November Check In

I didn't take these photos too long ago, but our yard looks completely different now.  Our first snow, which is generally a dusting, ended up being over a foot.  A lot has melted, but it's winter now for sure.  Getting a picture of all seven of these kids looking their best is absolutely impossible.  First of all, I'm not a photographer.  I'm a mom with a camera, which is close, but I don't have an artistic eye and I'm usually feeling pretty lucky if people are at least in focus.  Second of all, they're kids. 

Little Miss Bella is the star of the show these days.  She's fun, and playful, and cute, and just an absolute delight.  Her facial expressions are hilarious and her desire to hang with the big kids is adorable. 

Marci remains the most independent kid we have ever had.  She is driven and smart and focussed.  She observes things that most kids would never notice and is the first to want to help.  She loves "doing school" with the big kids and got extremely offended one time when I suggested that cutting a piece of paper "was" school.  

Felicity continues to do everything her own way in her own time, God bless her!  She is the leader of the pack (her two younger sisters) and is quick to give a random hug or compliment.  She doesn't always love school, but get's motivated when she gets to do "tricky stuff".  

Nica is a favorite amongst her little sisters and will oftentimes play with them for hours.  She loves when she gets to stay up late with the big kids and read or hang out with us.  She thrives off of affirming words and is always making sure she is doing everything "just right". 

Gianna is loved by all. Truly.  We often joke with her about her "fan club" at karate.  It seems that every kid always wants to be her partner.  Can't blame them really.  She's quick to get up and get going in the morning and will make breakfast for anyone who comes into the kitchen demanding requesting something to eat.

Emma has been and will forever be the peacemaker in our house.  She's kind and sweet and thoughtful.  Don't let that fool you into thinking she's a pushover though.  She has a famous "Hmmm..." you'll hear whenever she disagrees with you, but doesn't want to be rude about it.  She will sweetly play along with her sisters even when they don't ask her to and has made a name for herself as the resident banana bread baker (but don't ask her to cook anything, trust me).

Aidan is becoming less kid and more man every day as he approaches 16!  What?!?  He recently completed driver's ed and it won't be long before he's behind the wheel.  His sisters love it when he humors them by filming something and turning it into a movie.  He's the resident artist and film-maker.  He's been working on a project with a friend of ours that will be released soon.  I love it when he laughs and has a great sense of humor.

Last but not least...duck.  We find duck in the most unusual places doing the most unusual things.  We haven't figured  out what inspires duck to be so duck-like, but we all love duck's "quack, quack" and soft, squishy cheeks. 

We've had a few transitions this fall, but I think we're at a good place now.  Not that we were at a bad place before, but being in the midst of a transition is never very enjoyable.  Brett is chairing his department at work, which is basically a fancy way of saying he has a different title and a lot more responsibility.  There have been a few fires to put out and currently there's a bit of an uproar on campus.  Without going into too many details I'll just say that it's been more than a little stressful, but I want to say that we're handling it well.  There's not a lot we can do about most things anyway so we'll just keep plugging on and doing our best. 

Let's talk Lice!

So there we were, chugging along beautifully in our brand new school year.  We were waking up to alarms, getting our chores done, working hard on academics, what could possibly go wrong?

What could go wrong?  Well....let's see....we could maybe, just perhaps, quite possibly discover that our entire family (minus 3) was infested with lice!!!!!!! I will spare you the details about how this was discovered and where we got it.  Let's just say that dealing with lice on 6 people (all girls with long, long, some very thick and long hair) is absolutely as awful as it sounds like it would be.

I was absolutely horrified at our discovery and will admit to shedding tears over the ordeal!  I realize that anyone can get lice, but I've been a mom for almost 16 years and have never even considered it a possibility!  The homeschooling family with lice?  What in the world?!?!

We spent fourteen hours on day one cutting and treating everyone's hair.  It took six hours in the morning of day two and three that evening.  We've spent a little less time each day, but we are still checking everyone over and talk about what we're going to do with our time when we are no longer staring at each others' heads. I contacted anyone I knew that had any experience with lice and we have been so very diligent with everything for almost two full weeks that if we haven't completely gotten rid of it for good I'm shaving heads and burning my house down!

This Wednesday is technically the two week mark, but if everyone says check for two weeks I'm going to check for three!  Not only was this ordeal extremely expensive, but we have spent hours and hours and hours nit-picking, and checking, and washing things, and bagging things.  It has been an all-consuming endeavor to ensure these unwelcome guests are gone for good!

