Milkshakes make everything better!!

Well, we got our Daddy off to the airport on Tuesday. He made it to his training destination-- of course not without incident-- we are talking about the Army here, folks! Apparently, they never paid his tickets. So, when he got to the counter, there was no ticket-- ha!! Of course, he missed that flight and after hours of waiting and missing connecting flights, he finally made it. Ugh. Poor guy!!

Meanwhile, back at Team D. headquarters, we needed a pick-me-up. So... milkshakes all around!! The boys did a "CHEERS" for Daddy and all has been well-- 2 days in ;)!

Grace and Peace,
Shari

International Night

Friday was International Night with our homeschool group. It is a lot of fun and an easy way to get the kids to learn about other countries. Here is a quick run-down of how it works, in case you may want to start something similar in your homeschooling community:

*Families choose a country to study and create a display of their country on a tri-fold display board.

*The children need to create three questions they would like for people to answer after "visiting" their country. The organizer compiles all the questions prior to the event and puts them into a "passport" book for children to use on International Night.

*The night of the event, everyone brings: a) their project (duh); b)a dish from their country to share potluck style-- with a label so everyone knows what they are eating and what country it represents; and c) some sort of stickers or stamps to keep at their display, so the children can "stamp" their passport after visiting that country.

*After everyone shares in a potluck meal, the children are free to go pick up their passport and begin learning about all the other countries represented. They write the answers to the questions in their passport on that country's page, stamp their passport, and move on to the next country!

It is nearly impossible to visit all the countries, but we sure have fun trying!!

I bet you'll NEVER guess which country Team Dragovich studied and displayed-- ha!! I am SOOOOO proud of my boys for all the work THEY did on their own-- finding and printing pictures from the net, printing MULTIPLE maps, until we got just the right ones, doing ALL the writing (if you knew how much my oldest hates to write, you would be falling out of your seat right now), cutting, pasting, painting and arranging on the display board and coloring Africa-- okay, they got worn out by then, and after coloring in 9 countries, they turned it over to Dad. All I did was guide the organization of the facts, paste the two middle maps and do some minor labeling of pictures once glued onto the board. And all on a week that we took off of school since it was Daddy's last week home with us.

AND, of course, to make it even cooler... we borrowed the GREATEST stuff from our friends the Coen's who have already been to Ethiopia and graciously trusted us with their sweet treasures. It all just made this whole adoption process more real to us. Which I don't know if that is good, because now my heart is aching a little more that it was before :).

Grace and Peace,
Shari

Team Dragovich's country-- are you surprised? If you look closely, you will see some flap books see my post on Live & Learn

The boys with some of our props-- Don't ask me why Wyatt has that bag on like he does-- it is a cloth bag you carry stuff in. Isaac is holding an eastern orthodox cross, and Sam is wrapped in a shawl made by the women who carry wood on their backs for a living.

Look at all the neat things the Coens loaned us! The boys' favorites were the toys for Silas, a book and his Ethiopian outfit... wow!

Isaac in Columbia-- this one is for our dear friends whose daddy is Columbian!!

He looks pretty natural in that Russian soldier hat, doesn't he :)?

Belated Halloween Pics

I was the most well-protected mama on Halloween night!! I had THREE military commandos to escort me to every home. Except, THEY GOT ALL THE TREATS!

Nothin' like posting Halloween pictures two weeks after the event. Oh well. Enjoy!
Grace and Peace,
Shari

My three Commandos-- Daddy did the makeup

My heroes

Team Dragovich-- open for TREATS!

More Travel Families to Stalk!

More families from our agency traveled this week to pick up their kiddos from Ethiopia. I am a bit slow on posting these, but they will be there until the end of the week. Enjoy!!

Nunez Family
Terwilleger Family
Hammond Family
Britton Family
Laughner Family

Grace and Peace,
Shari

The Big Race

Well, it's over. The months, weeks and hours of marathon training is over. Yesterday morning, Team Dragovich piled into the mini-van at 5am (Thank you Lord, for the time change!) and drove to Raleigh, NC, so I could run in the 5th marathon of my running "career". And, boy... do I know how to pick 'em! HA!!! Let me just preface this next part with-- I really had no choice. I knew I wanted to do a race before Tony left on his big "D" and before we brought home kiddos from Ethiopia. I also was very limited in what race I could do. We couldn't travel for this race, and the only other race remotely close was OBX-- and it is next weekend... the weekend before he deploys. Not to mention we would have had to travel. So... City of Oaks it was.

