Goodbye Blog :(

I have been going back and forth for months, trying to decide if I should just close my blog, or try to update it more often.  It's a constant source of guilt that I haven't been keeping it up.  Kameron and Brenner have all these great memories blogged and printed into books.  Then Micah comes along and...  (crickets). 

Every day I think, I need to get on there and do some blog posts.  So many significant things have happened in the past year, but for some reason, it overwhelms me just thinking about trying to get caught up.  I feel like I'm a terrible mom if I don't continue with it, I want the boys to have those memories in print for them to read someday, but I just have to face reality that I can't right now.  And I'm tired of constantly feeling bad that I haven't kept it up. 

In this phase of life, we just have way too much going on and I need to just take it off my plate.  2013 was a big year with Micah being born, having to say good bye to Barrett and just all the life that has happened!

So here is a snapshot of what is going on with us right now and will hopefully provide insight into why I can't keep this up!

Travis is working full time, going to school full time, leading a men's group that meets once a week and applying and testing for firefighter jobs.

I have started working part time and mostly from home, homeschooling Kameron in Kindergarten, trying to raise 3 young boys, managing our house, and am going to be leading a portion of our Children's ministry at church temporarily.

We are also involved with our small group that meets once a week and either going to be selling or renting out our house in the immediate future. 

So it's just a lot.  Then trying to just do normal life in there somewhere... be married, be parents, be friends, be family...  :) 

So I will leave this post up for a while so people see it, and then will be closing my blog.  :(  I'm so sad, but maybe when life slows down a little, I will pick it back up!

Starting our homeschool adventure!

I was really torn on what to do with schooling this year.  Technically, Kameron wouldn't start Kindergarten until Fall of 2014, but I really believed he was ready.  I went back and forth trying to decide if I should do preschool with both boys, or go ahead with Kindergarten for Kameron and do more preschool aged things for Brenner.  So I decided to go ahead and try him starting Kindergarten, and then if I felt like it was too advanced for him, we'd cut back and go at a slower pace. 

 

I am SO glad I went ahead with it!  I found an awesome curriculum to use and purchased their Kindergarten pack.  Kameron is excelling with it and we do a lot of it with Brenner too. 

 

For the first "day of school", I surprised with the boys with chocolate covered donut holes for breakfast.  They were beyond excited and it set a good tone for our first day.  Travis also left us a note, which was a great surprise.  I'm so thankful for a husband that is so supportive and excited about this journey.  

 

So with this currciculum, we do history, bible reading, a rhyme with hand motions, science, dramatic play activities, bible memorization, devotions, music, art, math, reading comprehension, phonics, handwriting and a thinking skills book.  We don't do all of these every single day, some rotate around and some we do every day.  I have been surprised at how much Brenner has loved doing with us and it SO fun to watch them learn together! 

Within a week, Kameron was reading!  I had tried teaching him to read a while back, and now realize he just wasn't ready.  His reading lesson book is one of our favorite things to do together.

We make sure to leave lots of time for playing!  Our "schoolwork" doesn't take more than 60-90 minutes, which I scatter all throughout the day. 

I try to leave one or two things from our lesson plan for the day for when Travis is home.  It's nice for the boys to get to learn from dad, do fun activities with him, and then Travis gets to see a little bit of what they are learning. 

Kameron still has to do his eye patch for 4 hours a day, which he usually does while working on the tablet.  The boys LOVE to snuggle and do the tablet together.  I feel like in the last month since we've started school, they have become so close, are getting along so well and just really enjoying being together.  It's been really good bonding time for our family.

This was the boys making boats out of foil and then finding how much they could hold in the water without sinking. 

We have finished up 2 full weeks of school now and I am thrilled with how it's going.  We are loving the curriculum and it has been so much fun to do it all together.  I was really nervous about if I would actually be able to pull this off with my 3 little men, but it has been so much easier than I thought it would be!  I do some with all 3 boys, some with Kameron while the younger 2 are sleeping, and some we do when Trav is home as a family.  It has given great structure to our day and I am blown away every single day with how much they understand and the conversations we have!

