Hi All

Time has just flown by with all that has been going on at our house. We are only homeschooling 2 days a week now since I am back in school. Roosie is attending our church school part time while I am in class and Hoopy and Tman are attending full time (their wishes). We do math and some other things at home now while the rest of Rossie's work is done at school. We are getting ready to start a Winter nature study and she has a book report (notebooking style) to do. Posts might be infrequent here but I am planning on trying harder to make sure I get all my blogging done more regularly. I do post a little more often on my main blog. Please check back in from time to time here though. You never know when something new might pop up. Blessings! ~ Nikki

Gearing Up For School

Now that I have a break from Summer classes I am working on the finishing touches for our upcoming school year. I have a love / hate relationship with school planning lol. I love the thought of a new school year but sometimes the details can get very "boggy" and I feel like I'm in a rut. It will pass though; it always does. This year I will have a 6th grader and a 9th grader. My eldest son goes to our church school and my eldest daughter graduated last year. We will be doing lots more nature study per requests of Roosie my 11 year old. I will be posting more links on the pages here for neat sites that I find for all subjects so be sure to check them out.

While working in our flower bed last week we found an interesting  tenant under a flower pot; a black widow spider. So that will be the first subject of our nature studies.I found a great info link here BLACK WIDOWS ; its from our local university. I think you will find it very informative especially if you live in Tennessee. Also the ironweed and goldenrod is already beginning to bloom here so we will do a study on that too. Sometimes we follow the Outdoor Hour Challenge using the Handbook of Nature study but we also kind of go rogue with it sometimes and pick our own thing that catches our eye. We use different websites and things for our info too. I found a great book, ABCs of Nature at our library's book sale for a $1 and it has been a great tool.

Click to buy at Amazon

I try to find some free lapbooks or notebooking pages to use with our studies. If I can't find any ,then I make them. I encourage you as a homeschool family to buy either Microsoft Word or Print Shop software. They are both excellent tools for making worksheets.Worksheets I make I will post on my HSLaunch page. If you are not familiar with that site please go check it out. There are some really great printables there.

Do any of you have any different resources you use for nature study? tell me about them. Blessings! ~ Nikki

End Of The School Year

Well our school year ended several weeks ago. We had a great year! We learned so much together as always. My youngest son Hoopy will be a freshman this Fall. I don't know where time is going so quickly lol but it needs to slow down. Its our Summer break time right now although I have some Summer courses to take. I will be working on posting some links and things this Summer. I will probably be adding pages for the links just so they are easier to find. Have a great day! Blessings! ~ Nikki

January Freebie!

I found this on another blog today and thought someone out there might enjoy it. Blessings! ~ Nikki

Funnix

March 1...YES!

Going by the temperature you can tell it is still Winter around here but all the birdsong sings of Spring soon to come. I can't wait :) I love Spring! We have been preparing for Student Convention for the last few weeks so school has been slow. We will be hitting the books again full force when we return . We leave Sunday morning and return next Saturday. Hopefully warm weather will greet us when we get back. We long to get outside and do some nature study. We have fallen behind in our Outdoor Hour Challenges. The kids are also tossing ideas around about what they want to do for their lapbooks. I have been pondering too. Next school year will begin a new season for me. My oldest DD will graduate this year. It will seem strange to me to go back to just schooling 2, unless DS Tman decides he wants to return home for school. Tman and BabyGirl are both looking into getting jobs. When did they grow up? Did it happen when I blinked? You know what I mean... don't you? Are any of you dreading the "empty nest"?
Be sure to come back later this week. I will be posting another book review and I will be having a giveaway. Blessing! ~ Nikki

Toodles got the job PTL!

Toodles got the job PTL! For now it is only part time but may become full time later. We are so excited! Thanks to all who prayed :) Blessings! ~ Nikki

Internet again :)

