My name is Heather and I'm a blogging slacker

Like anyone who knows me doesn't know I'm a slacker. No pictures today, sorry. And since nothing is happening around here except school I thought I'd give a glimpse into the life of a homeschooler Faulkner-style. So here we go. WEEEEE!
7:30 Brenna and I are up. Brenna watches TV. I go running with my friend Jen.
9:00 I'm back. I wake everyone who is still asleep(Riley) up. Kids get dressed and eat. Blair is usually gone by now.
10:00 Start school. We usually start with our readers first. Riley is finishing Riding The Pony Express (that should be underlined but I can't figure out how to do that on Blogger). Brenna is reading Pocahontas And The Stranger. Caleb is reading Sam and Pat (it's an 8 page reader that we have been reading for a week now, I'm a bit sick of Sam). We then do vocabulary, spelling, handwriting, writing, math and science. History and geography are tied into their readers. Brenna pretty much does her work on her own and I just check it. The boys and I sit at the table and work together. They do the same science and history. Also part of the Sonlight curriculum is what they call Read-Alouds. These are books I read aloud to them (DUH). We read these at night before bed. The boys read-aloud right now is The Apple And The Arrow. It's the story of William Tell. We also read our Bible story and usually a chapter of Harry Potter. We all do art together once a week. I found a really fun art game to help them learn different artist.
Around 12:00 break for lunch.
12:30 back to school to finish up anything that didn't get finished that morning.
1:30 or so We are usually done with school by now and I try to get the kids to go to the park to run around or ride bikes but it is just now getting cool enough to do that for longer then 10 minutes.
2:00 Chore time- each kid has two chores each that we rotate about every other week or so. These are the six chores that I dislike the most that don't involve chemicals or toilets. And really what's the point of having kids if you can't make them do the stuff you don't want to do. Emptying the dishwasher, taking out the trash, vacuuming, animals food, animals water and watering inside plants. They don't get paid for these chores. These are "being part of a family" chores. The only chore we pay them for is cleaning the cat box because that is above and beyond.
After chores they have free time until dinner.
So that is our homeschool day in a nutshell. Riveting isn't it.

Summer projects

Most kids summer projects would include some kind of outside activity, not here in Vegas. Summer is when we hibernate and only adventure outside to jump in the pool. And since Riley got banned from video games for a week I had to come up with something to do. Grandpa Denny's birthday is coming up so they made cards for him. Here they are working away.


Caleb drew him a book called Rollercoaster Birthday Riley stamped a card.
Brenna made a card of her own creation.
We are "starting school" on Monday. We have actually been doing one day a week through the summer but now we will be going into everyday mode. I am looking forward to it, mainly because I am bored out of my mind. Brenna said "That was a short summer" then I told her we are only starting a week before "normal school".
I would love to hear from you guys so please leave comments.
Also you can click on the pictures to make them bigger.
That's all for now,
Heth

Why now???

The question should really be why at all. Well I love blogs. I have a long list of blogs that I read everyday. But I have to say the thought of starting my own blog did not even cross my mind. But in a conversation with a friend who does have a blog (hi Beverly) she said she does her blog to keep in touch with her family and friends who don't get to see her kids daily. So I let that rattle around my brain for a little while. Then today I saw that little Blogger icon in the corner of one of the blogs I read and decided to see how easy it was. MAN IS IT EASY!!
So that being said I'm not sure if I will have a lot say but I will try to at least post some pictures every once and awhile.

Here's a pretty important one. Brenna got baptised Easter weekend. Our church has a beautiful outdoor baptistery. Notice the big crowd. Miss Jenny and Mr. Marcus her two youth pastors baptised her and Blair got to be with her. I got to take pictures. Afterwards Caleb said he wanted to do it too but I think he just wanted to swim in the baptistery.

Caleb learned about tally marks in Kindergarten. Here he is practising on the back wall. Notice Fat Max keeping watch.

This is Riley on Easter. His t-shirt says "Someday I'll be your boss". He has decided to grow his hair out like his friend Tyler's. So right now he looks like a cute little skater dude and a lot like his Grandpa Denny. I'll take a new picture and post it next time.

Here are the kids on Box Day. It's was the day we got all our boxes from Sonlight the home school curriculum we use. I was totally excited. The kids, honestly, could have not cared less. But they didn't do all the research I did either.
That's all for now. I will take some more recent pics this week and post them soon.