Merry Christmas

Jesus didn't come to brighten our Decembers, but to transform our lives. ~Rich Mullins

We have had fabulous Christmas celebrations with family and friends and the celebrating will continue well past the New Year as we welcome 2012 with the Gray side family visit. But here are some of our highlights of Christmas 2011.

Holiday Nights at Greenfield Village

Em and Zeke enjoy the skating rink
A break from the freezing cold.

Em and Marilyn

Eli and Abby help out the carolers

Santa sighting!
Watching the model trains
And a free carousel ride!

Christmas Morning:

We had to wake Eli up!
Cinnamon Rolls

Micah's own sled!

And LEGOs!

Favorite game from Great-Grandma

The Andrews girls!
Things like this is why she may have a broken arm! (Yes, she is sliding down the stairs with Micah's new sled!)

Getting ready to play Apples to Apples, Jr., another favorite game from grandma!

Cousin Julian visiting for the holidays from New York

Eli's new best friend!

Christmas in New Hampshire

We have taken an extra week off of school this year to spend time with Emily's family out in New Hampshire...We had an awesome time skiing in Jay, Vermont and then at Loon Mountain in the White Mountains of New Hampshire, drinking hot chocolate, hanging out with cousin Skyler, getting feathers in our hair, getting spoiled by grandma, playing with Razzle (grandma and grandpa's Cairn Terrier), and making ornaments.

And we thought we'd really end this vacation with a bang....I mean...a fracture...buckle fracture to be exact.

The first broken bone in the Gray family. No one was very surprised that it was with Abby! Note to self: sending kids out to play in tree house during freezing rain is NOT a good idea!

We had a wonderful visit and will miss everyone so much! Thanks for all the great times! Love you all! Merry Christmas!

Happy Thanksgiving...

The bellies are full,

The dishes are done,

I just want to say thank you

To everyone!!!

We're Back!

We have now had our internet up and running since about July! I am finally feeling like I can possibly do a blog post once in a while again! The school year started with a flurry of activity, as usual! We are in the midst of soccer mania, mosaics, togas, multiplication, co-op classes, and a pole barn remodeling project! Whew! Never a dull moment here. I am really enjoying Rome to the Reformation so far with My Father's World. We spent a couple weeks at the end of August finishing up our Greek history from Creation to the Greeks. So, everything was fresh in our minds when we started in with Rome this fall.

In Holly, Michigan, they hold a Renaissance festival every year for a few months. Although we are not there yet in history, my friend invited us to go along with them back in September and it was fun! People are totally in character wherever you go. We got to see a jousting tournament :)

The kids did really cute mosaics a couple of months ago; Zeke's was pictured above and this is Abby's more modern take on a mosaic. I love it!

We

Just Dropping By

Just sitting here at Abby's gymnastics borrowing air time from Jungle Jave :) AH, internet! We borrowed a "hot spot" from Verizon for a few days and, while it was quite slow, it was better than not having internet at all! But, it seems that Comcast has said "YES"!!!! We can have internet...now, all we need to do is trench...perhaps a few more weeks!!

What's been happening....

We have slowly been getting more and more settled in our new house. I am the slowest at this transition. I often get very upset all of a sudden at the remaining piles of boxes in a few corners of the house, cry at the shower curtain lying on the ground waiting to be hung, look at the new landscaping that needs weeding, trimming, mulching and turn my back quickly to it! I'm sure I'll be much better off in another year!!!

We have had lots of fun raising tadpoles straight from the eggs we found in our pond a few weeks ago! We will only have 3 weeks of our CtoG curriculum we won't make it to this year ( I agree with my friend Lisa--the history has been lacking in this curriculum since we finished up Egypt--we still haven't made it to Babylon yet!!! I guess that is the price to reading so much of the Bible in chronological order with young students...). We are in the midst of soccer, soccer, and more soccer! We enjoyed another Wild Swan production today--Treasure Island. Without TV, the kids are reading, reading and reading! Although, I'm not too crazy about these American Chiller books they have discovered and like reading...I have been planning which workshops to attend at the INCH conference this year, planning my two co-op classes for next fall, correcting lots of school work, folding and putting away LOTS of laundry...

