Weekly wrap-up - new grand baby added some craziness

In the wee hours of Sunday morning my second grandchild was born.

I'll tell you more about that in another post. His birth added a little craziness into our week but we wouldn't trade it for anything.

The fact that he was born in the wee hours of the morning meant that our sleep was completely disturbed that night and we've been struggling to get back on track all week. That has affected our starting times each day but we haven't done too bad.

We've also been anxious to see him as much as possible so we've been trying to get our work done as fast as possible so we would be free to go see him. This has been a great motivator for actually getting our work done, so that's a bonus.

There was just one day this week that we ended up shortening our official learning time. That was the day our little Isaac went home from the hospital. We helped get them settled in at home. I recorded that day as a half day of school in the Homeschool Helper but I was still pleased with the amount of work we did manage to do that day.

Here's a summary of what we did this week in each subject area:

Bible

Anna is still enjoying doing the Walk With Jesus: 21 Days Through Matthew reading plan in the YouVersion App and reviewing her Bible verses with the Scripture Typer App. She's made it to day thirteen of the reading plan and has mastered seven verses.

Art

Art was a mod podge of things this week. Anna decided to draw on some balloons. She drew a dog face on one balloon and a cat face on another.

She also did a few sketches this week. She sat outside and looked for thing to draw. One day she did two sketches - one of a tree and the other of Buddy, our neighbour's dog. Another day she sketched Brody, the little guy that lives next door.

I did just one quick sketch one day this week of a picture I took of my new grandson sucking on his daddy's finger.

 

Grammar

Continuing on with our lessons in First Language Lessons, we learned about linking verbs this week. One activity involved writing nouns on some cards, linking verbs on others, and adjectives on others and then selecting a card from each group to put together to make sentences. Anna really enjoyed that.

 

Math

I am thrilled with the change in Anna's attitude toward math. She's really loving math time right now, and she is really learning. We are continuing playing games to review math facts. Anna wanted to make up her own game one day this week and we've been playing it every day since. You can read about it in a post with the title she game the game - I Love to Do Addition Game. Friday we spent some time playing with pattern blocks, learning the names of the shapes and problem solving as we made pictures with them.

Music

This week we worked on learning O Canada. Anna didn't quite have the tune down by taping time. She was still struggling to stay in tune in a couple of sections so I suggested that she use her ear phones to listen to the YouTube Video of O Canada that we'd been listening to all week while I taped her singing it. If you listen closely you can hear where she starts to stray from the tune but she did a pretty good job.

 

Reading

We are continuing to listen to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz. We've made it up to chapter 18. We've had some great discussion inspired by the book so far. Anna finished the Magic kitten book she was reading during silent reading so we went to the library to get a new one for her to start next week.

Social Studies

We managed to do two sections in Story of the World: Middles Ages this week. We really enjoyed reading the version of the story of Beowulf in the book. The lyrical way it was written made it fun to listen to.

This coming Tuesday is municipal election time in our province. We spent some time this week discussing the elections and the three tier government system of Canada. Anna read the candidate flyers that came to our house and we checked out the information sheet about polling booths to see where we needed to go to vote. Anna was quite upset to learn that she can't vote yet. I'm hoping she still wants to vote when she's old enough to.

Spelling

Anna is still loving spelling. She did her first review test this week in Spelling Power and got 100%! We made it almost all the way through list seven this week. Anna is really starting to pay attention to spelling and I love watching her stop to see if a word looks right the way she's written it before asking for it to be checked. She is doing great!

Writing

Did the week two lessons in Writing With Ease. We really enjoyed the passages that we had to narrate from Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. Anna is doing great with her dictation exercises and copy work.

This week we started introducing cursive writing. We are working our way through the Cursive Writing Worksheets at Kidzone. She's mastered a, d, and g so far.

And that's our Weekly Wrap, inspired by the Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers Weekly Wrap-up. Why not fun in the fun and tell us about your week?

