Third day in...

...and I'm still feeling like I can do this. We seem to be getting into some sort of routine and other than the math meltdown from Elaina this morning, all is going very smoothly. I haven't again resorted to using my phone as a distracting device for Nora. Instead, I have really tried to get her interested in working on some "school" projects. I am going to take Caitlin's advice and get her some school-only playdoh, stickers, etc... and I think that will majorly help.

Tomorrow night is my first Parent Information Meeting for our Classical Conversations campus. I'm not even nervous like I thought I would be. I'm just excited and eager to get our classes going. Right now we have ten students and there are two more that I'm hoping will be added before the year starts.

Jason comes home this weekend and he will get to stay home for a couple of weeks. Elaina joined the church last Sunday so we will have her baptism while he is home. We also will go on a date. As I've mentioned before, that's my very, very, very favorite thing to do.

Eily goes to the ENT doctor tomorrow to see about getting her tonsils and adenoids removed. I'm not at all excited about scheduling that surgery. Not on her behalf or mine. It sounds plain miserable. And from what I hear, it takes ten full days to recover. Let's just throw that in the mix with everything else, why don't we?

I hope you are having a lovely week. I'd love to hear what you have been doing.

Harmony Hill 2014 and other Things

We have been home from camp for a few days now.
I"m not sure why, but I have had a really hard time bouncing back this year. I have been sleepy. Super, duper sleepy. There have been years where I have had much less sleep, and years where the temperatures were so hot that it took all my energy just to walk, but never have I come back feeling so exhausted. I'm just going to chalk it up to getting older because I don't know what else it could be.

Imani

If I stay on schedule with my chore list for today, I should have all the Harmony Hill equipment put away and all the laundry washed and folded. I will count this as a major accomplishment. Because it is.

Teague

I'm attending my first Classical Conversations Practicum this weekend. I'm very excited about it because I feel like I signed up to be the director but haven't really done anything to learn how to be the director.

Ryan

Since we've been home, I've been trying to go as long as possible without buying groceries. At first, it seemed as if we had nothing to eat, but I'm figuring out how to be creative and we have had some really yummy, filling meals.

Claire, Elaina, and Lillie

 These pictures were taken on our "nice" camera and obviously, I only thought to bring it with me on one day. But that's ok. Maybe next year I'll do better. Enjoy what few photos I did take.

A wind-blown Nora

Claire

Nora and Elaina

Eily and Catherine Palmer

Lukey

Claire and Eily

Teague

Weird shadow photo of Ryan and Nora

Josie Claire

Aunt Pretty and Eily

The girls had their Christmas Parties at school today. I just kept hopping between the three. It was handy because I could pig out on chocolate candy and no class was the wiser. :)

BFF's

Eily has a (non-related)best friend and I COULD NOT be happier for her. I used to imagine what it would look like to see her laughing and playing with a girl her own age and let me tell you, today's lunch at school proved that it's a sight worth seeing. I think a play date at home is in our near future. 

Wednesday

There's just not a lot to post about these days that you haven't already heard from me before. I mean, there is one thing I could write about but I'll spare you. It's gross. It's bad. It's nasty. It's taken over my life for the past two days and I'm not even involved. It's gross. It's time consuming. Oh yes, and, it's gross.  It involves hair. And that's all I'm going to say about that.

Other than that, life is regular. We had parent/teacher conferences this afternoon. All three have all A's. (Eily actually has all 100's.) All on Honor Roll. All reading well above their level. All seem to behave while at school. Mrs. Pickatrz commented on how Elaina is such a deep thinker and the best listener in the class. Mrs. Young commented on how talented Claire is in Math and how quickly she figures out the answers . Mrs. Means commented on how sweet Eily was and how much she's opened up since the beginning of school.  Parent/Teacher conferences are fun when those are the types of reports you hear. :)

Jason is on his last big trip for this year. Hallelujah!!!  And then it's 5 weeks until thanksgiving, 9 weeks until Christmas and 10 weeks until 2014. Gracious! I think I'm going to go stick my head under the covers and be in denial for a while. I suggest you do the same. 

First day of school 2013-2014

Oh my goodness. Another year of school has started and will be behind us before we know it. I was originally planning on homeschooling this year. I had bought the books, printed the schedules and prepped myself as much as possible. 

And then our house sold. 

And I'm certainly not complaining about our house selling; that's an answered prayer. It just really threw a wrench in my planning and quite honestly, my sanity. I've really been struggling this past month to keep my head above water, to parent as I ought, to stay on top of the banking and bills, and still smile and have a nice disposition. 

Last night was especially horrible and I finally just started bawling. Thank goodness it happened at my parent's house and not in our old house where I would have just been alone with the girls. Mom and Dad quickly took over (I think they saw it coming and were just waiting in the shadows for the bell to go off) and got the older three girls in bed. Dad walked me out of the bedroom and Mom started rocking Nora. I just cried and cried and Dad comforted me in the way he has since I was a tiny little thing. Because he fathered four daughters, ol' Dad has had a lot of practice in comforting wailing women. 

