Ten Reasons To Like Homeschooling

When I read this from "The Old Schoolhouse"... I just thought it was cute and wanted to share it with you...

1. You always get lots of help with your school projects.
2. Your birthday is always a school holiday.
3. Study Hall can be in some pretty exotic locations.
4. You get to teach your little brothers and sisters to read.
5. French club means having your best friend over to make crepes et parler francaise.
6. You get to take a "sun" day instead of a snow day.
7. The world becomes your classroom.
8. An appointment with the guidance counselor means a special night out with Mom.
9. The school staff always loves you.
10. You get ranked as #1 in your Senior Class.

Finally- My Gift to Eddie....

I invited Eddie to Whitestone to celebrate our anniversary... and to have a bit of time alone before the baby's arrival. Even though we were only gone for one night- it felt like we had days together.

View of the Lion and Lamb from the Farmhouse. Our room is the octagonal turret .

Views from our room....

Our Week

Wonder what the guys have been up to out in the woods?

His first taste of carrot cake... seriously!
Dozer work.... before

and after.... almost finished!

School stuff. Hard to believe that our year is coming to a close.

February 15, 1992

Today marks our 17th anniversary. 17? Wow! Time flies.

Yesterday, Eddie had a wonderful dinner for us, along with roses and a hilarious card. Then this morning he had a beautiful breakfast ready and waiting ... complete with kitchen clean-up. Wouldn't take much pf this for me to get spoiled. Thank you hubby!

My mind can't seem to fathom that it has been 17 years since Eddie shared his name with me and made me his bride. We had only known each other a short 10 weeks when he ask me to marry him. I am certainly blessed to have such a good, godly man that I call husband. God gave me more in Eddie than I could have ever imagined.
So happy anniversary sweetheart! Wonder what the next 17 will have in store ;-)

Funny to me...

I read something this week that was so odd- even funny to me. And of all places... it was at the checkout counter in a pizza place advertising Parent/Teacher Conferences.

"Families who feel connected to their children's school also feel more connected to their child."

After I had a good laugh... and recovered from a bit of shock... I felt a bit saddened that a great number of families actually believe that. Home education is not just a choice we have made for our family. It is a conviction. It is a privilege to feel connected to my child everyday- regardless of what the day may hold.

"Home School" or "Homeschool"?

Have you ever wondered if its two words or one? Leave it to Ruth Beechick to come along with the answer. Sometimes it seems she has all the answers. What a godly woman. Through her writings she has blessed me over and over again. Thanks Ms. Ruth!!

Weekly Language Tip by Ruth Beechick, Curriculum Specialist

Homeschool was not a word three decades ago. If you checked a dictionary, you would have written the adjective home and the noun school. Together that made "home school." If you wanted to coin an adjective, you would hyphenate the words: home-school student or home-school books. Or coin a noun the same way: run a home-school.
Separate words or hyphenated words--that's all that was legal in those days. But homeschoolers and their writers proliferated rapidly. Some remained legal; others ignored the rules and joined the words. I phoned the New York Times and asked how they wrote home school. An editor said, "If it's not in the dictionary, we don't use it."
Well, a year or so later the one-word form was in the dictionary, thanks to innovative homeschoolers who used it so widely that dictionary makers could not ignore it. (My online dictionary hasn't learned this yet.) Once we had the noun homeschool, it was easy to turn it into a verb. Writers of English do that all the time, dictionary or no. A recent example is to say, "I Googled it." That's much more efficient than trying to use the noun: "I put it into the search engine called Google."
So homeschool began as two words, then was coined into a hyphenated term, and then with wide use became a joined word in the dictionary. That's the path that many words take to enter the language. High school has not taken that path. But your homeschool (adj.) student can homeschool (v.) in your homeschool (n.). And you can use related words like homeschooler and homeschoolish and the derivatives of plural and past tense and participles.
You are changing the dictionary and, more importantly, you are changing the world. Tell you children that homeschool and high school are handled differently.
--Ruth

http://www.mottmedia.com/pages/publications.asp?Pub=beechick

Taken from "The Homeschool Minute"

Boys

Have I mentioned that I love little boys and all their stuff? I grew up with two sisters.... and was far from being a tom-boy. God knew I needed a little boy when he gave us Isaac. This afternoon he had some wonderful friends over to play. The nerf bullets flying over head and the dirty shoes at the back door make my heart giggle. Secretly, I was in hopes that the baby God was sending to us was a daughter... but today while I watched the guys racing down the hill on sleds and garbage can lids, I realized that My Father knows the desires of our hearts better than we ourselves do. 'Cause I like boys!!

And Isaac's Gift To Me....

And look what Isaac did! He helped Eddie carry in the crib and mattress... Well, maybe Eddie helped him. He was determined to put the crib together. And I must admit he was a huge help! We gave him the decision to either move to another room in the house or to share his room. When he learned that his new sibling would be a brother, he decided to share his space with his new brother.

I just had to post this one! Isaac wanted to see what things would look like from his brother's perspective!

Hubby's GIft to Me

After a quick trip to get Eddie's blood treatment done, he surprised us with dinner at our favorite place in Knoxville... Rafferty's. Then we headed to my favorite place to shop these days.. Babies R Us! I don't usually enjoy shopping- unless it is with a credit card and catalogue or for books. But we had a wonderful time getting ready for baby. The next morning, I had an appointment with my nurse midwife.... so, he even went along and made a stop at Target to get the crib and mattress! Yahoo hubby!

Fun, Fun, Fun!

What do you know... there was enough snow to finally go sledding down the hill! In 10 years, Isaac has only played in the snow once... but this one made up for it. We measured 1.5 inches. That's a start!

What? Could It Be?

Snow! It's snowing...

Visit to Cuz's House

Eddie had a physical scheduled in Knoxville this week... so of course Isaac and I headed over to Aunt S' house. We may end up visiting her more in Knoxville than in Sweetwater.