 

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I Love To Do Addition Game

"Let's do math now so we can have some fun." That's not a sentence that passed my 7 year old's lips last year, but it was spoken by her today. I give Denise Gaskin and her book Let's Play Math credit for the change. Following Denise's advice I have laid aside the work book and instituted some games to teach and practice math concepts and facts. We are learning and having fun.

Our math time has consisted of us playing lots of games, many with cuisenaire rods. One day this week Anna wanted to make up a new game for us to play, and she titled the game "I Love to Do Addition".

At her suggestion we've been using eraser pencil toppers as player tokens, even though we don't really need player tokens to play the game. She assigns each of us a token and gives each of us a cuisenaire rod that matches the colour of the token we have. Our eraser pencil toppers are blue, yellow, and orange so we each end up with either a nine, five or ten rod. That makes it pretty easy to practice adding nines, fives, and tens.

To play the game each player takes turns making up an addition problems for the other player. One of the addends in the addition problem has to be the number that is represented by the players rod. For example, if I have a blue token I get a blue rod, which represents the number 9. Anna makes up additions problems for me that always has 9 as one of the addends. If Anna has a yellow token she gets a yellow rod, which represents the number five, and I have to make up addition problems for her that always has the number 5 as one of the addends. We take turns giving each other problems and figuring out the answers using the cuisenaire rods.

While we are playing I record the addition equations on a sheet of paper just to give Anna a visual of what we are doing. I don't make a big deal of pointing it out to her I just do it in plain view so she can see it.

I noticed today that she is really getting adding by tens and adding by nines and often doesn't have to use the rods to figure out the answer. She really has learned a lot through this game that she made up, and she's having a ball playing it.

Thanks, Denise Gaskin, for helping me realize I need to put some fun back into our math time.

Math is the theme for the Homeschool Weekly Photo Challenge this week so I'm linking the post there. Do you have a math inspired photo to share?

Copyright Jacqueline's Jabberings 2006-2013

 

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Week 1 Art Projects

For art this year, I have decided that we will work on at least one art project each week. My original idea was that we would take a walk on Mondays and find something to sketch while on our walk. We would do a rough sketch Monday and then enhance that sketch all week long. Friday would be the last day to make improvements. It didn't quite go that way this week.

Monday we did go outside in the back yard and pick something to sketch. Tuesday I suggested we try to improve the sketch. At first Anna didn't want to make any improvements to hers but finally she came around and worked on it a bit. Wednesday I suggested we add some colour to our sketches. Thursday I suggested we work on the sketches some more. Anna decided her sketch was done and she wanted to draw another one, so I told her to go ahead. Friday I suggested she add colour to her second sketch.

I wish I had taken pictures of our sketches each day to show the changes but I didn't think of it the first three days.

I had decided to sketch a fallen log in our back yard. I didn't spend much time on my sketch, but here is my finished sketch

 

Anna decided to sit on the steps to our basement and sketch our dog, Pepsi. In her sketch you can see her feet on the steps and Pepsi sitting at the bottom of the steps. The thought balloon above Pepsi's head shows that Pepsi is thinking about how much she loves Anna.The second day she added the background of the railing and the concrete area Pepsi was sitting in and the tree and play equipment in the backyard behind it. The third day she added some colour. Here is her finished sketch

 

For her second sketch she decided to draw one of her dolls. Here is her initial sketch

 

Friday she added some colour to her sketch. Here is the finished sketch, with the doll she was sketching in the background.

 

I think she did a super job!

 

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First full week of school - so far so good :-)

This was our first full week of school and if every week is as good as this week we will have a good year. Dare I hope? I feel much more together this year than I have at this time any other year. We seem to be nicely falling into a grove. I really hope it continues.

Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers does a homeschool weekly wrap-up and I've decided try to participate this year. That's the inspiration for this post.

