Sweet Surprise

Just learned of this awesome new company called Vintage Remedies!
"Vintage Remedies provides educational resources for healthy and natural lifestyles for all ages! We offer a curriculum series for ages 2-12 that enables parents to teach little ones about healthier habits.
We also operate the Vintage Remedies School of Natural Health, which trains herbal and wellness professionals around the globe. Our comprehensive programs are biblically based and backed by evidence based scientific research." (copied from the info section of their FB page)

How neat is that?? Helping parents like you and me teach our kiddos about healthy lifestyles! I am so excited to really dig into their products and see what all they offer!!

Another super cool thing they offer is a you Tube channel with instructional videos on how to make different creams, rubs, lotions etc. Check it out!!
Here's the link to one of their videos on a Peppermint Foot Soak that I can't wait to try!!! ENJOY!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NVNRri1ZVN8

God took my half-hearted effort and gave me something GREAT!

Have you ever gone into something half-hearted? Thinking you'd be happy getting even a little out of if, not really expecting much at all? Well, that's what happened with me this year with the Ultimate Homeschool Expo. I had heard a bits and pieces about the expo in different circles, but being a new homeschool mom I didn't really know alot about it. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Randy and I had hoped to attend a convention this year for some direction and to see what some of the vendors had to offer as well as have the opportunity to hear/talk to speakers who have been in the homeschool community for several years. But as with most things lately, the money just was not there and we couldn't afford to travel to a large convention this year. Of course, as usual, we failed to rely on the fact that God had already worked things out for us before we even knew we needed Him to. FIVE YEARS before we needed Him to actually!!!
That's how long ago some amazing people began the Ultimate Homeschool Expo. When I originally heard about the expo I thought maybe I would buy a ticket as a supplement to another convention I planned to attend until money got tight and then the the $25.00 ticket to the UHSE started to look like my only option. So we decided we would buy the ticket and if it wasn't very beneficial we were only out 25 bucks! Besides, there were some freebies I would get so I thought maybe it would at least be a wash...

Little did I know, I was in for the surprise of my life! I have been so blessed by this expo! The freebies were great, but the real treasure was in the live and bonus audios! The live audio are offered with an open chat room as well. So not only are you able to listen to the speaker, but you get to meet, discuss and grow relationships with other parents that you would never have the time to do at a live convention. Plus, whatever you miss in the session while you're chatting it up with your new pals, you can listen to later as all live sessions are recorded and then uploaded to the membership site!

The host and owner of the expo Felice Gerwitz moderates the chat room and takes questions then at the end of the session relays all of those questions to the speaker and he/she answers them RIGHT THERE! Try to get that at a live convention! The speakers may have time for "a few" questions but here you actually get discussion. If you're still confused or your question wasn't completely answered just chat that in and Felice will dig a little deeper with the speaker!

I never thought about how chaotic a live convention would really be and how hard it would be to cultivate any relationships outside of those you had before you got there, but stop for a moment and think about it... I liken it to shopping on Christmas Eve. Everyone is rushing around trying not to miss that one thing they're looking for. Ironically enough, just like with Christmas isn't sharing our faith and growing God's kingdom what we're SUPPOSED to be doing? And yet, we're always hurrying around, no time for one another. Well I can honestly say that during expo week I could not wait until each session time so I could chat with my new sisters in Christ! We shared stories, both good and bad, prayed for and with one another and blessed each other with encouragement beyond measure! My cup truly overflows!

And TOPICS! Wow! There was such a wide range of topics that at first I wasn't sure where I wanted to start! Did I want parenting encouragement? Curriculum Guidance? Character Education and Leadership Direction for my Child? Stuff that was beyond my kiddo in age but would apply to my older niece? Help for my husband to be a leader in our home? My options were just endless! Thankfully they are all downloadable! Can you imagine going to a convention with only yourself and possibly your husband and trying to catch EVERY session you wanted to hear, some of them overlapping in times? I'm exhausted just thinking about it! As I said before I have been greatly blessed by this expo.

And you could be too! If you are interested, homeschool parent or not, in some really helpful and encouraging sessions on raising children in God's image while setting your own godly example I urge you to not just take my word for it... go check it out yourself! The membership site is still available and I promise you will not be disappointed!

