Happy 5th Birthday to Wren!  She is the last of the girls to turn five so we now have three five year olds dashing about these days.  Wren is our fashionable little girl.  Leopard, or cheetah print only.  No zebra print allowed.  It's just not cool you know.   

I have been learning how to use my new camera.  It has so many settings on it that I have had to read and reread my manual just to figure out the basics.  Once you learn the icons it's not hard but it can get confusing.  I decided the best way to master it was to concentrate on one setting at a time.  Today I worked on the aperture priority setting (a manual setting) and the portrait setting (a programmed aperture priority setting).  I managed to create bokeh for the first time.  Bokeh.  Yes, it has a name.  The blurry background, often bright spots or lights behind an up close portrait or object.

My results:

and a self-portrait

I've been watching my granddaughter Cadence for the past week while she's out on school break.  She's a good kid and easy to take care of.  She has been enjoying her "lazy time" and getting to see her cousins more than normal.   The only challenge I have had is getting her to eat.  If I offer beans in any shape or form I'm good but if I suggest anything else it's doubtful that it gets eaten.  I've never seen a kid love burritos so much. 

As part of her being here with me I have promised her mom that I will have her practice her reading to me so each day we sit down and she reads a book to me.  I'm back to teaching lessons.  It takes me back to the days when I was teaching my children each day.  I have to admit I enjoyed the challenge.  I also think I was successful in my endeavor since I have four children, all graduates, all have attended or graduated from college, all are productive members of society and above all they are happy and they love God.  So I consider it a success. 

Homeschooling your children is not something to be taken lightly.  It is a big responsibility.  The biggest challenge for many is diligence.  It means setting a schedule.  It means sticking to it.  It means not going out to lunch with a friend because school hasn't been done.  It means setting goals and helping your children achieve them.  It means doing it EVERY day whether you want to or not.  I found that if I let one day go by without doing school (on a regular school day) it was even easier to let the second day go by and before I knew it we were a couple of weeks behind.  It is easy to let daily life interfere and to be honest there are days you just want to be selfish and say, nope, I'm going to Walmart and I'm doing what I want no matter what but you can't!  You HAVE to make yourself do school because in the end you are just hurting your children if you don't develop that diligence.  Not only are you not furthering their education the best way you can, but you are hurting them by teaching them that school isn't important.

I realize there are many methods of homeschooling and not everyone sits down at the kitchen table and does two hours of school each day.  Some subjects lend themselves to a more relaxed method.  Science is often learned through hands on activities and experiential activities.  History is often accomplished through museum tours and discussion but the fact remains that to learn to read you have to sit down and work on it.  It isn't just picked up by osmosis, you have to take the time to really work on it.  Same with math facts.  It takes time.  It's those core subjects that require mom to put aside herself and get herself organized and just do it! 

Okay, so that was a rabbit-trail.  But hopefully this will all tie together in the end. 

In watching Cadence I have had to be a little more organized in my day.  The first couple of days I didn't get around to reading with her.  I failed.  Now did it hurt her for those two days?  She would say no.  But if I kept on not doing my promised job it would.  She would go back to school having forgotten her reading skills.  It takes daily practice to master reading and I didn't want to make it harder on her than it needed to be.  So I had to apply myself and set aside reading time and be diligent in getting it done.  For her sake.  My petty wants and needs of running into town, playing on Facebook, reading my own book, could be set aside for the time needed to read with her.   When homeschooling my children I had lessons I taught on purpose.  As I was sitting here listening to Cadence read today I thought about the many lessons our children, and now my grandchildren have learned from me not on purpose.   They haven't always been good ones.  That's how it is in our society.  Our kids learn lessons through observing those around them.  And lessons are learned.

What are some things I see children being taught today in our society? 

• We teach them that doing right is only necessary if it doesn't inconvenience ourselves.
• We teach them that preservation of power and social standing is more important than honesty.
• We teach them that truth is relative.
• We teach them boys are bad, girls are good.
• We teach them that everyone is a winner and by default do not teaching them how to handle defeat gracefully.
• We teach them that self-esteem is more important than excellence.
• We teach them that someone is always at fault and it is never yourself.
• We teach children that they are an inconvenience.

Is the church doing any better?

• We teach children to hate church.
• We teach children hypocrisy by being politically correct instead of Biblically correct.
• We teach them fear of man instead of fear of God.
• And we pretty much teach all the "society" list above in a church setting too.

I suppose I ought to explain but I'm not sure I can.  Or want to.

Sweet Daria decided to sing for the family talent show.  Cora was really worried she wasn't going to sing loud enough to be heard over the piano.  I guess when practicing she was very quiet.  Turns out Cora didn't have anything to worry about.  Daria was belting it out so loudly she didn't quite get the right key.  But it sure was cute!

I gave up on waiting for Xanga to encode the video so I uploaded to YouTube.  This was the entry by Aaron and Jill, Otto and Wren.  I personally like the way Wren remains frozen in fright....

I have uploaded a video of our first entry in the family talent show but Xanga is taking a thousand and one years to "encode" it.  So.... lacking a video you get photos of the family.    I'm partial to these people.

Savva had a smile on his face almost all day

 Art and Emily   

Cora and Vova

Hannah and Chris

Aaron and Jill

Walter got his BIG tractor!

Daria

Otto loves his cousins.  Otto and Fergal.

Wren!

New Readers for the new readers.

Cora who has just announced the expected child #3 (in July).

Jill, a crazy fun picture of her playing a game.  She basically had to "head bang" 120 times in 1 minute.  She did it with a few bangs to spare!

Emily and Fergal.  She was thrilled he wasn't screaming like he usually does when she holds him.

Sisters keeping watch over the little ones in the other room.  Hannah and Cora.

Hannah got a new nutcracker! 

Art, happy as a hamster with his maze ball.  Should keep him entertained for months.

Otto loved the cookies!

Cadence

Fergal.  Mr. Bright Eyes, maybe a little bit crazy-eyes too.  I think he had gotten too much sugar.

Cora playing a game where she had to move a cookie from her forehead into her mouth without using her hands or touching it with anything.  She actually managed to do it!

Yes, this would be my husband with panty-hose on his head with a baseball in the end of it, swinging it like an elephant trunk to knock down soda bottles.  Just one of his more entertaining moments of the day.

Uh..... Ken picking up cotton balls using Vaseline to stick them to his nose and transport them across the room to a different bowl.  lol  Another VERY entertaining moment.

Cora, the master dice stacker.  Another point for the girls team.

Emily had to shake ping pong balls out of the kleenex box tied around her waist.  She shook and shimmied so hard she fell down before the balls all came out.

Jill doing the paper dragon.  Score one for the girls!

I really could just leave this one up to the imagination..... but Chris had to pick up paper back of varying sizes using only his teeth and he couldn't touch the floor with his hands.  The last bag was only four inches high.  He is a very limber man.  I will never take him on in a game of limbo.

Aaron's annual Lego gift.  This year it was a giant Lego head that I filled with lifesavers for his desk at work.  I've been giving him Legos every year for the past 28 years.

The lovely candle lit lantern that we received as a gift that I used as a table center-piece.  The acorns around it were Burr Oak acorns that a friend of mine gave me and are two to three inches in diameter.

Last but not least.... my husband and I.  He does love his butter. 

everything!

Food! 

Presents!

Singing!

Games!

Pictures to come soon.

My daughter mentioned that her tree has no ornaments on it's lower half thanks to her son who seems intent upon removing them all.  I saw this today and discovered that Santa has the opposite problem.... lol