Happy Birthday Esther Hope Mullis

On Friday Esther had her 7th birthday. We were in western NC visiting with Greg's mom and dad at their new cabin. We were able to go on a train ride and eat at a really cool restaurant right on the river. Esther was sang to 8 times with family calling her and people who found out it was her Bday! She loved that. Here are a few photos of her day!

I made a friend!

When we moved to Kernersville, I immediatly began to look at homeschool activities that the kids could get involved in so that they make some new friends. One of the ones I chose was homeschool PE at the YMCA. I thought that a 7 week course would be just right once a week for them to make some new NC friends.

We are on our 3rd week and the kids have made some good buddies that they are anxious every Tuesday to get up and go see....But, God threw in an extra special blessing for me...He sent me a friend too. I met a girl name Jodi ( my sister's name) on the first day of class. She had a brand new baby girl I just had to admire and we started talking.
It turns out she was born in NC, but lived most of her growing up years in Lakeland, FL! Her husband is also in full time ministry as a youth pastor. We are they same age and she told me she graduated from Liberty. Come to find out, we were at LU at the same time. We may have even lived in the same dorm that semester!

We decided last week to go swimming after PE today and so we let the kids swim for an hour and then we went and got cheeseburgers and hot dogs and ice cream at Bill and Leah's .We had such a good time and made plans to picnic at the park next week.
It was just a sweet gift from the Lord to unexpectedly make a friend!

And School Begins...

We finished up our first week back at school and had a great week! We switched math curriculum's from Abeka to Math U See. We love it! All 3 kids had a great first week of math and made 100% on the end of the week test.
For History I am going to use Story of the World and Galloping the Globe. We did a little G the G this week and worked on Asia. I am also doing Five in a Row vol. 4 for History....just not this month!

The science book (The Scientist Apprentice) I decided I didn't need or want, I decided the night before school started I did in fact want to use, so I ordered it and it is on the way! The first topic is Astronomy, and we will study that for 8 weeks!

Language, Reading and Spelling are still Abeka (If it ain't broke don't fix it!)

I have a really cool book called Draw then Write by Evan-Moor. The kids will learn to draw an object and then write a story about it. Hopefully, I will be sneaking in writing as fun!

We are going to do a Fall nature Study by Jane Claire Lambert (who wrote Five in a Row) in October and the Winter Study in February.

We are using the Marble Jar incentive this year. I have a larger than a mason jar that the kids put marbles in, when it is full, we are going to go do something fun. They can each earn 2 marbles a day by doing school work without complaining and chores without complaining. If I catch them doing something good, they earn an extra marble. I can take marbles away for griping, complaining or fighting. It is working really really well....I hope it continues to!

We also went to Homeschool PE at the YMCA where there was a total of 38 homeschoolers...wow! The girls also went to an American Girl book club tea and that was a lot of fun too!

I will post some pictures soon of the school room and the tea!

First Day of School 08/09

Abby in 5th grade
Nathan in 3rd grade

Esther in 1st grade

Moved!

We are thankfully all moved in to our new house. We love it here in North Carolina. The church has been so kind to us and we are excited to begin this ministry here with them. I almost have my house unpacked and decorated and I am so glad, because we will begin school on Monday!
We will be doing Abeka for reading, language and phonics, Math U See for math, Konos and Five in a Row for Science, History and Language and Bible and writing.

Some of the extras we will be doing are:
Homeschool PE at the YMCA
LEGO club
Basketball
American Girl book club (for the girls)
Guitar lessons (for Nathan)
Church Christmas program

We also have some birthdays this fall! Abby will be 11 in November and Esther will be 7 in September!
I will post some pictures on Monday for the first day of school!