When my website crashed, I learned quite a few lessons through the process of trying to get storiesofourboys.com back up. I am going to tell you all about it.

For eleven whole days, storiesofourboys.com was wiped off the face of the internet.

It started on January nineteenth. I woke up to error messages. I had no idea why. After twelve hours of trying to figure it out, I investigated my older wordpress.com version of Stories of Our Boys. Would you believe it? They said my bill was not paid for my domain.

Huh. Who knew?

I did pay the bill, but then I saw some odd activity on my bank account, and I reported it a couple of days before the website crashed. My thought was that for sure the bank will fix this little charge, and all will be well.

Ha! The bank fixed it all right. Turns out it was the fee for my website domain, and WordPress did not appreciate me taking their money away with a bank claim.

Oopsie daisies…my bad.

So WordPress snatched the old rug right out from under me.

Dear WordPress, a little note would have been nice. But I do see how this was also my fault. I should have investigated my bank claim further instead of jumping to conclusions.

The first day of the website crash, I was a miserable mess.

Then after that day of grief I was okay. I knew that if they wanted to help me, they could in fact help , and there would somehow be a way to fix this. Alan kept reminding me that if there were a crime, they would pull up my website like it was nothing.

I found that oddly reassuring.

Sure enough, eleven days later, Bluehost gave me a rescue, and restore my whole website to all of it’s January twelfth glory.

While I was snug in my bed, not thinking about my website at all, a nice person from Bluehost Escalated Support team restored a back-up of my site.

When I awoke this morning, I opened my email, and there was a message from Bluehost letting me know I am back online. Hurray!!

I do believe this calls for a celebration. For quite a few days, I worried ten years of work was down the drain, never to be seen again.

Last night my son Daniel said if I get my website back up, we have to celebrate with a soda and a red velvet cake. I agreed to it, so I guess I owe everyone a little party!

There are a few glitches left, mostly in the form of image loading. I will have to work on that, but at least my website is back!

Here are thirteen lessons I learned from this whole crashed website debacle:

(And honestly I probably learned more than just this.)

1. Make less hasty decisions. Stop and think things through. Don’t claim fraud on a bank charge unless you thoroughly look at it from every angle.

2. I need to take a computer science class, many computer science classes. There is so much more I need to know about website maintenance.

3. Sometimes $19 can get you in a lot of trouble.

4. SSL means secure sockets layer.

5. DNS means domain name system. (It is a little embarrassing that I did not know that before, but I never sat down and thought about it! I never needed to.)

6. You can call up the company you purchased your domain name from to get help when your domain is pointing to the wrong place, and they will fix it for you. Many thanks to mine! Wild West Domains customer support was excellent.

7. Bluehost is helpful. They are my friend.

I am only back up and running thanks to Bluehost. My computer has some back-up elements, but I do not even know where to upload them to. See? I need to go back to school.

All links to Bluehost on this page are now affiliate links because I now wholeheartedly believe in this company and endorse them. If you want to build a website, I do recommend Bluehost.

8. WordPress will swiftly punish you if you put a claim on their charge.

They do not play, nor do they send you a bill and give you an option to pay a different way to fix it as quickly as possible. I had no idea. It took many back and forths before they sent me a link to let me pay with a new method to reinstate my account.

9. WordPress uses automated computers to answer their email support. It worked only okay, so I’m just sharing this information.

10. Did I mention I am going to enroll in computer science 101? I have been building and maintaining my websites since 2013, and there is still too much I do not know that I would like to know.

11. Keep asking for help with the proper channels, and don’t give up.

Bluehost and I had several chats, knocking out one problem at a time. I am so thankful we did not give up.

12. Stay calm and kind during a work crisis. It makes it easier for others to help you.

This may be the first time in my life I was able to stay calm in any kind of crisis. It made a huge difference though. I was able to think more clearly and feel more like a grown-up. Each person I talked to at Bluehost and the domain place thanked me for my patience and kindness. It went a long way.

13. Eventually, God truly will fix your problem in your sleep. God is a refuge to us for real.

It reminds me of that time I prayed about the neighbor who I was avoiding, and God up and moved her across town! Prayer works, y’all. Prayer works.

This concludes my Ted Talk on what happened to me last week. Anyone want to go enroll in community college with me for some computer classes? I think it will be fun!

Thank you for your patience while I get everything all fixed back up. This was embarrassing to go through. I kept thinking about all the people checking my website and thinking I had hung up my blogging hat.

I’m still here, y’all! Thank you for sticking with me! Sorry for the weird problems. I hope you can learn from my mistakes!

If you have any tips for me on the topic of website care, feel free to share below in the comments!

