okay-I failed in the pic uploads!!

We started school today, and I just wanted to share, I didn't cry this year or scream at the kids.  I rather enjoyed the day.  Last year was a bit of wild ride!! Many phone calls to friends crying, whole lot of prayer on my face on my carpet (thank you Tony for letting me buy that thick ol' carpet), and so many second guessing the decision to homeschool!
This year, I spent the summer little bit at a time, organizing my thoughts, reading books, listening to other homeschoolers and watching my kids learn when I wasn't teaching! 
I now realize, Anna and Abby both freeze when I ask them the answer to a multiple choice question, but if I rub their back and we work together to eliminate the wrong answers, they love it! 
Gabriel can take an encyclopedia on history and learn about centuries in one week, no test, no papers, just pure knowledge and filled with emotions.
If Eric has a schedule and a list to check off, he is happy and I just have to smile at him a few times, and he is off and running.
Saying the Pledge of Allegiance this morning was exciting as was the delving back into the bible together.  I love that as a family, we do this, it seems so small, but so significant.  We also have a flag!! woo hoo!! 
We have our regular Easy Grammar that we are zooming thru, we finished 3rd grade in 4 months last year, and started 4th grade and we are 1/2 way done, so we kinda came in the midst of nouns today, but it clicked right!  Tomorrow is the 2nd day of school and they will do a test! ha ha  Eric is also doing the high school version, which concentrates more on sentence structure.  He enjoys it and it goes quick.  I totally spaced that today for him, but fixed the schedule as I wrote this post!
Math-U-See has been the key for the youngest 3, we are almost done with Delta, and will go into fractions in Epsilon by November.  The girls are going at a slower pace, but Gabriel is chewing the pages up like crazy!!  Eric is doing Teaching Textbooks in Geometry, and uhm he is on his own! lol
We also got a computer program called Aleks for just a computer math lab, and that will start in a few weeks, it strengthens them and is to the state standards so may help establish some foundations in a different way? Who knows, but it gives fun time on the computer so all 4 are happy about that.
Eric is doing Apologia for science, and I have to make him stop.  He really loves the way this is laid out, the experiments are fun and he loves putting them together without my help.
Caterpillars arrived Saturday, in time for a unit study! So today, we learned a bit on caterpillars and measured bugs around the house! 
History is Story of the World with Evan-Moore Ancient Civilizations thrown in for a funner notebook.  We also use Discovery Education for video snippets to "enhance" the learning...ha ha that means, Gabriel loves to watch a video, and he loves history, the girls like the moving pictures!! Eric peeks and watches too!
We are using Writing Strands this year for the youngest 3, in hopes of pulling better writers out!  I think it may work!
We are also doing Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry as a Literature Study, 10 pages at a time....and chew chew chew!  I love the book and love that it is completely different from the other subjects!
Eric is learning PhotoShop via my friend Miss Behaving video series (available at Scrap Book Graphics) but given as a gift to me, but her awesomeness!
So, I actually showered today, made dinner (green chile' enchiladas) and went to the store!  I am rather impressed with myself! Perhaps tomorrow I can get some pics up on this blog!