I haven't published a single thing in so long that I about forgot I even had a blog. Hope all are doing well and had a great start to their New Year. It is as busy as ever here. We started doing foster care about 2 years ago and it has been quite the ride. Come to think of it, that may have something to do with no posts:)!
The kids went to school last year and did well but all elected to come back home this year. Emily and Travis are doing school on their own and Lindsay is doing Classical Conversations at a a co-op not far from our house. She loves it and has learned so much. We will see what happens next year. I am planning on her doing it again.
We have a 2 year old right now. She came to us 4 months ago. She is a lot of work but a lot of fun, too. We are enjoying fostering children, atleast most of the time.:)
Emily has a part-time job and gets her full license at the end of this month. She is very happy about that.
Other than that, I have been working at a coffee shop 1 day a week and house cleaning a couple of houses, plus homeschooling and dealing with a 2 year old, but hey, who wants to be bored??:0
Well, I am headed off to bed, but wishing you all a good night. May even try and post some pictures...we'll see...Trisha

Raegin with my dog in the background. I watch her and her sister and couple of days each week. She is adorable and growing so fast.

Here is some of the fun we have had this year in co-op. We have been very busy and it has challenged me quiet a bit to learn!!--and make it fun. We are now on navigation, sailing and explorers. I am learning more about the stars and navigation then I ever really wanted to:) Ah well, it has been fun.

Here is Emily's new bedroom. She is so happy not to be sharing with LIndsay right now and loves her own space!!

Here is my favorite part of the basement remodel job!! My office behind closed doors! What a genius my husband is!! I have dreamed of this for so long and now I Finally have it and it is wonderful!!It holds my school stuff, my computer, my bills, my kids finished crafts and art stuff, my stuff for our co-op and lots of other stuff:) It is AWSOME!!

Other than that, we have had a great spring minus the week the flu visited our house and we washed mounds of clothes, blankets and sheets...ugh!!

It is starting to warm up here finally and we are excited for tulips popping out of the ground, hostas peeking green and shrubs and grass turning green. I am horrible at taking pictures, but will try to get it done soon.

Trisha

Co-op fun

We have been having a lot of fun in our co-op. We have been learning things about the USA divided into states and regions. We are trying to experience some of our coutry's history and culture.
In some of these pics, we are making tin can decorations, in others, we are making amish dishes and desserts... we have done all kinds of things and half of the time, I forget my camera...sigh...
Oh well, here is a small taste in the life of our family!

Growing up

LIndsay and Alissa having cousin time

Linsay and Alissa have such a good time together

Lindsay had a good time at fair and enjoyed wearing her sister's 4-H shirt:)

Emily, at the mutton busting contest:)

Lindsay



The kids are really growing up! Life is so different than when they were small. So take heart those who think they will never get sleep again, you will:) --atleast most nights:) It takes a lot more energy to keep up with them at these ages than when they were small. They are always busy now!! Life is good and we are enjoying watching the kids grow.

Our school room is getting close to being done and we are very happy about that. We have been working on it pretty steadily for the last 2 weeks and it is very close!! It is so exciting to think of having a school room and a place for all the papers in my life:)

Trust you are all having a good fall. Will catch up to you later.)

Here is our chrysalis just before it emerged into a butterfly

Here is the beautiful butterfly. He crawled all over our hands and flexed his wings many times before he decided he could fly farther than the back porch:)

Here he is on the back porch. We really did have a lot of fun with this whole experiment!!

We are also having a lot of fun at our co-op so I'll have to post pics of that soon. When I'm there, I forget to take pictures because I am so busy:) I'll try harder.:) Trust you are all having a wonderful fall.

Here is one of our butterflies emerging from his chrysalis. It was so exciting I had a hard time taking pictures since I wanted to just watch. It was amazing! His wings were so tiny and fragile when he slid out and only half the size of his body. But within twenty minutes his wings were full size and he sat and dried out for about 2 hours and then started flexing his wings and flew off. WOW talk about fearfully and wonderfully made!!

I will post more of him, but ran out of space on my uploader.

Lindsay at our 4-H bake sale. It was fun and we sold all the pies we made. 72 pies sold by the slice. Yum! The 2 older enjoyed serving and selling them.

Here is Lindsay with a basket that was handmade, and a bunch of corn from the grist mill. That was amazing to watch. Lindsay ground all her corn into fine powder and loved every minute

Here are Jeff and Travis learning to work together in the logging industry:) It was a fun day of 4-H and Heritage Days!! We had a blast and learned a lot.

Here are some pictures from our last field trip on things in the Midwest. We did it with our co-op group in Muscatine. The egg factory was amazing! It was mostly Amish people that were operating it. It was very neat and informative.

This is the Dairy creamery we went to and toured. It was crazy how many people regulate milk!!

Here is our little group posing. :)

We have been having a lot of fun and getting back into the swing of school. I have finally found my phone and will be post ing more pics soon. Hope you all had a wonderful summer. :)

4-H fun

The kids have finally made it to their first 4-H fair. They are having a blast! They watched the judging of all the dogs. One of Emily's friends got first place and won the trophy. There have been speeches, calf judging, dog shows, agility for dogs, mutton busting, and so many fun things. Tomorrow, we head back to the fair and Emily and Sarah have a working exhibit to do. I'll have to post pictures about that later. We have been having so much fun! Emily's friend, Sarah, showing her Pug. She was one of the later groups and had been there for 4hours and was tired.

Emily's friend, Sarah B., showing her dog.

Emily's friend, Anna, showing her dog. This is a horrible pic. I thought I put the better one on here. It was very interesting the way that the judges did their choosing.

Emily, talking to the judge about the paintings she did and her write-ups about them.

