That's why ducks fly

Summer finally to this part of the world. It is really pretty warm these days - if there are no major storms, it is quite nice. So today Jeremy wanted to go to the pool where his sister was life guarding. We some stuff to do so we went to the pool for the last two hours before closing. Due to insider information we knew that it would be less crowded during that time. Anyway, the little guy had a great time. He jumped and dove and flew down the zip line and the slide. He had blast. Unfortunately somebody stole his goggles. So after the swimming we went to the store to buy a new pair of goggles. Jeremy found what he was looking for, which was a combo pack consisting of goggles, flippers and snorkel. He really liked it and tried it out at home. It was quite funny to see him struggle to waddle through the house. I just burst out laughing when he mumbled to himself "Now I know why ducks fly rather than walk" while he waddled on into the kitchen for a glass of water. 

I thought I share this little snipped with you, maybe you need a little smile today. I know I did :-)

New Curriculum arrived!

I have been homeschooling for about six years now and every year I ponder anew which curriculum to choose. I have tried textbooks, but that doesn't seem to work well for my lovelies. I really liked  Ambleside Online. A great curriculum fashioned after Charlotte Mason's style of teaching. I really enjoyed it when I had only two kids and they were in the same grade level. It didn't work so well for me when I had three kids in three different grade levels. I don't know how others are doing it, but it drove me crazy, it is quite possible that I could have done something different and make it work, but I couldn't figure out how. Then I tried to put my own curriculum together, which worked well but was VERY work-intensive! I also tried Tapestry of Grace, which I thought was super because I could put all three kids in the same curriculum and we were all learning the same but at different levels. The difficulty I had with TOG was that I couldn't just pick a few books. I constantly had to battle the want to read every book, which TOG clearly states is NOT intended.
This year we will be a very different year for us for many reasons, some I will talk about in a week or two, the other reason is that one of my kids is starting college work. She is going to do 'her own thing' and I have only two left to teach. I really needed something this year that spelled everything out for me and was already all done, so that basically all I have to do is open the folder and start teaching. Sooo, this year we are trying Sonlight. I got the first box with curriculum and I am excited! It is ALL done for me! I don't have to do much at all. I can't believe how easy it can be to plan a school year! Would you believe that I am pretty much done with planning for one of my kids? I opened the box, put all the stickers on the books, so we know which books is for which week. Next I loaded the student and teacher folders and I am done :)  I can't believe it! Okay, so I have to add Math and Science, but they are really easy to plan, because they are pretty much scheduled when they come. This year the kids will do Wordly Wise on the computer, I got a really good deal on that. The only thing I have to do is move some of the scheduled work, because it is planned for five days but we want to do it in four days. That way we don't have to worry about things when it is co-op day. So Fridays will be for co-op, field trips and catch up if needed.
I would like to mention that there is nothing wrong with any of the other curricula, I just really don't have the time to plan so extensively anymore.

So anyway, here are some pictures from 'box day'  :D

It has been a while :)

Oh my, time really flies! Last time I posted, we were surprised by snow. Now we have mainly rain, though I don't want to be unfair, we also had a few sunny days since then. The weather is about as crazy as our lives are right now.

I am in the middle of planning my daughters graduation party. I am so blessed to have a good friend helping me. Highschool graduation is an American thing and I grew up in Germany, we didn't have grad parties. So now I am learning many things about it,  so I will be ready for the other two children who will follow in a few short years :) I can't believe I am done homeschooling her. Where did the years go?  This is a new chapter in life, for all of us. I am excited to see what God has in store for her.
Here are two  pictures of my grad girl, courtesy of JK Photography.

My little guy wanted to go fishing the other day but I had a few errands to run in the morning. So we made a deal, if he got his school work done by the time I got home again, I would take him fishing.
Let me tell you, he has never done his school work so fast! So I had to keep me end of the deal, which at first I wasn't all that happy with because more work was waiting for me to be done. But I wanted to keep my word. I have to tell you, it was a blessing. While Jeremy fished and had fun and made some new friends, I got to sit in the sun and just relax. I got to soak up some wonderful, warm sunshine. After about two and half hours we had to leave because I had more stuff to do. We both had a great time. Jeremy caught quite a few fishes and I had time spend with my Lord :)

A winner :)

It has been quiet on this blog for a while. Once again I am amazed at how fast time passes by...  I missed writing our journey down and am glad that life is at a little slower pace now.  We have had a busy season, which was also fun. A lot of things happened and I will try to put them all in one blog post, which will hopefully not be too long :)
So, grab your latte or tea or other beverage of choice, kick back and relax - it's the weekend :D