I think one of the reasons for our success so far this year is the Homeschool Helper app. I am loving it! I can see room for some improvement in the app but it is definitely a help in keeping me focused. I love checking the completed lesson box as we complete each lesson.

Another reason for our success so far is the method I've come up with to keep us on track. Besides the Homeschool Helper app, where I input our lesson plans before we do them, Anna and I also both have our own clip board to hold papers for us to journal about the lessons after the fact and our own binders to hold completed papers.

 

Anna does daily journaling pages. Every day she puts the date at the top of a new page and then as we do the subject throughout the day she writes the subject name on the page and writes at least one sentence about the lesson for that subject when we complete it for the day. Once both sides of a journaling page have been filled in, so after two days, the page gets taken out of the clipboard and placed into Anna's binder.

 

I do subject journaling pages. I have a page in my clipboard for each subject and I write the date and a summary of what we've done each day on each subject after we have completed it. Once both sides of a sheet have been filled in it gets transferred from my clipboard to my binder.

 

One other thing that helps us stay on track and feel accomplished is Anna's subject list on her ipad. We made the list in the reminders app and she gets to choose what order she wants to do the subjects in and to check them off when they are complete. She really enjoys that. Every morning we just uncheck the list and start again.

 

I tend to start school slow each year and gradually introduce the subjects into our schedule, but we're further ahead this year than past years. So far the subjects that we are doing are Bible, language arts (reading, writing, spelling, and grammar), math, social studies (history and current events), art, and music.

We start each day with what we call calendar time. Basically this is just a time when we write today's day and date on our white board and Anna writes it on her journaling page. We also discuss how many days are left in the month and if there is anything special about the day.

Next comes Bible time. Anna has been watching me do my bible reading using the YouVersion app on my iPad for some time now and she asked if she could do the same, so I set up an account for her and we checked out the reading plans to see which ones would be good for her. We were excited to find they had some Bible reading plans from Phil Vischer, creator of the What's in the Bible DVDs which Anna loves. She decided she wanted to do the Walk With Jesus: 21 Days Through Matthew plan. Each day there's a video, a devotional reading and scripture passage to read, and many days there is a colouring sheet to print. She has been working through it all week and loving it.

Scripture memory is also a part of our Bible time. We are working our way through the list of scriptures in the Parent Handbook for Scripture Memory. Although the list is grouped by age we are ignoring the age indicators and simply working our way through the list. We are using the Scripture Typer app to learn the verses. I've been using the app for a while now myself and thought Anna would enjoy it so I set her up on it. I loaded the first lot of verses into the app for her and she has mastered 5 verses this week. Every day she reviews the verses that need reviewing and starts a new one if she feels ready. She has been enjoying it so far.

Once the calendar time and Bible time are done Anna is free to do the rest in whatever order she wants, and everyday was different this week so in no particular order here is a summary of what we did in each subject this week.

For grammar we are using First Language Lessons. I love how simple, yet thorough the lessons are in this program. We started Level two this year and this week we did the first five lessons. We talked about common and proper nouns, pronouns, action verbs and state of being verbs. All but the state of being verb lesson was a review of last year's work. Poem memorization is also part of the program and this week we reviewed the poems we learned last year and started work on a new poem - The Goops. We don't quite have the poem memorized yet but Anna does read it with great expression.

 

We started using Writing With Ease for writing last year. We enjoyed it, so we are continuing with it this year and have started Level two. We did the lessons for week one this week which involved narrating Aseop's The Grasshopper and the Owl and The Fox and the Stork. Anna had her first dictation exercise this week and was excited to do her second dictation exercise also. Hopefully the excitement keeps up.