And then he went to Sonic and brought back ice cream. See? He knows what he's doing.

Anyway, today was a new day and not just any old day. It was the first day of school at a new school in a new town! Did I forget to mention that we decided to send the girls to public school for a year? Oh, sorry. Well, due to a lot of factors, we did. I'm excited for them to have this experience, but I can't wait to get to be their teacher again and get back into our regular curriculum. I'm already making plans for next year. 

So...back to today. Everyone was so excited. There was a little drama this morning with the what to wear/how shall I fix my hair scenarios, but we made it out the door right on time. 

Elaina (7) Second Grade
Claire(6) First Grade
Eily(5) Kindergarten

Claire complained of a stomach ache on the way to school and was convinced it was NOT due to nerves, but rather, a result of her breakfast. Funny thing though, as soon as started towards the school building, that stomach ache vanished. Elaina was also feeling a little nauseous but she was pretty sure it was all nerve related. I agreed.  I walked with each girl to her classroom and took a picture of her at her desk. Elaina was nervous but her teacher knew where Renee, one of Elaina's best friends, was and walked Elaina to meet her so that they could visit before the bell rang. I really appreciated Mrs. Pickartz effort to make her feel at ease. 

By the time I got Elaina settled, Claire had already left for her own classroom down the hallway and was busy at her desk. Her teacher's name is Mrs. Young and she seems very kind and very friendly. The boy beside Claire is Jacob, and Claire said he is very nice.

My last stop was to deliver little Eily to her classroom. She is in Mrs. Means class. When Eily first heard this information, she was terribly upset. She calmed down once she learned that a person's name does not describe their personality. She was so nervous at first and just stayed balled up in her chair until her cousin, Clayton, walked in. As soon as she saw his familiar face, she hopped right up and began unloading her backpack. I snuck out while she was distracted but I wanted so bad to stay and be a fly on the wall. 

The day flew by. Jessica (Clayton's mama), came over and we peeled and cut up a lot of fresh peaches that we had picked on Saturday. Then I made a peach pie and it by the time it was baking, it was already time to go get the girls. 

They each had a great day. They took turns in the car telling me every detail they could remember about their day and their little voices kept getting more and more animated. Eily got to go to the library and watch a Clifford movie; Claire got to go to Art class today; Elaina also went to the library and was one of the few students chosen as the most well-behaved for the day. Eily said her nap felt like it lasted five seconds. All three said their PE was just a play day since it was the first day of school. Elaina broke her pencil in half and was embarrassed for a little while. Claire made a friend named Brooklyn. Elaina made a friend named Zion. Eily made a friend but she doesn't know what her name is. 

When we got home, we went through each backpack and I signed all the paperwork and we worked on Elaina's homework and spelling words. So far, easy peasy. Eily had homework, too. She was supposed to work on learning the circle shape, the number one and the words AM and I. I didn't even bother quizzing her. She's got this. I did go over Elaina's spelling words with her and she just messed up on one word so I feel confident that by Friday, she'll know them all just fine. 

It was a good day and I'm excited to see what tomorrow brings!

Thursday

I haven't slept much this week and when you don't sleep much, you don't feel like writing blog posts. Yesterday was our very last Wednesday School and it was a nice feeling to be finished but also sad to think that something we have been doing for 15 years has come to an end. Alisa, Rachel and I sent the kids away with various people and then we organized, purged and cleaned the building. Then I came home and did the same thing here with all our school items from this past year. I was a little amazed that I was able to find two trash bags of things to throw out even though I had completely purged the house a couple of weeks ago. It just goes to show there is always something you can get rid of. I still need to go through the dress up clothes and the scrap paper drawer before I can call it quits and that's on the schedule for today. Our realtor is coming tomorrow morning to take pictures and get us back on the market. Please pray that someone will buy our house this year.

Nora is adorable and I love her lots, but if she doesn't start sleeping through the night again, this blog may just die. I'M SO TIRED!

Big girls are nice.

Eily went to spend the day at Aunt Sarah's house to do "school" and Nora and Jayger are asleep. It's calm over here. It's not clean, but it's calm. But guess what?! Elaina and Claire have taken it upon themselves to clean the kitchen, dining room and living room. And you know what else? The bedrooms and bathrooms are already clean. And the schoolroom is already clean. So you know what? In a few minutes I'll have a totally picked up house. So you know what that means? It means I can spend the afternoon doing the other things that need to be done, like folding clothes and ironing clothes and mowing the front and back yards. (Hopefully for the last time this year.) So you know what that means? It means today is a shaping up to be a pretty good day.

 

 

 

Aunt Sarah texted me this picture this morning.

