Mid-School Year Update 2016-2017

Our homeschool has been plugging along since the first week of September 2016, until we were interrupted by weeks of morning sickness where it was a chore to even make it out of bed most days, much less teach anything! 

Then in October, Mason fell and cut his leg open, requiring lots of stitches and staples, which got infected with Staph A. He was hospitalized for a week and on some high grade antibiotics.  Thankfully, our family rallied around us and made sure all our other kids were cared for and loved while Mom and/or Dad were in the hospital with Mase.  Mimi and Poppie even flew all the way from Alabama to help us out!

Poor sick little guy!

We started to play catch up with school in November, but took a week off to visit Grandma and Grandpa for Thanksgiving.  In early December, I came down with the worst sinus infection I have ever had, which was made even worse by the fact that I couldn't take anything to give me much relief because of the pregnancy. 

It was a miserable two weeks and we got zero school done, but honestly, that's life.  And that's one of the wonderful aspects of homeschooling.  We were able to put formal school on the back burner for a little bit and focus on getting our family healthy and working together as a team to ensure that the house still functioned and everyone was fed and bathed and had clean clothes to wear.

Before Christmas, we got back to our normal school schedule and only took the Monday after Christmas and the Monday after New Year's Day off.  We have since been going strong and we've developed a daily routine that seems to be working for us for now!

I get up about an hour before the kids so that I have time to collect my thoughts, read the Bible, and get my to do list made before the chaos begins. In the mornings, the kids get dressed and bring their dirty clothes down to the washer first thing, then we have breakfast together. 

Strawberry oatmeal! Nom nom!

Everyone finishes the rest of their chores (making beds, brushing teeth, etc.) and I get the dishwasher unloaded and the laundry started.  The little kids play in the living room while the big kids and I work on their math and their writing lessons. 

Sometimes the little ones want to do math too!

The washer is usually done at some point during math, so I switch the laundry to the dryer then.  It is really helpful that our laundry room is just off the dining room, so I can hear the washer stop without having to constantly check on it.  Otherwise, I know I would forget about it... :)

We finished our reading curriculum a few weeks ago, and have now moved on to spelling, so we do that after writing on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday.  We do a grammar lesson on Tuesday and Thursday. 

By that point it is usually getting close to lunch time, so I get lunch ready while the kids pick up the toys that are inevitably strewn about the living room.  We eat anywhere between 11:30-12 and then the kids get the clean laundry out of the dryer and start folding while I load the dishwasher and clean up from lunch. 

Everyone then takes their clean, folded clothes upstairs and puts them away.  Mason's usually make it as far as his bed, but we're working on it! Then it is time for Paisley's nap around 1pm.  Once she is in bed, we sit down and read a lesson from our history book and our Bible curriculum.  I usually let the kids color or build with Legos while I'm reading as it seems to help with their focus. 

Our kids and two friends putting the Legos together while Pais sleeps.

Science has gotten the short end of the stick this year as I haven't been able to keep up with doing an experiment every lesson. Sometimes we skip the experiment and just talk about what should have happened and read the lesson.  We also do Latin DVDs a couple of times a week, usually Mondays and Wednesdays, with an informal review on Fridays.

 

Dad doing a science experiment with the kids!

At that point, we are done and the kids can play or read while I get dinner started (or sit down and read!).  Most of our lessons are structured to be done three or four days a week, so we try to take Friday off or use it as a catch up day if we haven't finished any work from the week.  I like being able to get some bigger projects, like decluttering or deep cleaning, done around the house on Fridays.

This routine has been working for us so far and we are already caught up with where I wanted to be by this point in the year.  In fact, this month and March we are working ahead so that we will finish all of their books by the middle of April.  Although I hate to do two lessons a day in some subjects, I know that everything will be thrown into a tailspin once the baby is born, so I would rather get it done now than do sporadic lessons this summer.

They crack each other up sometimes!

So, that's where we are right now! We are in a good place and a good routine and I am definitely praying that we can keep it up as I get further along in this pregnancy and the fatigue begins to set in again!

2017 Goals for our Mini Suburban Homestead!

I am a little late in posting our goals for this year, considering it's already mid-February, but with everything we have going on with the pregnancy and homeschool, I am giving myself grace! Our ultimate goal (5-10 years out) is to buy a house on at least 5 acres and begin raising more animals, have a larger garden, and become more self-sufficient.

