Our Adventures

Well, we are currently homeless, we've moved out of our house in Monrovia, ca and our house in Lehi, UT isn't available until Sept 21. So like any normal person would, we (my mom, 3 kiddos, and I) decided to go on a 3 1/2 week long road trip. We left wed aug 28 and headed out to my Brother's house in westminster, CO. We took three days to get there and have enjoyed every minute, well mostly every minute. We've visited an Indian museum, an aquarium, a water park, got stuck in quicksand, and have only been gone for six days. Needless to say, we're exhausted, but blessed and thankful for this special time with family. 

It has been so fun seeing my brother and remembering how much we both like to have fun and live life to the fullest. I could always count on him to go on an adventure with me, even if his only job was to carry all my bags while I went on a shopping spree in Canada!! Not to mention, my sweet sister-in-law, who has been so gracious having us here on such short notice and is so much fun to be around.

The time we've spent with my mom has been priceless, we both love to travel and are good at balancing each other out. She often brings reality into my adventurous ideas and I make her do things that sometimes seem crazy. 

We still have 19 days left, which sounds long and exhausting, but I'm looking forward to spending some time with Eric next weekend and then heading out to see my grandparents, aunt, uncle and cousin.

Valentine's Wreath

Simple valentine's wreath I made for a Valentine's Party.

I'm slowly learning...

I've been spending some time, thinking about some of the things we go through as parents of little ones. They can be so trying... One of the hardest parts for me is just the constant responsibility of caring for them, I know that sounds bad, but getting them fed and dressed and bathed and changing the diapers is tiring. I have a hard time pushing past myself and on somedays am so anxious and frustrated that I can't do anything that I want to do, because I have to take care of these children. It seems like dinner times are the worst, I'm prepping dinner, frazzled and frustrated because eric is supposed to be home now, desperately hoping eric will walk through the door any minute to help with the children. And that's when one of them walks up to me and asks for chocolate milk, I snap at them and tell them, "NO, Dinner is cooking, wait for dinner." If they proceed to complain, I yell at them, "NO, dinner is cooking, just be patient!!" Not even realizing the irony in that. Maybe if I displayed more patience while waiting for dad to get home, they might learn how to be patient from my example, fancy that! I recently had a breakthrough in this area, and it's inspired me to try harder...

It was just one of those days, I woke up with a sore throat, I wanted desperately to stay in bed and not have to get up when eric left for work. But, I pulled myself up and started doing the things I have to do at the beginning of the day (Feed any kids that are hungry, change diapers, make sure anthony uses the bathroom) slightly praising myself for already doing better than yesterday, but as I was changing Becca's diaper, I noticed she had spots on her stomach and back, she had been having fevers for a couple of days.

This was a problem, I knew I would have to take her to the doctor. I started worrying, not about my daughter, but about how I would have to go to a new doctor and I don't know if I'll like him, I won't be able to just sit and rest all day, like I had planned, I'm going to have to get all the kids dressed and out the door, and I just didn't want to. But as I looked at my baby girl, I knew I had to suck it up, I have to take care of her more than myself. So I went into Mother Mode. I made an appointment, got everyone ready, ate lunch and headed out the door.

I arrived at the doctor in heels (hoping to make myself look older) with no stroller, because I was too lazy to run back up and open the garage to put it in the car. I held Becca, who was doing a good job complaining about being sick and looking very pitiful. Trying to fill out forms with one hand, the other two children buzzing around at my feet, and Becca trying to steal my pen. I finally get in the dr, that goes smoothly, but he tells me we should draw blood from Becca just in case she has the measles (She didn't, she had roseola, and is fine now).

So with all three kids I walk out the door to go get her blood drawn, while on the way to the car, Anthony falls and scrapes up his wrist and knees. He burst into tears and starts crying out for his dad, full of drama. I stopped, comforted him and led him to the car. Meanwhile, Alissa has been limping and complaining because her toe hurts, she had hurt it a few nights before and wasn't happy that she had to wear shoes. So, we finally get to the lab, and I get Becca all settled to get her blood drawn, the other kids just sitting by and watching, (not the greatest idea but I didn't have much choice). It took about 5 minutes of Becca screaming bloody murder, for them to get the blood. Alissa in the background, "I don't want to watch this, it's too scary, I don't like it". Anthony just running around trying to make people laugh (That's his coping mechanism).

