Owner: My Home Sweet Home URL:http://myhomesweethomeonline.net Join Date: Sat, 15 Dec 2007 21:05:11 -0600 Rating:0 Site Description: This homeschool mom blog is proudly powered by WordPress, gummy bears, sweet tea, and bloggable moments provided by my husband and our eight children. Site statistics:Click here
Girls' Day Out 2007-12-12 23:55:32 My two oldest daughters celebrate birthdays this week. We have combined them, for the most part, since the week of their second and fifth birthdays, when the two-year-old had a nervous breakdown because her sister was opening her presents and she was told her birthday wasn’t for four more days.
In our household we have a tradition known as the birthday lunch, which means mommy takes you out on a lunch date. By special request, another option is now available - the birthday movie. Since the girls chose to celebrate together and our dear neighbor (bless her heart) gave us free kid’s meal coupons for a nice restaurant - which accepted our expired coupons - we did it all! (I think they deserve a photo opportunity after their kindness.)
We started with lunch, during which I was reminded just how truly loony my kids can be. Drama Queen (my soon-to-be eight-year-old) was in true form, and Princess (now eleven) was rather goofy, too. These girls are great together in spite Read more:Girls
October and November Swaps 2007-12-09 23:09:39 The Homeschool Blog Awards site is coordinating a monthly swap. I had never heard of a swap, but it has been great fun.
Summer at Mom is Teaching was my October
swap partner and I received the following goodies, which my daughters immediately tried to confiscate:
The cherry tin contains a candle, the ribbon will decorate our Christmas gifts, and the jar will soon be filled with Russian Tea mix for this winter.
Dianne at Bunny Trails was my November
swap partner and this is what I received:
My 12-year-old son is dying to play the camcorder game; the candy bar box looks empty because, well, it is; and the paper star ornaments were so amazingly creative and beautiful that I asked Dianne to teach me how to make them since I’m in charge of crafts for a Christmas party this week. She kindly posted the directions, so you can make them, too. (I just realized that the Santa star ornaments weren’t in the picture; Dianne sent me these ornaments that she made from Barb’s pa
Christmas blog designs for Blogger 2007-12-07 10:23:34 If you’re looking for a Christmas
blog design for your Blogger
blog, please visit my design site, Barefoot Blog Designs. You’ll find links in the top of the sidebar for the 4 Christmas templates that are available. Here are previews of each; if you click on the image, you’ll link to the information about ordering that design.
Thank you, and Merry Christmas!
You're invited to a Christmas blog decorating party! 2007-12-05 14:00:05
Sisterlisa at Apples of Gold Ministries is hosting a Christmas
blog decorating party. Submit a link on this post if you’ve decked your blog for Christmas. This is kind of fun for me since I got my diary girl all spruced up just in time for the Homeschool Blog Awards. This year, however, the HSBA team members removed ourselves from the polls and nominations list.
I sincerely appreciate the nomination for Best Blog Design, and so in the interest of good fun I’m conducting my own poll:
Note: There is a poll embedded within this post, please visit the site to participate in this post’s poll.
A Quote for Mothers 2007-12-04 22:22:57 I came upon the following quote tonight. It truly blessed me and I was surprised when I saw the source. It is certainly as relevant today as when it was written:
If mothers could learn to do for themselves what they do for their children…, we should have happier households. Let the mother go out to play! If she would only have courage to let everything go when life becomes too tense, and just take a day, or half a day, out in the fields, or with a favourite book, or in a picture gallery looking long and well at just two or three pictures, or in bed, without the children, life would go on far more happily for both children and parents.
~Charlotte Mason, Volume 3, page 33 of The Original Homeschooling Series.
I don’t know about you, but I feel guilty about anything and everything I do for myself, as if it is unnecessary and purely selfish. As mothers, we need to recharge our batteries sometimes; otherwise it’s easy to become cranky and resentful, and that doesn&rsq Read more:Mothers
, Quote
Thoughts on the Homeschool Blog Awards 2007-12-02 22:31:23 Voting has begun for the HomeschoolAwards
.htm">Blog Awards
. When the nominations began, I never would have imagined the controversy that would ensue over two little words: family-friendly. Rule #9 on the nominations page states:
If your blog violates the rules (no cussing, no photographic nudity, your blog must be a homeschool-related blog), you will not be added to the nomination list. Only family friendly (G-rated) blogs, please!
