New Beginnings

Our ds will be starting public school next Tuesday. He, of course, is very excited! We, on the other hand are a little bit nervous. I am praying that he will find something there that sparks his interest, something that causes him to strive to be a better person. I am praying that he will find a way to fit in with a good group of kids and not feel like he has to "show off" in order to be accepted. I am praying that he will learn to feel good about himself. 

I will be starting a home-based daycare the following week. I will have a 14-month-old and a 7-week-old. I have been having fun lately buying baby and toddler toys and supplies. I have been blessed to find some great deals at our local thrift store and children's consignment store. I have decided to get registered so my two families can claim their daycare expenses on their taxes. It means a little bit more paperwork for me and some costly fingerprint scans, but otherwise is not too bad.

Your prayers in these new areas that we are walking into are much appreciated. 

Slowly feeling like home

Our house is slowly starting to feel like home. We have the living room and kitchen completely painted and the office (the formal dining room) only needs paint inside the picture rails. I just finished painting the downstairs bathroom and we will tackle the foyer this weekend. I got the paint on the lower portion of the foyer under the chair rail, all three coats, but the upper portion will have to wait until we can borrow an extra-tall ladder. We also need to have a large chunk of time to finish it as I don't want to stop in the middle of a wall. 

We are looking for area rugs to put down in the living room, office and foyer, but are having trouble finding rugs that are not extremely expensive. The one for the living room needs to be around a 10'x12' and those are starting around $300. We are hoping to run into a good deal. I just bought a large rug to put in front of the sliding door as that is where a lot of dirt and grass gets tracked in. The dogs spend a good portion of the days (if it is nice) on the screened-in back patio and we go out frequently to take the puppy potty. 

I have been promising pictures and will get some posted as soon as we get them taken. I am trying to wait until the rooms are all painted.

New House, puppy and a birthday

We close on our house Tuesday afternoon! Our household goods arrive the following Monday and we will be painting and cleaning during the time in between. I am so excited. I cannot wait to get my things back. You would not believe how much I have missed my Kitchen Aid and can opener. I also miss my clothes as we have been wearing the clothes that fit into our suitcases for 2 1/2 months and I for one am getting tired of wearing the same thing. 

We just got a new puppy, a 10-week-old rottweiler. We named her Annabelle Lillian and she is too cute. As soon as we get our stuff and can post pictures, I will. Annabelle and Milo play and get along great. She is already bigger than he is and it won't be long before she is huge. Her mom is 110 pounds and daddy is 150 pounds. She will probably be somewhere in between. She whines a lot, but that is to be expected for her age and the fact that she came straight from her mom, dad and sisters. 

Dd's 10th birthday is Thanksgiving day. We went out to Cracker Barrel for dinner last night and she will get her presents Thursday morning.  She has been counting down the days since early November and has been asking what the date is for the last week. She has requested a sugar cream pie instead of cake, but we will do that next weekend, once we get our appetites back.

Whatever you ask in my name

"I am the true vine, and my Father is the gardener. He cuts off every branch in me that bears no fruit, while every branch that does bear fruit he prunes so that it will be even more fruitful...No branch can bear fruit by itself; it must remain in the vine. Neither can you bear fruit unless you remain in me...If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing...You did not choose me, but I chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit-fruit that will last. Then the Father will give you whatever you ask in my name." John 15:1-2, 4-5, 16

I have read or heard this portion of Scripture many times. I picked up something new this morning, however. Jesus says that He is the vine and we are the branches. Just like in an actual vine the branches cannot do anything if they are separated from the vine. The vine gives the branches nutrients and health. It is only when the branches are receiving those nutrients that they can bear fruit. If the branch is unhealthy it will not produce fruit and if it is weak it will not be able to hold up the fruit it does produce. 

So often I have read the last portion of the Scripture and thought that we only have to ask for things in Jesus' name in order for them to be given to us. Not so! Jesus says that we must remain in Him in order for our petitions to be granted. How do we remain in Him? We must seek each day to do His will. The only way to know His will is to stay in constant contact with Him. We must pray continually for guidance and wisdom. We must study His Word so we may know the truths He has written for us. We must place our focus on Him. It is easier said than done in this busy world we live in, but if we truly desire to remain attached to the vine, we must make a conscious effort every single day. 