PTL, we were able to pay off some debt and that allowed us to get our internet back on at home. Much easier to afford that bill without the other one. Things have been going good for us. School work has been going good between the bouts of sickness. We have more snow on the ground today and to be completely honest...I'm tired of it. Winter is ok until March gets in view . Then I long for Spring. I get tired of the cold and snow. I want to see things grow and play in the dirt :) My oldest two Blessings are preparing for Student Convention. They are competing in several different categories; including music , art, sports and drama. Tman is also competing in the preaching category ,**BIG SMILE**. I have been wanting to work ona lapbook for a while but our textbooks have to take precedence for the moment. Maybe in a few weeks we can work on one. I will be helping our Christian school prepare for competition by working with the kids in the dramas. Once that is said and done I will have more time to work on a lapbook. I might just let each one choose their own subject to lapbook about. I know Roosie has already made one shark lapbook but I bet she chooses to do another one. She is a shark fanatic. We actually took a notebook and made somewhat of a lapbook out of it. She would write info about a shark and then we would glue a picture beside it. On the next page she would do a drawing or I would print out a color sheet and after she finished it we would cut it out and glue it between two pages so that it made a popup. Pretty neat looking I think. Anyhow, I will be on here more often now and posting more so check back with me. I will also be doing my book reviews. i will be posting one later today as a matter of fact.I will also be having some great book giveaways over time so be sure to sign up for those. Toodles was asked to come in and submit a job application today so be praying about that for us. Thanks, Blessings! ~ Nikki

Still Here

We are still without internet at home and will be for a little while longer. Other things have to take precedence until Toodles finds a job. We have put in so many applications its unreal but nothing yet. So those of you who are praying for us please continue to do so. School is going great.We are learning and having a great time. We have been lax in our nature study this month but we will catch up. We are enjoying the big birdfeeder Toodles made me for Christmas. He mounted it in front of the front window for us. I love watching the birds. Anyway, hopefully soon I can get online more often. For now I will post as I can and read all your wonderful posts.God Bless and have a great day. Blessings ~ Nikki

A Giveaway

Hey everyone!

Check out this giveaway at The Mennobrarian!

http://www.themennobrarian.com/2009/12/giveaway.html

Blessings! ~ Nikki

Christmas Tree

Today we bought our Christmas Tree. It is a beautiful Fraser Fir. This is our first real tree in several years. I must say it is kinda nice. Our last real tree was a Douglas Fir and was much more fragrant but they are much more expensive this year :) We also enjoyed our first peppermint milk shake of the season tonight. I'm sure we will enjoy more though. Tomorrow we plan on decorating the tree. I also have to get our post up tomorrow on the Nature Study we are doing as part of the Outdoor Hour. I leave you tonight with a question.
Real tree or fake? If real; which kind is your favorite? Blessings! ~ Nikki

Uplifting news for a change

For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ: for it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth; to the Jew first, and also to the Greek.
(Romans 1:16)

Check out this link:
http://www.charter.net/news/read.php?ps=987&rip_id=%3CD9C657L01%40news.ap.org%3E&_LT=UNGL_LARSDCCLM_UNEWS

JR Convention

Hi all! It is a great day in the Lord ! Roosie,Hoopy and I are in Kentucky with our Christian School for Student Convention. Pray for all the competitors today. I miss my DH and BabyGirl and Tman but we head home to Tennessee tomorrow so that makes me happy. I cant seem to get used to time "falling back" this year. For nearly a week now I have been waking up about 4am. Today was no exception. Its only 6:41 am but I am already starting to get sleepy again. No job yet for Toodles but God is being ever faithful. Our needs are met so truly, what else could we ask for? When the right job comes along then Toodles will get it. School has been going great. We are having a really good year so far. We will be doing more special things around the holidays. Stuff like lapbooking or notebooking. We enjoy doing stuff like that. I have not really been able to work much on the free printables I'm making but maybe after convention I can. We have had a hectic pace trying to get ready for that. I'm looking forward to the Homeschool Blog Awards this year. I am eager to see if the blogs I nominated get listed. You are some great bloggers out there :) I may not comment much at times but trust me, I read :) Well I gotta go. We have to get ready for convention. I will update later.

Hey everyone! We are back! Our crew brought home 17 medals today. Hoopy and Roosie both got several first place medals. Hoopy has 5 medals total and Roosie has 7. They all did a tremendous job and I am so proud of them. Well it is late and I am tired so goodnight all! Blessings! ~ Nikki

Don't Forget...

Don't forget that the last day for nominations for the Homeschool Blog Awards is today!

Blessings! ~ Nikki

I won an award !

Sonia over at Homeschool Treasure Trove gave me this gorgeous Blogger award. Thanks Sonia!

Now I have to tell you six things you might not know about me.

