Museum of the Bible, Washington, D.C.

New Museum

This past year a new museum opened up in downtown Washington, D.C., in between all the federal buildings, metro stops, and Starbucks. In fact, this museum shares brick with the Federal Center Southwest Metro stop, making it an extremely convenient destination!

The Museum of the Bible is only a few blocks away from the United States Capitol building!

Alan and I discussed visiting it, but we weren’t overly motivated. After all, was it literally a museum full of Bibles? I mean, we love God’s word and all, but how do you make a museum out of books? That sounds more like a library.

Well, last week, I finally realized that I was about to lose ALL of my freedom. Alan was headed back to work, and all four children are out of school for the summer for two MORE months.

I suddenly knew I HAD to get out right away!

At the first opportunity, I made my escape, not even sure where I was going. I only knew I was headed to downtown Washington, D.C. Somewhere between my house and the metro station, I decided upon the Bible museum, rather than visiting any of the Smithsonians, which I’ve seen a dozen times.

Metro Stop

Federal Center Southwest. It’s on the blue, orange, and silver lines, and it literally puts you out on the opposite end of the same building that houses the Bible Museum. At the top of the escalator, round either corner. Don’t cross any streets. Walk to the end of the building. You are there.

Pssst… you can download this app to help you navigate the D.C. Metro system. It’s also available for Apple devices.

Ticket Prices

Adult: $15

Kids 12 & Under: $10

No, I did not buy tickets in advance. I went inside and purchased at the counter, and I only had to wait behind 2 people.

How big is this place?

Much bigger than I thought. And thankfully, it was much more than just a giant museum of Bibles. Ha! I’m going to tell you what my favorite parts were, so if you only have a couple of hours you can cut right to the chase.

I have to admit that most of my favorite parts were the ones I couldn’t photograph. Sorry!! I did see one man cheating with his phone at his hip to take the forbidden photos, sort of like a certain one of Alan’s aunts always does….but y’all know I’m actually not much of a rebel..

But I will do my best to TELL you about those not-to-miss exhibits, even if I didn’t get a photo.

Let’s start with the first exhibit you come to after getting ticketed..the room of paintings and displays that are:

On loan from the Vatican

(!!! Wow. Sounds so official, right? These have to be good.)

circa 1209

So much of this room was lost on me because I did not find this display key until after I had walked around and looked at the paintings, not knowing what they meant.

Lesson learned: In the Vatican room, find the key to the RIGHT of the doors (I tend to always go left) before you peruse the gallery.

key that explains what each of the paintings are about

While I was in the Vatican room, I kept hearing loud bumps and such, and I thought, “What is there, a daycare above my head??”

No. Turns out it was this:

I actually don’t know what all goes on in here, but it sounded like fun. I was child free that day, so I passed on this.

Obviously, when I do take my children to the Museum of the Bible I will be spending plenty of time in the children’s experience wing, which I can tell you with strong certainty is adjacent to the Vatican gallery. Ha!!

The next exhibits I went through were about how Bible affects our culture, how the Bible has affected America (greatly), and the history of printing Bibles.

Those were three different large galleries.

This is a huge interactive computer display where you can take polls and see the results.

Freedom is a major theme throughout the Bible as well as American history. People on both sides of these issues have often sought to use the Bible to back up their views, but the people in this Freedom display used the Bible in the name of freedom.

The Bible & How it Affects Us

George Washington Carver is a big deal where I grew up (in the deep south where growing peanuts became profitable in place of cotton). He was a godly man dedicated to science and the Bible.

This section had hundreds of personal testimonies of how the Bible affected their lives as well as stories of important historical figures and their faith.

History of the Bible

I thought it was cool to see this replica of the Gutenberg press:

painting of the shepherds visiting baby Jesus

Naturally, I enjoyed this exhibit of Christianity in fashion. I love clothes.

In the elevator, there is this beautiful moving photo. I mean it actually moves.

What do you call that? Like a mini-video..a gif?

How I miss Israel. Someday let’s go back!

The Cafe!!!

The Mediterranean Clam Chowder!!!! LOVE!!! This is what I ordered. Photo from the Museum of the Bible.

Okay, I don’t know what this says about me, but the museum cafe was one of my FAVORITE parts of the museum. You can find it on the top floor. They had a variety of Mediterranean food, some things I had not seen since my trip to Israel, as well as regular American options. I found the food to be affordable and delicious.

