We're back...

Well, it's been almost a year since my last blog post. I'm not sure exactly why I stopped last fall, but it was probably a combination of lots of things - our first year homeschooling, coaching Joseph's soccer team, Sarah starting dance classes, Joseph and Sarah starting piano lessons, attending a homeschool co-op every week where I taught a Spanish class to 3rd-6th graders, teaching an online Spanish 101 course for the college, writing the Primary program, singing in the annual Christmas concert, arranging and performing in a flute trio, and David getting called to the High Council (meaning he is super busy on Sundays) -- either way, blogging fell off my to-do list.

So, I decided to start again. I'll tell you a little about what we're up to now and do a "flashback" post every now and then to share some pictures and stories from the past year.

For Grandma Carol - This is the bike you helped Kathryn buy.

August has been a crazy month. We went to Redding for a week and celebrated Joseph's birthday there. (That trip deserves it's own post...I have tons of pictures!)

At the lake

They built this in Redding...can you guess what it is?

7th Birthday - Wild Kratts "Cheetah Power" cake

Along the way, Sarah and Rachel got sick and had terrible coughs, which they passed to the other kids while we were all trapped in the van for the 12 hour drive.

The week after we got home the older kids went to a "Little Farmer" camp at a friend's farm here. They had a great time learning about all the different animals and life on a farm. They got to collect eggs, milk the cow, pick veggies from the garden, make butter, and do lots of fun crafts too. (Sorry, I didn't get any pictures of that). But, their favorite part was swinging on the rope swing that went over the creek and then "accidentally" falling in the water. =)

This past Tuesday was Sarah's first day of school. She is attending an elementary level Montessori school that recently opened here. Her teachers are great and her class is small (11 kids, 2 teachers), with mixed ages from 1st through 3rd grade. So far she is really enjoying the peaceful routine, personal attention, and ability to choose her own work during most of the day there. One day she went on a nature scavenger hunt with her class at the adjacent city park. Another day she played a rousing game of chess with a classmate.

First day of 2nd grade

Joseph and Kathryn are starting homeschool on Tuesday, and little David will start preschool at Montessori in the mornings a few days each week. We decided to NOT do soccer this year, at least not formally. We plan to play a lot of family games in the backyard. Sarah's going do ballet again and, new this year: Celtic soft shoe and hard shoe (tap). All three of the older kids will be taking piano lessons of some variety (either a private lesson, group class, or lesson with mom).

David and I are "back to school" too. Classes have started at the college again and David is teaching his regular load. I'm teaching Spanish 101 online again (this is my 3rd year now). We're doing a homeschool co-op again this year. So, it's looking like another busy fall. I'll try to keep you all updated.

Heather

PS If anyone wants to opt out of the automatic email updates when I make a blog post, just let me know by replying to the email. OR, if you don't get an email and would like to, let me know that, too.

Random Photos and Activities from September

 I've been really lazy about updating the blog and taking pictures. We've been so busy here. Toward the end of September I went to a seminar in the Tri-cities area (in eastern Washington, just 2.5 hours from our house). The speaker was Robyn Openshaw - aka Green Smoothie Girl. I've read stuff on her blog before and tried to implement some of her ideas. Well, going to seminars like that get me all excited about eating healthy again. So, here's baby David drinking his smoothie. It's mostly fruit, but has some spinach in it too. He loves it!

At the seminar, I won some cool stuff -- including Robyn's 12-step program, cookbooks, and other goodies. That was Friday night. I got to stay the night with a friend (David stayed home with the kids) and the next day I went to the temple there. It was a great little getaway for me.

Sarah and Joseph are playing kindergarten soccer. It's hard to tell in this picture, but Joseph is at the front of the line and Sarah is at the back. They have a ton of fun and get lots of exercise.

And, they get a snack after the game. I think that is secretly why Joseph goes. One funny thing is that the teams are all sort of randomly assigned according to where kids live or go to school. On our kids' team there are 5 LDS kids and one who is not (the coach's son). 

Davey was trying to use a fork to eat his PB&J and we wanted a picture of it, but he stopped once the camera came out. He is getting so big!

He likes to climb up on the chairs and eat the leftovers off the table. Sometimes he sits on the table too if he can't reach what he wants. He also likes to pull chairs up to the kitchen sink and make messes with the water. His all-time favorite activity though is unrolling ALL of the toilet paper--directly into the toilet--then trying to flush it. We've had more than one clogged toilet this week. In fact, he also put the cardboard roll down my toilet and got it very stuck. We're not sure how to prevent this TP obsession since the other kids need to have easy access to the bathroom, toilet, and toilet paper and I can't guard the bathrooms 24/7.

Here's Kathryn on her first day of preschool (sort of--she went in May a few times, but now she's full-time).

Here she's putting on her slippers. 

We have about 50 different house projects that we'd like to do. They're all in different stages of being completed: everywhere from "dreaming about it" (aka the kitchen) to "I just need to do a little touch-up painting and it will be finished". Above is a picture of the master bathroom and the lovely roll-in shower. It seemed like more water rolled out onto the floor than actually went down the drain, so we never used this shower. Instead we trekked down the hall to share the kids' blue bathtub. I really wanted a deep soaking tub because that's what I love when I'm pregnant, and because it would be nice to shower in our own bathroom with a little more privacy. So, I searched for the perfect tub (it took several months), had it shipped to us, and got bids from different contractors/plumbers. At the beginning of September the demolition began.

After a day of work--by a professional (not us!) we had this big hole. Sarah gladly modeled in the picture.

After another day the tub was in it's spot and the concrete board was going up.

