February 25th, 2020

Today I had a lot of anxiety... or nervousness or something. I feel so un...  Like professor UN.
I used to think I could like have the perfect house and family... and that all that would go wrong would have nothing to do with me, my husband or my kids... and I was wrong. And my dream is not realistic. And now what?
I had the dream that I could pursue midwifery and homeschool my kids. And then there was a climax which led to a trauma, which led to so many strange and weird places... And now, I'm afraid to dream. What if I just go back to trying to get a little bit of that first dream... Like the clean house and the delicious smells to come home to... Is that doable?
Adam:
I learned that um never switch places with people because then you're not gonna know a bunch about them and it's not gonna be fun and soon they will recognize you are not their child, etc...
I have learned that you should never forget to take dogs out every morning for exercise and to go potty, because they might get extra tired and lazy. I suggest that you do all that stuff, because then if you don't that is gonna happen.
Abe:
He switched clothes because he wanted to go do something and then go back and have a wonderful life. That's all he wanted to do.
What I've learned about dogs is that if Jaq looks straight up at me then he needs to go potty.
Peter:
What I learned is never switch families cuz then you have a different life and you're not used to that life so it's going to be a little annoying for a while. Then you'll get used to it and if you get used to it, that's bad cuz then you won't want to go back to your family where you belong.
I learned that if our dog looks straight up at you it needs to go pee or poop. And give a dog its space.
Helaman:
perhaps he learned lavender doesn't always help burns...?

Reproductive Learning

Today I taught the little 4 boys about the reproductive system. I used some anatomy pics from an instructional/educational video on YouTube, as well as a beautiful animation of the labor process. We Peter wanted to learn to tune to Billy Boy, so we looked it up.
Peter: I learned the tune to Billy Boy and how a baby comes out. It comes out of the vagina. I learned that girls and boys have different body parts. Do not shake a baby.
Adam: I learned that you should never shake a baby or else they might get brain damage or die. I also learned that a baby comes out of the vagina. When a baby comes out it starts crying and it's really disturbing to a girl. I learned the tune to Billy Boy. I learned that boy reproductive parts are outside of their bodies and girl reproductive parts are inside of their bodies. The baby grows in the uterus. Breasts make milk for the baby. Some people who get too much milk transfer it to people who don't make enough milk.
Abe: I learned that babies poop and pee in their pants. If you shake a baby it will die. Eggs come out of an ovary of a girl. If it gets fertilized it will turn into a baby. Baby's umbilical cord are attached to their bellies. A belly button is a scar from an umbilical cord.
Helaman: Boy parts are called Penis and Testicles. I learned the path the pee takes in a boy. Girls have different parts. Girl can grow babies inside of them.

Peter at Homeschool 11/5

Peter:
So, once upon a time, there was a man and he had a wife. So, the man was in the Forrest and saw a weasel. The weasel strartled him. The man yelled out loud and startled the weasel and the weasel dropped what he was doing and holding. The man picks it up and he thinks he sees a golden ring in the spit on it. He wipes it off on his shaggy clothes and then he sees a golden ring. He remembers his mom telling him stories about golden rings and so ya know, he said the magic words... "Magic, magic, magic ring... do your bidding as you are told". He wished for a bag of gold and the bag of gold just magically appeared by his feet. He looks down at the bag of gold and picks it up and then hurries through the woods to the store and buys his wife a shawl and some food to last them months. So he gets to his house and he tells his wife what miracle had happened. His wife says, "did you steel that ring?" He said, "no a weasel gave it to me." Every time she heard that she pretended to cry. And so the wife took that ring from the man and she said, "What are the magic words?" Because she knew about the magic ring too. "Magic, magic, magic ring, do your bidding as you are told!" And she turned the man into a werewolf. The wife got whatever she wanted. The man was pretty unhappy and he went to the house and saw the chest that his wife had hidden the key to. He took the key out and said the magic words. "Magic, magic, magic ring, do your bidding as you are told." The man hears donkey hoof steps and a donkey appears. And then the man went in the house smiling. Because he turned his wife into a donkey.

Book report on a story from: More Bones: Scary Stories from Around the World. by Arielle North Olson and Howard Schwartz
Today I introduced Peter to a multiplication chart and he loved it! He went through the whole chart saying out loud what times what was what... And he likes the times tales stories!!! They are working for him!!

