At the end of August we headed west to Lake Michigan. It was an awesome little family trip. Here we are on the pier in South Haven.

A visit to South Haven isn't complete without a trip to the famous lighthouse. So we did that first!

 Ari loved the sand.

Daddy and the boy.

Fun in the sun and sand.

We believe this is Sephi's head. The waves were pretty wild that day.

                                           Walk on the beach at sunset. Gid loved the rocks.

                                                              Happy little bedbugs.

What an awesome day!

Happier than ever!

The Hobby That is Taking Over Our Life

We learned about aquaponics from an in-flight magazine in April of 2010. Unemployment stopped us from experimenting with the newfound technology right away, but we did alot of reading and surfing to learn all we could. In June this year, within two weeks of moving into our new home we purchased our first IBC tanks. Then we went on vacation. Returning from our trip back to Mo. with the flu, didn't stop us from setting up our system right away.
A month later we had fish, bacteria growing happily, nitrites becoming nitrates and a system waiting for its first plants! So exciting!
Our plants were grown for us by Brendan Bradley, a new friend with a head full of knowledge about plants and permaculture. In went the tomatoes, happily soaking up the red and blue spectrum from 8 T5 grow bulbs.
This is where the hobby gets out of control...
Bry and I went to Florida! If you think that a weekend at Disney World was the plan, or something romantic was in the air you would be wrong. (well romance was at least thought of ;)

We attended the first annual Aquaponics Association Conference! It WAS AWESOME.
Friday we visited two aquaponic farms. One a research farm and another a full blown commercial farm built in a greenhouse on top of a three story building. Totally cool.
Saturday we spent in classes taught by the "experts". The cool thing is that the experts have only been doing this for three to four years! We learned alot!
In fact, we learned so much we have to take apart our system and start over! Oh darn!
We also spent some fun time meeting people and at the book signing for Sylvia Bernsteins new book, Aquaponic Gardening. Got our copy!!

We came home really wanting to involve the kids in our crazy new hobby. What better way to do that than to make it part of the school day! So, I found the Disney PlanetChallenge to help in this endeavor. The kids and I will be creating a basement system for your schoolroom and learn all the science behind how and why aquaponics works! The hook for the kids is the all expense paid trip to Disney World if we win the challenge! (I wouldn't mind heading back to Florida for a more relaxing vacation too!)

Bryan stayed up all night fixing our system last night, so we wouldn't lose our plants or fish. We mainly had to fix the filtering.  Here is our system before

and here it is now, awaiting some more gravel and our little lettuce and chard plants.

We cut two 55 gallon barrels in half to create 4 grow beds. This is a use what you have system. Bryan is enjoying the challenge of the unique plumbing. These tomatoes have been in the system for about a month. When we got them they were 3 or 4 inches tall.

So life has been busy.

