Monday, January 14, 2013

Weekly Update: the one without a number.

After a few weeks off from school and a few partial weeks with a few kind of weeks and a few blah weeks, I've lost count on what week we are in right now. Ha! I can't even tell you how many DAYS we've been in school since we haven't been using our counter on a regular basis. How about we just call this week 1 of 2013 and not worry about it? Thankfully we aren't required to keep up with the number of days or weeks of our homeschool year in our state so really....it doesn't matter. :)

It's been a doozy of a week! I knew it would be after the long and ridiculously fun Christmas break. I didn't plan to take so much time off from school at the first of the school year, but quickly realized that the littles weren't going to get much done with Daddy AND the teen at home all day!

So we got off to a rough start. Monday morning was so bad that we had to restart our day. Around 10am, I sent the kids back to bed, climbed into bed myself, and then *re-woke* everyone. We smiled and hugged and greeted the day with a little more enthusiasm the second time around.  The rest of our day went much smoother. We enjoyed an extra long reading time in history and did most of our schoolwork on the living room couch.

After such a bad start to the week, I was determined to do better on Tuesday. We got off to a great start. Accomplished a lot of school work on the couch again. Joshua, Drake, and Hazel (our dog) fell alseep on me while I read from our history book so our morning quickly turned into a time of rest. Drake and the baby weren't feeling all that great anyway, and Kaleb and Gabriel had fun playing on the computer while the rest slept.  When the sleepers woke, we went into town for a quick lunch. A super nice gentlemen who talked to my boys at the restaurant surprised us when we went to pay for our lunch. He beat us to the bill!!  How sweet was that?! I was flabbergasted to say the least. A very nice surprise! We did a little bit more schoolwork when we got home and then just enjoyed the rest of the day by watching a couple movies.

The hubs called on Wednesday to tell me he was coming home.....as soon as the dizziness stopped. He had a raging fever overnight and woke up with the flu. :( After tying up a few loose ends, he headed home. Drake and Joshua also woke up sick with the flu so school was cancelled and I took care of the sicklies all day.

Thursday and Friday were filled with Daddy and Drake sleeping off their flu fever, Kaleb and Gabriel playing and then resting for long periods before jumping back up to play some more, and me holding a sick baby.

By Saturday, all fevers were gone and everyone was on their way to good health. Daddy and Gabriel still have a little cough but otherwise are doing much better. Nathan and I never did get sick...so thankful for that since Daddy could barely move.

No pictures. My hands were too busy taking care of my loves....and I'm sure nobody wanted their picture taken anyway. :)

We'll begin schoolwork again on Monday (today) and hopefully have a much more productive week minus any illnesses. :)

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

Back to life, back to reality.

After a busy fun holiday season, I am ready to get back on our usual schedule. I LOVE the holidays but we need a set routine to keep sane around here. So before we dive back into our normally scheduled program, here's a look at some of our holiday fun, in no particular order:

Christmas Eve pjs!


Christmas program put on by our church at the local FAC. It was awesome! We had a great time!


Celebrating Nana's birthday...fiesta style!


My sweet baby girl, Hazel, all prettied up and ready to party!


Fun Christmas activities...they especially like this edible one.


Making Christmas cookies!


A baby's FIRST Christmas!


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Gingerbread houses!
Nathan was home with us all day, every day for TWO WHOLE WEEKS!

a LOT of hot cocoa!


More cookie/pretzel fun!

Gingerbread truffles...made family style!

New Year's Eve card games.

A fun run for Mom and Dad!


Christmas Cookie Decorating party complete with crafts, popcorn, hot cocoa, and A Charlie Brown Christmas. We had over 40 kids at our house!!! It was awesome!


Celebrating it all with my love!
New Year's Day trip to the ER...and five stitches!

 
We had a lot of holiday fun...minus the ER trip. Made many memories. Enjoyed each other's company. And tried to slow down...at least a little bit. :)

We're working at getting back to normal this week.  The teen is back in public school. The hubs is back to work. The littles and I are back to homeschool. I am working on decluttering the house. My New Year's resolutions are to get rid of the excess and only allow positive words come from my mouth. Both are proving to be a challenge but I'm loving the results so far!

Business as usual at our house.....until SPRING BREAK!!!

Happy holidays!

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

The rest of Buddy's visit!

Finally showing down long enough to post the rest of our new friend's visit! The boys LOVED having Buddy around....once they adjusted to him. :)

Just as I stated in the previous post, some of these are straight copies of pictures I found on Pinterest, others are ideas that I tweaked to fit our family, and a few are my own original late-night-gotta-move-the-elf ideas. 

The pictures are terrible...from my phone. Ugh. My camera that I took in to be fixed in September STILL isn't fixed. But let's not talk about that touchy subject. Let's just move right on to the pictures, shall we?


Buddy opened a present a few days before Christmas. To the boys, this is a HUGE no-no. They know that any gift opened before time will be returned. We decided since Buddy didn't know that rule, we would forgive him and have a game night. :)


Hiding in the *jungle*.


Peek-a-boo, I see you! Buddy left the boys a message telling them that he was playing peek-a-boo with them...and when they found him, they would get a sweet surprise. Hot chocolate!


*snowball fight* with Santa Claus. I was afraid all night that our dog would eat the marshmellows so I set the alarm to get up before the boys to make sure she didn't and then went back to bed. Ha! :)


After spending the whole previous day baking and decorating sugar cookies, the boys found Buddy sitting on top of one of the cookie tins...with a guilty cookie smile.


Movie Night! Gabriel was amazed that Buddy ate all of the popcorn. "That's a lot of popcorn for a little guy!" :) Buddy left the movie at our house for the boys to watch thata afternoon.


Swinging from the ceiling fan!! They actually left him up there all day.


Christmas Eve morning. Buddy reminded the boys of the real reason for the season. He left them a note that told how much he loved being at our house and how fun they are. He also told them about Jesus and how much He loves us all and how He watches over us every day.
 
We were all sad to see Buddy go. I had just as much fun (if not more!!) than they did. We can't wait to see him again next year!

You can see all of Buddy's antics right HERE.