1. I randomly speak in movies quotes with my family.

2. I grew up a certified countrified farm girl and I miss it too.

3. I know what it is like to carry your drinking water from the spring. My maternal Grandparents and Great Grandmother did not have running water (unless you count the current in the spring LOL)

4. I have met Mrs. Dolly Parton several times. (And yes she is a veeeery distant cousin lol). I even got to watch her film a Christmas movie at a local covered bridge that was 300 feet from my house.

5. White Christmas is one of my all time fave Christmas movies and has been since my teen years when my cousin Noo and I would get together and watch it each year.

6. I love walking in the rain. Always have and hopefully always will.

Now I must give this award to six of my blogger buddies.

BabyGirl at Sparrow's Pearl

Roosie at Nobody Move! I Dropped Me Brain!

Debbie at Living For Him

Shirley at My Four Miracles

Pat at Pat's Place

And finally...you! Yes You! You know who you are! That dear sweet person reading my blog...that makes you gorgeous to me! Blessings! Nikki

Finally An Entry And HSB Awards

It has been a while... a lot of things have been going on here. We have been going and going and going, kinda like the energizer bunny ...minus the energy LOL Anyway, we had our Fall festival at church yesterday and had a great time.We raised some money for our youth and ate some great food.Our county sheriff volunteered to be arrested to help us raise money. He was great so thanks Hoss. Last week I went to a Third Day concert with DD,DS and a friend. It was an amazing worship service.. Look forward to seeing them again. Our drama team has been busy practicing. We have two performances coming up and we are very excited. Our local paper came by the festival yesterday and talked to our youth group and took some pictures. They liked that :) We had an amazing service this morning at church. I would love to be there tonight to see all the baptisms (6) but both DDs are down with the sniffles. So at least I have found the chance to sit and blog. School has been going great. This past week we gathered some leaves. The color has been amazing here again this year. I have found that I prefer laminating the leaves instead of ironing them with the wax paper. When you laminate them you can hang them up on windows and get a stained glass effect. It is very pretty. It is also time for the Homeschool Blog Awards again. I have to do my nominations tonight. There are so many great ones out there that it is hard to decide. On the other hand if anyone would like to nominate me (shameless begging I know!) that would be nice. Not sure what I could be nominated for ..but I have to at least be good for a laugh every now and then . Right? Anyway, looking forward to getting settled back into the quiet side of life for a bit and hopefully doing some blogging and getting some free stuff uploaded to HSlaunch. Blessings! ~ Nikki

September Already !?!?

Time does seems to be flying by here at our humble abode. August saw many busy weeks for us. We had VBS in August this year. It was awesome! DD BabyGirl turned 16! I don't know where the years are going. I turned 35. I have earned every wrinkle and silver hair. I'm proud of them. I had to go to the Dr. to discuss possible surgery for my bladder and to have several tests done. Instead of surgery I will be having meds and PT. This is day two of the medication and it has done some great things for me. Had I known years ago that it would help this much I would have taken it sooner. We are preparing for school to begin week after next. DS Tman will be returning to the Christian school at our church this year.He wants to have some interaction with his friends this year so we are going to give it a shot. I help out several times throughout the year and they allow our kids to attend the conventions with them . We have decided to go with all PACES because frankly, I feel like having a "lazy" year. BabyGirl will graduate in Spring of 2010 and we have a lot to plan for that so we want to take it easy on the lesson planning. I'm sure we will do some mini units and lapbooks together but our mainstay will be PACES.
Today is my Big Brothers birthday so "Happy Birthday Brotherman!" I love Ya! We have spent the day finishing up our Fair projects. I still have some things to do but I will finish them up later tonight. The county Fair starts on Monday. The kids enjoy the rides and Toodles and I enjoy looking at the exhibits.
We have also been doing the Fall cleaning around the "homestead ". I will post more about that on my Homestead  blog. You can come on over and check it out if you like. There are some amazing recipes and stuff on all the blogs over there. Just click on the "Dreamin' of the Farm" pic on the right sidebar and visit my blog. Then you can check out the other blogs by either clicking on the Front Porch link or using the Random Blog link. Well Tman is making some homemade chili for supper tonight, Momma taught him:) so I'm going to post on my other blog and then check out what is going on in the kitchen.Have a great weekend! Blessings ! ~ Nikki

Pictures

Ok here are the pics I promised!

First ~ casting Crowns with John Waller


July 4th

Lake Erie PA

Bridge in Pittsburg.

