Joy.

This is my picture of the year for 2015. This totally sums up what I’m wanting this year to be like. Last year was all change, change, change, and more change. It was WORK. It was learning to teach again. It was so much learning I thought my brain would bust.

Nothing against work and learning, but I’m still exhausted.

Let’s make work and learning a little more fun for all this year, especially me.

This year we will not:

1. move

2. change schools

3. Go whole weeks without leaving the house.

4. give birth

5. wean a baby

6. Say good-bye to all of our friends.

This year we WILL:

1. Go to the beach more often.

2. Have lots of guests!

3. Keep on home schoolin’.

4. Potty train J.D. (later this year…not now)

5. Finish our first year of home schooling.

6. Go to Legoland.

7. Visit the San Diego Zoo. Oh yeah, baby, that is so happening soon!!!

8. Have my lesson plans done BEFORE the new school year starts. That’s a benefit of being a second year CC’er. I actually have some clue as to what is going on. That statement is probably something only a Classical Conversations family could understand. It’s just a whole other method of schooling that will shake up your brain and fill it with tons of new information and ideas.

I’ve captured a few of our recent 2015 adventures on camera:

Batman went to Joshua’s basketball game with us.

My friend Jennifer showed me a ‘meme’ online that had a picture of a Batman mask. It read, “Always be yourself. Unless you can be Batman. Always be Batman.”

Daniel is following in Caleb’s steps of costume love. We often hear Caleb ask Dan, “Dan, do you want me to go dress you up in a costume?”

They have quite the super hero collection.

Do you know what else Caleb likes to do? He makes up math problems on the board. In his free time! Never have I ever.

Did you know that we sometimes call John David “Joshua #2”? It feels like raising Joshua all over again–a more aggressive version. Anyone with three older siblings will come out kickin’.

What makes him like Jman? So many things! He loves books. He’s allergic to nuts. His face is very similar. He’s the same size that Joshua was. He’s high maintenance. They have all been high maintenance, except for Caleb.

Let me take a moment and thank God for the one low maintenance child….

haaaa! Of course, Caleb is a wild card. You never know when he’s going to take some freak notion to try to walk to school by himself, like he did in Kindergarten, BUT I will say that I’ve never seen a more self-reliant child. He almost never asks for help.

JD LOVES books. I think most kids do.

I already wrote about Jennings’ visit, but I didn’t share pics from beach day #2. We were much better prepared. All boys had on swim gear. Caleb wore very little, and I really don’t know how he didn’t freeze to death, but he didn’t.

Sometimes I wonder why we don’t just go to the beach every day.

When small people steal brownies

Last weekend, we prepared Daniel a perfectly good lunch. Then we went upstairs, and left him alone in the kitchen to eat it.

We also left a pan of cooling brownies on the counter. So there you have it.

The young author needs lots of room to spread out his work.

Joshua has a new hobby. He writes and illustrates copious amounts of comic book stories.  I get a kick out of the way he spreads them all out on his bed.

beginning PreK 4!!!

I’m gradually easing Daniel into PreK4.

I love the Montessori preschool style, and we are also doing that with Daniel. I have a whole post that I’m working on about that.  Coming soon!

This pic is of Daniel enjoying an A Beka learning game. Every time he correctly says a letter sound, he gets to put an apple on the tree.

Believe it or not, Daniel will also be a Classical Conversations student in the fall. Too cute. My expectations for that are pretty low. I’ll just cheer on whatever he does learn and not spend a single second concerning myself with what he doesn’t learn. Entering as a K4 student, he will learn Cycle 1 memory work 3 times!

JD had a ball playing with Aunt Jennings at the beach.

Day 2: These two never did get wet.

Do you remember that pre-teen girls’ sleepover I mentioned? Well, they painted my nails. I haven’t painted my nails since about 2005, so now I have these horrible chipped, purple sparkly nails, and not an ounce of polish remover in the house. I am such a boy mom. Now I have to go buy nail polish remover.

I also learned that when it comes to modern pre-teen pop culture I apparently “don’t know anything at all!!!”

“What is BAE? What does that mean???”

“It means above all else…”

Wait…but wouldn’t that be AAE? Or maybe they said better than all else. I forgot already.

