2014 Year in Review

Hello, as with these other year memory posts, I’m making my blog a bit more organized.

Two weeks of Good-byes (January 24)

Why do we call them good-bye? They don’t seem particularly good, it only seems good if you don’t like the person.

I rather unofficially decided these summaries are going to be more for me, and a way to remember the little things I enjoyed in the past week, because I was talking with my friend Amanda and we were realizing we don’t really have pictures of the adults doing things, or of just the every day moments, so these last 2 weeks I’ve been trying to do that.

The kiddos have started reading to us the bedtime story, it’s been our sneaky way to get some extra reading practice in, but also lets them have fun picking the story. The kids also have now learned how to hand wash dishes, which was a little scary for me as they were using my tea cups at the time. And I finished up a 4 doll outfits that only needed the velcro added in a marathon velcro sewing spree.

In school we finished by the skin of our teeth week of 11 of Illuminations {affiliate link, and yes it’s in bold because I feel accomplished to of done that}. We spent several days with Superman sick with the flu, and it’s hard to limp along in your lessons with one kid moaning in pain. We switched to a new math, because Saxon just was not working, and the jury is still out on it. Princess is definitely not a fan, but the boys are fine with it. For some reason Batman decided to glue paper on himself, I’m not sure why this was so funny, but he thought it was hilarious.

We experimented with starches on foods, played Thunder Hamsters (the boys Christmas present from Aunt Tara). Made Phonecian boats, I successfully made cream of mushroom soup from scratch. And I found the picture of poor sick Superman.

The parents all went out so the E family kids and my kids had an evening together. I gave them the job of practicing a skit of the first 3 Judges of Israel, and these are the practice shots I got before we headed off. There was an adorable one of Princess in a strange amalgam of costumes, but she didn’t want me to share it.

Princess had her first cavity, and was very unhappy as she came off the pain killer. Batman showed off his funny face making skills, and Jeff FINALLY got his last Christmas presents.

Princess had her AHG meeting, and as always was happy as a clam. I started sewing matching outfits for Princess, her doll, and her friend M who’s moving, and her doll. We looked for fat in our foods. The kids had a playdate at a local park, and the boys organized an army there. Two of the E family kids came to stay for the week as their parents are up in Idaho interviewing for jobs.

We visited one of my high school friends and her kids. She has a field of bamboo in her backyard that she runs a constant war with, so she was quite happy to let my kids harvest bamboo for her, so we came back with a trunk full of bamboo for the kids to make into weapons.

We got a little bit of school done. The kids worked on learning who the Greek gods and goddesses were, and they played lots and lots of games. The E kids taught my kids their math lessons for the week, which was diverting for them. We had tea for dinner one night, and all that activity was too much for poor Superman who fell asleep during their quiet reading time.

*And I promise I won’t usually have this much crammed into a post, but I wanted to get as many pictures as possible before they moved, and so we had lots of special events going on. That, and it was an amazingly busy week.

On Wednesday (yes, I’m only on Wednesday), we picked up the other 2 E kids, and went to the children’s museum. Since I’ve got a whole post in the works reviewing our new kid’s museum, I’ll just give you the picture I got of all the kids together. They didn’t really fit on the bench, and the older E kids are getting entirely too old for my tastes.

Each morning I’d leave the kiddos a to do list, and since I had older kids that made up free babysitting I could leave them as I ran errands. I left them my camera and I got some very amusing pictures. Then last night I came home from Kung Fu and Princess ran up to me “It’s snowing, so I put on my Christmas dress, and I’m starving, see.” Then she sucked her gut in as much as she could and gave me the most pathetic “feed me” look she could find. Then collapsed in laughter.

So, that’s been my 2 weeks. I’m sure the next post will start with this morning of snow play from the kids that I hear outside my window.

