Tyler

Tyler turned 11 on October 21st!  Can you believe it?  I sure can’t!  Ty had several days worth of celebrating.  Thursday we took a trip to Walmart and he used some money he earned, some he got from Grandma Whitney and then the difference I paid for and we got him an ipod touch for his birthday present.  Friday for his birthday I fixed him whatever he wanted for breakfast.  We had waffles with buttermilk syrup and orange juice.  We were supposed to go camping with Josh’s family but due to court for Josh we were unable to go.  So Josh went over to his dad’s and borrowed the tractor and had a load of dirt or two delivered and he spent the rest of the day building the boys a bike track.  It’s been the plan to build one for quite some time and I guess today was the day!

Awesome that I don’t have any pictures of Ty on the track…guess I’ll have to fix that!  But here is Link driving the tractor (he loved it and wouldn’t get off) and Josh working on the track.

Ty had planned to have a big halloween birthday party, but a few days before his party he says to me “mom, I won’t have a birthday party if we can go eat out at Ninja”  Done!  I don’t love having birthday parties so I was more than happy to go with that plan!  We took Ethan with us and went to Ninja and ate at a hibachi table.  The boys had never been before and they loved it.

Ty catching some shrimp in his mouth.

The next day Grandpa and Grandma Whitney came to get their trailer and take it home to Logandale for the winter.  They told Ty they wanted to take him out to dinner for his birthday.  You’ll never guess…he picked Ninja again :) ha ha.  So back to Ninja we went.  My parents had never been there either so it was a fun 2nd trip.

On Monday Ty went with his Aunt Crystal and Grandma Neilson to St. George.  Grandma treated him to Olive Garden for dinner and Aunt Crystal treated him to Thriller at Tuacahn.  He was so excited to go and said he had so much fun!  I don’t have any pictures of that darn it.  But he said it was awesome and that he really liked going.  Thanks Aunt Crystal!

This past Wednesday we went to Ty’s last pack meeting as a cub scout (technically he’s already out of cubs) and he got his arrow of light and he earned every single Webelo badge.  So he got the rest of those and a cool plaque and patch.  I can’t believe he’s graduates to boy scouts.  We were super proud of him for earning all of those awards.  A few months ago he decided he wanted to get all the awards and got to work.  Of course, we had to help him a little bit, but the motivation was all his.  We are super proud of him.

Grandpa came to watch

Ty’s  a great kid.  We love him.  He helps me out a ton at home with the little boys.  He’s super creative and can be found drawing or at the piano trying to compose something.  He’s super excited to start playing the cello this week (one of our presents to him).  I always have people telling me what a great kid he is wherever he goes.  I’m so glad that Heavenly Father sent him to our family!

Tracen’s fashion sense

Tracen has quite an interesting fashion sense.  He can put together quite the combination.  But some of his best stuff is where shoes are concerned.  Interestingly enough his best shoe choices come when he’s trying to sneak off to Addi’s house.  I think we give Megan something to laugh about a little more often than I’d like to admit.  Here are some of his shoe choices.

Flip flops and tennis shoes…

Snow boots and slippers…

Different colors/sizes of boots. (with shorts)

Flip flops and snow boots, striped shirt and plaid shorts.  This was one of those days he ran away to Addi’s.

He keeps us pretty entertained!

Layers of the Earth…a little science project

When we first started homeschooling, Tyler had been learning about layers of the earth, earthquakes, volcanoes and other things like that.  He wanted to continue to learn about them.  So we did a little unit study and the boys had fun learning all about that stuff.  Ty would have also had to build a model of the layers of the earth and he wanted to do that as well.  So the other day we finally got around to it.  We decided to make it out of rice crispy treats.  For each layer we dyed the marshmallow mixture a different color….

The core and the outer core were red and orange….a sticky mess!

The mantle—yellow.  more stickiness.  We found that putting them in the fridge for a little bit helped with the stickiness and making it easier to mold.

I think this is the lithosphere….The boys would know!