On that same floor (the 6th), I took a stroll around and came upon this beautiful room, which I didn’t even realize the museum had:

This loooong window provides views of the Capitol, the Library of Congress, and the National Monument.

That dome-like thing on the right is the Library of Congress. The one on the left is the Capitol.

Those domes are Smithsonian museums on the National Mall.

the Washington Monument

I thoroughly enjoyed soaking this in and taking pictures for my fellow tourists.

Right next to the long window on the 6th floor I found this exhibit of antiquities from Israel.

The long-term exhibit is called History and Archaeology of Ancient Israel, and it was my 2nd favorite part of the museum.

This is a real, Egyptian-style mummy found in Canaan, estimated from around 1100 BC.

I took photos of a few other ancient artifacts, to include altars, coins, and ancient writings, both Biblical and non Biblical.

The one in the center with the 4 corners is an Israeli altar. I can’t recall what the others are.

Egyptian account of the same stories found in the Bible. I love this sort of archaeological find!!

Oops!! So interesting, but I didn’t get a photo of the actual amulets. The description was exciting to me, so I focused more on it.

You can read more about the silver scrolls, which are even older than the Dead Sea scrolls, at this article I wrote here.

Next I went through the Hebrew Bible Experience.

No photos were allowed in this video/exhibit tour. It was a retelling of the high points of the Old Testament. This tour takes 30 minutes.

I thoroughly enjoyed the Old Testament tour.

The Jesus of Nazareth exhibit, New Testament Theatre, and the Washington Revelations attraction are all on the 3rd floor, and I was running out of time. The museum was about to close!!

Washington Revelations

So I paid the $5 fee to see the Washington Revelations. I figured if it cost extra, it must be good, right???

It was SO fun. This is not for babies and toddlers, though, sad to say. It is more like a simulator/ride like you’d find at Disney or Universal. In fact, it reminded me of the Soarin’ ride at Epcot.

You stand and hold on to this fly board in front of you, but you never leave your spot. It’s just that the floor tilts around with what’s showing on the screen so that you feel like you are flying through Washington, D.C., looking at the many scripture references throughout the monuments and buildings in the city.

It was exhilarating. Two thumbs up here, but I don’t think John David (my youngest) will be big enough for it yet.

What I Missed!!

I was rather dismayed in researching for this post to realize that I missed some of the best stuff. Here’s what I wish I’d made it to:

•  New Testament Theatere, lasts 8 minutes, on the 3rd floor
• Stations of the Cross, by artist Gib Singleton, the crucifixion story illustrated in miniature statues

I think the Stations of the Cross is temporary too.

Make sure you don’t miss these!!

1. Washington Revelations– It was my favorite just because it was fun. (floor 3)
2.  Actually ALL of the 3rd floor. Just go there first.
3. 6th floor: That’s where I found the enormous viewing room, the restaurant, and the antiquities exhibit!

So basically hit the 3rd and 6th floors first, in my humble opinion. I think the basement actually had the Stations of the Cross, which I missed.

To learn more, see the webpage for the Museum of the Bible.

I did leave time to browse the gift shop by the exit, of course. I bought a cute little blue and white dish that was exactly like the ones we saw when we were souvenir shopping in Israel last summer.

Then I took a sweltering walk over to the Capitol building since it was so close.

…and I let a nice tourist take my photo for me.

I hope you get to visit the Museum of the Bible soon too!

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We lived in D.C. (both inside and outside the Beltway) for 5 years, and during that time we always had at least 2 preschoolers, sometimes 3. If it wasn’t at the ‘Space Museum’ or the ‘Dinosaur Museum’, we couldn’t stay long. Art museums were terrifying to even attempt with them, so like most parents, we just didn’t.

One year I sent the boys to stay with their grandparents for a week, and I had the rare opportunity to wander the District alone. It was a BLAST!! I adored every minute of it.

That was the year I walked into a genealogy conference at the National Archives and became hooked. It was also the year that I discovered the under appreciated jewel that is the Smithsonian art galleries. My favorites were the National Gallery of Art, located on the Mall, and the National Portraiture Gallery, located closer to Chinatown.

While browsing through the National Gallery, I came across Thomas Cole’s Voyage of Life Series. I was frozen to the spot, studying each individual painting. It’s a series of 4 enormous canvases, packed full of meaning and inspiration.