Spelling Power is a program I used with my other children and I decided it was time to start spelling with Anna. I love the way this program is set up for short lessons and you can move along at the pace appropriate for your child. Each day you give the child a pretest/teaching test of about 5 minutes and then you spend about 5 minutes studying the words the child got wrong. You're also supposed to spend about 5 minutes doing skill exercises but so far our pretest and studying has been taking up more than the suggested time so we've skipped the skill exercises. We're getting faster though so maybe we'll fit some skill exercises in next week. Anna has really been enjoying spelling so far. This week we got through the first four word lists, learning the rules for four of the short vowels (a,e,i,o). Anna did a great job! She misspelled just one or two words each day and needed only one extra day to study a word before mastering it. She loves that one of the studying steps is to write the word in the box of sugar we made just for that purpose. The words have been very simple so far and I'm hoping she can keep up the good attitude as the words get harder.

 

I am not using a set program for reading. My plan is that we always have a read aloud we are working on together and that we have a time of silent reading every day when Anna can read whatever she wants to herself.

Presently for our read aloud we are listening to The Wonderful Wizard of Oz from the Books Should Be Free site. I also downloaded the book from that site into IBooks so we are following along in IBooks with the audio. We actually started this about a week or so ago and by the end of this week we made it to chapter 13. In a notebook we have been keeping a list of characters as they appear in the book and writing a short summary of each chapter after we listen to it. Anna is really enjoying it and asks to listen to a couple of chapters most days.

At the beginning of the week Anna started a new Magic Kitten book. She has read a few books in this series lately. Moonlight Mischief is the book she is working on at the moment and she's made it to chapter seven so far. She enjoys silent reading time and is quick to grab her book and set in to reading.

Last year we started using Story of the World for history. We worked our way through Volume One: Ancient Times last year and enjoyed it, so we started Volume Two: The Middle Ages this year. This week we finished chapter one, about the fall of Rome, and started chapter two, about the early days of Britian. We read a section for the book each day doing shared reading - Anna and I taking turns reading paragraphs. Then we do the review questions and write a sentence or two narration about what we read. We did pretty good with this most of the week but Friday was a disaster. Anna had left history for last and she was tired and her attention was gone. She couldn't recall any of the information when we did the review questions so we will be repeating that reading on Monday, hopefully with better results.

Along with our history, we also covered a couple of current events in social studies this week. On September 11th we spent some time discussing what happened on September 11, 2001. We googled for pictures of New York before and after the destruction of the twin towers. We looked up New York and Washington, D.C. on our map. Friday we spent some time learning about Jonathan Trappe and his attempted crossing of the Atlantic powered by 370 hellium balloons. He failed in his attempt and landed on the west coast of Newfoundland not too far from where we live. We had some fun exploring Jonathan Trappe's sight and watching the videos on it earlier in the day and then Anna was quite interested in watching the news reports about his landing in Newfoundland later.

Anna has been struggling with Math. We've tried a number of different approaches and programs but it just does not seem to be clicking and sticking. Last month I downloaded and read Let's Play Math and I've decided to take the author's advice and put the textbooks and teachers manuals aside for a while and work on cultivating the aha! factor in math. This week I realized that I had tried too quickly to move Anna from concrete to abstract in math and that she needs me to slow down a bit and have some fun with her, so that's what we've been doing. And we really have had fun. And she really is learning. I intend to write more about this in another blog post later in the week so suffice it to say that this past week we touched on the concepts of measuring, money recognition and value, counting by tens, and adding and subtracting to ten. We did this by playing games such as race to ten, coin trade in (which we have retitled capture the looney), race to 100, add/equal, and measure me. I will add links to explanations of these games as I blog about them.

For music this year we are going to pick a song to learn each week. This week we decided to learn Chris Tomlin's Jesus Messiah. We found a YouTube video of Jesus Messiah and we listened to that and sang along with it each day. We printed off the lyrics so we could practice without the video when we got confident as the week progressed. Friday I taped Anna singing the song accapella.

 

For art this year I have decided that we will work on a least one art project each week. I have a blog post all ready to post about that with pictures of our projects from this week so suffice it to say here that Anna did two great sketches this week.

And that's our report for this week. It is a lot longer than I intended it to be. I promise next week won't be as long - maybe. :-)

So how was your week?

