What a GOOD Friday!

Some of you have heard...

Aunna Hope Jie

has been matched to our family FOREVER! We are delighted to welcome her into our family and continue to prepare to pick her up. Aunna Hope is the name we have given her and Jie is part of her current name. We want to preserve part of her Chinese heritage so we look forward to continuing to research what her Chinese name means.

She is one year old now. We will now wait 4-6 months until we get to travel to China and snuggle her. (So she will be 16-18 months when we will pick her up.)

We are not allowed to post a picture at this time but were excited to have her in our Easter picture. We were matched on Good Friday. What an amazing weekend to celebrate new life for our girl.

{An orphan NO MORE!}

Thank you for all of your support! We are excited for what the next months hold. We praise the Lord that she is currently in a foster home instead of an orphanage.

organizing your student sheets & looseleaf copies

Each year in the summer (or late spring) I look through our curriculum for the following school year and decide which copies need to be made. (I put sticky notes on the pages sticking out of the book so I can get to them quickly.) Then I make the copies, paperclip each child's papers together for each day and file them in date order in my file holder. If there are student sheets that come with our curriculum I put those in their own folder with each child's name on it. Depending how many student sheets there are you could separate them into your paperclips as well.

When we start the school year and start using the copies/student sheets we keep them in clear sheets in a "fancy binder" until the end of the year.

{More about what we do at the end of the year to keep their special work for our records and to use as reference material. Stay tuned for the next video.}

I love our pencil packs!

As many of you know I started selling thirty-one last June as part of our adoption fundraising effort. The bags have been so useful, more than I expected, and of course fun!

The bags pictured in this video have definitely been among the most used since we got them. Check out this video on how we use the Timeless Beauty Bag for school supplies or craft supplies. And of course it's always fun to embroider the kiddos names on them!

If you're interested in checking them out in the thirty-one catalog

visit www.mythirtyone.com/erinobwald

incentive tickets in homeschool

A bunch of you have asked recently about homeschool (what we use, what we do, how to start...) and I just love to share! We have tried lot of different things and it's fun to share what's worked for us and what we enjoy!

I thought I would make a few videos, as well as post pictures, of ideas that we have used over the years. I hope they can help you have a fun and enjoyable homeschool experience too!

Get all of these fun little "tickets" (aka dye cut shapes) from your local school supply store or office supply store. If you live near Fresno or Clovis, CA I love to go to GW School Supply!

Happy homeschooling :)

**You can also use this idea for around the house jobs or anything you want your kids to work towards or earn.

not sure the pages thing will work...

...so I will post everything here and make labels for different topics :)

I am trying out adding pages to our blog to fill it out a bit and blog about different topics. The first I thought I would add was in the area of homeschool...since I spend most of my time doing this each week.

I just love children's literature and going to the library with my kiddos. Today we organized another round of what I like to call A to Z Authors. I made this up last year  to expose my kids to more authors and illustrators that we might not other wise come in contact with.

There are so many favorites but I thought this was a way to meet 26 (if you can ever find an author of a children's book that starts with a Q or X good job) but most often 24 new authors and illustrators.

 {here are pics of our last two A to Z Author pics}

I love, especially in this time of our life, when we randomly bring home a book about adoption. This darling book made its way into our rolly-cart today.

What learning can take place in this activity?

- letter recognition

-alphabetizing

-counting

-categorizing

-reading

-listening

-checking out the books on their own card {independence}

-keeping track of them at home {responsibility}

while we wait...

Hello friends, family and those we haven't met yet!

If you are new to our blog then I am excited to share with you that we are waiting with anticipation to be matched with our daughter from China. We have three kids {pictured to the left} that are also all excited to see who God has planned to join our family.

We are a family that homeschools {although that was not our plan}.
It has grown into a beautiful way to explore the world as a family. I firmly believe that you can learn something EVERYWHERE you go, homeschooling fits right in.

So...while we wait {and maybe after} I am excited to post about our everyday happenings, ways we learn around town, homeschooling ideas of organization and exploration, creative ways to learn new things, and how God moves me to live surrendered to Him in my life as a woman, wife, mom and daughter.

I love my family, my four girls, books, especially children's books, craft & office supplies of any sort, gardening, cooking-ish, babies, adoption, farm animals, quilts & fabric, colorful things, big families, organization, chocolate, coffee with tons of creamer, mexican food, the fizz of a soda pop, my Starbucks cup full of water, multitasking, American Sign Language, fresh fruits & vegetables from Farmer's Markets, having a pool, chap stick, my large vehicle, bags & totes, jeans & workout pants, Uggs & flip flops, the smell of Cabbage Patch Kids & Strawberry Shortcake dolls...the list goes on...

I might blog on any of these wonderful things :)

swag...

Hey there guys. I wish we had more to share about our little girl...but we don't. Not quite yet anyways. 

But it is interesting as we wait and wonder just when that call will come what God has in store for these waiting weeks and months. Two things have come up in the past two weeks that give us a little glimpse of God's timing. They are unrelated, as far as we can tell to actually going to China, but opportunities to be used here to show God's love and use our gifts.

So we continue to wait and be faithful to what He is asking us to do until we go.

One fun thing we get to share is that our friend who designed the t-shirt for the Beard Growers also set up an online store for others to purchase them as well. 

{Some of you were asking so here it is} 

And...his wife designed a necklace to add to the site as well. They are so talented and generous with their gifts! Thanks Cameron (Ephraim Clothing) and Alana (Make Pie Not War) for sharing your talent with us and spreading the word about orphan care!

Let us know what you think of these designs in the comment section!

Blessings