1st Grade, aka our Homeschool Adventure

I'm backposting this blog post for the ease of finding it later when I want to reference it and only know it was at the beginning of school in 2018. But for truth-in-writing, I'm actually writing this post at the beginning of October. I wasn't prepared to write the post in August. I had lots of big feelings, and hundreds of words floating around in my head, but none of them seemed like the right thing or best way to explain this life-choice that our family has made. 

Turns out, it's been almost two months and I still don't have all the right words. But I have more confidence and peace, and so I'll share a few thoughts. 

We're homeschooling Lydia this year. Instead of starting first grade at Fox Hollow with her friends, she's staying at home and learning math, language arts, science, art, plus a myriad of other things like love, family history, scripture memory work, poetry, and lots and lots of literature. I've thought about this very loosely for many years, but never seriously considered homeschooling until this past year when the thought of sending her to first grade made me physically ill. I am lucky enough to know several successful homeschoolers who I admire very much and after asking hundreds of questions, doing an incredible amount of research, and compiling a pro/con list with dozens and dozens of items on each side - we made the jump and decided to follow our gut and give it a try. In end, the list of pros was longer than the list of cons - and here two months later, we are thriving. 

The first week of school was a little awkward as everyone was talking about their new teachers, and conversation seemed to come to a halt whenever I was around - like people weren't quite sure what to say. I hoped that it would get better after the newness of school wore off, and that has absolutely been the case. Even with the initial awkwardness, I have been overwhelmed with how kind and supportive people have been, and I'm grateful that people don't seem to be bothered by us making this choice for our family. I'll be the first to say that it's not the right thing for everyone. But I'm grateful that we can all make choices that are the best for our own family and we can support and love each other through our similarities and differences.

It's Lydia who is starting first grade, but we are really all homeschooling together. The boys spend the whole morning with us as we read books, sing songs, and do our "Morning Time" routine. Caleb goes down for a nap and then we do our "Table Time" where we move downstairs and focus on Math and Language Arts. Austin sits at the table with us and works on his own toy/craft/coloring or he plays with his toys nearby. We all come back together to do our afternoon activities. I can't express how much I love spending this time with my children and I can honestly say that it's made me a better mother. I have guilt-free, uninterrupted time to dedicate to them, and it's filling me up. I want to teach them how to live their lives with peace and focus and goodness, and although every day isn't perfect (not even nearly), I feel like this is working for us right now. Lydia is thriving. Austin and Caleb are, too. It is bringing me so much joy.

I will say, about half-way through the first week I thought to myself "I've made a terrible mistake!" We were getting used to the new routine and I was filled with self-doubt, but we are choosing to have faith and to lean in to the choices that we've made and as we're doing that we are seeing the fruits of this lifestyle. 

One of the things that Lydia talked about missing the most from Fox Hollow is that she wouldn't be able to eat lunch in the lunchroom. Which is a completely understandable feeling. There are lots of things that she will miss out on, but we went to the store - bought her a lunchbox, packed a sack lunch and ate it at the park. That satisfied her, the sweet girl. The number one reason this has been so successful so far is because of her. Her goodness, her personality, her willingness to learn and work.

And so, here we are. We are choosing a different path, at least for now, for our family. But I have confidence that the Lord is with us. He will step in and make our homeschooling efforts better than we could do on our own. He will make up for any of the "cons" on the homeschooling list. I feel this way about both choices. Public School has pros and cons, homeschool has pros and cons. If we are faithful - it doesn't much matter what we choose because He will be there to make up the difference. But this choice feels the best for us right now, and I have faith that he is the one that is making it such a blessing to us - and I hope that I can listen to Him and let him lead and guide us as we are on this path. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints is putting out a new home-based Gospel Learning program, and I'm feeling so grateful that our structure is already in place. We can incorporate it easily into our lives and hopefully our children will benefit from the goodness, the light, the faith that we will try to fill our days with. 