 

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Our Homeschool Space

Lisa, at Canadian Homeschooler, is posting a weekly homeschool photo challenge. I think I might try to participate throughout the year.

The first challenge - to post a picture of your school space - was posted earlier this week.

We don't have a space dedicated exclusively to homeschooling. Our homeschooling takes place all over our house. This is a picture I snapped today of Anna doing her silent reading. The white board sharing the couch with her tends to follow us wherever we might be working at the moment. There is a small bookcase at the end of the couch which holds most of our material. The two fold-up desks in the foreground are are new additions, and we're loving them. They, too, get moved around wherever we happen to need them. One is mine and one is Anna's.

 

The big world map on our living room wall plays a major role in our homeschooling. It gets references any time a place is mentioned throughout the day, be it in a book we're reading, a history or geography lesson, or a video, movie, or tv show we're watching. Along side the map is where we post printout of poems, songs, or other memory material we are working on.

 

My girl is big time into art so her art work is displayed in many places throughout the house.

 

 

So, that's a little peep into some of the homeschooling spaces in our home.

 

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Coin trade game

 

Inspired by a game suggestion in the Let's Play Math book, Anna and I have been having some fun. She loves the game and is learning the value of coins without realizing she's doing math. :-)

You need about 9 pennies, 4 nickels, 3 dimes, 4 quarters, and one looney per player.

We have double this because just two of us are playing. We keep our coins and a die in a ziplock bag.

Players take turns rolling the die. Each dot equals one cent. Players collect the number of cents indicated by their roll and then check to see if they can make any trades before the next player rolls. Once they have five pennies they trade it in for a nickel, two nickels get traded for a dime, two dimes and a nickel get traded for a quarter, and four quarters get traded for a looney. The first to get the looney wins.

Here's a video of us playing the game. You can tell how much she loves it by her excitement at the end, even though she lost.

 

 

 

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2k walk in 30 minutes

I walked again today! It's been a long time. Life got I'm the way and messed up my routine. Today everything finally fell in place for me to get a walk in. I walked 2k in 30 minutes. I know that is a very slow pace, but its better than not doing anything at all.

My walking may still be sporadic for a bit cause life is still crazy, but I will try to get in a walk here and there when I can. And I will blog about it because it helps me to be more motivated.

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I'm a grandmother!

...To a beautiful tiny baby girl. She came early! She was only 3 pounds 15 ounces, but she's perfectly healthy. God is good!

I was at my cousins house having a laugh the night before our river rafting adventure when I got a call from my youngest son. He was away working but he had received a call from his girl saying she was in pre-term labor and they were prepping her for a c-section.

Needless to say that changed my focus. I felt so helpless being so far from both of them. I did the only thing I could do, I prayed - for a healthy delivery, for peace and safety for mom, and for peace and a quick flight home for dad.

A couple hours later I got that word that we had a baby girl and that she and momma were doing fine. Daddy was still trying to get home to them.

This is the first look we got of our baby girl, sent in a text message.

My cousins had all gone to their rooms earlier having given me orders to let them know when I had any more info, or if I got any pictures. I ran around the house making sure everyone saw our baby and we all celebrated together.

Because the baby was so tiny they decided to fly her to a children's hospital where she would be sure to get the care she needed. Baby was flown out in the morning and momma was flown out in the afternoon. Daddy was still trying to get home to his girls.

I never really understood how tiny the baby was until I saw a picture of her in her mommy's arms

 

After a long couple of days travel daddy finally got to see his girl in person. Because she was so tiny and had to spend most of her time in an incubator, he didn't get to hold her right away but I was anxious to get a picture of her with her daddy.

When he finally got to hold her he quickly became a pro and enjoyed every minute of it.

I haven't had the opportunity to hold my granddaughter yet. I haven't even seen her in person much. Only two people are allowed in to see her at a time so any time I go visit her either her mommy or daddy have to leave, and I don't like to take that time away from them.