Back to School 2017

We had the best first week of school that we've ever had in the entire history of our homeschooling! We had such a great week in fact that I didn't even take a single picture until the second day of the second week.

I did something this year that I haven't done before, at least not successfully.  I planned out our entire year.  I know, I know, that's a recipe for disaster usually.  It's very un-"Teaching from Rest" and Sarah Mackenzie just might have my neck if she found out about my year-long plans.  I'm totally kidding!

What I've learned from years of homeschooling this crew is that I simply don't get the time to plan as we go.  In years past I have planned out two weeks at a time and have told myself that I'm going to use the "extra" week to keep a week ahead in planning.  The reality of it is that I have a husband who has crazy hours at work and just isn't available much to give me time to plan.  It's true that my older kids can help out and I could technically use them to get time to plan, but I use them for more pressing matters, like menu planning or bill paying.

One thing I've become very good at is being okay with it if we get "off" of my plans.  They're my plans to begin with so there's no need to freak out if a couple kids are on Week 1 Day 3, but others are on Week 2 Day 1.  Whenever one of my checklist-loving kids starts getting worked up over being "off" I just say, "Do the next thing."  All will be well, just do the next thing, and then the next after that, and the next after that.  In the end we'll be fine, learning will happen, the world won't come crashing down around us, and if we need to take time to deal with something (stay tuned.....) then we will.  No biggie.

Baby Ducks

Baby ducks!  Quite possibly my favorite "pet" ever!  They are just so sweet and fun to watch.  

We had ducks a couple of years ago and they were, unfortunately, plucked off one by one by a bobcat.  I'm not positive that these guys will have a much different ending, but for now they are super fun and we are getting a lot of free(ish) entertainment from them. 

Isabella absolutely loves the ducks.  She wakes up every morning, and goes to the sliding glass door that is the entrance to our 3-season-room (where the ducks are living currently) and says, "Cheese. Ducks."  Cheese happens to be one of the ducklings names.  We have Cheese, Quackers, Patito, and Napoleon, who is so named because she's little and a little feisty.  

Almond the cat is probably the only local resident who is not impressed with our newest additions.

We are officially on summer break, except for a certain high schooler who needs to finish his Music Theory class.  This morning we woke up and went for a nice long hike right away.  The laundry is out on the line, the girls are playing in water on the deck, Aidan is sitting in a lawn chair reading, and most of ours days are filled with a lot of free time (more on that later).

Almost Finished!

We are sooooo close to the end of our school year.  It's this time of year, every year, where I'm really tempted to say, "That's good enough" and call it quits.  Much to my children's dismay, that's not going to happen this year.  We are finishing strong, we are going to go to the bitter end, we are not going to fizzle out, not this year!!!  How is that for some motivational "speaking"?  If my "day job" doesn't work out.....

 I think the weather will cooperate this week.  It's supposed to be raining all week long.  Rainy days are perfect for convincing my little students to stay in, cozy up, and get their work done.

 We have had some beautiful, warm, no bugs (yet!) days that have not gone to waste!

 I'm already finished getting my list together for next school year so I can plug away at the actually planning all summer long.  I find it works best for us if I have a whole year planned out and we can be flexible when we need to be.

 We have some awesome plans for this summer break.  We, of course, have a couple of house projects, deck-staining and dining room expanding to be exact, a little travel, a lot of relaxing, even more mosquito-slapping and tick killing (can't pretend we don't spend an unhealthy amount of time in those activities), and hopefully some great family time.

I started getting grumpy this morning as Brett was getting ready to go to work.  When we get this close to the end I start getting a little antsy.  Luckily, I snapped out of my funkiness, gathered my troops and we got a good day in.  Here's to another week or so!

Snowball Fight

This winter wasn't all that impressive as far as snow (or cold for that matter) goes.  A couple weekends ago we went for a little walk at a nearby state park and the snow just happened to be perfect "snowball snow".

It was absolutely the most delightful sight watching Felicity and Aidan have a good old fashioned snowball fight!

Deck Party

It's not every day when we get to hang out on the deck in the middle of winter for any extended amount of time.

This isn't on our deck, but is just too cool not to include. Aidan has more artistic talent than I could ever hope to have.  A lion out of snow?  Seriously?  Who does that?

The tongue!  Killer.

Okay, so maybe it wasn't exactly warm.  

It's good for teenagers to have their ridiculousness posted all over the interwebs, no?  Character building I tell ya.

Growing up way too fast!

Oh Marci!  

She was trying to avoid having her picture taken.

Gotcha!