I know that homeschool is the unconventional choice but it's SUCH a good choice for us and our family and I'm grateful that we have the opportunity to take the leap and have this time together.

insta-august

{insta-august}   You may be wondering, where are the blog posts about instagram for June and July? Well, there aren't any. And our August posts were few, too. But this summer was absolutely the best, and sometimes the balance between 'posting' and 'just enjoying the moment' leans heavily to the "just enjoying" side, and I'm so okay with that. I love documenting our lives, and sometimes instagram is the best forum for that because I'm able to write down my thoughts as they come instead of sitting down afterwards to try to blog them. But sometimes it's not.

That being said, this summer really was a summer that dreams were made of....



{8.9.18} This has been the summer that dreams are made of. ☀️👒🏕️ Basically the perfect combination of cramming in all the fun possible AND being totally low key and just enjoying our lives together. It's been filling my cup in ways I didn't even know that I needed, and has given me such great insight into what I want our lives to be like in the future and how I have the power to make that happen. We're living our best life and I'm so glad I get to live it with these people of mine. #livingourbestsummerlife #notoveryet





{8.19.18} We went camping this summer at Maple Canyon, my fav ever. 🌲⛰️ The kids had gone down pretty well, and David and I had spent some time sitting by the fire and watching the stars come out. We went to bed, but after less than an hour we woke up to a huge storm rolling in. Lightning flashed, rain pelted our tent, and the wind blowing through the trees and down the canyon sounded like a flash flood was on it's way. There was something profoundly symbolic as we laid there watching over our sleeping children while the storm raged outside. At one point we discovered a small opening in our rain fly which was allowing water to seep into our tent, soaking Lydia's sleeping bag. But after discovering the leak we just pulled everyone in a little closer and held on a little tighter. 🏕️⛈️🌲 Here's to pulling our family a little closer and making our lives a place of peace amid the storm raging all around us.

Summer of Dreams

This summer. *sigh* This summer was something special. It was magic. I know that it may seem like I'm overselling it - but it was just, perfect. 

The kids were at perfect ages for going, exploring, swimming, splashing, hiking, and bounce-house-jumping. They were also the perfect ages for just staying home and playing in the backyard or playing with toys inside our house. I felt like we had a really good balance of going and staying, playing and relaxing. I love the water and our summer was filled with water activities. We invested in a paddle board and a small kayak and it was such a good choice. We used them repeatedly over the summer, and I love that even though we don't have a motorboad and we don't go water-skiing like I did as a child, I can still give my kids the experience of being out on the lake, jumping off the docks, and feeling the wind as you're surrounded by water on all sides, just enjoying the sunshine. 

I basically stopped social media through the whole summer with just a blog post here and there. I'll echo what I said in my first instagram post back:  This summer has been filling my cup in ways I didn't even know that I needed, and has given me such great insight into what I want our lives to be like in the future. It's been a summer of slowness and some introspection and I'm learning that I have the power to make to create the kind of life that I want for my family. I want things to be slower paced, filled with goodness and light. Memories of love and laughter, not just rushing around from place to place. Obviously, not everything in life can be sunshine and roses all of the time - and obviously, this summer was filled with it's fair share of tears and fighting and "we should have gone home 30 minutes ago in order to avoid this meltdown" and "when will it be bedtime?"'s - but I wouldn't change a thing about it. 

 I will say, I initially loaded 131 photos. I'll try to cut it down as I go through! It's tempting to want to repost all the pictures of my favorite things this summer, but if I know I blogged it in another post (like our summer staycation/trips), I'll probably try not to repost the pictures. But know that for every one picture in this post are a hundred tiny little memories all tucked away in what will probably go down in history as my favorite summer ever. 

Here are some highlights:

-Ice Cream Date with Grandma and Grandpa Peaden. I made the mistake of saying that I'd share my ice cream with Caleb, who proceeded to take my entire cone and refused to share with me. He then finished off Grandpa's Strawberry Sundae. 

-We got an Unlimited Family Pass to the Classic Fun Center in Sandy and it was a huge win. The kids loved jumping on the bounce houses, roller skating on the rink and the track, playing in the ball area, and most of all (my personal favorite) going down the waterslides. In fact, after the first time of going to the waterslide portion, we basically didn't do anything else for the next 6 weeks. I could just sit at the bottom of the slides with Caleb (who was happy as a clam with his big bag of sliced frozen grapes) and watch the kids come down. They were both big enough (with a puddle jumper) that they could swim to the edge, grab their board, and trek back up to the top of the hill. I could keep an eye on them the whole way, right from where I sat. It was amazing.  

