Ready for Another School Year

We have started our 7th year of homeschool and I have never been more thankful to be on this path than I am as we start this year! And I don't say that flippantly or arrogantly, it is just something I am extra thankful for the consistency we have with this even if it is extremely difficult to homeschool at times.  We are at least not finding ourselves in complete limbo heading into this next school year and will proceed with business as usual.  

With that being said, we are almost a month in at this point and we are working through the challenges. After being pretty hands off last year with pregnancy and a newborn I have really wanted to be involved this year and make sure they are where they need to be and grasping all their concepts. That is pretty much a full time job each day as I balance the 4 kids and a baby but we are hopefully figuring things out. The kids are doing great, Mom feels overwhelmed :)

We are covering a wide range of Elementary schooling this year.  Malachi is kicking off his final (sniff sniff) year of elementary school.  This should not be too difficult of a year for him as he just expands  on the concepts he's already been working through.  I am excited to see him complete this year of school and move on to a new journey in middle school (wow!) soon!   

Eli is conquering 4th grade this year.  I actually think 4th is going to work out really well for him.  Last year he got brand new 3rd grade that was pretty intense and this year he is doing an older version of the curriculum that basically covers a lot of what he covered in 3rd grade.  Since 3rd was so challenging I think what is going to end up being a lot of review in 4th is going to be great for him as 3rd grade basically felt like a jump right into 4th last year. He is already off to a great start! 

We continue our journey into these later elementary grades with Sabrina this year. She had an awesome year in 2nd and has had updated curriculum all along in her journey through school so I am confident she will handle the challenging curriculum well in 3rd grade. She is already working hard and doing pretty good. It is no easy task to handle the uptick in work from 2nd to 3rd but I know she is up to handling that challenge! 

And of course I am still working with LB. You may or may not remember that last year with the input of her preschool teachers we decided to continue preschool at home last fall. That was 100% the right decision for her and we have completely let her determine the pace of school this year. Preschool started out pretty slow for her but all of a sudden we hit the new year and she was just eager to learn her letter sounds and write her letters and showed all the signs of being ready for kindergarten.  We decided around March to test the waters of kindergarten and she has just bloomed and is flying through her kindergarten curriculum and is now reading and writing in cursive and just blowing me away!  I anticipate it won't be much longer before I post that she is starting 1st grade herself!  

So clearly we have a lot going on over here and we are still navigating the waters of 4 kids in full time school and a baby who is all over the place! This is definitely not the easiest decision I have ever made and it challenges and refines me everyday but I love having my kids home with me and getting to witness for myself every school challenge and every school victory. I am so proud of all of these kids! 

4th of July Weekend at Great Grandma's

Covid has ruined several of our travel plans this year so we didn't know what to expect for our 4th of July plans but we decided to just go for it and still visit Great Grandma for the holiday and just get out of town for a couple days!  Her house is the perfect place to get away but also not have to go anywhere and stay away from the general population.  

But first we had to get there! I wasn't too concerned about the big kids as they're good travelers but a 4 hour car trip with Ayla was going to be a new experience. 

She actually did pretty good considering there weren't all that many places we could even stop the car to take a break with Covid restrictions. But we got her out once and got to watch the elk for a little bit at the same time. She was a trooper! 

And then the rest of the weekend at Great Grandma's filled with sourdough pancakes, walks exploring the tide pools, reading books, playing piano, cornhole, and lots of exploring Grandma's vast backyard!

It is always an enjoyable place that the kids really look forward to visiting, and it was really nice to finally get away even if it was a quick trip! 

Ayla 7 Months

Before this girl hits 8 months, I better update on 7 months!  This first year of her life is flying by, even if she's pretty much spent most of it lockdown.  This girl is becoming more fun all the time as she gets into new routines and explores and learns more.  

The best part of this last month is that she is finally sleeping consistently all night long.  Sometimes she will wake up around 5:30 to eat and go back to sleep but for the most part she is sleeping all night until about 7:30 in the morning. This has been wonderful as she's by far our latest baby to figure all that out.  

She is getting faster at crawling all the time and there is so much she wants to explore!  Her and Groot have become quite the friends this month.  She is also saying Dada and nono and every once and awhile a mama. She gained over a whole pound this month and is weighing in at a whopping 16.5 lbs!  She is such a sweet little bundle of love! 

On the food side of thing, she is loving all the foods. She's not a huge fan of purees (she will eat them though) but loves to eat whatever we are willing to give her.  She likes mango and strawberries and puffs and cheese.  We are still going strong with nursing which is awesome! This is the longest I have ever been able to make it and I had hoped we would be able to make it  longer this time so I am pretty happy about how this is playing out! We do supplement the bedtime feeding every night but with the amount still in the freezer that is totally fine! 

