He is serious.

I think Dakota is serious about this photography thing. This is what he had put on the back of my van a few weeks ago.

He is doing good, keeping steady business. He always has pictures to edit. There has got to be some trick to editing faster, but he hasn't found it yet.

He now has a studio set up at the house next door to us. And he has a field and a pond for an outside studio.

Would appreciate prayer

I went to the doctor today. I figured we would try something new and I had high hopes for something to give me relief. I was so disappointed with the out come of today's appointment.

He told me I was out of his league and I needed to find another doctor.

I'm already in so much pain and just feeling horrible so I've been down, but tonight I am really feeling down and feel like there is no hope for me.

I'm trying to look into all my options and praying that the Lord shows me what I need to do.

Fractions

Today Elijah and I went over fractions. He has done some fraction work in a workbook before, but I wanted to do some hands on fraction learning.

So I had him to draw 4 pizzas, which is kind of funny since he has never had pizza. He really didn't know what went on a pizza so we talked about that and decided to make 4 different pizzas, peperoni, mushroom, bell pepper and olives.



Elijah cut the pizzas out.

Then I told him he needed a whole pizza, one pizza cut in half, one pizza cut in thirds and the last pizza cut in fourths.
Then I wrote fractions on the white board and had him to show me using the pizza pieces that he made.

We learned that the denominator of a fraction tells how many equal sized pieces something is divided into. And that the numerator of a fraction tells how many pieces of the denominator there are.

Tomorrow we are going to use our pizza pieces and compare fractions to decide what is larger and what is equal. We may even add some fractions.

Baby, It's Cold!

It is 19 degrees right now and believe me, we are not used to this kind of cold.

Our old house does not have any heat other than a couple of plug in electric heaters that we bought from Wal-Mart and with temps like this these heaters aren't doing anything.

This week the kids and I have been closing off the school room and the kitchen and only trying to heat those two rooms. We use the two electric heaters and turn the oven on and open the door. After several hours we can get it warm enough. But when Jody comes home he opens up the living room and dinning room and all our efforts seem useless. We can get two rooms fairly warm, but it's not enough to warm up 4 rooms.

We do keep the playroom and bedrooms closed off. It's really cold back there, but we don't go to that part of the house unless we are getting in the bed or really really need something. Dakota went back there a few minutes ago and the clock said it was 38 degrees back there.

Anyway I'm not complaining, okay, I'd really like for it to warm up, but I do enjoy the kids and I locked in the two rooms spending the day together talking, laughing and picking on each other. I get warm fuzzy feelings just from the closeness that I feel with my kids. I LOVE spending time with my kids and I feel like my days are numbered with this being Dakota's last year of homeschooling. So for now I like us being stuck in the same room together.

Back to School

We started back to school today. It wasn't a pretty day! I really try to find fun stuff and keep things hands on as much as possible so I really don't understand Elijah trying to find ways to get out of school.

Today, first I had him do a quick workbook page that took him about 4 minutes. As soon as he finished he asked if he could take a break. WHAT? 4 minutes of school and you need a break?
That did not set well with me. All morning he worked harder at trying to get out of school than he did at any of his work.

I had found a short (like 3 minute) video online about snow that I wanted him to watch. I start the video. He starts to watch, but then starts talking and asking me can he turn a game on at his computer, but he won't play it yet. That did not set well with me at all! I blew up, we both cried.
I don't know what his problem was, but I bet it doesn't show up tomorrow.

We did continue with school and it did turn out alright, I just hate we had the blow up.

BEFORE the big blow up Elijah made a pyramid out of sugar cubes. I had wanted him to do this when we finished our Egypt unit, but it was really hard to find a box of sugar cubes around town.




The finished pyramid.
We also worked with money today and started a new creative writing book.