Children's Scripture Curriculum

My friend Courtney, that you can spy on here, is a homeschooling mom and fellow crazy person... I think the latter part has more to do with the fact that she tolerates spending time with me and would also like to complete an Ironman triathlon, I can also thank her for my obsession with crazy looking shoes, but I digress.... She showed me her Discover the Scriptures Products for LDS Homeschool and now I am the proud owner of the Old Testament curriculum (thanks to digital downloads it's already here and ready to use) and am super excited to start our Old Testament Stories over again! We're 3 stories from the end and I had planned to go through the book again from the beginning since we're still in the OT in Gospel Doctrine, but I'm even more excited about this accompanying curriculum since I know that my kids will get that much more out of their reading. Granted I do ask questions regularly to help my children with comprehension, but this helps me focus a bit better and gives me ideas on how to enhance the experience through activities as well. Go check out their sample pages! They even have programs for younger (1st-3rd grade) and older kids (4th-7th grade) so as your kids age the content and ability levels are adjusted. They are a little pricey in my opinion, but until I can figure out something this creative to make on my own (which probably isn't likely without help from my hubby.... my brain just doesn't think like this), I love that buying these is an option!

King David WAS good....

Our lesson in church today was on King David. More specifically 2 Samuel Chapters 11-12, and then we didn't get to Psalms 51 (his repentance), but I'll leave that there for you so you can look it up if you so desire.

We've probably all heard the David and Goliath story, and from there we've probably all heard the story of King David's inappropriate relationship with Bathsheba that then led to the murder of her husband.

The lesson that we were given today was about the latter story, however, our instructor reminded us of what King David had done/who he was before this incident. I don't know about you, but my mind kind of goes from Goliath (where David is really strong in the Lord) to Bathsheba (where David all of the sudden makes a bunch of really big mistakes and then ends up bringing condemnation down upon himself). How often do we consider where he was in the middle of all of this? And how can learning from his example be beneficial in our lives?

King David WAS a really good king! One of the best really. He was the first to unite the 12 tribes, built temples, helped Saul's family, won wars against the heathens in the area, established Jerusalem. He was truly doing the bidding of his Heavenly Father, and as such, was highly favored of the Lord. How do you get to the Bathsheba incident from this high of a place????

Here's where the visual aid of wrapping a single string around your wrists and trying to break it comes in. If you were to wrap a few strings around your wrists you would be able to break it easily. A few more wraps and it'd be difficult, but doable. Wrap many strings around your wrists, and now you're in trouble. So to it is with sin. Little by little we are susceptible to Satan's enticings and as we give in, he binds us to him. Scary stuff! I know where I want to be bound, and it's no where near that guy!

In David's case he really shouldn't have been on top of his house when he saw Bathsheba, his place was with his army, but he decided that they were winning.... so why should he go? So, he's shirking his duties and just home being idle. Then he sees Bathsheba, has a thought (which would have been easy to repent of at this point), but then he decides to "pull up a chair" and entertain that thought. Then he acts on it. Then she gets pregnant. Uriah, her husband, is a good guy so David is having troubles getting him to come home to be with his wife, so he sends him somewhere that he knows he'll get killed.... yah, he's not doing so hot with the decision making at this point. You get the picture. You can't cover a mole hill with more dirt. If you're trying to hide it all you end up doing is making it bigger and more visible!

I've mentioned before how much more blaring my faults are when I'm parenting solo. It's not as bad as it sounds really. I spend time thinking about what I need to do in order to be a good parent and really that ends up being a mental discussion about what needs to happen in our environment and in me to have a better relationship with Heavenly Father and to share that with my children. I know I need EVERY ounce of spiritual help and direction I can possibly get. So, sitting in church today brought to mind a blogpost that I read this last week on playing cards over at being a mother who knows. We have face cards in the house, but I don't play with them and I've maybe seen them 3 or 4 times in the last 6 years and that wasn't even to do anything with them. I remember hearing that we shouldn't have face cards, we never did growing up, but we've had some since being married and I didn't think much of it. After reading her post it reminded me that having those cards in my house may not be a big deal to other people.... they're just a tiny deck of cards after all!.... but having them in my house period is keeping the spirit from fully descending on me and my home the way I not only want, but the way that I desperately need it too!

David started out great. I don't know that I have ever been at the place he was spiritually, and yet he fell. What a HUGE reminder of how diligent we need to be at getting rid of the little things in our lives that are keeping us from having the full power of the spirit as our companion. We need to do our duties, quickly replace thoughts that aren't in line with our morals and values, be in constant communication with our Heavenly Father, and never be idle. We have to stay in control, there is no other option, especially as mothers! Even when we're doing well we can't stop moving forward and doing better! Let's determine to examine our lives and do a little better everyday about removing the things in our lives that are keeping us bound. As we celebrate our freedom as a nation, let us also pledge to find personal freedom!

