Adventures in "StoryVeale"

It's not every day you get to travel back in time and pretend you're a frontiers woman. (I made that up. Don't know if frontiers woman is an actual term but it's at least descriptive, right?!)

The past two Sundays we've gone blackberry picking! I remembered to bring my camera this week, so I was able to capture some photos of us in all our berry-stained wonder.

Entrance at Westfork

Sorry, forgot to make my sister right side up before I uploaded the photo :(

This is how tall a blackberry bramble can be. Which makes it quite fun to try to tromp through to reach that perfect  berry that is always just. out. of. arms. length!

Fruits of our labor

Yum!!

Hm... How can I get more blackberries???

I just heard Mia yell, "One Minute!" and Maggie responded, "Of course, your majesty."

I have no idea what they're talking about but I do know Mikayla is locked up in their room with them and naptime is calling.  So their royal adventure will be interrupted soon, which will likely cause tears of royal distress.

Oh, well.

Mikayla, for her part, told me today her diaper was wet.  I've been told kids who are cloth diapered potty train earlier.  I'm scared to hope, but maybe, just maybe the baby is starting to have an understanding of her body and we'll be out of diapers!

We had our first meeting of Classical Conversations on Tuesday and it went wonderfully!  We learned about Columbus, Infinitives, Latin, and how to count by "2s".  Now it's up to us to make all of those wonderful, factual sentences come to life this week.

We got a little help!  One of our facts to learn was "What are the Four Types of Tissue?" (We are doing anatomy this year).  The answer is Connective, Epithelial, Muscle and Nerve.

Well, Mia has had a cyst on her arm since the beginning of July.  It's grown and grown and gotten uglier and uglier.  We finally made an appointment at the dermatologist, just in time for it to start draining on its own.

Yesterday was the appointment (we kept it to be sure we're taking care of it properly).  We had already done our schoolwork for the day and so I shouldn't be surprised it was on her mind, but we had quite a conversation with the dermatologist about how the cyst was a part of her epithelial!

Always looking for ways to use knowledge in a practical way!

The cyst is doing well but will take about a month longer to heal.  That seems so long to me!  It doesn't seem to be slowing her down at all, though.  As you can see, she's fully capable of being in good spirits:

We're waiting to see when that front tooth falls out!

They just crack each other up... when they're not fighting!

Feel the love!!!

Alright.  I'm warning you now.  If you don't want to know or care that my kids are awesome, you should definitely not watch these videos.

They are the same song, performed by the girls separately because they were being punks and wouldn't sing at the same time.  That's they way the cookie crumbles sometimes.

They are singing the first four sections of the Timeline Song, put together by Classical Conversations, the homeschooling group we're working with (there are 20 sections altogether).

When we were first deciding if CC and homeschooling in general was something we were willing to walk into one parent told us about this song.  "It's amazing!" she said.  "Each year they learn a Timeline Song that walks them through history from Creation to Modern Times!  It integrates Biblical history and ancient/modern secular history into the same timeline so you have an understanding of what is happening and in which order!"

At first I didn't know if my little ones could figure it out - after all, "Hyksos Invasion of Egypt" and "Phoenician Civilization and the Alphabet" are not words that easily roll off the tongues of a three-year-old and five-year-old!

We take one section a week - you can see where the sections are by where the girls pause and Maggie needs a prompt! - and practice it for about 10 minutes a day.  There are cards with descriptions of each event and an illustration (anything from Caravagio's portrayal of the Sacrifice of Isaac to photos of pottery from the Mycenaean Civilization).  Depending on their interest we spend extra time on certain cards and learn more about the history behind that little chunk.

So now that I've given the background, enjoy the videos!  I'm so proud of the little stinkers!

I learned tonight if your living room is big enough for a twirl in a nightdress, you have a home.

I learned tonight if your heart is big enough for a hug and a kiss, you have a family.

I learned tonight if your kid goes for the shotguns, hide the turkeys.

The End.

It's been a shamefully long time since I updated here with photos.  I'm so sorry!
It doesn't sound like our life is very full these days, but it has been!  The top three things:

1.  Running the mini storage.  We're now the resident managers of the storage, which means we're "on" 7 days a week from 7am - 7pm.  The office is open 8am - 5pm every day except Sunday.  This is a normal work week for a lot of people, but it has been a change from our normal flexibility.

Isaiah has decided to start a personal war with pine needles - to date I think he's bagged close to 50 huge black bags of pine needles from the grounds.  It's making a difference, but it's also a little depressing because of how many are still left!

2.  The yard sale.  My whole life we have used a yard sale to dispose of contents of units people abandon for various reasons.  This is not your ordinary yard sale... we have enough volume to be running a thrift store (and there's more to take out!).  It's been slower this year than in years past.  I'm using Craigslist to advertise certain items but it really hasn't taken off.  So, we may have to reassess but for now it's a life of sorting, organizing, cleaning, and tarping for the daily monsoons.

3.  Homeschooling.  Even though our school year won't officially start with Classical Conversations until the 23rd, we have begun our year.  The girls are in desperate need of some structure!  I've discovered they're too active and creative to be left without structure for too long.  (Let your imagination wander on that topic...)  They thrive with the school work and we've been reading through Little House in the Big Woods, which has been awesome.  My goal is for both of them to be reading independently by Christmas.  Mia's almost there right now and Maggie's doing ok.  We'll see!

I've continued to post daily on StealingFaith.com.  It's turned into my personal quest (Iz has pine needles, I have a website!).  It's growing, so if you have time, stop over there yourself and if you like it, please recommend/share it with friends.  I've discovered beside writing talent you have to have a "platform" to break into the publishing industry.  Readers of StealingFaith are my opportunity to prove to a publisher people would buy something I've written!

We had a wonderful time at our family reunion in St. Louis at the end of July.  Here are some photos, followed by a few of the girls in our new digs in Flagstaff:

Melt downs at the top of the St. Louis Arch with cousin Aspen

Aren't my mom and dad a good lookin' couple?!

St. Louis Zoo... wonderful zoo, so hot I wanted to melt.

The zoo provided their own "misters" - cousin Aspen loved it!

Riding with Daddy in the golf cart around the mini storage!

Yes, she selected every part of this ensemble.

Our Mia is about to lose another tooth.  She's growing up so quickly!

That's the quick and dirty update from here!  Hope you're all doing wonderfully!

I've always been a little paranoid and concerned about how people can do bad things.

I watched Enemy of the State and, purely based on that movie and its ability to track Will Smith through the world, I refuse to enable OnStar in our vehicle.

It drives my husband crazy.  He's all safety-minded and stuff whereas I want to be able to disappear completely if necessary.

Today in another blog I read, It's Almost Naptime, I saw a clip from a new story that shared how our use of smartphones with location enabling can seriously put us at risk.  (Yet another sign that technology is going to kill us all.  And yet I remain addicted.)

[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2vARzvWxwY]

I've gone through and tried to disable every location tracking device I can find, once again.  And I'd suggest you do the same.

'Cuz I love people and all, but I don't want them to know where I am at any given time.  You saw how that turned out with Will Smith.

(Oh, and always keep enough cash on hand that you can flee the bad guys without using a credit card.  Because that is totally relevant to the every day person's life.)

Stumble It!