It’s been over a Month!

 

Yikes!  It’s been a month (okay, more than a month!) since I’ve updated this.  Life has been so jam packed!  Let’s see if I can give a run down.

 

We finished up most subjects in May.  I was going to go one more week with our full load, but life got in the way and I just said, “Forget it!”  So, we ended a week early.  Not a problem since we do school year round.   We’ll start back up the third week in June doing just “school lite” which includes reading, math and history and science for the older two and minus the history and science for the younger two.  It’s been nice to have a break, but the kids always do better in routine.

 

So, as for “life” that has taken precedence over school… here are some highlights

 

The kids had their AWANA end of year celebration.  Unfortunately, all the photos were out of focus because I didn’t realize my camera was on manual focus. :-(  Each of our children completed their books (one completed his book from last year and his entire book this year).  Rylan and Bryson completed their review and extra booklet as well.  Kylie completed all her gold and silver verses.  Jayden even got an extra award for the most verse memorized this year!  The kids were each proud of their accomplishments and we celebrated with ice cream afterward!

 

 

Happy 9th Birthday to Kylie!

 

 

We got to visit with some good friends who are on home assignment from missionary work in Turkey.  They are actually heading to Japan in November to continue their ministry!  It was SO wonderful to see my dear college friend and her lovely family again.  We only get to see each other every 5 years or so, but we pick up right where we left off.  We both decided we would be good friends if we lived closer than 1/2 a world away!   (Kylie is not in this picture.  She was with her best friend that weekend… as a bonus we have my best friend’s son in the picture with us!)

 

We have video, but no still shots of Kylie’s first violin recital.  Since I was running the recital I could not run the camera!  She did great as did all the girls.  It was a fun evening in our front yard!

 

We had to say good-bye to some very dear friends this past week.  Last last year I met a sweet wonderful lady at church.  She and her husband came to our city (from quite a distance) so her husband could complete a 1 year fellowship.  We tried to connect over the winter, but we had so much sickness in our house that as soon as I thought I would invite them over someone else would be sick.  Finally our sick streak ended this past spring and I invited Amie over with her three children.  We hit it right off and have gotten together every week since.  The kids all had so much fun together and Amie and I enjoyed talking about so many things we have in common (one of which is homeschooling!).  We will miss them so much, but we know this was God’s plan all along.  I count it a blessing that we were able to meet this side of Heaven and look forward to future visits!

 

 

And… BASEBALL has started!  Every night Monday through Thursday this year with the two younger boys playing.   A bit challenging for the family schedule, but fun too.  We very much enjoy watching each of the boys!

 

 

In the midst of all this we painted the younger two boys’ room.  A light and dark blue. Looks really nice.  It’s the first of several rooms that we’ll paint this year.  We’ve also been out in the yard a lot trying to get it under control… it’s coming!

 

The kids will do VBS this coming week and I will be busy making sure everything is ready to go for summer for Children’s Ministry at church.  I’m also trying to get school planned for next year by July.  I’ve got most of their curriculum copied and put in binders (not going to file this year).  I’m busy learning Homeschool Tracker Plus to hopefully get all the lesson planning done this next month and be able to just print out schedules over the school year.  I’m also making the goal to collect most everything needed for the 3! sciences I’ll be running next year.  I really would like the kids to be able to pull out a bag and have everything they need for their experiment of the week in it. 

 

I’ll try and be better about updating… I think things are going to slip into a “summer normal” after the kids are done with VBS next week.  Hopefully that will allow me a bit more time to update!