-When we weren't up to driving all the way down to Sandy, the kids were still thrilled to go to our neighborhood swimming pool. Lydia is getting to be such a good swimmer, and Austin isn't far behind. I made him wear his puddle jumper, well, all the time. But he was clearly more confident and happy in the water than ever before. 

-Plenty of time at home to play in the back yard. 

-Even though yardwork was still not-my-favorite-thing-to-do, we got on it early this spring and it wasn't as terrible through the summer. A huge factor of this is that we hired a weed control company this year and it made all the difference in the world. We went from hundreds of dandelions to zero. Like, zero. There were still lots of other things that needed attention, but we were able to get to a bunch of other projects we'd wanted to do but could never get around to due to the never-ending-weed-battle. Like, a new tree! We finally decided to just get a second tree on the bottom level because the upper tree hasn't grown at all in five years and we need a little bit more shade in the back. Both trees are doing great and we are excited for some shade next summer. 

-Playing hard = sleeping well, right? 

-I was in charge of our Ward Walkabout, which is my favorite ward activity of the year. Six members of the ward host a booth filled with delicious breakfast foods, and then everyone in the neighborhood comes out on a Saturday morning, walking around the neighborhood and eating yummy food. I basically love it. I didn't get more pictures because I was bustling around. I couldn't do the things that I am able to in my calling without the support of David who unflinchingly and unfailingly takes care of our family so I can do a good job.

-We were so lucky when the Wards moved in across the street from us. And we are so grateful for the baby technology that allows us to get together to play games after all of our kids are asleep for the night.

-The Lehi Library had a "Construction Petting Zoo" where they pulled out a ton of the city's equipment and let the kids come look at it. The only thing that was missing was a street sweeper!

-Favorite thing to do at home? Pull off all the cushions from the couches. Or playing in the kitchen cupboards. Or bringing every single toy into the family room. It's a toss up. 

-These two melt my heart. They love each other and are such good friends. Someone said something that other day about Lydia having her own room, but I was like "Lydia and Austin share a room and they wouldn't have it any other way!" This summer they have gotten to be even better friends, and it's not unfrequent that the request to sleep next to each other at night. 

-We watched Camille and Jason when Baby Sadie was born and loved having them stay with us. We took them up to the hospital in Ogden so they could meet their new baby, but because other children weren't allowed onto the hospital floor, I found this darling park next to the hospital and we spent some time there after dropping Camille and Jason off with my mom. I wish we lived closer to this park. It was a great little nature spot right in the middle of Ogden. A note about this: I was feeling a little rushed as we were trying to get out the door in the morning and hadn't even thought about lunch until I got into the car - realizing that we were going to be gone for many hours and that my kids were going to be hungry in .25 minutes. I shrugged it off and thought, well I guess we will be stopping by McDonalds, even though my kids don't eat it that great and I didn't really want to pay $20 to feed everyone. But as I was driving away, my sweet neighbor, Andrea texted me to tell me that she'd just dropped homemade lunches for me and my kids off on my porch and wishing me a good day. (I had mentioned to her earlier that we were going to be gone for the day, but had said nothing about food.) It was such a huge blessing. I turned right around and grabbed the lunches from the porch. Not only was there enough food to feed all five kids, plus my mom and me, it was all delicious food. Strawberries and Nutella, yummy ham sandwiches, apples, carrots. Even typing about this right now, it makes me tear up. I'm so grateful for Andrea and tender mercies. I'm so blessed.

 -Playing board games, toys, and hanging out with dad. Summer is the BEST. It almost makes busy season seem worth it when we get to see SO much of David during the summer.

(Austin snuck into Caleb's room during his nap to "play" with him.) 

-SWIMMING LESSONS! These were more effective for Lydia than Austin. But by the end of summer he was comfortable in the water, getting his head wet, and everything. Plus, their classes were right next to each other in the line-up and the fact that they held hands every day until class started (unprompted) was so wonderful that I'm going to say swimming lessons was a big win. Plus hanging out with this baby one-on-one was pretty great. 

