Welcome back. I'm busy doing my homeschool planning for next year but I'll be here occasionally keeping you updated. You may find just what you came for and if you don't, then keep checking back!

I’ve gone for weeks at a time this summer unplugged from the internet – from my online commitments, my websites and blogs, facebook and emails.  Not only that, but I’ve been without cell service too!    Talk about a big shock.  You do know who’s blog you are reading, right?

I’m not gonna lie, I think my nerves were rattled for a few days as I found myself pacing around in circles wondering what in the heck I was going to do with all this time that I now possessed.  So, what does this list-maker do?  I made a list of the four things that I was going to do every day.

1.  Read the Bible every morning. 

2.  Spend quality time playing with the kids. 

3.  Read a book from my list of classics for two hours.

4.  Go outside or get some exercise.

These were the things that I wanted to accomplish every day on my six week vacation.  And so far, so good.  I know that I am extremely blessed to be able to step away from my every day obligations, literally step half of the country away, and just BE.

Rejuvating my body in nature, my soul with the word of the Lord, my mind with the great classics and my sense of humor with my children and husband has given me a new perspective on the tangeable things that matter to me the most.  It has given me a clear vision again of what it means to live a life of balance.  Isn’t this what us moms are always claiming we have to do well? 

Balance.

We’ve lived as a unit again, without the distractions of the communication highway.  We’ve lived a solitary summer and we’re coming back changed.

It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.

-Emerson

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My dear friends, Barb and Molly, sent me emails this past week checking in with me because they hadn’t seen much going on over here.  You ladies are so sweet.  Thank you for reminding me to post something….anything!  I’ve been so busy lately that I’ve forgotten about my bloggy friends.  You sure do know how to make someone feel loved.

So, here’s a few things that have been going on with us!

My oldest son turned 14! We took the whole family plus a couple of his friends camping at a spring nearby.  We had an absolute blast and he is such a joy to be around.  I love being his mom.

This little guy is a sponge.  He just soaks in everything that is going on around him and everything in his life is an adventure.  Here he is making us spaghetti while we do our morning school routine.  And then he’s making spiders with playdough and pipe cleaners counting their legs..1..2..3..4..5..6..7..8.

We’ve been winding down some of our subjects getting ready for a change of pace this summer.  We school year round (sorry to repeat this, but some of you may not know this).  So, in the summers we do lots of fun things that we don’t get to do during the other months like sight-seeing, traveling, science kits that have been lurking from the shelves and history books that we’ve skipped over.

Here we are at a cabin in the Georgia mountains, right before dark. The kids were getting ready for a glow-in-the-dark sword fight. We hiked, played pool, gem mined and relaxed a bit with friends. You can see more pictures of our trip on my facebook page.

I took my princess to see a ballet, Sleeping Beauty, for a mother daughter day.  I try to sneak in time for us to do girly things, otherwise she may not know how a young lady should act with all these snotty nose boys around.  (They don’t really have snotty noses, except one right now ’cause he has a cold.)

My middle child, The Inventor has been busy building things like mouse traps and candy machines thanks to his Grandma that supplies him with bags of junk recycled objects and lessons in physics.  It is really handy having a Grandma that was a gifted science teacher come over to “play” with the children.  They always look forward to their time with her.  She knows how to make learning not boring.  I’m so thankful for her and her time that she gives her grandchildren.

My artsy son has been spending his free time making collages that he hopes to sell on Etsy.  He has a whole line.

He also writes, produces, edits and burns copies of movies on a weekly basis.  He and his older brother have some pretty funny scripts that they are working on right now.  It’s not uncommon for me to find weird things laying around that are “props”.  I found a half melted stick of butter and a butter knife in a zip locked bag in the fridge one day.  Ummmm, yuck!  Who wants to use that? They come to “class” with red stains on their skin from blood wounds because they just shot a battle scene.  And just this morning I yelled, “Who left the white wig in the backyard?  It’s getting ready to rain!”

I love my life.

Don’t get me wrong, dear friends, there is plenty of hectic stuff going on around here too.  But, I’d rather make you laugh then pity my life with five children.

