The Sticky Life: Fall is beginning!

...so I figured I should share how we spent the last technical month of summer. :) Thank the stars for pictures from my phone! I hardly remember.

After the cabin, my brother Dan, his (pregnant!) wife, Britany, and their two kids Evelyn and Emmett came out for a Utah visit for about a week. It was so nice to see them! I love love love when ALL of my family gets to be together. Sam's too, seriously. The kids have so much fun with cousins and I love getting so much chatting time with adults that I like. Haha.

One of the experiences while they were here was visiting the farm part at Thanksgiving Point. They got to feed and ride different animals, it was great!

(Willow didn't last long)

I also had to laugh: we made these one waffles that were AMAZING, tasted like crepes, with whipped cream and strawberries. I promise I served the kids first, and myself last...but when I finally got around to taking a pic, they'd all eaten all of theirs and mine was sitting there all beautiful. So it totally looks like the opposite. Make the children wait, MAMA IS HUNGRY!!! lol

10 for parenting right there...

Better.

I tried to have some fun things going on when everybody else was starting up school again. Making the most of the pool was one of those things. :)

I know you've been missing partially-covered-by-a-finger-shots, what with 2017 technology. So...you're welcome.

Atticus turned 4 on August 30th!!! WhaaaaaaTTt! He did. We partially celebrated early with a trip to Jungle Jim's, which was a blast. On the day of, we (again), went to the pool, and were going to do a movie but there wasn't anything at the dollar theater and I'm a cheap-o these days in that regard so just made the most of a movie at home we'd never seen before, with treats and stuff. Then we had his choice for dinner, which was super nachos. Mmmmm

LOOK AT THIS! LOOK AT IT!! This was in a bathroom stall at Jungle Jims. A little seat for a baby/toddler while mama takes care of her business!!! I was so tickled I had to snap this. It was amazing.

Nachos nachos nachos...

Sam kept our 'use newspapers for birthday wrapping' tradition alive with Atto's presents. :)

(Different day?...I can't remember which was his birthday time and which wasn't)

I had wanted to do something buddy-related though, and it didn't end up happening right then...so when Sam and I went down to Provo for the BYU-Utah game a week or two later, I snagged my sister-in-law Jandel and three of her kids for a trip to the Bean Museum and then a movie at the Wilkinson Center theater and called that his birthday party. Atto loved it. :)

We also celebrated a lot the next day, with even more family down in Provo and presents from the grandparents. These kids get so spoiled.

Jori did start school that we're doing through this charter school, which she attends all day Mondays and half of the day on Tuesdays. The program is designed for homeschoolers, so everybody in her class attends the same amount, too. She didn't love it at first but is enjoying it a lot more as it goes on. On Tuesdays she has four elective classes: cooking & etiquette, wilderness survival skills, arts & crafts and a tumbling class. When she gets home on Tuesdays she always wants to help with dinner. She's the best.

Money is tight and Atticus has struggled a bit with really mastering toilet training, (not to mention emotion control), so I didn't think a normal preschool was really in the agenda for this year for him. But I did want to do something, so me and two other moms in our ward are doing this homeschool preschool thing for our three boys once a week. We've only done it a couple times so far, but it's been great. :) We have some really low level academic stuff (introducing numbers and letters, basically), and then a character lesson each time.

We ran into some homeschool friends after the kids had a 'back to school' photo shoot for home school kids that this lady in one of my facebook homeschool groups does, and had an impromptu playdate in a stream at this gorgeous church house. Atticus slipped in the mud and got his shorts all dirty, so we just yanked them off. So her boys ended up ditching their pants, too. I love that they were be-boppin' around in their undies/diaper. Cute kids!

I already mentioned, but both Jori and Atticus participated in soccer this fall, with me as Jori's coach. It was an adventure! I'm a little ridiculous, you guys. I got so stressed out about coaching these 1st and 2nd grade girls. Silly business. Oh! But fun fact! Two of Jori's teammates are also homeschooled! I found that out on the last day and was delighted. Have you ever seen the DaVinci Code? You know how there's all this secret society business going on? Sometimes it feels like that's me, with homeschooling. Can't tell, can't tell! Cause I'm new and fear other people's judgment. So finding others who do it too is such a breath of fresh air.

Sam's been in overdrive with furniture projects lately it seems like, finishing painting two bookcases and totally re-doing a buffet we already had. I'm so happy with all his hard work! Bless that man. Heaven knows I'm terrible at finishing what I start, in regards to home furnishing and decor.

We took another family trip to Wheeler Farm, which we always enjoy. We actually brought along some tortillas, but I'd snagged them to feed to ducks on a different day and it hadn't ended up happening, so they'd just been sitting in the van for a few days. So by the time we offered them to the ducks at Wheeler Farm, they were all hard and the ducks had no interest! It made us laugh quite a bit.

Willow is obsessed with my phone lately and it's driving me CRAZY. Stop with the technology, child!

Here's an awesome "I'm changing her diaper" shot. I guess it has it's uses, in a pinch.

Finally, homeschooling...we've slowly been adjusting. I'm loving the pros, and not the cons. Surprise! :)

I think overall it's been a positive experience so far. I just started a 'reading curriculum' with Atticus, since I think he wanted something else like his big sister has each day, so we're working on that for about 5-10 minutes on days we have lessons. I don't do much on the Mondays and Tuesdays (except that preschool co-op thing), because of driving Jori to that charter school. It's farther away than I'd realized when I signed her up, so that's been a bit of a pain. So we don't push it those days, and do lessons Wednesday-Saturday with a lot of flexibility there.

Jori already finished her year's reading curriculum, because she knew everything except the spelling words and those were all phonetic so she figured them out pretty easily. So we'll be moving on to the next one and going from there with that. Her math curriculum uses an abacus which has caused a lot of giggling around our house, with it's similarity to Atticus's name. :)

I do worry about certain things, but am trying to put forth effort to overcome/combat the things I'm worried about that deserve attention, and dismiss those that don't. I'm not perfect.

I have been LOVING the way my kids have been interacting though, honestly. It's weird. We had all summer, and I swear they didn't interact this way. But they just seem...closer. Jori's been playing a lot more with Willow, as has Atticus. And with each other, they seem so much more like partners in crime these days. Not sure how to explain it exactly...but it's like in the summer, Jori played with Atticus because he was there so he was better than nothing; but often lately she's played with him because she wants him as a playmate. ? Hopefully that doesn't sound totally nonsensical.

It's not the only pro that appealed to me about homeschooling, but it was one of them. Potential for stronger family relationships. A friend in our last ward once said that she had told her teenage girls, "Friends come and go, but family is forever. So you'd better find a way to like each other!"
I really liked that.

I'm sure it'll fluctuate and seriously, there's still plenty of mischief and teasing and naughtiness that happens...but there's a lot of love there, too. Fills me up with butterflies and sunshine.

Oh one more: I planned all the meals in September way in advance, did all the shopping except for produce at once, compiled all the recipes into a binder, and kept the order on the fridge so if Sam wanted to do the cooking he could. Ah!!!! I've never been that on top of meals before!! Doesn't mean we followed it perfectly but it was better than any previous attempt I've made. I think the key was sticking with meals I know; meals I don't take about 3 times as long as they're supposed to, the first time I make them, so I always kind of dread doing them when it gets down to it. At least with the kids all over me.