All posts by Melissa

After Midnight Musings,, Again

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Yes, yet again, I am still awake at 1:25 in the morning. You know, wouldn’t it be great if we never had to sleep? Don’t get me wrong, I love sleeping, but sometimes it would be nice just to stay up all night while the kids sleep and just get everything that needed to be done, done. Then you could spend the day with the kids and doing things you really want to do without feeling guilty that your house is a mess.  Anyway, just a thought :)

So baby is 6 months old today,,er,, yesterday. It’s just so hard to believe. Soon he’ll be crawling and getting into everything. He is just such an adorable little darling and quite the character!  I love his little screeches he’s been doing lately. He found his voice and instead of babbling or cooing so much, he has taken to short little screams and screeches, just for the fun of it.LOL  Of course it doesn’t help that we laugh at him and then he smiles and does it again.  He absolutely LOVES daddy. When daddy walks in the room he just squirms and smiles,, it is so adorable! Daddy was the first to make him laugh, and I’ll bet you that’s what his first word will be!  He has also found out that he can actually stick his tongue out.LOL,, he’ll sit there with his tongue partially out of his mouth quite often now and it is so funny! I tried to take a picture of it tonight, but by the time I’d turned the camera on and was ready to take the picture, and then had to press the button a couple times before it finally flashed, of course he didn’t have his tongue out anymore,, go figure!

Well, good night for now. I want to sit and write some more, but I’ve got too many ideas running around in my brain and I’d have to get them separated into separate posts. So maybe tomorrow my head will be a bit more clear! I’m still trying to get the hang of this blogging business, so bear with me!

A Good Day

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Yesterday was a very good day. It’s been awhile since I’ve had a few hours of peace during the day, what with a 6 month old, 3 year old and 6 year old boys. Usually the older two are running around, play fighting, real fighting (-: , asking me to help them with something, wanting something to eat, the list goes on and on….. Baby is a very good baby, but even good babies take up time and energy needing to be held, fed, played with, and I wouldn’t trade all of this for anything…

But, mommys need a break during the day and I don’t usually get that because usually my 3 yr old won’t go to sleep if I try to lay him down for a nap now unless he gets up fairly early, so I’ve stopped bothering to lay him down so I don’t have to spend all afternoon fighting him to stay in his bed. He is a very strong willed boy and even though he gets disciplined when he gets up out of bed, he’ll still keep doing it or sit there and cry the whole time and just won’t go to sleep. He’s been getting better at night about going to bed, finally, most likely due to not taking a nap during the day.

Anyway, so yesterday I had to get up before 7am to get baby and ds2(dear son #2) into the car to take daddy to work so we could have the car to be able to pick up ds1(dear son #1) from his cousins house where he had spent the night. When we got home after picking up ds1 around 10am and then picking up daddy for lunch around 11am, both boys were both really cranky and kept fighting about stuff. So about 1:30 I put ds2 down for a nap and he actually went to sleep really fast….of course he would, after being awake since before 7am!lol… And then I put baby down and since he had been awake for quite awhile that morning, he went to sleep quickly too. Then I had ds1 lay down on the couch for awhile. He doesn’t take naps at all anymore since he was 4 yrs old, but I do make him lay down sometimes if he’s really cranky and he will be nice and quiet for me.

So there I was with 3 kids in the house, yet it was quiet!! I briefly thought about just relaxing, but then I thought I would feel alot better if I was able to get some cleaning done. I was able to wash quite a few dishes (don’t have a dishwasher so I have to do it all by hand), and then I was able to fold most of the clothes from mount washmore that were piled high on the couch. I did a little work on the computer too. I let ds1 get up after about an hour and we did some work in his school workbook. All in all, it was about 2 hours of quiet bliss before baby woke up, and then it was another hour before ds2 woke up.

Awwww, so nice. Now we’ll see how today goes!

Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University Giveaway

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Hey there everyone! You have got to check this out. ChristianPF(Christian Personal Finance) is doing a Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University giveaway. Included is:
Lifetime Membership – With your lifetime membership, you and your spouse can attend an FPU class anywhere, any time, at no extra charge.

