Are you ready for this?

It's been such a busy past couple of months and I've really neglected to blog on a consistent basis like I used to.  I just haven't had the time or energy!  In August we took a 2 week vacation to New Mexico and Colorado to see all of my side of the family.  It was a lot of fun and so great to connect with family and of course they were all excited to see how big the kids have gotten in the past year.

  As we were driving to New Mexico we received a call and SURPRISE our real estate agent had an offer on our house, we counter offered and the rest is history, we were closing in less than a month. Our house was only on the market for a total of 38 days, whew it was a whirlwind!  Which meant we only had about 3 weeks to move out by the time we returned home from our trip.

If you live in the Tulsa area and need a great team of real estate agents call Linda Reed and Sallie Coltharp.

We were so blessed by all of the wonderful friends that helped us move, I think we ended up having about 9 or 10 guys and several ladies and we had everything moved out of our house in 3 hours and into several storage units.  Thankful for all the help for sure!  We signed all the papers and closed on our house on Sept 28th and then moved in with my in-laws.  They've graciously allowed us to stay with them while we are searching for a house.  I'll keep you updated on our house search.

Thanks for reading,

Beautiful Colorado

After our trip to New Mexico we headed up to the Durango, Colorado area.  I still have family and friends  up there and we couldn't wait to see them. 

Wild turkey

 My Grandma Penny lives up in the mountains and it's beautiful at her house, we usually see deer,elk, wild turkey and this time we saw....

 A wild black bear on her property, it was very exciting and gave us all a big thrill!

Deer in the woods

Kylan loves to come to Grandma's house and he even calls it his "summer home".  The summer of 2011 he stayed for almost a month with her, we really missed him and couldn't wait for him to come home.

While in Colorado we love to go hiking, exploring the woods, geocaching, shopping in Durango, visit with friends and family and take pictures.  There are so many places for the photography loves, it's unbelievable.  Kenzie and Kylan have been taking a photography class and had ample opportunities to use their skills on this trip.  Here are a couple of my favs that they took.

Photograph courtesy of Kylan Wedemeyer

Photo taken by Makenzie Wedemeyer

Photo taken by Makenzie Wedemeyer

Photograph courtesy of Kylan Wedemeyer

Thanks for reading,
 

Land of Enchantment

How many of you know where I'm from?  I mean where I was born and raised until I was in about 3rd grade.  If you guessed New Mexico you would be correct.  Land of Enchantment, and the place I called home as a child.  We then moved to Odessa, TX for a couple of years then Durango, CO and on to the Tulsa, OK area where I met the love of my life and we've been raising our lil blessing that detoured through South Korea.  Yes, our roadmap is filled up isn't it!

This is the kids with my Aunt Kat and my Grandma Dees-my mom's side of the family

The kids playing games with some cousins at Grandma and Grandpa Tinker's house

 Makenzie and Grandpa Tinker

We saw some beautiful desert scenery, aren't the colors gorgeous!

Kylan and Grandpa goofing off together.

The sky was gorgeous and looked like it had been painted.

We followed ancient pathways to a distant time at the Aztec Ruins National Monument.

 We even got a couple of days of homeschool in on our trip, for more info here and we created a mini lapbook of this wonderful state that's rich with history.

 The kids had the opportunity to become Jr Rangers and were sworn in at the park and given badges, this was really fun and something they won't forget. 

 Next, we headed up to Colorado to see the Falconer side of the family....

Growing Up Wild

 Growing Up Wild is a 5 DVD video series about the life of the Wild family, they are missionaries in Papua, Indonesia.  These educational videos show different aspects of missionary life such as, their home, how they get supplies, water and energy.  They delve into differences in culture like nose piercing is very common with the Wano tribe and the family allows two of their boys to get their nose pierced.  We decided that Kenzie and Kylan could do this as well, have you seen the kids lately?  They both have nose piercings, JUST KIDDING!  They don't, although I suggested it to them and they both laughed but decided that wasn't for them right now.

The videos are filmed by the family and show every member of the family including their pets.  The mom and the dad are the narrators and the filming is gorgeous and very engaging, we couldn't look away! The purpose of the series is to introduce children, ages 5-12, to missions work and what it looks like.

The DVDs are available for $18.99 plus S&H; or you can purchase the complete set (all 5 DVDs) for $80.99 plus S&H (a 15% discount).

Ever since I found out that we were one of the families picked to review Growing Up Wild my children and I have been running to the mailbox everyday anticipating it's arrival.

The package arrived the day before our trip to Orange Beach, Alabama. So, we loaded the DVD's up and the kids watched them during our 13 hour roadtrip.  Kevin and I were in the front and couldn't see the videos but we listened to everything and we could hear the excitement in Makenzie and Kylan's voices as they discussed the videos.

