Christmas Update

Now that I finally have a moment I wanted to give you all an update on our Christmas. This year was a little different from years past. We have always done things a certain way, like that I cook dinner for my family and my mom on Christmas Eve. Well, we didn't get home from Nashville until Christmas Eve afternoon, so cooking a big dinner was not going to happen. So you know what we ate for dinner, Subway! I still can't believe it. The funny thing is we enjoyed it just as much.

Christmas Day was one of our best. The kids did wake up early as usual, but everything just seemed more laid back. We opened our gifts, I fixed pancakes and bacon for breakfast, and then we just enjoyed spending time together. Later that evening we did have to go to my sister in law's for hubby's family Christmas, but it even went really well. That was something new.

As for presents I think we each got what we asked Santa for and then some. So here goes the list (it goes along with my slide show)...

Me: My hubby and my mom got me a Keurig coffee maker. It was such a surprise, I was not expecting it. I love it, and use it several times a day. My hubby also got me a Cricut Expression for scrapbooking. It hasn't arrived yet, but I can't wait to get it. I also got some Lucky jewelry, a new housecoat, some accessories for my Cricut, Sing Star Country and Pop 2, and coffee for my Keurig.

My Hubby: We got him a Dremel and accessories for it. He has been wanting one forever. We also got him some house shoes, a traveling manicure kit, and candy. My mom got him the AC/DC Rockband game for the PS2. He is a kid at heart.

TT: TT cleaned up on the video games he got Shawn White and 300: March to Glory for the PSP, Gutiar Hero World tour and Aerosmith, plus NHL '08 for the PS2. Plus he got a new guitar for all the ripping he will be doing on the PS2. He also got a new pair of American Eagle jeans that looked totally worn out (I love em), a down vest and a coat also from American Eagle. Finally, he got a song bird book, baseball cards and candy.

Poogie: Poogie wished for American Girl stuff and boy did she get it. She got several outfits I lost count of how many, a wardrobe to put all the outfits in, and a bed for Julie her AG doll. Poogie also got a WowWee lion cub that is so realistic, and two new Pet Shop pets. Along with all this she got a MP3 player, 2 new DS games (Pet Shop Jungle and Chihuahua & Friends) and candy.

Buffy: Buffy got a new bed which she desperately needed and loves, a new weenie dog stuffed toy and a bag of her favorite cookies from Pet Co.

Claudy Mae: Claudy got a new lazer mouse light. She is crazy about it.

Whew, what a list. The best part about all of it was that we spent most of Christmas Day and the days following just having fun, playing games and spending time together.

I hope that each of you had a very, Merry Christmas!

Hope you all had a Merry Christmas!

I know I haven't posted in a while, the holiday has kept me busy. I hope that all of you had a wonderful Christmas, I know we did. I hope to post more this weekend. I didn't take a lot of photos this year. I just enjoyed the moments without constantly taking pictures, a first for me.
Till then.

The Nutcracker!

Yesterday Poogie and I went to see The Nutcracker with a friend of hers from ballet class. It was the first time for both of us to see The Nutcracker live. WOW. It was so wonderful. The girls danced like they were floating. Poogie sat through the whole thing barely moving. She loves ballet.

It seems weird to me for my child to be so focused on something. This is her 4th year dancing and her first really focusing on ballet with no end to the obsession in sight. In all my years I haven't ever been so focused on something other than getting my college degree. I am proud of her and in awe of her. Both my hubby and I want to support her in this passion so hopefully it will grow. If she looses interest, fine, but if not I want her to know that we will support her interest no matter what. That is something my nor my hubby's parents ever gave to us, support to reach our dreams.

Oh, a little dream of mine came true this weekend. My hubby and I got to go out on a date. Yes, we went out to dinner and a movie. I took him to see Twilight, of course. It was so nice, but ended too quickly.

I Can't Believe It!

As some of you may know who read my blog now and then, I lost 20 pounds last spring on WW. Since, May I hadn't really followed the program, just watched what I ate. My weight stayed around the 130 mark and I still wanted to loose those last 4 or 5 pounds.

This morning I was trying on outfits to wear to The Nutcracker with Poogie tomorrow and I noticed that my pants were loose and my shirts were too big. I didn't think I had lost any more weight. So I stepped on the scale and was amazed to find I had broken the 130 mark by one pound. Now, I know that doesn't sound like a lot but I haven't been below 130 in about 5 years. It felt great.

It was just what I needed during this holiday season. These last few months have been really hard. We have been adjusting to my hubby's new job. The idea of moving away from our friends this summer and starting over again in a new town. It is a double edged sword, I am excited about moving. I have always wanted to live in the new town, but it is hard to take my kids away from their friends. But, hey I won't let it get me down today!

A cute activity for kids

I know most of you that homeschool know about Starfall. But for those that don't or haven't seen this game you should check it out. It's called 10 little snowmen. The player gets to build a snowman by reading the requirements and then the snowmen sing the song. It is really cute. Poogie made several yesterday.

There is also a great calendar activity on the site. That is a skill we have been working on this month since her MUS doesn't address this skill I have been using sources such as Starfall to introduce it. Check it out. Oh, and of course it is free.