Then, of course, I had never heard of any of their bands/songs/singers. Also, did you know that many of these children have their own smart phones??

I cannot imagine giving a pre-teen unlimited, unsupervised access to the internet.

I’m sorry, but I think that is a terrible idea. Plus, it’s impossible to run any activities with people who are always looking at their phone.

The most startling realization from all of this is that our Joshua is only two years away from being a member of this ‘middle school’ crowd. He’s nine!  Does that mean that some kids his age are already getting their own smart phones??  Giving a kid a cell phone so you can call them is one thing. Giving them a smart phone where they can access porn, snapchat, and anything else in the world is totally different. I’m not talking about 17 year olds. I’m talking about middle schoolers.

Electronic time is such a new dilemma for my generation of fellow parents. Our parents had to deal with Nintendo time. We have to worry about what they might access on an iPad!

Alan and I have stuck to our ‘no electronics during the week’ rule. They can play video games on the weekend. This weekend they didn’t even get to do that, but no one seemed to miss it. We are also very strict about what video games enter our house.

I’d better run. Daniel and John David are ready to get out of the bath tub. When all else fails, baths are the greatest way I know to entertain small children.

The post Funny Stories Plus My Plans for the New Year appeared first on Stories of Our Boys.

Jennings and I have been friends since I was 19, and Jennings was 18. Now we are in our 30s. We have gone from bright-eyed, hard-working college students, who both seemed to hardly ever get a date, to what we are now…..one married mom of four and one successful flight attendant and aunt extraordinaire. Jennings was there the night I went on my first date with Alan. She was one of my bridesmaids. She already knows the back story. That’s what’s so wonderful about ‘old’ friends! They already ‘get it’! No need to explain anything. They already know anyway.

Now when I say we were hard-working college students, I can’t emphasize that enough. We were not your lazy party girls. No, sir. We meant business. We were also both recipients of the same National Alumni Academic Walk On Scholarship. Jennings and I both, at some point during our University of Alabama years, held down two part-time jobs a piece, while going to school full-time. That’s how we became such good friends. We worked together as Resident Assistants in the largest freshman girls’ dorm on campus.

Jennings is the friend that you feel like you can tell anything to, without feeling judged, or at least she doesn’t let on that she’s judging me…..ha!

“Oh, I’m never going back to the regular work world. I really didn’t care for ‘working,'” I admitted to Jennings last week. I don’t think she judged me…

lol

We had such a wonderful time, touring the California coast. Jennings is quite the world traveler; however, she has never been to my particular area of Cali, so we had a great time exploring.

The boys went almost everywhere with us. They had a BALL, and I do mean a ball.

We took the boys to the beach on two different days. Yes, I had to clean up a whole lot of sand, but it was worth it.

JD, before he soaked himself

Poor JD.

The sea just beckons us to join it, and so he tried. He timidly toddled, just barely into the surf, when a wave suddenly came and knocked the tiny fella right over. And when you are 20 months old, and so very small and inexperienced, you don’t know what to do, but to lay there, rather stuck, and cry.

The boys were partially laughing at the drenched-in-his-clothing JD, and partially laughing at their mother. That wave took me by surprise too, and I shouted, “Oh! My boots!” I instinctively backed up, but then I saw my baby, stuck on his back, and jumped back in and grabbed him.

Don’t worry. We’re talking one half an inch of water, no harm done, and two adults there to quickly grab him up.

Now I am off to sleep. I was up until 1 am last night with my friend Julia, and a room full of 11 and 12-year-old girls. I know. I never thought I’d write that last sentence either, but I’m helping Julia with a Wednesday night class of pre-teen girls, and Julia decided to throw them a sleep-over.

But that’s a whole other story.

We just love hosting our friends and family. Next week, my parents arrive! Alan’s parents are visiting in March. Then in July, a whole family of friends from Virginia is coming!!  🙂  So exciting!

Come back anytime, Jennings! Next time, come on a weekend, and Alan can take you out kayaking with the sea otters!

sunning sea otter in Carmel

“A world without friends, I don’t think I could bear it.”  ~Jeff Foxworthy

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I’ve been talking a lot about my hermit problem, and I want you all to know that things are getting so much better around here. The boys are finally opening up a little more at tutoring. I had to practically drag them away from there today! Even John David doesn’t cry when I drop him off for the tutoring childcare! We have all met plenty of people that we truly like, and the fact is that I haven’t met one single person here that I can’t find something to like about.