Lincoln was lots of help cleaning up.  Mmmm

Blue colored candy coating for the crust.  Ty had great ideas for drawing the continents on…it didn’t work out so good, so we just stuck with ocean.

Then we cut into it so we could see all the layers.  They weren’t really proportionate but we were good with that.

Jesse’s earth…

Tyler’s earth…

Tracen’s earth…don’t mind his near nakedness…he thinks clothes are optional.

The boys being themselves…

It was a lot of fun!  It made a huge mess but was still a lot of fun.  The boys actually said thank you to me all the rest of that day and took them to Grandma’s house to show them off.  And they were good to eat, and that doesn’t hurt either :)

Joy school goes to the pumpkin patch

Last week we went out to Paragonah for Joy school to pick pumpkins.  We brought Addi along with us.  The kids wandered around the pumpkin patch, found their perfect pumpkins and then we played around a bit.  Then when we got home they decided they needed to carve  a few.

Link “carved” his too…

Tracen’s creation…

Ty ended up spray painting his

It was all a lot of hard wo rk!

Silly boys

I have some silly little boys!  I love it when they get silly and a little crazy!  We were doing a little organizing the other day (hence the mess in the background) and the little boys started “riding” some horses.  It was hilarious.  Link was squealing and laughing.  It was hilarious!

Jesse also taught Tracen to draw “bob” on one hand and a smashed bob on the other hand and then he has a little thing where he smashes bob and then he says “oops he’s dead”  I don’t know what the real way to do it is, because Tracen has his own version.  But nearly everyday, at least once a day, he draws on his hands.  I can’t get him to stop!

Bob is on the right hand and the smashed bob is on his left hand.  Some drawings are better than others!

We also have a silly dog.  Sadie basks in the sun…and by basking, I mean she takes it to the extreme.  She pretty much looks dead.  She does this pretty regularly.  She’ll lay like this for an hour or more and never move a muscle.

We’ve got lots of sillyness going on around here.

Heaven help us all

Read at your own risk….

So each week I (hopefully at the first of the week…but not this week) put together a little run down of what we need to accomplish for school during the week.  That way I can stay on track.  Most of the time we don’t finish it all but I’d rather shoot high and miss than shoot low and miss :)  This week however I’m a little behind…..see, I kinda forgot to go to work on Sunday night and about the time I was sitting down to work on the schedule they called and was wondering if I’d planned on showing up.  So that threw off the first of our week.  I planned it all out at work but hadn’t typed it up all nice (I’m also using it as a record of what the heck we’ve done all day/year)  So I was typing it up this afternoon and I got side tracked and pretty soon I was off working on my brussel sprouts.  Tyler comes in and gets on the computer and starts playing and giggling.  Then he says “mom! Can I print off my school thing?”  Sure why not…..well I’ll tell you why not….A few weeks ago on facebook I posted that living with Josh and 4 boys I was sure that not a day would pass during the next at least 17 years that I wouldn’t hear about farting or some other bodily function.  So far I’ve been right.  Tyler added a few subjects with corresponding lessons to the bottom of his learning plan for the week.  You can check them out if you dare.

Tyler

Weekly Assignments Week of October 9 2011

Subject	Monday		Tuesday		Wednesday		Thursday		Friday
Devotional			Read scrtiptures
Math	Horizons 1-3		Horizons 4-5		Horizons 6-7		Horizons 8-9		Horizons 10 LOF 26
English	Lesson 16		Lesson 17		Lesson 18		Lesson 19		Lesson 20
HistoryAncients	Lesson 9		Lesson 9 & 14		Lesson 10& 14		Lesson 11 & 14		Lesson 14
Science	Read		Read		Build Earth				Botany pp12-13
Handwriting (Horizons 4)	Lesson 8						Lesson 9
Music	Practice piano Band		Practice piano Band		lesson		Practice piano Band		Practice piano Band
PE	Karate 2hr
Reading	30 min		30 min		30 min		30 min		30 min
Farting	Arm pit farting		Knee farting		Hurshey squirts		Poo bubbles		chocholate
Pooping	The goldentoilet		Lesson 2 troll		Lesson 3 the island		The poop pit		Pooping cows

And there’s just not really anything else to say I think.