When we went back to D.C. this summer, Alan photographed all 4 of them for me to share on my blog, and I got to explain them all to the boys and their friends.

Do you know what tells the story of life, both present and past fathoms better than any museum full of relics??

Our art!!! I felt far more in touch with American history at the American Art and Portraiture Gallery than I ever did at the American History Museum. It’s a genuinely moving experience. I highly encourage you to visit an art gallery of this caliber if you ever get a chance!

The Voyage of Life, painted by Thomas Cole, located in the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.

Beginning of Life 

In this first painting, the baby is arriving to earth, escorted by his guardian angel. Heaven is dark and unimportant to him, but the earth is in full bloom, filled with endless possibilities. The cave behind him shelters him from harm.

Me, explaining the paintings

Youth

I love this one. Youth on the river of life…lovely and green with a brilliant castle in the sky. Life is a grand adventure.

Manhood…..life’s not so easy anymore..

This man is not in his 20s anymore. The river of life has gotten rocky, and there are dangerous rapids and rain all around. His focus turns upward as he prays for help.

Old Age

Now he is an old man. Things of this world have grown dark and no longer hold their appeal. He is headed towards Heaven. It is the light at the end! The plaque beside the painting explains more:

Next time you tour D.C., don’t skip the National Gallery of Art. There are actually 2 original sets of this series, as Cole painted TWO. The other one is kept in New York.

This series has my heart!! I cannot fully explain it. I hope you enjoy it too.

The post The Voyage of Life: My Favorite Art Works in D.C. appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

I have been taking a blog coaching class, taught by Crystal Paine. I never realized exactly how much I don’t know about the blogging business.

One of the things Crystal has taught me is that it’s important to do videos sometimes. Apparently, videos should help my audience connect with me better. So I am making my very FIRST DIY selfie video. The video skills are horrible. It’s literally like my talking head showing you some Bible journaling pictures. But hang with me, we’ve all got to start somewhere, right?

Have you heard about Bible journaling?

I want to show you my own Bible journal: (Just watch the video below. If you read this in your email, you will need to go to my website to see it.)

Here are a few more photos. I did NOT draw these. I got these pictures from the speaker who came to our MOPS group:

I gotta say. These bold images DO help me remember the scriptures better. It gives a brilliant visual.

Fruits of the spirit! Love this one!!

So, in my next post I will share my very first attempt at drawing in my Bible. It is extremely amateur, and it wasn’t over the top fun for me because drawing is not my thing. But it wasn’t unpleasant either.

If you are interested in trying your hand at Bible journaling, I found a few excellent resources for you:

This blogger did a how-to post on Bible journaling that was good: How to Start Bible Journaling

And here are some cool supplies you can buy from Amazon. (Yes, these are affiliate links.)
This would be a great instructional book, if you have no skills (like me).

This is a devotional book that actually has built-in room for your masterpieces.

These are colorful pens like the pros use.

And if you just want to do good ol’ alphabetized dividers like MY journal, well, that’s a lot easier. You’ll just need a large binder, paper, and a few packs of dividers! My favorites are the write-on tabs. People with arthritis don’t do folding up tiny pieces of paper and sticking them in a tiny little sleeve.

I can see why Bible journaling is so popular right now. You can express yourself, learn scriptures, and create a visual in your mind that helps you learn your Bible better, all through your own art work. It’s definitely something worth trying out.

I dare ya to try it! I’ll show you my attempts in my next post. I’ve done 1 so far, but I want to try a couple more first because my first attempt was….not that good…Be sure to share pictures with us if you do try it!! I’m on Instagram now as well as Facebook!

Excellent verses

The post What’s this Bible journaling craze all about? appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Today I want to talk about creativity. When I was a child, it was greatly celebrated, but I was never so sure that I actually possessed any of this creativity stuff. There were only two subjects I disliked in school: P.E. (We’ve talked about this) and Art. Yep. I never liked Art. I love to admire other people’s artwork. I would just rather not make any myself.

Sure, I write all the time. Non-fiction. All of my work is simply jotting down what happened, what’s funny, and what is true. Reading fantasy, sure, I’ll do that. Dream up fantasy? Wait. I do that too, but I keep those thoughts to myself. Be thankful.

So today, I’m going to let Caleb tell the stories. His stories are grounded in fantasy, but they sound quite believable. In fact, one of them IS TRUE. See if you can guess which one.