Schooling for the older boys fall 2017

Honestly, at this point, I am 'blah blah blah.... 'I love that I have been recording the kindergarten so far: 2 days into it... and honestly, as far as the older boys are concerned with homeschooling, I have just been kind of waiting for guardians to start up for schooling the boys (Sept 7). And also asking them about how their classes are going at public school... There will be some inspiration gotten there at guardians ... info that will cause them to ask questions for more in depth studies... I thought we had "the bronze bow" book (needed for guardians in Sept- book discussion on the 21), but when I went to find it, I couldn't. So, decided it would be good to do some book organizing, which was on my to-do list anyway... the boys were supposed to help, and did a little. Luke read to the littles (finding old time favorites) and James helped me bring books down from upstairs... Anyway, the hunt for the first guardians book discussion book goes on. This was yesterday. Today, the boys went to work for Sister Turley after getting home from school and eating lunch. They had sugar there and now I am struggling with their very scattered, or too focused brains to get them to do work here at home...
I found some 6th grade math curricula that I wish to sell. I put it up on FB... so far, nothing... but it's a huge group and people do searches there for what they want, hopefully. And hopefully someone wants it.
I did buy the writing supplies that they are using for writing skills in youth guardians. Although, I still need to get one copy that I bought as a pdf online...
For Peter, sad, but yesterday a "friend" gave him a sucker (red) and today he didn't know any of the answers on the "homework" that he was given and got them all wrong...  He said it was a very bad day. I finally got a hold of the IEP, because I remembered it had been sent via email/pdf... YAY! Hopefully things will go better with him there from now on. I also emailed his teacher about the sucker... even though she didn't really have anything to do with it...
Love you!

Silence Experiment

This is Mylie. Yesterday I read an article about how silence is good for the brain. And I wanted to apply it. So I did. Today. After church, lunch and break... we had almost an hour of silence. Wow! That was pretty brand new to the twins. I loved it!!! Juliet said it was chaos, but I think it was the best non-chaotic time we had had in our house in a long time!! Talk about peace! Later Juliet said it was calming.
Beautiful peace. Leah says it was refreshing. I asked Peter if it was a good time and he said, "Yeah." Clint says it felt nice, peaceful. Luke says it was good. It was nice and relaxing, cuz, well I'm usually that nice and relaxing, but the house isn't usually... although during our silent time, Helaman was not silent and neither were a couple of the other younger kids, so it wasn't really all completely silent." James says it was like finding gold in the middle of the sun, because it's pretty hard for things to get that silent around here." Esther says, "I thought that it would be fun to remember stuff and to speak loud again."
You can read the article here.
It affects the parts of the brain that I know all of us need help with. Thanking God for all the blessings!!

The New FHE Way

By Mylie

Clint and I decided last summer that we wanted to change the way we do FHE. We had been trying to fit a lot of things into our Family Meetings on Sundays, but that was making my Sunday difficult... I wanted to keep our Family History moment and our mission statement, but I just didn't want them to make our Sunday meetings go so long... so... we decided to make there be 4 parts to our FHE lessons. We would have one topic to focus on. One person would present a Family History moment that would reflect how a topic was learned or exercised. Another person would give a scripture on the topic. Another would present their perspective on how the topic is included in our mission statement, and how we have lived it and/or can do better on it. And another would give a testimony or other story or lesson on the topic. Each person has about 3 minutes to present. Ever since we have switched this around, life feels better, and FHE goes awesome. Family meetings on Sundays have actually decreased though. I'd like to do planning and meditation and/or confession circle for our family meetings on Sundays.

Esther 7-17-16

Today at church I learned about captain Moroni. I learned about the armour of God and we got little coloring pages that we can color and cut out of Moroni. I didn't get to finish mine, so I gave it to Dad.
I went to the bathroom
Caleb saw his name in the jar.
Yesterday I went to a birthday party and I am so happy that I got to go. I had fun with Rosie and Olivia on the slip-n-slide. and we out soap on the slip-n-slide. And I got to taste the licorice jelly-belly's they are the pitch black ones.'
I lots of work yesterday and today I felt really pretty.

These are really sweet baby cheetah cubs, in really, really cute ways.

I'm grateful for animals and Heavenly Father, that he made them.