Sunday, May 17, 2009

A couple of bugs stopped by this week........

Senior Banquet

Yesterday our school Heritage Christian had their senior banquet to honor all of its home school seniors.

Our senior this year is Sarah.Sarah and her friends Aliza and Seth who happen to be sister & brother.Steve giving his blessing to Sarah.
Seniors-Sarah is in front

A Day In My Life

Since we decided that Joe would continue to be home educated through high school I looked at our ISP's Class Day II class offerings. Physical Science Lab is offered so I signed him up for that class. We are able to drop off our high school students, but I don't like to do that and signed the rest of us up to go too.

As I was heading to the car I was chatting with my friend Pam and told the girls to go get into the car. They obediently went to the car and after a few minutes they shut the doors and locked the car, from the inside.

All of a sudden the horn started blaring in panic mode. It thought it was being stolen and was reacting to this hostile attack against it. I don't have the "clicker" "remote" for it as it has been lost for over a year now so I couldn't just press a button to deactivate it. I told Addis to unlock the car from the inside and she did but it kept honking and honking and honking. FINALLY it went off only to keep honking ANYTIME we did ANYTHING to it. By now office workers are looking out the window, women are coming up to my car to get a gander at what is going on. (Did you know that I make an impression wherever I go, whether I like it or not?-With 12 kids, two colors, adults and babies-that tends to happen)

I decide I'm going to go home with my horn blaring and at least give the people at the church/school some peace and quiet. As I was driving through the parking lot with my horn blowing John said, "Mom, someone is coming who wants to talk to you." So I stopped and it was Yukon Don. Yukon Don is a family friend who does Bible Study with Steve on Friday mornings and is a handyman by trade. Thank you Lord! He worked and fiddled around for a while and could not figure out where the fuse was for the horn. He finally found it and took it out. Problem was my car would not go into drive unless the horn fuse was in. He put it back in and I shifted into Drive and then he took the fuse back out. Oh, the peace, the quiet! It had been honking for about twenty minutes.

I drove home with five of the kids in the car with me. All was well but I knew I couldn't do the errands that I wanted to so home bound we were. As soon as we pulled onto the driveway I turned off the car and tried to restart it, it didn't work. Steve came home and tried to figure it out, he couldn't either. He disengaged the battery thinking if it sat for while maybe that would work. Nope.

We had to get to a graduation celebration so we left it, hood propped for later pondering. On our way home, Sarah says to me, "You know this happened the other night at Youth. James made it go off and I stuck the key in the door and it went off." Huh? Are you kidding me?! It took a 17 year old girl to tell three adults how to disengage the horn. We tried it. It worked!

I had Steve call Don to tell him what we figured out just in case it happened to another home school mom and his assistance was needed. He told Steve, "I've been going to Class Day for 3-1/2 years and it's never happened before, I hope to go another 3-1/2 years before it happens again. Hilarious.

Home School Convention

Last weekend we went to our local home school convention sponsored by Christian Family Schools of San Diego. The main speaker was Voddie Baucham.
If you've never heard Voddie speak you're in for a delight. I have YouTube videos below for your listening pleasure if you have time to listen.

We were challenged in many areas and reconfirmed our decision to home educate our children, even the one going into high school. We have Joe signed up with a charter school. A great charter school. Can't say anything bad about it. BUT! It is a government school. Period. It will always be a government school. So I'll have to buck up and get through high school once again. (I've done this four times now you would think it's not a big deal.) Voddie told us, "Don't quit!!" That was what I needed to hear. I broke the news to my son that he would continue to have me as his teacher and he took it very well.

We were challenged in not letting boys and girls playing contact sports together. When boys are physically pushing girls and competing with them they are not learning to protect and cherish them. As it turns out the soccer team Joe had tried out for was allowing a girl to play on the team. Now you can't tell me that she is THAT good that she can't fit on a girl's club soccer team. I'm not buying it. We told the coach that Joe wouldn't be playing on a team that had girls on it, especially at fourteen years old. Could this be why we have more domestic violence? There are NO gender lines between men and women, boys and girls? Come on! Let boys be rough, physical, sweaty, aggressive, testosteronish (my own word) without a GIRL in the mix. I told him our concerns and we told him he couldn't play. He took that well too. He is a REALLY GREAT kid. It turns out that a higher level team was having tryouts the same day I told him he probably wasn't going to play on that team and he went. He thanked me when he got back in the car after the tryout. He liked being challenged, he liked not being the best player on the team, and if we had not put our foot down, he wouldn't have had the opportunity. So now we just hope he makes the team. :-)

I came home after the conference and downloaded podcasts of Voddie's for my iPod and have all ready listened to a few. He is inspiring, rightly handling the Word of Truth, and challenging. Thanks for a great weekend, Voddie!

Tuesday, May 12, 2009

Mountain Camping pictures

We went camping in our local mountains a few weeks ago. We camped at Paso Picacho and were able to go to Green Valley Falls twice to enjoy the rocks and little waterfalls. The kids had fun there and enjoyed our camp as well. Below are some pictures that I took of the nature scenes around me. You can see more of my people pics on facebook.


The spider is at the bottom right.
Textures in God's world amaze me. This beautiful dove flew right across the path in front of me Blue Jay (I think.)WoodpeckerThere is a deer just coming out of the bushes. The little things poking out of the ground are mini pine trees. The area was devastated from the Cedar Fire in 2003.

Tuesday, May 5, 2009

Biblical Womanhood by Voddie Baucham













Anna's Birthday

Anna celebrated her 3rd birthday the other day.

Isn't she sweet?
She's so funny. This is her REAL personality. She doesn't show it much outside of our home unless she is very comfortable. New suits. Is Adah Derartu to much? Look at her posing. I think I have my hands full with that one.
Oh to be 3 again!