It's ON!

So, I've taken some leaps lately. (Oh, by the way... we are still schooling and I have kid thoughts and pictures to share, but they're just a little more labor intensive, so they'll have to wait for a moment when I don't have one foot in bed, sorry... fluff for now!)

I've officially taken the steps to get all my duckies in a row and will be: Running a 5k 31 July. Doing a sprint Triathlon 7 Aug. Riding a 25 Mile Bike Race 25 Sept. :-)

If you've been reading you know that I haven't been doing the swim training that I've needed to since I figured that I couldn't figure out the logistics for the August Tri... so I've just done the bike/run/strength training. Haha, yah, now I'm getting a little antsy. I know I can finish the swim, but I'm sure I'd like to finish it stronger than I will, plus I need to give an estimated time for finishing, which means I need to actually go swim the lengths. Yah, that should be interesting!

Oh, and I'm taking a good little road trip through UT and AZ for about 10 days right before the race(s). Needless to say my bike and jogger stroller are coming with and I'm trying to make preparations to have all my food made myself before we go and make plans to still cook/eat well while at the hotel and visiting family.... I seriously started to consider not going! Trying to keep up with everything while away from my little hobbit hole, I mean home, is the most stressful part of all!

Well, to make matters a little easier I do plan to soothe my soul by buying a pair of Vibrams. Barefoot running just makes sense! Here's a youtube clip for you:

And just for funsies, here's my new love:

They're funky yet cute! Here's to some fun runs in July and August! Looking for more fun stuff to do and hoping that my son gets his swimming down this year so he can start doing triathlon's too!

A Quick Post....

So, I know I've been absent, and for that I'm sorry! I promise to catch up, lots on my mind lately! My parents came to visit for my son's birthday last week and I'm SO BEHIND. It was fun though :-)

In any case, I had to write a quick post so that I could share my praises of www.delicious-monster.com. If you're not a Mac user, well, you'll want to be after you see this program! I've been in the process trying to get all our books and videos catalogued (can you say nightmare), and I'm literally about halfway done with both after only having this program since late this afternoon. YOU CAN SCAN BARCODES!! How cool is that?! My kids think it's the neatest thing to here a beep, have the computer say the name of the item being scanned, and then watch it appear on my virtual bookshelf completely with a picture they recognize that gets filled in a very fun way. You can also type in ISBN's or your book, attach a photo if it doesn't have one automatically, it picks up all of your iTunes stuff and catalogues it, you can add toys, music, games, clothes, plus it links into amazon so you can buy or sell there... and... you can "check out items" to people and a due date gets automatically added to your iCal so you don't forget about an item you lent to so and so. It's awesome!

I'm kicking myself for not getting this earlier. My good friend over at gentleartofchaos.blogspot.com/ told me about it last year during a fun "let's go check out the school supply store outing" (don't laugh, you know you get excited over the smell of pencils too!). I told my husband about it, we left it at that. So, single me who buys lots of gifts for herself because somehow that makes everything better, came home from the bookstore for the 2nd time this week and thought I'd look up delicious books.

You actually download the program and get to try it out (at which point you WILL be completely enamored), then you buy the license. So, go try it!!

Homemade Soft Pretzels

So, when I find a website that interests me I tend to spend some time snooping around. I bet you can't guess where I found this recipe...... yep! You're smart :-) The Confessions of a Homeschooler blog I bragged about yesterday had a recipe section I had to check out. Found a super easy looking recipe for soft pretzels. Had to try it. Made it today. LOVED it! Seriously, they tasted like the ones from the mall, but I know what's in these! They were, in fact, super easy. I'm still trying to figure out the climate here, so I had forgotten that sometimes I have to use way less flour than the minimum a recipe calls for. I was getting a little worried that they wouldn't turn out as the dough was a bit dry, but they were great anyway! I can't wait to try them with garlic/parmesan and dipped in marinara! ***As a side note: I ran out of wheat flour so mine were half white half wheat.***

Oh My! Homeschooling Activities for Littles!

I just stumbled onto confessionsofahomeschooler.blogspot.com... oh my, oh my! I'm in love! My ultimate goals for learning with my kids is that things are fun for them so that they're always wanting to love and explore new things and that we grow closer together as a family. What better way to do that then by playing! I specifically looked at her letter learning stuff, yah... click on this and tell me that you don't want make just about everything on the page! My kids will LOVE these ideas.... and since I'm pretty lame when it comes to imaginative things, I'm especially excited that everything is all laid out! Have fun!

Homemade Granola Bars (and other good eats)!