With this done, we walk out the door, Becca screaming all the way to the car. I get her in her seat, still screaming. I get Anthony buckled and he starts screaming about his wrist and knees hurting, crying for daddy. Alissa is barely holding it together. I close the door and take a breath. All I can think is I must drive through and get a snack, this is how I know I'm barely holding it together. This is my coping mechanism, soda and a snack from a fast food place. However, we are short on money and I knew I shouldn't. I talked myself out of it, got home, gave the older kids a Popsicle and the let them watch a movie while I made dinner.

Talk about a long day, I was so ready to call it a night. I started making dinner, and decided that I should make cookies because I was really craving something sweet. Of course, the kids wanted to help and Becca wanted to be held. I held it together, got dinner in the oven. Cookies were put on hold, I figured I would just do one ingredient at a time. That's when I got the text, Eric was stuck in traffic, That's ok I thought, dinner won't be ready for a while anyways, no big deal. Dinner finishes and Eric walks through the door. From the moment I see him, I can tell he doesn't feel good. I hand him the baby while I dish up and eat and he tries to hold it together. Before I finish he hands her back to me and runs to the bathroom. I take her, finish eating and feeding her. He comes back and lays on the couch.

This is where my breakthrough happened. Thoughts were running through my head... I was hoping he'd rescue me, I don't feel that great either, why can't he just suck it up, etc... But I stop myself and start thinking, I went into mother mode today, I didn't feel that bad, I can push through, finish the day strong and be the good wife, that lets him rest. So, I get up off my butt and start making cookies with the kids, I run to the store to get milk for Becca and eggs for cookies. I took the older kids and made sure that Becca was happily playing in her room before I left, so Eric could have some quiet. We get home and finished the cookies, while Becca fell asleep with Eric on the couch. And at the end of the day, the best part of the day was the last part, that I spent with the kids, making cookies and going to the store. I cherished the time I spent with them. I would've missed out on a special time with them, if I would've let my attitude get the best of me. I'm so thankful to have learned this lesson.

Parenting is hard, that is true. But as Christians, we are to persevere through hard times, die to ourselves, serve and love others. If we do this in ministry to other's, shouldn't we more-so with our own children? And through it, We will be blessed. When we see our children do the same for each other, or in the special times we get to enjoy with them. I will choose to live life with an attitude of service to my family instead of in service to myself. I pray that God will give me strength to persevere, and a reminder to change my attitude when I forget.

First Week Of School

 We had a very successful week of school!! It does depend on what you define as a successful homeschool day, but the way I define it, it went great. We didn't finish everything, and did much less on the last 2 days of the week. However, we stuck to it. We did the basics everyday. We had fun together and enjoyed learning new things. Pretty much everything we did worked well. We did have a hard time with the blocco puzzles, we'll have to keep working at those. But we loved Camelot Jr.

Getting Ready for School - Part 3

Today, I'm showing you how I plan on organizing my school journey. I would love to have a cool notebook full of sheets, calendars, to do lists, etc.. But I can never get that far, so I only have a few things to show you. I started out figuring out how much I need to do each subject and making a check off list for that. Here it is. Next I've made a schedule, this is a very rough draft. I'm not going to stick to a strict schedule, this will just give me direction. Some things don't need to be done everyday, such as the Animal Study or the Five in a Row, but I'll leave the option there, so that it does get done somedays :)

Next, I've taken five folders and marked them Monday through Friday. These folders will hold the worksheets that we'll be doing for the day. It will include Math, Writing, sometimes Spanish, and any other sheets needed for the day.  I also have three for anthony, I'll be putting color & shape worksheets in there along with coloring pages or any others worksheets I have for him.