Here's the link, go take a look!

https://www.secureinfossl.com/affProgram/Ultimate-Homeschool-Expo-2011/52019

The Battle Is The Lord's

Today I listened to my first preview speaker for the Ultimate Homeschool Expo and WOW! She was amazing!! Her name was Lorrie Flem of Eternal Encouragement Magazine http://www.eternalencouragement.com/ and it was such a blessing!! She opened in prayer and used scripture like a mad woman!! And she really convicted me about feeling like my "little" job as mommy and homemaker wasn't enough!! I was blown away!!! I encourage you to take a look at her site but I also encourage you to grab your ticket for the Expo! even if you aren't a homeschooling parent, these speakers will encourage you as a parent in general. There's another FREE session today so log on and listen!! I'll be there too!! Here's the link to the site to listen for free:
http://www.ultimatehomeschoolexpo.com/?p=203

and here's the link to the site to buy your ticket if you decide to:
https://www.secureinfossl.com/affProgram/Ultimate-Homeschool-Expo-2011/52019

Hope you enjoy it!!!
Candie

An Opportunity You Won't Want To Miss!!

As most of you know, this will be my second year homeschooling Braydon. Randy and I had hoped to attend a convention this year for some direction (haha) and to see what some of the vendors had to offer as well as have the opportunity to hear/talk to speakers who have been in the homeschool community for several years. But as with most things lately, the money just was not there and we can't afford to travel to a large convention this year. Of course, as usual, we failed to rely on the fact that God had already worked things out for us before we even knew we needed Him to. FIVE YEARS before we needed Him to actually!!!
That's how long ago some amazing people began the Ultimate Homeschool Expo. Now I'm sure they didn't start it is JUST for Randy and I, but it's really comforting to know that they DID and that it is exactly what we were looking for!! I am going to be able to listen to and chat with some terrific people in the comfort of my own home and even in my jammies if I so choose!! They are offering TONS of door prizes and give aways and will even have a vendor hall. Not to mention all audio will be recorded in case you miss a show!
I know some of the things we as homeschool moms stumble upon on the web can be a little "iffy" but let me assure you, this is something you won't want to miss! My cousin, Cyndi Kinney, who writes homeschool material is a speaker, and the owner of the Expo is her publisher and let me tell you these ladies are phenomenal!! I don't know how I would have EVER gotten things off the ground for myself and Braydon last year without Cyndi's wisdom and encouragement, and the wonderfully encouraging emails I get from Felice (just as a subscriber) are terrific! Plus, Cyndi speaks so highly of her I feel like I know her myself! I also subscribe to EVERYTHING Cindy Rushton does (another speaker and former owner of the Expo) and she is such a down to earth, all on the table Godly woman that I can't wait to hear what she has in store for us this year!!
I encourage you to just stop by the site and take a look. The ticket price is so inexpensive that you almost can't say no. But go look around, google some of the speakers, I promise you won't be disappointed!
Here's a link... Enjoy!
https://www.secureinfossl.com/affProgram/Ultimate-Homeschool-Expo-2011/52019

That's My Boy!!

For those of you who have read this blog in the past, you are aware that from time to time my kid get words mixed up, jumbled up or just flats makes them up to fit his needs. Well here are a couple or stories you are going to love!!
Story number one: We have ripped up most of the carpet throughout our home due to Braydon's allergies, but in our living room we have an average size area rug that catches the random airsoft pellet, blade of grass or lego that you can't see until you have two little circles tattooed on the bottom of your foot. Well the other night Braydon was walking across the living room and winced in pain. As he bent down to pick-up what had stabbed his foot he says "Darn hedgehogs!"
You may be thinking to you yourself... Hedgehogs??? In the rug??? Do we even HAVE hedgehogs in West Texas? Well my dear friends what he was actually referring to was a goat head! LOL Why he thought it was called a hedgehog I will never know. BUT, they will forever be called hedgehogs in our house!

Okay, story number two: My parents have recently decided to join the rest of the country and jump into the age of technology that we have all be in for some time now. They got rid of what I called their jitterbugs and both got iPhones. Well the other night we were in their living room and my dad and I were both texting on our phones. As you can imagine I was texting rather quickly and my dad was just creeping along. My husband chuckles a bit and comments how funny it is that I'm able to text so fast and my dad still has to "hunt and peck".
Well several days later I receive a LONG text from my dad and my husband I are joking about how long it probably took him to type it and from the back seat Braydon comments "Yeah, chicken and peck, chicken and peck." Randy and I about died. This kid is a riot!! If I could remember to write down HALF of the stuff he says, I'd be rich!!
Anyway, hope this brightened your day a little! :) It brightened mine just thinking about it all again as I typed it.

The praise of a lifetime!!!