Travis, talking to the judge about his woodworking exhibit and his write-up.

Creation Science Museum

We took the kids to the Creation Science Museum. It was very interesting and fun. IT takes forever to load pics sometimes, or I would put more on here. This is Lindsay and Nathan right inside the door. I'll have to upload more later.

A Day at the Zoo

Carrying the picnic basket. Comrades in arms. How cute!

Lindsay in the petting zoo

Feeding the birds at the zoo. The birds were hilarious. Travis said he never needed to feed another bird! He has had his fill!!! The birds must have been starving, because as soon as we walked in, they jumped all over us! It was a little unnerving, to say the least!!

The Macaws drinking nectar

Emily and Kara feeding them! They had about six on them at one time, but I was busy trying to get rid of one off my shoulder and so missed the shot...sigh...!:)

Sorry, I ran out of memory on my camera and these are all the pictures I got of the kids. They had a blast and even got to pet toroises. It was a lot of fun. Then, we went to the swing area and had a picnic lunch. It was a great morning!

Trust you are all having a wonderful day! Trisha

Keeping Busy!

Here is the latest update on the patio. It is finally getting done and looks great! It is so exciting to start seeing it come together at long last! I am enjoying it so much!

Here are Lindsay and Sophia planting flowers and enjoying Spring!

Here is the lady that we do our co-op with each week! When we went to the community college for the kids' chemistry experiments, we all had to wear these goggles. We looked pretty funny!

Here are the kids with their teacher. It was a lot of fun and they enjoyed it!

Here is Emily with a friend doing some of the experiments.

It has been a busy month for us. It has been nice to get into May and find life slowing down atleast for a short time. Hope you all are having a little break before the summer business starts and then fall school.....it just goes on and on! :)

Braces!

Emily has finally gotten braces! It has been somewhat of an ordeal! She had to have 4 permanent teeth pulled and believe me, she did not enjoy it!! She was ready to forget having beautiful teeth! She has been excited with the braces though. I'll post pictures as soon as I can of the "new look". Travis has decided he wants braces, too. I told him that I HOPED he didn't have to have them. Goodness! Kids are funny like that!

Other than that, we have pretty much come to a halt with school, except for a little bit of Math left. We are READY to be done! Spring has sprung and we don't want to miss any of it!

The kids have had a blast this year and I have been so grateful! After the last year, I was ready to call it quits, until I found a lady who did unit studies, and we started doing classes together on Thursdays. The kids have loved it so much! It has breathed new life in to us! Next year, we are going with that curriculum and already have our year mapped out! We are very excited about it!
Have a great Friday and a wonderful weekend! Trisha

Chemistry and 4-H

The kids got to go to a Community College and do some experiments in the chemistry lab. They had a blast and learned a lot. It was a lot of fun. Don't they look great in their goggles? They did not love that part!

Emily had to do a presentation for 4-H. She was very nervous, but did a great job! She talked about the different mediums of art. She loves paints, pastels, water colors, chalk, colored pencils and so many others.

We have a very busy life and are enjoying every minute--well, relatively speaking. :) We have lots to keep minds and hands busy and are learning so much.

Lindsay's class that she has been doing these last few weeks separate from Emily has been on insects. Well, last week she learned about bees and has been terribly impressed with them. She talked half the way home on how bees carried pollen, how they did a little dance to tell the other bees where honey was and all sorts of other facts. She is growing so fast and it's hard to believe my baby is almost a first grader! Not sure I'm ready for that!!!

Well, I'll post more later. How much later, I don't know.....:) Trisha

We have just returned from going to IHC in Ohio. We had a wonderful time. The Lord really helped some of the speakers and we were able to renew many friendships. My Grandma and Great Aunt were also there and played a large part in our decision to go. It was great to get to visit with them.
Oh Thursday, we went to the Creation Science Museum and had a blast with my brother and sis-on-law. It was very crowded and busy there, but there was so much to see. It is a fascinating place with beautiful wax figures and the full story of the Biblical account of Creation, the flood and other things. We hope to get to go back one of these days.
We got home Thursday Night and were glad to be back in our own beds! Sorry I am such a horrible blogger! Life is just too exciting sometimes to stop and come down to update it.:)
Trust all are doing well! Until next time, Trisha

Fun Week

We ended up leaving on Monday and went and spent the week in Michigan with my sister-in-law and mom. We had a blast and did a little running around. Mostly we just chilled and had some time to just do nothing. Of course, with 5 kids running around, nothing IS a relative word as there are so many things to do just to keep life operational.:)

As most of you know, our pastor has resigned and is moving to Alabama. We are in the process of finding a new one. That is NOT an easy task. We are going to miss the Jones' terribly! The kids were fast friends and cousins, and as homeschooling moms, Penny and I did sooo much together! It will be a big adjustment!

Let's see, other than that, we will be in school for atleast 4 more weeks, though most of the kids' work will be done by the first of May, a little of it will go into the second week of May. Then we will be done!!! I am soo looking forward to that!! It has been a good year, though! One of the best years I have ever had. Partly because we found a co-op that is doing the KONOS curriculum and the kids fell in love with it, consequently Mom did too!!! THey are so excited for what we will be doing next year that they have been poring over the book trying to get a head's up! They are so funny and I am so glad!

That is all I can think of. Hope you are all having a wonderful start to your weekends! Trisha

Co-op

Here is Lindsay dressed as a locust getting ready to molt!

Here are the kids as caterpillars in cocoons. Getting ready to change to butterflies.

Here they are after they have come out of their cocoons. They were so funny and cute. The lady who is teaching them is a kindergarten teacher. She does a great job! The kids love it!

Here they are butterflies and trying to fly around. They look pretty funny and cute!