Where I pretend we returned to normal…. (January 31)

I told this to Jeff and he laughed at me. For some reason he doesn’t believe that exists. He’s probably right. winter wonderland

Friday started off in a winter wonderland, school was cancelled everywhere, and since I wasn’t really planning much in the way of school anyways, it made a perfect excuse to cancel and just let them play. And they did.

They’d all go outside play for 5 minutes, then come inside and sit next to the fire getting all toasty warm, followed by another round of playing outside. We had the traditional 5 inch tall Texas snowman.

They finally gave up on playing outside, to play inside shortly after we picked up the last 2 E kids. The afternoon was filled with tea parties, board games (including my new LEGO The Hobbit game {affiliate link}). After we dropped all of the E kids off at their aunt’s house Jeff found a box of our books from when we were kids. The kids raided the box and took all the books upstairs they wanted to read right now. That night when I went to tuck in the kids I found the boys with flashlights reading the book they got from Aunt Tara.

Monday was probably a bit more like what our days normally are like. Some fun activities mixed in with some mundane. I was franctically finishing up a birthday present, and made about 3 last minute visits to the fabric store as I ran out of elastic thread. The kids happily did their All About Reading lessons (level 2 for Princess, and level 3 for the boys, affiliate links).

Tuesday we had another ice day, but this time Jeff stayed home from work when I told him there was already over 100 accidents out there reported, and most of them were on his route to work. So the kids played out briefly, but it was all ice, nothing fun to play in, other than slipping and sliding. What to do on an ice day?

Build a fort of course, and play with your toy guns. I love the picture of them all reading around the fort.

As I mentioned in the Job post we stopped by the E house one last time as they packed so I could drop off a birthday present for their youngest and get a picture of the girls in matching outfits. They loved getting a last chance to say good-bye, and all the kids attempted to sneak into our car, the trailer, and wherever else they could hide. It was a fitting send off. We already have theoretical plans to meet up somewhere to visit. So between grocery shopping, and that “quick visit” we lost most of our school time on Wednesday.

We did by the skin of our teeth get all of our school lessons done, there’s one or two we’re gonna work on today, but it’s mostly done. We worked on writing about a character they made up. We learned about the Israelite Civil War, and about the respiratory system. The kids continued working on multiplication, and seem to be finally really getting it. And we had lots of fun working on our Zeezok music this week.

Here’s my big discovery for the week, it was so cool I stopped and took a screen shot, yes I am that much of a nerd. The new update in Illuminations automatically saves your lesson plans for the week. That means I don’t have to save the individual weeks. How cool is that?

Planning for February (February 8)

Last Friday I wrote out our week in review and looked at what all we’d done, and it was another busy week. I hit publish, went about my week, and realized I’d forgotten to set goals for the coming month, and take a moment to see how I did with the past month.

My big goals for January:

Do dishes every night before bed.
Get kitchen all put together
Get back into a school routine

Well, I didn’t do so well with those goals. Most nights in January I collapsed into bed without having gotten the dishes done. I did however get my kitchen put together. The mess from Christmas is gone, and for the first time in months I can see my kitchen desk. And it’s stayed clean for about 2 weeks now, which is usually a good sign it’ll stay clean.

I haven’t done so well with getting back into a school routine. We spent January running from one emergency to another, or so it felt. I don’t really think there were that many, it just felt like it.

The great irony is on Tuesday I’m going to be a guest panelist for a G+ Hangout on Air with Bright Ideas Press talking about homeschool scheduling. I kind of feel like it’ll be the blind leading the blind, about the only thing I can say is “Get Illuminations, then fix it to what works for you.” I don’t think that one sentence will fill a whole hangout though. Do you?

But our time has been filled with other great things. I may not have gotten dishes done, but we made cookies, and the kids performed shows. Complete with invitations and posters promoting the show.

Princess participated in her first awards ceremony where she got badges for American Heritage Girls. However the poor girl has a non-ambitious Mom who leaves finding badges to the girl, and so Princess didn’t have all that many badges this time. She didn’t care one bit though.