I'll stop by all of your blogs to get a quick update from you!

Till next time I get air time :)

Temporarily Done Blogging....

I am sorry to have to do this (for myself and my mom, mostly), but I have to stop blogging until we can get internet access at our new house, or until I can set up a regular "internet time" at the library, coffee shop, or Steve's office. So, I may post once in awhile, but nothing regular. When we do finally get internet service (we are s.l.o.w.l.y. working with ComCast on this), I will re-open my blog. And I am thinking of doing two blogs, one for just My Father's World following and homeshooling; and then one for more personal family pictures and postings. I love following fellow My Father's World bloggers, and don't want to bother people with too personal of postings...and vice-versa...if you are not into following my home schooling adventures, you won't have to! We will see when this all actually happens! I will try to get the blogs I follow to post on my phone, so I can keep up with you...I really enjoy reading about others' homeschooling days and adventures (especially if you are using MFW)! Thanks for reading. Bye for now and I hope I'll be back by next fall!!! The Happy Molars By the way, we are mostly settled in our house now...the first week was very hard! Our school room is up and running. I am feeling more at home everyday, and I am getting us back on our normal schedule. We've had such a busy month (moving, getting our old house cleaned and painted and on the market, end of co-op performances, 3 spring soccer schedules starting, a surprise party for my dad)...I'm looking forward to things settling down in May/June. We all know how that goes, though :)

I, Nebuchadnezzar, was at home in my palace, contented and prosperous.

I am in week 4 of our Beth Moore study: Daniel, Lives of Integrity, Words of Prophecy. I love it! I have been rather distracted from all our house stuff, so haven't really taken the time to fully emotionally engage in some of the days homework, but today I got to since the kids were gone to my mother in law's! In our Esther study last year, and now again in this Daniel study, I am relating more to the antagonist of the story than the hero :) The above verse really struck me since I have been so consumed with house stuff. I have been praying that the Lord would protect Steve and I from finding our contentment and security from this new house and that we would always find our peace in Him alone. As Beth Moore said on last week's video, it is better to learn this lesson "from the page" than going through anything remotely like what King Nebuchadnezzer went through to bring him to his knees! But how awesome it is to see that the Most High God granted King Neb the stump of the tree and its roots to stay in the ground so that he could finally give glory and praise to the ruler of Heaven and earth!

Weekly School Review

Amidst the moving craziness, we were able to have a pretty full week of school. We had fun dissecting owl pellets on Monday! "This is really fun, and I thought it was going to be boring," Zeke said. They loved finding the skulls in the pellets. Abby even found a bird skull! This activity is definitely not for the faint of heart. There was a slight odor to the pellets...and Abby even started having allergies to the fur in the pellets! But, Micah could participate, which he always appreciates and Eli was very festidious about cleaning off the bones!

On Tuesday, we had our co-op. I co-teach a "Michigan, My Michigan" class and got to put this lighthouse craft together for this week. The kids really liked it; even the two boys in our class who never want to do the craft participated in this one with no complaining :) We have learned that the kids really like playing games too--they stay much more engaged! Bingo, Jeapordy, and I am going to try Hang-Man next week!

Wednesday and Thursday we completed our schoolwork early for the Happy Molar household--by 1pm! The kids have done a good job working hard all morning so we can have time to run to the house or run errands for the house in the afternoon. Abby got to have a play date on Wednesday afternoon, and my MIL took the kids Thursday afternoon overnight! What a blessing! Steve and I spent 2 hours at the lighting store, had a nice dinner out and I got to attend a jazzercize class in the morning instead of at 7pm at night! I sent their English, math, bird lapbooks, Bible assignment and read-aloud along and my MIL was able to complete all the school work we had for Friday! She's a pro!

My mom is coming for a visit this week, so we will be taking the next 2 weeks of school off for her visit and our big move! And the next time I post a review, it will be from our new school room!

The half-move!

