radomness

The only negative to keeping busy with KandidsbyKorri this time of year is I don't feel like picking my camera up when I'm at home. There have been so many things I've wanted to take pictures of and blog about so tonight was the night, so here we go. This is all very random by the way.

This is a our advent Jesse tree, it's silver and very pretty. I'll expand on it more in another post so this is just a teaser.

 Our first ornament we hung today about the root of Jesse.

 Our big tree is decorated and this is my favorite ornament.

 And these wrapped goodies are part of a tradition we started last year. We have collected an assortment of Christmas books over the years and so we wrap them up, 24 of them and starting on December 1st we open one book per night and read it by our Christmas tree. And on night 24, Christmas eve, we open up a new book. The kids love it and so do mom and dad.

 I told you this would be random. Michael and I climbed into bed the other night and saw this sign that Anna had made. It was a great reminder of where we live.

 You can see the sign in this picture but you can also see that the kids built a fort. Why, oh why do they always choose our room? I have no idea. Maybe it's their sneaky way of forgetting about the clean up part and mom and dad are forced to do the clean up when we go to bed at night.

 This is by far one of my favorite Christmas decorations. I grew up with this in my home and my mom gave it to me a while back. It plays music when you wind it up, it brings me great memories of Christmases growing up. We've never been big on Santa but there is just something very sweet about this Mr. and Mrs. Clause.

 Michael did a great job putting lights on the house, I love the big ones in the car port.

 I have found a new friend, Dunkin Decaf is delicious especially with vanilla creamer. I have had a cup every morning since Thanksgiving, my coffee pot only makes an appearance on Thanksgiving and Christmas but maybe it will become a more permanent fixture in the kitchen. It puts a smile on my face when I wake up, it really doesn't take much to please me.

 What is there to say, I love chocolate especially the peppermint kind.

This cracks me up. This is Anna's blanket. She has three stuffed animals that she calls her BFF's and usually they are not bundled up in her blanket. When I went to say goodnight to her a few nights ago she told me her BFF's were hybernating. They have been like this every since. Anna still sleeps with them, just in this form.

 And last, this reminds me of my grandma Dehn. The smell brings back a flood of memories from her kitchen where we spent a lot of time when growing up. The smell actually makes me want to wash my dishes by hand. I LOVE it!

busy

If your wondering why I haven't been posting much on this blog it's because I have been busy doing this. The goal I set for my photography business for the month of November/early December was 12 photo shoots. With only working on Saturdays and Sundays, this seemed like a fair goal and would allow me to make the amount of money I needed for Christmas shopping without interrupting my family responsibilities too much. I ended up exceeding my goal and booked 15 photo shoots. Even though life has been busy, I have loved every minute of it. I have met some great families, been able to spend time with families I already know and love, and bless people with family pictures. To peak at my work click on the link above and you can see what's been keeping me so busy.

Happy 12th Birthday Jadon!!!!!

At 3:06 a.m. this morning, Jadon turned 12 years old! I can't believe our oldest is already 12, but at least we have one more year before he becomes a teenager! YIKES! I need this year to prepare and pray for that! Jadon's birthday wish started shortly after his 11th birthday when he started asking for a water dragon. He had researched all there is to know about this reptile and felt like it would be a great pet for him to raise. He saved enough money to buy it last spring but mom and dad were not prepared to allow another pet in our home so we said no and of course "ruined his life".  Sometimes timing is everything and it just wasn't the right time. So the subject came up again in August and we told Jadon that we would let him get a chinese water dragon for his birthday in November but he would have to put some expense into it and also a lot of work to help dad build a cage. Michael and Jadon spent hours working on this cage and it was completed last night and moved into Jadon's room. Kevin joined our family about a week previous and is enjoying his new hotel. He was in a temporary enclosure that doesn't even compare to this set up! So we are now known as a petting zoo at our house because we have:

1 dog named Pepper

8 chickens who I won't take the time to name but they all have names. 

