The HerdKeeper

One of the fun/scary thing is having a hairstylist in your house. My hairstylist has hot pink hair, two of my boys had mohawks throughout the summer and now my 3rd daughter had her long curly brown hair chopped off.

we went to the beach this summer and Emma, Rebekah and I made T-shirts for everyone. We figured everyone is always counting us so we would give them some help. It was a lot of fun!!! I only regret not having t-shirts for the grand-rents.

On Monday afternoon/evening Emma, my 16 year old, fell in a cheerleading stunt and has a compression fracture of her L1 vertebra. She spent about 36 hours in John Hopkins Hospital. My goodness is that a big hospital. It is like a mini city. She now has a brace that resembles a corset and she is in a good deal of pain. So for the next week or so I guess we will be having a health unit on our skeletal system and practicing the character quality of servanthood and patience. Emma has been asked multiple times if she will go back to cheering and stunting. she says well I just won't do that stunt again. I am not so sure.

Great first day. The best part is watching my older kids all working together instead of all reading separately in their rooms. Today was map work and we pulled out Atlases, encyclopedias, magnifying glasses and believe it or not binoculars to read the small print.

Today during school Melaina said to me "Mom can you please hit the pause button I have to go to the bathroom."

She is the sweetest most adorable baby. She calls me "her mamma".

I love a good schedule. I am always searching for the perfect schedule. I have a feeling I will always be searching as there is no such thing as perfect. Or so they tell me. So here is my fall schedule overview Mondays we school from 8:30 – 3:30 or 4, we clean up and I theoretically clean up and start dinner. Annah has guitar practice on Monday nights. Emma and Rebekah tag team babysit if Don has to work late Tuesdays are co-op days. This is the first time we have ever participated in a co-op and my kids are loving it. Don drops off Emma, Rebekah and Donny at 8:30 for a government class and then I come at 9:30 with Annah, Ben and Josiah. My littles are babysit by big sister, till my Aunt and her little one come for an hour or two to play, then my mom comes till I can get there and she does science with Annah and Josiah. Tuesdays, Emma and Rebekah have cheerleading from 4-6, Emma and Rebekah go to a Bible study after cheerleading till about 9:30 and Donny has football from 6-8

The Votes are in and the Emmalacins are in office. We held a mock election on Friday between Annah and Emma. Emma won with a narrow margin of 4 to 3. My kids got to understand a little bit about the checks and balances of government. Because of the size of our family we did it in house. Our inauguration and inaugural ball will be on Wednesday, our final day of the study. It was between my 11 year old and my 16 year old. The 16 year old won hands down but I got to witness the sweetest act of love. My 16 year old voted for her sister. Is that not awesome? My 11 year old is all about order and rules and well you can imagine how well that went over. Anyway, we got a good "drill" on the branches of government and checks and balances because Mom is the legislative and judicial branch and I get to decide if it goes along with our “constitution”. If it does not violate our constitution we will enact that law. It really made that all so much clearer to the kids and it was fun too. One

On our way to drop her older sisters off at cheerleading Melaina asked me to turn on the warm air conditioning. One would never guess her dad owns a heating and air conditioning business.

I was woken up this morning with a sweet little voice "mamma, my toes are dancing". She climbed up on my bed and showed me her wiggling toes. Is that not the sweetest thing you have ever heard.

the season is upon us. ug. My goal for this season, beyond survival, is to have some kind of meal prepared even if we all can't eat together. Last year we ended up eating pizza way way to much. Today I hate it. We also frequented sub shops, the BK lounge and blech McDonald's. Our first night into the season, yesterday, I blew it. I forgot I was serving a meal at church and I was not taking everyone with me so I didn't prepare for those left home. Me and the servers had fried chicken and potatoes and green beans, those left at home got to have pizza with daddy. ug. Tonight I made ham with apple slices and honey drizzled on top and sweet potatoes. At the last minute the girls ride back to our sons football practice cancelled and my husband had to leave before dinner taking my football player with him, he dropped off my cheerleaders who gobbled down dinner and I had to take one of them to a mission trip meeting while the other babysat. So at 8:24 my husband and son

This is the cutest pirate you will ever see.