We started off with a Karate Tournament. Jeremy just started Karate in January and this was his first tournament. I told him that maybe he shouldn't expect too much, because he didn't have much time to learn and train. Though it was great to get to know the process and see what's going on, so that he would be better prepared for the next time. I thought it would be good to get him ready - just in case he didn't win anything, which in my mind was clear that it wouldn't happen because he just started with this. Well, my 'little' son proved me all wrong. He didn't just get trophy, he brought two home! One was for participation in the gold belt basics. The other was for first place in team form! Yeah! He and his partner did really good - especially since both of them are pretty new to Karate. This was awesome for the boys and Jeremy was on a high all day long. Of course the high energy one could easily feel at tournament had something to do with that as well.

One happy boy :)

On the heels of the tournament followed the yearly Pinewood Derby Race with the Cub Scouts. The past four years Jeremy tried really hard to win the race but never did. He wasn't sure that would want to enter this year, but wanted to give it another try. Well, good that he did, because his car came in first place! He was just ecstatic !  Now he and the other boys who won go on to race at the next level. Even if he doesn't win there, that is okay, he had a blast so far :)

my little guy with his winning car 'Sharp Cheddar"

After all of this excitement, we still had to finish the project for the geography bee at our co-op. Jeremy chose to make a display board about Berlin - Germany. That was a bit difficult to fit in, because it didn't have much to do with our school. Since we are studying about the ancient civilizations, we didn't quite fit it. Though we did learn that Germany existed already during ancient Roman times, though it was called Germania. So I guess it did fit into our history - somewhat at least ;-)

So it was a very eventful and successful few weeks for us, especially for Jeremy. It was a great time, but I was glad to have some normalcy back :)

Justice Department: Home Schooling not a 'Right'

Really? So what does that mean for homeschoolers here in the US????

Since this hits close to home - so to speak, I thought I pass this on. I think if enough people know about this, we can then stand together to keep the right to homeschool here in the US. It is the land of the free and should remain the land of the free!

The U.S. Justice Department says home-schooling is not a fundamental right.

That was the argument the Obama administration made in federal court against an evangelical Christian family from Germany seeking asylum in the United States.

Germany broadly forbids home-schooling. So the Romeike family was forced to flee the country or risk losing their five children to the German government, which was trying to force them to put their children in public schools.

The Homeschool Legal Defense Association is working on the Romeike family's behalf.

Michael Farris, founder and chairman of HSLDA, wrote about Germany's home-school ban in his blog saying, "It is thought control. It is belief control. It is totalitarianism dressed up in politically correct lingo."

For more on this important case and its potential impact on home-schooling in the United States, CBN News spoke with Michael Donnelly, director of International Relations for HSLDA.

The Romeikes claim their religious freedoms are being violated.

But U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder has filed against the Romeike family in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He said that asylum should not be granted to home-schoolers since home-schooling is not protected under religious freedom.

But Farris wrote, "In most asylum cases, there is some guesswork necessary to figure out the government's true motive -- but not in this case."

"The Supreme Court of Germany declared that the purpose of the German ban on home-schooling was to 'counteract the development of religious and philosophically motivated parallel societies,'" Farris explained.

Source:
http://www.cbn.com/cbnnews/politics/2013/February/Justice-Department-Home-Schooling-not-a-Right/

Beginning of the week

Mondays are usually a little difficult for us. It isn't so easy to get started again, especially since we didn't do anything over the weekend due to the winter storm warning. Though in our particular neighborhood we didn't experience anything too awful. We thought we better play it safe and stay at home, which was really nice and cozy. Which made the start of this week really hard :)
We started out school day a bit later than intended, but it all went well. Jeremy did one whole math lesson from Math U See in about 30 min! Yes! He really had fun doing it and I enjoy to see that he has fun and understands this part of math easily. In Science he is doing Human Anatomy and Physiology from Jeannie Fulbright this year. It is a good curriculum and has some really fun and easy experiments. Boys really seem to like those, the girls, in general didn't care much about experiments. Anyway, Mrs. Fulbright came out with an audiobook for Anatomy, which Jeremy listened to and followed along in the science book for a little. Then he decided that he wanted to color some pages from the accompanying student journal while he listened to the audiobook. This was really awesome for me, because while he was learning, I was able to make food! I was surprised how much he retained from listening. So we had a good school day and he felt pretty independent.