But in the meantime, I have decided that I can do most things that true homesteaders do, just on a smaller scale.  Besides having a dairy cow.  I don't think the neighbors would like that very much! I do plan on getting a few more chicks in March so that once our current hens get older, we will not have to start from scratch with new layers.  As many eggs as we had last summer and fall, I may have to start selling the excess once the new chicks start laying!

Homesteading to me is more of a mindset than anything.  It is about knowing where your food came from and having that direct connection to the land.  It is about having less of a reliance on consumer goods and becoming more of a producer.  Let's face it, none of us will ever be fully self-sufficient without living a very meager lifestyle, but all of us can do something to reduce our dependence upon commercial America. 

So with that in mind, I have come up with a list of skills that I would like to master (or at least try!) before the year is out:

• Make vanilla and almond extracts (sooo expensive at the store-and I bake enough to make this one worth a try!).
• Experiment with making different flavors of yogurt. We love the vanilla, but I'm sure the kids would enjoy something different from time to time.
• Make homemade mayonnaise.
• Research ways to preserve fruits at their cheapest price (freezing, dehydrating, and/or canning). We go through a LOT of fruit and it gets expensive in the wintertime! 
• Find a great, non-crumbly sandwich bread recipe.
• Expand my bread making to include brioche, challah, and sourdough varieties.
• Expand my canning repertoire to include:
• Beef broth
• Chicken broth
• Beans (kidney, black, and white)
• Homemade spaghetti/pasta sauce (find recipe!)
• Chicken chunks
• Make soap.
• Make beeswax candles.
• Make homemade pasta.
• Make homemade cheese (start with mozzarella).
• Find great from scratch biscuit recipe and freeze them for quick breakfasts.

I would like to come back and update each of these bullets when I accomplish one of the tasks, just to keep myself on track.  For example, I made challah bread this afternoon for our French toast dinner! It was easier than I thought and the braided loaves look very fancy!

 

 The braided loaves before their last rise.

After baking.

Next time I will let them bake for about 5 minutes less and they should be perfect!

The Plan for Spring

I love this time of year! It is still too cold here in Idaho to accomplish much outside, but inside next to the fireplace, I am in full scale planning mode for our gardens and yard. 

Obviously not to scale!

We have a very small area, so every little bit of space has to be used wisely!  We currently have three raised beds on the north side of the backyard and a row of arbor vitae on the west fence for a little bit of privacy.  The southwest corner is fully occupied by the chicken coop and run.

My goal this year is to get the blueberry and raspberry bushes replanted and to have a productive vegetable harvest.  We didn't get anything last year except for a few carrots because the free ranging chickens and ducks ate EVERYTHING. Literally.  Now that they are confined to their run, I am hoping to have more success!

Marcus wants to grow a giant pumpkin and the kids would like to plant some grape vines, so we will incorporate those into the plan as well.  I also want to plant some potatoes in buckets and maybe a few corn stalks on the fence line.

Some of the best advice for gardeners I have ever read is to only grow what your family will eat.  In the past, I have always overplanted because I thought that every decent "wannabe homesteader" should grow things like peppers, cucumbers, and cabbage.  The problem is that we don't really eat those veggies very often.  So even if we did get a good crop, it went to waste in the fridge. 

Everything I've got on the plan for this year is food that we will eat fresh or I will can for the winter.  I am excited to get started and see how my garden grows!

39 Week Update and My Quest for Great Literature

Today is 39 weeks!  I have to be honest, besides morning sickness all.the.time., this is probably the worst part of pregnancy.  Marcus can attest to the fact that even though this is baby number four and I should be somewhat tuned into the signs of labor by now, I lay in bed at night and speculate on how much longer I think it will be.  I think it's more of a pleading at this point for God to hear how miserable I am and start labor, haha! 

 

I am past the point of getting dressed in the mornings and I might make it to the shower during Mason's naptime, but even that is pushing it.  I've still had lots of pressure and BH contractions, but they always seem to go away just as I'm starting to convince myself that I'm actually in labor.  I actually halfway packed my hospital bag this week, but since I should only have to be in the hospital for 24 hours, it seems kinda silly to pack a bunch of stuff besides a Boppy and nursing tanks.  I have a couple of cute outfits for Paisley, but I plan on going home in yoga pants and a tank top, lol. 