I am sure you will all forgive me for not posting when you hear about our schedule the last couple of months.
June 7 close on house 4pm. Move in by 8pm
June 8 First camp activity I was in charge of....I missed it. Migraine.
The next few weeks were filled with trying to make the internet happen, get unpacked as much as possible, taking kids to the library, enjoying hiking adventures (I only got lost once, Jake knew the way), getting ready for our trip to MO, and thrift store shopping.
June 15 5 mile Hike with the Young Women. So fun. I need more excersize!
June 18 Went to somewhere past Battle Creek to pick up some IBC tanks for our aquaponics system. Fun trip!
June 20th-? Trying to get the basement painted.
June 27 Bry leaves for a business trip. I am left to prepare 8 children for a big trip alone!
June 30-head for Peoria, IL to pick up Bryan on our way to Nauvoo, IL, got stuck in construction traffic because I didn't understand my GPS. We made it anyway.
July 1st Nauvoo IL Yay Keenan and Suzanne!
July 2nd on to Missouri for more family and friends
July 4th Celebrate Independence day at Sarah and Kevin's
July 5-6 Kids spend the day puking . By evening I am sick too.
July 6th-Bryan has had enough...he takes us home. No one throws up on the way. A miracle!
July 7-9 Working on our aquaponics system-even though we feel crummy. I think this is when I finally finished the basement painting.
July 11-16 Four girls participate in the community production of The Magic Tinderbox. Daily rehearsals, trips to the thrift store for costume parts and lots of sewing. We lived for a week with Queen Featherbrain, the Duchess of Vainglorious, and two lowly (but very cute) servants. I couldn't find the camera for the performance!! Will contact other parents for pics.
July 18th Countdown to Girls Camp begins! But first...
July 20-23 Jacob and Jolie head off to Nauvoo for Youth Conference. We tried to get all the dishes done without help from Jo
July 21-Gid the Kid turns 6. We had planned to have a campout and cook food over a fire. Alas it was over 100 degrees! So I bought a sprinkler and popsicles and that made the birthday boy happy.
July 22-Spend 6 hours cleaning and organizing the garage. Moving lots of boxes into the places they will actually go and trying not to get overwhelmed. I can park in the garage by the end. It was worth it!
July 23-found awesome school desks and the find of the year...a 9 ft Stainless steel, 3 tub sink for $50 at a School asset sale!!
July 25-31 Lots of camp prep. Brain not on the planet. Did get a chance to start painting a bookshelf though. Also trying to ween the baby. She is NOT a baby anymore!
July 26 Spent the day at Silver Lake with kids. Very needed break!
July 30 Jake heads to Scout Camp/High Adventure
Aug 2 Send my big girls off to camp! I join them the next evening.
Aug 3-6 Camp in Hiram OH! It was awesome. We have the best girls!
Aug 8 No obligations in sight. Phew! Ack! Have to start thinking about the new school year!
Aug 11 Jacob's first day of Commando Krav Maga. Not sure how I feel about that. But he is happy.
Aug 13 Bry and 4 kids head to the lake with a friend for a glorious morning of canoeing and fishing. Four others and myself head into town for a morning of garage sales and window shopping. Wonderful day! LOVE where we live. That night I drove some youth to the Stake center for a dance. Then I was dragged on the traditional after dance trip to Wendy's (we ended up at McD's). Got everyone home by midnight! We have such good youth in our ward. Love being with them! (including mine of course)

And there had many things transpired which, in the eyes of some, would be great and marvelous; nevertheless, they cannot all be written in this post; yea, this post cannot contain even a hundredth part of what was done among so many people in the space of two and half months!

I will post some pics again soon!

Been too long....

LIfe has been so full lately that I occasionally feel guilty about not blogging but just haven't had the time.

We are in our house....

This is the awesome view of our front yard out my bedroom window. Whenever I look out I can't believe I get to be somewhere so beautiful.

Here are a few pics from the last few months.

We have gone hiking several times. So many awesome trails to choose from. We all love it. Jake has also gone biking on the trails with the scouts.

Gid the kids turned 6 years old in July! Wow! He spends his days on his bigger bike...mostly crashing.

I rarely get to be in the pictures! This one is taken courtesy of Emilie. These two are my crazies. Love 'em!

This pic is dedicated to my Mom. We are playing the penny game. If you guess which hand Mom is holding the penny in you get to move up one step. First one to the top wins! Not sure if this was a desperate Mom invention or someone else's genius but it sure comes in handy in a house full of unpacked boxes. (In case you were wondering, the dress up box had just been found.)

Stay tuned for some more catching up...including but not limited to: Joseph's birthday, Aliyah's birthday, Jakes birthday, moving into the house, the park, the library, the Magic tinderbox, Girl's camp, summertime in Michigan, aquaponics in the shop. (Do you think I will really get to all that?)

I will try!

A house!

This has been such a long ordeal I am not sure whether to woot or not! We made another offer on the original house after the sellers lowered their price again. We also have different financing options now that makes the septic system a problem we can deal with. So excited they accepted our offer on Monday!
Moving forward with hope. We celebrated Monday night with an ice cream cone at Zou Zou's in downtown Chelsea. It was a great place and yummy!
When we drove by the house we saw families of geese and ducks enjoying our ponds. Can't wait to be there!!

Part II: The Michigan Saga

To summarize: We were welcomed into the home of the most perfect couple on earth at the end of February. They have already served two missions. I think they have decided that we are their third!