The post So happy to be back! 13 Lessons from When My Website Crashed appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Home schooling may be one of the greatest challenges I have taken on as a parent.  

One of my biggest struggles is making learning fun. If the boys spend all day doing seat work, writing, and listening to me teach them, they start to become unmanageable. A house of unmanageable children will wreck your day in a hurry. I figure if it is hard for me to find ways to make it fun, it must be hard for other parents too.

Of course, I occasionally run into those parents who seem to have it all together. They LOVE home schooling, and their children seem to know everything. Then I think, “Oh, huh, look at that. Actually home schooling is quite easy for some.”

It’s amazing the difference that experience, preparedness, organization, and a toolbox of good ideas can make!

We’re growing in this. S-l-o-w-l-y but surely I’m figuring out how to manage home schooling.

I have one ace up my sleeve that is a big help. My mother-in-law and sister-in-law are fully experienced teachers. Nonna taught in the public schools, mostly middle school, for twenty years. Amy also taught middle school for over ten years. They have both sent me great supplies this year, and I have used as much of it as I could work in and saved the rest for later.

When Nonna was here this last time, she helped me set up a FANTASTIC filing system. I’ll talk more about that on a future post.

Then she introduced us to……..Brain Pop, Jr.

This can be used whether you are home schooling or not. I just joined as a parent. First, I want to tell you upfront that this is not a free site, nor are they paying me to talk about them. Man, I wish they were! This site offers:

-A huge selection of cute and funny teaching videos, divided by topics and subtopics in math, science, reading and writing, health, social studies, and arts and technology.

-Each sub topic offers a game, printable activity, hard quiz, easy quiz, and more!

-For science, the print-outs are often easy-to-do and fun science experiments!!  I am loving this!

I have tech-savvy kids who are hard to impress, and they actually enjoy these videos and activities.

It is the very first educational “computer center” that I’ve found this year that my second and third graders enjoy!

Brain Pop does have a few free videos and games, and you can download all of that on their app as well. This site is computer friendly as well as app friendly.  They have a new “free movie” every week.

I warn you. The theme song is so catchy. It WILL get stuck in your head.

If you’d like a free preview of what Brain Pop Jr. videos are like, see this free one on local and state governments on their YouTube channel.

There is currently a two week free trial you can start out with.

I chose the parent option. It was $119.00 for the year. If you want to also get Brain Pop (grades 3-8th), you can get both for a total of $159/year.

Oh! And you want to be careful which Brain Pop version you get.

We use Brain Pop Jr. because it’s for Kindergarten through 3rd grade. The only thing they were missing that I’ve needed so far was Evolution and Natural Selection information, to go with our current science unit in Classical Conversations.

Regular Brain Pop has the same hilarious robot videos, but on the more advanced material. Nonna said that her middle schoolers loved it.

(Side note on the evolution bit: Yes, I teach them about both evolution and creation. Obviously, I’m a firm believer that the Earth was created by God. The boys are too. )

Using Brain Pop Jr. with Classical Conversations

So far, we have barely scraped the surface of what all you can do with this technology. You can bet I will be sharing more details on this in the future. For now, I’ll share what we have done so far, and my Brain Pop Jr. CC Cycle 3 Science Lesson plans for weeks 21-24.

-Composers and Musical Instruments! Brain Pop Jr. made learning woodwinds vs. brass, etc. a lot more fun!

This will take you to the whole music section: Music

There are so many options there!

I also used Brain Pop Jr. to help my third grader with division.

I used it to help my first grader with Reading and Spelling Skills.

But more than anything, we are using it for Science:

CC, Cycle 3, Week 21:

Uniformitarianism.

Brain Pop, Jr. didn’t define uniformitarianism, but it did have a whole video, game, quiz, and activity section on gradual land change and fast land change.

There is an erosion experiment to download, as well as fossil activities, and a Grand Canyon puzzle!

CC Cycle 3, Week 22

Catastrophism

Again, they didn’t use the word catastrophism, but they had all the bells and whistles for a fun lesson on “Fast Land Changes”, complete with science experiment and a sequence game.

CC Cycle 3, Week 23

Natural Selection– I couldn’t find it on Brain Pop Jr. either, but I guarantee you they would have it on the not-Junior version.

However, I did find a great video, somewhat related, on Extinct and Endangered Species.

CC Cycle 3, Week 24

Good Science

I found a great lesson on the Scientific Method.

For a complete list for Cycle 1, click here.

Thanks again to Nonna for introducing me to Brain Pop Jr.!

The post Ways to Use Brain Pop Jr. at Home School appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

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

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