I will then have the following weeks worksheets in these file folders. At the beginning of the week I'll have everything set, so I can pull out a folder and know what we are doing for the day.

I also have folders for each subject, so if I find a worksheet or something interesting in that subject, I can place it in the folder.

Here are our school boxes, and Alissa excited to start school  

And a few more things that arrived, the science kit looks way cute, I'll be buying another one of these for Anthony.

Getting Ready for School - Part 2

Bible - Bible is what I'm most excited about. We will be reading through this whole bible this year. We have to read 3 stories a week. I'll be making flash cards from one verse I picked to memorize for the entire week from the chapters we're covering. I'm hoping that when we start our day with this, Alissa will soar. We've been working on pray together as a family and she really enjoys that.

Math - I'm using the Math K5 book, we are doing 1 lesson a day. I chose this book, mainly because it is really cute, it has colorful pictures. We are not going to use any of the manipulative's or the teacher's guide, because I want to keep math simple. All of the concepts are easy enough that I can explain them to her or show her them in my own way.

Writing - I'm mainly using Spectrum Early Years, Learning Letters. We will be using this book on Mondays. I'll introduce the letter and then we will use other random books I have to reinforce the letter through out the week. This will take us 26 weeks, and then we'll work on forming words.

Reading - I'm using Teach Your child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons. I have a fondness for this book, because it's what I used to learn to read. Alissa seems to enjoy it also, it works for us and we're sticking to it. I'm also suplementing that with the Reading Eggs.com program. This is a very cute website that teaches kids to read. She really enjoys playing the games. We'll do 3 lessons of the 100 easy lesson book and 2 lessons from ReadingEggs.com a week.

Language Arts - We'll be doing 1 lesson from Language Lessons for Little ones a day and 4 stories a week from What your preschooler needs to know. I think she will love the preschooler needs to know book. She loves any stories or songs.

Science - We'll be doing a unit study on animals, leveraging this book. This is a very cute book, they have multiple topics you can choose from, but I chose animals. We'll do projects and read books about animals 3-5 days a week, just depends on how well it goes.

Five in a Row - We'll be using this just to add some fun to our schooling. We're doing a co-op with our homeschool group, so we will be doing 1 book every 2 weeks. We'll read the book every day and then discuss one topic from the book and then once a week we'll have a day to do projects based on the book, including science projects or craft projects, etc..

Foreign Language - We'll be using this book for spanish, Alissa is thrilled to learn spanish. We'll take a two years to get through this book. It looks a lot like a preschool book, but teaches the spanish words for colors, shapes, letters, etc. We'll also be watching Signing Time to learn some sign language.


Next I'll show you how I'm organizing everything and a schedule of how we're going to get through all this in a week. 

Getting Ready for School - Part 1

Look what arrived in the mail!!! It's time to prep for school, I've received boxes of stuff that I found on timberdoodle.com. I'm so excited to share with you what I'll be doing with Alissa this school year. 

 Here it all is out of the box, doesn't that look soo fun!

These are for Anthony. I'll be using them to keep him busy. We've already opened the lace-a-shape and Fanta Color Junior, and they work great. The kids both love them and Anthony especially loves the Fanta Color Junior. He completes the puzzles perfectly. 

The Colorback Sea-Turtle and PeekaBoo Animals puzzles are also to keep Anthony busy. The Camelot Jr. is for Alissa. You're given pictures and blocks, you have to build what you see in the picture. I'm looking forward to doing this one with her.

These are for Alissa. We have Bloco, these are like foam puzzles, Colorful Caterpillars, this is a game where you roll a dice and then lace a caterpillar. We'll be using the abc cookies to leverage our reading and writing. Crocodile Hop is an active game for the kids to play together.

Here we have Starter Spanish, for Alissa. She's super excited to learn spanish. What your preschooler needs to know is a book of stories, songs, rhymes, and some science and history too. Both of the kids will enjoy this along with the Wii Fit for kids.

Next, I'll show you the actual curriculum we'll be doing this year. This stuff is mostly just to supplement and help keep their hands and minds busy.