 When we returned home we decided to watch the videos again (so mom could see them) and we also worked on some of the activities that were included.  We had the opportunity to review Growing Up Wild -Volume 1 which included 3 episodes that were approx. 15 minutes each.
 The episodes were the following:
Home Sweet Hut-this episode tells how the Wild brothers house was built in the jungle.  Since we just sold our house and are we hunting for another house while living with my in-laws we were able to talk about the differences in building a house in Oklahoma vs. the jungles of Indonesia.

Supply Trip- this episode follows the Wild family on a trip to the city to purchase several months worth of supplies and shows how the get their supplies home on a small plane and even a helicopter!  We tried to track what we would need for a month and then multiplied it by 3, it was a crazy amount of food and personal items.  I'm sure if we lived in the jungle or somewhere that didn't have a Wal-Mart nearby the amount of items would be greatly reduced!!

Sun and Water- this was a fascinating episode that told how the family gets their water pressure and electricity.  After each episode they have suggested activities to do with your children.  An activity guide CD is included that has printables for each activity, this was very helpful!

We also reviewed Growing Up Wild-Volume 4 and enjoyed it immensly as well.  This DVD had 3 episodes that were approx. 15 minutes each.
 Amazing World Around Us-this episode told about spiders, beautiful birds, a giant stick bug and pythons!

Adventures in Culture- this episode covered many types of cultural differences including the nose piercings that I talked about earlier.

Tribal Calling- this episode talked about the Wild family knew they had a tribal calling.  We talked about how God calls people to do many different things, things they might now ever expect to do. The kids asked is this had ever happened to us and we said yes!  We were called to adopt internationally, I never in my wildest dreams imagined I would be called to adopt but it has been one of my greatest pleasures to share the joys of adoption.  I also reminded them that God told me when I was 19 that Kevin and I would be working with teenagers someday and I pushed it to the very back of my mind because at that time I was still a teenager and not ready to work with teens yet.  In the past year we knew God was leading us to work with some troubled teens and when we followed His lead and opened out hearts many walls have been broken with these precious girls.  Kylan was kind of upset because he doesn't know what his calling is yet but I reminded him that he's only 11 and his calling will come.  Makenzie feels that she's being called to be a missionary but she's not sure where.  We told her to just keep working on her Punky Monkey Missions and God will lead her in the right direction.  We had such a great time discussing our "Calling" and explained that it could change in the future.

This was the perfect ending to a wonderful year of Schoolhouse Crew reviews and was by far our favorite review for the entire year.  In the next couple of weeks we will be adding the 3 remaining videos that we haven't reviewed, we are all looking forward to exploring with the Wild family!

Thanks for reading,

 

Guest Hollow

This school year we are taking a break from out normal history curriculum, and using a free curriculum that I found online called Guest Hollow.  Guest Hollow has sections for math, language arts, science and two different American history curriculums.  We are using Year One which was targeted for 8-9 year olds in 3rd grade but is easily adapted for other grades mainly 2nd-6th grade.  We are using it for my 5th and 7th graders and it's working out very well.  Here's a list of all topics covered this year

Topic 1 Native Americans: Seminoles



Topic 2 Native Americans: Northeast Indians



Topic 3 Native Americans: Great Plains Indians



Topic 4 Native Americans: Southwest Indians



Topic 5 Native Americans: Nez Perce



Topic 6 Native Americans: Northwest Coast Indians



Topic 7 Native Americans: Inuit



Topic 8 Discovery and Leif Erickson



Topic 9 Discovery and Columbus



Topic 10 Incas, Mayans and Aztecs; Cortes and Pizzarro



Topic 11 Discovery and Exploration



Topic 12 English in America: Pocahontas, Jamestown



Topic 13 Pilgrims



Topic 14 Colonies and Benjamin Franklin



Topic 15 French and Indian War



Topic 16 George Washington and More About the Colonies



Topic 17 The Revolutionary War



Topic 18 The Constitution and a New Government



Topic 19 A First President, a New Country and Johnny Appleseed



Topic 20 Lewis and Clark



Topic 21 Monroe Doctrine and the War of 1812



Topic 22 Andrew Jackson; The Trail of Tears



Topic 23 Inventions and Changes



Topic 24 The Alamo



Topic 25 The Gold Rush and Pioneers



Topic 26 Pioneers and Moving West



Topic 27 Abraham Lincoln, Slavery, The Civil War (but not in depth yet)



Topic 28 The Transcontinental Railroad, George Washington Carver



End of Year One!

We've really been enjoying the Native American unit studies, and have done a bunch of fun projects including a tour of the Aztec Ruins National Monument in New Mexico.  The kids participated in the Junior Rangers program and received some cool badges.

We built model size tepees.

and we've made History Pockets from a book that Evan-Moore publishes.  The kids and I have enjoyed reading all types of stories about Native Americans and even listened to an audio CD of The Birchbark House.  I can't wait to learn some more about American History with this hands on approach that's not only been fun but very informative.  What are you learning about in history this year?

Thanks for reading,