Ahem.

I feel as though there’s been an awkward silence on this blog, even though I know it’s largely one-sided.  I don’t think even my mom checks it anymore!

Here I am, though, clearing my throat and jumping back in.  Rather than attempting to play catch-up in this space, I’m going to lay the current state of things at our house as a foundation for future posts.

I’m pregnant with our fifth child.

I’m not just a little pregnant, either.  I’m this pregnant:

That’s actually a super flattering picture compared to how large I feel right now. But I sent it to my mom and she said my belly was “ginormous” so perhaps the picture is not so far off after all.  That picture was taken at a few days ago and I’m now 39 weeks pregnant.

When I was 39 weeks pregnant with Caitlyn (my 2nd child), she arrived!  Here I am walking to the hospital to have her:  .

As I type this, I’m currently wearing that same purple shirt, the same jeans, and my hair is in the same bun.  (My maternity wardrobe options shrink considerably near the end of pregnancy.) . The little girl with the velcro shoes now looks like this, though:

We don’t yet know if this baby is a boy or a girl, and we don’t even have names picked out yet so I’m hoping the baby stays put at least a week or so more!

One wonderful thing about having a bigger family is that the older siblings get to anticipate the birth right along with me and Scott.  They are all so excited to meet this new Bean, with the possible exception of Josie (2).  Josie would like the baby to stay in my belly. 🙂  For the rest of us, it’s a waiting game at this point.

We moved into our new house 7 weeks ago.

The last time I mentioned building, I thought we’d be moving in February.  It turned out to be 3 stressful months later than that, during which time I was so sick in my pregnancy that Scott had to take point on house building stuff for us (as well as pick up the balls I was constantly dropping).  Now that we’re mostly settled, though, the endless stream of decisions has slowed down considerably and the thought we put into design over the past two years is really paying off in daily living.  I am in disbelief we get to live here!

There are still some rough spots to smooth out … (notice the grout around the sink in my belly shot above doesn’t match the wainscoting? Yeah, that’s the wrong color and the tile guys are coming back out to fix their error.)… and gaps to fill in (No couches yet! Can I offer you a folding chair?) . We sort of rushed the move-in process trusting our builder would finish up the odds and ends after we were living here. That’s meant we still have sub-contractors here regularly, but it’s also given us time to settle in before our baby arrives.

I’m hesitant to post many pictures here and I’m not totally sure why.  Maybe because it feels like bragging? We lived in far more modest apartments/houses for the first 14 years of our marriage and this new house feels totally fancy pants to me!  Granted, we aren’t pretentious people and didn’t choose things that *look* fancy, but the nature of a custom home is that you have the privilege of choosing everything and that’s pretty amazingly privileged.  I’m really happy with how things came together, though, and most especially with how the spaces are being used just how we imagined.

Here’s Mackenzie in the music room (where I can see her and hear that she’s playing but the sound doesn’t dominate the whole house):

We’ll eventually put a chair or love seat in there for listening, but Josie went ahead and dragged a big pillow to that same spot to do just that in the meantime! There’s a built-in bookcase to store piano books in that room and great light and views out two sides so it draws us all in to play.

We started a new homeschool year.

We homeschool year round with regular breaks, like so:

We start up mid-July with “Daddy dates” for each kiddo and fresh books and routines.  Then we do formal learning 4 days/week and generally take a break week every 7th week, plus extra breaks for Christmas, Easter, trips, etc.  That means about 36 weeks of school (6 6-week terms) finishes up at the end of May and we take June as a “Bonus Month” where we study something different as a family. (Last month we read through Around the World in 80 Days and mapped Phileas Fogg’s journey as we went.)  The first two weeks of July are off and away we go again.  This rhythm works really well for our family.

Last year we had so many interruptions with building the house and my pregnancy that we probably averaged 2 days of a school a week (plus we attended a co-op 1/week).  I was really grateful to see that so many of our educational goals still moved forward despite my inconsistency.  Our kids still adore reading, had much more time for creative play and hobbies, and ultimately learned a lot that wasn’t part of any plan.  All that said, however, I’m really looking forward to more routine this year and I know my kids are as well.  It was frustrating for Mackenzie in particular to feel like she couldn’t get any traction with piano and Latin because they both require consistency.

We switched up a lot of our curriculum for this new year, and I get more and more comfortable every year with choosing an approach that fits our family.