Camping

Last week we headed up the mountain with Josh’s parents and brother to do a little camping.  We left Tuesday night after Josh got home from work and pulled in about dark.  His parents and Jade had gone up the day before.  This is one of the awesome things about homeschooling, we can go camping or wherever, whenever we feel like it!  We had some days off in the middle of the week and I had to work all weekend so we were able to go do something fun instead of staying home so the boys could go to school.  We just took some of our books with us and did our school work on the mountain.

The weather was absolutely perfect and the trees were beautiful.  I was mad at myself because I was messing around with my camera and ran my battery down so I didn’t get to take pictures of some of the leaves I wanted to.

On one of the days we went on a hike.  It was an interesting adventure.  Josh thought if we drove down the road a little farther we could cut 3/4 mile off the trail.  I won’t say much more about it except that I promise that it’s not worth it to try to cut 3/4 mile off of a trail.  It’s not that far and you’ll probably save time and effort just staying on the stinkin’ trail. We’ll call that P.E. and wilderness survival class.  Ok it wasn’t quite that bad.

Mack was up with Jade most of the time and he and Tracen dug around in the dirt, got along and fought.  They’re funny boys.  Lincoln bugged them and the bigger boys and we sat around and enjoyed the weather, and ate smores and other good food.  It was a fun trip.

I love this picture….Josh said I couldn’t put it on the blog :)

Linky still loves to listen to music.  He’s sharing with his dad.

The trees were so amazing.  We couldn’t have been up there a better time.  

We took Grandpa’s 4-wheeler up and the boys rode it around our camp constantly.  Lincoln and Tracen loved it.  They would both run for it any time they heard it fire up.  They would have rode that four-wheeler all day for 3 days straight.  When I took this picture I thought though….that represents three whole years out of my life (and that doesn’t include any of the raising part, just the building part) and they’re out there trying to kill themselves.  Ok they weren’t but it crossed my mind.  They had so much fun.

Josh’s dad had to leave early so on Friday Josh took Ann’s trailer down the mountain.  We stayed up there and finished up school and then went on a four-wheeler ride.  Lincoln fell asleep right at the last moment.  He never snuggles so I sat and held him and snuggled my filthy little boy while he was sleeping.  He had so much fun it wore him out.  And between the dirt, dust and teddy grahams he needed a bath bad!

The how’s, the what’s and the why’s

I’ve had a lot of people (from far away from us) request that I do a post on our decision to homeschool the boys.  And a lot of people around us ask us why we decided it too.  I’ve had really great intentions of doing it, but I’ve been really busy homeschooling the kids!

This goes back to 2nd grade (Ty is now in 5th).  Up until 2nd grade Ty’s teachers (who were/are/have been great) were able to keep him entertained.  He’s a super smart kid, but they were able to do things with him that kept him happy and not bored.  Not long into 2nd grade Ty started getting really bored really fast.  I talked to his teacher and we came up with some solutions that made him happy.  She checked with me a lot to see how he was doing and we made it through.  I’d already started researching homeschooling a little bit.  Then we moved to Parowan.  He finished out 2nd grade ok and third wasn’t too bad.  He said he was bored.  We talked with his teacher and tried to help him out there.  Tyler’s also a little bit shy and has one or two friends that are boys and a few more that are girls.  He’s not a “popular” kid and doesn’t need to be except that he can sometimes be the target of meaner kids actions.  This became a bigger problem in 4th grade and combined with his boredom he was fairly miserable.  Again he had a great teacher that we talked to a lot and tried to help him out.  Tyler, though, wouldn’t tell anyone at school when there was a problem.  He would just come home upset or mad.  And it started to change his personality a little bit and I wasn’t excited about that. 

