WOW - it's been a long time!

Time has certainly gotten away from me. I haven't posted anything here in so long. So, rather than play catch up, I'll just start anew.

Last week, we started school. We homeschool. What a wonderful adventure and journey it has been for us. I have a 16-year old son who is a junior this year. He's very creative, very analytical, a little bit shy and loads of fun to be around. This year his main course load is Chemistry, English Grammar & Composition, SAT Essay & Study, American Government, Trigonometry, Philosophy, Biblical Studies, Career Development and Driver's Education. With a little over a week started, all is going well. He continues to leapfrog past me in mathematics, so it's a good thing I married an actuary with a degree in math. He's the official math teacher! We're also continuing to look for a new computer game design program for him (gotta have some fun)!

My 7 year old daughter is a bit less excited about sticking to a schedule, but is accepting it with something which loosely resembles grace. Her course load is Reading, English, Spelling, Science, Heritage Studies, Bible, Math & Art. She loooooves the art class, a teensy bit less excited about some of the other classes, LOL. Although, she is very creative about trying to delay class, she does settle in well once she has some hot tea and a small snack.

It was interesting this year trying to decide which curriculum to use. In the past, we've stayed pretty much with A Beka. However, in the past year or so, I haven't been as satisfied with some of their updated courses. I think, and it's my opinion only, that they've listened too much to the criticism of the past that they were too hard. It seems they weren't very challenging last year and not only did we finish early, the kids were more bored than ever before. So, being a little disappointed by what we saw for this year at the homeschool conference, we changed things up quite a bit. I still went with A Beka for some of the high school courses (Chemistry & American Government), but none at all for second grade.

For second grade, we are mostly using Bob Jones University Press curriculum. Not for everything, but for most. They have a more challenging, cohesive curriculum which integrates with a biblical viewpoint even more than A Beka. They don't just throw in the odd Bible verse, they actually use the scripture as parts of their lessons. So far, after completing all of the lesson planning (therefore, reading through the entire books), I'm very pleased. They seem to be paced fast enough to ensure that "A" won't get bored, but not so fast that we lose the concept. After all, learning is what it's all about, not simply entertaining them.

So, we are off and running with school.

On other fronts, there is another vacation looming in the future. It will be wonderful to have just family time with hubby not working - while he works from home most of the time, it's just not the same as having free time together. It's never long enough, either. But, I feel blessed that we are able to take vacation and that we have a job to vacation from. I'll post more about that later, but I'll see if I can find some more pics from last years (I love seeing them).

We have recent updated pics for the kids homeschool I.D.'s that I'll load shortly. It's so fun to see how much they change each year.

Well, that's all for now, I'll be back later with opinions on all kinds of things: styles, dating, politics (I'm conservative, go figure, LOL) and of course, homeschooling along with family issues and current events.

It's good to be back to blogging!