"I tell you the truth, no one can enter the kingdom of God unless he is born of water and the Spirit." - John 3:5

Yesterday was an amazing day for me! I got to see my little boy accept Jesus into his heart and have his sins washed away in baptism. Making this day even more special was being able to see my daddy baptize him just as he had done for myself, my brother and my niece in years past.
As we stood before the entire congregation of Antioch Christian Church where I have attended since I was his age, my little boy told the church members and his peers in no uncertain terms that he wanted to be baptized to "Have his sins washed away, receive eternal salvation and the gift of the Holy Spirit". Sound coached to you? Well if you know my Braydon you know it wasn't. He has studied his little baptism book, asked his daddy and I questions and looked through the Bible with me to find the answers for several weeks now. I was so proud to stand in front of other moms and dads and know that my little boy GOT IT!!
Don't get me wrong, I'm not being boastful at all! As parents we know how hard it is to get our children to listen to most, if any of what we say. With all of the "worldly" things that we encounter and sadly let creep into our daily lives, our faith is sometimes not the most discussed topic at the dinner table. It's often a little easier when they're smaller because we can point Jesus out in the most simple activities and things around us. But as they grow they begin to lose interest really quick in the stuff that worked before like "Thank God for the flowers and the sky and the air we breathe and the rain that helps the plants grow for food..."
These days I find myself in the car with my now 9yr. old little boy replacing those comments with silent prayers asking for teaching opportunities and new ways to relate to him with out being a mushy mom! The truth is I'm not good at the mushy mom thing either so I'm kinda stuck!!! I stumble through everyday hanging on for the times when he hears a song on Air 1 and asks for and explanation or when he remarks about why I didn't react a certain way to someone elses ungodly behavior so I can use that time to explain why I am trying to lead by example and show God's love through my own behavior. So WOW, to stand beside him and listen to him speak so boldly for his Lord knowing all the while that I always feel like I'm just one moment away from total failure and losing my son to the proverbial "dark side" was a moment I will never forget as long as I live!!
I only hope that you moms out there barely hanging on like I am will take comfort in this little piece of my life and know that even though you may not feel like you are moving mountains, as long as you are praying for your child and doing everything you can to let him/her see God in your life I believe that Jesus will stand in the gap for you and lend a helping hand whether you see Him do it or not. Beside, it's not for US to move those mountains anyway!!! There's someone BIGGER for that.

Candie

Dropped Call...

Cell phones, our life lines to the world around us! Not many of us go through the day without making calls, texting, checking our emails, Facebooking, Tweeting or just surfing the web. But sometimes these handy little devices can be quite persnickety! They lose our calls and cut out at some of the most inopportune times it seems. It hilarious to listen to someone in a department store yelling our their spouse who's on the other end of the cell phone as if they're trying to talk to their 80 year old grandpa.

Well how many times have we used this lack dependability to our advantage? Come on, you know what I'm talking about!! You pretend your phone dropped a call. You ask the person on the other end of the line to repeat themselves so they think they are cutting out. Some of us have even gone so far as to mimic, in our own words, the previously mentioned "cutting out" process.

Well let me share a little story with you. For those of you who haven't had the pleasure of meeting my precious gift from God, you about to get a glimpse of the true Braydon. And for those of you who already know him, this will just be par for the course.

The other night I was asking Braydon to do something, the task is something I can't even recall now. And I hear this ridiculous crackling noise coming from the hallway followed by a muffled voice that said "What? I think you're breaking up! I must being going through a tunnel or be in an elevator."

YEP! There you have it ladies and gentlemen! My child just took the quirky cell phone issues out of the cell phone and applied them to his own needs!!! Now that's out of the box thinking my friends!!! He is indeed a shining star!! Watch out America, either we'll be able to mold this brilliance into something amazing over the next few years or he'll be the next Jack Black!!! Either way I'm planning to be well taken care of in my old age!!!

The Randomness That Is My Life!

