Starting tomorrow we’ll be having a big change in our homeschool. Dad is taking on J1’s daily homeschool as he’s having trouble submitting to my authority.  In order to do that, he will be going to school with Dad each day and work in his classroom.  This was a suggestion by Eric’s principal to help us with this problem.  I’m not happy about this – but I’m not fighting it anymore as I’m just tired of running into that brick wall again and again and again.

Please pray for all of us as we proceed forward.

Found this on Facebook….

The Big Read is an NEA program designed to encourage community reading initiatives and of their top 100 books, they estimate the average adult has read only six.

*Look at the list and star those you have read.

Share this list in your blog, too, if you like.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen*
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien*
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte *
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowlin *
5 To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee *
6 The Bible *
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte*
8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell*
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott*
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare *( most but not all of Shakespeare’s works)
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier (saw film)
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien*
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams*
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame*
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis*
34 Emma – Jane Austen*
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen *
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis*
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne*
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell *
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown *
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery *
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding*
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52 Dune – Frank Herbert *
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen*
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding (film = blech!)
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett*
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses – James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal – Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession – AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens*
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker*
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White*
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle*
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams *
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare*
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl *
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Cool…I’m definitely going to look for some of these in my library.  Anyone have a good suggestion for where to start?

Stolen from Julie at Multiple Blessings – with my thanks for a fun idea! I hope I can remember to do this yearly!

All About J3
How old are you? 8
What’s your favorite color?  Green
What’s your favorite holiday?  Christmas
What’s your favorite video game?  Spiderman
What’s your favorite food?  Tacos
What’s your favorite restaurant?  KFC
What’s your favorite subject in school?  Math
What’s your favorite book?  Magic Treehouse
What’s your favorite song?  Crazy Frog
What’s your favorite movie?  Lord of the Rings
What’s your favorite TV show?  Clone Wars
What’s your favorite character?  Chowder
What’s your favorite animal?  Bird
What’s your favorite kind of pet?  Goldfish
What toy will you never give away?  Gameboy
What do you want for your birthday?  Legos
What would you buy if you had a million dollars?  Legos
What makes you special?  Mom and Dad loves me
What’s the best thing that has ever happened to you?  got a Lego pirate ship
What scares you?  scary movie
What do you want to be when you grow up?  Pizza delivery man
If you could change your name, what would be it?  Cody
Where’s your favorite place to go?  Jungle
Who is your best friend?  Thomas
Who do you admire?  Justin
What do you like about J1?  jokes
What do you like about J2?  when he lets me play with his Legos
What do you like about JGirl?  She’s pretty

Stolen from Julie at Multiple Blessings – with my thanks for a fun idea! I hope I can remember to do this yearly!

All About J2
How old are you?  12
What’s your favorite color?  Black
What’s your favorite holiday?  Christmas
What’s your favorite video game?  Lord of the Rings, Return of the King
What’s your favorite food?  Mac & Cheese
What’s your favorite restaurant?  KFC
What’s your favorite subject in school?  Handwriting
What’s your favorite book? Any book I read
What’s your favorite song?  Crazy Frog
What’s your favorite movie?  Lord of the Rings
What’s your favorite TV show?  Chowder
What’s your favorite character?  Anakin in Clone Wards
What’s your favorite animal?  Alligator
What’s your favorite kind of pet?  Dog
What toy will you never give away? My Legos
What do you want for your birthday?  Nintendo DS
What would you buy if you had a million dollars?  All the game systems and all the Legos
What makes you special?  Building stuff
What’s the best thing that has ever happened to you? Meeting friends
What scares you?  A scary movie
What do you want to be when you grow up?  A builder
If you could change your name, what would be it?  Jeremiah
Where’s your favorite place to go?  My friend’s house
Who is your best friend?  Jeremiah
Who do you admire?  Gavin
What do you like about J1?  His jokes
What do you like about J3?  When he’s not a tattle tell
What do you like about Sissie?   She’s funny