SO at the end of last year I told Ty that we would do what ever he wanted to do for school  We’d almost homeschooled the year before and I chickened out.  I promised him I wouldn’t this time.  So all summer we’d planned on staying home.  Jesse went back and forth a little bit.  3 days before school started Ty all of a sudden decided he wanted to go back to school.  So we hurried and got everything ready and I sent them.  I even went and talked to Tyler’s teacher before school started and again, she was great.  About a week into school Ty said he’d wished he’d stayed home.  A half a week later we started in with the super negativity and being sad or mad everyday.  Josh and I talked about it and we decided why delay the inevitable we needed to try this for Tyler.  If nothing else, if it doesn’t work out, Ty needs to know that I was willing to try something else for him. 

I can tell you that the day that I went and told the principal I was going to pull them out was one of the most stressful days of my life!  I don’t have a huge problem with public schools, I have loved nearly every one of Ty’s teachers and they have all liked him and been great to try to make school a good experience for him.  So to go to the school and tell them I was pulling him out was huge for me.  It went really well and Mr Porter was awesome.  That was Friday and all weekend I vacillated between excited and “holy cow what in the heck did I just do”

Now what about Jesse?  Jesse is also a really smart kid, but he’s also super mellow and just happy to be here.  He’s happy to go to school and hang out with his buddies, do his work, whether it’s easy or not (Hey, the easier the better right?)  But he can also hang out at home and be happy.  I’ve never seen a kid that can push a one day sickness into three so well or a 4 day tonsillectomy into a week and a half.  Not even kidding.  I knew that the minute that Ty wasn’t having to go to school, Jesse’d want to stay home too.

Then there’s also the fact that I work every other weekend and Josh works one weekend a month and that we’re usually home together only one weekend a month but every Thursday and Friday.  So hopefully we can be together and go do things together more often.

The first week I worked a lot and slept a lot so we didn’t do much.  I told everyone we’re a year round school and this week we’re off track :)  So we’ve been going for about 3 weeks now.  It’s going really well!  I’m enjoying it and I think the boys are too. 

As far as how we’re going about doing it all, I didn’t go with any one curriculum.  There’s tons of stuff out there and free online school through the school districts.  I just read a bunch of reviews and just picked different things based on what I thought would work for us.  I’d already picked most of it out over the summer and had already bought a bunch of stuff.  So far I’ve only found one thing that I don’t like and am not going to use.  We love not having to wake up at 6:30 every morning.  We get up, eat and get some of our morning chores and stuff done and get started with school about 10.  Most days at 10:50 I take Ty to the high school for band.  I get Jesse started on something before then help him finish it up and get started on something else before I pick Ty up.  Then we get all our group stuff done (History and Science) while Link naps in the afternoon.    On Tuesday and Thursday Tracen is also at Joy school so it’s a good time for us to get a lot done.  We’re usually all done by the time the bus pulls up.  It’s nice because by then they usually have their piano practiced and they aren’t coming in with homework to do.  I also have included a little scripture study or reading a story from the friend most days as well as a lot of home ec (we’ve been busy canning!)  The home ec isn’t always done by 3 though lol.

I get the socialization question a lot too.  I hypothesized that part of Ty’s problem was having to deal with social situations too often and I think I was right.  He’s trending more positive.  They go to Karate every week for two hours and scouts each week as well.  I’ve tried to make sure they hang out with friends (we’re getting too old to call it playing anymore) and they will probably go back to crossfit kids soon too.  So I’m pretty sure they’re not suffering socially :)

Super mom

There are times when I’m playing the piano in primary that I end up with Lincoln on my lap.  For the most part, he’s usually pretty good and doesn’t try to play with me.  But I will usually get comments from someone (usually a guy) wondering how I can play the piano with Lincoln on my lap.  One Sunday Bishop says “I can’t take care of kids or play the piano and look Sister Neilson can do both at the same time”  I just laugh because it’s just normal.  The minute I get up to the piano Link’s there with me.  He loves it.  I had to play the closing song on the organ a few weeks ago after the primary program and so I was practicing A LOT!  Lincoln would try to climb up and scream until I’d let him up with me and then this would happen….(don’t mind my ugly hair)

or his dirty face…

And when you’re off he wants off….and when you’re on he wants on.