Full-Color Dave Ramsey FPU Workbook – The new full-color, hardback workbook will walk you step by step through all 13 of Dave’s newly updated life-changing lessons.

High-Quality Audio CD Library – Includes all 13 lessons, plus two bonus CDs in a convenient storage case.

Durable Envelope System – Dave’s famous, easy-to-use cash management Envelope System, now with a stylish, durable cover.

Dave’s Book, Financial Peace University Revisited
Helpful Tidbits – New budgeting forms, bonus CDs, tip cards, debit card holders, and more.

Access to the Member Resource Center – with online features including budgeting software and an active discussion community for the duration of your FPU class and bonus articles, videos and more for a lifetime.

So head on over to ChristianPF and enter! This would be an awesome deal! I have a couple of Dave Ramsey books, Total Money Makeover and the Financial Peace workbook and he is great! If everyone listened to his financial advice, our country would be so much better off.

Can you imagine not having any debt? Actually making ends meet and having some money to spare, even if it’s just a little, but your able to save it and not spend it unless it’s truely an emergency? Now that would be some financial peace. Money isn’t going to make us happy, only the Lord can do that, but He does want us to be wise stewards of our finances, because if we’re in debt and always worried about how we’re going to make ends meet(because of our own doing),, well then we can’t effectively serve the Lord.

So anyway, I’m entering to win this Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University Package, and crossing my fingers!

First Baby Teeth!

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Well, our little guy finally had a tooth pop through last Saturday. Boy does time fly. He’s been teething hard for a couple months now, and drooling so much you’d think he could cause a flood! The great thing is that I felt in there Wednsday night and found that the other bottom tooth is poking through now too. No wonder he’s been so cranky! Two teeth at once,, poor guy.

It’s exciting, but at the same time, I know it won’t be long before he’s walking around and then not long after that he’ll be too big to hold. I look at my other two boys and it’s neat to see them grow, but then again I’d love to hold them as little babies again,, smiling at me with that little gummy smile,, thier little face lighting up when I walk in the room,, Ahhh babies,, God sure knew what he was doing and how to get us to reproduce more!LOL Even though they can make you insane with thier crying and keeping you up all night pacing the floor,, they make up for it with thier little baby cuteness and charm and make you almost forget the pain of child birth and the sleepless nights!

Enjoy your babies while you can, because they grow up so fast! Good night everyone….

Advantage of Homeschooling

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Wow, there are so many advantages of homeschooling, where do I begin? First of all, your kids get to spend more time with you, in turn creating a stronger bond. Now, I know, some may be thinking”yeah and then they end up driving me nuts” LOL , but hey, just because you homeschool doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have a break every now and then! Every mom needs a break from the kids once in a while. But for kids to be at school 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, gives them more time with thier teachers and thier peers than it does with a parent during the day. Then when they get home, they have homework to do, maybe some sort of activity, dinner, and then bed. And as I read in another post about homeschooling, sometimes the kids start getting closed off from telling how thier day went , and maybe even keeping from you what they do with thier friends and who they hang out with. That was true for me when I was in school. That’s one thing I regret from my younger years, is that I wish I had been more open with my parents.

A huge advantage of homeschooling is the one on one learning. Public schools cannot effectively teach each child one on one because of the many students in each classroom. They also cannot teach to every childs level and style of learning which leaves some children falling further behind, while others are bored because they need more of a challenge. Teaching your own kids at home gives you the advantage of being able to see your childs needs and meet those needs in thier learning. Now if you choose to public school, this is where the parents really can step in and help thier kids succeed even in public schools. Parents just need to be more involved in helping with thier childs homework and making sure it gets done, or getting them the help they need to improve thier grades.

Another advantage of homeschooling is being able to go on field trips or vacations whenever you want. You’re not tied down to your childs school schedule and you can even do homeschooling on the road if you’re going on a long trip. Take a trip and visit historical monuments and you can have a fun history lesson.

