October 21

This day marked two years since my double mastectomy at the hands of Dr L.  and the start of the reconstruction process by Dr S. Three months later all surgery would be complete.  One year following that I would have a final procedure to normalize my look.
Two years later I still struggling with the whys?, the what ifs?, the shaking of my head and the sobbing over what was lost.  On this day two years out I was serving some beautiful women on a weekend renewal.  I had asked my team to cover me in prayer because anniversary dates are difficult and I really didn't want to go down in a sobbing ball of messy while serving women.  I made it about halfway through the day without a thought to what the day meant in my history.  And then....I glanced up.  A simple black t-shirt with a large pink ribbon caught my eye and my breathing became shallow and the tears started pouring.  I quickly excused myself from the room and headed for fresh air.  I pleaded with God to make it short, this weekend wasn't about me and I didn't want it to turn that way.  A few of my team mates saw me hit the door and prayed for me.  The attack was blessedly short lived and did not reappear the rest of the weekend.
I learned a few things this past weekend.
1.God is present even when I am pushing Him away
2.Prayer is powerful
3. Good friends who pray are powerful
4. Pray now not later
5 Time does heal wounds but scars are always present.

Girls Weekend

Once a year I get together with a few girlfriends and head out on the town.  We are homeschooling moms who live about as far away from each other as you can get.  Between us we leave 15 kids in the capable hands of our husbands.  I literally breathe deep the whole weekend.  These two women have listened to me whine, rejoice, cry heavily over broken dreams, and laugh.  At their feet I glean wisdom.
This year one of friends couldn't make it.  Logistics just couldn't be had.  God has a reason for that....but it sure was a different time without her, besides we all know how much getting away recharges us.
I plum wore myself out this weekend.  Time was spent walking all over the riverwalk, and alamo.  Eating whatever I wanted, and doing whatever struck our mood.  We also managed to run a 5k at Sea World after the above walking!  Good times.

Bright Ideas Press WONDERMAPS

WonderMaps by Bright Ideas Press is well, wonderful!  This is a fabulous product that makes finding and printing maps for your specific need very easy.

This year my kids are studying American History with a little bit of world thrown in to set up some timeline correlations.  As we study each time period of American History I need to find about a dozen different maps with the detail or with the click of a button lack of detail that I need.  Wondermaps provides that and more.

So let me give you an idea of what I mean.  We are currently studying a bit about the Civil War.  I needed a map that showed confederate and union states as they were at that time.  Navigation is fairly easy in the program.  I searched using the thematic maps.  I also browsed over where the Mystery of History  and All American History curriculums are mapped out to see how easy it would be to use if I was using those curriculums.  Once I had the map I could decide how much detail I wanted.  Rivers, key, labels etc could all be selected.  This works beautifully for quizzes.  You can use the same map for teaching and then remove the labels and present the same map for testing.  No more white outing!

Here my son is coloring in the confederate states

A close up of the maps. This one is from the All American History II.

As I briefly mentioned above if you are a user of Mystery of History or All American History then the maps for those are organized for you in their own section of Wondermaps.  

WonderMaps isn't just maps.  There is a teachers guide as well that has ideas, mapping projects, how to make a salt dough map and much more.

Below is a video that Wondermaps created that gives a fantastic overview.  See for yourself how the program works.


I really enjoyed getting to use Wondermaps.  Not having to search all around the internet for a clear map of exactly what I need to teach my kids is a blessing.  I love the fact that you can select more or less detail as you see fit.
You can get WonderMaps from Timberdoodle for $44.95.  This is a product that will span the entirety of history teaching.  You can get a Free homeschool catalog from Timberdoodle as well.

Disclaimer: As a member of Timberdoodle's Blogger Review Team I received a free copy of WonderMaps in exchange for a frank and unbiased review.