Earlier this year I was blog-gathering at all my favorite stops and came across a powerful comment made in response to a post…the testimony in this comment is awesome, and I contacted the author and asked for her permission in sharing it here with you all. Hope it blesses!

Sharon said…

Hi there.. I have hope for you!!

It is possible to resurrect your marriage!!

Our marriage has got so much better.. and sometimes I could just almost burst for the happiness I feel because it just keeps getting better!!

Here is what I did..

I started to faith talk in prayer about him.. No longer would I talk about his faults.. no matter how many there were.. I spoke blessings over his life.. I still speak blessings over those things I want to see come to pass..

Galatians 6:9
Let us not become weary in doing good, for at the proper time we will reap a harvest if we do not give up.

Heb 11:1 Now faith is being sure of what we hope for and certain of what we do not see.

Apologise for anything that you have said that has cursed him.. I don’t just mean swear words.. but anything that could/would open the door for the evil one.. Even being angry and saying how you feel can hurt him.. I say this because your happiness.. and dreams cannot rest on him.. they must rest with the Lord.. Nobody else can bring us peace and joy like Jesus can.. That is a big burden to carry trying to please someone..

The thing is.. God loves your husband as much as He loves you.. and you have faults too.. When God looks at you.. He isn’t trying to see your faults.. but He loves you because you are you!! And He pours Himself out to you because He loves you..

You need to start loving your husband that way too.. The way God loves you.. I know there is anger.. hurt.. disappointment.. maybe bitterness.. I had all those.. but love like the 1 Corinthians 13 love overlooks those things.. and is patient.. kind.. gentle… long suffering..

Speak good about him in front of your children.. with your friends and let him hear you do that.. and praise him for all that he is doing right and praise God for his being with you and for him.. Even if you can only think of one thing to say well of him.. Do so!! I know there will be healing here..

Think of how good it feels when someone praises you.. builds you up.. start doing that for your husband.. It makes me cry tears to think of that sort of love.. especially if we might not deserve it..

Ask God to help you do this too.. It does work.. I don’t know what will happen for you both and how.. but I know love works..

That kind of love drew me to God.. and it helps me love my husband and find the joy of marriage.. and my husband has changed so much.. It really had nothing to do with me.. I just loved him and spoke well about him.. I know God did the rest..

He has become a friend and attentive to my needs and I now enjoy looking to meet his needs.. and it makes me cry to think of just how sweet our relationship is.. I could not have believed it would get this good!!

Bless him.. do good to him.. and let your heart be at peace.. Speak in faith the things you desire for your marriage.. your family.. and those things will start to come to pass!!

I will pray for you.. Satan has no foothold at all when love flows..

Christian love from Sharon

Any of you read Ted Dekker’s Christian suspense novels? My friend Jana sent his Circle Trilogy home with me after our wonderful June visit to her family’s home…and during my bout with poison sumac, I read the whole set–couldn’t put them down! (Jana, did you know he’s working on Green, book zero in this set?) Recently, I checked his Martyr’s Song series out from our church library, and I’m pondering the truths of the following paragraphs taken from When Heaven Weeps:

“Take this in remembrance of Me, Christ had said. Participate in the suffering of Christ, Paul had said.

And yet Americans turned forgetting into a kind of spiritual badge, refusing to look at suffering for fear they might catch it like a disease. They turned the death of Christ into soft fuzzy Sunday school pictures and refused to let those pictures get off the page and walk bloody into their minds. They stripped Christ of his dignity by ignoring the brutality of his death. It was no different from turning away from a puffy-faced leper in horror. The epitome of rejection.”

And from later on in the book,

“Realism allows us to participate in one’s suffering and voyeurism takes pleasure from it. The two are like white and black. But many Christians would shut the suffering of the saints from their minds; it’s not what Christ had in mind. He knew his disciples would want to forget, so he asked them to drink his blood and eat his body in remembrance. The writer of Hebrews tells us to imagine we are there, with those in suffering. I ask you, why is the church so eager to run from it?”