The photo wall I’m most proud of. This is as creative as I get folks: picture arrangement.

See my fire-place mantel scarecrow. You can buy him at Hobby Lobby, often on sale. It makes me smile every time I look up at my fun fall mantel.

Caleb’s Stories #1: Aiden, the Wolf, and Me   (Written as Told by Caleb)

One day me and Aiden were playing in the woods. This was before we all got poison oak, and you told us we couldn’t play back there any more, Mom. We were just on the edge of the woods. All of a sudden, we saw this whole herd of deer, and they just came running by us. They didn’t even see us.

Me and Aiden were like, “Whoa! What the…” Then a WOLF ran by!!  Two wolves! Two wolves were chasing the deer, because it was getting dark outside. Aiden and I just froze.

One of the deer was so scared, he even fell off the little bridge into the ditch! I guess he just wasn’t looking where he was going or something, but then he was stuck down there and couldn’t get out.

It was the scariest day of our lives.

Each of the boys drew a self-portrait in art class at school. I thought this was impressive for a kindergartener! Daniel is a perfectionist, so he covered up some black splotches with paper, as you can see.

Nonna has her house all decked out for fall too, and I thought this turkey centerpiece she made was cute and festive.

Story #2: The Raccoon Family

One day, it was starting to get dark, and Joshua and Aiden and I were playing in that big tree. You remember, that one that was so awesome for climbing? We saw a whole family of raccoons come out of the SEWER!

The dad was super fat, too. Then there were like four little raccoon babies. They were so adorable! Like kittens! We wanted to pet one, but of course, we didn’t because we were a little bit scared to do that. We tried to throw a rock at the big fat dad, but then we were like, no, just kidding, and we didn’t throw a rock at him. We did scare him though, and we didn’t think he’d be able to fit back into that sewer. It was hilarious!! We were all dying laughing.

Nonna created this coffee table arrangement with a basket and fall gourds and silk flowers. Love it!

Even our littlest man has been getting creative.

I just loved how Caleb set this table up. That’s an octopus, wearing a baseball cap, with its tentacle wrapped around JD’s sock monkey.

Last, but not least:

Story #3: Bats!!!

One day, it was starting to get dark, and Aiden and I were still playing outside. We were whacking the trees on the hill behind our house with sticks. Whack! Whack! Whack! Whack! Then, all of a sudden, like FIVE bats flew out of the tree we were hitting!!! Aiden and I looked at each other with the wide eyes like, “Aughhhhhh!” Then we just took off running. He ran to his house, and I ran to our house. It was crazy. I’d never seen bats that close before.

Daniel’s drawing of Grandaddy

Before: Our new house has these two windows that you could see through a little too well.

The new window treatment was hard to photograph from outside, so I took this photo from inside. See the pretty new windows? Alan got these static cling strips from Lowe’s and stuck them right on there. Now you can’t see straight into our living room any more.

Caleb loves to draw sharks, and he’s also enamored with that swirly-sky Monet painting. You can sometimes see signs of that in his art. Looks like this boat is in a lot of trouble.

We love to draw monsters.

Spongebob characters, by Caleb

My husband is surprisingly creative too. I guess that’s where the kids get it from.

Recently, the cover completely fell off of my Bible. Alan decided to fix it for me one morning while I was away and surprised me with this when I got home:

Duct-Tape Bible cover

Teal is my favorite color, so he bought teal duct-tape and white duct-tape. Then he wrapped my Bible in it. It turned out cute too!

The original burgundy cover doesn’t even show through.

I was impressed.

So which of Caleb’s 3 stories do you think was true? Leave your guess down below or on Facebook, and I will tell you if you got it right. If you haven’t liked my Facebook page yet, be sure to do so. It’s hard to keep up both a personal FB page and a blog FB page, so I am trying to move to primarily using the blog FB page. You can follow me on Facebook here.

Happy fall, y’all!!

The post Caleb, Aiden, and the Wolf: Creative Tales From California appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

This week is our Spring Break. Wahoo! That’s something to celebrate! I have about 5 billion goals to accomplish and all of 5 days to do it in. Mostly, we are prepping for the big move. It’s three months out, but hey, that’s like three weeks in Mom years.

I could tell you what’s been going on around here, but I thought it’d be more fun to show you, so today’s blog is a photoblog:

My Raynaud’s syndrome has been acting up lately. 