I am happy to report, however, that she is growing and doing great.

I can't wait to hold her and kiss her. Soon, hopefully.

 

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How I found out I was going to be a grandmother

Way back in January I was sitting in a movie theatre waiting for Les Miserable to start when my cell phone rang. I quickly stopped the ringing and checked to see who it was. It was my youngest son. He rarely calls. My first thought was that something was wrong, so I quickly sent him a text. This was our conversation:

I immediately started to cry, and the movie hadn't even started. :-) I quickly sent off a few more texts - spelling, grammar mistakes and all -

So, that was a Tuesday.

Four days later, on a Saturday night, at 6:51 in the evening, I get this text from my oldest son

 

It was a little odd for them to be going out to our place, about a 40 minute drive from their place, at that time of night, especially on the snowy night that it was, but we had friends visiting for the weekend that they wanted to see and probably wouldn't get to see if they didn't come then so I didn't think too much about it. They came and we had a nice little visit. Just before they left my son got his wife's purse and took something out of it and presented it to me saying that it was the real reason the came to visit. This is what he handed me

 

Needless to say I was in tears again and the grin that I had started wearing Tuesday got a little bigger. Both my boys were going to be daddies!

Both couples swore us to secrecy for a while until they saw the doctor and knew more about how far along they were. That prompted me to send the boys this text a few days later

 

So, that's how I found out I was going to be a grandmother, twice. When they finally saw the doctors and got their due dates all straightened out they were actually due just a little more than a week apart!

Here are the two beautiful mommies showing off their baby bumps a few months back.

 

 

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Community Bible Experience

I heard about the Community Bible Experience quite a while ago and loved the concept but couldn't get anyone to commit to doing it with me. Recently i decided to sign up for the free trial anyway, just to see if it was as great as I thought it was.

I downloaded the complete Books of the Bible:NT into iBooks and I love it! I had already started the YouVersion Community Bible Experience:NT reading plan a few days earlier and was really enjoying doing the readings in YouVersion but I like it even better reading it from the Books of the Bible:NT in IBooks. There is a better option for making highlights and notes and there's also the additional introduction to the books. The introduction to the books are great!

My one disappointment is that I haven't figured out how to access the sample audio files on my iPad. I don't think it's a problem with the files; it think its my lack of know how on how to get them to work.

I would love to actually do this the way it is meant to be done - with a group of people. Maybe some day.

 

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No walking this week, but lots of excitement!

Its been a crazy, but exciting week since I last posted. I haven't managed to do any walking, but that does not mean I've given up, just that life is in the way for a bit.

Just a quick update on the excitement right now. I'll expand on it more in later posts. Two exciting events interrupted my walking routine.

The first event was a fun filled weekend with some female family members. One aunt, one sister, one daughter, five cousins, and one cousin's daughter, plus me, added up to ten crazy females gathered in one house a week ago today to set out for a crazy adventure the next day.

The second event was one I was not expecting to happen for almost another two months. I became a grandmother!

I'll share more about both these exciting events soon, but for now I just wanted to explain that my walking routine has been interrupted for a week, but that does not mean its over and done with. I'll be back at it again soon.

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Walking - day 1 of week 2

Walked again today. Normal Dawson route. I remembered to start the timer for the walk but I forgot to stop it when we finished walking, so I'm not sure how long it took, but I think it was about 30 minutes.

I had a new walking partner today. Anna's been wanting to walk with me every since I started walking. Today I decided to take her. I told her it was a test to see if she could come again or not. I think she's decided not to come anymore. It was too long for her.

She started out fine and was very entertaining. Here's a sample of the entertainment she provided.

 

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Summary of week 1 of walking and on to week two

Some tweets by friends and acquaintances about their running reignited my desire to run. Realizing I am far from being in shape to run I decided to start walking.

Day 1 - Wednesday, July 3

Starting slow. Walked 20 minutes. Main Street, 10th Avenue, Elmwood Crescent and cut across yard to join into Earle, 8th Avenue back to Main.