I’ve been a reading maniac lately.  This is part of the reason that I haven’t been blogging.  I’ve been reading these books:

• How to Read a Book – funny title, but EXCELLENT!
• Invitation to the Classics – good overview of the classics
• The Discoverers – by my new favorite author, Boorstin
• The Book Thief – for book club
• Composition in the Classical Tradition – cause I’m nuts and decided it was time to learn how to teach the progymnasmata to my high schooler
• and a handful of others that I haven’t finished yet, in preparation for history next year

I know it’s a long update and if you stuck with me then please leave a comment so I can send you a personal congratulations!!  But, I don’t know when I will post again next, so I figured I’d make it a long one.

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Thanks to all my friends that have emailed me asking where I’ve been lately.  I’ve been focusing my extra time on homeschooling a highschooler next year.

For those of you that know me in real life, you know that I love a good challenge.  Homeschooling the highschooler is not the challenge that I’m talking about here.  The challenge is that I’m writing a history curriculum that I’m going to be teaching in a small group setting.

I enjoy using the Socratic method of teaching and there are many benefits to teaching history and literature in this fashion with a small group.

The above picture represents the light reading that’s been going on at my house during my free time.  The stack, as I like to call it, varies daily.  So, if you don’t hear from me it’s because my nose is stuck in a book.  I’ll be back to blog about it all later when I have something worth hearing.  Until then!

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Welcome to Homeschool History Buffs!  If you would like to participate in the blog hop, please get your code below from Linky Tools.  Add the code to your blog post so that you can hop easily from blog to blog that is participating.

Please help spread the word so that HHB can grow to become a great resource for history project ideas.  Each entry becomes eligible to be included on the Homeschool Gadget Toolbar under history projects chronologically.

We made a talking feather from our Hands and Hearts Early American History kit.  What I love about these kits is that you get all the materials needed for these incredible projects.

We are in the Colonial time period and the kit has been perfect so far in providing us with candle dipping, the bowl game, and other colonial and Native American Indian crafts.  I purchased two kits, one for each family involved in our co-op and the children have had fun doing these projects as a team.

If you are wondering what a talking feather is, here is a good explanation here.

To read the legend of the talking feather read here.

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If you know me, you know I love vintage.  No, I’m not totally convinced that 80’s is vintage, yet, but I may arrive at that conclusion some day.  I like 40’s and 50’s vintage.

Here are my finds that I gathered from a flea market excursion on a cheery sunny Saturday morning.  Thanks to my gal pals for arranging a birthday treat for me.  We met early in the morning to do two things I love – vintage and bargain hunting.  I was able to get this all for $35.  (A friend gave me some b-day spending money that I didn’t count.)

I’ve wanted a vintage locket for a long time.  This one was $3 and is silver.  I got some cute plastic bangle bracelets, some coral necklaces in bright colors:  yellow and red, anchor earrings and a nifty black and white scarf.  Plus some other chain necklaces for my little girl.

Cigar boxes make great storage for little things. I’ve decorated a few and keep my jewelry in them. My boys have some in their room that they use to keep little things in too.  They were each 25 cents and the four vintage aprons were each 50 cents.  I normally spend $4-9 dollars in antique stores for these.

A great find was a shoe box filled with vintage trim, lace and binding for $5.  I got a stack of art books for my husband and some vintage buttons.  One button says HOT ‘LANTA.  Since we met in Atlanta, I thought it was cute. A couple of vintage posters, a pink beaded purse and a soft woolen 50’s green blanket for a twin bed are also shown in the top picture.

So, everything that I just listed is all fun and games, but here is the real deal that I came across. (drum roll please)
For $10, I bought a complete set of The Story of Civilization by Will Durant. I’ve looked on Ebay and Amazon and the complete set starts at 120.00. My husband said, “Sold!”. But, I can’t part with this set. I love history too much and besides it will look fabulous in our library.

Last but not least….Bridge anyone? This is a set of 24 decks of cards in little green metal trays. I was told they are for playing bridge with a bunch of ladies. Since the cards are all vintage and they each have 52 cards, we can use them for any kind of card game we want. But, I think I’ve been inspired to learn how to play bridge.

This post will be linked to:

• Things I Love Thursday
• Thrifty Thursday
• Finer Things Friday
• Frugal Friday

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