It has been many years since I have said yes to helping out with VBS. I forgot how much work goes into preparing for a class and my mom has done a significant amount of it. wow, no wonder my kids love VBS. We are doing Outrigger Island as is half the VBS in the country are. Know Live Speak

I worked on my school room all day on and off. It is nice and clean. I need to hang pictures that are stacked by the printer. I am just not sure where to put them. I need to get something to organize all my cd's for the computer and music cd's in something else. I would love a master CD case and then copies in another one so the kids can't scratch the originals. I need a new light fixture, something that gives a lot more light and I think that about finishes it up. We are gearing up for our study on Russia which will lead us into a study on Vikings, World War I, World War II, Communism, Crimean War, Cold War, the arts and architecture. I am really excited!! We are going to be studying government for the first 4 weeks and I think following it up with a study of a communist country will be very appropriate. Here are my little mailboxes one for each of us. The baby and I share. We had a ball decorating them with little foam stickers. I leave little treats and I love you note

Here are the crates I use to store everyone's workbooks and notebooks. Our family is color coded. Emma is RED, Rebekah is Yellow, Annah is Orange, Donny is Blue, Ben is Green, Josiah is gray, Melaina is pink, Noah is brown, Lydia is purple Lydia's color is Samantha's old color and Aliyah does not have a color so when she is old enough to do school she will get Emma's color of RED. Emma and Rebekah keep their school books in their rooms in their crates (theoretically). I need a new crate for Noah this year but I doubt I will be able to find brown so I will look for tan or white. He will defnitely need a crate this year for his "school". He will not be 5 till November but he wants to be a big kid.

It has become a dumping ground for miscellaneous stuff. Even large pots and pans and paper plates from the teenagers eating snacks at the computer. If they do not know what to do with a paper it gets dumped here. As you can see it needs a little work. My goal is to have this spotless and in order by Monday morning. If I ask for help maybe I can clear the area to work in peace. lol

When Emma was a baby I used to sing to her You are my sunshine you are my sunshine you make me happy when skies are grey you'll never know dear, just how much i love you please don't take my sunshine away She turned 16 and got her first official boyfriend.

I love to cook, I hate to clean up. One of my family favorites is spaghetti. Samantha, Emma and Annah all know how to make spaghetti , Rebekah the 14 year old has thus remained under my radar and has avoided most cooking. Definitely have to work on that. Here is Annah making spaghetti for the masses. 3 lbs ground beef browned with one large onion(my family does not like onion so we chop this into tiny pieces) 4 large cans of crushed tomato sauce 4 large cans of tomato sauce 2 Tablespoons of basil, oregano and garlic (powder, salt or sometimes the real thing depending on what we have on hand) We serve salad and garlic bread with this. yum.

I cannot believer that summer is half over. I have spent half of it obsessing over what to do next year for curriculum. While "I" love Tapestry of Grace and have learned so much from it my kids are barely tolerating it and we are just dragging our way through the school day. Don has encouraged me to try something new by doing some old. Once upon a time I loved to homeschool and I loved to teach and my kids loved to learn. Soooo we are returning to KONOS. I know my kids will love this I just need to make sure I can be prepared. So now I am obsessing over what units to teach in KONOS and for how long. We have chosen the Russian study and I am not sure how long to make this study and who to include. Speaking of returning, we have started to use the PEGS chore system again. Mainly it keeps everyone accountable not just in chores but in behavior attitude and communication. It helps me remember to praise and reward for good behavior, attitude or communication. On Sunday Noah came t

This is our new puppy. Our last puppy had to be relocated because he had a tendency to go after our neighbors. He hated them and that is an understatement. So Sawyer is in a non-children family and we have latte. Her "official" name is Lady Latte. For a while all the children called her latte and Don and I called her lady but since they out number us latte it has become. She has a sweet disposition BUT as all puppies she has some tendencies we need to work on. Stealing food and trash is a big one and she still has not completely got the don't pee in the hosue thing. aaaahhh Anyway, she is a cute one And yes she is on my sofa.

One morning I came downstairs to find Don with Lydia and Noah in his lap jockeying for position. When Lydia saw me she hopped off and came running. I greeted her with a good morning princess. She beamed proudly. Noah not to be left out announces he needs a morning kiss too, sp I say good morning prince. He stops dead in his tracks and says, I am not a prince I am a king.

nope, not moving, we are ripping up, filling in and tearing down and building up. We no longer have a fish pond, trellis and overgrown pond plants, we now have a slate sidewalk, more fenced in yard (we reused the pond fencing so this was low cost - yeah!!) We still need to work on more sidewalk and grass. Here are some "construction" pictures. I hope to post some after pictures by the end of June. I can't seem to load more than this one picture...

