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...

Catching Up!

Since my last post, there has been a ton of things going on in our lives, so it's going to take me a few posts to get it all in.  We spent almost the entire month of June in Alabama with my parents, mostly just hanging out and being lazy for the summer.  We got the kids going with the library's reading program and they devoured lots of books;  we even went on a bear hunt or two! ;-)  I was able to get a few books crossed off my reading list as well during my break from school. 

One of the few books I read

We took a few days to explore the area and visit a couple of museums and local tourist attractions.  The kids loved standing next to the waterfall at the dam because it covered us in a cool mist on a blazing hot summer day.

The overlook at Wilson Dam

One of the waterfalls by the dam

 

The bigger waterfall that gave us a good misting

The water temp was still pretty cool for June

The kids had to squint because of all the mist! It sure felt good though!

 

We spent a lot of time just hanging out and enjoying the company.  The kids sure loved hanging out with Mimi and Poppie.

 

Especially when Poppie gave them tractor rides!

 

Taking a nap with Mimi 

A lazy afternoon of Farkle and cheese puffs

Teaching Tay how to play War (that's Daddy's war face, lol)

The kids spent a week at VBS and had a blast!  They're still singing the songs they learned!

 

When Marcus and I were still dating, one of the first restaurants we went to in Alabama was Casa Mexicana.  We have a framed picture of the two of us at the table.  This trip, Casa was one of our last restaurants to go to, so we thought it was only fitting to get a new picture showing the difference of 10 years.  We've both aged a little bit and we've certainly added to our family a lot! It makes me wonder where we'll be in another 10 years...

 





27 Weeks

Well, the end of the second trimester is finally here.  This is the last week and I'll be in the home stretch.  Miss Paisley is definitely making her presence known lately.  She kicked me so hard the other night that she almost knocked my Bible off my lap!

 

She likes to be active mostly after breakfast and when I'm lying in bed at night.  I've been having way more heartburn, especially in the evenings after dinner.  Other than that, my energy is still up and I'm feeling really good!

 

We've pretty much gotten everything packed up that we aren't in the process of using.  The last week we're here, we'll have to get the rest of the kitchen stuff and all the furniture ready to go, but other than that, the packing is essentially done!  We've taken care of everything that needed to be repaired around the house--so proud of Marcus for changing out the water heater by himself!!  He saved us almost $400 by doing it instead of having a plumber come. 

 

Last night, Marcus had a brilliant idea and gave the kids the water heater box to color on.  It kept them busy for over two hours before they had to get baths. 

 

 

So much fun for them!



Mother's Day 2015 - Park Evening

After we left church on Mother's Day, we went out for lunch at Applebee's and then went home and the boys laid down for a nap while I finished up some homework.  Taylor and Daddy bought me some beautiful roses, a Mother's Day card, and some Twizzlers, yum! :)

It was a gorgeous day, so we decided to grab a pizza for dinner and have a picnic at the park.  We all had a blast.  Everybody got in on the action, even Daddy!

Taylor helping her brother! Proof that it does happen occasionally! :)

Mase munching on a breadstick

Daddy and Hunter racing across the lily pads.

Mason trying to figure out how to get down, lol!

Miss Paisley and I relaxing on the bench.

 

This was right before Mase decided he wanted off and almost flew into the mulch, lol.

Tay and Hunter swinging like a crab.

Whee!!

We saw this cool flower; I have no idea what kind it is, but it was beautiful!

 

We drove home with the windows down and enjoyed the sun going down.  I couldn't have asked for a better Mother's Day!  I even got a back massage, which is a little slice of heaven for this pregnant mama!  :)  

 

2015-2016 Curriculum

As I said in my last post, we are going with the Classical Conversations at home method this upcoming school year.  Which means that the foundation of our school will be, ironically, the Foundations guide from CC and the audio CDs of the memory work.  

