Houston, we have readers!

It is so fun to watch your children learn! I know homeschooling isn't for everyone and I know if you don't homeschool, you still get to watch your children learn. But to be with Danae and David every day and watch that lightbulb moment several times a week is such a huge blessing to me.

We are about 3/4 of the way through our school year and are planning to finish up at the very end of May. So 3 months to go! I'm excited about finishing out the year because a break will be very welcome, but it's been an awesome school year.

Danae's biggest progress has been in reading. At the beginning of the school year, she was refusing to blend at all. I really believe this was a developmental thing. She just wasn't ready to take those sounds that she had known for 3 years and blend them. It seemed silly to me that she couldn't do it, but she just couldn't do it. And no prodding from me was going to force her into it. It was just going to cause frustration. I had wise advice to not push her and so I didn't. We kept doing lessons, but I kept them fun and short. And then one day in October, c-a-t was suddenly "cat." Amazing stuff!

Since then, she's slowly progressed through her reading curriculum and we have added in some site word work as well. She's doing really well!

Enter David.

Yesterday, David wanted to do "letter school," as he called it, like Danae was doing. I said okay and got out some letters. He identified them (s, a, m, p) and their sounds. And then proceeded to sound out the word "map" and "sap" and "Sam." He's three people. Kids are so so so different!! You hear that from everyone, but my kids are living proof.

So now both of my children are working on reading! Fun stuff!

My house is CLEAN

I do not claim to be Suzy Homemaker. There was a time (pre kids) where I had my house all perfect all the time. There was only me to mess it up. Even when Lucas and I got married, there were only two of us to mess it up. Yes, the dishes and laundry had to be done, the bathroom had to be cleaned, I ran the vacuum every now and then, and dusted before we had company. But there were no toys to pick up before I vacuumed, my bathroom never had anything but bathroom things in it before I began to clean, and the laundry situation was not nearly as mountainous as it is now. Kids just add some extra work to the mix.

So, since I've had children...and daycare children...and homeschooling...and life...I've become sort of lazy about cleaning. It's so gosh darn overwhelming sometimes! I keep up with the basics - it's not like we're living in absolute filth - but I also don't have it spic and span all the time.

Enter a combination of homemade cleaners and hosting Friday Night In.

My mommy friends and I get together once a month on a Friday night for dinner. We all bring part of the meal and our families. It's chaos, but so much fun! Our husbands are getting to know each other and the kids have fun leaving mass toy chaos in their wake.

It's my day to host. Today.

I've been cleaning for a week and a half, all while trying out all of my Pinterest homemade cleaner recipes. I do not think my house has been this clean since the last time my in-laws visited. That was when David turned 1. He's now nearly 4.

Part of me is just super happy to have a clean house. It looks great! The other part of me is sad that it's not going to stay this clean, because I've met my family and I know my lack of enthusiasm about cleaning.

Now that I have reported that my house is clean, I must go deal with my very long to do list that must be accomplished by 5:30pm tonight!

A Work in Progress

I have a lot in my head lately. I partly blame Pinterest. There are so many good ideas on there and so many things I want to try. But it's also that I want to provide a better, healthier home for my family, save money, and eat more naturally. I'm doing this a little at a time and have started with shampoo and cleaners. Starting next week, I'm going no-poo, which means I'm using baking soda and apple cider vinegar to clean my hair. You can look up tons of instructions on how to do this. I don't feel qualified to explain it since I'm a newbie.

I've also been working my way through my household cleaners to replace them with recipes I found on Pinterest. The best cleaning recipe I've found so far is equal parts vinegar (heated in the microwave) and dawn dish soap. I sprayed it on my bath tub, left it for several hours and the soap scum WIPED off. It didn't scrub off, it WIPED off. Amazing stuff. My spray bottles for other cleaning recipes (mostly using vinegar) are on their way from Amazon. Love me some Amazon.

And then I planned a whole week of recipes with no pre-packaged meals. This sorta scares me since I don't enjoy cooking, but I think I have a good plan in place. Tonight we had BBQ Chicken Pizza with a homemade crust. Fabulousness on a fork.