I’m spending a bit of time each morning re-reading and re-absorbing Joanna Weaver’s Having a Mary Heart in a Martha World. I welled up with tears time and time again as I read the chapter entitled, Lessons from Lazarus. It covers suffering and the how-to’s of trusting God’s character, relinquishing control, developing faith and hanging in there during the times when you haven’t a clue if God is going to proceed with a comma or end things with a period. And how to accept His will either way.

I have to wonder if my sensitivity and continued musings on this subject of suffering mean that some is coming my way quickly. Kind of scary to look up at my girls as they work feverishly on their geography postcards, and wonder what God has in store for this family of mine. To think of my dear, strong man, hard at work and wonder if we’ll be blessed with fifty plus years together. What will he look like when he’s grizzled and gray-haired? Will I be around to see it? All those “what if’s”? And then there are the million sureties that in this life, we will have the day-to-day trials to face and conquer by God’s grace.

Yes, I find this subject very fascinating, as you can see by all my posts I’ve linked to below. I’ve included a little snippet or synopsis beside each one, if you too, wanted to take a closer look.

Are You Willing? Jesus was willing to take up His cross, how about you and me? Are we equipped for it?

Contentment: Caught Between Bitter and Sweet “…something I heard Greg Laurie say on Christian radio the other day. I was driving, so of course, I don’t have this verbatim, but he made the point of how humiliating a death sentence a Roman crucifixion was…a death reserved for the very worst of criminals. Jesus was willing to die that type of death for us, and He tells us in the Bible to “Take up your cross and follow Me.” Are we to think that living the Christian life will be one of ease and prosperity? If it were, wouldn’t people be flocking to Christ in droves…all for the wrong reasons?”

Exploring Dying to Self “The path toward humility is death to self. When self is dead, humility has been perfected. Jesus humbled Himself unto death, and by His example the way is opened for us to follow. A dead man or woman does not react to an offense. The truth is, if we become offended by the words of others, then death to self has not been finished. When we humble ourselves despite injustice and there is perfect peace of heart, then death to self is complete. Death is the seed, while humility is the ripened fruit.” (commentary by Alice Smith on Galatians 2:20)

The Coal-Diamond Transformation “My mother always said she was just a lump of coal and the hardships and difficult people that crossed her path were just helping her to more quickly become a diamond.”

God Knows the Way In this post we’re reminded that nothing we endure is foreign to God, He knows every detail and has a plan…just remember Job and Joseph and their trials! How awesome it is to do a scripture hunt for scriptures that have the words, “but God” in them: Genesis 50:20, “As for you, you meant evil against me, but God meant it for good, in order to bring about this present result…” NASB

Fatith Lesson? No Thank You. How God can make roads through our personal mountainous trials (Isaiah 49:10-11) IF we accept His workings in our life…

Blessed Be the Name Has your road been marked with suffering? Then practice Hebrews 13:15.

“Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there’s pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name”

Hello! Sorry it’s been so long again…I’ve had some behind-the-scenes blog issues to resolve, and being short on time, I’ve had to let the blog sit till I could do some tweaking! Thankfully all issues were resolved today when I upgraded my Firefox browser to the latest edition…whew, simple fix! So here’s that picture I tried to post a while back…of my youngest juggling a full load of cucumbers! We’ve sure had a bumper crop this summer!

And nope, this post is NOT about cucumber muffins…

Okay…about muffins…

One of my adjustments to this back-to-school routine of ours, is in trying not to rely on cold cereals so much for breakfasts. I used to be pretty good at keeping fresh fruit on hand, and occasionally making pancakes or muffins or scrambled eggs for breakfast…but recently got into the cereal habit. It’s easy, the kids can fix their own breakfasts…but it’s expensive and not-so-cozy when it comes to “family mealtime”! And we’ve got *good reason to try to save money these days…so I’m getting back to doing a lot more “from scratch” breakfasts.