It has been quite the whirlwind in the Happy Molar world! On March 2nd, we closed on our new house--hurray! We are still just blown away that this is happening! On March 3rd, the painters moved in and we moved half of our "stuff" into the garage. We are waiting for the painting to be done, appliances to arrive (next week!), and new carpet (2 weeks) before we make the last big move. We have been busy buying light fixtures (A LOT of them!!!) and taking trips to the house once in awhile to answer a painting question, unload a mini-van full of boxes...

I will post some before and after pictures of the paint soon !

Non-school Review

It was OK to play in the middle of the road today!
Is it spring yet?

This past week has been very...random...to say the least! Our co-op was cancelled on Tuesday because of the big snow we had on Sunday night, which gave me the time I needed to get our grocery shopping done for the week. Looking back, perhaps I should have done school that day! But we really did need groceries...I was scrounging for meals by then anyway! Then Wednesday morning we took Steve to the bus stop to catch his Mega-bus to Chicago (which he learned never to take again...). That made us start school a few hours late on Wednesday morning. Then on Thursday, Abby woke up with her 3rd fever in 9 days...she'd have a fever for a couple days, then it would disappear, only to reappear a few days later. That same morning Zeke woke up really complaining of a sore throat and when I looked in his throat, I saw some white spots. They were in no shape for school (and I rarely hand out sick days). We got into the doctor's office that evening and those two tested positive for strep. That evening, my mother-in-law spent the night since she had lost power that day. Friday, I woke up with a sore throat and headed straight for the doctor's office, but I was clear. I sent Z & A home with my mother-in-law since they were going to have another sick day and I was supposed to meet the designer and a painter at the new house in the afternoon. I took the younger boys with me to get my first round of carpet samples and to my meeting at the new house... To my frustration and disappointment, the realtor that is "taking care of the house for the bank" never showed up to let us into the new house...argh! Steve and I thought we had confirmed this meeting, and he never contacted us about not being there. I was very frustrated since I had two people with me, wanting to get into the house! This realtor has been very odd to work with. He will not let our own realtor have access to the house, there is no lock box on the house, he says he needs to be there every time we want to get into the house, and he only gives us one hour sharp to be there, then hovers over us until we are out the door. We have been trying to get quotes from drywallers and painters...next Wednesday, this will not be a problem any more! But Steve wanted to have the drywall repair starting ASAP--the first week we own the house. I wonder when we'll actually start the work now....

WHEW! What a whirlwind. The next 4-6 weeks are going to be very spotty as far as school is concerned as well. I'm pretty much only going to plan a couple days of school per week, when Steve has his full days at the office. One of his full days falls on our co-op day, and we do not do any of our school on those days since we are gone all morning and then have a friend from co-op over for a couple hours in the afternoon...so I will only have Monday and Fridays as a full day of school and probably Wednesday for a half day. The rest of the week, during Steve's non-clinical times, we will be spending a lot of time tranistioning into the new house. My mom will be here the third week of March...hopefully for some of the last hauls over to the new house?!?!? So...I've just got to do what I can during this transition time until we get settled again. I'll keep you posted!

I was really excited for science this week...and then couldn't do any of it! I have been using my own resources for science based off of the outline that is in the Creation to Greeks TM. So, the past few weeks, we have been reading some things about birds and I printed out a lapbook for each child to do for our bird section. But, only Eli got to do a few things on his since he was not sick. I also ordered some owl pellets to dissect and am excited to do this next week.

We did go ahead and start The Children's Homer, even though I am not finished with The Hittite Warrior. I think I can do both books for a couple of weeks--we'll probably move our reading of The Hittite Warrior to bedtime. I see that a lot of you have gotten the audio book for The Children's Homer...I should check and see if our library has it. My kids love listening to books on CD! Zeke seems very interested in all the Greek Mythology...he's been reading a few extra Greek Mythology books I placed in our book basket.

Zeke is working on writing a "tall tale" for English and seems to enjoy the planning stages. Abby is working on a letter, although she writes quite a few letters on her own. We will do the chapter, however, so her curriculum stays lined up with Zeke's. And we just keep plugging away on math. I have had to skip a lot of the vocab and art in CtG curriculum the last few weeks to keep up!