First day of school

Eily's School

I've slowly been working on putting Eily's "school" together. She is old enough to need to feel included but not really old enough to do actual schoolwork. We will continue with our reading lessons and she will be doing some handwriting at Wednesday School, but other than that, she will just have the items in her cubby to refer to as her schoolwork. Here's what I've gotten so far and probably all I will get, at least for this semester.

Here we have beginning sewing. All the girls like to play with these.

We have number puzzles.

We have spelling puzzles.

Thanks to Pinterest, we have Velcro Sticks. Look, I made a house!

We have a workbook because workbooks are fun.

More spelling puzzles.

Here we have one of her Busy Time boxes. We have Do-A-Dots, crafts, some more workbooks and twisty, bendy things that you can shape into what ever you want. (I forgot what they're called.)

These are neat. They are another Pinterest find. The white spoon has the upper case letter and the clear spoon has the lower case letter. She lays the clear spoon over the white spoon to make a match. (See "M")

Busy Box #2

A few workbooks, more crafty things and more Do-A-Dots.

And this. Yet another Pinterest craft.

I glued 5 sticks on the back of each picture and wrote the same number on all 5 sticks. Then I cut the picture apart to make a puzzle.

A completed puzzle.

Fantabulous Day

Y'all.

I got up at 6:15 today. I did it!! I sat in a dazed state for a few minutes, read some of the Advocate and Messenger, a little in Exodus and Proverbs and then I went for a run. I'm in a bit of shock that it actually happened. We still didn't get school started until about ten because I made chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast and then we had The Great Clean-up. For some reason, Sundays are rough on the house. But being late hasn't stopped It from happening. We have completed so much this morning and right now we are taking a little lunch break and I'm letting the girls play outside to soak up some sunshine.
What a beautiful day. I have all the windows open and the smell of fresh air is wafting through the house. It's one of my favorite smells.
I'm off to get Porky out of her crib and feed her some lunch and then hit the books again. Hope your day has just as lovely as mine.

First Day of School Photos 2011-2012

Elaina Ceridwen Sacran
5 years old
August 2011
 Kindergarten

Rachel Claire Sacran
4 years old
August 2011
Pre-School

Eily Edith Sacran
3 years old
August 2011
Distracting but Adorable

My class 2011-2012

Milestones

Elaina completed her 100th reading lesson just a few minutes ago. It is a good feeling to say we did it. We finished that entire book. It would have been easy to quit about 10- 15 lessons ago because she was already into real books at that point but I felt that for the sake of example we needed to finish the book. Finish what you start.
She amazes me.

Eily is hilarious. That girl has no fear and will probably be the one that breaks a few bones during her childhood. Jason and I like to stand at the kitchen window and watch her play outside. The other two girls have to rely on her to stop the wildly swaying see-saw because they are too scared to put their feet down while going that high. Eily just swings her legs over the side, holds on to the poles and drags her feet on the ground until it slows enough for the girls to feel it's safe to dismount. Then she opens her hands, drops to the ground and runs over the playhouse to climb up on top of the roof.
She makes me laugh.

Claire is becoming quite the fashionista. This morning I picked out a Chuck-E-Cheese play shirt for her to wear and she had to put it back and get a ruffled long tee because that one was "much cuter." I guess it is very important to look good for Charlie, the dog.
She makes me smile.

Sniffles, Moo's and Milestones

I have a bad head cold and I only got about two hours of sleep last night but I am trying to make the best of the day. We picked up the house and ate lunch and I decided to go ahead and start Claire's school lesson instead of waiting until Monday. This week the lesson is about cows. So we talked about cows, their babies and their four stomachs. Then we started to memorize a little poem.

The Friendly Cow by Robert Louis Stevenson

The friendly cow, all red and white,
I love with all my heart;
She gives me cream, with all her might
To eat with apple tart.

She wanders lowing here and there,
And yet she cannot stray,
All in the pleasant open air,
The pleasant light of day.

And blown by all the winds that pass
And wet with all the showers,
She walks among the meadow grass
And eats and meadow flowers.

----------------------------------------------------

Jason and I celebrate our 6th anniversary today. It's pretty amazing and unbelievable, and yet I cannot imagine it any other way. What was life before? I have no idea. This is so normal and satisfying.

Love.

Today was our first official day of school. It really was a lot of fun. Claire woke up bright, shining and ready to go. Elaina? Not so much.

Yes. She posed herself.

Result's of Elaina's first piano lesson. (Note to self: Do laundry!)

Make an on-line slide show at www.OneTrueMedia.com

At this point, for me, it's all about

habit training.  What a long, long way I have left to go.  I wish I had read Volume 1 about 4 years ago. At least I am not reading it 4 years into the future, right?  cha

Elaina's Calla Lilly

The beanstalk.


















It keeps growing...




















and growing...

and look! It's still growing.

I'm afraid it will reach the ceiling before it decides to stop.

And isn't an actual flower bud supposed to appear at some point?