So far the muffin plan has been working well for us. It takes a few minutes each evening after supper to throw together the dry ingredients for the morning’s batch…for instance, last night I decided we’d have Jumbo Banana-Carrot Muffins for breakfast…so I mixed up the dry ingredients, and also the wet ingredients (honey, carrots, applesauce), kept the dry mixture on the counter in a sealed bowl, and stuck the wet ingredients in the fridge for morning. Mixing up breakfast took less than three minutes, and most of that was waiting for the egg whites to stiffen in the mixer.

Several of my muffin recipes call for a streusel topping–a mixture of butter, brown sugar, cinnamon and chopped pecans. At the beginning of this “breakfast” planning adventure, I mixed up a quart sized freezer bag full of this topping and stashed it in the freezer to speed up the muffin making process. Pretty handy!

Here’s this morning’s muffin recipe for you…notice that it has no oil or butter, and we enjoyed these just fine WITHOUT the streusel topping!

Jumbo Banana-Carrot Muffins –from the 2008 Taste of Home Annual Recipes, page 284

• 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour (whole wheat works dandy on these)
• 3/4 cup sugar
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp baking soda
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
• 1/4 tsp ground nutmeg

Note from Mary…mix the above dry ingredients together night before…

• 2 eggs, separated
• 1 TB honey
• 1/4 tsp grated orange peel
• 2 medium ripe bananas, mashed
• 1 cup shredded carrots
• 1/2 cup unsweetened applesauce

I also mixed the above wet ingredients together the night before, excepting the eggs (since they need separated and mixed in different orders) and excepting also the bananas, since they tend to brown. I chop my carrots with my Pampered Chef food chopper, so much faster than grating/shredding them, as I don’t own a food processor. Technically the orange peel isn’t considered a wet ingredient, but it worked just fine doing it this way.

Directions:

In a large bowl, combine the first seven ingredients. In a small mixing bowl, beat egg yolks until light and lemon-colored (I just beat them with a fork). Beat in honey and orange peel. Fold in the bananas, carrots and applesauce. Stir into dry ingredients just until moistened. (You’ll notice I did things slightly out of order by preparing things the night before, but it didn’t alter the outcome any)

In another small mixing bowl, beat egg whites on high speed until stiff peaks form; fold into batter a third at a time.

Fill greased or paper-lined muffin cups two-thirds full. Bake at 350*F for 25-30 minutes or until a tooth-oick comes out clean. Cool for 5 minutes before removing from pan to a wire rack.

Yield: 9 jumbo muffins or 17 normal sized muffins

You’ll notice that this recipe is a pretty affordable one to make…no milk, oil or butter…and the only expensive ingredient is the grated orange peel, which, if you keep oranges on hand…you have in abundance if you grate before tossing the peel! I happen to have a spice jar full of orange peel leftover from the days when I made my own orange cappuccino drinks…so it’s good to find a use for it.

Remember, nothin’ says lovin’ like breakfast with a muffin! Ever try breakfast by candlelight?

Here are some more I’m wanting to try:

Tasty Muffin Recipes Suitable for Diabetics and Just In Time for Back-to-School…

Sugar-free Molasses Bran Muffins

Muffin recipes GALORE

Have you ever posted favorite muffin recipes at your site? I’d love a link to them in comments! Thanks!

*trying to save money back for orthodontic expenses, primarily, didn’t want you to think I was expecting or anything! ;O)

So McCain chose a woman, and what a woman! This political race is getting more exciting–finally!

I wanted to point you to two wonderful articles…one written by Christian fiction authors, Brock and Bodie Thoene, about John McCain’s grueling POW experiences and Sarah Palin’s pro-life choices. Reading it blessed me enough to call my children over so they could see what we’re praying for… 

This other article is from Albert Mohler’s site, titled, “Welcome to the World, Trig Paxson Van Palin–Now the World Has Seen You”. Trig is the four and a half month old son of Alaskan governor, Sarah Palin and her husband Todd. He’s their fifth child, and was born with Down’s syndrome.

Special thanks to Holly at Seeking Faithfulness, for posting links to these articles on her blog in the first place!

I’m feeling hopeful!