I really thought this was a no-brainer. Apparently there’s a misconception that the HSBA team members had some kind of agenda that would result in the disqualification of certain blogs. In reality, I’d never heard of these blog who were disqualified by their content.
Next came the notion that the team members shouldn’t be allowed to participate in the contest. The following comment was left on the HSBA site:
Dear,
I want to be helpful, and due to some discussions on my blog, I wanted to pass on some comments/thoughts to you.
Have you considered t
The Drama Queen strikes again 2007-12-01 20:04:55 Our guinea pig died last night.
Our precious retired neighbors took our five youngest to eat breakfast with Santa this morning, so no one noticed in the rush to get them out the door at 8 a.m. (my husband realized it after they were gone). With a day full of basketball, a housewarming, and a Christmas parade, it was this evening before everyone was reassembled at home and my husband made the announcement.
Our girls tend to take this sort of thing very hard, and this was no exception. A funeral took place in our backyard and afterward the girls huddled around me, crying for their lost pet. My 7-year-old, a.k.a. Drama Queen
, said she wanted a new guinea pig for Christmas. My husband and I had already discussed that we did not want to immediately replace this guinea pig with a new one (been there, done that), so I said, “Why don’t you pay extra attention to Muffin (our dog)?”
Without missing a beat, Drama Queen wailed, “But she SMELLS BAD!” and after a br
What happened to my baby? 2007-11-28 17:28:23 Lily is growing up much too quickly for my taste. Doesn’t she realize that she’s the baby and I want her to stay that way? Lately she’s been letting me know that she’s ready to be potty-trained. Shouldn’t I be the one telling her, and not the other way around? She keeps taking off her pants and her diapers, and then throwing the diapers in the trash, a less-than-subtle hint. Today I finally convinced her to leave the diaper on, but then she put on a pair of her sister’s undies over the diaper. Yes, Lily, I get the hint. It’s just that you’re my baby and I want you to slow down a little. ‘kay?
She’s also a budding chef!
Isn’t she precious?
Thank you! 2007-11-21 16:28:26 Thank
you so much!
The nominations list was posted today on the Homeschool Blog Awards site, and I was nominated for Best Blog Design and Best Cyber Buddy Blog; in spite of infrequent posting, I’m also a team member for The Well Drained Mind, which was nominated for Best Family or Group Blog.
My diary girl is all spruced up for Christmas. How do you like her?
I’m looking forward to checking out the nominated sites. Voting begins on December 3 and continues until the 15. Congratulations to all the nominees!
I can't wait! 2007-11-20 19:30:03 Recently I’ve been thinking a lot about Pride and Prejudice, but it hasn’t been available the library. I finally checked out the book on CD thinking I would listen while I design, but apparently I’m unable to concentrate fully on two things at once. It just didn’t work. I’ve been listening in the car and my two oldest daughters (7- and 10-years old) are hooked, too.
Years ago we rented the A & E mini-series with Colin Firth, not realizing it was 5 HOURS LONG. Once started, however, we were powerless to stop watching. It simply couldn’t be done. So we stayed up until a ridiculously late hour and finished it.
Disc1 arrived in the mail from Netflix today, and I’m expecting disc 2 tomorrow. Sometime during this holiday weekend we will settle down to a P and P marathon, and I CAN’T WAIT!
Do you have any movie plans for the long weekend?
Merry Christmas in Song 2007-12-22 20:54:08 Go here to listen to three minutes and twenty-nine seconds of Christmas
cheer!
The old version of The Little Drummer Boy always gets to me. I remember how my mother sang it, rolling the “r” in “rum pum pum pum.” I heard Snoopy vs. The Red Baron on the radio the other day and it made me think of how much my cousin and I loved it as children. My favorite Christmas CDs in our collection are the two by Harry Connick, Jr., and Vince Guaraldi’s A Charlie Brown Christmas.