Oops

Oh goodness, apparently I didn't keep up with my plan very well!  :)

My new plan :)

I have been feeling horrible about how behind I am in blogging.  Almost every single day, something happens and I think, I should get this on the blog before I forgot!  Well...  in months, there is hardly anything on here and I have probably forgotten everything I had wanted to post.  I always wait until I get my pics on the computer, so I have them to go with the posts, but then get behind on that... it's a vicious cycle.  :)

So my new plan is to keep a sheet of paper in the kitchen with bullet points to write down blog worthy things during the week, and then do a post once a week.  I can't believe I have missed the whole summer!!

I am hoping to do a "summer recap", at least with a couple pictures.  But if not, here is what is going on RIGHT now, and hopefully I can keep up better from here. 

We are starting our first official homeschool year.  Kameron is going to be doing Kindergarten!  Brenner is actually going to do a lot of it right along with us, and then I'll modify the math and handwriting for him.  We are really excited to start and I have all my curriculum ready to go.  The curriculum I've chosen is set up to be really flexible, so I'm hoping it will doable with these 3 little guys! 

Micah is just amazing.  We love him.  :)  He is so happy, all the time.  He just started sitting up today, which I have been SO excited for.  He loves to be watching the boys and I, so it will be so nice when he can sit on the floor with them while we're playing.  He doesn't sleep great at night, but we're getting there.  He wakes up 2-4 times a night, but last night was just once, so we have hope.  :) 

Travis is actively looking for firefighter jobs, trying to get in shape for the tests and praying he finds one soon!  We can't wait for him to have a firefighter schedule, so that we will be able to homeschool together a lot of the days.  We have been working like crazy on paying off debt, working towards our goal of becoming debt free.  I've been selling things over the summer and we've been really motivated to get our medical bills and my student loans paid off!

At the end of last Spring, I did an AdvoCare 24 day challenge and LOVED it.  I got down to my pre-baby weight by the time Micah was 3 1/2 months old, which was huge for me.  I think Kameron was 6 months before I could even wear normal jeans!  :)  So over the summer, I've been being good with eating and have maintained that weight, but am anxious to get back on the program and keep working towards my goal.  So I'm going to start going to the gym in the evenings and get back to menu planning and eating on plan. 

SO...  now hopefully I will stick to getting a new blog post up here each week.  Maybe even a picture every now and then.  :)

Lake Whatcom Railway

I get so worried about having my posts in order, that then I get so behind because I feel like I can't post new things until I get all the old ones done!  So I am going to accept that at this phase of our life, I don't care if they out of order, as long as they are on here!  :)

 

Kameron has to wear an eye patch for 4 hours a day over his right eye, in order to make his left eye work harder and eventually get stronger.  So we have created a chart for him where he puts a sticker on a chart for every hour he does the patch.  For every 15 hours, he earns some type of reward.  He's earned a trip out for ice cream, a trip to the arcade to use some quarters out of his piggy bank and his latest reward was a train ride.  We normally wouldn't do something this big for a reward, but Travis had found a deal on a travel site that we were planning on taking them on anyways, so we made it his eye patch reward.  :) 

 

We had such a great day.  The boys were beyond excited to ride the train and it was so fun watching them explore everything.  They had a banjo player that walked around the car playing and singing classic songs.  We had such gorgeous weather and the temperature was perfect. 



 

We rode for about 20 minutes, and then they dropped everyone off for a while to go check out a waterfall and people could drive this train cart on the tracks.  The boys thought this was really fun!

We had a great family day and it's so fun being able to do more of these types of the things now that the boys are getting a little bit older and appreciate it so much!

Love

I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE this baby.  I cannot get enough of this adorable face!  I just want to kiss his little face all the time!

So much for that...

So we did the same newborn picture of both Kameron and Brenner in the striped onesie that we sent out for their birth announcements.  I was all excited to get the picture of Micah in the onesie laying in Travis' hands and he was NOT having that!!  So after several failed attempts and lots of crying and a squirmy baby, we gave up!  So here are the pics of the boys:

Kameron:

Brenner:

Micah:

 

Every time we tried to put his arm up, he would just throw it right back down and get mad.  At least in this one, he wasn't screaming, but he does looks a little scared about what we were trying to do!

Looking at these makes me realize that the boys definitely do have their own unique "look" to them.