 At the time we still had hope that the search for our own home would be short. Over that last month we have gone from hope to near dispair multiple times. Every time we found a house that would work or at one point a home that we thought was amazingly perfect. Someone else was a step ahead and had already made an offer.
Did the Lord want us to live in someone else's home forever!!?

We have had a lovely month though if you don't count the house hunt.

Sarah's birthday compelled cheerfulness and a trip to the Ann Arbor Hands-On Museum. The kids had a blast. I, of course, forgot the camera.

Our three oldest participated in the Stake roadshow. Our ward performed a praiseworthy story of Snow White and the Seven Dwarves.  Jolie was a singing tree, Aliyah a dwarf named Hope, and Jake, a dwarf called Honesty.

Bryan and I have gone on a few dates into Ann Arbor. We tried to go to a vegitarian restaurant but were disuaded from that scrumptious idea when we discovered that Ann Arbor parking garages were not intended to house 12 passenger vans. We plan to return with friends in a smaller car!

He and I both recieved callings in the ward. He as the 1st counselor in the Sunday School (somewhere he hasn't served before) and as the teacher for the 14/15 yr old class. I was asked to head up the Girls Camp committee this year. I am really excited as we go camp on the Johnson Farm near Kirtland Ohio!

The younger kids and I visited one of the parks in the area to learn about making maple syrup. We helped get sap from a tree and watched as it boiled down over a hot wood stove. We are all looking forward to having a maple tree of our own to make some maple syrup next year!

Our overworked and flabbergasted realtor has been a genuine friend. She invited us to visit her at home and play in her big building that is the perfect place for kids to unwind during the cold winter months. It houses a pool table, trampoline, ping pong table, and riding toys. We've enjoyed two visits to this haven of excitement.

One day on the way home from there we took a road we had not travelled before. As we were almost home Bryan spied a long unused driveway winding up to a home on the top of a wooded hill. Upon realizing the home was empty we turned around and went to check it out.

It seemed to be an abandoned brand new house. Peeking in windows of abandoned houses has become quite a talent for us. This time the house was on a hill. I actually had to lift Bry up to see in one of the windows. Just a funny memory. Glad I didn't have the camera.

To make a long story short we got home snooped around online and found the owner of the house, gave our realtor all the info. It took some doing but we found that the home had been only partially forclosed on. We made an offer to the bank and hope to hear today!!!!!

The house is on 20 acres. Much of it is wooded and the rest is marshy. There is a large pond where we discovered some mallards nesting. It is the perfect spot for maple syrup making and our very outdoorsy children.

I am hoping, hoping this is the Lord's plan......

The Big Move....or everything that has happened so far

Update: Where to start.....we are in Michigan.
We thought, when Bryan accepted this job that the troubles were over. We could now breathe deeply and relax a little. So little did we know.
Bryan started work for a company in Michigan in December. A huge blessing. We began to dream of moving, a new house(not a remodel), new places, new experiences. At the end of December he and I and Aria spent six stressful days house hunting. When on the last day at the last moment we thought we found one we went back to Missouri rejoicing.
Bryan's job then became extremely demanding and he was travelling away more than he was home, w
while I and the eight children tried to prepare for the big move. I was very grateful that we didn't have to pack. We spent our days purging the house of everything we did not want supercontientious movers to stuff in boxes to then be found cluttering our new house.
Shortly after our return to Missouri we learned that we would not be getting the house we wanted, so we began looking for a rental. Bryan discovered one that would work and we were again relieved that we would have a home to go to. Then we learned that we WERE getting the house we wanted and we were very excited.
All through these experiences we were having a lot of trouble with the relocation company which was supposed to make this move as smooth as possible, yet did nothing but mess things up.
We planned our move for the middle of February. Shortly after scheduling the movers we learned that the relocation company had again messed things up and we would not be closing on the house when we originally planned. We left Missouri anyway with the help of several kind friends who cleaned the house and one especially amazing friend who came back the next day to mop and finish up for us.
We got to Michigan on the 17th of February. We lived in a hotel for a week and a half.
Our family has had the good fortune of falling into the boundaries of an especially amazing and service oriented ward. We have been fed, housed, hugged, worried over, fasted for, smiled at, and welcomed compeletely.
The home we thought we were buying turned out to need some major work. At that point we discovered that the rental we had as backup was not adequate for our needs and when we thought we had miraculously found the ultimate rental of our dreams we were reminded of the reason we do not rent....the number 8 that is attached to the word children.
To be continued.....