A new school year always sends me into a dither…juggling fifth and third graders and a very motivated preschooler means not verra much time for moi! Not to mention the whole housekeeping OR homeschooling dilemma!

But some good things have come of it…come see pics from our first day of school and read all about my adjustments!

Thought this pic of my youngest juggling cukes about sums it all up! Lately it seems I’ve been blogging by the skin of my teeth…sorry about that!

(Oops, wordpress isn’t letting me post the picture…I’ll try again later!)

I promised Leticia I’d share this recipe here SOON, and figured I better get it done tonight, b/c my days have been FULL up getting in a school routine!

This enchilada recipe couldn’t be simpler…my only gripe is that it’s expensive to make. But believe me, it’s worth the splurge every so often! It came to me via a great homeschool mom-friend after tasting hers at one of our monthly potlucks about two years ago. Here you go, Leticia!

Chicken Enchiladas

• 2 cans (13 oz) chicken breast in water (you could cook your own chicken and save a little)
• 1 cup salsa, your favorite brand
• 1 (4 oz) can chopped green chilies (this is a great addition, but I usually leave it out)
• 1 quart heavy whipping cream (most expensive item in this here recipe!!!)
• 2-4 cups shredded Colby-Monterrey Jack cheese
• 10 or more 8 inch flour tortillas

Combine chicken, salsa and chilies. Place mixture in tortillas and roll. Place seam side down in 9×13″ baking dish or larger. Pour whipping cream over top. Bake for 45 minutes at 350*F. Sprinkle cheese on top with ten minutes remaining in cooking schedule. Be sure to completely cover the tortillas with cream or the edges will burn. Once you serve the tortillas on a plate, use the remainder of the sauce to spoon on top.

I’ve taken this to potlucks, and I just leave it in the baking dish for serving. Mmm…I wish I had the ingredients on hand, now I’m craving this stuff!

It’s fun to tour other people’s homes, and just as fun to me is talking foods…as in, what are some of your family’s favorite main dish dinners?

Here are the “basic run-downs” for two of ours…fried chicken quesadillas and smothered steaks! I apologize that there aren’t exact ingredients…but that’s what these kind of dinners are all about! No brainers–no recipe required! Got any? Share them or links to them, please! I’d love some new main dish meals…

Fried Chicken Quesadillas

My mom fixed these one night a few years ago when dh and I happened to be visiting over the dinner hour…I think it was a spur of the moment creation for her, one I took special note of, thankfully!

For a family of five, you’ll need:

• 3-4 large boneless, skinless chicken breasts or 7-9 chicken tenders (raw, uncooked)
• a large plastic Ziplok bag or bowl filled with 1.5 cups flour seasoned with your favorite seasonings (I use powdered garlic, minced onion, Lawry’s Seasoning salt…)
• large skillet w/vegetable oil covering bottom evenly
• around 1.5 cups of your favorite shredded cheeses
• 7-8 large flour tortillas
• Salsa, if desired

Slice your raw chicken into strips (about 1 in x 3 in) and dredge them in flour mixture, covering completely. Place floured chicken into hot oil in skillet. Cook around 7 minutes, flip chicken to other side and cover with lid. Continue cooking for another 15 minutes or till done. Remove from skillet and drain chicken pieces on a plate covered with a paper towel.

The skillet should still have some oil left in it, leave the stove top on about medium heat and begin filling your tortillas. I use one tortilla per person, laying chicken pieces on one half of the tortilla and then sprinkling cheeses over the chicken. Then I fold the tortilla (in half) over the top of the chicken and put it in the hot skillet. You can brown two tortillas at the same time in this manner. My husband likes me to add salsa to the filling in his, everyone else likes theirs just plain chicken and cheese. We love these…the tortillas crisp up so crunchy and golden, and it’s just a fun treat to have fried chicken embellished in this easy way!

Smothered Steaks

This delicious recipe has been a stand by ever since the birth of my second daughter…a friend from church brought it over and I had to get the recipe! Of course, she claims there is no recipe, but she told me how she fixed it and I’ve been fixing it ever since! It’s yummo!