After many more days and numerous trips to different stores to look at tile samples, we finally have this beautiful tub/shower. I'm very pleased with the end result and sure enjoy it. Now, I need to finish painting (notice the wall on the left is a lighter beige color while the wall on the right is a darker brownish color--we'll be painting it beige...but I am dreading doing that side because of the toilet, vanity, mirror, light fixture, etc. that are in the way). So, one more project {almost} done!

And, we're already working on the next project. This is a room out in the shop that was nearly finished when we bought the house. All the walls had sheetrock and were taped, but no texture, paint or flooring aside from the plywood. We've been patching holes (hence the pink spackle spots), spraying texture, and laying some of the left over wood floor from our family room. We'll be painting it this week and installing baseboard and window trim. Then, David gets to use the room as his home office.

A Shout-out to Kathryn

(I know I said I wouldn't mention potty training again, but I just have to brag for a minute!)

This little lady earns the award for easiest potty-trainer (so far) in our family. She has now been dry at night for three days in a row. A couple of the nights I still didn't think she could do it, and wanted her to wear a diaper, but she refused. I didn't want to fight over it, so I figured I'd sneak in later and put one on her. I forgot, but she didn't need it anyway.

On Friday she got to visit the Montessori school in the morning. She was thrilled! She took a pair of slippers because that's what they wear in the classroom. The teacher said that she didn't say much, just kind of took everything in and was very well behaved. She even used the potty there.

"First" day of school.

She'll start going to preschool regularly in the fall. She's excited about it, but she also enjoys doing "home school" with Mom, too. 

It's official, Sarah is going to Kindergarten

This week I completed the paperwork to register Sarah for kindergarten in the fall. She'll most likely be attending the school that is just two blocks from our house in the morning. She'll still go to the Montessori school in the afternoon. It was a difficult decision to make and something that we thought about a lot. Before we even had kids, David and I decided that we wanted to home school our children. As Sarah has grown, we've realized that home school cannot be a pleasant experience for me or for her at this point in time.

While Sarah is in kindergarten, I'm going to see how home schooling goes with Joseph. If it's successful throughout the year, then he'll likely stay home for 1st grade too. We'll see.

Kathryn is going to start attending Montessori in the morning. So that means I'll only have the boys at home in the morning. She has been doing really great this week potty training. Even after being up half the night throwing up a couple of days ago, so still wanted to wear underwear and has had only one accident in 2 days! She told me she's doing it so she can go to "Joseph's school".

School was cancelled today because their teachers were sick, so we made up some school projects to do at home. This is a "Hundred Number Board", similar to what they do at school. They match up the little squares of paper with numbers 1 to 100 on the grid (the cardboard) in order.

Making Progress

It's been an eventful week around our house.

Over the weekend baby David took his first solo steps - 3 on Saturday, then 4 on Sunday. I missed it both times -- I was out and David was home with the kids. He finally walked for me early this week. It was just a few steps and he'll only do it when there's an incentive. Crawling or cruising are still the preferred modes of transportation. He also cut another bottom tooth, which brings the total count up to 7 (4 on top, 3 on bottom). I think he's working on #8 tonight because has has woken up twice already and he's really grumpy. He's also been sleeping better at night, except for when those teeth come through. He sometimes sleeps for 12 hours straight now! You'd think I was getting a lot of sleep now, but there are 3 other kids who often wake up at least once every night too. Sarah likes to get up and dig around in the kitchen for a snack around 3am. She is also prone to nightmares. Joseph wets the bed almost every night. Kathryn...she's my best sleeper right now. She'll sleep for 12 hours straight nearly every night (probably 29/30 nights).

Speaking of Kathryn, she decided over the weekend that she was ready to be a big girl and start using the potty. Previous attempts at potty training have been utter failures because she had no desire to use the toilet or ditch her diapers. Now, she won't even let us put a diaper on her at night. She's done well - today she didn't have any wet accidents. We're still working on getting #2 into the potty..but all in good time. She is doing almost all the work herself. She got a new little potty so that she can "take herself" whenever she wants to...and she does! I think she prefers going alone. We're are fully into the "I can do it myself!" phase. (Yes, she speaks in clear and complete sentences).

Joseph and Sarah got a little guitar this weekend ($5 at a garage sale). They've had fun tinkering around with it and playing alongside their daddy. They took it to school for show and tell this week and got to play on it during singing time there. At school Joseph is making a lot of progress with reading and writing. He surprises me everyday with his ability to read random things around the house or while driving. Sarah reads some too, but mostly she is artistic and will often choose crafts over reading/writing work. Her ability to focus on one task and finish it has increased substantially in past few months as well.

Today I found some babysitters and went to school...to hear David give a lecture / speech on Mario Vargas Llosa (the main subject/author of his dissertation). He spoke for nearly an hour and a half to about 60 students and teachers. He was awesome! I learned a lot of things about Vargas Llosa and it was quite entertaining.

David has been super busy. (What's new, right?) In the next two weeks his To Do list is going to get much shorter. He'll be done with a lot of committee work and other mentoring projects at the college, not to mention the semester ending, and his work load with his second job will decrease substantially too. Until then, he's putting in 12-15 hour work days to get it all done.

We're both looking forward to the summer when he'll be home half of the day and we can finish some projects around the house.

Other good news - I am getting my own brand new laptop!! For FREE! I am going to be teaching an online Spanish course for the college this fall and they are going to provide me with a laptop (owned by the college, of course), to aide me in my work. =) It came in this week so once I have all my accounts set up with HR and IT then I'll be able to use it. I'm so excited. Our current laptop is nearing its 5th birthday and has seen better days. It will be nice to have two computers in the evening too when David and I both need to be working at once.