Satan is just waiting for a gap to open up so he can squeeze in and pour poison into our lives. We must not give him the opportunity.

Ready for Battle

Today I am reading about Gideon and his battle against the Midianites. Quick summary from Judges 6-7: The Israelites had continued to do evil in the Lord's sight so He gave them over to the Midianite's for 7 years during which they were cruelly oppressed. An angel came down to Gideon as he was threshing wheat and told him that the Lord was with him and he was to save Israel from Midian's hand. Gideon of course was dumbfounded as his clan was the weakest in Manasseh and he was the least in his family. (Sounds kind of similar to David.) Gideon goes on to defeat the huge Midianite army with only 300 men! He originally came with 32,000 men, but the Lord weeded out 31,700 in order to prove to the Israelites that it was God and God alone that won the battle. 

I love this verse-"The Lord answered, 'I will be with you, and you will strike down all the Midianites together.'" Judges 6:16

God did not sent Gideon out to do a job by himself. He went with him! Defeating the Israelites was a seemingly impossible task, but God caused Gideon and his tiny army to triumph, and they did not even go into the battle with swords. They walked into the enemy's camp with trumpets and jars. It reminds me of the story of Joshua and the fall of Jericho. Joshua and his men were supposed to march around the walls of the city once per day for 6 days, then on the 7th day they were to blow their trumpets and shout. At this point, the wall collapsed. The Israelites did not even touch the wall. 

I don't know about you, but I would much rather be on God's team than on the enemy's team. There are too many events in history that speak of God's power and the enemy's defeat. When God calls us He also equips us.

Just As I Am

Just as I am, without one plea,

But that Thy blood was shed for me,

And that Thou bidst me come to Thee,

O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, and waiting not

To rid my soul of one dark blot,

To Thee whose blood can cleanse each spot,

O Lamb of God, I come, I come.

Just as I am, though tossed about

With many a conflict, many a doubt,

Fightings and fears within, without,

O Lamb of God, I come, I come...

Just as I am, of that free love

The breadth, length, depth, and height to prove,

Here for a season, then above,

O Lamb of God, I come!

-Charlotte Elliott (1789-1871)

I came across this hymn in my reading this morning and it expressed what I so often feel and see in others. I know so many people who don't come to Christ or who don't grasp the full relationship with Christ they could have because they don't feel they are worthy enough. I am so grateful that we don't have to be perfect before we come to Christ. He takes us just the way we are and loves us like a brother or sister. He wants to share His kingdom with us. Isn't that amazing! Even though we don't deserve it, He died for us so we can share eternity with Him.

New House

We are in the process of closing on our house here in South Carolina. We originally put an offer on a house three doors down from the current one, but that is a long story that ends with us dropping NFCU as our loan processor. The house has 4 bedrooms, 2 1/2 bathrooms and has 2,100 square feet. Jeremy is excited that it backs up to a golf course. Unfortunately we are on hole 4 so he will not be able to pop in for refreshments between holes 9 and 10. The kids have already picked out their bedrooms and did not fight during the discussion.  The downstairs is very open and roomy. The large living room with fireplace opens to the dining room that we are going to use as our office. The kitchen is right next to the dining room and opens to the living room, so I can cook and still be with the family. Our last 2 homes (that we owned) had the kitchen separated from the living room. I hate cooking by myself. 

I am already looking at paint colors and trying to figure out what will look good. The living room and office share a long wall, so we will have to use one color for that and since the kitchen is open to the living room the colors for both rooms will have to coordinate. The you have the foyer area to deal with, and "oh, boy" is my head swimming. I would really like to do a stormy blue somewhere but don't know where. I am also debating on a pretty turquoise color for the kids bathroom. I may take that color for my bathroom, though. Argh, help!

Jonah's Prayer

In my distress I called to the Lord, 

and he answered me. 

From the depths of the grave I called for help, 

and you listened to my cry.

You hurled me into the deep,

into the very heart of the seas,

and the currents swirled about me;

all your waves and breakers

swept over me.

I said, 'I have been banished

from your sight;

yet I will look again 

toward your holy temple.'

The engulfing waters threatened me,

the deep surrounded me;

seaweed was wrapped around my head.

