Harry Potter

So, in our travels this summer, the kids and I listened to the first three Harry Potter books. Since my kids are little, I decided that we should wait to let them read the next books when they are older. Rachel was totally bummed when I told her she could read the next book, so we came up with a deal: Once she reads the first three Harry Potter books on her own then I would let her read the fourth book. I thought it would be a long time before she would be ready to read them on her own. Well, she finished the first book while we were still on vacation, and in the last month and a half she has finished books 2 and 3. She just started book 4 as per our deal and she is sooooooo excited! Sometimes this girl amazes me! She is only 5! I was always a pretty good reader but I wasn't reading chapter books when I was 5. That is something I LOVE about homeschooling. I love being able to watch my kids learn new things and to be able to encourage them and let them progress at their own pace. I can give Rachel time to read every day and I can encourage her to keep trying new things and harder things.

Almost 2

So, Elijah is almost 2, and it's showing. This is what I found just as we were about to walk out the door to go to church this morning. He was so proud of himself too.

Kent's 4 year old birthday interview (a month late)

1. What is your favorite color? Black, I mean all colors.

2. What is your favorite thing to do? Play

3. What is your favorite toy? My telescope

4. What do you want to be when you grow up? Um…When I grow up I want to be a police.

5. What is your favorite food? Eggs

6. Who do you like to spend time with? Rachel

7. What do you do really well? Doing the job that I get up the things that dad helped me get up. (The tiles under our carpet.)

8. What makes you laugh? When you tickle me really soft like as soft as I like, but the squirmy tickles, I don’t like them remember?

9. What is your favorite time of day? Um...my birthday. Um…I mean when I get to play with Rachel.

10. Who is your best friend? My friend Amanda.

11. What do you like to do with your family? Um...Play with them.

12. What do you love to learn about? Mom. I mean the gospel

13. Where do you like to go? To Grandma and Grandpa Jo’s house, also Grandma and Grandpa Bulloch’s house.

14. What is your favorite book? Mom. I like the one that is the Harry Potter one that you can listen to.

15. What are you afraid of? Lions

16. What is your favorite animal? Cheetah, well do cheetahs go really fast? Then a cheetah. I’m pretending to be a cheetah right now! Foom!

17. What is your favorite snack? Goldfishies. Well fishies that aren’t goldfish because goldfish aren’t the crackers that I love. (He means whales)

18. What is your favorite song? Peter Peter Pumpkin Eater

19. What is your favorite game? I like to play a game and its called Mr. Bucket. We have that game, remember? I feel like I want to play it right now.

20. What do you like to sleep with at night? Well, my favorite toy.

21. Is there anything else you want to tell me about you? Mmm...not much but, um, I can see the ceiling. I feel like I need to jump on the trampoline and play my favorite game.

Painting pumpkins

Most people probably know this about me already but I absolutely LOVE pumpkins! There is something about them that just fills me with happiness. To celebrate it finally being fall I decided to get out some paint and with my extremely limited painting skills, paint some happiness (aka watch you tube videos on painting pumpkins because I have no idea what I'm doing).

I looked out the window and what did I see?

Elijah sleeping 'neath the pecan tree.

Violins

Fun day!

Wednesdays are turning out to be one of our fun days this school year. We start off our day with violin lessons for the two older kids which is so much fun! Then we drive to the library to get books for the week. Then we get to have a picnic lunch with dad in the park by his work. I have totally been missing Jacob since he went back to work so it is nice to go meet him for lunch for a little while. I remember when we lived in Tucson, Jacob got to come home for lunch every day because we lived super close to his work. That was the best ever! Here we live about 25 minutes from his work so even is going in to visit him for lunch isn't super easy. Today was a lot of fun though. I'm hoping to make this an every Wednesday tradition! And the cool thing about homeschooling is that we can do that and the kids can get the rest of their school work done in the car while we are driving! I love it!

Oh what a year!

Well I seem to have fallen off the face of the blogging earth this year, and with good reason. Our life has been CRAZY! Being a mom of three kids is hard, lots of fun and totally rewarding, but totally hard too. This year it was made harder by Jacob's job. He had to leave our family and go over seas for 3 1/2 months. We have been through a lot of separations with his work and ask of them have been hard but none of them were as hard as this last one. Though this last one I struggled pretty badly with the dreaded "D-word." DEPRESSION. I had never gone through anything so hard in my entire life. Jacob's wonderful parents invited my family to come live with them for the remainder of o our time apart even though they already had another family (Jacobs brother) staying with them at the time. I packed up my kids and left. We stayed with them for about three weeks and then with my parents for two and then with his parents again for another two weeks before coming home and getting ready for Jacob to come home. It's crazy how instantly right it feels to have him home after having him gone for so long. Being apart for so long and so often has definitely taught us to cherish our marriage. After he came home, Jacob was able to take quite a but of leave and we loved having him home! It was so hard on everyone when the time came for him to go back to work! We are now two weeks into that and trying to come up with a new normal. Last week was extremely rough, but thankfully this week has gone a lot smoother. We are getting into a good homeschool routine and it's been awesome! Maybe now that things are getting settled again, I can start updating my blog again! (don't hold your breath though 😉)