It's been a long year...

...that has gone by super fast.

Ya, I know, that doesn't make much sense.  But, trust me, if you'd had the year I've had, you'd totally understand.

It's been a while since I've posted anything.  I kept meaning to, but life just kept getting in the way.  Then it just seemed like it's been so long, why bother?  After my miscarriage, I really just felt like I was in a fog.  Then I found out I was pregnant again.  I wasn't sure I was ready to be.  After all, I was still grieving the baby I had lost.  I was on a crazy emotional roller coaster, both excited and terrified at the same time.

The pregnancy was difficult, but I made it through.  That wonderful blessing is now a smiley three month old baby boy :).

Meet Bug, the newest member of our family:

Amazingly, through it all we still got a lot of school done.  We did take December off (no matter how hard I try to school through December, it never happens!) and most of January.  The kids were chompin at the bit to get back into things.  I was still in the hospital the first time I was asked "when are we going to start school again?", lol.

I was worried that the long time off would have set Peanut back in her kindergarten work, but, surprisingly, she seemed to be more ready.  She was retaining things much better and hardly struggling at all.  Consequently, she breezed right through the rest of kindergarten, we finished Friday.  I was planning to do some miscellaneous lapbooks and such for the rest of the year and start 1st grade with her in September.  But she has done so well since January, I decided to just jump right into 1st grade now.  I was going to start today, but I didn't get all the planning I needed done over the weekend (oops!).  So I'm hoping to get that done today and hopefully start tomorrow.  Today we all worked on an Easter poster.  I was going to have them all do lapbooks, but when I realized how much printing that would entail, I decided we would all do a poster together!

When everyone is playing nice.........

Munchkin is also breezing through her work.  We are only a little over half way through Creation to Greeks, but she is done or almost done with everything else.  I need to get some planning done for her too, lol.  I'm going to switch up our language arts.   Instead of Language Lessons, Pathways and Sequential Spelling, I'm going to try Learning Language Arts Through Literature.  I'm going to stick with Wordsmith Apprentice for now, but may leave that behind in the future as well.  I'm hoping this switch will work well, but we'll see.  She's also just about finished with MUS Gamma, so she will be starting Delta as soon as it gets here.

School is always better with a baby :o)

Little Man has really been pestering me to "do school" as well.  He's frequently not satisfied with the "school toys" (aka, MFW Preschool package) anymore.  So I've started doing an ABC notebook with him.  I've been mostly using the printables I found on Homeschool Share, but have found some of my own here and there as well.  He's really loving it and enjoys getting to show off each new page to Daddy in the evenings.  I have no idea what we will do when we finish all the letters, though!  I'm thinking maybe do something similar with character traits.  I need to do some googling!  I'm also thinking he may be ready to start kindergarten in the fall.  We'll see though, he will only be 4.5 and I don't want to push him too fast.

Bits has been my most challenging right now.  I have a bunch of toddler activities for her, but she doesn't want to entertain herself with them.  She wants to be in the middle of what everyone else is doing.  I'm really struggling to find the balance of spreading my time between all four (and taking care of a baby!).  So most mornings are rather chaotic, but, amazingly, we still manage to get it all done!  And usually before lunch ;o)

So that's kinda a quick recap of what we have been doing and where we are.  I plan to keep blogging and getting new things up in a more timely fashion ;o)


Blessings,