I did get some sewing done, I made about 20 frogs, and actually got decent pictures of the whole process, so I’m gonna update that post with better pictures and an actual real tutorial. I now have about 30 frogs, and would like to get a few more to make the “steal the frog” game work a bit better.

We had random mystery men show up at our house. Eventually the mystery was revealed to be Superman, but for a long time we were wondering who was that man with the strange nose and glasses.

Princess and I went to the Frozen Sing a Long during the Super Bowl with my Mom.

And all of this rambling led to a point, I’ve set new goals and thought about a few things. Namely this week I realized what we were doing for dishes was not working, I was feeling frustrated and over-whelmed doing all the dishes. Yes, the kids unload the dishwasher and frequently reload it. But, I had dishes I was doing for things I didn’t even eat.

NEW GOAL: THE PEOPLE WHO DID NOT COOK THE MEAL WILL DO THE DISHES FOR IT.

I’ve also been rethinking my lesson plans for school. Every week I cram in as much as I possibly can for us to get done, and every week I look at the schedule and say, “Well, we didn’t get this done, and we didn’t get this done, and ooohhhhh, that we didn’t even touch.”

I need to learn to be more realistic. There has to be time for cleaning, and grocery shopping, and “Mom woke up with a headache, don’t talk to her” days. I’m not really scheduling that in.

NEW GOAL: SCHEDULE A REALISTIC WEEK, NO MORE SUPER WEEKS THAT LEAVE ME TIRED

We’ve also gotten back into our bad habit of watching TV together as we eat our meals. It’s easy, and we talk around it, and I suppose it’s somewhat social, but I’d prefer we eat at a table with no TV. To do that I need to make sure my table doesn’t look like that bottom picture there. Covered in random crafts, school supplies, and I think paint we’re thinking about for our room.

NEW GOAL: EAT 5 OUT OF 7 MEALS AT THE DINING ROOM TABLE, NOT IN FRONT OF THE TV.

One thing I have done well with is leaving my kids room to be kids, and to cuddle, and enjoy being kids. It’s been a rough week with some discipline problems and general frustrations, but it’s also been a good week of cuddles, and memories, so that’s been good. My final goal for the month:

NEW GOAL: GET UPSTAIRS BACK IN SHAPE, AGAIN…

It was there, and then I slacked on checking to make sure it was clean, and I got a few things I didn’t have an immediate plan for placement, and you know how that goes.

Now, the kids are in bed, Jeff is at a men’s retreat, and I think I’m going to take the advice I gave someone else earlier and go read a good book while curled up by a fire. Doesn’t that sound nice?

OUR SCHOOL WEEK (September 19, 2014)

All About Reading level 4 came in (AAR4, both affiliate links), and I’ve spent most of their reading lessons and random bits here and there prepping for the lessons. The boys are excited to have reading lessons again, because it means more games for them. We did some cooking to create a Roman Road from Phyllis’ post here, and the kids loved that dessert/school activity.

We continued our Roman-themed activities with a mosaic they made out of candy. I guess this is also the hype my kids up on sugar week. Which seems to of ironically coincided with the “week of massive rain and headaches.”

In our Bible lessons we learned about Jeremiah, and the boys quite “nicely” took pictures of me teaching the lesson, but they also got a few silly pictures of themselves playing dead. Oh so helpful as always.

GAMES PLAYED THIS WEEK:

Destination USA
LEGO Robo Champ (affiliate link, though Amazon’s price seems high right now)
and then we discovered several of our Lego Games were missing pieces, so the boys were set to cleaning the game area

BOOKS READ THIS WEEK (AFFILIATE LINKS):

Ella Enchanted
several Batman junior novelizations that I didn’t keep track of because it changed each day
Princess is really into Critter Club books
Duck in the Fridge (which someone sent to me for review without telling me, and the kids think it’s hilarious)

GENERAL LIFE CATCHING UP

This past week has been hard for me because I’ve been extra tired with all of the pressure changes giving me headaches and I think the stress Jeff is feeling from work is rubbing off on me, so I’ve been somewhat snappish, and the kids have all been tired because several weeks of running hard has caught up to them and they are tired tired tired.

