What are the kids up to? What fills our days up so full that before we know it, it's bedtime again?!
This winter has been COLD and COLDER. I've tried to look at the positive side of it, however, and recognize that when days are cold and short we have nothing better to do than study and read. So school gets done! There are less distractions which is nice. Sometimes we get snow days in the middle of the week. Sometimes we get snow days that last all week!!
Spring seems to be approaching, I think. It's time for me (Rhyetta) to start planning and planting spring veggies. It's not quite warm enough for me to want to be outside yet, but hopefully soon. As the snow melts away, the yard gets muddy. Today was the first time Klaus got to play outside for a very long time due to cold weather. He's so happy sloshing through puddles and throwing rocks. All the kids love to be outside except Kian. He doesn't desire to be outside the way the other kids do. I have to ask him generally (but it has been cold, that might be why).
For school we start our day with Team Cleanup. For 15 minutes we all work hard on deep cleaning. I love having all the kids help me. I don't feel like I'm the only one doing cleanup anymore. I've finally taught the kids to do the dishes too. How awesome to say, "Abby, please do the dishes. Kian, please clean up the counters. Ella, please tidy the living room. Felicity, please get the dining room ready for our next meal." And it gets clean!
The kids are learning more and more how to cook and bake. Abby still loves baking muffins. She's branched out into cookies too. Kian has always loved to bake cookies. Ella can do cookies on her own now. She's learning more meal kind of foods too. Felicity wants to learn how to do it all on her own as well. Matt is now the designated baker. His whole wheat bread loaves come out better than mine! He's amazing! I try to stay out of the kitchen as much as possible and make things as easy as I can. Even so, I'm in there a lot! My favorite winter breakfast: oatmeal with frozen banana slices, any other kind of bite size fruit, chopped walnuts, cinnamon and blackstrap molasses. It's such a treat!
We are also studying Spanish together. The kids are really picking it up now that we've got a good resource to use from the library. We have devotional everyday and are studying the scriptures along with the Constitution. The kids break up to work on their own levels in English and math. Felicity and I have a reading lesson together. We usually have a snack break, then come back together for history. We are finishing up Ancient History. Then we break up again for science. PE comes after lunch usually. Then we've got an hour of Silent Reading. Although for the past couple of weeks we are reading out loud together the 2nd book in the Flavia de Luce series, "The Weed that Strings the Hangman's Bag" by Alan Bradley. I can't recommend these books enough. They are murder mysteries classified as adult fiction but they are not gruesome. The heroine is a 12-year-old girl, Flavia, who loves chemistry and independence. She is clever and precocious and we laugh out loud at her antics. This is not like a typical juvenile read aloud. This is something even adults will enjoy. But that is my personal opinion.
We occasionally get together with other homeschooling families to have parties or do service projects or go visit interesting sites in our area. The kids go to Primary on Sunday and Kian is active in Scouts and Young Mens. Abby and Ella attend Activity Days twice a month with other girls their age at church. Aside from this, we play and learn and read and watch good shows and cook and eat and clean and sleep!
Matt got a teaching position at a brand new school opening in St. Joseph. It is in a nice area. It is a non-title school. He will have parent support. He will be in an air-conditioned building!!
Rhyetta (me) keeps busy with homeschool, housekeeping, working at the library, serving in Young Womens (the best calling in the world), learning, etc. My current interest is real estate investing. We're thinking of buying a property in Cameron to rent for profit. We'd like to pay off our mortgages on our Spanish Fork house as soon as we can since they are at such a high interest rate.
We're still eating healthy and exercising every day.
Klaus is such an active 3-year-old. He's tiring, really tiring. Winter doesn't help either. He's speaking clearer and learning how to dress himself. He loves stories, minions, playing with this siblings and being close to Mom and Dad. Sometimes he asks for a snuggle. I think the creators of "Despicable Me" studied the lives of 3-year-olds to model their minions after.
Felicity is growing more and more into a girl. She's less shy. She wants to learn how to cook. She is almost reading. Everyone still falls in love with her red hair.
Ella is always reading or playing happily with someone. She is great with little kids. She loves to wear jeans and plain clothes (like I did as a kid) whereas Abby wants skirts and dresses. Abby hates tennis shoes. Abby is now in charge of buying all of her own clothes and shoes. When I buy them, she always cries about them for some reason, any reason, so she will now be in charge of her own wardrobe. She found a darling pair of winter boots yesterday at a secondhand store in Platte City for only $1.75. That's a good start!
Kian devours any book placed near him whether it's a baby's picture book or a college textbook. All of the kids are currently enjoying the "Chicken Soup for the Soul" series a friend of ours handed down to us. We are studying chemistry, he and I, and enjoys balancing chemical equations even if they aren't really possible. He just makes them up. He gets more answers correct in our chemistry lessons than I do and does the problems in his head.
Well, that's an update. That's what keeps us busy from sun-up to sun-down. We love y'all!