Next is you have more say in who your kids hang out with. Some may think that we shouldn’t tell our kids who they can and can’t be around or that homeschoolers “shelter” thier kids too much and that they aren’t “socialized”. Now I do believe kids need to get out and play with other kids and make friends outside the home, but in public shools, usually they aren’t that well supervised out on the playground. When I was in grade school, as I’ve mentioned before in my homeschooling thoughts, I learned things and heard things that were perverted and that I should not have been exposed to at that age.
So with my kids, I am all for enrolling them in some extra curricular ativities, like sports, or art classes, but those things are much more easily monitored. I think that with homeschooling, they will gain a stronger foundation in the Lord(if we make sure to be diligent in teaching them and living the example) before they are fully thrown out into the world to make thier own decisions and hopefully then they will choose to let the Lord lead them. Gods Word says”Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not depart from it” Prov. 22:6 (KJV)

So one more advantage in homeschooling that I’ve learned from reading peoples testimonies, is that homeschooled kids tend not to give in to peer pressure as much when they get older. They are more independant thinkers and they tend to be more independant learners too. I think that is a great thing!

I think that about covers the advantages of homeschooling, but if you have more to add, or if you just want to share your thoughts, Please leave a comment! I’d love to hear from you!

Homeschooling Thoughts Continued….

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So I was thinking that my last post about this probably sounded a bit jumbled, but the thoughts were just running through my head as I was writing them down..

Well, I want to make it perfectly clear that I do not think that public schools are evil or anything. I do feel, however, that if you are able to homeschool your kids, then you should at least give it a try. You will not ruin them! There is so much information out there on the internet, at the library, that it really isn’t hard to learn what needs to be learned. I have learned so many more things since I graduated high school just from studying up on things over the internet.  Sure I could have paid to go to school to learn how to build a website and all that goes along with that, but you know what? I’ve done my own research and taken the time here and there to learn from all of the free information out there, that I now know how to build my own website and how to write in html, css, and I even know alot more about php than I used to.  It’s taken awhile, but that’s only because I’ve had kids along the way and I don’t spend every day working on that stuff.

I just really believe that a big issue with public schools is that there are too many kids per classroom. A teacher cannot possibly deal with every childs individual learning abilities and styles. They don’t get a whole lot of one on one time and many parents just send thier kids to school but don’t  do much to reinforce thier learning once school is out.  I also believe that teachers ought to get paid according to thier performance. I know when I was in school, I had certain teachers that I loved, and most other kids did too. I learned the most from those teachers and they were the ones that seemed to really enjoy teaching and really took an interest in thier students. 

Anyway, so now that we have all these resources at hand, I really think that many parents can get back to teaching thier own children from home if they so choose.  Back in the “old days” parents didn’t have all the things necessary to teach thier children apart from reading, writing and arithmatic. But when it came to history, science and advanced math, a school teacher really was necessary.

As far as how much the government is involved with homeschooling. I am one that believes there should be some way to monitor how homeschooled kids are doing. Otherwise you will get more people keeping thier kids out of school and then not teaching them anything and these poor kids will go out into the world not having much of an education to help them.  I don’t think there ought to be any rules on how or what should be taught, but I do think that testing every so often is not too much to ask.  Oregon, which is where we live, only requires that homeschooled kids be tested before grades 3, 5, 8, and 10. 

I do not think there should be any more restrictions than that. I am in favor of testing for a couple reasons. How else are you able to determine how a child is doing and where they are at? Also, some parents may not take thier childs education as seriously if there are no deadlines. Given the fact that in Oregon you don’t have to register as a homeschooler untill your child turns 7 on or before Sept. 1st, and then you can choose to start them either in 1st or second grade, I think that gives plenty of time to be ready for a test by 3rd grade, especially when children that are homeschooled tend to advance faster than in public school because of the one on one teaching.

I really don’t think one should be afraid of tests if they know they’ve been putting forth the effort to teach thier child what they should be learning.

Well, that’s my homeschooling soap box for now.

To be continued……