I also wanted to intro a great site created by one of my favorite bloggers. She has created a site dedicated to homeschooling your child for free or as close to free as you can. I get great resources from her, it is called Nearly Free Homeschooling.

So this is what it is like....

to get all our school work completed. Hmm, it's quite interesting to know that all it takes is a few hours of uninterrupted time and voila, school work is Finito!!

I was worried that the kids would mutiny on me because I have actually added more work to their lesson plans to try and make up for all the stuff we didn't do because of the YMCA. But they didn't. They actually did their work. Now, just let me say today may have been a fluke, but it sure was nice.

I am experimenting with a few new things. After great debate and frustration, I decided to keep up with SOTW but we are going to work on the rest of Vol. 1 from last year for now. It has more interesting activities in it. I am hope to purchase Vol. 2 after Christmas along with the CD's so that we can listen to them in the car if we need to. That is the year we need to be in for the 4 year rotation cycle. But when am I ever where I am suppose to be;)

I also added a little extra math for both of my little darlings. Poogie has been so bored with MUS Alpha. She loves math, but wants to do more. So I purchased Math Mammoth Time, Money and will be purchasing 1st grade for her. She loved the Time lesson we did today.

For TT I purchased Decimals 1 from Math Mammoth. I just feel he needs to see how fractions are also decimals and vice versa. He did the first lesson today and he did extremely well. He even said he liked the lesson. WOW! I haven't heard that in a while.

The Math Mammoth ebooks were inexpensive and from all the lessons I have read ahead seem to be quite through. I mean they don't have a huge teacher's manual, but I still like them. I hope to purchase Teaching Textbooks 6 this spring and have TT work through it this spring and summer. Or I might start in the fall with 7, but I will really have to work with him outside of MUS to get his knowledge built up. He took the placement test for Teaching Textbooks a few weeks ago and it placed him in 6. He couldn't do several of the decimal problems, and a few others that won't be addressed in MUS for him to move up to 7. The worst thing to get behind in is math. We are going to do everything we can to keep that from happening.

Anywho, I am also planning some fun lessons for Christmas. Most of them are based on my Jan Brett Christmas collection. We will be doing a cute and fun lesson on The Mitten, in which we will make our own paper mittens and little critters to put inside. For Who's Knocking on Christmas Eve we will be studying polar bears with the help of Enchanted learning. Finally, for The Wild Christmas Reindeer we will study, reindeer. The kids love these stories and the beautiful illustrations of her books. I will add the link for my Mitten activity later, can't seem to find it now.

If you like Twilight..

For those of you like me that loved the Twilight series, you may want to check out Stephenie Meyer's site. She has the beginnings of the unfinished manuscript, Midnight Sun. Just click it and the link will take you there. It is the story of Twilight written from Edwards point of view. I have read most of it and I loved it.

I love when authors write books from other characters points of view. I have read a few of these types of books, such as Pamela Aidan's, An Assembly Such as This which tells the story of Pride and Prejudice from Darcy's point of view. It is a series of three books, and I truly love the series.

I decided to post this info about Midnight Sun because I know several of my friends are reading the books for the first time right now. They are just falling in love with Edward and Bella. In fact, on of my girlfriends e-mailed me tonight that she was reading them and I told her about MS and thought I should share it with others.

Many people are not like me. I am constantly on Stephenie Meyers site checking up on new books and all during the filming of Twilight. So I thought I would give ya'll a heads up.

Enjoy the series. I know I did. Oh and check out the Twilight soundtrack, it is awesome. I mean it has Linkin Park need I say more.

Recovery from the weekend.

That pretty much sums up my day. I hope all of you had a safe and happy Thanksgiving weekend. I hope that you didn't get hurt trying to cash in on one of those Black Friday sales. I know I didn't.

I spent Friday driving to my hubby's apartment and then setting it up for him. It looked like a really bad college student room. You know an air mattress in the middle of the floor with a box as a night stand. It all looked a little sad. Well, now he is set up in style.
The rest of the weekend was spent shopping and just hanging out. We drove home yesterday and to say that the traffic was terrible was an understatement. It was crazy. I can't remember the last time I went out of town for Thanksgiving so I am not accustom to the jammed interstate highways.

Another thing I haven't ever been big on is going shopping at 5 am on Black Friday. I worked enough of those days during my years in the retail world and it is not worth it to me. We went shopping on Saturday and the crowds weren't really that bad. I even tried on clothes at the mall and that wouldn't have happened if it was crowded, I don't like to wait for a dressing room.

Anywho, today was spent in recovery. You know the drill. Wash the mound of clothes everyone brought back from the trip, while thinking that there is no way you took this many clothes with you in the first place. Clean the house yet again. Go to the grocery since you didn't buy much before you went away.

School was also a new idea to our systems. Last week I finally just gave up and decided to start fresh today. We did start fresh and were able to actually complete a full school day. It felt kind of weird to actually complete everything. And now that the YMCA is out for December we can do a full school day everyday. I hope to get caught up in some areas I feel we are behind in.

All in all it was a productive but exhausting day. To bed for me.