To the roots of the mountains I sank down;

the earth beneath barred me in forever.

But you brought my life up from the pit,

O Lord my God.

"When my life was ebbing away,

I remembered you, Lord,

and my prayer rose to you,

to your holy temple."

"Those who cling to worthless idols

forfeit the grave that could be theirs.

But I, with a song of thanksgiving,

will sacrifice to you.

What I have vowed I will make good.

Salvation comes from the Lord."

Jonah 2:2-9

Transport Reviews

This is a copy of what I just posted on www.transportreviews.com. It is a site to review auto transport companies and has hundreds, if not thousands, of companies listed. It ended up as being a 4 out of 5 rating.

We recently had our truck shipped from Hawaii to Denver. I was originally going to use another company (AAA Anytime), but did some research on them through this site at the last minute and found they only had a 2-star rating, most of which stemmed from poor/very rude customer service after pickup. They told me they could guarantee a delivery date so it would be waiting at the airport for us when we arrived, but many of the reviewers complained of late deliveries. We are only making a short stop in Denver and will be driving through the SC, so a late delivery was absolutely not an option.

I was quoted $1940 by AAAT, which was lower than most of the other companies I contacted, and the other companies quoted me higher rates before the gas prices spiked! I dealt with Mike and he was an absolute pleasure to work with. He was friendly and knowledgeable throughout the entire process. My only complaint, and the reason I gave them a 5 out of 6 rating, was due to the rude customer service from one of the other guys in the office. Mike was out of the office for the day and it was a Monday in August-the busiest month to move cars. I felt like the guy did not want to deal with my problem and just wanted to get me off the phone. I could have waited until the next day to speak to Mike, but we needed to deliver the truck to the port that day as my husband was leaving for one week. By the time we got the booking number it was too late in the day and I ended up having to deliver it the next day with a friend and had to have my husband fax a notorized letter giving me permission to ship the vehicle. Mike's co-worker said I did not need a power-of-attorney to drop off the vehicle, but Matson requires one. The lady at Matson kindly agreed to accept the truck that day (as it was the last day to drop off vehicles for that week's ship) with the understanding that she would not release it to be loaded until she received the notorized letter.

I called Mike a few days later and he apologized for the problem. My truck was picked up from the port in Long Beach the day it left the ship and was driven straight to Denver. The carrier was Dependable Auto Ship. Mike quoted me 5-8 days from Long Beach to Denver and it arrived on day 5. The carrier called my husband's uncle the day before to schedule delivery. The truck arrived with no damages and from what I understand was washed prior to delivery, making the inspection run smoothly.

Overall I was very pleased with the service we received from AAAT. My only advice for vehicle shipping is to make sure everything is taken care of at least one week prior to the pickup date. The problems I experienced could have been avoided had we not waited until the last minute to turn in the paperwork to AAAT, which was completely our fault. I was very nervous about shipping our truck (it is brand-new with 900 miles on it), but would definitely ship with AAAT again and go through Mike.

Religious Freaks (or Nutcases)

This topic has bugged me for a long time and I am finally going to say something about it. Have you ever watched a show on TV or a movie where the bad guy turns out to be a crazy nutcase who just happens to do what they do because of something in the Bible? I recently watched CSI: NY and the movie Mist by Stephen King.

I don't want to ruin Mist for you if you have not seen it, but there is a woman in the movie who is regarded as crazy by the entire town. As the movie goes on she gets increasingly persistent that she is a messenger from God and starts spouting off things like retribution for sins and God's wrath coming down on the townpeople. She eventually advocates killing certain people to please her angry God.

(spoiler warning) CSI: NY has had a series of shows going for the past month or so in which a NY cabby is killing people and leaving markings on the back of their necks. The killer turns out to be a guy who is killing people because of Lev. 27: 29- "No person specially set apart for destruction may be bought back. Such a person must be put to death."

These are not the only shows in which this has occurred, but they happen to be the most recent and the ones that come readily to my mind. It is just disgusting to see Christianity run through the mud and given a bad "name". How many people watch these shows and agree with the "religious freak" portrayal? How many are turned away from a relationship with God because of things like this?

On a happier note, I was watching America's Got Talent last night and Donald Braswell said he was blessed to be where he was and believed it was God's will that he had made it this far in the competition. I am so glad to hear people give the glory to God and thank Him for His presence in their lives.