For a 9×13 pan full (our family of five always overeats on this and still has leftovers)  you’ll need the following:

• 2-3 lbs cubed steaks (these may be called minute steaks or club steaks or round steaks–however, round steaks are pretty tough, you’ll need to tenderize them prior to using)
• a large plastic Ziplok bag or bowl full of flour with your favorite seasonings
• large skillet w/vegetable oil covering bottom evenly
• 1 regular sized can cream of mushroom soup
• 1 cup sour cream
• 2-3 cups milk

Dredge your cubed steaks in the flour mixture and brown them lightly in hot oil. Drain the browned meat pieces on a paper towel covered plate and place into a 9×13 pan. In medium sized mixing bowl, combine mushroom soup, sour cream and milk until mixed thoroughly. Pour this mixture over your browned steaks and cover 9×13 pan tightly with foil. Place in a 350*F oven for 2-2.5 hours. This is delicious with mashed potatoes, there’s usually enough sauce to use for gravy, though not enough for leftovers. We love how this cooks up, so tender and saucy. I’ve never tasted better smothered steaks!

So there you have two of our favorite main dish meals! Hope you give them a try sometime, and in the meanwhile, whatcha got for me?

Are you struggling between two heart desires? Believe me, I have been there, done that and it’s not much fun.

For me, it began almost three years ago. You’ll remember many posts from me on the subject of my women’s fiction writing, and how easily I could lose myself in it–letting the children and housework fall apart around me. What a struggle to find balance, in fact, balance was so elusive, I finally quit fiction writing altogether. I just couldn’t reconcile the two passions–homeschooling and a writing career. I know better women than me can juggle these things…and maybe someday I’ll be able to, but not now.

At first letting go was terribly depressing. I hung onto my writing projects like a toddler on the verge of losing his blankie…I’d never had a passion outside my children and husband before. Sounds pathetic, but remember I married right out of high school, and my family has been my world. And I’ve been so fulfilled that I never felt anything was missing. Discovering the books within me, though, tapped a brand-spanking-new-and-exciting dimension of ME…a falling in love experience…a happy realization that God gifted me with this crazy love of words for a reason! Wow. Anyway. I lost myself in this dream for a year…devouring books on the writing craft and going to writing conferences and learning from other pros and wannabes. Pure bliss…that continually battled my family for my time until I realized that I had to cut back. And cutting back didn’t work. Giving it up altogether finally made the difference.

My point is, I’m not missing the fiction writing at all these days. I’m not even all that concerned when a week goes by without blogging. We’re ramped up about homeschooling and spending time with friends and church activities…right now the solitary and immersive lifestyle of writing isn’t possible! I don’t want it to be possible. I want my life to be about homeschooling and enjoying these girls while they’re little and being a 30-something stay-at-home mom is my ultimate joie de vivre!

How did I end up letting go of my writing dreams? Well, honestly, I haven’t let go of them. I feel a real peace that those are future chapters in my life, ones I anticipate and gladly put off for a more convenient time…possibly not until my kids are raised! I begged and pleaded with the Lord about it, especially because I got to the point where I would have gladly put the girls in public school just so I could have a full day of unfettered writing time. I began resenting my family’s needs and that was what finally opened my eyes to my wrong priorities. Wrong for *me* because God has emphatically called us into this homeschooling lifestyle.

Asking God to realign my desires with His really meant turning OFF my passion for writing. Please, I’m not preaching at anyone, this is *my* story–I’m not cut out to balance two passions. Not as whole-hog as I am about my “babies” (both real and imagined!)!

Anyway, I just realized today how God’s given me back my satisfaction with this season of life. And it’s a pretty blessed arrival, deserving of documentation at my site!

Anyone relate?

Even a sunshiny day has its cloudy spots. Life is sure like that, sometimes it seems that we have the same old trials spotting up our happy days…and it’s up to us to choose how to react. By God’s grace we don’t have to slug around in the shadows!