2 leopard geckos, Sam and Belle

1 uromastic named Spike

1 chinese water dragon named Kevin

and just for the record, WE ARE DONE! 

NO MORE PETS, we will spend countless hours taking care of the ones we have so we are done. 

We are very proud of Jadon's responsibilty and maturity he has shown to take care of his reptiles so Kevin has been well earned on his part. 

Happy Birthday Jadon, mom and dad love you so much!

Thanksgiving show

I am so thankful that our kids get to be homeschooled and also go to school one day a week. We love Eagle Ridge Enrichment Program offered by Mesa Public Schools for homeschooled children. We have found it to a be a great addition to our homeschool plan. Anna LOVES Fridays and loves her Kindergarten teacher. Parents were invited to a Thanksgiving Feast where we got to watch our students sing, be part of a play and show us what they have learned about the history of Thanksgiving. 

The Kindergarten class all wore Turkey's on their heads, here is Annagrace sitting down for the feast. 

 This is part of her class singing a Thanksgiving song, there are only 10 students in her class.

 Anna was also Star of the week so she got to bring something special from home to share with the class. She chose to bring her butterfly lapbook that she has worked on in homeschool. Here she is sharing it with the class.

 It was really fun to see her animated and talkative with her classmates. It takes her a while to come out of her shell and settle in, but I would say it looks like that has happened. :)

Service project

Our family belongs to a homeschool field trip group called SWAP (Schooling with a purpose). This year our group decided to do a service project and send care packages to a marine troop in Afghanistan. All the children filled out "about me" forms so the Marines can read about the children who sent them their care packages. 

This is what the form looks like. There is a line that says: I love Jesus because: and Jadon's response was because He is cool. Anna said she loves Jesus because He let me be her mom. Talk about melting my heart, oh my goodness I was holding back the tears on this one. And then Camden decided to say the same thing because he saw how special that was to me. :)

Each child included a picture of themselves. 

We had an army man come talk to the kids about the military. It was a great talk the kids all learned a lot. 

 There were a lot of donations!

And I thought I would include this picture because Jadon made it. He had to build an egyptian house for his Thursday afternoon Biblical History class. He did a great job!

leaps and bounds!

We are already in our third month of homeschooling for this school year. It has flown by! In a few previous posts on my blog like this post, I mentioned how Camden's homeschooling is looking quite different this school year. There is more information about it on this post too. But for a quick recap, last year it became very clear to us that Camden had some sort of learning block when it came to reading and writing. Despite his hard work and much effort, his progress was very little. After much prayer and petition to God, our answers came in the form of an amazing educator in Colorado who works with struggling learners and who's ministry is helping these bright kids become successful. Her name is Dianne Craft and she determines what learning glitch/block a child may have and then equips the parent to follow through with some specific programs that help learning become easier for the child. A few weeks back Camden and I flew to Colorado to meet with her, you can read about her on this website. During our consultation my suspicion that Camden has dyslexia was confirmed. He also has dysgraphia which is the deficiency in the ability to write. This was no surprise to us as we knew something was going on that was making it so hard for Camden to read and write. 

Before meeting with Dianne Craft, I had already been using her tools and teaching methods at home for about 8 weeks. In that short amount of time, the progress I saw in Camden was AMAZING! In this amount of time his reading level had improved half a grade level and his writing was becoming legible. And the best part is that Camden's confidence began to soar and reading/writing was becoming so much easier for him. After meeting with Dianne, I now feel even more equipped to help Camden continue to succeed. 

The best part in all this has been having a front row seat in watching Camden succeed. It has brought me to tears to hear him say "MOM, I can read!" And then watch him read and write even when he is not in school just because he wants to. How cool is that! 