Day 2 - Thursday, July 4

Started with a 25 minute walk. Slight route change. Skipped Elmwood and went right to Earle. Went for a second walk in the night with Sarah. Passed by Earle and went right to Midland for the loop. Did it in 40 minutes for a total of 65 minutes walking on day 2.

Day 3 - Friday, July 5

Started the day with a 30 minute walk. Another slight route change. Skipped Earle and went to Dawson.

Day 4 - Saturday, July 6

Started the day again with a 30 minute walk, same route as yesterday.

Day 5 - Sunday, July 7

Didn't walk til late in the evening. Went with Sarah again and did the same Midland route we did last time in about the same time - 40 minutes.

Day 6 - Monday, July 8

Started the day again with the normal 30 minute walk on the Dawson loop.

Day 7 - Tuesday, July 9

Started the day again with the normal Dawson loop and cut a bit of time off. Did the route in 28 minutes 50 seconds.

And that was week 1. A great start!

Today was day one of week two. I didn't get a walk in until late this evening. Walked with Sarah again and did our normal Midland loop. I completely forgot to time the walk but I think it took about 40 minutes.

 

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Trying out Blogsy

I've discovered what appears to be a great app for blogging using an iPad. I have struggled with blogging since my lap top died, over two years ago. I thought that I would easily pick it up again about a year ago when I got my iPad, but I discovered it wasn't as easy as I thought to blog from an iPad. I returned to lamenting the death of my laptop and gave up on blogging - until now.

Yesterday I decided to start blogging about my progress in walking, but I almost quit again before posting my first post! The app that I had downloaded a nice while ago is very frustrating to work with. I decided to go ahead and use it for my first post but to search for something better. That's when i came across Blogsy.

I spent the morning watching the How-to-Videos on their site and becoming more and more amazed. Blogsy appears to be a great app! This is the first of what I hope will be many blog posts that I will create using Blogsy.

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Walking Again

A week ago today I decided to start walking again. I thought that tweeting about my decision and progress might help hold me accountable, so everyday I tweeted how long I walked. Then I got to thinking, that's a bit boring for tweets, and also sometimes I wanted to say more than what could be said in a tweet, so I started thinking about blogging my progress. So, here I am.

It's been a long time since I even visited my blog. My first thought when I logged in is that it is in desperate need of a makeover, but I have no idea how to go about doing a blog makeover from an iPad so that's not going to happen any time soon.  I almost let that stop me from blogging now, thinking I should do the makeover first but I seriously don't know when I'll be able to do a makeover and I didn't want to delay starting to blog, so here goes.

I recently became aware that some of my friends and acquaintances in my community, where I've been living now for almost two years, are runners. I don't know if they've been runners for years or if they just recently started. I learned about their running when some of them tweeted about it. That's what got me thinking about it again.

Back in January 2009 I actually started a blog, called Couch Potatoes to Road Runners http://couchpotatoestoroadrunners.blogspot.ca/ , as a basis for a challenge between some family and friends. In the first post on that blog http://couchpotatoestoroadrunners.blogspot.ca/2009/01/how-this-blog-came-about.html I shared that years before a friend had told me about a walk/run program that she enjoyed and I had tried it for a while and loved it, but didn't keep it up. I thought that getting some family and friends to join me in the challenge in 2009 might help me stick to it, but that didn't work either. In a post on May 11, 2009 http://couchpotatoestoroadrunners.blogspot.ca/2009/05/faithful-in-training-but-not-in.html I shared how I was disappointed in the lack of participation of others and I wrote my last post on that blog May 31,2009. At that time I was still faithfully training and had worked my way up to being able to run for 25 minutes straight without feeling winded. I was pretty proud of that but I think the training petered out shortly after that. 

I did try to start to train to run again once or twice after that but then I finally just gave up. I even tried just walking, but I didn't stick to that either. 