Green Hour Challenge

I came across the Green Hour Challenge while browsing around some of the TOG blogs. I have decided that we really need to get out and enjoy nature and have been looking around for quite some time to try to find ideas to get us moving.

The Green Hour Challenge is a weekly nature study using the Handbook of Nature Study (you can download it free from the Green Hour Challenge site). The author of this blog has broken down the Handbook of Nature Study into weekly bite-sized bits and gives out a new assignment each week. She starts out slow, with only 15-20 minutes being spent on the nature walk, but continues with follow-up assignments to do during the remaining part of the week to add to or focus on the topic. She has relieved a lot of the stress of nature study by breaking it up this way and it is nice to know that we can take it slow and don't have to be experts before heading outside. I don't want to feel pressured to spend entire days outside looking for or researching things I have no experience in.

If I can figure how to add the button to my sidebar I will get it added. Hopefully I will be able to blog soon about our nature study excursions.

Move Countdown-starting now!

20 days to go! I was just typing out a list of what our last few weeks entail and thought, wow, we have a lot going on!

Some friends will be moving in with us on the 11th and staying through the 18th (they are moving out of their rental out in town and waiting to move into housing on Hickam). The dog goes in for his vet appointment on the morning of the 16th, dh gets pinned in the afternoon, the movers will be here on the 18th and 19th, we move into the Navy Lodge on the 18th, the Khaki ball is on the 20th, our move-out inspection is on the 22nd, dh checks out from PSD on the 23rd and we fly out on the 24th. Our flight is not until 9:30PM so we will have all day to do whatever we feel like. We need to pick the dog up from the kennel by 2PM and have arranged for him to have a doggy playdate at a neighbors house until we need to leave for the airport. Hopefully he will be nice and tired and will be able to sleep for most of the trip. The first leg of our journey is about 8 hours and the second is 1 1/2 hours. FYI for any of you planning to travel with your pet in the near future, we are paying $275 for our 16 pound dog to fly in the cargo bay. Mind you, it is a fully pressurized compartment, but come on, $275!

The airline we will be flying with recently changed their policy regarding baggage limits for active-duty military on orders, so dh husband will be allowed to check in 4 bags, each weighing up to 80 pounds and up to 80 linear inches (L + W + H). If the second leg of our flight was not a connection (meaning a sister airline) he would be allowed up to 10 bags. The rest of us are allowed one free checked bag, one carry-on and one personal item. As our temporary apartment in South Carolina is fully furnished, including linens and dishes, we will not need to pack any of those items. That will free up our luggage for clothing, as the mainland will have cooler temperatures at that point. That reminds me that I need to head over to the NEX to shop for winter clothing for the children and myself. Hawaii does not get cold, so I only brought a couple of sweatshirts and packed the rest in storage.

Dh purchased a tonneau cover for the truck which is being delivered to my mom next week and I just got confirmation that the truck will be delivered next week to dh's uncle. We are flying into Denver and driving cross-country to visit friends and family on the way. The military is paying us per diem for a portion of our trip, making this a good time to visit with everybody. That and the fact that we only have to drive one way instead of the normal two. We are taking two weeks to do the entire trip, whereas we had two weeks 1 1/2 years ago to drive from VA to CO and back. We ended up spending 6 days of our 14-day total driving.

Daddy helps with breakfast

I woke up Labor Day morning to find my husband and daughter busy in the kitchen making chocolate chip pancakes. Daddy had cleaned up the kitchen and was helping dd mix up the batter and flip. We like to eat our chocolate chip pancakes with powdered sugar. Below is a picture of ds eating his extra-large pancake. He also likes to have his with syrup (corn syrup free, of course).

Almost

As Monday was a holiday and Dad had the day off, we decided to also take the day off from school. We headed up to Turtle Bay and stopped at the Turtle Bay Resort where we hoped to see some turtles. We were too far east of where we should have been and only got to see 4 turtles swimming in the water. Had we gone to the actual Turtle Bay beach, we would have been able to possibly see turtles on the beach and could have listened to locals "talk story".