In case your wondering exactly what this all looks like in our homeschool day, let me try and give a brief description. Each day, 4 days a week, I am implementing a very specific reading program, writing program, and math program with Camden using tools and resources created by Dianne Craft that are geared for a child who learns best through Right brain teaching methods. The resources are also helpful for children who have dyslexia and dysgraphia. Camden and I spend about 45 minutes working on the reading program per day and this not only involves reading but also something called brain integration therapy. Believe me it sounds strange but it's not. It consists of exercises that cross the midline which simply means that Camden is crossing over the center of his body through specific movements. ((On a side note, when Camden was a baby he missed the very important milestone of crawling. This is such an important step in the development of a baby because the motion of crawling is crossing the midline of the baby's brain which means the baby is using both the right and left brain as they crawl. Camden didn't walk until he was 17 months and from the time he was about 8 months until then, he would walk around on his knees. He just skipped crawling all together.)) So during the daily exercises he is doing right now he is doing something called the "cross crawl" and as he stands up he is bringing his right knee up to his left hand and vice versa. This is just one exercise out of the six that he does each day. During the 45 minutes Camden is learning new sight words through colorful cards where the word tells a story, he is reading through specific word lists, and reading a story each day out of a book called a Merrill reader. He also does some dictating and then reads back to me what he wrote. He works hard during these 45 minutes and so do I!

Camden is also doing a specific writing program and this takes us about 25 minutes 4 days a week. It involves a writing exercise called "writing 8" which will help Camden not reverse his letters or numbers anymore. During this time we also work on spelling, vocabulary, and paragraph writing.

This is just a brief overview of what we have been working on and that doesn't even include math, science, and Bible. So as you can see Camden has been a very busy boy the past three months! With the above teaching methods along with nutritional supplements, and of course the power of prayer we are seeing tremendous strides with Camden. His reading and writing is growing leaps and bounds and we couldn't be happier with the progress he is making. I can't even imagine what he will be like after carrying this out all school year! The very cool thing is that this has not broken our budget and someone else is not having to "fix my kid" but I get the honor of doing that. And I get to learn from an amazing woman who has years of experience working with the struggling learner. 

Even though this may be one of our busiest and toughest years of homeschooling we will ever have, and there are days when I feel so drained, and days when Camden gets frustrated, I have to remind myself how lucky I am to have the freedom and priviledge to homeschool our children. I am so thankful that God made Camden just the way he is, and that he and I are getting to spend some special time together every day to overcome his learning challenges. I am filled with hope! God is so good. God is so good. God is so good!!!!!!

Project complete!

You might remember this post from a while back. And this one. I have been working on this for quite some time and today I was able to complete it. I had so much fun with this project. From taking the pictures, finding letters in nature, figuring out which ones to use, finding the frames, and putting the finishing touches on it, I loved it all. So here are the final results.

 I may change the "E" in Camden's name. I have a lower case red brick "e" that looks really good too. I just can't make up my mind.

Out of Africa

On our drive home from the mountains we stopped at Out of Africa. We had this planned for several months and we were all pretty excited. It was our best zoo/park experience ever! We felt as if we walked away with an associates degree after being educated about all their animals. They are great educators and it was really fun to be up close with the animals. I highly recommend this place! Since our family doesn't celebrate Halloween this may become an annual Halloween day trip destination. It wasn't crowded at all and made our day very enjoyable. This was our first year not celebrating Halloween and it didn't even phase the kids, in fact I think it's safe to say this was their best Halloween yet! If you are curious why we decided to not do Halloween, you can read this blog post from last year. 

Mountain getaway

We had a fabulous time spending 5 days up north at this beautiful place. We are so thankful for the generosity of our friends who allow us to retreat at their cabin a few times each year. It is by far our kids' favorite vacation spot. They love exploring and love being in nature so this place is a perfect fit. Michael and I love the serenity of Munds Park and life just slows down several paces after being here for just a few minutes. Michael's brother and his family joined us for a few days and it was great to reconnect with them and let the cousins play.