Toy Mountain

Last night I set off on a journey to a far off place (Pittsburgh) to venture into unknown lands (Ikea) to buy magical items (storage bins) to tame the dragons on Toy Mountain.

Okay, that sentence used up all the creativity I have in my head today.

I really had never been to Ikea. I only figured out a few months ago that there is one in Pittsburgh and that is totally drivable for me! I love that store already and am looking forward to another trip.

I had looked online to try to determine what I wanted and although I got the same storage system, I got different shaped ones than I was looking at originally. Since Christmas, our toy situation has been out of hand, but I knew I would need to buy better organizers for the kids' rooms and I hated to do the toy organizing job twice.

So last night I stayed up until midnight last night assembling 4 Trofast systems. Each child gets two in their room, where they are to keep small toys that are inappropriate for infants and anything they don't want to share with the daycare kids. I struggle endlessly with wanting them to learn to share and feeling sorta guilty that they have to share every toy they own, especially when those toys are new. I'm hoping this helps.

Today I sorted toys from 8am until noon, played outside with the kids for about an hour, and then was back to sorting until Lucas came home at 4:30. It's organized and labeled and I'm thrilled with the results! I really want these same systems for my play room, but I need to save some money first, especially since what I have down there is adequate. I just like the look of closed storage so much more.

Here are some pics of the "after" of their rooms. I could have taken before pics, but really, you don't want to see that. And I find it seriously embarrassing!

Valentine's Day Around Here

Lucas and I have never been crazy Valentine's Day celebrators. It's a day to make an excuse to go out to eat and I LOVE any excuse to go out to eat, but we rarely do it on the actual day. We did that one time when we were first married and were so squished into the entryway (literally the entryway) of the restaurant that we vowed not to do that again.

Lucas once cooked me supper for V-Day, which was very sweet except that it was then that he discovered that I absolutely abhor shrimp. Ooops. I choked one down just for him. Ahhhh young love.

Married for a decade with two kids Valentine's Day agenda? We bought the essentials - cards and chocolate, which we plan to devour tonight. The kids are getting some chocolates and skittles, which will for sure send them into a sugar-induced frenzy right before bed. Oh well.

Also, the littles made string art today. We recently had a homeschool group Valentine's Day/President's Day party and this was what the big kids did for a craft. Danae found the leftover supplies and wanted to do one too. I found the idea on Pinterest and these are certainly not pin-worthy, but good when you're 3 and 5. And they had a ball with it.

These are now displayed proudly in their rooms

A year later

It's been a year since I posted to my blog. I'm an official failure at blogging. I'm a good blog-reader, but not such a great blog-writer. But sometimes I have these things I want to share because, well, let's face it - I've been spending too much time on Pinterest! And I'd also like to remember some of the fun things we are doing in our homeschool.

So here I am again attempting to make a third start at this blogging thing.

New in our life in the last year - David did get his tonsils out and he no longer sounds like an old fat man when he sleeps. His quality of sleep is better so he sleeps a reasonable amount of time each night (12 hours instead of 16).

Both kids began school in September - Danae in K and David in PreK3. David is a PreK3 drop out. We will try again next year. He is so different from Danae! She was very ready for PreK at 3. He is just not. So he's learning via Legos and some workbooks when he wants to. Danae is doing awesome in K. She'll tell you her favorite subject is art, but she's doing really well in all subjects.

I don't work at Pizza Hut anymore. I quit in August so I could focus on school with the kids. It was a good job that got us through a tough season financially, but I would not want to work that much again. It was utterly exhausting and I felt like my house was coming down around my ears way too often. To help with our income, I am selling ThirtyOne on a very part time basis. I'm actually doing mostly online parties. That has been fun for me, because who doesn't like a new bag at a discount?

Lucas is thisclose to being done with his bachelors degree in Christian Counseling. We are all ready for him to be done because school is such a time-eater, even when it's online school. He has made the dean's list several times and I'm so proud of him!

Lucas and I celebrated 10 years of marriage this year and we went on the KLOVE Friends and Family Cruise. I highly recommend it! We'd like to go again in a couple of years.

So, now that I've summed up our year in a blog post, I just have to make sure I blog again sometime before another year passes...we'll see :)