Time4Learning is a hit!!!

Several months ago I was introduced to Time4Learning by a friend who had just began homeschooling. I logged on and watched a demo and was not impressed enough to let go of all my hard work of pulling together curriculum from multiple sources for multiple children. I thought that the quality of the program was not what I was looking for.
Then life changed....we had an eighth child...we had two kids start high school...we began a large move 600 miles from our home, family, friends, and home school co-op. Overwhelm set in. Time4Learning was seeming like a very good idea. I jumped at the chance to try it out for a month in exchange for this review.

I was delighted that I could sign up 4 children for the first month. We began in the 6th, 3rd, 2nd, and 1st grade. Each of the children used the feature that allows you to do work in the grade ahead or below the chosen grade. Our second grade child is really a third grader who has some trouble with reading. It was a relief to her to do the language arts curriculum from 2nd grade as it was easier for her to read. I was pleasantly surprised that the phonics lessons really helped her to improve her reading also.
Our first grader was just happy with all of it. She says she especially liked doing the science. Our third grader is a fourth grade student with a low desire to read. He loved all of the Time4Learning subjects and I look forward to convincing him that he is capable of performing at grade level. Our oldest child in Time4Learning was willing to do all the subjects because it was on the computer. In contrast, my most convincing teaching from other sources could not persuade her to enjoy reading about many of the subjects that were covered in this curriculum.
There is a lovely feature included in the curriculum where the student earns a certain amount of computer game time in the Playground after completing their schoolwork. I especially liked this because I didn't have to worry about the kids accidently going to a site that was not safe. For the first week I didn't even tell the kids this feature existed. Then, on the day they were all dancing around telling a friend how fun school was, I decided I was convinced too that Time4Learning was a keeper.
My initial opinion that the quality of the curriculum was not what I would like was based on my viewing of a demo. The demo was animated and loud. I didn't want the kids learning from cartoons. On using the curriculum I was pleased with the levels for 3rd grade and up. There was a lot of reading and actual photographs of the people and places the kids were learning about. There were also internet links to sites with more information. The lower grades have a lot of animation but it kept the kids attention and they did remember what they were learning. Sometimes it was hard for them to understand the animated characters, but I think it would be solved if we got headphones.
I really liked the record keeping features. It made it really easy for me to keep track of each child. I could tell where they needed to review and when the level they were working on was too easy.
There are some features we haven't used such as the word processing for writing and journaling as the kids need some typing instruction first. But we are looking forward to using this curriculum. I may even enroll my Kindergartner also.
I had thought I might wait to begin this curriculum until after our move but I am so glad I didn't wait. It was great to be able to pack up the laptop for our move and not have to lug around boxes of books to keep everyone busy. It was especially great to have something worthwhile for them to do while we were stuck in a hotel room for hours on end as we were house hunting!
Time4Learning has freed up my time to do things with the kids that are more fun for me. When I know the basics are covered we can read stories together and take on bigger projects that I have been too overwhelmed in the past to do with them. I hope time for learning can continue to be the blessing it has been so far!
(the opinion expressed in this review is entirely my own, the content was not written by Time4Learning, but I have been compensated)

Stay Tuned for our family review of Time4Learning

I've been invited to try Time4Learning for one month in exchange for a candid review. My opinion will be entirely my own, so be sure to come back and read about my experience. Time4Learning can be used as an online homeschooling curriculum, afterschool tutorial or a summer skill builder. Find out how to write your own curriculum review for Time4Learning.


I have been looking into using Time4Learning for quite a while for several of the kids and this gives me the perfect opportunity to see how we like it. Wish us luck!

Giveaways!

I should be posting about Bryan's new job or how cute my kids are or even my new house but I am posting to let you know about a Silhouette giveaway on two blogs I follow! Because I really want  a Silhouette!!
Shabbychiccottage is so cool! and Beneath my heart is lovely!
 If I win this Silhouette, I plan to make the awesomest things for my new house.