There’s a song I haven’t heard at all this Christmas; I’m not even sure of its title. It’s about a man on a train at Christmas and he hears a woman crying on the train. I can’t remember all of the details, but the song is narrated instead of sung and there are bells in the background. If you know the title or artist, please leave it in comments for me.
What are your favorite Christmas carols?
Read more:Merry
, Merry Christmas
Praying for Rain 2007-12-21 16:40:42 We are facing a serious drought in our neck of the woods. Friends of ours own a lake house; my first post on this blog was from Memorial Day 2006, which we spent there with them. Here is a photo from that post (my husband is the cutie driving the jet ski):
See the island in the background? Here is a photo I took last weekend. The trees in the background are the same trees from the above picture:
You can now walk to the “island.” Look at how low the docks are:
Our friends have had to repeatedly push their dock further out and down (approximately 60 feet so far) as the water has receded.
Our family has personally taken steps to reduce our water consumption. I keep a pitcher in the kitchen sink which catches water when we wash our hands or dishes. When I need to rinse a dish before putting it in the dishwasher, I use that water. We water plants with it, too, so I hope a little soap or food stuff won’t hurt them. “When it’s yellow, let it mellow&he
Whoop-Wii! 2007-12-20 13:38:02 This post has been brewing in my head the last few days and was originally to be entitled something like “Wii
Schmee” (a less-than-inspired title), until an unexpected twist altered the ending today.
My 12-year-old asked for a Wii for Christmas. I told him that we couldn’t spend that kind of money per child, so he launched a campaign and talked one brother and one sister into agreeing on it as a group present. He even handed me his extra cash and donated his Amazon earnings from selling old video games. My husband and I decided that if the kids wanted it that bad and were willing to work together, we’d get one. Silly us.
I thought Wiis were in short supply last year at Christmas - that surely there would be plenty to go around this year - but that is where I was completely and hopelessly mistaken. The saga began innocently enough at Wal-Mart where I went to the electronics counter and asked to buy a Wii. I might as well have been wearing a sign that said &
My foray into OpenID 2007-12-19 11:18:30 I recently experienced difficulty commenting at my Blogger friends blogs using my WordPress blog’s URL. Many of you had comments from me that basically said, “Please allow anonymous commenting on your blog again. It is only allowing registered Blogger users to comment, not WordPress users like me.” I finally decided that it was a bit odd that all of my blogger friends had gone hyper on their comments security settings, so I decided to test my design site. Sure enough, there was no longer the “Other” login option, the one that had enabled me to use my WordPress blog URL for comments. This left me with two choices: leave “anonymous” comments and manually code a link to my blog, or leave comments which will link to my Barefoot Blog Designs site. Neither of these were attractive options to me.
I wondered why Blogger would remove the “other” commenting option, and my guess was that it allowed people to leave comments while assuming Read more:OpenID
My little cover boy 2007-12-17 23:17:25 We recently attended the Christmas concert for our children’s music program, and were pleased and surprised to discover our son on the cover of this year’s concert program. I hate to admit that I had never gone online and viewed the proofs from yearbook photo day. In our experience photographers usually don’t stand much of a chance of capturing a good shot when you’ve got a bunch of kids lined up waiting to go to their class/lesson/ball game. We gave up on ordering sports team pictures years ago, and just take our own. Needless to say, I was surprised to see such an adorable picture of my son on the cover, although I wondered why his hair was such a mess.