One of the biggest decisions we had to make this year was whether to formally classify Hunter as Kindergarten or whether to hold him back until next year.  His 5th birthday is ON September 1st, which is the cutoff, so we could have gone either way with him.  I leaned towards holding him back a year at first because, like most little boys, he has the hardest time sitting still and tends to fidget all. the. time.  But since we are not going to enroll them in a CC community until the 2016-17 school year and he'll be 6, I think we will be able to train him to sit still long enough for the lessons.  My other reason for going ahead with Kindergarten for him is because this child has an amazing memory.  This has really become evident with AWANA this year.  He has no problem memorizing his Scriptures and even some of his sister's!  Any song that comes on the radio he can sing the words to and we have an audio book of 'Twas the Night Before Christmas that he can recite all the words to from memory.  So since the CC memory work will be our main focus, I think that it will be perfect for him.

Our Bible study starting out will be Who Is God? And How Can I Know Him? by Apologia.  I've read several very good reviews of it and this year I want to do a family study instead of one that is segregated by grade-level.

For math, we will be sticking with Saxon.  It has worked well for us this year and so far the kids have enjoyed it.  I will be using Level 1 for Taylor and repeating the Kindergarten book for Hunter.  He sat at the table with us when we did the activities for Taylor and seemed to really enjoy them.  I want to reinforce the ideas that he picked up on this year before we move on to new material for him.

For English/Reading, we will be using First Language Lessons for The Well-Trained Mind, Level 1.  This is another one of those that I've heard good recommendations for, so we are going to try it out.  I still have Explode the Code that we used this year and I will probably have Hunter go through it again before moving on to FLL the following year. 

I debated back and forth between Story of the World and Mystery of History for a while, but I think we are going to go with Mystery of History this year.  The deciding factor for me was that it is more Biblically-centered than SOTW.  My only concern is that I've read reviews that it may be geared more towards older elementary school students.  Of course, if we try it and end up not liking it, we can always change it!

As a supplement to CC science, I am going to get Science in the Beginning by Dr. Jay Wile.  I like that this science book is geared towards younger elementary students and that there are simple experiments with household items for each lesson.  The other great thing about this book and the subsequent ones is they explore science following the timeline of history.  It helps that we are starting with Cycle 1 in CC this year, so we will be learning our history and our science starting with Creation.

If that didn't seem like enough to keep us super busy throughout the year, I would like to throw in a few lessons on fine arts and classical music.  I would love to get both kids into music lessons, but they also want to do soccer and baseball and I know I've got to draw the line somewhere!  I keep having to remind myself that we will have a newborn when school starts as well and I'll probably be running on very little sleep for a while!

To organize all this and help keep me sane, I will be using The Well-Planned Day planner again.  I have loved how it has room for everything for the kids' school (and mine!), including my dinner menu for the week and shopping lists.  It suits my Type A personality very well.  In fact, I hinted to Marcus the other night that my current planner expires in June, so I'll be needing a new one soon! :-)

I know that I am overextending myself, but honestly, I'd rather schedule too much and not get it all done than to schedule too little and then be scrounging for things to add mid-year.  So we're shooting for the stars! :-)

Our first year homeschooling

Ever since I read The Well-Trained Mind by Susan Wise Bauer and Jessie Wise, I have been intrigued by the idea of a classical education.  I felt like this was the kind of education I wish I had when I was growing up.  Then, a couple of years ago, when we were exploring the idea of homeschooling, Taylor and I got the opportunity to visit a Classical Conversations program and observe the way that it worked.  I was amazed at the things that these kids had memorized!  They remembered more about Latin than I did after three years of AP Latin in high school!  I knew this was something that I wanted to explore in more detail and seriously consider for our family.  We didn't jump into a CC community immediately because I was still working at the time and would not be able to homeschool exclusively until the following October. 