Boys waiting to see Mommy at Mile 10

In all the reviews of this course, the word "hilly" seemed to come up alot. It is compared over and over again to Boston's course-- a famously hilly race. I ran Boston in 2007-- um... NOT a good comparison! City of Oaks is TWICE as hilly as Boston-- at LEAST... and I will argue down to the bone with anyone who tries to deny it. It is WAY hillier than St. Louis-- which is also considered a hilly course, and the course which I quailfied for Boston on in 2006. There is not a flat spot in the entire race. And, YES, I studied the topographical map of the race before running it and Tony and I even drove the course on Saturday. Scary, insane and wow... are the words which come to mind-- of course, I wouldn't allow myself such thoughts before the race-- that would be death to self!! But, now that it is over?... well, there's no holding back! :D

There I am-- still track sub 8's (min. per mile)

My goal was to break 3:30-- run sub-8:00 splits. I ran the first half well under that... 7:40-7:50's. The second half was where I lost all my time-- 30 seconds per mile. Which, of course, was where all the killer hills were. I gained some ground the last 5 miles, but it wasn't enough to break 3:30. My final time was 3:33:08. On the bright side, I won my age group (30-34), came in 14th overall for the females standings out of 255 total women; and 98th out of over 900 total marathon runners. It is a PR for me (personal record), and I requalified for Boston easily. The other good thing is, I didn't lose any more time on the second half than any of the top runners did. Only one woman in the top 10 ran even splits the entire 26.2 miles. All the other top runners (men, too) dropped 30 seconds or more off their pace the second half of the race. I truly believe that I have sub 3:30 legs-- maybe even on that course, if I had just a little more experience racing on that sort of terrain and knew better how and when to push my legs.

Now they are waiting for me in Umstead Park-- mile 17

Most importantly, I learned a lot. I have one more marathon under my belt, my boys were overly proud of their mama and Tony was super proud of my performance. He is already planning my next year of training and racing and was looking up all the races "we" are going to do over the next years-- nice fast, flat courses to kick out some killer times. I am learning to be content with my performances, recognize where I need to "toughin' up", and zeroing in on what I really want to be able to achieve in my "running career" and why.

Mile 24-- no more sub 8's-- that's okay, I'm still movin' at least!

I hope you enjoyed the pics of our big event. One more neat detail... Tony and the boys saw me 5 different times-- miles 4, 10, 17, 24 and the end. In order to see me at mile 17, they had to park the car at the entrance to Umstead Park, RUN 1 mile in, on the trails, down one of the steepest hills of the race to see me. Tony had Sam make marks in the dirt for every woman that passed before me. They counted 17. When I came by, they cheered me on, told me where I was in the standings and then ran back up the hill (remember-- 1 mile up), back in the van and on to mile 24. I managed to knock off 3 women by the time they saw me again... something I may not have tried to do, if I hadn't known they were keeping track :). Tony said Isaac was so excited for me during this race, and I guess he kept getting frustrated with Sam for not hurrying enough. Apparently he kept getting after Sam to, quote: "Hurry, UP! Mommy is waiting for us!" :)

They are my heroes.

Mommy and her boys-- after the race. Sam is holding my 1st place-- in age group-- plaque.

Grace and Peace,
Shari

Live & Learn Press

This one is for all you homeschool mommies. Last week at our homeschool support group meeting, we had the owners of Live & Learn come present their idea of Live 'N Learn folders. This is another name for a Lap Book. NOW, before you roll your eyes, groan within and click to read someone else's blog-- STOP!!! I know your pain! I have three boys! I know what it is like to do the dreaded-- P-R-O-J-E-C-T (insert climax music... take your pick). And I also know that I have looked on longingly at the lap book idea wishing if only I could figure out how to make one of those... without having to for-go laundry, dinner and cleaning the house... just so I can create a cool lap book project to go with our latest unit study!

What Live & Learn does is take all the hard work and do it for you. They a) teach you HOW to make these "mini-books" which go INSIDE your folders (e.i. lapbook) that you present your project information on; and b) they have created tons of unit study projects on cd-rom with all the templates for every "mini-book" you would make to go with the study and directions for how to assemble-- DIRECTIONS YOU CAN UNDERSTAND!! AND... they just started working with Apologia Science, and are creating Live 'n Learn notebook "folders" to supplement ALL of Apologia's curriculum. So... for those of you using Apologia Science, you can go to their website, buy the cd rom for your particular series (e.g. Team D. is studying Botony this year) and then have ALL the templates for answering ALL the questions in the form of these "mini-books", attaching them to 3-ring hole punched cardstock and stored in a lovely binder. So, at the end of the study, you will have a great "Lap Book" full of information on your subject, presented in these little "mini-books" that your child created (even if you do all the cutting and s/he does the writing-- or maybe for the littles, you even do the writing as they dictate to you the answers!).

