It's been about 6 months since I posted. Needless to say, life with a newborn and 5 children total is a beautiful but busy blessing! (Say that 10 times fast!) Little guy turned 6 months last week. He is so sweet and has the best little smiles and giggles that light up the room. Wednesday he had a lip and tie clip/revision. He's been doing amazingly well, but hates the stretches we have to do with them. I don't blame him. I hate doing them too him. The first few months were very rough because of the ties, but life is much better lately and we're so thankful for him.
We have settled in to our new duty station and been here a year now! We have come to accept it, and don't hate it as much as we use to. We have made some great friends and have enjoyed spending a great deal of time working on home improvements- the joying of owning our own home. We have a new priest (after being without for a year) and he is absolutely wonderful. We don't enjoy the trips to the city. And when we're looking at medical needs, the multiple trips a week, which we're currently looking at- followups for little guy and appointments for my health. But, we're trying to make the best of it.
As for our house. My husband and son have laid concrete to extend our driveway/make a basketball court. We've torn down an awful fence and overgrown trees, put up a beautiful new fence and painted it, and leveled out the backyard and planted grass that is now coming in quite beautifully. We have also put up a swing set for the kids, and plan to do a bit more in the back yard. They also installed new windows in all of the basement windows and installed a ventilation fan in our basement bathroom. And redone a lot of electrical in the basement. And installed a ceiling fan in the kitchen. I'm sure there's more we've done, but those are the biggest things! As I said, our new home has kept us busy.
This past fall, the kids were playing soccer. Three different teams kept us incredibly busy. Zach's team was undefeated and Hannah's won all but one, which they tied. Abby had a great year learning more and spending a lot of time running the ball down the field with her long legs. Now they are all in basketball, and that's going to be interesting. We practice every night of the week, and then games are on Saturdays. There are 2 days where all 3 play at the same time, at 3 different schools, and many days have double headers for some of them! Jon is coaching Hannah's team, so I'll be dividing up between the other two teams. Should be an interesting 6 weeks ahead.
And then, there's homeschooling. I usually like to do a post of what we're using and what's working for us. I definitely feel this year has been going much better than last year. My number one goal has been to remember that this is my job, this is how I support our family. So I've been trying to get up and get dressed nice, and even trying to get up before the kids. Some days that's harder than others with Max, but I'm trying. I'm also trying to do a morning devotional with my coffee each morning. I've been reading A Catholic Woman's Book of Days and A Gracious Space. The first is very short, like 2 minutes to read and just give me a bit of scripture to think about each day. The second is a great one to encourage any homeschooling parent on their path. It is not particularly religious, but really great.
Zach is in 5th Grade. His studies this year include Teaching Textbooks 5 and 6. He is almost done with 5, and then we'll be doing 6. (Which i still need to purchase eeks!). Hannah is in 4th and doing Teaching Textbooks 5. They are both using Seton Religion 5 and Seton Health, Typingclub.com, and BraveWriter for writing. I have also been assigning Saint books for both of them this year.
Abigayle is in 2nd and preparing for First Holy Communion. She is using Seton Religion 2, and then her and I are doing The King of the Golden City with CHC's guide and Preparing to Receive Jesus by CHC as well. She is using Math 3 from Teaching Textbooks, Seton's English and Little Angel Readers for Reading. WE are blowing through this finally, so we may have to find something else for the end of the year. We are sort of using All About Spelling, but I have a hard time actually doing it with her, and it is really too easy to begin with, so we'll see what I do about that.
All 3 of the older kids have been in a PE class through the parks and rec, which is about to end. Then we will be doing a drama performance with the local homeschool group. We are using Catholic Schoolhouse art and science for all which I love, and we've been doing a weekly poetry tea time- fancy tea set with snacks and poetry. They all have 30 minutes of piano and reading each day. And then we are still using Connecting With History/RC History. And reading Saint stories each week.
My husband helped me create an excel document to keep up with our assignments for the year, and I created a weekly assignment sheet that has been incredibly helpful as well for each child. Overall I feel this school year is going much better than last year!
