Our year of change….

I can do all things in him who strengthens me. ~Philippians 4: 13

This is my new mantra, and I’ve been returning to these words frequently amidst all of the change that is happening in our lives right now.  What change, you ask? Oh right… I haven’t updated for a while.  Well, only the ongoing change and adjustments of homeschooling, preparing for a baby to arrive very soon, selling our home, moving in with my parents (God bless them!) for a few weeks, then moving into an apartment for 6 or so months while our new home is being built, and then the final move into our new place.  And a few other details in between that cannot be overlooked, especially the blessed and momentous occasion of the wedding of my sister (the twins are the flower girls-so fun) only 11 days after our little bundle of joy is to be born.

So, amid the craziness that has settled into our lives recently, I decided to take a moment and snap this ( slightly awkward) photo of myself and baby at 7 months.  These days are so full, and I don’t want to forget to capture what really matters, what I really am cherishing and want to remember forever.

And have I shown you this little treasure yet?

My baby girl about a month ago.  I cannot wait to hold this little one, kiss her, snuggle with her.  It keeps me motivated to get done what I need to get done now, so that when she is finally here, I’ll have little left to do but look at her, soak her up, breathe her in, and maybe even get a little rest.

Science Fridays

A little update for you on the homeschooling front…

We’ve started a new thing we are calling Science Fridays.  After months (and months and months…) of feeling like Science was getting less attention than it deserved in our school week, I decided to set aside Fridays to make it our main focus.  We also do some history and some more formal religion assignments on Fridays, too, in addition to any catch-up work from the week.  But I am so pleased, and feel a wonderful sense of relief with our new system.  Science is one of my favorite things to work on, and I couldn’t stand that it was often getting bumped for other subjects that seemed to take up too much of our day.  I’m actually somewhat proud of myself for making the change.  Often I can be pretty stubborn hang on to my initial plans for something for too long because I hate giving up and will try against all odds to make stuff work.  This is not a helpful quality to have – especially when one is a homeschooler or a parent in general.  I’m (slowly) catching on.

We purchased our first microscope and it is quite a hit.  The kids are trying to make slides of all sorts of things to look at; insects, leaves, hair, etc.  It is not the best quality microscope, however, so it takes a lot of patience and adjusting.  We did have a pretty good look at some onion cells, though, which is actually what we tried first.  I now have plans to save up for a better quality microscope, but this will do for the meantime.  Even if you are not doing school at home, you should consider getting one of these things just for the good old-fashioned fun they are.  My boys can stay busy for quite some time looking at stuff.

Landon is currently learning about the skeleton , so he and Hunter (who did this last year) worked together to assemble our new friend “Mr. Bones”.  Original name, I know.  It was good review for Hunter and he helped me by quizzing Landon on the different bones.  I appreciate it so much when they work well together.