 What happens is that the blood vessels constrict when you’re cold, cutting off blood supply to the extremities. First, the finger tips go purple and then they go white and extremely numb. I suppose I should start wearing gloves. This would happen to you too if you were freezing in Alaska or something, but this happens to me if I’m even in a building with too much air-conditioning. My cold threshold is crazy low. No worries. We’re moving back to the land of sweat and mosquitoes. 

The other day I put Daniel down for a nap. He’s five now, and he rarely ever naps, but sometimes he gets so sleepy and grumpy that I deem it a must. This was a must-nap day. However, once he was upstairs all quiet and alone, he got down and had a BALL playing in the hallway with cars and who knows what else.

As I came up the stairs, I heard that classic boy-running-to-bed to pretend to be asleep sound. Because apparently he thinks I’m deaf.

Now that Caleb and Joshua are too tall to fit into any of their costumes, they have taken to putting these size 8 superhero costumes on JD and Daniel. Who needs pets when you have little brothers?

This is a Velociraptor.

Woody and Buzz.

Because finding gluten-free pizza was one of the happiest things that happened this week. It is a big deal.

Don’t tell Daniel these are weeds. I think he is the sweetest thing in the world, always bringing his momma flowers.

One of my neighbors gave the boys a bag full of snacks, from the “Easter Bunny.”

Dan painted this at Cubbies this week. He even said, “I put blue on this side, and red on this side, and put it together to make purple in the middle!”

Daniel made this “shapes” bird-house at home-school this week. We do preschool at home two days and regular preschool three days.

Dan took his new Star Wars ships everywhere the last couple of days.

Actually, he’s already broken one ship. He explained, “Mom, that’s because he was shot in battle. Mom, that’s why he’s broken. He’s supposed to be.”

People are always giving us stuff! Our homeschool umbrella school director gave this set to Daniel, and he LOVES it.

But someone really should follow Dan around all day with a vacuum cleaner.

Guess what I did yesterday…..

Oh, yeah, I took my birthday money shopping. It was GRAND. (No, I did not buy a cooler. I keep that in there to hide the large amounts of Easter chocolate that I’m saving for some special people.

And guess what I found near the stores??? SONIC!!! I didn’t know these existed in California.

That afternoon I also took Caleb to a Star Wars-themed birthday party. She themed it out so well, y’all. They got to fight Darth Vader, hop on a tree-stump obstacle course, shoot a Star Wars ship with Nerf guns, and last but not least, they threw pine-cones at these clone troopers:

I totally wanted to play this party game. The kids were not able to pop them all, so the adults DID get a shot at it. It was fun!

close-up

I hope you all had a fabulous weekend as well. We have basically zero plans for Spring Break, other than to catch up on all the work we have to do, but that’s okay. Even work can be fun when you tackle it with the right attitude, with a little happy music playing, of course.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TAsG__XjU8Q

(Enchanted move clean-up scene: You gotta watch it.)

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hard at work

Any science project or craft attempt done by this momma/teacher has to be brain-dead simple. This is an atom we made from fruit loops and pipe cleaners. Beautiful? nah. Fun and easy? absolutely.

We had a surprisingly fun day of school today at Ants in Our Pants Elementary School! 🙂

We introduced all of our new memory work for the week, and then we spent about half an hour on reviewing work from past weeks. I’ve been wanting to do this game that’s been floating in my head for weeks, and we finally did it today!

The Review Olympics!!

It’s more like a centers relay race, only I had the boys do it together. It’s so much less confusing that way.

We did this in multiple rounds. They started at the board. They had to answer the question and then do the assigned P.E. type task. I alternated between math and grammar questions at station #1:

Fill in the blanks. Then crab walk from the kitchen sink to the garage door.

They loved this. Then they had to go to station #2: Sing the assigned history song. That’s their favorite memory work. They love that part. I hear them singing history songs all week long, all over the place.

Then do 10 push ups.

They love this stuff.

Then to station #3: Color the listed geographical features. Shew! They struggle with the mountain ranges and lakes. I think it’s so easy, but we are all different.

endless possibilities with sentence strips

Then to station #4: Latin

The first time, they had to match the Latin to the English and put them in order.

The second time, I put them on the floor, and they had to hop across, reading them as they hopped. Don’t fall off!!  The floor is lava!!! Hot lava is always popular in learning games!!!

He can’t actually read the Latin sentence strips, but he does everything they do, so he sure does enjoy the hopping.

