Life according to Instagram

Back in May, my phone accidentally got dropped in a glass of water. I put it in a jar of rice for a few days, but sadly the camera was forever broken. My contract came up last month and I have been enjoying taking pictures and playing on Instagram again. Here's some of my favorites I've taken recently(and hopefully I'll be able to share more, in the weeks to come, as long as I can keep my phone away from water glasses!)

Sweet baby getting ready to go back to bed for the night.

Anna's birthday was last week(which I'm getting ready to post about), and I decided to let Lily stay up after everyone else had gone to bed and help me make her cake. We had so much fun spending some one on one time together!

For Anna's birthday Erik and I took her to Build a bear. She was SO excited to get Twilight Sparkle from My Little Pony.

These three boys bring so much joy to this Mama's heart.

Late night cuddles.

Picnic fun!

Sister love. :)

Our Home School Year

Today we officially started our second year of home schooling! It actually went really well, although I didn't even attempt to try and make a schedule for this week. Hopefully in a few weeks I'll have a better idea about what will work for us, and then maybe I can make a more specific schedule for school time.

Last year was really busy, and I spent most of it stressed out and just plain overwhelmed. There is a ton of information out there when it comes to homeschooling, and since it was all foreign territory to me I didn't really enjoy my first year of home schooling like I had hoped. I was pretty lost about what I was suppose to be doing.

So after many conversations between Erik and I, and much prayer, we decided that for this year we wouldn't be doing classical conversations. I really love the program, but just felt like we needed a break. Also having two kids in the program as opposed to one, plus paying for childcare really wasn't in our budget, so we are going to just focus on being home.

This year we are using My Fathers World kindergarten for Miss Anna(but we plan on taking it really slow with her, since she just turned 5 a few days ago) And My Father's World first grade for Jack.  I really wanted a curriculum that would tell me what to do every day, and I'm so thankful that's what My Father's World does. I will also be using Story of the World for history a couple times a week mainly for Jack, but I'm hoping to have Anna sit in on it too. In the mornings after breakfast and chores, we will have a circle time where we go over the calendar, ABC's, and  the memory verse we are working on. I will also use this time to read aloud to everyone from the same book. I'm hoping to read some about different missionaries(from this series), some of James Mayhew's books about different artists, and hopefully some chapter books like The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe and Charlotte's Web. Everyone seemed to really enjoy circle time last year, so I hope to be able to keep that up this year.

I also plan on having the kids listen to the classical conversations cycle 2 cd at different times during the week(along with Steve Green and songs for saplings!) And I plan on doing different projects that correlate with classical conversations(I LOVE using this blog for ideas!)

I still feel very strongly that kids learn best through playing and reading, so I plan on giving them plenty of time during the day to do both of those things. One of the beauties of home schooling is that formal school can be done in just a few hours.

This year school and our daily schedule will look a little different than it has before, but I'm really looking forward to this new season of life.

The Smoothie Olympics

Oh yes, we have a smoothie Olympics. What, you've never heard of one before? It's pretty exciting let me tell you!

See after the olympics last year, the kids were all into playing the "Olympo-mics"(as Lily would call them), and I'd randomly see kids in their bathing suits jumping off the couch(the diving board) and into the "water"(the carpet.)

Obviously since they loved the Olympics so much, I had to think of fun ways to incorporate them in our daily lives. So one Sunday when I was frantically hurrying, er,  graciously encouraging my kids to finish their smoothies before Church this idea popped into my head. And without really thinking about it I declared that we were going to have a "smoothie olympics", and that whoever won would later receive a gold medal. I'm really not sure why I do these things to myself, since I'm really not what many would call "creative", and I wouldn't even know where to begin in making a gold medal(but thankfully I'm married to a pretty creative person..)

Anyways, that was just the push they needed, and suddenly everyone was drinking their smoothies as fast as they could. It was such a big success that every time I make smoothies, a smoothie Olympics takes place.

Erik thinks we're giving them permanent brain freeze at the rate they down their drinks. Regardless, I'm happy to have  yet another fun way to get something healthy into their systems!

Privacy

Yesterday morning I posted this as my facebook status:

And I just caught my 3 year old trying to take a pregnancy test..

Then later that day I posted this picture:



In case you can't quite tell what this is a picture of this is Lily "pumping." Ahem.

I had this thought afterwards that it probably doesn't seem like I get too much privacy around here. Which is true, of course, because that's just what comes with the mommy territory.

But there are times where, say, I'm using the bathroom and I have a plethora of children pounding on the door, that I'll say,"You really need to give mommy her privacy right now."

The other day I said this and a little while later Anna brought me one of Luke's pacifiers, and proudly declares,"Here's your privacy, Mama!"(Apparently she thought privacy was the same thing as "paci.")

Hmm, no wonder I can't get any privacy around here. :)