The Homemaking Party: Field Trips to the Joplin History Museum, the Titanic Exhibit, and a Farm!

Hello Friends! Wow, well this has really been a week of getting out of the house---and it's only just begun! I spent Monday getting my hair done, getting groceries, and doing several other errands. Tuesday night, we took the kids to the Joplin History and Mineral Museum for a special exhibit. The museum is hosting a small Titanic exhibit through Saturday so we made the quick trip north to check it out. 

We'd never been to this museum and were pleasantly surprised about all the cool things there were to see. Joplin has a (literally!) rich mining history and many minerals and machines were on display in this small museum. Here's Liam explaining to me that this amazing "cave" we were in was probably a real life mine at one time and once the people moved on to another mine, they turned this one into a museum! Ha! The displays really were very well done---but were housed inside an unassuming very much twentieth century building. I just let him believe what he wanted to, though...

Afterward, we took the kids to Wendy's and treated them to dinner and Frostys. Most of the kids had never had a Frosty so it was a life-changing experience...

This morning we got up bright and early to visit a local farm. The dear people at this farm put a TON of work, time, and money into hosting our group of about 100 homeschool parents and students! The kids learned a lot about running a farm and taking care of horses. It was a great experience for them!

I spent most of the morning with the two littlest girls as everyone was divided into groups by age. Kynthia seemed to take to the horses easily and really enjoyed grooming them.

It was a cool and windy day---just right for me...but I guess I'm not really a Southern girl, now am I? 

All these sweeties are such a joy to take places. They're obedient and respectful and very thankful and appreciative. Tomorrow we're going to visit a friend who was injured and had surgery and hasn't been able to attend church for a couple months. After that, we've got our Good Friday service, Easter activity day on Saturday, Easter Sunday...and then two of the boys and I are headed to Oregon for a week! More on that later...but is anyone else feeling as busy as me this week? Ha!! Oh well, it's a blessing to have fun things to do and fun people to do them with!

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The Homemaking Party: Daddy's Homeschool Chemistry Lessons

Good Morning! Welcome to The Homemaking Party!

Just want to put up a THANK YOU to everyone who left such sweet comments on my update post last week. You were all so sweet and encouraging! I'm feeling really motivated and encouraged to get back to the heart of blogging and building my community of blogging friends!

Last weekend, Daddy started something new in our homeschool---Chemistry! Jamie works much more than full time, week after week, serves as a board member and in worship ministry at our church, and still makes time to be present in the lives of his nine children. I'm so thankful!!

He doesn't usually do planned out lessons with the kids, but when we recently discussed the serious lack of advanced science in our homeschool, he really stepped up to the plate. I'm good with nature study discussions and activities pertaining to whatever we're doing outside on a given day, but I was a Chemistry drop-out in high school and have never felt like I could (or should!) teach these higher level science subjects.

About a year ago, a friend told me about a new curriculum she was trying out called The Good and the Beautiful. It sounded like a pretty wholesome thing so I decided to check it out. Ha! The day I went to the site, they were offering a one-day free printable of their entire brand new Chemistry course! Woo Hoo! I printed it out and put it in a pretty binder...and handed it over to Jamie. Ha!!

Our first lesson was a general overview of Chemistry and featured an experiment where we caused marker colors to separate out on wet coffee filters.

We first guessed what would happen when we got four different colors wet...then we drew those colored circles on coffee filters and put just the tips into water to see what would happen.

The colors spread out and separated into different shades...and even some surprise colors!

Everyone got in on the lesson---from me and Lynzie, the grown ladies of the house, to Kynthia and Brenna, who are six and seven and not yet doing formal lessons. I figured I'd get in on this teaching and then I'd feel better about reteaching it to the youngers when they're in high school.

Once the kids' filters were dry and they'd recorded all their observations, they stored their pretty colored filters in a notebook. We're looking forward to Saturday morning when Jamie will have lesson number two ready to go through. It's days like these that reinforce that homeschooling (and any family learning opportunities, really) is more about the time spent and the memories made than any intelligence gained. I'm thankful!

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Embracing Change

Grace at Home

I Miss Blogging...and Other Mixed Up Thoughts of the Day

How do you feel about change? Some people love it when the old goes out and the new comes in. My husband is like that. He's always ready to jump into the next technological advancement and he's great when it comes to trying new things.

Me, not so much. The Beatles and the Bible tell us there's a time for everything and that circumstances change, but that doesn't mean I have to like it! If there's one thing I've learned about change though, it's that life would get pretty stagnant without it.

My life started going a different direction a couple years ago and part of that was reflected on this blog. I used to post several times a week and was working with many big name brands. But, you know, that started to get really tedious and pretty soon I'd lost my voice as a blogger. More and more, I had to be the person the brands wanted me to be, and the blog wasn't really mine anymore. I decided to let that go and my plan was to go back to blogging about Jesus and antiques, but that hasn't really happened, has it? I've struggled with bouncing back from that change.

Deeper things have gone on in these two years---things that are big enough to actually require a grieving process. Many of you know we lost a baby in October. I'm about six weeks from the due date of that baby and life is getting reeeeally tough to handle as that time draws closer. I'm ok. I'm getting through it with the love and support of my husband and kids and a couple close friends, but I've got to lean in to feelings of anger, jealousy, and so much sadness, that I don't really want to face.

Happy changes can still bring a time of mourning. That's a new concept to me, but it's so true. Lynzie graduated last April---almost a year ago---and I've been struggling to keep the joy in our homeschool. I'll write more on that later---that one needs a whole post of it's own---but the grief I'm dealing with, even with her still at home, sort of blindsided me.

I'm taking on some new ministry responsibilities in my church---which has brought up some questions for me about identity and callings. While I'm excited about what's ahead, there are some identity things I have to lay down in order to take this road God's got me on...and that's hard.

Why am I writing out these disjointed thoughts? I used to share heart stuff here, back in the days before the sponsored posts took over my life, and I'd like to get back to that. I miss my blogging friends and community. I feel God bringing something new to this blog. I'm looking forward to seeing what it is!

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