The boys headed off last Friday for a birthday party sleepover, and so Princess got to see her cousins alone and entertain them as we all watched “Moms Night Out” (affiliate link, and it’s hilarious you NEED to watch it). Later that week Princess and I had a Mommmy/daughter date and saw “Dolphin Tale 2” (in theaters now, and great for any ocean lovers).

The boys were quite the hams when they had access to my camera, and so I’ve got about 20 more pictures like the two I included in the collage, and it’s quite silly.

Meanwhile we tried the baking soda/dawn dish soap/vinegar bath for poor Mac and he liked it even less than the other baths. He still smelled like a skunk, but with this being his FOURTH bath in as many days it seems to of decreased. I don’t know if that’s because that bath worked, or enough washings and soap have helped decrease the smell. Either way his fur is the softest and fluffiest it’s been in weeks.**

Oh, and Mac also found a possum in our backyard and tried to make friends with him, that one didn’t go well either. He’s been oblivious to the many many toads we see on all of our nightly walks, unless they leap right in front of his face. Then he startles and goes back to ignoring them.

And the final picture is Princess starting American Girl doll club. Each month they talk about a different doll. They started off with Kaya and Princess feels for Kaya because she too has twin brothers. Next month we’ll be teaching the Caroline lesson.

And I think that’s that for our week. It never seems particularly full until I start writing about the week, and then it’s so full I can’t really talk about all of it. Next week for sure I’ll be writing about Jeremiah, but most of the rest of this will be expounded upon some point later on.

linked up to: Collage Friday

** I did finish the dress I made to destress at about 11:15 Saturday night. I still have to do some hand finishing on the lining, because I decided to fully line it. The lining went together in less than half of the time of the dress because I didn’t have to match color gradations. And I have found my new project: armor knight hoodie.

November and December memories

NOW ON TO WHAT WE’VE BEEN UP TO THIS PAST COUPLE OF WEEKS (ASIDE FROM BEING SICK, SO MUCH SICKNESS)

We had a fabulous Thanksgiving with my family. The kids had lots of fun playing with cousins, and watching movies together. The next day we got our Christmas tree (and I made all the kids pose with the Reindeer).

Which led to the massive Christmas decorating rounds. Getting out our various nativity sets, and decorations. Despite all the decorations we pulled out I’m sure there’s a missing tub of Christmas decorations somewhere.

The following weekend Jeff’s parents came down to visit. We made SO many cookies, way more than I care to count, and I’ve still got a batch of dough to roll out and make.

Everyone enjoyed the chance to hang out, play games together, and generally have fun. We also headed up to Burnet to visit Main Street Bethlehem. The Baptist church has turned an entire city block into first century Bethlehem, and it’s amazing to go through. You can see examples of their projects at the time, handiwork, inns, taverns, a home, and of course the Roman guards.

Batman had to have a picture with the soldier, who was quite happy to pose with him. Or willing to…

In the school front we learned about:

Saint Boniface and the Christmas tree, appropriately timed from our Mystery of History 2 (affiliate link) lesson.
We then went on to learn about Iconoclasts and Charlemagne.
The kids learned about expanded notation in math, which they hate with a passion, and I’ve retaught this lesson in so many ways I’m going crazy.
We learned about Christmas in Sweden, with yet another mishap in the kitchen. I could almost write a book about our lessons going wrong.
We learned about India and discovered we are not every good at spinning with a drop spindle.
Oh, and we started the Winter Wonderland Art Class (affiliate link), and the kids have quite proudly given away two of their projects as Christmas presents so far. I highly recommend the class if you’re looking for an art class for the non-artsy.