Riding a 2 wheeler!

My dad sent Jordan money for her birthday (and Christmas--he just mailed it 3 months late:) We went to Walmart last night and got her a new bike. We had left her little bike with training wheels back in Idaho for her little cousin. Today after about 2 hours of practice in a parking lot down the street, and LOTS of tears she can now basically ride the bike. She still has to figure out the brakes though. For now she just puts her feet down and crashes the bike to stop :)


She's still a little wobbly on the stearing

I'm a big girl mom

Change of Heart

We have been having some major behavior issues with Jordan again. So for now our plans to homeschool are off. I don't think I can handle dealing with her behavior and trying to get her to learn something. This last week I took all of her toys out of her room and she has to earn them back. I did leave her books and coloring books and I have to see she has taken up reading more. She earned her computer time back on Friday and some TV time back yesterday. She does not have the TV back in her room though.
I'm saddened by the decision not to homeschool but also feel some relief because I have been so stressed out over her behavior lately. I checked out some parenting and discipline books out at the library yesterday. I'm hoping they will help me too. I'm still keeping our subscription to Time4Learning.com for now because it really is a good educational site and Jordan enjoys it. I'm hoping we can just do some fun educational things for enrichment. She is on a 2 week break from school now so we have alot of fun stuff going on for a few weeks now.
Her 7th birthday is at the end of this month and we are trying to decide what to do about her party. We can not have the party here. For one thing this house is in too bad of shape for me to even think about having people over. Plus we don't have a table or anywhere for the kids to sit and eat cake. I wish the weather was more predicatable and we could plan to go to the park or something but it always seems to rain on her birthday so we are thinking of the ice skating rink, the roller skating rink or Burger King (they have a playland). I just need to check on prices. I think she will only invite 2 or 3 friends. My mom will be in town the weekend before her actual birthday so we will celebrate it then.

4-H and sports

Jordan will be joining 4-H this weekend. They are having a kick off party at the YMCA to start the 4-H year (which runs Feb.-Nov.). She will actually be in Clover Buds which is 4-H for kids 5-8 years old.

We are also signing her up for spring soccer, swimming lessons and gymnastics next week. I found out the spring soccer is alot like the indoor soccer she is in now. There are no practices and they just play for 1 hour each Saturday. I guess she will get her exercise if nothing else. We are hoping to get her into the Thursday evening swim lessons and the Tuesday evening gymnastics. Add to that her AWANA on Wednesdays and we will have a very full week! Her 4-H will be on weekends but they don't have a set schedule right now.

Soccer

Jordan is on an indoor soccer team at the YMCA. It's a very unorganized group but oh well. They play on Sundays from 2:30-3:00. There's no scores kept but there's also no coaching. It's just disorganized chaos. The kids are divided into 2 teams and just run around in 1/2 the gym. Jordan seems to have fun with it though. here are a few pics from this last weekend.

Jordan going after the ball

Tossing the ball back in one of the few times the "ref" called it out of bounds. They don't hardly have any bounds. It's more like when the ball gets into the bleachers it's out of bounds.

My big girl!

I stayed up late last night working on homeschool stuff and was hoping I would get to sleep in. Jim woke me up at 5:45 because he couldn't find his car keys. I went back to sleep after he left and didn't wake up until 9:50! I heard the TV on downstairs and thought Jim had come home early from work. I got downstairs and Jordie had the TV on her cartoons, was playing a game on the computer, had let Jesse out of his kennel (which she normally never does) and had eatten breakfast! Normally she would wake me up and whine about being hungry, want me to turn the TV on for her (it's cable so she has to turn the TV and the cable box on) and find a cartoon channel. She knows how to turn the computer on herself but I was surprised that she had done it. I asked her what she ate for breakfast and she said the rest of her oranges. Now granted that was about 3/4 of a can of mandarin oranges so she will probably be pooping all day but the point is she had done all of this on her own, without waking me up and whining. I praised her profusely and am hoping she will continue to be more independant now.

We had a lazy moring and now it's after 12 and I told her we need to get moving and get the house cleaned up. After the cleaning is done we are going to work on our map of Alaska. We are doing a homeschool project of following the Iditarod this year. There's a whole email group/website set up for this. We are really looking forward to it.

Another Long Overdue Update

Get ready to read a novel.......