Fast forward to the present and we are finished with Kindergarten with Taylor, which was definitely an eye-opening experience.  I, like every newcomer I'm sure, was overwhelmed with curriculum choices, and I ended up going with a few different ones that were recommended by fellow homeschooling moms.  We had success with some and others didn't fit our family very well, but I now have a little bit more knowledge about what to look for next year. 

We took a VERY relaxed approach this year because I was still working until October and then in December we found out we were expecting Paisley and then the horrid morning sickness began and I was in and out of the hospital a couple of times.  In January, we decided that we wanted to move to Boise to be near family and from that point forward, it has been a whirlwind of looking for jobs and selling our house(s) and taking care of ALL of the myriad of details that come with moving across the country.  We definitely practice reading with Tay and try and incorporate math wherever we can, but we stopped sitting around the dining room table with our workbooks a while ago.

Next year, however, Taylor will be in first grade and Hunter will be starting kindergarten, so I plan on a more focused approach.  During the school year, I actually looked forward to the days where we did our chores and then sat around the table with our lessons because it gave our days more structure.  On days we don't "do school" it seems like there is more whining, more complaining, and more asking to watch a movie or a TV show every 5 minutes., which is a surefire way to a cranky mommy by the end of the day.

So as we look forward to the upcoming year, I have decided to focus on the classical education that is offered in Classical Conversations, but we will be doing it at home.  I always tend to be overly ambitious, but I decided that trying to get to class every week with a newborn might be too much, too soon.  So we will work on the CC memory work at home and then jump in the following year with a CC community.  I am in the process of nailing down the rest of the curriculum that we'll be using next year because somehow I have a hunch that if I wait until August to get everything figured out, a certain little girl might make things a bit difficult on me! ;-)

First Beach Trip of the Year

It has been getting warmer and warmer the past few weeks, with a few cold, rainy days mixed in, but it looks like summer is on its way here, so we decided to take advantage of the last few weeks we will have in South Carolina and go strawberry picking and then to the beach.

I wish I had gotten a picture of all the yummy strawberries we got because they were perfectly ripe and huge!  We found some the size of my palm!  I was able to make 12 pints of freezer jam, which will be gifts to our friends and my parents when we leave Beaufort in June. 

The second batch of strawberry jam setting up

 

After strawberry picking, we made it to the beach late morning and the weather ended up being beautiful!  There were thunderstorms predicted almost all day, so the kids prayed the night before that God would give us nice weather and He did!  I love being able to point out  to the kids when God specifically answers their prayers.  It is such a testament to how much He loves us to answer such a simple prayer, but one that meant so much to them.

 

We packed a picnic lunch of PB and honey, Cheese puffs, and bananas for Daddy and the kids and a turkey and cheese mini-pita with a Kind bar for me.  I think they enjoyed feeding the sea gulls more than eating the Cheese puffs themselves!

 

 

 

 







The water was still freezing at first, but I swear kids have no nerve endings, so they were out there in the water all day.  I will admit that after the initial "Oh my goodness, that's cold!" wore off, it was really nice to just sit in the shallow waves and enjoy the sunshine.

 

 

The kids wanted to bury Marcus in the sand and they made him a "baby belly."  He kept saying how heavy the sand was and I joked that he should have to carry it around all the time!

 

 

We finally pried ourselves away from the beach late that afternoon because the kids were singing in the choir that night and we needed to get back to get showers and dinner before heading to church.  About 5 minutes into the drive back home, I looked back and saw this...

 

 

He was trying sooo hard to stay awake, haha!  I looked at Mason and he was already out.

 

 

I looked back over at Hunter and in the time that it took me to take the picture of Mason, he finally gave it up!

 

 

Normally Taylor is not one to sleep in the car, but the ocean must've worn her out as well because she was curled up asleep too.

 

 

I know we are going to miss this place when we move, but we are excited to experience some new things in Boise.  But for the last month or so that we're here, we plan on taking advantage of all that the Lowcountry has to offer and making memories with the kids so they'll always look back fondly our time here in South Carolina.