a homeschool life conversation with maren jones

Hello! My name is Maren & I am the lucky wife of Dan Jones.  We met on a blind date in high school & have been married for almost 18 years.  We have 6 children: Averee 13.5, Adelyn 11.5, Owen 10, Reese 7, Gavin 4 & Fisher 3.  We live in beautiful Southern Utah. We enjoy the outdoors; boating, camping, fishing, hiking, traveling, playing games, & watching movies.  But nothing beats a date night, or even better-a vacation with just us two.

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where your treasure is

Oh, my. I should have posted this about a week ago, but life and everything, and well, I'm just getting around to it!  I want to document that autumn when Abe was two and Matthew was five, because these sure are precious days. And the mustaches. How could I not document those?! The mustache thing started last year when Matthew wore the same costume as this year. We looked at him all decked out and realized a mustache was missing.

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a homeschool life conversation with jesika harmon

We are the Harmons! Robbie, aka the Principal who the students actually want to get sent to visit; Jesika, aka the teacher/mom who some days flies by the seat of her pants; Bree, aka the sweet 9 year old who loves everything art, history and music, and not so much anything math this year; Gabe, aka the 7 year old who rolls his eyes at reading unless it has to do with animals and college sports teams; McKay, aka the 5 year old who is trying to find his place as the third child and has all the sport/math/reading talent as his older siblings but kindawants to be different; and Quinn, aka the 3 year old ballerina who reminds mom that she has to do “her math and grammar” every day too.

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autumn art projects

I love this time of year. The change of season is always refreshing to me. And the autumn colors against the brilliant blue sky is breathtaking to me. One of my favorite things is to find ways to bring nature indoors as well as create with my kids. I think it's important for them to create, but I also find it's an essential outlet for me personally! Here are a few projects we have enjoyed doing.

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school lately

Homeschool is such a full experience. I attempted to express my feelings about it the other day to my husband as we drove. It's as though my love for my children has deepened and expanded through this experience. That's interesting because I didn't think that love could increase because it was so great--but it has.

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grumpiness and a gorgeous autumn day

Ever have those mornings where there's a general aura of grumpiness going around? Maybe not in your home, but it occasionally happens in our home. I think it usually relates to one sort of stress or another when it comes from me or my husband, and when it comes from one of the kids, I can oftentimes correlate it to not enough sleep or some sort of little sickness (a cold or something) making it's way through our home. Either way, the reality is that sometimes grumpiness takes a bit of a hold on us.

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