Today started out slow for us, with me feeling typically behind after “losing a school day” yesterday. Tuesday was a crazy busy day away from home…picnicking at the zoo, running errands in the “big” city, delivering a meal to a good friend who just had a baby boy (!), and barely making two meetings at church. The girls and I rushed home at 9:30 pm, head-achey and starving, threw a pizza in the oven and commenced to carting in all our “stuff”, coolers of perishables I’d bought, bags of other grocery items…by that point I didn’t want to even eat supper I was feeling so nauseous. But I slept great!

And I slept in…putting me further behind. Woke up to some discouraging news of the financial variety and you know what? God has shown me over and over again that nothing is TOO big for Him. But I’m human, and venting is part of the process. Fortunately for my kids, my house took the brunt. I cleaned all morning like a mad woman breaking only to supervise school and start on lunch. All the messy spots that remained from my bout with poison sumac are washed away…and something about all that homemaking rooted down deep within me and God brought peace to my heart.

It’s like, the sky can be falling in, but I am a mother and a wife and a woman, and these things are my heart–the things that matter–they surround me. My family and my home. I may not be able to change any outside circumstances, but I can whip my household into submission and be better for it!

I even got industrious about supper–thawed some cubed steaks, beat the tarnation out of them with my meat mallet, breaded them and fixed them up for smothered steaks tonight! Which reminds me, I have a pot full of potatoes boiling that needs checking…

Once my youngest was down for her afternoon nap, the older girls and I got out our devotional book and our Bibles and had a great quiet time…which progressed to reading a chapter in our Health book, and then assembling our spelling notebooks and filling in one of the spelling rule pages…we even had an hours worth of fun with our Botany, playing Taxonomy with shoes! Didn’t get all the subjects covered, but we had a wonderful time together, no sour faces about school today!

Around five o’clock, we headed outside to clean out the chicken’s brooding boxes and refill them with fresh wood shavings…collected ten cucumbers from the garden from which the girls chose a couple, hosed them off and munched them gone. Mmm!

For a day that started out sluggish-turned-panicky, I feel real peace and happiness right now.

I just shared one of my favorite verses with a good friend yesterday, and God knew I’d need it today. Maybe it would bless you as well.

“Be anxious for nothing, but in everything by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving, let your requests be made known to God. And the peace of God which surpasses all understanding will guard your hearts and minds in Christ Jesus.” Philippians 4:6-7 (italics mine)

So next time you’re hit with something unexpected, try to turn it over immediately to Him…with thanksgiving! And don’t be surprised at the peace that eventually follows.

It’ll be okay.

All my lovely “first day” plans kind of went out the window, with last week’s bout of Poison Sumac–ick! You’ll all be glad to know that I’m so much better, in fact, well enough to go camping with friends this past Saturday/Sunday! I doubt I’ll take normal life and good health for granted for a long time to come!

Anyway, as I was saying, I’d planned on last Thursday being our first day of school…complete with our treasure hunt kick-off and craft day. Problem was, I didn’t have all my supplies together for either the craft OR the treasure hunt, so we’re jumping into school books anyhow and plan to work the other stuff in on a special day TO BE ANNOUNCED. Thankfully, my girls cut me some slack this year! We did, however, get to break in my middle daughter’s pottery wheel…and oh boy, was that a blast!

So everyone always asks me what curriculum I use, and the truth is, I’m eclectic…always using a hodge podge of whatever comes highest recommended to me by trusted family and friends. There is SO much out there to choose from…so many top notch resources, so much that I’d love to do if we could afford it…so each year I add something new, and continue using what I loved from years prior.

Here’s a quick list of what we’re using this year, and links to the websites so you can check them out if you so desire! You’ll notice I like to combine subjects with my girls…they’re in different grades (3rd and 5th) for math and language arts, but this year we’ll be tackling the other subjects together! Last year we did different histories and sciences, etc, so I’m really psyched about this approach. There are always ways to make it more intensive for my older daughter…so I feel certain this is the way to go…for us!