We then headed down to Hale'iwa to window shop. We walked by a roadside stand where I saw a really pretty sea shell windchime. I told the owner we would stop in on our way back. We kept going and found a lunch wagon selling malasadas and found out they were open until 6:30PM. We headed back to the restaurant where we were meeting friends and had our dinner. Ds and I left the restaurant and drove over to grab some malasadas. As we were pulling in they were closing up shop. The roadside stand was also closed up.

So, we almost got to see turtles close-up, almost got a windchime and almost had some yummy malasadas for dessert with some left over for breakfast. What a disappointment!

Motivation for Schoolwork and Chores

We are constantly looking for ways to motivate our ds to do schoolwork and chores and to follow the rules. Here is what we have come up with. If ds is finished with his schoolwork by 4PM and he has an average of an 80% for all assignment he will receive 1 hour of screen time. If he comes to me before 4PM and says he is done and I have to remind him about an assignment I take away 15 minutes of screen time. 2 reminders costs him 30 minutes. I give him poker chips that he can redeem at any time (only after schoolwork and chores are finished) throughout the week. I can use them daily, or save them up to be used on one day for an extended video game period. It is his choice.

We are having a bit more trouble with the chore part, though. We currently give him $10 per week for allowance as he more opportunities now to do things with the youth group. Monday he has pooper scooper, straighten his room and kitchen duty, Tuesday he weed eats the yard (it is small so it takes him about 15 minutes), straightens his room and wipes down the bathroom, Wednesday he sweeps the porch and lanai, dusts upstairs, has kitchen duty and straightens his room, Thursday he deep cleans the bathroom, straightens his room and washes his laundry, Friday he has kitchen duty and Saturday he dusts and vacuums his room. Each day's chores should take him no more than 30 minutes, except the day he deep cleans the bathroom. After adding all the chores up he has a total of 15 chores. $10 divided by 15 gives me .66. I think I might make each chore worth $1 and just not pay him for straightening his room, giving me a total of 11 paid chores.

So how do you decide what to pay for? Do I pay him for the completed job, even if it took him 5 times to get it right? Do I deduct money for each time I need to go back because it was not done right the first time? Do I give him a specified number of times to get it right and then withhold the money if he goes over?

The Widow's Might

The following is taken from www.thewidowscry.com. I found them when I went to www.rebelution.com which is written by Alex and Brett Harris, authors of the book Do Hard Things.

In 2003, HeuMoore productions was unofficially started. A collaboration of two Alaskan teenagers, David HEUstis and JohnMOORE, primarily focusing on short silly videos, was born.

2005 found John and David relocated to Texas, with some upgraded gear. After more experimentation found them very popular at the worlds largest Christian film festival, they began to focus in on developing quality family entertainments.

In 2006 they created the award winning documentary 'A Lifetime of Childlike Faith', which tells the dramatic story of one man's journey in his dream of sharing the gospel with people from all over the world. This success soon found over ten thousand copies of their film in distribution, and they were on the road to bigger and better projects.

2007, HeuMoore Productions found new members added to the team, and their film 'Heartstrings' won both the Best Young Filmmakers award, and the Audience Choice award at the San Antonio Independent Christian Film Festival. This was the first time the Audience Choice award had ever been taken by Youth contestants.

They were disappointed though, that their technical quality hadn't grown to nearly the level they had hoped. So in 2008, they launched their biggest effort; The Widow's Might.

The Widow's Might is a full length feature film set in modern day America, following the struggles of several Christian families to keep a widow from losing her home due to tax foreclosure. The Widow's Might is by far HeuMoore's biggest, most intense production. Working with experienced hands like James Burgess (Cinematographer and Colorist on Pilgrim's Progress) and Charles Lake (Assistant Director on Time Changer), we believe ourselves up to the challenge of a theatrical release feature film with excellent production values and rich moral landscapes to inspire Christians accross the nation; But we can only do this with your help!

There is a list of ways you can support this important effort:help!

Stay informed! - Go to WidowsMightTheMovie.com and sign up for email updates. We need a solid base of supporters, and we want you to be a part of the movement!

Recruit! - Get 10 of your friends or family to sign up on the email list, and tell them about our project. Forward this email to everyone in your inbox, and post this information on your blog!