In December Jeremy started with Karate and I am happy to say that he really likes it. Last week he was allowed to break a board, he was really happy that he succeeded :)
For the next week he is going to train a lot because he is going to his first Karate tournament at the end of this month. He also has his pinewood derby with his cub scouts at the beginning of March and he working a lot on his little car. I haven't seen it yet, because he goes to a friends house because the friends dad has all the tools they need. We only have a bread knife ;-)  I will post some pictures about that after the derby. In the meantime, here are some Karate pictures of my little guy when he broke his board. Though really, he isn't that little anymore :)

the teacher is explaining what to do

test run on how to hit the board with his knee

He did it ! 

Friends and Cheesecake :)

After a look into the mirror this morning, right after I got out of bed, I was sure the day was ruined. God had a great way of lifting my spirit though. A friend called me on skype and we had a chance to connect again. Even though we didn't touch base with each other much, except the occasional hello on Facebook or through reading each others blogs, it seemed as though we sat together just yesterday. It was such a sweet surprise to talk to her and her children. It made my day, though come to think of it, I am not so sure I made their day. I was not the most pleasant sight ....

After we stopped talking, she had to go because her husband had made pancakes and everyone sat down to eat. That got me hungry and I ventured into the kitchen, only find that I was too lazy to make something for breakfast, so I ate a gluten-free Christmas cookie for breakfast. If you'd like a recipe, look here.     

The kids had fun decorating cookies :)

and they are very good as well :)

When I finally got done with my shower and looked much more presentable, I decided to make the cheesecake I had planned for yesterday. It turned out sooo good! I did make some changes though, because the original recipe calls for pumpkin puree - I made the cheesecake several time like that, but we didn't feel like pumpkin today. So I substituted sour cream for pumpkin puree and lemon for cinnamon and pumpkin spice.  If you would like the recipe, you can click here.

It actually looks a bit darker than it is.

very moist and yummy :)

After all the baking and warming up the left overs from yesterday I cleaned the kitchen, dropped off one of my daughters at the mall - insert rolling eyes - took my little guy to Target to buy Lego Batman 2 for the Wii. It was sold out and so we went to Walmart where he found his long desired game, which he bought from his Christmas money from Oma and Opa. Thank you both, you made him very happy :) Then I dropped him off at home and went to pick up my child and two of her friends from the mall, brought them all to our house and tried to ignore loud laughing of three teenagers. Then I started working on my goals and organization for 2013. I think I deserved that piece of cheesecake. It was a good day :)

Merry Christmas to everyone!

We had a wonderful Christmas celebration. Last night we went to church for Christmas Eve. That was very nice. It had been too long since we were last at church on Christmas Eve. It made everything just so much more festive and thoughtful.
Today we talked to my parents in Germany for a long time. My sister is visiting them from Portugal and we skyped with her, too. It was so much fun to connect with them and be able to at least see them and talk as long as you like. I remember when I first moved to the US in 1985 all I had was the phone. Believe you me, it was EXPENSIVE! to call Germany, so I tried not to talk too long. Of course that made the distance seem so much more. Now, thanks to computers and Skype, we can talk and see each other as long and as often as we like and it doesn't cost anything. I just love it!
Then the kids played "Mexican Train" while I made our Christmas dinner. I really wanted to make goose, but at a price of $ 70 I decided against it. So we had marinated beef, with potato dumplings and red cabbage ( Sauerbraten mit Kloessen und Rotkohl). It was really delicious. For desert I had planned gluten free cheesecake, but since I talked to my parents for a really long time, I didn't have time for the cheesecake. So we will have Jesus' birthday cake tomorrow :)
After that the girls played with their new iPad for a while and then we snuggled onto the couch with gluten free cookies and watched 631 of 1060 pictures my parents had send me on a DVD. The kids were surprised that I was once a kid ;-)  Well, not really surprised but you just don't think of your parents as having been a baby once upon a time. So we had a few laughs of how Opa used to look before him and Oma were even married or when long sideburns were all the fashion.  We looked at baby pictures of me and pictures of me and my sister in the 70's, boy the style during that time was a serious fail :D
It was a good celebration of the birth of Christ. Thank you Jesus for everything you have done and still do for us. I know that His birthday is not in December, but I don't really care, because no one knows exactly when He was born. I am just more than happy and thankful that He was born and that is what we celebrate.

This is a German tradition "Bunte Teller"
everone gets a plate with Christmas
Candy. Actually there also should be
some nuts and oranges on there but
nobody wants that :-)

In the process of setting the table 

Christmas dinner is served :D

Nina is having a deep conversation with
"Siri"  ;-)

Midnight sledding.....