 

Otherwise, we're just playing the waiting game now.  This last trimester I've had restless legs whenever I lay down to rest, which has been really frustrating for both Marcus and I at bedtime because I'm constantly adjusting and trying to get comfortable and it's very disruptive for both of us.  Anyway, I figured out that if I take a hot bath before bed, it helps my legs to relax and I go to sleep much easier.  So during my baths, I've been catching up on a lot of reading and it's been wonderful!  I've read five books in the bath in the month that we've been here!

 

I know that all this uninterrupted reading time is going to come to an end pretty soon with Paisley's birth and school starting back, but I am using this time to work on my "Classics List" that I came up with several years ago.  I have always been a reader, but when we were exploring the Classical education model for our kids, I felt like there were way too many influential, award-winning books that I had either never read or skimmed over in school just to do well on a test.  So I compiled a list of books and have been slowly working my way through the list as I can find the time between my college classes and the kids' school/activities.  I also have to fight the urge to be on social media during any free moment that I get, and bath time seems to be a good solution because I surely am not taking my phone or computer to the bath with me!  Of course, I might be just as upset if I dropped a book in the bathtub...

 

 

It's a pretty extensive list and still have a long way to go, but I am steadily making progress.  The great part about this list is that there are books that I never would have chosen on my own, but now that I've read them, I see why they are considered classics.  I feel sorry for our generation of kids that will not be exposed to some of these books because these stories are powerful.  I just finished Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl right after reading Night by Elie Weisel, both of which are about the Jewish plight during WWII.  Very gut-wrenching stuff.   I've read books about migrant farm workers in California during the Depression (The Grapes of Wrath), Apartheid (Cry, the Beloved Country), and slavery (Uncle Tom's Cabin), as well as mental illness (Flowers for Algernon), racism (Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry), socialism (Animal Farm), Communism (1984), and I'm currently reading about the disgusting conditions in the meat-packing industry and the issue of wage-slavery that immigrants to this country faced in Upton Sinclair's The Jungle. 

 

I am so glad that I created this list back in 2012 because, unlike with social media where something new comes along every 5 minutes, books like these force us to examine our own hearts and they tend to leave a lasting impression.  Although many of the books are merely fiction, we still find ourselves immersed in how we would react if we were the characters in the book.  I truly believe that great literature helps us determine where our belief systems lie in the real world.  In the abstract, it is easy to say how we would act in all situations, but when an author is able to challenge those positions, it either reinforces our convictions or it makes us realize that our beliefs were faulty to begin with.   

 

This is why I feel bad for a generation that is not being raised to read and think through some of these tough books.  Without grounding and reinforcement of a belief system, there is a much higher probability of just going with the flow and being blown about by whatever the popular school of thought du jour is.  I want my kids (and me!) to be able to articulate why we believe what we believe and why we always come back to the Bible as our moral absolute.  We may not always understand why God tells us certain things, but we can trust that His plan is sovereign and that He is in control.  There are so many theological lessons that we can learn from reading great books and bringing them back to the Bible, but this post is getting terribly long and I don't want to ramble, so I will save those thoughts for another day!  In the meantime, I'm going to go read!

 



 



38th Week in Pictures

38 weeks pregnant today! Still having lots of pressure down low, but no contractions so far!  Hopefully she'll decide to make her appearance sometime soon! It's getting too hot for me to be this pregnant, lol!

Kelly's mom was transporting five puppies between shelters on Saturday, so she called us over to let the kids play with the puppies for a while.  They had a blast! I think the puppies had a good time too;  they slept all the way to the next shelter!

Saturday night, Marcus took Hunter to a Boise Hawks baseball game.  It was Hunter's first time going to a baseball game and he had a blast!

The bat "boy" was a dog!!

Whoa! That's some intense looking nachos! I guess ball park food has changed since the last time I went to the stadium!

Panorama view of the stadium

The Hawks ended up winning in the bottom of the ninth with an RBI triple!  There were fireworks after the game and Hunter couldn't stop talking about how much fun he had.  I love that there are all sorts of things to do here with the kids that we might not have had the opportunity to do elsewhere.

I had to end with the sweetest picture ever from naptime today.  Melts my heart...