We have three weeks plus one day of full blown school left. Aliyah and to many parent teacher conferences have thrown us three weeks off schedule. This is one disappointed homeschool mom. We are usually finished by Memorial Day. Life is in hyperdrive right now so here I am relaxing and sharing some of the finer and not so fine points of my days. We have a writing utensil rule. Only at the kitchen table. I have enough wall art to know that I do not have this one drilled into their heads. On one particular school morning I allowed markers at the table while I helped different kids work on math. I looked up to see that while she was at the table she was still not being supervised. ack. I was not more than 4 feet away. I couldn't even scold her she was so proud of her "makeup". It was crayola marker and I thought it would was off easily, she still had a faint blue shadow for church on Sunday.

Resurrection Day is one of my all time favorite days. It reminds me of new beginnings.

Burn baby burn About a week ago Donny burned himself on the dirt bike. He was jumping the ramp and came in for a crash landing and the hot tailpipe seared his leg. At this point, in my best motherly tone, I must point out that he was not obeying one of our three safety rules. He was wearing shorts. This burn was about two inches wide and 6 to 7 inches long. I am freaking out thinking I should take him to the doctors and Donny assures me it will be fine it has a nice white blister on it. He straps an ice pack to his burn and went outside to shoot some hoops. So when his father came home I asked him to take a look and see if he thought we should get it looked at. What was I thinking? This is the man who slices a ¼ inch deep chunk out of his arm and puts gauze on it and hopes for the best. Don assures me we will just keep it clean and all will be well. Sigh. So over the next few days Don helps Donny keep his wound clean but it is still oozing and not looking so hot so I broke down and cal

I was reading over the website for the children's home Emma is visiting and discovered that Monday-Friday they must be up by 5:30 am and lights out by 9pm. This is hysterically funny since the hours Emma would like to keep are pretty much the same, only she likes to sleep during those hours. I do not think she will complain much about getting up at 8:15 too much anymore. In the infamous words of Emma “What now!”

We were reviewing the Passover story and I asked what happened when the Pharoah refused to let the Isrealites go. Josiah yelled out. " oh, I know, he sent frogs, bugs, and carrots". Carrots!!! I just love moments like these.

well not exactly. I love the little mispronunciations that make my children's innocence so beautiful . Melaina is so proud of herself that she is a cheerleader. She is part of Upward Cheerleading. It is a fantastic program. So day in day out day after day we hear drivel it pass it we want a basket. too cute.

These are my babies! They love to have their picture taken. Aliyah, Lydia and Noah. My middles are Ben, Josiah and Melaina. They are my energetic bunch My middle bigs are Rebekah, Donny and Annah. This group are my biggest helpers. They do the bulk of the chores and are always on the look out to make a buck doing extra work My big bigs are Samantha and Emma. Samantha works outside the home and is gone a lot and Emma well she is 15 and to busy being social for much else right now.

We finally got snow on Thursday and it was beautiful. The kids sledded and snowboarded and played till they couldn't move another muscle. God kept them safe and brought all my adventurers back home at dark o'clock.

While I was getting dressed on Sunday morning and brushing my teeth and "painting the barn" Lydia kept taking things off the bathroom sink. I would remove it from her hand and say "That is not for you". The last thing she grabbed was a small round brush and she immediately took it to her hair. The next thing I know she is whimpering and saying "this is not for me". The hair brush was tangled in her hair. I untangled her hair and she happily wandered off to another adventure.

That is the number of hamsters we have been through since Christmas. It was believed that the first hamster died of post traumatic stress disorder. It was handled a lot and died. So we bought hamster # 2 and we did not pick it up, we fed it, watered it, he (we are assuming) ate from our hand, we petted him but did not pick him up. Ben went to feed him. He started off his morning conversation "Wake up little buddy, I have your breakfast". Then came the tears. It is at moments like these that being a mom is tough. The whole family would like another pet. This spring we are looking into a dog, chickens and bunnies for now we have an empty cage and a 9 year old disappointed boy.