Reading about others close to me running sparked my interest again. I am certainly in no shape to run right now and I seriously don't know if I will work up to that or not.  For now I am content with just walking.  We'll see what happens as time goes on.

NaBloPoMo November 2 - live anywhere

Friday, November 2, 2012
If you could live anywhere, where would it be?

We just moved into our new house in a new community just a little over a year ago and I honestly have no desire to live anywhere else. I finally feel settled.

NaBloPoMo - favorite quote

It's November 1st - the first day of NaNoWriMo and also the first day of NaBloPoMo for this month.  I've been thinking about NaNoWriMo for a while now but I completely forgot about NaBloPoMo until today.

I would really like to do NaNoWriMo but I really don't have the time or set up for it. I did make a start today but it just made me realize how truly impossible it is with my present situation. I may, however, continue to plod along.  We'll see.

Rediscovering NaBloPoMo today gave me some hope when I thought all hope was gone. It gave me a new goal to shoot for, one that I think is a little more doable. These will be far from perfect. There will likely be many spelling and grammar mistakes and much fluff with little substance.  I do this simply for me right now and it's important that I just do it without striving for perfection.  I'm hoping it will help me in many ways. So, here I start.

Thursday, November 1, 2012
Tell us your favourite quotation and why.

I think my favourite quotation is actually a Bible verse - "thou wilt keep Him in perfect peace whose mind is stayed on thee", from Isaiah 26:3. This verse is my lifeline in every difficulty and struggle that comes my way. The faster I remember to stop and get my mind back on God and to trust Him, the faster I get back my peace back.

My First Book Launch

Well, it wasn't actually my book launch, as I have never written a book, but it was the first book launch that I ever attended. I'm hoping it won't be the last.

I was excited when my dad pointed out to me that one of the people that attended my church in my new community was none other than Newfoundland author, Nellie Strowbridge. I had read her books Catherine Snow and The Newfoundland Tongue and I took advantage of the first opportunity I got to let her know that I was a fan. I was thrilled to get to chat with her about her past books and ones she is working on.  I was really excited when I received an invitation from her publisher saying that she had requested I be sent an invitation to attend the launch of her new book, Maiden From the Sea.

I asked her permission to tape the launch and post it to my blog. She graciously agreed.  It's taken me a few days to get it ready to post.  I had taped it with my phone and needed to edit it before posting it. There were people coughing and moving about and chatting during parts of the taping and I wanted to get rid of that stuff.  I had never edited a video before and didn't have a video editing program and the only thing I had to work on was my phone.  I downloaded IMovie and googled help to learn how to use it and I finally got it done.

Here is the video I put together with clips from the book launch that I attended in Deer Lake May 19.

Yard Tour Part 2

Last post I took you on a tour of our front yard and one side of the house.  This time we'll tour the other side of the house and the backyard.  It really is not an exciting tour at all right now because there is nothing there yet but it will be fun to watch the yard change over the years.  This part of the tour takes place in two videos because I ran out of space on my phone on the first video.  The second video is a little frustrating for two reasons - the wind plays havoc with the sound at times and Anna interrupts often.  Oh well, this is simply for my benefit really so I'm not too worried about it.

Side Yard



Backyard

Come Tour My Yard

We moved into a new house on totally undeveloped property back in August of 2011.  I have some pictures somewhere of what it was like then.  I'll try to find those and post them later. We still haven't done much at all to the property, other than cut down the forest of tall grasses in the back yard.  We do want to develop it but it will not happen quickly.  I've been on a Dave Ramsey kick for a while now and Sheldon is playing along somewhat so it is my hope that we will only make improvements to the property as we can pay cash for it.  We've had a few "discussions" about that so we'll see what happens.

Anyway, I decided that I would like to do a kind of video documentary of what we do with the property over the years so I taped the first part of that today.  This video takes you on a tour of our front yard and along one side of the house. Not much to see there yet but here's what it looks like now.