Well, actually it wasn't midnight, it was more like 9:30pm :)  Jamie had a friend over and all four of them went sledding. It was pretty cold and the snow had turned into mostly ice, I guess that thought was enticing for them. Luckily Nina has her license and I didn't have go out into the cold, though they used my van instead of Nina's car. To my dismay they put the wet sleds on the leather seats.......
It wasn't far from the house only about 5 min by car and they all had their phones and about 45 min later they were back and enjoying cups of hot chocolate with marshmallows. I have a good idea of how fast time goes by and so I enjoy every minute (most of the time) with the kids. The advise from a good friend was to do my best to live in the moment, thank you P. those are wise words. So now I try to live in the moment and don't get too frazzled. I try to remember to take time to listen to what they say after I ask them how they are. I will do my best to put my work down for moment to given them a hug or a smile while looking into their eyes. All too soon all of this will be a memory and they are living their own lives with their own children....

Nina and A.

looks like they are having fun

unfortunately we don't have a picture with Jamie
because she was behind the camera

doesn't the little guy look exhausted ?

I would have thought that it would work better if
 the smaller one sits on the lap of the bigger person?

 our crooked little Christmas tree 

I just had to show those totally adorable little snowmen.
Friends gave the to us last year for Christmas, thank you again
P. family!

18 !

We just had a milestone Birthday in the family. My oldest daughter turned 18 years old.
I have no idea where the time went! I doesn't seem that long ago that I watched her on the ultrasound and saw her feet kicking me. We brought her home in a Christmas stocking, she was just too cute and born too close to Christmas to pass this by ;-)   I remember her 6th Birthday, which was a princess birthday and all in pink and purple. We made cone hats and attached some pink and purple streamers to them and all the little girls had fun playing all the games my sister played with them. I remember many more Birthdays, some with tents in the living room others going to a Castle (Schloss Charlottenburg) and dressing up there and learning some dance from long ago.
I remember the first day at school. The first friends. The first overnight. The first piano lesson....
I always told her that she can quit taking piano lessons when she can play Franz Liszt for me. Now she can play Liszt and Chopin for me and she doesn't take piano lessons anymore. She just taught herself to pay Violin.... My dear, sweet Nina, I love you more than you can imagine. I am incredibly proud of you. Not only because I get to listen Liszt now, but because you keep fighting. When life has been less than kind and gentle with you, you keep hanging on to God and get up dust yourself off and keep going. That is one reason I am proud of you. You have a very big, loving heart and give everyone another chance. Sometimes it gets me upset because so often you get hurt, but more often I admire you for that. You are a wonderful young woman and I pray all of Gods abundant blessing on your life. Now you are legally an adult. That is kind of strange for both of us, I think. I thank God for you and am very curious to see what God will do in your life. I love you!

Jamie did a great job decorating the place :)

even the pooch was decorated......

the birthday presents...

the little brother gave her his present

her own coffee cup, so I can use mine and a gift card

I think she liked it  :D

the present from her sister, silver earrings. Very pretty! 

That was her dream birthday cake ;-)

The "little" guy starts the Birthday parties...

Jeremy is the first of my three lovely children to start with Birthdays, which we will be celebrating once a months from now and end the last one in January. I have often wished that the kid's Birthdays would have been in the summer and we could have lovely garden parties, decorated gazebos and lovely warm breeze accompanied by lots of children's laughter. Do you remember Meat Loaf's song " Two out of three ain't bad" ?  Well, in this case it is more like one out of four ain't bad :)  We have parties and we have decorations and we have lots of children's laughter. Because we live in a rather small apartment, we have to 'outsource' the parties. This year my 'little' guy wanted to go to a Go-Cart place, which proved to be waaayyy too expensive. So he thought about Paintball - really???? In my mind I could see injured and crying kids and very upset moms. That didn't sound like a lot of laughter. Luckily he finally settled on a trampoline park. We had a part of the trampoline park just for us for 30 min. That was really great and the kids enjoyed themselves very much and bounced all over the place. They threw the balls and played some sort of trampoline-dodgeball. They were jumping and falling and bouncing and running and laughing. After the thirty minutes we had to leave that private court and join the public, which was much more crowed, as there were about three or four more Birthday parties at the same time. The kids jumped and played for another sixty minutes after which they were very hot and exhausted. I think they were kind of happy that they got to sit down and have pizza, something to drink and cupcakes. Jeremy had a great time and enjoyed the company of his siblings and friends. After we got home and he had a shower he fell exhausted and happy into his bed. We had a fun day celebrating his 11-th Birthday. Though to me the past 11 years seemed more like 11 months  :)

Siblings :)

trampoline-dodgeball

yeah, well, the camera didn't do well with kids in mid-air

Everyone is enjoying pizza and something to drink

Happy Birthday, mein kleiner Frosch :D