Catching up

Well... My first post and then nothing ;) What can I say. We had a virus... the computer kind... and I couldn't get online easily until today.

Thanksgiving was wonderful. We made Thankful Turkeys and before we had dinner we all said something that we were thankful for, I wrote it down, and we all put it in our turkey.


We also played some of the games we learned about in school that the Pilgrims and Indians played at the first Thanksgiving.

A relay race


broad jump

ring toss

Friday morning we got up and went to the mountains to pick out our Christmas tree. It's our first live Christmas tree and everyone was excited!


Saturday we started decorating it. I have a feeling it will take us until Christmas to get done.

We are going to light our first Advent candle today. We've never done Advent candles before, but thought it would be a neat tradition to start. But it is not the time to do it when children are falling asleep at the table.

I'll have pictures of the Christmas tree and candles later today or tomorrow.

My first post!

I'm about as excited as I get... about Thanksgiving? Christmas? No. We came up with a name for our school! None of us are creative namers. My first dog's name was Stray. Matthew's blog is East's Weather Blog. Jayden named our dog Puppy.... you get the idea!

Cornerstone Academy it is!!

Cornerstone as defined on dictionary.com

- something that is essential, indispensable, or basic
- the chief foundation on which something is constructed or developed

We want to lay the basis for both our children's education and faith. It is our God-given job as parents to disciple our children, and we feel we cannot accomplish this if they are away from us for 8 hours a day. We also feel we are more capable of teaching our children because we know them and care for and about them more than even the best teacher in a school system can possibly be.

A lot of people ask us "what about socialization?" Well.... kids aren't supposed to "socialize" in school?! They get in trouble for socializing, or at least they did when I was in school. But, our kids have more friends than we do. They play with kids in the neighborhood at least once or twice a week. We go to church as a family on Sunday mornings and our Sunday school class is an integrated class, which means all age groups attend, and we get to supervise their social interaction with people of all ages. They do AWANA and children's choir at church, which is almost all about socializing. And they play sports once they are old enough. This winter we are actually doing basketball for the first time. That should be interesting.

We don't know what we'll do in the future. We are taking this one year (and a lot of times one day) at a time. In the mean time... we love it and wouldn't have it any other way. It's loud, whiny, lots of screaming and crying and fighting, and full of love.