Baby Girl, you are just a delight to watch grow up!  You are changing so fast these days and it almost feels like you learn something new every single day. I love just sitting back and watching you learn and explore and observe. My favorite words to describe you are curious about the world around you and determined to get what you want. Great characteristics to have baby girl!  We are enjoying life with you so very much and can't wait to see what you learn and discover next! 

100 Days, Counting Blessings

We are now well over 3 plus months into this pandemic and hit 100 days now since we were ordered to stay at home. We aren't necessarily afraid to go out in public, but there is really no purpose for us to be out much. With homeschool and Peter working from home, grocery pick up, online church, and all sports and activities being cancelled we've kind of just been forced to be at home a lot more. There isn't really anywhere to be and we've enjoyed this extra time spent at home.

Sure there are lots of hard parts, several cancelled vacations, numerous birthday parties skipped over, sad to not get to watch both my boys play baseball or watch Sabrina dance ballet at her recital.  Our small business being all but shut down and wondering how it will survive, watching numerous friends and family take on the stress of job loss. Now surging numbers in our state, new state wide mask laws to try and slow it all down. I certainly don't take the impact of all this lightly. It is a stressful and hard time for so many.

But us personally, I have seen huge blessing flow from this time. Not the pandemic itself but some of what it has done for our family.  First and foremost, Peter is home with us.  This was an unexpected immense blessing for our family.  While our small business is struggling bad, Peter's primary job is not only surviving but thriving during this time which is a just a huge weight lifted when we consider what things could look like for our one income family.  Back in September of last year things really cranked up for Peter at work.  That was also about the time I hit the 3rd trimester.  November came along and as I was needing him most, there was no balance between work and home life.  Then baby came and his promised paternity leave, while he squeezed in time where he could, never fully came to be what we looked like or expected.  Work needed him, and I needed him and the battle between the two definitely created conflict and tension.  A new baby always adds stress in the beginning and work was piling on massive amounts of stress in Peter's life that were also causing tension. While we were surviving, we certainly weren't thriving.  Peter was working insane hours well into the night and I don't know how he did that with a newborn. It added a whole lot more work for me than I was expecting coming out of having this baby. I thought thing would be "different" and that he would be around more this time to help me tackle 5 kids. 

So basically things were just hard in the season right before the pandemic hit.  When he first started working from home in March, we thought, like most people probably did that the longest timeline he would be home would be until the end of April.  Then May came around and he cancelled his parking permit because we were thinking he may be home until July or so.  Then June came and he finally returned to his office and got all the things he left behind - his phone charger, extra monitor etc.  because the timeline became more open. And now in this most recent phase we have been told he won't step back foot into his office before 2021!  I've always wished he had the flexibility to work from home. I think he was a bit more skeptical that he could accomplish work goals while also being at home but through this "experiment" he's learned he can accomplish pretty big work goals and balance home life.  It has been so rewarding for the kids to have their Dad home and get to see him here and there throughout the day.  I feel like our lives are more connected then ever as I have some idea of what his work life entails and he actually has some idea of what is happening at home throughout the day.  He has a stronger relationship with Ayla than he had with the other kids at this age because he see's her throughout his day instead for just a short time before her bedtime when he's trying to balance helping me and seeing his other 4 kids. 

This time has been transformative for our family.  We aren't hustling to get here and there and everywhere.  We are enjoying a much simpler life where the kids just play outside without the rush of getting dinner on the table so they can get going to their next activity.  Of course life with 5 kids is still busy and stressful from time to time but Peter is able to be so much more hands on and the time wasted by commuting 90 minutes every evening is just massive for our family. When he unplugs for the day, he is instantly home with us!  There's less tension on our marriage and just in general there feels like more happiness in our home.  I love the quote I've seen going around that in the hustle to get back to life, let us take time to reflect on what is worth hustling back to.  Even when this is all said and done, there is much of life that we don't want back!  We will definitely slow down on the amount of activities the kids are doing so they have plenty of time to just play.  We have high hopes that Peter will be home at least most of the time from here on out which would just be incredible!

All that to say, there is blessing in this time.  It is a hard period of time and we still don't know how all this will shake out in the end, but for now I choose to focus on the blessings for our little family and how much this 100 days "stuck" at home has actually become a good thing for us! I of course hope that businesses reopen and in general the illness goes away but I also hope some parts stay just the way they are right now! 100 days into this, I assume many more to come before we see the end of this road but we are here, soaking up life as a family and counting how blessed we actually are!