I just finished my first batch of homemade granola bars. It's seriously so easy! I used the recipe found on www.joyfulabode.com I'm sure some of you clever people out there can make them even healthier, but I had fun! I didn't use peanuts, just made the granola base with oats, sunflower seeds and wheat germ ******Just as a side note, if you do decide to make these and use peanuts PLEASE don't take them to church or pretty much anywhere else with you! So many people have severe peanut allergies and it's upsetting to me that I have friends who at least once a month have to leave church and are in bed for hours trying to get over an allergic reaction. Not cool! Leave anything containing peanuts at home, if you MUST take food with you to church or in public try to choose a more benign food****** I mixed in dried cranberries and pressed almonds into the top. I'm waiting for them to dry now and am very excited!

Food Networks Alton Brown has one here that looks good too. It's similar, but requires oven time whereas the one above (after toasting the base ingredients) does not.

I'll have to keep looking for the other one that I stumbled on and wanted to try.

Anyway, I've also found myself very much addicted to banana chips, but as I like to have a little more control over my food and I hate paying for preservatives, I went searching for recipe and found this. Simple, I know, but I often have to see what other people did to make it work for me.

Lastly, if you're looking for healthy snacks to make, my Living on a Dime newsletter had a link to a free 40 healthy snack recipe e-book. I found this fun and am excited to try the baked version of fried zucchini, gummy candy, and a trail mix that uses banana chips, hazelnuts, and has vanilla flavor via vanilla pudding.

Okay, no really, this one is the last thing I'll post. I really enjoy going to eatbetteramerica.com. They have lots of "healthified" foods and give you a nutritional rundown too. Gotta love that!

Happy eating!

Running Info...

Why yes! I did in fact thoroughly enjoy my run today, thanks for asking! I even got that treadmill up to 6 point something and had a grand ol' time! I won't be competitively running anytime soon, or perhaps ever, but it's fun to test what I can do. Makes me happy! Anywho, I stumbled on MarathonRookie.com and wanted to make sure that I shared it with you. It has plans and information for any type of running (5K's, 10 K's, half marathons, etc), plus weight training and nutrition info, it really is an AMAZING site. Check it out!

Tri Week 3

I'm pretty glad this week is over! It seems like the first and fourth weeks of my husband being gone are especially hard, and that kind of runs into my training.... but I'm still happy to be training! It's harder to get going and a bit on the mentally grueling side to get through since I'm super tired, but I've been plugging along :-). I only missed one day (which I shouldn't have), I excused myself since I wasn't feeling so great, but I'm sure if it was a run and not a bike I would have found a little more strength to muddle through. It is what it is! Here's this weeks' schedule:

Day 1: 20 minute run

Day 2: rest

Day 3: 45 minute bike

Day 4: 24 minute run

Day 5: 20 minute bike (that I didn't do)

Day 6: Sunday Rest

Day 7: 45 minute bike

I'm excited that tomorrow is another run day! My runs are longer than what the schedule requires... I always add at least a 5 minute warm up and 5 minute cool down... sometimes I just run a little extra for funsies :-) Who knew I'd like running so much? My new best friend Courtney that just moved here (and homeschools and wants to do an Ironman too!), has run a marathon and has a friend trying to talk her into doing one in Idaho next June. Barring being pregnant (and even then, depending on how far along), I'm totally thinking about making a road trip to run it too!

Here's to week 4! .... Feel free to join me.... I don't just post my schedule for me :-)

Jorgensen-ville

Well, specific pictures of the kiddies doing activities and whatnot are located on our private blog.... you'll have to contact me to see those.... but here are the chicken's we play with! We've had them since they were 2 week old balls of fluff, they're quite the ladies now. We have a Silver laced Wyandotte (Lacey), a Golden Sex-link (Goldie), and a Dark Cornish, who has yet to be named... sad, I know, but it took me a while to even think of ones for the others and they aren't even that original!

Here's our garden too. I had a nice zucchini on the plant closest to you, seems to have miraculously disappeared and no one knows where it went despite all the broken leaves laying around it! *laugh* Oh well, things are growing well otherwise and I'm impressed by how things have taken off! They had a shakey start, but with good pruning and lots of water everyday I'm surprised by the growth. This was our first garden, so it's been more of an experiment. Next year we start seeds in plastic cups earlier than this year, we make sure to lay out top soil and moisture control soil onto the area before tilling, and if dad isn't deployed he'll be taking leave so that I don't have to hurriedly get things into the ground while baby and others are crying, oh! And we fence everything in! I had some awesome corn growing in the back area behind the tomatoes... turns out the chickens thought they were awesome too!

And lastly there's Nigel, resident feline, who just came back home last week, after living with my parents over the last

year whilst I moved twice, lived in 3 different states, and traveled through 9 states with 3 kids and then pregnant, I know.... you wish you could be me :-D