Still teething though :( - darn those molars, come through already!