Mase Man

As I was looking through my pictures a few days ago, I noticed a trend.  Mason is a little clown! So this post is pretty much a slideshow of how silly he can be!

Row, row, row your boat in the Sam's cart

"I keeled the spider!" (After stomping on it several times, he went and got a towel to pick it up. Good thing it was a plastic spider!)

Making silly faces at lunch

He got into Mommy's mascara! At least he knew where it went!

Trying to look through the binoculars backwards

He wanted a back rub from Daddy after Mommy got one

He wanted to throw the fish back in the water

While still healing from falling over and hitting his forehead, he decided to jump down from Taylor's window seat and bite a hole in his tongue.  He's determined to give Mommy a heart attack, I believe.

Swimming in the dogs' pool

 

Chowing down on the fry sauce, like a true Idahoan!

Helping Aunt Kelly get the brownie batter off the beaters!

 

As I'm getting ready to fix lunch, I look over and see that Mason is two steps ahead of me!

As silly as he is, he is still such a sweet boy! (Especially when he's asleep! ;-))

New Home: The School Room

Out of all the rooms in our new house, I have to say that I am most excited about the school room.  I am a total, unapologetic nerd and I have way too many books to have bookshelves scattered all over the house.  I am really excited about this upcoming school year as it will be our first full, official year of homeschooling the kids.  With Taylor in 1st Grade and Hunter in Kindergarten, plus a toddler and a newborn, it will be interesting to see how this year plays out. 

Last year, before the morning sickness kicked in and life got crazy with moving, I really enjoyed the structure that our school days provided.  It seemed like the days went much smoother when we all had a routine and knew what to expect.  These lazy summer days have been wreaking havoc on our schedule and I will be glad to get back to some structure!

So, I am very excited about having a dedicated place for us to do the majority of our schoolwork because one of my biggest frustrations last year was having to get our school stuff cleaned off the kitchen table for lunch and get it back out afterwards if the need arose.  It will be nice to be able to close the door and leave a project where it is without having to clean everything up in between school times.

This is more the office side of the room, where I've got most of my books, including cookbooks, old textbooks, scrapbooks, devotionals & Bibles, fiction, and a whole shelf of adult classics that I've picked up here and there.  It will be nice having the computer and printer in the same room where we do school.  Besides pencils, that was probably the tool we used the most last year! On top of the bookshelf is Marcus's diploma-mine will be joining his soon!

Around the corner, I have the world map, United States map, and a dry erase writing practice page on the wall next to our curriculum shelves.  The shelves are two 3x3 cube organizers from Lowe's stacked on top of one another.

Across the room is our dry erase board and the calendar and clock.  I also got Taylor a small magnetic board that she can use with the magnetic letter tiles when we're working on making words.  The cubbies below the white board are the 2x3 cube organizers from Lowe's attached at the ends.  They hold our other supplies, like math manipulatives, letter tiles, hole punch, label maker, etc.

As of right now, I'm keeping all of my craft supplies in the closet.  But there is plenty of room in there to add more storage if we need it.  Behind the door is a copy of the Declaration of Independence from Hobby Lobby.  We also have a copy of the Bill of Rights that is still packed in a box somewhere!

A straight-on view of the white board and cubbies.  We have 38 days until school starts! I want to add a section on the side of the board that details our daily/weekly schedule so that the kids know what is coming and to keep me on task with what I expect to accomplish that day or week.

A better view of our curriculum/kids books cubbies.  I have these organized by subject with the board books and younger kids books on the bottom so that Mason can get them out while we're "doing school."  Math, Science, History, Reading, Bible, Fine Arts, and supplies that we use on a frequent basis round out the other shelves.  I even had room in the top right cubby for Marcus's and my current textbooks. 

 

The only other thing that I need to pick up for this room is a small table to go in the middle.  I have debated between desks and a table and I think that since most of our work will be done together (only math and English will be done at different grade levels), it would be beneficial if I could sit down with them at the same table and we can work all together.  If they need to be separated because they're getting distracted too easily, I can always send one of them to the kitchen table, which is still within eyesight for me, to work by themselves.  Read-alouds will still be done on the couch so everyone can get comfy and enjoy the story.  So excited to get this school year underway-we'll see if this room looks the same halfway through the year, haha!