Then to station #5: Timeline Chairs. They had to sing the time line song, switching chairs for each subsequent event.

The chair game could be used for anything. You can’t move to the next chair until you’ve said each part. For example:

Protons, hop chairs, Electrons, hop, Quarks….

I bet every single CC family does this center. Put these 8 timeline cards in order.

Station #6: Put timeline cards in order. Run up and down the stairs.

They did great today. I was so proud of Caleb’s behavior, I gave him a Twizzler and let them have at the arts and crafts box. They had a BALL.

He says there will be a puppet show at our house tonight.

Resourcefulness: If you flip him over, there’s another puppet on the back:

hehehe

I did not do so great. I had a total melt down when I lost my dust pan again. I just knew someone had taken it….. Turned out it was right where it was supposed to be, but it had fallen under the extra broom, just lodged in the corner, hard to see.

Mom had to do some apologizing.

This sort of patience-losing that I do always shakes me up and makes me question if I am really fit to teach my children.

Then I remind myself that I have seen plenty of teachers in my day have melt downs too… This is something I need to work on myself. I need to commit it to prayer. No one is perfect. I remind myself of that constantly.

Sometimes I wonder WHY am I doing this??? Why am I home schooling?

1. Have I improved their academics?

Yes and no.

Here are the improvements I feel like I’ve made, academically:

the whole “classically trained” bit

I can’t begin to tell you how much information we have memorized. It’s tempting to say, “But it’s only memorized, what if they forget?” That’s the beauty of Classical Conversations. There are 3 cycles of memory work. For example, if a child starts CC in grade 2, like Caleb, and does cycle 3 in 2nd grade, then he will do cycle 1 in 3rd grade, cycle 2 in 4th grade…….and this is where it gets good:  He will do cycle 3 again in 5th grade, and cycle 1 again in 6th grade. If a kid started in 1st grade, he’d get all three cycles twice. This repetition over the years really sets that info into the memory.

The boys and I made this poster of this week’s memory work.

I love that!

For example, this week we are learning:

1. “In 1889, Theodore Roosevelt and his Rough Riders defeated the Spanish at the Battle of San Juan Hill, while trying to help the Cubans win their independence.”

2. more of our timeline song: Japan’s Isolation through The Seven Years’ War

3. Name and label the Great Lakes: Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior, and Niagara Falls

4. “omnia per ipsum facta sunt”

“All things were made through him.”  John 1:3

5. Name some parts of an atom:  nucleus, protons, electrons, quarks, lepton, and neutrons

6. 10 millimeters = 1 cm

100 cm = 1 meter

1,000 meters = 1 kilometer

7. Irregular Verb conjugation:  to write, write, writes, wrote, writing, written

8. the art works of Georgia O’Keefe

And that’s just this week!

2. Have I helped Joshua in math, as I’d hoped?

YES!!! That boy is SO ridiculously smart. He is easy to teach, and he definitely is not ADD. He is just really good at tuning out when he’s bored, and he thinks school is:

“boring.com”

and

“Yawn City.”

Not just public school, ALL school, my school included. He sure wasn’t bored during my little Olympics today, though. 🙂 Pat, pat, pat my back.

I can teach Joshua anything in just 1 or 2 explanations.

3. Thankfully, Caleb was already soaring in math, so there wasn’t serious improvements to be made there, just plunging forward….

4. Is Caleb reading better?  Yes. Maybe he would be anyway, though. I don’t know if I’ve helped him any more than a regular class would have helped him, honestly. Either way, I’ve enjoyed being with him and watching him learn.

But do you know what my biggest concern was?

My sanity. Am I sane? Can I handle this?

hmmmm Not the way that I’ve been doing it. I’ve been ‘stressed out’ for months. I don’t think the way I have been trying to do so much, all at once, all the time, with no help was healthy for me. The things that I don’t get to bother me too much.

If I am going to do this next year, I have to change a couple of things.

What?

I need to separate the little ones from the big ones for a few hours a day so that I can focus better without getting so frustrated and having such a mess to clean up afterwards. I’m planning to enroll at least JD in a Mom’s Day Out type program. I did that with my little ones, and I wasn’t trying to do anywhere near as much back then as I am doing now!

I’ve also been researching new cleaning schedules. I found a mom who does a once-month deep cleaning, like we used to have Betty do, and I liked that idea.

