Happy New Year!

The week between Christmas and New Years is my favorite of the year!  It's of course fun to have new things to use and enjoy, but I also love taking a whole week to reflect on the past year and make plans for the coming year.  Seth had several days off, so we spent plenty of time relaxing and resting, but we also did some decluttering and goal planning (two of my favorite things!). I'm looking forward to seeing what's in store for us in 2018!

Linus

This adorable little boy recently turned one, and he is enjoying all the new freedoms he has found through walking!

He can now join the big kids in things like climbing up slides....

He LOVES playing outside (and getting filthy)!

And fruit is one of his favorite things!  He helped himself to this peach from my grocery bags!

He is discovering and trying new things every day and it is so fun to watch!  He just started getting teeth, waving, and giving kisses!  He is such a sweet little boy!  I love this age so much!

A few fun things...

1.  Ezra is 6!

We celebrated by having a fun Lego party with family, then he spent most of his actual birthday playing with all his presents!  We had orange chicken for dinner (a popular birthday request at our house!), and per our new tradition, he got to stay up late and and do something fun with Mom and Dad (he wanted to play Legos!).  It was a great weekend celebrating our special boy!

2. School is officially done for the summer!  Benjamin still has to do his testing, and we are going to be doing a few school-ish things over the summer, but the rest of our work is done and we're ready for some fun!

3. This vegan pancake recipe is my new favorite pancake recipe! I discovered it when I wasn't eating eggs (I can eat them again!), but I liked this recipe better than my old one.  Not only is it super frugal because there are no milk and eggs (especially when you have to use pricey alternative milks), but it's perfect for any time you have run out of either of those things.  But, they are really light and fluffy, even with whole wheat flour!  

This and That

Here is what we have been up to lately, in no particular order:

The kids just finished up Awana for the year, and we took advantage of their annual photo booth to take our first whole family photo in, probably, years.  So sad!

Three years in, and I still feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants with homeschooling!  I'm constantly experimenting with our schedule and trying to figure how to make things work best for us.  We have our core daily activities down pretty well, but I was struggling with the other stuff; history, science, etc.; the subjects we don't do every day.  I tried doing these things once a week, but I would forget, or wouldn't be prepared, and we just weren't getting to them.  Then, I started experimenting with unit studies for these subjects, and it's working great!  We still do our daily work, but then we'll also do one of these subjects every day for a week or two as well.  Doing it this way allows me to just plan once, and it gives us a chance to really get into the subject.  I'm loving this!

Linus keeps growing and learning new things!  He has gotten really good at pulling himself up, can walk along furniture, and just learned how to crawl!  I kept him in his Moses basket as long as I could, but he finally figured out how to get out, so I had to move him into a play pen.  It took a bit of thinking to figure out how I was going to fit him in the bedroom with the kids, but we did it! 

We finally had several days of sunshine in a row, and I started working in the garden!  I am so behind!  Our poor yard always needs a fair amount of work in the spring!  The kids, though, took advantage of the sun by getting out the pool for the first time!  Seth also got the rope ladder up on the playset, so they've been enjoying that, too!

Benjamin and Joanna just finished up two months of swimming lessons, a first for them!  They started out really hesitant and nervous, but they ended up loving it and doing great!  We had to take a break due to schedule conflicts, but they're looking forward to going back!

Benjamin lost both of his front teeth, which makes him seem like such a big kid!  He also decided to try to earn and save up money to buy a dinosaur toy he wanted.  It took him a little while (at mostly 25 cents a job), but he did it!

Thanks to lots of good recommendations online, I almost always have a big stack of books from the library, and I try to sit and read for a while every day, usually during rest time or before bed.  I have read a ton the last couple of years, and while it is not always easy to fit it, it is so rewarding!