half way there and learning toys!

I thought I would post a little update on how school is going for us. In short, we love it! Yesterday as we were driving around with a friend, he and Ian were talking about how when they would miss a day of school even for a doctors visit it was so cool to them. They would think, 'wow! Is this what people do during the day??' It was surreal to them that life went on outside the school building. I remember thinking things like that too! One of the positive things about homeschooling is that my kids will always know that there is life beyond school. And they will have practice every day learning how to live the way they will some day when they make families/lives of their own. This is an aspect of homeschooling that I expected, but there have been a few positives recently that I did not expect.

The main one is the freedom that it brings! I've always tried to maintain a decent sleeping routine for my kids. I like them to be well rested:) So it's nice to not have something else during the week that we have to be at. I really like just being able to take each day at a time. If we're feeling tired or cranky or sick we can just hang out and do nothing that day. Or if we're really needing some friend time we can schedule a play date. Then we can do some letter activity or readings later in the day. Another thing is how little time it takes. I have seen her learn so much in the past few months and we really only spend about 20 concentrated minutes 4-5 days a week on learning activities. Although, to be fair, a lot of her toys and tv shows and computer times are probably also learning time too!

Those are just a couple things we love. I am loving homeschooling and have been so grateful for the way it fits with our family. God lead us here and it's cool to see how he's provided. I thought I would share a couple things Mary got for Christmas that I've really loved so far for homeschooling:
The LeapFrog Tag Reading system. This thing is awesome. It reads words individually or it will read the whole page. It is easy to figure out, even for a 3 year old. And there are some pages that have little games on them. She will sit and play with it for close to an hour. It is a great activity for the time between when Noah's nap starts and when hers does. That way I can get some stuff done too!

Crayola's Dry Erase Activity Center. This is my second most loved gift. She isn't great at writing yet, but I know she will get there some day and this thing means I don't have to laminate pages to make them dry erase-able! She is mostly doing pre-writing stuff like tracing lines and connect the dots. You just slide your paper underneath the glass/plastic part and then you can write. So awesome.

This is Melissa and Doug's pattern blocks and boards and you can't really go wrong with that. I love this because we don't have much in the way of patterns and spacial reasoning skills. This fits the bill! She also is getting better at doing jig saw puzzles so that works too. This set helps us work on shapes and colors. Although she already knows all of these shapes and colors it's a good way to review.

Around the house

I used to take pictures all the time just while we were hanging around the house. If one of the kids did something cute I would grab the camera and beg them to do it again. Maybe I just got bored of waiting...I don't know. But I decided I want to start capturing some "boring" moments around the house again. Lately they really like to sit in this chair together:
One day last week Noah woke up really early from his nap and I wasn't quite ready to give up my free time of watching Parks and Rec and crocheting. So I grabbed him a snack and had him sit on my bed with me. He was super happy about that so I had to grab the camera and capture the cuteness:
Enjoying the chair, and each other:
Thanks to a present from our kids team at church we spent one morning building a gingerbread train! Mary had lots of fun eating the candy, and I had fun building.

Hide and Seek

Here is how awesome Mary is at hide and seek:

Not only does she say, "I'm right here!" But she also likes to tell you what room she will hide in before she goes to hide. And we now take Noah to hide too otherwise he will stand right next to wherever the others are hiding and point.

17 months

Noah is 17 months old! It's kind of hard to believe. We have just started really working with him on a couple things like coming to us when we call him, looking at us when we say his name, and staying where we put him. He's doing pretty well with these things, but he also likes to laugh and run away:) He is putting words together now and talking so well. Today he said his longest sentence yet of, "Vacuum on mommy!" Yes, he still loves vacuums and brooms. The way he says vacuum is super cute too. It sounds like daaacuum. He is still a champion eater and sleeper. He's had some ear troubles in the past couple months but I think right now he's ok. It's hard to tell with a toddler. We've been trying some home remedies which I think are going well!



Hello ladies...

He has a love-love relationship with Mary. As in he loves her and she loves him. He LOVES chasing her around. Sometimes she will go get blankets for each of them and then they will run around the house dragging their blankets. He wakes up asking for her (well, after he says mommy eat!). He never wants to go into alone time because he just wants to play with her. He will say Mary randomly in alone time. She loves to give him kisses and look after him. He kept dropping his toys today after breakfast and in her usual fashion she was picking them up for him. Finally I told her not to pick them up any more and that if he dropped them he would just have to sit without a toy. This was very distressing for her because he of course dropped his toys right away. She asked me to please pick them up for him, but I reminded her that he is not supposed to drop his toys and if we keep picking them up for him he will keep dropping them. She didn't really care for that answer, but I think she understood.
Another cute story happened today. He was super whiny after his morning nap so I put him back in his crib and told him I'd be back when he was happy. Mary came upstairs and asked where Noah was and I said he was getting happy. She said he sounded happy and asked if she could go get him. I told her she could not go into his room, as she was already headed back there, because I wanted him to stay happy before I got him. I went back to fixing lunch, but I could hear her in the back so I figured she went in even though I told her not to. When I walked back I saw that she was standing right outside the door whispering through the crack, "Noah come on, get happy so you can come play with me." SO CUTE! I told her to go on in because I was about to cry over the cuteness.
Here is a pretty typical scene. Noah being pushed in the swing and Mary stopping him for a kiss on the head:

And finally, Mary really wanted me to take a picture of her today while I was trying to get some of Noah. So here's the best we got:

The rest of brown county

Here are some pictures that really captured what we did: relax! We found this pottery studio off this country lane back by our cabin so we went to visit. They couple that owned it was super friendly. We talked for a bit and bought some pottery from them. It was really just a perfect fit for us. We love the outdoors, and my mom and I love pottery:) We met Bob, the friendly neighborhood dog. He took walks with us almost daily and the kids called him bobbers (well Ian did, but then the kids started calling him that too)

We played outside a lot:



And lastly, we played with toys:

Blankets

Noah is all about blankets lately. He wants them on his head and he wants to walk around. If it falls off he flips out and says, "on mommy!!!" Until I put it on...

Thanksgiving

Thanksgiving Day was a great one this year. We sat around, took a really long walk in the morning, cooked, and ate. And we had turkey! Usually we go to my dad's for thanksgiving and we have themed thanksgivings. This year's theme was New Orleans, to give you an idea of the themes:) So we don't usually get the standard thanksgiving foods. Here are a couple pics:

If the kids could articulate this thought they would ask why the grown ups are messing around and when they get to eat!

Vacation

We went to Brown County Indiana for a few days over thanksgiving and it was amazing! Such a relaxing and enjoyable few days:) Since I don't have pictures on my computer yet I will post a couple videos. Noah kept doing this thing where he'd put his mouth up on the couch...It's weird, but funny:

We spent a lot of time around the cabin just enjoying some time to relax and taking walks. Here is something Noah found amusing during the times we were all just laying around:

And finally, here is a video of what the kids have been doing a ton lately. Mostly right before bed time. I don't get it, but they seem to think that's the time to chase each other, and everyone else, around the house: