The Great American Solar Eclipse 2017

We are blessed to live in Tennessee , which was a prime viewing spot for the Great American Eclipse. Unfortunately we were outside the path of totality by a few miles. We had a wonderful show though. BabyGirl, Roosie , Toodles and I were able to have our own little viewing party. Tman and Hoopy had to work. We made viewers with boxes and they worked well. We also had a welding helmet that we shared to gaze at it. It was amazing to watch God's work in the sky today. As I said earlier, we were not in path of totality so we did not have complete darkness, but we did have some wonderfully weird lighting. Also the crickets cut loose at  full volume for 2 minutes then stopped. The drop in temperature was noticeable for us also. The show didn't last long but it was worth the wait. I'm just very thankful today for the goodness of God and His masterful works. Blessings ~ Nikki

New Year New Hello

Let me start off by saying how much I truly, always, enjoyed blogging. Many years ago I joined Homeschool Blogger and Homestead Blogger to find socialization among fellow homeschoolers, homesteaders and Christians. I loved the outlet that blogging gave me. I loved the many people I “met” in cyberspace who shared so many common dreams and goals as my own family. When those sites went down I was so lost. I started these blogs here on blogger but still lost touch with so many from the other sites. Still, I had a place to come and document our lives, share things I had made for our homeschool and things I had made to use in our ministries at church. Then as our life needs began to change and I headed back to school and into the work force, these blogs got lost in the shuffle. I had big dreams and goals of coming back and dusting off the blogs but again, no follow through.  Now don’t get me wrong, I had no dream to be one of the super mommy bloggers. Still don’t. I believe my super mommy power is in the home not the web. But I do miss the outlet blogging has been for me; especially as I battled through some issues with depression and anxiety. I should have come here to put words to page…it has always been a comfort to me to write. I may not do it well but I love it. Anyway, my lovely daughters have convinced me to get back to my happy place, to say something, even if I’m the only one who reads it. So here I go again. Read, share, enjoy if you can. And hey, maybe say hello to let me know you have been by. Encourage me when you see me lagging.  Blessing everyone! Nikki , TnMtnRose

HS Launch Files

It came to my attention today that the HS Launch domain is no linger active and so the links to all my printables are invalid. I do apologize. At this time I do not have internet at home except on my cell phone, one downside to living in the countryside, so I cannot move them all to another site. I have not updated this blog in a while, no internet and busy life has kept me from it but do look for updates soon. We are looking into getting a mobile hotspot to use at home as at the moment even satellite internet is not available to us. See you soon! Blessing ~ Nikki

A New School Year

First Day Of School 2014/2015 Senior and Freshman

Today started a new school year for us. It is both exciting and bittersweet. This year Hoopy will be a Senior (graduating !?!?!?!) and Roosie started her Freshman year. Our homeschool journey is in its final days. Time just needs to slow down. I am not ready for this crazy ride to end. I mean, I look forward to my children growing, finding their place in the world and starting their own families, but it takes my breath to think about the end of our homeschool days. Already we have had our oldest son and daughter graduate. Its a conflict of pride and fear for me. I'm proud of all their accomplishments yet I fear the ending of our long journey. These are days we can never regain...
At least this December my college journey will be over and I will have an easier schedule; so our homeschool days will again have a quiet rhythm. My DD BabyGirl carries the load for me on days when I have class. She is a blessing beyond measure.
I am quite excited for the literature part of our school year. This first semester we are reading A Christmas Carol . I have notebooking sheets (available on HSLaunch , check the sidebar for links) that the kids will use to answer questions on. There are so many great resources out there for this book. I hope to get a post together with all those resources within the next week. Blessings!

New Notebooking Pages

It is hard to believe that the end of the year is here. 2013 flew by didn't it? Hopefully everyone had the chance to enjoy every moment of it. I worked on some notebooking pages during December. I thought I would share them with you. This is a picture of the blank page I made. Click on it to download.

 The other pages look like this but they have drawings from  A Christmas Carol on them. You can find them on my HSLaunch page HERE. Be sure to check them out and let me know if you like them and find them helpful. Blessings! ~ Nikki

Nature Walks

With Fall all nice and settled in here in the Smokies, it is the perfect time for a nature walk. Roosie and I went last week and then BabyGirl went with us this week. We got some lovely pics that I wanted to share. I wish that we had been able to get a picture of our deer we came across but they moved too fast for us. We have a small herd that moves through our neighborhood every day. Sometimes I have to wait for one to move out of the driveway so I can head out to school. I hope you enjoy the pictures! They are not great because I took them with my phone but hopefully you will like them. Be sure to get out there and take a walk too! Blessing ~ Nikki

Who tree! This tree has an odd shape that you can't really see until all the leaves are gone. It reminds us of a Who tree from Whoville. It is one of our favorite trees. Usually in the Fall it is a very deep red but the other day it was more orange. 

 

 

Here it is from another angle with some awesome cloud cover behind it :)

The woods a week earlier.

A friendly slug

A baby "woolly booger" or woolly bear. he was only about an inch long.

Foxtails

Late purple aster

Heath asters

We also saw 2 deer, a chipmunk, a towhee, a Carolina wren, chipping sparrows and honeysuckle berries.

School Planner

Every year I peruse all the free planners on the internet and I always fall in love with several but they never seem to be that perfect fit. I've made my own over the years and now I just tweak it to suit our needs. This year I adjusted ours to fit 2 students instead of 3. I also updated my Planner cover. I used the wonderful graphics found at My Cute Graphics to decorate the front of my planner 

and our attendance calendar which I picked up at Calendar Lab. *Just a note: the original graphic on my cover only had 5 owls so I layered another single image onto it in Word because we have 6 in our family.* I copied and pasted my calendar into Word and dressed it up to fit my planner.

You can pick up my basic planner HERE. Use it for your planning needs or as inspiration to create your own. This is my dressed up "home" version, it's a little different. Pick it up HERE in Word, or HERE in pdf.

I also have another with a F.R.O.G. theme HERE. If you look around on my HSLaunch page, HERE, you will find other printables that go with that such as covers and address sheets. I also found a wonderful resource at Atlanta - Homeschool. It is a monthly record keeping sheet for "at a glance" things. Pick it up at their site HERE. 
Last year I found this wonderful binder at Walgreens. 

It makes a great binder for a homeschool planner. It has 3 inner pockets plus it has an inside clear view pocket which is the perfect place for our attendance calendar. I also print out our local school systems calendar to help me plan our holiday/break schedules. My kids have friends in public schools so I have always tried to match up a few days so they can spend time together.

Here is what I keep inside my planner. I keep page protectors, which will hold the planner pages, worksheets and stuff.I also have notebook paper. And I keep these wonderful tab dividers to separate my kids work. They can be written on and erased :) Love them! I also love the plastic pocket dividers too.

I hope you enjoyed my Planner tour. Leave me a comment  :) I would love to visit your blog and see how you are getting ready for this school year! Blessings! ~ Nikki