Tonight I scanned the site to see the other pictures, and now I know exactly why his hair was so mussed. I think there’s only one other boy in his class and he must have missed picture day, and that apparently left no one but my little
Prince Charming to entertain the girls (my daughter is on the t
Wordless Wednesday: Holding Hands 2008-03-11 23:00:37 My almost 96-year-old great-aunt passed from this life early last Wednesday
morning. We took our children to the hospice center to see her Tuesday night, and I was touched by the image of my daughters holding her hand. Although I wanted to capture it, I didn’t have my camera. My son suggested [...] Read more:Hands
HomeschoolEstore Changes to CurrClick.com, Curriculum in a Click! 2008-03-10 00:00:51 Have you heard? HomeschoolEstore has just changed their name to CurrClick
, and apparently the name isn’t the only thing that has changed. The site updates sound wonderful, too. Read all about it:
The Same great site and customer service … but better! Experience our improved previews of thousands of your favorite homeschool titles, easily [...] Read more:Curriculum
It’s the Ultimate Blog Party, Y’all! 2008-03-08 19:05:32 Janice and Susan at 5 Minutes for Mom are hosting another Ultimate
Blog Party
! I really enjoyed last year’s bash and was excited to see a repeat. Thank you so much for stopping by to visit me; please leave a comment and let me know you were here. I will offer a [...]
Aunt Mayme: March 24, 1912 - March 5, 2008 2008-03-07 13:07:36 My sweet Aunt Mayme donned her angel’s wings a week early as she hovered over Atlanta last Monday night, life-flighted by helicopter from one hospital to another. She quickly became a favorite with the hospital staff, this tiny almost 96-year-old woman who had not been to a doctor since breaking her ankle in 1961, [...] Read more:March
Astronomy through the eyes of a four-year-old 2008-03-03 12:28:37 My four-year-old daughter sat and colored during our astronomy lesson today (Jeannie Fulbright’s Exploring Creation with Astronomy
), and I discovered that she has a quite unique perspective on the subject!
Me: Have you ever been inside a greenhouse? (discussing the atmosphere)
Felicity: Yes! Miss Ann’s house! (Our neighbor’s house is green.)
Me: Our atmosphere goes very high [...]
In 99 words or less… 2008-03-01 12:00:51 I haven’t posted in over a week, so I’m going to try to cram a lot into one not-too-long post. The most important thing is that my almost 96-year-old Aunt Mayme had a heart attack and went into the hospital on Monday night. For those of you who aren’t my real-life friends and [...]
BloggedIn - News & Networking 2008-02-21 12:40:44 Today is my first post as the host of the Blogstyle column at the new BloggedIn - News & Networking. BloggedIn is a new newspaper-style blog that is first and only official publication of the Family-Friendly Network. Lauren has been doing a wonderful job with the site; her interviews are a delight! [...]
Wordless Wednesday: Gull in Flight 2008-02-19 23:00:57 My husband snapped this shot during a family vacation to Florida in ‘02. We stood on the beach tossing popcorn, as seagulls hovered around us and snatched it out of the air. It was an awesome experience that the kids wanted to repeat daily.
Visit 5 Minutes for Mom or Wordless Wednesday
for more [...] Read more:Flight
Join the Carnival! 2008-02-18 23:32:19 The Carnival
of Homeschooling One Room Schoolhouse Edition is being hosted at the Homeschool Blog Awards site today. Stop by and visit to read some wonderful homeschool blogs. Please note that we have code in the sidebar that you can nab to link to the HSBA site or the Carnival post. We really appreciate your [...]
The Center for Puppetry Arts: Duke Ellington’s Cat 2008-03-13 23:22:51 Recently three of my kids and I took an impromptu field trip to The Center
for Puppetry
Arts for their homeschool day production of Duke Ellington’s Cat:
On the road with jazz great Duke Ellington is one cool cat. From the early days in the pool halls to the concert halls performing before crowned heads, this [...]
How fast do you type? 2008-03-21 00:18:28 79 words
Speed test
I saw this tonight, and being unable to resist a challenge, I had to play. I got my best score the first time, and then it was all downhill. I think I’m just too tired (insert any other good excuse here); I’m sure I’ll be back to try again later. This is actually [...]
No title 2008-03-19 23:03:34 The day before my new camera arrived I explained to my husband that although I am very motivated to learn, this would be a whole lot more equipment than I’m capable of using at this point. He looked at me and said, “ESO.”
“Huh?” was my intelligent reply.
“ESO. Equipment Superior to Operator.” He [...]
Recommend Site To A Friend