Support! - The cost of feature film productions is high, but you can support The Widow's Might by purchasing the Heartstrings DVD. Heartstrings is not only a great film for your family, but is an excellent gift choice, with meaning and power. Order it Here. HeartstringsTheMovie.com

Be a Leader, and help your friends reach their ten; the power of word-of-mouth is astounding, and is the key to reaching the world with messages of hope found in Christian films. It is only a small inconvenience, but does a tremendous service to us as filmmakers.

Be a part of this movement toward God honoring films. The industry can only thrive with your support!
Thank you!

Teenage discipline

Here is a question for all you moms out there. What sort of punishment/consequences do you impose on your teenage children? Our son is already under tight supervision because of a lack of trust and his refusal to follow rules. He has to earn screen time based on getting his schoolwork and chores done daily by 4PM and only gets his cell phone once all of schoolwork is finished. It is taken each night before bed and kept by me until the next day.

Here is the current situation. My 14ds was told to be home by 5:20PM and was told before he left not to text or call asking for more time. He texted me at 5:15 (which I did not receive until later) asking for 30 extra minutes. He did not text back again until 6:30PM, this time asking how much time he had left. I told him he was over an hour late and told him he should have called me or come home when he did not receive a response to his text. He finally got home and I gave him his punishment-being grounded for 2 days, one day per 1/2 hour. He is grounded from friends and his cell phone for that time period.

He immediately launched into an attitude and tried saying he had texted me, but I had not texted him back (implying it was somehow my fault). He then tried telling me it took him 30 minutes to find his friend and another 30 minutes for them to fix something, so he should not have had to come home after the hour was up. I told him he was going to do dishes tonight as his punishment for the attitude and it just got worse from there. We took the dog for a walk and he argued the entire way about the unfairness of it all (and the fact that he NEEDS the bigger room when we move. Hello, how does that relate to the current topic?).

After we got home and he ate dinner he kept trying to get out of doing the dishes. He tried offering to do the dishes Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday instead (Monday & Wednesday are his days anyway), and then switched to arguing about how tired he was and that he just wanted to go to bed early. He finally went in to do dishes, only to lie about using hot water. I told him he was to wash all the dishes on the counter and unload the dishwasher, meaning for him to wash all the dishes, not just load the dirty ones into the dishwasher once it was unloaded. It was more of a principle thing-having him do the harder job of hand-washing all the dishes. He refused and ended up putting most of the dishes in the dishwasher.

I decided to not say anything, but went into his room and took the speakers my husband let him borrow. He noticed as soon as he went to his room and came down looking for another arguement. I told him that since he decided to disobey me I took the speakers back. My thought now is to have him unload the dishwasher tomorrow at lunch (our normal chore time) and he can hand-wash all of the dishes like I told him to tonight. Any thoughts?

Latest movies

We have recently started going to the base movie theatre to watch movies on the weekends. In the last two months, we have watched Prince Caspian, The Hulk, Indiana Jones, Wall-e, and Kit Kittridge. We are not a movie-going family and this is by far the greatest number of movies we have seen in a long time. I think the difference is that I have recently started checking to see what is playing for the month and adding those movies we are interested in to our calendar. We are even set to watch Journey to the Center of the Earth next Sunday afternoon.

I have been very pleased with all of the movies and have not left the theatre after any of them thinking it was a waste of money. For instance, today we watched Kit Kittridge: American Girl. A review of the movie can be found at Plugged in Online. ds-14 was not enthused to say the least about watching a "girl" movie, but he agreed with me at the end that it was a very good movie. I told my daughter she should read the Kit series and write a compare/contrast essay on the books and movie. I am not sure if I will actually have her do it, but if our writing program this year has her doing a compare/contrast I might bring it back up.

Moving Update

We finally got the truck shipped off. Months ago I settled on a company to transport our truck from Honolulu to Denver and was all set to go until I did some research about them online. I found this great website, called Transport Reviews. This is a site that customers can post and read reviews on just about every transport company that is in business. As I started reading the reviews on the first company I was dismayed to find that they had only received 2-stars out of 5. I went even further and found that most of the problems stemmed from horrible customer service. I started digging around and investigating only those companies which had 5-star ratings. I made myself a list of those companies and read through their reviews, leaving out anyone who sounded rude in their responses back to customers. I finally settled on All America Auto Transport. I have been dealing with Mike and he has been wonderful.