I’m starting to remember. Oh yeah! I do like people!

Transitions are just hard, aren’t they? John David and I seem to have the hardest time with them. Every time I see him pitching a fit over some great new change in his life, I just remind myself, “This child is me.”

Moving across country and beginning home school all at one time was a huge transition. We’re over the hump. We still have rough days. I still make regrettable parenting errors, but I’m feeling hopeful.

That’s why I could never name my blog “Biblical Homemaking” or something like that. Can you imagine the pressure!? Ha!

All it would take was one time for a neighbor to overhear me losing my patience with my family, and I would be completely discredited. Nope. Not trying to act like something I’m not. We’re just a family, trying to do what is best. We listen to God. We make mistakes. We get back up again. 🙂

I have some really great news for you. John David has successfully made the transition to toddler bed!

Oh! Do you see those black out curtains? I’ve been storing those for 3 moves, and they finally came in handy! John David slept until 8 am for three mornings in a row.

I know! I hope you’re okay. Didn’t mean to make anyone choke on their coffee here. I was shocked too…

Happy JD. Happy parents. Sometimes he still wakes up at 1 am for cuddles though. yep. cuddles. I know. You hard-core folks would never put up with such, but hard-core we are not.

I was sitting in his recliner yesterday, and I chuckled at his neediness, “Oh, JD, you are so spoiled,” and as soon as I said it, I felt so sad! This child is not spoiled. This is the FOURTH baby. He rarely gets Mommy to himself. He gets a fraction of the amount of time with me that Joshua, or even Caleb or Daniel, got. With Daniel, I sent the big boys to school, and I was his all day long. JD doesn’t get that, so let the world shake their heads. If my baby needs some 1 am cuddles, then that’s just what he will get.

….And that’s why I have a strict policy about going to bed at 10pm now. It has changed my life! Over Christmas, I did all of that relaxing and sleeping, and I came home feeling like a new person. I decided then and there that I will never kill myself with sleep deprivation, stress, and unrealistic expectations again.

Do you remember my psoriatic arthritis theory and this thumb nail?

Well, it got a whole lot worse than that by Christmas, but guess what. You won’t believe it. My thumb nail is now completely NORMAL.  It’s all GONE!

So is my shoulder pain! You cannot convince me that the two are not related. I am quite sure that stress and sleep made a difference. I don’t want to end up with those nails, popping Advil 800, ever again.

In other news….Apparently, sleep is important to Alan too.

Caleb came home from the Spongebob movie Saturday and said, “Hey, Mom, just to tell you, at Spongebob Squarepants, Dad fell asleep through a lot of it.”

haaaaaaaa I asked Alan about that. He looked a little ashamed. hehehe

Alan and the boys have a few things in common, when it comes to deciding what is interesting and what is not. The other night, they were taking too long to eat their dinner, so I whipped out a magazine article on glaciers and started reading it to Joshua, Caleb, and Alan. Alan protested and started digging around for the Childcraft book on great battles for freedom.

I thought the glacier article was fascinating. Halfway through, I stopped and quizzed them all, “Wow, so what animal lives in this glacier?”

Three blank stares.

Alan said, “No idea. That was boring. Can I read my story now?”

humph!  Caleb said, “Polar bears?”

“No! Didn’t y’all hear me say the part about the little black worms that feed on the invisible algae!!???”

They all sort of giggled and started making worm jokes. I still made them listen to the rest, though. The boys said they liked it, so at least we know they’ve learned to try to make their momma happy!

I wonder if they liked Alan’s story about the Battle of Tours better.

It’s 9:45, so I’d better get to sleep. Guess who is coming to visit this week!!  We are all so excited!!!

As Joshua said, “Aunt Jennings is coming!!  You remember, Caleb, she has the glasses. Don’t you remember? She gave us the Hank the Cowdog books!”

The Hank the Cowdog books are a hit. I even enjoy them!

Hope you all have a great week!   We’ll be having a ball showing Jennings our favorite California spots!

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