Ok, I know I have been awful about keeping this blog updated. I just looked and it's been over a month since I posted anything. I have been on the computer every night but not on here. We have decided to homeschool for second grade and I have spent practically every waking moment online researching for it. UGGH! It's become an obsession I think. We are not going to follow any specific set curriculum but are doing unit studies and lapbooks. We are also using Time 4 Learning (online curriculum). I'm still in the research phase and still seem to find all kinds of new info each day. I did order a science text book and workbook and will possibly do the same for social studies. I will use these more as guides for what to study. I will be getting a math book because I'm lost when it comes to what math she should be working on. When I talked with Jordan about what she wanted to study next year almost everything she named off had to do with animals or nature (is she my daugher or what???). I found a great blogspot blog that does what they call the Outdoor Hour Challenge. http://handbookofnaturestudy.blogspot.com/ It's not really an hour but an activity you do each week outdoors with your children. If goes along with an old reference book by Anna Comstock called the Handbook of Nature Study. We are looking forward to adding this to our daily/weekly curriculum.

Jordan is really excited about homeschooling. Her cousin Parker has been homeschooled for 2 years now. They spent a week and half together at Grandma's over Christmas and Jordan was so happy that she did "Parker's 2nd grade work" with him while she was there. After Christmas we did a short mini unit on Polar Bears and made a lapbook about it. I have found a great website that gives you lots of templates for lapbooks and reasearch ideas too. The Enchanted Learning and Homeschool Share websites will be our God Send for alot of this.

Front of lapbook (got picture of polar bear from work and typed title out )

Inside of lapbook. We got templates from Enchanted Learning and Homeschool Share websites. We took a "field trip" to the Omaha Zoo and took the pictures

Back of lapbook. Picture report on Polar Bears in a pocket.

Right inside of book lists names of "family" Male=Boar, Female= Sow, Baby= Cub

Polar Bear Diet Shape book. Inside she cut and pasted info about a polar bear's diet.

Book about polar bears. We learned alot about polar bears just from this mini weekend unit. Did you know polar bears fur is actually clear and drinking straw like? How about that polar bears don't drink water?

Right side of lapbook. A polar bear maze, a picture (we took at our zoo) and a "T-book" about where you can find polar bears.

OK, now that I've updated you on our homeschool adventure let's see what else I can tell you about....

Christmas- We spent Christmas eve and Christmas day evenings at Jim's parent's house with James. It was a nice time. We had our traditional syster stew and sloppy joes dinner and then opened presents with them on Christmas eve. We did our own family Christmas with Jordan on Christmas morning (at 5am because Jim had to work) and then went back to his parent's house that evening for duck dinner. I realized I didn't really take that many pictures this Christmas

Jordan with her one present she got to open at home on Christmas Eve. It's her Mariposa Barbie from my mom

Jim reading the story of Jesus' birth
James and Jordan

James in his Packer's coat he got from Grandma

Jordan on Christmas morning

Jim on Christmas with his key finder keychain which doesn't work right so I still have to help him find his keys all the time :)

Jesse with his new toys

Riley with his new toys

Our kitten Nala. I don't think I posted about when we got her. We got her the day after Thanksgiving. Jordan and I went to the pet store just to look around and fell in love with her. Jim wasn't too happy at the time but has since fallen in love with her.

Courtney came down after Christmas but was only here for a day because of a big family blow up that has since been rectified. We were glad to be able to see her though. Victoria and Chad are here from Florida visiting. They are staying with Grandma and Grandpa Leland. It was nice to finally be able to meet our son-in-law. I took all the kids out to dinner at the buffet with a gift certificate we got from my mom and Norm. Let me tell you James and Chad are a couple of goof balls (just kidding guys). You would think they've known each other all their lives though the way they get along. Chad and Tori are coming over today after church and I will try to get some pictures of them. I'm sad I didn't get any pictures of Courtney while she was here.

I went to a 12 hour scrapbook crop on the 27th. That was my Christmas present from Jim. I had a productive day and got 15 pages done. I hadn't done any scrapbooking since last spring and it was nice to get back into it.

We are slowly but surely getting work done on this house and may end up buying it from Leon. He's giving us about 6 more months to live here before we decide for sure.

Jim is switching to 2nd shift in Feb. He will be helping me with homeschooling since he will be home more during the day. I am still loving my job. I'm going to talk to my boss soon about homeschooling Jordan so she knows she will be there more during the day. With Jim working second shift she won't need to come over until 2:00 though when Jim leaves for work so she will only be there an extra hour a day. I was told when she hired me that anytime I am scheduled to work Jordan can be there for free so it shouldn't be an issue.

Well it has taken me over an hour to post this update. I know there are other things that have happened but I can't think of them right now. I will post more later if I think of it. :)