Saturday, January 30, 2010

Kyla

Kyla loves to sing and one of her favs right now is "o be careful little eyes what you see". Except her version goes "foy da Fader uppa sairs is looking downa sairs, o be ca-ful litta feet whe you go". It cracks me up every time I hear her. =)

Friday, January 29, 2010

housewise

I've been meaning to post about this too:
I know I mentioned in an earlier post that I wanted to get a grip on my house again as it just seemed out of control. Well, right after that, Ed and I were talking and the Lord just brought to mind a good way to accomplish that.
I don't know if I've said before but our house is pretty small (3 bedroom,1 bath) and as much as we love it, I sometimes feel like we are about to push the walls out. We do have a huge back yard which I'm soooo thankful for, but anyway...back to what I was talking about. We discussed it and decided it would be a good idea to put all the kids in one of the rooms (using a couple sets of bunkbeds) and put all the clothes and toys in the other room, instead of having your traditional boys room/girls room. We were spending so much time just on clean-up and rewashing clean laundry that never made it to the drawers. I desperately need to be efficient if I'm ever going to make any progress and we figured this would be a good way to accomplish that. Sooo, first week of January we were busy rearranging our entire house. As of last week sometime I finally got it all sorted out and I have to say I LOVE it. The washer and dryer were already in the boys room so we made that the dressing room/toy room, and the other room is the sleeping room. I allow nothing in there except the beds and blankets and an occasional book. It has made a huge difference in my laundry already. I can stand there and fold and put away everything within just a few steps. And it has made the kids toys available again but they can only pull out a couple things at a time. I already feel so much more organized because it sort of consolidated alot of miscellaneous stuff too. For example, I now have a drawer for all the girl's hair stuff and jewelry. Another drawer for hats, gloves, and backpack/purses. Just little things like that. They don't seem like a big deal in themselves but it all adds up. =)
Ed and I still have our own stuff in our room and Asher's stuff is in the hall on the changing table. It is already helping and I'm looking for the day when I can see the bottom of my laundry baskets. hahaha. Yeah, I know I'm dreaming on that one.
Anyway,... so far I've made a decent start on some of my goals for this year.
Feeling very thankful!

Miracles still happen...

It's true...I know, because this week we have gotten school done EVERY day. Don't laugh. I'm sure that for most of you that wouldn't qualify as a miracle but for me it sho' nuff is. =)
We started back doing school the 2nd week of January and it has actually been going pretty good. I'm really enjoying our curriculum for a couple of reasons. 1) it's easy to use, 2) it reinforces natural ways of learning and is classical in style, and 3) I'm seeing improvement in my kids.
We still haven't settled on a Math curriculum though...we ruled out Saxon for now as it was just way too much for me to handle, but are looking for a good alternative that will be user friendly as well as something that will move the kids forward quickly. I'm terrible at Math so it needs to be fairly self-explanatory. =) A friend just recommended Math-U-See so I want to check that out.
I was talking to Mom last night and we were discussing the possibilities of an end-of-school production the kids can put on. Somewhere around the first of June. I do realize that is still down the road a ways but I have to start planning for it now. =)I think it would be alot of fun as well as encouraging to them to see how far they have come and get to show off some of what they have learned. I'm hoping and praying we can finish our goals in time to have the summer off. So far we've never had that, but as I said...miracles still happen. =)