Saturday, July 31, 2010

To homeschool or not to homeschool....

I know a lot of my friends are getting to the point in their parenting journey where they are thinking of schooling options for their kids. I am at that point, too! Although, my options look much different than people that are going to live in the United States!


A lot of people ask me what we will do for the schooling of our children once we are in Indonesia. The truth is, we really don't know yet since we don't know the exact base we will be living at during our service there. Some of the bases have schools and some I'm not sure about. I know one base has an international school K-12 and some of the other bases have K-8th grade. MAF is really great about meeting the needs of individual families who are serving in Indonesia. I know one base in Papua had only one family with children (they may have been the only family at that base, too, I'm not sure). They had two children and MAF was trying to find a teacher to send there to help out with the schooling of only two children. I think that's pretty great! Our thoughts for now on teaching our kids is that we would love to send them to school in Indonesia if one is available, but we are prepared to homeschool the first few grades if we need to. I think it would also be fun to join some kind of homeschool co-op where a group of moms each have a role in teaching all their kids combined.


Daniel and I have been trying to stock up on supplies to take over to Indonesia and one thing on my list is supplies to help with the schooling of our kids. Daniel's mom took me to a homeschooling store yesterday and it was so fun to look around! They have TONS of new and used materials for sale there. Plus, the are Christians, so they had a lot of faith-based curriculum to choose from as well. For anyone in the area who is interested, The Homeschool store is off of 290 and W 34th street. The address is 1355 Judiway Street or http://www.thehomeschoolstore.com/.


I was looking at a curriculum called Sing Spell Read and Write. It looks like a great program that includes everything you need for teaching 4-year-olds and up. My mother-in-law used it for her children. They loved it and I've been reading of a lot of others who loved it, too. It is an expensive program, though. I think if I were living here, I could probably put together something for less money, but this looks like a good program to pack with us because it seems like it has everything needed to teach our little ones.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this program? I'd love any input or suggestions as we prepare to move to Indonesia and keep up with the schooling of our kids!
Bonus Picture: The whole Galveston '10 crew on our beach vacation!

Wednesday, July 21, 2010

Beach Time!

Here is a re-cap of Wortley/Hill/Perez Galveston trip 2010. We had 15 people total under one roof for a week! It was a lot of food, fun, sand and playing.


Daddy and Joe trying to clear some of the seaweed away!




Reece actually took this picture. I thought it turned out really cute!

Mom and Dad on their beach house balcony. Usually they get a couple days to themselves in their beach house, but this year we were all there one day short of the whole time!

Michael pushing Will around in Reece Joe's doll stroller. It seems like every toddler is drawn to that stroller, whether boy or girl!

Grandmama with Joe, Rowan and Jacob. We fed a lot of birds on this balcony.

Blondie Rowan looking cute!
It took Joe a few days to warm up to the beach water. Of course, he was all about playing with all the yucky stuff he could find-sea weed, muddy sand, weird sea creatures... But, by the last couple of days, he was splashing like all the other kids.

Rowan and Reece... Wait for it......
And SPLASH!!


Diggin' in the sand.

The boat was a big hit this year. All the kids loved being pulled in in. Granddad did a lot of the pulling, but here it's Daniel's turn.

Beach Girls!

After a big wave!

This is the day he got really into the water. He would jump and then fall on his bottom and then roll around. We even had to put in his ear plugs because he was getting his whole head wet!


Snow cone time!

My sister brought her snow cone machine, so we made snow cones right on the beach. I enjoyed a Diet Coke snow cone...yum!






All the cousins! Reece, Rowan, Joe, Christian, Ryann, Will and Jacob.

We left after dinner on Saturday night and the kids were all worn out! So were Mom and Dad!
This trip seemed different than the previous trips to Daniel and I. Usually "vacation" with small children isn't really a vacation at all. But, this time our kids all slept really well (the whole family in one room!) and they took really good naps. Reece was always ready for a nap after staying up late with cousins and playing in the sun all day. Daniel and I even got to take naps and lie in the shade reading books. It was hard to get back to reality after this. Such a much needed, relaxing, fun trip!

Monday, July 19, 2010

SEVEN YEARS


Happy Seventh Anniversary to Me and My Main MAN!!

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

Then and Now

THEN - 2003
NOW - 2010
Daniel took me flying right before we had to leave Idaho. We realized that it had been 7 years since he's taken me flying! Way too long! It was fun to see him flying in action again. Oh, and all the MAF pilots have to wear their fancy flight helmets. You can see Daniel's reflection in the visor part of his helmet.

Quick Update:
When we left Idaho, we drove to Bellingham, Washington to visit Daniel's grandparents (hopefully I'll post some pics of that later). Then, we began our 4 day road trip back to Texas with a few stops to see friends and family along the way. We drove all day Saturday and night Saturday and got home Sunday around 8am. Then, Tuesday morning we headed to Galveston for a beach vacation with my family (AND hopefully some pics of that will follow...It seems I'm always about 2 weeks behind on blogging...oh well).

We are now getting back into the swing of support raising along with packing, sorting through all our belongings and doing tons of paper work to prepare our trip to Indonesia. On top of all that, Reece is attending a Bible camp put on by some friends in our Sunday School class. She is loving it!

Goodnight!



A Glimpse into the lives of a family on a journey to serve God through aviation in Indonesia!