January Wrap Up

Here are some highlights from January

Cute girls.

Caleb with a giant cookie in his mouth and then licking something off the floor, I don't know what.

Reading books and cuddling with the boys at bed time.

More Caleb.

One of the kids favorite things that I do is poor them a bowl of cereal, then I cover it up with yogurt so you can't see any of the cereal. Then I tell them that I am sorry, but we are out of cereal and all they get is yogurt. The kids love it. Almost every morning that I am here they want me to do it to their cereal. They play along and dejectedly say, "okay, that's okay that there is no cereal" or "I'm so sad." Then they light up with surprise when they dip their spoon in and find cereal. Caleb usually just says, "do the thing" when he wants it. It is so cute. One morning, I mixed it up and sprinkled a few tiny pieces on Lydia's yogurt in the shape of an L.

Lucy.

Shantel volunteered to help with a Activity Days church activity with Lydia. They went Ice Skating and had a great time.

Funny story. One week I told Lydia to pack her bag with the things she needed at church. Then she and Austin were both being funny. It turns out, they had both snuck a walkie-talkie to church so that they could talk to each other during class. Unfortunately, we caught them during sacrament meeting! It was so funny.

This is one of my favorites- book reading time with Lydia. Nothing else going on, just reading books and snuggling.

The boys in the bath.

Caleb enjoying his yogurt- you can also see I had covered up his cereal.

Last: Chick-Fil-A is awesome. All during January and February on Tuesday and Thursday if you bought any item you got a free breakfast item. So you could buy hash browns for $1.25 and then get a free breakfast item. They rotated what they gave you so that you tried everything. It was so so delicious and I loved it. Shantel and I took advantage of this almost every Tuesday and Thursday and I went with my audit teams too.

Happy January.

Basement Update - January

January Basement Update:

From our basement update in November we had just had the sheetrock and mudding completed. Here are a few of the pictures showing the progress.

Far end

Basement

Main end

Under the stairs

Storage Room

We took things pretty slow in January.

The biggest thing for me was finding smart light options. I really wanted smart lights in the basement and so I looked into all the options. After much deliberation, I decided that the Leviton stuff would work the best.

Step one was cutting holes in the ceiling for our lights. It is funny because we had marked on our paper where exactly every single light was, but every time we cut a hole and found the box right where it was supposed to be, there was a huge relief. We managed to cut all the holes in the right place.

Next up we decided to hire someone to come and paint. With our schedules and based on price, we decided it would be better to just get the painting done quickly. We would have wasted a bunch of paint slowly doing it over time and starting and stopping. The painters came and did it in one day and it was awesome. The whole thing was only about $1,300 to get it painted.

It was so nice to get it painted and get it cleaned up down there. Then we were also able to install all of the lights which is awesome to have lights down there!

The kids helped put the lights in under the stairs where they could reach.

Now we have paint and lights. Next up is finishing the bathroom and working on the storage room. Plus we need to do trim and baseboard. I still don't feel like we are close, but maybe we are closer.

Homeschool January

These homeschool posts are kind of funny, because it's such a SMALL snapshot of what we actually do each day. It would be impossible to capture everything, but I hope that catching these few pictures help us remember the mornings spent on the couch reading books, the math lessons completed by tossing balls between math facts, the scriptures/poetry memorized, and the overall feeling of being together as a family - learning and growing.

(I also hope that it helps us remember the good things while minimizing the rough days: the days where schoolwork doesn't want to be done, where all the kids want attention at the same time, where messes are made and never cleaned up.) 

Online Watercolor painting lessons:

Pizza night with Lydia's basketball team for winning "Best Sportsmanship" award.


I had Lydia clear out her carseat in the van and she ended up digging out like 8 books that she had been keeping in there. This girl LOVES to read. She doesn't believe in being in the car unless there is something there that she can read. I love this picture of David and her reading together in bed. She comes by her love of reading honestly.



This is one of the most hilarious things of our life right here. We have a "friend" that comes to visit on super sunny days. His name is "Dot". (insert cry-laughing face here). It's a reflection off my watch-face that reflects up on the wall. I don't usually notice, but every once in the while I'll be walking (or doing the dishes or wiping the counter) and the kids will yell "DOT!!!" and start chasing it around the walls. We then spend the next 15 minutes with me standing in just the right spot and waving the little spot of light all over the walls/ceiling while they laugh and chase it. (Lydia knows what it is, but it doesn't stop her from happily chasing it around.) I love this about my kids right now.




Homeschooling in Morgan is made up of reading books with my mom and taking a woodshop class (making wooden puzzles) with my dad. I will say it over and over again. I'm so grateful for all of our extended family members who are supportive and loving of our decision to homeschool. It makes the world of difference. David's parents are so kind and supportive and my parents, too. Always jumping in offering to do things to enhance our learning (and our lives).

One of the biggest things that people worry about with homeschooling is the socialization factor. I've never been really worried about that. I'm typically far more concerned with the over-socialization of the children of our society. I believe that nurturing the family relationships is vastly important, and teaches all of the things that people hope for when they refer to "socialization", without pulling kids away from their family units. However, I am incredibly grateful for the groups, classes, and activities that Lydia has the opportunity to be a part of. 

One of those is BRAND NEW for Lydia this year. Because of the changes with the age advancements in the church, Lydia got to start attending Activity Days in January. She's in with a group of great girls and they meet twice a month. One of their activities was to go ice skating and I was asked to tag along. (I love ice skating.) I loved it and so did Lydia. I'm proud of the kind, caring, funny girl that she is. She was careful to keep track of several of her friends, both the ones that could skate as fast as she could - but also the couple that hadn't ever skated before and had been having a harder time. She is an excellent ice skater and a really good friend. 

This is the best kind of socialization.



I put Lydia and Austin in a kickball/soccer PE class at the Dimple Dell recreation facility. Why? Because Ali Middleton had her kids in that class and invited us to tag along. Sold. The only thing better than homeschooling is homeschooling with the Middletons. (again #socialization)



Austin's FAVORITE part of homeschool is our Thursday poetry treat times. Austin is a great sous-chef and he really enjoys helping me make, well really any food but especially treats for our poetry treat time. We make pink lemonade in our teapot (that Melissa, my sweet sister, found for us at a thrift store because she knew I was on the hunt for one), eat a treat off of our china plates, read a few poems, and usually read a story from a children's storybook compilation. It's a good piece of our homeschool.



Lydia's current favorite part of homeschool, getting to choose to go to the Puppy Store for a field trip (every other week at most). They let her look at all the dogs, answer all of her questions about the different breeds, then they let her pick one dog to bring into a little play area and she gets to play with the puppy. She loves it. This girl knows SO much about dogs. She knows breeds, and care tips, and history, and what kinds of dogs make the best service dogs for different types of work/service (therapy vs rescue vs assist). She reads books and books about dogs (both fiction and nonfiction) and just really really loves them.


Building some "inventions". (Problem solving, creative thinking, use of materials, construction.)



And last but not least, we spent a day at the children's museum in Salt Lake City. It was a nice afternoon but I only took this picture. Ha.


Our first month back into homeschooling from the holidays. Not as much hygge as I had hoped, but still a good month.