Notebooking Nook

Work ~ School ~ Play!

{ 11:47, Friday, June 1, 2007 }

Our summer has official begun and the kids were so excited... that is until we sat them all down yesterday and laid out their summer schedule. We run three businesses from home and have two other businesses outside the home, so we are EXTREMELY busy! Things have really started getting out of control and we needed to enroll the kids help. So here's the plan...

Up at 5am (everyone has their own alarm clock and responsible for themselves)
Outside with dad by 5:15
Family works together outside until 6:30 (we live in the Mohave Desert and we have to work outside early before the heat takes over)
Mom and dd 15 make breakfast for family from 6-6:30.
Breakfast / Devotional / Family Prayer from 6:30-7
Finish outside chores if needed and do all inside chores. Everyone must do chores until 9am

This is the "Work" portion of our day. We accomplished so much this morning... pruned some trees and bushes, mowed the lawn, we did our usual "dog thing". For those of you unaware we own a commercial dog kennel and have over 150 dogs. We cleaned the carpets in 4 rooms and then we did all our "normal" chores, bedrooms, dishes, etc.

We are being quite strict with the kids because they have become a bit lazy while we were busy running all these businesses. If we catch them not working, if they are outside later than 5:15 or if they are not asking what they can do next, we add an additional hour of work after school and also don't allow them to be with friends that day. So far so good, they all want to see their friends so they are being very careful not to mess up! It's great!

Once the work is done the kids get a 30 minute break to have a snack, be on the computer or whatever it is they want to do.

We are still going to be doing some school over the summer... reading, writing, math and science. Of course, I'm always looking for teaching moments and run with those when they come up. But here's the plan for school....

9:30-9:45 ~ Devotional
9:45~10:15 ~ Math
10:15-11:00 ~ Reading
11:00~11:30 ~ Science
11:30-12:00 ~ Writing (either about science lesson or reading assignment)

After all this is finished, they are free for the rest of the day. However, they have to be home from friends by 6pm for dinner, night-time chores done by 8pm and in their rooms by 9pm. I have 4 teenagers and they thought this was very unreasonable, however, we are not going to be completely unreasonable. We will allow them to go out with their friends if something comes up and they have a church youth group on Thursday nights which means they won't be home until after 9pm. But, this is the plan. I really hope we can stick to it, we really need to get things flowing more smoothly around here.

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Our Straw Bail House ~ A Bit More

{ 05:02, Tuesday, May 1, 2007 }

I plan on posting pictures of the progress we made while building the house. We were building in '99-'00, so I'm going to have to look through my hard drive for them. I will get them up as soon as possible along with tips and resources. I'm heading out of town and hopefully will have them up by early next week.

I will say though that we don't live in what most people would consider a traditional straw bail house with the plastered walls and rustic look. I wish we had gone that direction, maybe someday we'll change the look. At that time in my life I was wanting a more classical, traditional look to our home.

Anyway, I should have pics up next week.
{ Posted in Family } { 3 comments } { Link }

Our Straw Bail House

{ 01:53, Tuesday, May 1, 2007 }

When we were planning to build our house several years ago my husband mentioned perhaps building a house out of straw bails. We had read about this in Mother Earth News many years prior and had put it in the back of our minds. When we spoke to our draftsman about it, he thought we were crazy, of course, but was open minded enough to help us out. We drew up plans and he made it work. We live in a beautiful home that stays cool most of the year. We live in the Mohave Desert, so AC is a must after about mid-June.

I'm not sure we saved money by doing it the way we did with all the extras, but it's fun to say we live in a straw bail house. Our windows are all deep set, about 2 feet. We have yet to put in a "proof window", but maybe someday. If I had to do over again, we would still build a straw bail house, however, I would go with a more simple floor plan and rustic features. We moved in May of 200 and overall we are all very happy with our home.
{ Posted in Family } { 2 comments } { Link }