Well, here we are... the end of November. It feels like these last few months have just flown by!! Something I'm learning with homeschooling is that you can't take a break with planning for even a minute or the holidays and specific dates that you want to be teachable dates sneak right up on you! I found myself still putting together Thanksgiving material ON Thanksgiving!!! While I have to say that it was interesting to have it all fresh on the brain when we celebrated Thanksgiving with our families, it would have nice to have had time to dig a little deeper BEFORE the turkey came out of the oven!! :)
All-in-all I have a great list going for next year's first semester lessons, but sadly this year has been a bit of a tester year for us. Well, I say sadly... Braydon is loving it. When mom doesn't get it together in time, we chalk it up to early prep for next year.
I don't have a specific topic for today's entry but I do have a couple of neat stories for you. I'll start with the funnier of the two.
A couple of weeks ago we were in the car and Braydon (getting together his mental Christmas wish list) says to me "Mom, can I have a Pocket Rocket? Cuz I wanna ask Santa for one but I know he doesn't get you things that your parents won't let you have."
It was too cute! Partly because he thought ahead enough to get permission before asking Santa but mostly because of his innocence!! Now is about the time (if he were still in public school) that he would begin to doubt the story of Santa, but hopefully being homeschooled we will be able to hold onto the magic a little longer!
The second is more a quick thing I wanna share rather than a story:
As I have said before. Now that we are homeschooling I see so much of Braydon's creativity coming back that I'm ashamed to say I didn't realizing he was loosing. Well tonight as I sit preparing lessons for tomorrow he comes into the office that doubles as our classroom and sits down at his desk. He opens up his History folder and takes out some research that I had printed out for the unit we are planning to do on Greek Mythology. Then he begins to do his own research on the laptop (using MY printouts only to help him with spelling). After a few minutes he is writing his own rendition of the struggle between the three brother Zeus, Hades and Poseidon. WOW!!! Just out of nowhere he decides to do a little writing!! Of course I am elated because I myself LOVE to write and have always hoped he would too, but I am even more impressed that he is WANTING to research and write just for entertainment! I remember a time after high school when I would get interested in something I saw on TV, begin researching it at the library and the write a research paper on the subject JUST FOR FUN!!! I thought I was the only person in the world crazy enough to do that... but here I sit, almost 20 years later watching my son do the very same thing!!!
God has blessed me so much this year with this adventure Braydon and I are taking together!
I am so thankful to be able to experience these things with my child AND to get to encourage and aid him as he begins to figure out what he enjoys, what he is good at and what he excels in!
We serve an awesome, loving and powerful God and I hope to raise my son to be just as in awe of his Father as I am!

Mapping Made Easy!

Now this is what I call learning about Geography and how to make/read a map!! We are studying about Kansas this week and the lesson came with these little single page maps to label as you go through the lesson. Well I decided it would be SO much more fun to make our own map to label with the lesson. So that's just what we did. We used 3 different transparencies of Kansas, one for the state itself with major cities and the capital, one showing rivers and lakes and another showing railways. Now we are going to work on a legend and continue labeling what the lesson calls for. We have had a blast and his retention of major parts of the state is amazing!! So much more effective than those silly sheets in his book that were difficult to understand anyway!! Not to mention, look at that face! He's having the time of his life. BTW this overhead thing also led to another (self driven) art project. Homeschooling has done amazing things for his creativity and desire to do more and learn more!! God is so good!!!

Halloween Fun!

So every year we have a tradition in our family to share some Halloween fun with our friends and family. When we first started it, 5 years ago, it was called Phantom-ing; but now people are calling it Boo-ing. Regardless of what you call it, it is a blast and we love the entire process. What you do is put together treat bags for 2 or more families with a poem and picture, leave it on their porch, ring the doorbell and RUN! The picture is considered the "phantom" and is to be placed in the window of the house so that other participants will know that family has already been hit. It's kinda like a fun chain letter. Once you have been phantom-ed you make copies of the letter and pictures and then put together bags for YOUR friends and family to leave on their doorstep.

Braydon and I spend all day in the kitchen baking cookies and other treats, bagging them all up, decorating bags and attaching the poem/pic. Then we're off to get our sneak on!! Braydon LOVES to deliver the bags, ring the bells and run like mad. I enjoy driving the getaway car that sometimes almost "gets away" before Braydon gets all his limbs back in. And Randy usually just sits back and gets a good laugh at it all... but this year Randy got a REAL taste of the action!

This year, just a few hours before we were to leave, Braydon hurt his foot riding his rip-stik. He was a trooper though and tried the deliver the bags but his foot just wouldn't let him. So, guess who got to be the "ding dong ditcher" for the night... You guessed it! RANDY! I have to say this was one of the absolute funniest years every!!! Randy is not the most stealthy person we know and he also lacks a little in the agility department. None the less, he ran, rang, tripped and jumped his way through the night. I'm so blessed to have a husband that is such a good sport. Not only did he join in the fun, but he allowed us to MAKE fun of him as well!

So to all of you out there who have never had an adventure like this one, it's not too late to start! I have attached the letter and picture we used this year for you to download and then the bag contents are just left to your imagination! Remember, it's suppose to be anonymous so just sit back and enjoy listening to your victims try to figure out where the delightful little treat came from!



ENJOY!!!

Phantom Letter


Phantom Pic