One last thing–I praise God for the freedom to hand pick my daughters’ educational resources. To have endless options as far as Christian curriculums go…you can’t ask for much more than that. What a huge blessing!

• Mystery of History Volume 1, Creation to Christ–I’m super excited about this series, because it covers world history in ancient times, such as what was going on in China when the Israelites crossed the Red Sea, and what famous Bible figure was living when the Trojan horse was being built…I joined the yahoo group for this volume of MofH, and have already printed off timeline figures, map helps, additional book lists, book report blanks, etc. Plus, the pictures people have posted there of their completed projects are hugely motivational!
• Historical Biographies– the What Really Happened series will be a wonderful read-aloud complement to our history program!
• A Child’s Geography this is so highly recommended by EVERYONE who has ever used it, and we are loving the author’s kid-friendly style and enthusiastic approach to earth study! This textbook came with a CD-Rom full of helps, and there is also a yahoo group in support of it, full of files and resources that I’ve been taking FULL advantage of! I’m impressed by the “Reaching Out to His World” and “Further Exploration” book list sections at the end of each chapter. This is more than a textbook, it’s a revolution to get our kids thinking beyond their own self-focused backyard and across the world by encouraging a mission field type of outlook. Powerful.
• The Star-Spangled State Book and Workbook we’ll tackle this once we’ve finished up the Child’s Geography. I’m super addicted to the Geo quizzes in this book, can’t wait to teach it to the girlies!
• Apologia science, their elementary Botany program so excited about this, as I just discovered that creationsensation.com has Apologia lab kits for each subject all packed up and ready to go, with experiment items listed according to chapter projects…this will save me HOURS of planning and shopping! There’s also, yes–you know what’s coming, a yahoo support group for Apologia elementary sciences, with so many resources in their files…from games to vocabulary lists to scheduling guidelines…My girls are anxious to get a Venus Fly Trap in the mail–woo-hoo! Botany, here we come!
• Professor B Math common sense math, taught and mastered in far less time than conventional math programs. I LOVE it! We have the CD-Rom, which is scripted, so my older daughter can sit with my 3rd grader and walk her through it if need be, and gain review in the process. Me likes that!
• Spell to Write and Read by Wanda Sanseri this program is the best all around multi-age language arts program, imo, for teaching phonograms and for making sense of the English Language! I love the spelling lists that stretch from preschool to college level, and that each week’s words are accompanied by several spelling enrichment activities. Plus, each year, my girls make their own spelling book, featuring spelling rule pages that outline each of our language’s twenty-something spelling rules. Fantastic program. I’ve blogged about it here before…many times! A curriculum you can buy once, use for all your children, each year. Very cost efficient!
• Sonlight’s Grammar Ace with School House Rock what a fun way to reinforce grammar rules! This is a super fun, user-friendly program that my whole family enjoys. Hubby and I really get a kick out of reviewing the School House Rock DVD songs…Conjunction Junction, and Lolly, Lolly, Lolly, Get Your Adverbs Here…and what’s even better, this program comes with ALL the School House Rock videos that were ever made! Not just the grammar ones…these jingles really stick in your head, my last year’s second grader particularly liked “3 is a Magic Number“–to which she learned her 3 times tables!

Of course, we’re still doing Mavis Beacon typing, and Music Ace, God’s World News and Bible…and all our handwriting will be covered by copywork out of our geography, history and Spell to Write and Read curriculums. The girls love to read and read aloud and be read to, so no need to assign extra reading…

Yes, I’m super happy with what we use, can’t you tell (?), but that doesn’t mean it’s the only good stuff out there, of course! Just sharing *my* favorites…the tip of the iceberg of all the goodies available to homeschoolers! If you are raising preschoolers, do your homework. You could start researching now, and be way ahead of the game…

I’ll leave you with an article I really enjoyed, 5 Essential Ingredients to Homeschooling Success by Terri Johnson. It outlines many of the things I love about being able to live this lifestyle…

How was your child’s first day of school? And if you happen to home educate, or have a favorite curriculum, please share it in comments!