Dh arranged for our household goods to be picked up, the car to be shipped and for our move-out inspection from housing. Everything seems to be rolling along nicely, but I still have moments of panic when I think I have surely forgotten something.

I arranged for us to move into a corporate lease in an apartment complex in Charleston for 2 months. The unit is fully furnished, including linens and dishware, and includes all utilities. It is priced higher than our SC BAH, but we will be receiving HI BAH for the first month, so between the two months it will even itself out. Our goal is to find a house to purchase in the first three weeks and close by the end of November. Our lease will be up December 9th so that will give us time to do any painting and pre-move set-up.

Grandma in Kansas has kindly offered to keep both kids for us for the month of October. We will leave them with her when we drive through and then she will drive them out with Grandpa towards the end of October. Dh and I are very excited to have some one-on-one time. It will make the house-hunting go a lot smoother as well. Grandma has a garden and Grandpa has a workshop, so both kids will have plenty to do. Dh and I only get alone-time about once per year. In 2004 we were able to fly Grandma out to be with the kids so I could fly to Scotland to spend 2-weeks with hubby during a port call. In 2005 we went on a 7-day cruise for our 10-year anniversary (again flying Grandma out). In 2006 I was able to fly to England to visit with dh. The visit only lasted 2 days as his schedule changed and they had to leave sooner than we thought. Grandma and Grandpa were both able to come out for that trip. In 2007 we did not get any alone time as we took a family vacation in April and then moved to Hawaii in July.

The only complaint from the kids is that they want to be with us to choose the house because they want some say in their bedroom choices. I told them they will get to choose bedrooms from the house we have chosen after they return and I am sure they will be happy with the selection. The houses in SC all seem to have 2nd living rooms or FROG's so we are looking forward to having an actual schoolroom. I am looking forward to having a real yard and a driveway that I can pull at least 2 cars into. I am also looking forward to being out of the main traffic loop. We are hoping to find something within 30-minutes of dh's work, but still be kind of out in the country. I am hoping to be able to find a place close to a riding stable so dd can ride more than once per week. She will probably have to work off some of her lessons, but she loves everything to do with horses, so I am sure it will not be a problem.

Fun evening science

My son reached into the bread drawer tonight and pulled out...a bag of homemade moldy bagels. I thought immediately about science (of course). We are currently studying clouds, but mold makes a nice detour. Ds did not want anything to do with it, but dd and I got out the microscope and slides and went to town on the mold after we ate our dinner. The bagels had three different colors-black, green and white. Using the scalpel we sliced off pieces of each color and looked at them all. We found that mold is actually made up of small spores that look like tiny bean bag balls. When they stick together they form lines of spores, looking like hair. We opened up our Usborne Internet-Linked Complete Book of the Microscope to do further research. We found out you should not eat moldy food even after removing the mold that you can see, as the mycelium threads will have already spread throughout the food. Some fungi are poisonous and can make you sick. It is not a good idea to breathe it in either, as you will be ingesting mold spores.

For further research you can go to Dennis Kunkel Microscopy, Inc. for some great images of fungi and slime molds.

Start of new school year

We started school about 5 weeks ago because we will be taking off some time during our move in September and October. I plan to take our math books, TOG Year 3 and Writing Aids. I will have the kids do math 2-3 times per week so they don't forget anything and we will keep a journal of interesting things done and seen while traveling. I started TOG 3 earlier than the online co-op we will be joining in October so we could take it easy during the move. By starting early, we will finish week 7 before moving into the hotel here in Hawaii and then will have to complete weeks 8 and 9 over the course of the next 6 weeks.

I decided to put aside the individual science curriculum in favor of doing a unit study with both kids. We started with air pressure and have moved onto cloud formations. We will be keeping a daily temperature chart for the next month or so to see how the temperature goes up and down in different areas of the country. I picked Divide, CO because that is close to where we would like to retire, N chose Herington, KS as that is where Grandma and Grandpa live and S chose Summerville, SC as that is where we are moving to. So far so good on keeping abreast of it each day.

I plan to move my other blog over to this site in a couple of weeks, or possibly after the move once I see if this site is easier to use than homeschool blogger. I have been having problems with pictures not loading and would like to post lots of pictures. It just makes the blogs so much more fun to read.