 -We always go to Gardner Village for their Witchfest in October, but this year we decided to hit up their Fairy Festival with Melissa and Zachary. I will say the weather in June is pretty unmatched! We had a great time.

-Manti Pageant. One of my favorite traditions. I know we blogged a whole separate post about this, but I wanted to make sure to include this picture of me in front of the house that I grew up in. Plus, thinking about the pageant and the power we have as parents has really gotten me excited about our future as a family. I'm pretty close to convincing David to buy a house in Ephraim to rent out to collage students during the year, then to let us move into during the summer so we can be in the pageant as a family. It would be amazing and I would love to give my kids that same opportunity that I had. Sometimes I am sad that my family doesn't live in Ephraim anymore, because I have very few ties there now, and no place for a "home base of operations" for visiting and such. But I'm glad we live close enough that we can come visit, and who knows - maybe we can create a future for our family here anyway. 

-Utah Valley Parade of Homes. This is one of David and I's favorite things to do. Most of the time we try to get a babysitter so we can go, but sometimes we just take our kids with us and hope that they last long enough for us to get our fill. Our kids did great this year. (It's really convenient that Caleb will still ride happily in the baby carrier, most of the time.) 

-More time at the lake.

-More time at Classic Waterslides. (water = the best)

-Tausha and Kayla (Barclay) came into town, so we met up with Bekah at Highland Glen and swam and talked and played and it was a great day. Caleb and Tausha's little boy Jack just happened to be wearing matching outfits. I love these girls, and was so happy to spend some time with them. It was good for my heart to see all of our kids running around playing so happily together. Lydia did a great job teaching the older girls how to kayak and then sharing it with them so that they could all have turns. 

-Watched Camille and Jason over a weekend and we went down and hiked Bridal Veil Falls then hit up the parade! We love parades, and love that we usually can connect with the Renchers to watch parades with them. 

-Can't remember exactly - but this is a different parade. We love parades! 

 -Ice Cream Dates with my boy.

-Discovery Gateway Children's Museum in Salt Lake. This is where David's work summer party was held this year, and even though he was out of town (on a business trip, lame), we decided to go. I'm so glad we did because it was so fun! (This was Caleb's first ice cream cone, and afterwards one of the partners, Paul Skeen, came up to me and said that he's never seen any person, child or adult, enjoy an ice cream cone so much. Ha. It's probably true!  

-Camping, reading, hiking. 

-Dating. 

-We took Lydia to see the local play that Melissa and Zachary were in, Annie Get Your Gun. We wanted to prep for what a theater play was like before taking her to Frozen on Broadway. I missed the memo that it was an outdoor stage. I didn't bring jackets or blankets or anything. Which would have been fine, except a severe thunderstorm blew in and rained us out. Lydia was in shorts and a t-shirt. #momfail. So I tucked her into my luckily-very-strethcy shirt and she was fine. In fact, she thought it was the best thing ever. 

-Splash Pads!

-Eating fancy Ramen with my sister and Mom. So lucky to have these two so close. My mom came down several times over the summer, which both the kids and I loved. Melissa came swimming with the kids and I, plus introduced my mom and I to her favorite Ramen place.

-Hanging out at the Peaden Homestead for Cal's Birthday. 

 -Playing with neighborhood friends + riding bikes outside.

- Completing the Lehi Library Summer Reading Program and earning a pool party! 

-Finding creatures in the back yard. Favorites: Praying Mantises, Potato Bugs, Lady Bugs, and our pet garden snake. (pet is a loose term, but we all kind of like him). Least Favorite: Voles. Ugh. 

-Lunch Dates with Dad. 

 A summer like this will wear a person out, you know?

It's hard to capture the magic and joy of a summer through a few pictures and poorly worded sentences. (I am pretty sure my grammar gets worse and worse towards the end of these long posts). But I just wanted to say that I loved this summer so much and the thing I loved most about it was spending such unhurried time with these children of mine, and spending time with my sweet husband. I'm SO sad to have summer ending. In fact, I'm basically in denial about the whole thing. But I am excited for the future with this little family and I'm going to try to enjoy each season as much as I have this past one. 

Happy Summer!