This is the best advice I’ve seen:

“It’s amazing how clean people THINK your house is if you just keep the clutter out.” That’s not an exact quote, and I have no idea where I heard or read it, but you get the idea.

I was never a proponent of being “super mom”, “warrior woman”, or such. They don’t give out medals for never letting anyone help you. Delegating tasks is wisdom, not weakness.

I would love to hear from other moms how they get it all done without feeling so overwhelmed!!

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He takes about 10 steps a day, but he still crawls most of the time. Apparently JD is a gradual, gradual, gradual learner. 🙂

My life is seriously adorable at the moment, and I am so thankful. It is a TON of work though. We bust our rears on this whole parenting gig.

We were hoping to go to Moss Landing today and check out the whales. But not so fast. My friend Sarah found a used fence for sale for me, so instead, Alan is digging fence holes today. We bought a chain link fence. It’s required in our neighborhood to put up a trampoline, and you know my boys have to have their trampoline.

Seriously, if you have little boys and room for a trampoline, there’s nothing I could recommend more highly.

We get the kind with the safety net, and they spend hours on it. I don’t do fence holes, so my goal is to catch up on laundry and maybe unpack a box.

I’ve noticed that I tend to exaggerate towards the negative.

The truth is we only have 4 boxes upstairs and one downstairs left to unpack. It has been that way for a week. We do have about 10 left in the garage, though. Alan needed a bucket today, and we couldn’t find one!

So here’s what’s new with us this past week: the craziness on camera

That was all during “seatwork” time.

I met an angel in disguise at the curriculum fair where I bought my A Beka books.

She said, “Now your schedule is not going to look like your friends’, and that’s okay. When those babies take their nap, that’s when you are going to teach the math and the grammar. Those are the things where the big ones will really need your undivided attention.”

I have treated that as gospel truth. There was one day where I tried to do Caleb’s phonics and reading while JD was awake: huge mistake. JD wanted to practice walking to me and get lots of cheering, but Caleb really needed me to listen to him read. Lesson learned.

The modern method for teaching writing, which was used at my kids’ last school, worked great for my first son, but failed my second son completely.

They have open-ended questions that kids as young as kindergarten are supposed to answer and just spell their words phonetically.  Since my second son could not read and did not have any kind of grasp on phonics, he would just panic and not write anything at all. Therefore, he was learning nothing about writing at school for the past two years. His papers would be blank.

Instead, I am using the Classical method of teaching writing for him. This way my son writes all day, but not from his head. He copies. He copies, and copies, and copies. I give it to him in attainable chunks. This way he is learning through actual writing. He is seeing how words are spelled correctly. I think this will pay off big time.

Even if I send my kids back to public school in the future years, this could be used to help a struggling writer in the after school hours.

Daniel tossed this puppet in the trash can about 5 minutes after we finished it. Oh well.

I know I’m his mom, but I was seriously impressed with Caleb’s snail drawing. He is seven. Way to go, Caleb!

So two weeks down!!! I was definitely a nicer, less stressed person this week than I was last week. I don’t think I handle heavy stress very well.

I have tried everything to get JD to sleep better at night.

Nothing has worked. Finally, two nights ago, I gave it over to hard, devoted prayer. There are many ways to pray: half-hearted, absent-minded, and then there’s the hard core prayer: where you are begging God for help. He listens really well to that last kind. For two nights now, JD has gone from sleeping 5 hours straight only, to sleeping 8 or 9 hours straight.  My prayers were answered. I’m going to keep praying.

Do you know what the hardest part about living here is? I know that this amazing ocean full of sea mammals is minutes away from my door, and I’m always too busy with work to get out there. It’s calling my name, and I cannot answer!!  Yesterday I had two errands to run: Staples and grocery store. I snuck off to the beach on my way. I only stood on the sand for 5 minutes and watched the waves crash into the shore, but it still helped!!  I VOW to take all of my family to that beach before Labor Day Weekend is over.

Yesterday I just reminded myself: No, I do not have free time, and life is a whole lot of work right now. But you know what? I have something way better than free time. I am important. I am needed. I have an abundance of purpose.

I remember when we first got married, and I couldn’t figure out what I wanted to do or be. I felt like I had no purpose. I cannot even imagine that now. This craziness, these children, this life is the greatest blessing I will ever have. Praise the Lord.

The post Home Schooling 4 Boys: So Much Work, But So Fulfilling appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.