Here’s what happens when Mama is too busy packing to do school:

Right now our school day looks like this:

• Classical music to wake up in the morning (Bach, then Handel, then Vivaldi this year), then family scriptures and prayer.
• Memory work at the breakfast table (scripture, poetry, Shakespeare).
• Math/Audiobooks/piano rotation.  I work with one child on math while another listens to an audiobook, then we switch.  I teach two kids piano then they each practice individually while the other does handwriting. My oldest adds Latin to her morning as well. Then play time for all.
  • Math is Beast Academy for 2 kids and Singapore Mathematics for one.
  • Audiobooks are mainly chosen from Ambleside Online’s recommendations (currently Kim, Princess and the Goblin and Pinocchio, for ages 10, 7, and 5).
  • Piano is my own mix of Hoffman Academy and Suzuki.  I’d like to get Mackenzie a legit piano teacher but haven’t yet committed to weekly formal lessons and practice.
• Family school: Science or history, depending on the day. *The Good and the Beautiful for both subjects.
• Play until lunch.
• Lunch loop: I read to the kids while they eat and we loop between composer, history, science, character, or whatever else I throw in there!
• Language Arts: Each child has a course book and assigned reading. My two oldest also have memory work, spelling, and some time spent on “keeping”. I rotate between kids so I can help each one with the parts that need me.
  • Language Arts course books are from The Good and the Beautiful and include grammar, literature, art, and geography.
  • Assigned Reading comes from Ambleside Online’s recommendation and loops each child through great biographies, nature novels, etc.
  • Spelling consists of a 1/week test from Spelling Power to find 5 words the child doesn’t currently know. Then they spend the other 3 days practicing those words using a Spelling Box (writing the words in morse code, watercolor painting the words, using scrabble tiles, etc.).  I spend ~12 weeks during the year teaching my kids from Logic of English so they get a grounding in phonograms and spelling rules.  The rest of the time is word lists as described.
  • “Keeping” is a way of typing or writing something they’ve learned, observed, or are thinking about. They can choose between a nature journal, gratitude journal, written narration about a reading, timeline entry, note to a friend or relative, etc.
  • Memory Work is grammar or geography depending on the day, and my oldest two work together on this.

A school day lasts from 9am to 3 or 4pm but includes 2-3 hours of play/lunch/chore time in there depending on the age of the child.

A lot of our curriculum came from The Good and The Beautiful this year and it’s far more “open and go” than anything I’ve used in the past.  I’m loving the independence it gives my two oldest because it’ll enable us to be much more consistent even when I’m busy feeding a baby!

We’re doing cool things that I always wanted to do but rarely “found time” for previously, just because they’re laid out nicely instead of relying on me to come up with them!

Here we’re learning about bones in the human body:

We still memorize several dozen names of bones and dive into bone marrow and blood cell formation (because I am who I am) but we all enjoy it more because we get to play with playdough and make floppy boneless people then add crayons for structure.

Here Mackenzie’s reading in her course book mentioned illuminated manuscripts and so during her Language Arts time, she sat on the porch and came up with her own beautiful initial letter:

I’ve been fairly anti-workbook in the past but honestly, I feel like what she’s doing in her TG&TB coursebook is generally very worthwhile.  Plus, it’s such a win to be able to work with a different child while she’s doing it.

We are not doing a co-op this year but we are doing an online charter school, which basically means testing, weekly accountability, and funds to purchase curriculum with.

This is often what recess looks like lately (as viewed through our kitchen window):

Biking in our unlandscaped backyard, occasionally with a book in hand.

We are still fans of travel. 

Last week we took off on a last-minute road trip to Victoria and pretty much played every day by ear.  We had lots of picnics in beautiful places, saw amazing bugs at the Bug Zoo, a great fireworks show, baby peacocks in the park, and explored the ferry boat with each crossing.

Earlier this year we also spent a week in Chicago with great friends, took a trip to Utah for my mother-in-law’s wedding(!) and even had a glorious date week in New Orleans for my childhood friend’s wedding.  (No wonder homeschooling took a backseat. Yeesh!)

Without fail, it takes us much longer to get out the door for a trip than I think it will and at least a week to get back into the swing of things when we come back home, but I’m always glad we make it happen. As the shirt Scott bought me says, “The diem ain’t going to carpe itself.”

We are still heavy users of the library.

Even when the rest of life seems crazy, you can count on us having 50+ books checked out at all times.

Fortunately, lots of readers means lots of helpers at the book return.  Ever wonder why they have three slots when only one car can go through at a time?  It’s because some people have to use all three at once.  Ahem.

Also fortunately, our library does “Food for Fines,” which allows us to turn a shameful amount of overdue fines into a warm fuzzy feeling as we feed the hungry.  Ha! You can measure how crazy my life has been by the status of my library fines.  Typically I accumulate just a few dollars here and there, but this year even Scott lifted an eyebrow at the number of cans required to wipe our slates clean.

Scott is still my very favorite.

Speaking of Scott, there’s no one on this planet better for me than that man.  He makes me laugh every single day.  These past six months have been rough for me physically, mentally and socially and he’s picked up the slack, encouraged me, provided much-needed perspective, and just made life sweeter.

He’s game for my crazy ideas. Here he soberly doling out our celebratory family root beer when we finally moved out of our rental:

He’s brave.  Check out this guy who abhors spiders, laying it down at the Bug Zoo to the delight of his kids:

He’s silly.  The kids kept bringing him wildflowers and he almost ran out of places to put them.

He’s an excellent doctor.  And did I mention he makes me laugh?

Of course it doesn’t hurt that he’s the father of my children, either.  These kids never smile for the camera at the same time, but other than that they’re absolutely perfect. 🙂