our dozen beautiful feet

PLEASE SEE BELOW FOR AN UPDATE: Originally posted April 2011: If you’ve been following our family, you know that we were trying to figure out how to adopt from India for several years.  It was so difficult to get the right information, or even figure out who to ask about certain things. I can’t count how many hours I spent making phone calls, sending emails, reading website and after website of legalese.   When we realized that India was not going to happen, I was so mentally exhausted from running all the circles. I told Paul, “I just want to pick an agency and fall into their hands and let them tell me what to do!”  So that’s what we decided to do.  We have quite a few friends that live overseas and have completed adoptions while abroad.  So we decided we’d write them and ask them where they adopted from, how they did it, what agency they used, etc.  Whatever the consensus was, if there was one, is what we would do.  There was a res...

In this first unit of Tapestry of Grace, one of the activities is to work on a map of the US.  They suggest marking stars on all the cities you've visited, and drawing the routes you've driven or flown for vacations.  Our travels are a bit more world-wide, so I decided to do this with the kids, incorporating our travels around the world.  It just seemed like the more logical thing to do for us.  I had no idea, however, just how ridiculous the map would turn out to be. I know we've been to all these places, but you just don't realize how crazy it is until you see it all drawn out on a map!  All this in the last five and a half years.  Wow!  I feel so blessed to have gotten to travel the world with my kids!  What a great gift for them! Countries Visited: USA India England France Ethiopia United Arab Emirates Nepal Thailand Singapore Australia (The dotted line to West Africa is a trip Paul and I took by ourselves while the two kids w...

If you read the last post about my review of the year, you saw that I had a little crisis of faith with my Tapestry of Grace. I have been a loyal Tapestry user, and recommender for a couple of years now. I'm so thankful that Father helped me to see I can do it, because I'm so happy to be sticking with it! All this digging into the nuts and bolts of Tapestry and being more convinced about it's rightness for us led me down the path of becoming more curious about exactly what classical education is. It's something I hear a lot, and is applied to a good deal of programs out there right now. I realized though, that I didn't actually understand fully what it meant.  Does it mean you study history chronologically in a cycle?  Does it mean you study Latin?  Does it mean you read the great works of literature? Is it all those things?  I decided if I am aiming for a "classical" education for my kids, I better understand it.  I started watching the Tapestry tea...

Whew!  This has been a marathon of a school year.  We began with second grade and first grade the last week of June in 2012.  We still have about three weeks to go. I'm glad I started early last year! I anticipated loosing some momentum while in the US this fall, and we lost more than I expected. : )  However, we have kept on (even if my blogging hasn't!), and are just about to finish up this year.  It's time for the year-end review. Grammar: Shurley Grammar and Composition Spelling/Phonics:  All About Spelling Math: Math-U-See History/Geography/Literature:  Tapestry of Grace Science:  Elemental Science : Earth and Astronomy Bible: Veritas Bible-Genesis to Joshua Art: Artistic Pursuits Last year, I posted that these were the programs we were going to be using.  Here's what ended up actually happening.  Grammar: We did make it through Shurley Grammar for homeschool Level 1.  I liked this program. I thought it moved at a ...

Paul turned 34 this year!  He's a very difficult person to buy gifts for.  He never wants anything, and pretty much has everything he *needs*, and then some.  I always rack my brain, try to listen for weeks ahead at things he mentions, scour the internet, and to add to the pressure, I've got two mothers begging me for suggestions as well. : ) This year, I decided to make it easy on all of us.  We would take a trip.  So I asked everyone to chip in a bit, and for Paul's birthday, we took a little getaway to a place right outside of our city called The Treehouse Resort! The rooms were little wooden boxes built up in the trees.  They had tree branches running through them.  The kids thought this was awesome. : ) They had all kinds of activities, like archery.  This was one of our favorite things to do. In the evenings, they offered camel cart rides through the Rajasthani wilderness.  They had bikes you could take on...

Tonight, we had one of those "I never want to forget this!" dinner conversations.  It went as follows: K: (said something inappropriate) M: Kiryn, I don't think the word you just used is a very nice word.  Let's not say that again. L: What did she say, Mom? M: It doesn't matter. L: But what did she say? Dad: Luke, let it go, it's not a word we'll repeat. L: Was it the S-word? Or maybe the D-word? K: No, it was the B-word, I mean, the F-word. (at this point, Paul looks at me with wide eyes and says:) Dad: Where are they learning all these words?!? Mom: So, Luke, you won't be in trouble. Please tell us the S-word. L: (embarrassed) ... stupid. M: Okay.  And now, please tell us the D-word. L: Damn. M: Okay.  Kiryn what is the B-word, please? K: (giggling) Um... butt. M: Alright. And now please tell us the F-word. K: (more giggling): Fart End of conversation, which ended with lots of snickering by Mom and Dad, and a co...