A Week of Serious Breakthroughs

When I started college in 1999, the computer world looked absolutely nothing as it looks today. We barely used email, let alone websites. Books were purchased at stores that sold coffee, notes were written on paper, and Facebook, WordPress, and Twitter were not even thoughts in anyone’s heads.

On top of that, as an easily bored 18 year old, I swore off anything computer or business world related. I made my home in the school of Arts and Sciences. The only contact I had with computer geeks were the engineers that I flirted with at the library. I will say that for me. I did study a lot. Let me tell you, pre-med studies are hard!

Therefore, my computer skills were seriously lacking when I started this whole blogging thing in 2007, with my private blog. It has been QUITE the learning curve for me, but I now feel so confident in website building.  I can’t tell you what a high it gives this non-computer-chic to tell you this:

Thanks to DaddyO and Nonna being here this weekend, I’ve had a little more time to work on the blog, and …….I moved the email subscriptions from the old blog to the new blog……..ALL BY MYSELF!!

One day, I’m going to take some computer classes, and then I’m really going to be out of control. 😉

Blogging friends, if you are thinking of taking the leap to a self hosted website in order to make income with your blog, go for it!!! It’s not nearly as hard as they make it sound. I went with Bluehost, and so far I’m as pleased as punch.

Meanwhile, the blog platform is still WordPress, so I don’t have to re-learn how to design my blog. It’s mostly the same as before.

Thank you so much for listening to my celebrating about my blogging education. Here are a few photos of what else has been going on around here:

JD has become attached to this puppy.

Oh, and I have had homeschool breakthrough after home school breakthrough!!!  So exciting!

We’ve been struggling with the skip-counting, so this week I used Caleb as guinea pig, and taught him only 3-4 numbers per day. This week we were on the 15s. That boy can roll out 15 30 45 60 75 90 105 120 135 like NOBODY’S BUSINESS now.  WhooT!!!  So no, he never got all the way to 225 like I’d hoped, BUT knowing 15-135 SOLIDLY is better than not knowing 15-225 at all.

It may be hard to tell in the photo, but we finally got the garage cleaned out to the point that you can actually park a car inside it.  This is us partying in the garage. It is now part storage, part playroom.

Daniel was so proud of this power wheel (doesn’t work) that we commandeered from the neighborhood dumpster. He sat in it for hours. It’s a firetruck, and the siren still works.

Daniel told Alan, “See your truck, Daddy. (pointing to Alan’s truck) This my truck. (pointing to power wheel) My truck have ladder. Your truck no have ladder.”

🙂

I found a new way to entertain JD. I gave him empty sippy cups and lids. He did whatever he did with them, all while studying his coin chart. Haaaaaa

Sometimes you have to work with what you have. The boys were doing great at matching states to capitals, but not so great with matching those capitals and states to the state shape on the map.

Then I went to my friend Joy’s house, and she had these awesome flash cards. I couldn’t find any to purchase, so I worked with what I had.

The dollar store had state “flash cards” that had so much information on both sides, they were completely useless…..until now. I cut out some bolder, less congested state images from the maps Amy sent me, blacked out the city/state names, and voila! Flash cards! These helped us BIG time this week.

I’m running out of time, so let me share this one last thing!!!  Character lessons! Here’s the link so that you can purchase them yourself:

http://thecharactercorner.com/lads-ladies-character/

I love these. The ones in the picture are just the ones we’ve been through this year. You spend a week on each character trait. Next week’s is “forgiveness.” I just think this is such a great way to start out the school day. What is more important than having godly character?

So I’m off to watch the Bama/MSU game. We recorded it, so don’t tell me what happens!  🙂

Roll Tide!

“The Lord your God is with you, the Mighty Warrior who saves.” Zephaniah 3:17