Our first mini-book w/ Botony... pull tabs down-- they have to define "biology" and "botony" on the pull-tabs and give the roots of each

Let's discuss these "mini-books", because that is the heart of what Live & Learn does. Imagine flap books and origami rolled into one. Remember when you were a kid and you folded paper in all those funny ways and wrote 1,2,3,4.. red, yellow, blue, green, then did the little jingle as you manipulated the folded paper "thingy" to find out who you loved? (Rrr.. this is hard when you can't be "hands on"). That is what mini-books are. You fold paper in all different ways and then your child writes information in the flaps, or pull-ups (not the diapers!), or whatever sort of mini-book you made about whatever the topic is s/he is learning. Then, you attach your folded mini-book into a folder, decorate the outside of the folder and voi-la! You have a cool presentation that your kids can be super proud of!

This is the same mini-book with the tabs pulled up so you can see the answers. Isaac(7) did all the cutting and assembly himself-- I helped a little with getting the tabs in their inserts without ripping the paper.

I know, this still seems random and not very well explained. It is sort of a hard idea to explain without being able to give you a visual. My pictures aren't so great, but I tried to give you just an idea-- we just started our Botony folders yesterday. I will continue to post pictures as we make progress. In the meantime, go to their website and check them out! Download some of their free samples, print them out and start folding paper. Once you do that, I think you will get the idea and then the wheels will start turning. The possibilities really are endless!

And the real test??? My boys LOVE IT!!! They made their first little book yesterday and granted, it took a bit more time than I expect it to once we get the hang of what we are doing (I could have done all the cutting for them in advance-- you know, in all my spare time!)... Here is the real clincher for me. They were engaged the ENTIRE time (45 + minutes), they ENJOYED their Botony time (which has been gag before this!), they were SUPER proud of what they had done-- first thing they had to do was show it off to Daddy; AND they DIDN'T EVEN MIND WRITING!!!!

Go check them out: Live & Learn Press

Grace and Peace,
Shari

Feel the Love

I'm not sure what is going on in my home exactly... a work of the Lord is all I can guess. My boys have been SO very compassionate and kind to one another over the last several weeks. I mean, don't get me wrong; they are pretty civil to each other on a regular basis. I mean, we have our days, but overall, they get along. But, lately.... well... there is just so much love to go around! This afternoon, Wyatt looked at Sam and said, "Sam, I just love you. You are the best brother ever. Isaac, so are you!" What?? What was that I heard? Oh my. I think that was a "no strings attached" compliment! And such a rich one at that! Hmmm... like I said. God giving us a sweet gift in these last days until Daddy leaves for the big "D".

Speaking of the big "D", this gear up for it is getting, well... exhausting. And the thing is, I don't know how to not have it be exhausting, either. We stay positive, and certainly there is never a shortage of things to do, places to go, games to make, etc. But, no matter what we do or how we spend our time together, there it is. Getting closer. Waiting to happen. I have talked to several friends who have "gone before me" so to speak, and they all say the same thing... getting ready to deploy is the worst part. Once he goes, we can get into a routine and establish some normalcy. Although, in our case, Tony will be gone for almost three weeks, then home for Thanksgiving, then gone for the long haul. Then, of course, we enter into the Holiday season and that is usually void of normalcy. So... maybe come January, I can think about a routine. But...why think that far in advance? What a waste of time :)... I'd rather just enjoy today even if it is a little tiring!

Oh... here is something cool-- The boys and I went to see High School Musical 3 today! Yes. On opening day. I feel so hip. One of their fellow homeschool friends had a birthday and rather than have a party, she opted for us all to go see High School Musical together. It was fun! I have to confess that I never saw the first High School Musical until it was out on video-- for a LONG time; and I have never seen all of High School Musical 2. I have boys. They don't dance around the house to "We're Better Together" (I think that is the name of one of the songs!). But, I'm SOOOO glad that we have friends with girls!! And here is my sad confession. As HUGE CHEESE as it was; I found myself ferclempt more than once. Yes, people. I teared up. I mean, Tony and I are High School Sweethearts, okay! So, stay off my case!! :)

Finally, there are several families traveling this week to pick up their children from Ethiopia. I am going to attempt to link you to them here:

Schmidt Family
Van Wetten Family
Redfern Family

There are others, however, these are the blogs I could find links for. Hopefully they will update their blogs throughout the week.

Take care and have a great weekend, everyone!
Grace and Peace,
Shari