So I'm actually going to catch everyone up here a little bit. Life has been super hectic around our household.
I have had to add Physical therapy a couple times a week to my schedule, which hasn't been easy. I have been suffering some terrible leg and joint pain on the left side of my body. I have survived it, and been working on it. But so far haven't seen much success. I'm really sad because they said it could take months of rehab to build the strength back up to what it was a year ago. My PT thinks he knows what is going on, but since my x-rays came back normal. We're just not sure. My dr. is hesitant to order extensive testing. But I may have to demand it soon. With the family history I am coming from, there's been too many joint issues. I'm too young to be dealing with this stuff right now, but it could happen.
I've also been changing my diet up. I went sugar and grain free, along with this diet change I also went low carb. I'm actually toying with the keto diet. Already with reduced grains and no sugar I have had felt better on some of my gastro issues. So a win-win there. But I struggle with stress-eating. And the last few weeks have been so busy and stressful, that I'm struggling big time. I have discovered that I can eat some kinds of popcorn and corn chips in small amounts. So those are my go-to cheat snacks right now. I am loving the Skinny Pop White Cheddar popcorn.
Since my last full week post, a lot of things have happened.
Caty started her science project for the Science Fair. She is attempting to hatch chickens. A friend of ours raises chickens and has been for several years. So we headed over to see her. She let the girls pick their own eggs. She lent us a incubator, and we'll see what happens.
Another big event.... Joe and I celebrated our 19th wedding anniversary. We didn't get to do anything on our own. So maybe someday soon we can have a date night. But we did get to celebrate with the kids. We include them every year in our celebration. This year though, the Annual Homeschool Book Carnival fell on our Anniversary. So we actually started our day out there....after I had to get up early for PT though...lol.
The kids had fun finishing their projects for this. It was one of those rapid pull togethers, but we managed to pull it off. This was the BEST book carnival turnout in a few years. All the kids that entered did wonderful. I'll have a separate post about that though. In this post, I'll show off our kiddos projects.
Then when we got home, we celebrated with presents, homemade pizza and pumpkin blizzard ice cream cake. This was a special treat this year, since Joey was actually able to eat the cake too!! The kids were excited about their gifts.
We didn't officially have school that week. We were on spring break, so there was a lot of downtime. But Lydia did have a few things that she had to be at. One being her History of the Horse class that she is taking at stable. She also had her sign language class and her volunteer shift at the stable.
On April Fool's Day I made sure to go over the top this year, since I sort of forgot last year. They were disappointed. I planned every meal and lots of little tricks. There was toilet paper in their shoes, popits under the toilet seat and fake dog poop. It was fun.
The kids also had Homecoming that night. They played their last basketball game of the season and cheered their last basketball game. What a game.....
Amid all of this, we decided that having a second vehicle would be a good thing. So one evening we spent working out financing and details on a 2nd vehicle for Joe. He is happy, he wanted a Jeep Cherokee. It's not a decked out version, but it's nice. It will definitely be comfortable for him on his journeys down to Nashville when we cannot go with him.
Joey and Lydia both had presentations due for 4H. We started out with Joey doing a presentation on his 4H Quick Breads project, and that backfired on us. The whole gluten-free flour thing was an issue. Since I changed my diet, I do not keep it in the house. So we had an accident with the flour and there was no extra. So he still baked snack for his club. We made about 72 pumpkin muffins. Apparently they were delicious!! The kids all seemed to love them. Even at home I was fighting to keep the kids out of them. He did his presentation on his Money Management project.
Lydia did her presentation on her self-determined American Sign Language project. This was one of her first meetings as secretary. So she also had to take notes during the meeting. I was totally prepared to have to help her throughout the meeting, but BAM...she had it all under control.
The next day, we went to our first Homeschool Show with our Homeschool with Minecraft classes. It was a rather slow day. I honestly spent more on curriculum than I made. There were some great deals. And we all know how much of a curriculum junkie I am. But we had fun explaining what we do in classes with everyone, and giving demonstrations. Lydia even won a really cute backpack at one of the booths.
The next day, I think I literally died. We all were hit with allergies. It was horrible. Poor Brayden has them horrible and so does Caty. I had to resort to over-the-counter things because the natural stuff just wasn't cutting it. Within a day mine were back under control and manageable. We are still working on Brayden's and Caty's. He doesn't want to use Flonase, which is helping me.
It's that time of year though when we remember the death of Jesus. So we have been reading the account of Jesus death with them from the Bible. Last year we started a new tradition of making Memorial bread (unleavened bread) with them. So they wanted to make sure we did it again this year. It was messy, but they were satisfied with what they made.
We also watched these videos:
and
The weather got warmer and we took a few walks and even a bike ride. One trip ended with us at the local dairy bar for ice cream. We took the puppies with us and they each got a treat too. They loved getting out for the long walk. I was actually surprised they made it the full mile walk.
We also had American Girl Book Club. This month was American Girl Jess. She stays in Belize with her parents who are archaeologists. In the club we learned about some Native traditions, including worry dolls and also talked about archaeology. I highly recommend this book for extended studies!!
Caty had planted Zinnia seeds for one of her 4H projects and they are started to sprout up.
We started a new history program, Truth Quest History - Beginnings. I really like how it is based on the Bible. You can use your own copy of the Bible to read from. So we are using this as guided reading along with our Bible. This week we talked about the creation of the Earth, the days of creation. They each created a poster to remember what happened on each day. We discussed why God may have designed things the way he did. So far this week, I'm definitely liking this program.
We have watched lots of videos, Including
We also watched the Wonders of God's Creation series. This was great for science and history.
Science class is going well. They have built molecules, and done lots of experiments. One of the favorites so far has been the citric acid and water in the mouth. Yep...a little like sour patch kids on the tongue. We had a backfire on one experiment, so try..try again. We took a week off from science last week, but back into the swing of things this week. We did our reading and now waiting to meet up with our friends for more experiments. We are almost done with our Periodic Table study.
Our Girl Scout troop had their annual movie day. The girls chose to see Boss Baby. I was thinking it would just not be worth it...but it was cute. The kids all really liked it. We have had a lot of girl scout events, including a mom and me camp with our troop. It was a fun overnight cabin camping experience. I'm glad that we only go camping once a year though. I'm so not the camper.
We did get back into the swing of things this week. We did some review in geography, math and writing sentences. I also had them all read Sarah, Plain and Tall and complete a comprehension guide. This was something new. They have never all read the same book at the same time. But it worked out well. I can't wait to continue on this path. I know Caty is excited about the book we start next week. Some days they'll read and work independently. But other times, we will work on this together and read together also.
This weekend....shhhh....we are actually not busy. We have some yard work to get going on Sunday. We have to keep Caty's science project on track. Lydia's science fair project is on track too. We just have to get started on the boys projects. So life isn't slowing down. But we do need to do some reorganizing, or we are going to run out of clean clothes and clean dishes...lol
Hope everyone has had a wonderful few weeks. I'll see everyone next week!!
Happy anniversary! Hatching eggs sounds like so much fun, we have chickens but have never hatched eggs.
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