My Empty Shelf Challenge Update #2

Wow! I just checked to see when I did my last Empty Shelf Challenge Update, and it was back in March! At that time, I had finished reading 12 books. My goal for this year was to read at least two books a month, for a total of 24 books for the year.

So how am I doing? Since March, here are the books I have finished reading:

• Mission Drift by Peter Greer
• The Antelope in the Living Room by Melanie Shankle
• Esther by Beth Moore
• How People Change by Timothy Lane
• Dancing with My Father by Sally Clarkson
• The Beauty of Broken by Elisa Morgan
• Hope Rising by Scott Todd
• The Fault in Our Stars by John Green
• Rhinestone Jesus by Kristen Welch
• Chasing Francis by Ian Cron
• The Nesting Place by Myquillyn Smith
• Animal Farm by George Orwell
• Radical by David Platt
• Grace for the Good Girl by Emily Freeman
• Me, Myself, & Bob by Phil Vischer
• Not a Fan by Kyle Idleman

Well, since the end of March, I have read 16 books, which brings my total to 28 books for the year! Woo hoo! Guess I should have upped by goal a bit.

Of course, this does not mean that I am going to stop reading for the year, that just wouldn't be right. So you might be thinking, what is in my book pile right now? Glad you asked:

I pulled out our copy of Operation World, so I can really start learning more and praying for the countries where our Compassion sponsored children live. Not really sure if I will read the whole book (it is a really thick one!), but I am thankful for resources like this one.

The Time Machine and I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist are books for our upcoming school year (which we plan on starting next week). And The Best Yes and You and Me Forever are books for me to read and learn from.

Hey, do you have a Goodreads account? If so, you can find me there and follow along to see what books I am reading next.

I would love for you to share what books are in your book pile. Won't you share them in the comments below?

Our Homeschool Plan

We are nearing the end of August, and most of the kids in our area have already started back to school. Some even started at the beginning of this month! Yikes!

We have been homeschooling since 1999, and because we file our own private school affidavit, we schedule our own school schedule, which works really well for us. This means we won't be starting school until September. And since I only have one student at home now, and she is doing high school work, she is doing most of her work independently.

As you can see, we have quite a full year planned! Here is the list of what she will be studying:

• Apologetics: "I Don't Have Enough Faith to Be an Atheist"
• Math: Algebra I with Teaching Textbooks
• Art: Color and Composition with Artistic Pursuits
• History: British History 
• Science: Apologia Physical Science
• Literature: British Literature with Learning Language Arts Through Literature
• Sign Language: this will be a class with other students

We plan to break up some of our studies with making scones and enjoying lots of British TV over the upcoming school year. Seems appropriate doesn't it? We can even count some of the scone making lessons as Home Ec!

What are your plans for your upcoming school year?

Our Summer Bucket List

As much as I love the routine of our days during the school year, I love the unstructured time we have during the summer. But instead of spending endless days doing nothing, I like to have a bit of a plan as we enter summer. 

A few summers ago, when both of my kids were still home during the day, I took my kids on quite a few local day trips. Of course I took a lot of photos on those day trips! I even ended up making photo books of our adventures for them and gave the books to them for Christmas that year. As my kids have gotten older, I know that the time is precious and I am thankful that we have opportunities to do a lot of fun things together.

This summer will be the second summer that my daughter and I will be home together during the day. She is quite a homebody and would rather stay home all day. But I know I would go stir crazy! Last year, we made a list of some things we wanted to do through the summer. We even made plans to invite a friend or two along when we could. And we both tried some new things together.

Last night, we started writing down some ideas of things we want to do for this upcoming summer.

Our Summer 2014 Bucket List so far...

We found a couple of ideas on Pinterest, but we came up with a few of our own ideas too. Over the next couple of weeks, we will be adding a few more items to our list. I love that my teenage daughter still wants to do things like 'chalk the driveway' and 'crayon art'!

What are your plans for this upcoming summer?

Tackle It on Tuesday: Civil War Event Photos

My first camera was a Kodak Brownie, a sweet little film camera that I took to Outdoor Education Camp in the fifth grade. Since that time, I have owned many other cameras and have learned a lot about photography. A couple of weekends ago, our family attended a Civil War event at my favorite location just west of Yosemite. The location is absolutely beautiful!

On Saturday, one of the battles took place during twilight when the light was amazing. Since we are members of the group, I was able to gain access to hang out by a tree on the battlefield during this twilight battle to take pictures. I won't bombard you with a lot of photos, but I will share a few of my favorites:

ISO 100, 55mm, f/4.0, 1/160 sec

See what I mean? So incredibly beautiful here! 

ISO 100, 55mm, f/4.0, 1/200 sec

I had to include this photo because my son is in this one. He is the fourth one from the left.

ISO 100, 200mm, f/5.6, 1/15 sec

I haven't finished editing all of the photos I took that weekend, since I did take over 300 pictures. This is one reason why I take quite a few photos, so I might capture one like this...

ISO 800, 85mm, f/4.2, 1/125 sec

...or like this one...

ISO 800, 145mm, f/5.0, 1/20 sec

...and like this one.

So I didn't quite finish tackling all of the photos I intended to edit, but I did delete over 200 pictures. After editing about 20 pictures, I have another 50 to edit to finish this project. And I really need to finish editing these photos since I am going to be paid for some of them! Yay!

For this next week, I want to start going through some of our bookcases. This is just one of many full bookcases we have in our home.

Time to unload some books!

It has been a while since I have homeschooled little ones, so it is probably time for me to clear out some of my younger age books. But it is so hard for me to get rid of books! So I wonder how many books from this bookcase I can let go of? Be sure to check back next week...

Capture Your 365, or not

Usually on Wednesday, I share my week’s worth of Capture Your 365 photos. But not this week. I knew we were going to a Civil War event this past weekend, so I thought I would take a break from the daily photo prompts and share some photos from our weekend.

corpsman

ISO 200, 55mm, f/4.0, 1/160 sec

Kelsey and a couple of the girls decided to go out on the field as corpsmen with our 20th Maine group this past weekend. Basically, they are responsible for bandaging up any of the fallen soldiers on the field.

43rd Viriginia

ISO 200, 200mm, f/5.6, 1/160 sec

This past year (even though we have only been to two events), Matthew has been ‘playing’ over on the confederate side of the field. Which means my children were on opposite sides!!

Matthew getting instructions

ISO 200, 200mm, f/5.6, 1/400 sec

So here is my son, Matthew, kneeling, getting ready to ‘fire’ upon the ‘enemy’.

Kelsey is wounded

ISO 200, 165 mm, f/5.3, 1/320 sec

Right in the middle of the photo, Kelsey is holding onto her ‘wounded’ arm.

At one point during the ‘battle’, Kelsey came to the front of their line and shouted, “Brother, stop shooting at us!” I could hear here all the way on the sidelines! Then ‘shots’ were fired, and over she went. Eventually, Matthew ended up being ‘shot’ and ‘died’ out on the field too.

full moon over camp

ISO 100, 50mm, f/1.8, 1/500 sec

Overall, it was a beautiful weekend! This was our seventh time at this event! Civil War reenacting has been a great activity for our family. We have learned a lot about the Civil War, and we have been able to spend time with some wonderful people.