Where Did A Month Go?

Ok, no way did I anticipate that I would be so busy this summer. It seems like we have been on a constant go go go. Well at least this is turning out to be a cool summer. I can't believe the weather we have been having. I guess I will update and let everyone know what we have been up to . That is if anyone is still reading my blog ...are you? Are you there? Hellooooooooooooooo?  Well anyway , here is the story... (imagine a movie narrator's voice..)
When last our blog writer left us she had intended to keep up with her blog posting but time seemed to slip away much faster than she anticipated. One week was spent in Bible study with her youth group in order to prepare their hearts for worship at the Casting Crowns concert. Truly it was an amazing week...watching God speak to the hearts of the youth (and adults too) was awesome. The concert was awesome too. The crowd was pleasantly surprised when special guest John Waller took the stage (ok our blog writer was extremely happy ...she loves his music). Mark Hall and the Crowns are some of the most humble people on the planet and they have such amazing talent. It was more than a concert it was a worship service. (pictures to come later).
Next for our blog writer came the July 4th holiday. A wondeful time spent with family and eating all that awesome July 4th food fare. A pleasnat evening was had by all as fireworks exploded in the night sky creating vibrant splashes of color against the inky blackness. (pictures to come later)
Then came the birth of our blog writers BFF's  lovely (much anticipated and teeny tiny) preemie baby girl. Both Momma and Baby are home and doing fine. Visit Shirley at MyThr33Sons and check out the story (with cute baby pics).
Later , our blog writer and family got to travel to Chattanooga and celebrate the 70th birthday of her lovely MIL.
Next for our blog writer and her handsome hubby came an unexpected oppurtunity to travel. They enjoyed a lovely trip through Kentucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, West Virginia and Virginia. Their favorite part was having some playtime at Lake Erie. Lovely cannot describe it. Pictures will definetly be posted later!
And last but not least our blog writer has been preparing for her and her DH 10th wedding anniversary tomorrow. They will be renewing their vows amongst a gathering of family and friends.Stay tuned for the next installment...
OK, was that funny? Did it make it more interesting? Did you smile? At least a little bit? Let me know if you are still here ... leave me a comment... go ahead ...I'm begging...I'm making puppy dog eyes at you right now...Blessings~ Nikki

Hey All!

It has been a while since I posted. I would like to say thanks to all who were praying for my requests.There has been a lot of improvement for all. We enjoyed our camping trip. We had almost 40 ... count 'em ... 40 black bear sightings. One Momma bear had four cubs with her which is unusual for our area. Of course this year we are having an increased black bear population. I have lived here all my life and have only seen about 10 to 12 black bear in Cades Cove , so seeing this many this year was very exciting. So if you want to  see black bear and you are near the GSMNP then you should check out Cades Cove.
Tonight we had a tornado warning issued for our area. We were watching some rotating clouds over our house . It was such a weird sight. The storms passed us over though and for that I am thankful. The garden is growing and I have been harvesting some cucumbers and grape tomatoes. Pickle time!! I will be posting about my garden and canning exploits on my Homestead blog. There is a link on my right side bar. Its called "Dreamin' of the Farm"
I have a family of bluebirds hanging around my yard but can't find where they have nested. Not that I am complaining. I love bluebirds. We have a lot of young wildlife in our yard this year. We have several baby rabbits and squirrels.
I am trying to get some school plans going but for some reason I just can't seem to concentrate on them. We found some great deals at the annual library book sale this year. I purchased the Hooked on Phonics program for $ 1 . Yep ! $1. The only thing wrong with it is that tape number 6 is missing but I hope that I can find a copy somewhere. I'm going to have my youngest use it for review this summer as she still has some reading struggles. My youngest son struggled with reading too and he hated to even try to read. PTL  though now he loves to read. It just took some time for him to find his rhythm. So if you have a child who struggles with reading, don't give up hope. It will come. Sometimes it just takes time. Well I am going to post on my Homestead blog. I hope to be back on schedule with my regular posts. Blessings! ~ Nikki
Here is a photo I took on landscape setting of a storm coming in over the Cove.

Prayer Requests

Please pray for my cousin Stephi's Daddy, Tommy. He is in the hospital and not looking too good right now. Also pray for our Deacon Randy. He is in the hospital with heart trouble also. Thanks ~ Blessings~ Nikki