Month: May 2016

If I felt allll the feels with Zelie turning two, I climbed in the Feelings Bus headed towards Heart Wrench Drive when Caidoc’s birthday came (all of two days later). I suppose I felt all sad and weepy because he’s my first baby, and we are experiencing all the firsts together. He’s growing up so fast, and very sure he can do everything an adult can do, in fact it took me a few weeks to convince him he was in fact turning 4, not fifteen, like he was telling everyone. Caidoc is constantly surprising me, and I constantly underestimate him. He’s our responsible, loving, kind, clever, curious, creative, lego-loving little man who always goes above and beyond for those around him.

His Lego party was so fun. This is the first year we introduced games and he took the bull by the horns and led them all! He made me very proud.

He requested a cake. Which is really not my strong suit. But I couldn’t resist trying. All those Lego cakes Pinterest were so cool.

I love you my handsome sweet boy. The best is yet to come.

 

How is it that my baby is already two years old?! I’m having these simultaneous conflicting feelings, that she was just my tiny baby, but that she couldn’t have possibly been that small once. She is thinning out, from all her running after (and from) her brother, convinced she is too old for naps, but still likes to be called my “baby”. While all her chub is shrinking, she her vocabulary is anything but. Zelie let’s us know what’s going on. She can tell us how she’s feeling and what she’s thinking and I LOVE it. It is so fun to have a glimpse into this sweet little girl’s mind, this pink-loving, affectionate, smart, opinionated (which is a good thing!), strawberry blonde, ocean eyed daughter. We are blessed to have such an amazing little person in our lives.

I mean, she’s stunning, right? 

Those blue-gold eyes, they slay me.

Her party was a pink and gold themed, ” she leaves a little sparkle wherever she goes”. I had a blast planning it.

Yep, that’s edible gold dust. Hey, you only turn two once!

That’s one excited big brother! He was so thrilled for her.

Happy 2nd birthday my sweet girl, the best is yet to come!

 

We have been trying to get lots of hiking in, and plan to do more. Here are some of our hiking pictures so far this Spring.

 

 

I cannot imagine not homeschooling. As challenging, time consuming, and frustrating as it gets sometimes, I. LOVE. IT. This comes as no surprise. My original major in college was teaching, I’m actually only a few credits away from my teaching degree. I also spent two years student teaching grades 2-12 which were some of the most fulfilling days of my life. However, teaching my own children has been infinitely more fulfilling. Watching my kids learn, and experience that excitement and joy with them is priceless to me.

This Spring we’ve had an awesome time learning all about Spring time, along with all the other regular subjects, like math, reading, writing, religion, etc. I’ve worked our Spring theme into all our learning which is so much fun. Here is some of what we’ve done:

These terribly technical pictures (NOT) are examples of things I pulled off the internet.

I LOVED this sticky garden activity. Anything to get us outside right away in the morning for school is just wonderful.

Here is our version:

I can’t get enough of C’s amazingly cute observations about the plants he collected.

This was really fun too, both kids got very creative!

I got an amazing Spring unit off of Teachers Pay Teachers. Homeschoolers, I cannot recommend this enough. I do not use a set curriculum because I find that very rarely does it address all our needs in the ways we need it to. This site is an amazing resource for putting together your own curriculum- cheaply!

This Life Cycle of a Bean has been the biggest hit. We’ve had so much fun.

We’ve been waiting weeks for our beans to sprout and they finally did! Each day C would show Husband which part of the cycle the bean was in.

When it finally came time to plant, they were VERY excited.

 

 

They did this all on their own and were so very proud :). C knows it his responsibility to take care of the seeds now.

Whenever we start having a hard time focusing during our school we do a physical theme dance like this one:

This life cycle of a butterfly was very cool to put together:

 

I so wish I could show you and explain everything we’ve been doing but that would just take too long. But, suffice to say, it’s been so fun and exciting! Both kiddos are learning so quickly and we have a great routine down.

I still haven’t totally decided what type of theme to do after the Spring one. Usually, I prefer to have it focus on what we are experiencing currently; a season, a holiday, etc. Last year I had a weekly theme, which was very time consuming, but moved at a quick pace. This year I’m really liking having a theme last a couple months, because we are able to go more in depth and explore more aspects of theme, for example, in Spring theme we’ve been learning about the biology of insects, plant life cycles, pollination, Spring weather, etc.

That’s it for our homeschooling update right now!

Cheers!

 

 

 

 

After much planning, consternation, and budgeting, my adventures in gardening for the year may begin! I’ve finally gotten all the plants and seeds in the ground with much help from Husband. Little Man and Miss A were good little helpers watering as well. I’m very grateful for the watering. cans they received as part of their Easter presents from Grandma Jill- my plants have a more fair chance at survival now that they aren’t being drowned by the hose when the kids feel like exercising their green thumbs! (Thanks mom!)

Naturally, I started out with incredibly grandiose plans which involved reading several gardening books and magazines (thank you aunt Gwen!), after which, I was sure we could live off our land while simultaneously having a glorious Eden. But, I gradually paired down my lofty thoughts to much more attainable goals (thank you again, aunt Gwen 😊). Now, I won’t end up with a bunch of dead plants and fruitlessly spent money (see what I did there? Haha!) .

I’ve focused on growing herbs and veggies- all things we can eat. I’m excited to make lots of salads. Obviously, just by planting these veggies I’m already well on my way to a summer bikini bod. At least I feel like it should work that way, don’t you?

We’ve been working on our backyard set up ever since we moved in. Slowly, but surly, it’s coming along. Since we have small kids and this isn’t our forever house, our goal is to make the yard useful and durable. Any pretty plants or bushes that are fragile, and can’t stand up to the kiddos get put out front. What does the front look like you say? Uh, let’s just not talk about that right now. Hey, I got the garden planted! That was no small feat. Stay tuned though, I got big plans for that front yard.

 

Cheers!