It's Christmas Eve!

Merry Christmas! We are so excited. It has been a great month. We have had parties to attend and going to Silver Dollar City to look at lights and see the parade. I love the whole month of December. We even added some Christmas fun to our school time. Lily has spent all month writing a Christmas book! She did such a great and independent job. She also took her time with drawing and coloring the pictures. Here it is for all to see! Oh and she will be bringing this to read to all of our family tomorrow on Christmas Day!

Didn't she do a great job! She found a word for every letter of the alphabet! This is Daphne's first Christmas and she gave me the best gift. She started crawling at just 5 months old. She had been army crawling, but now she is really crawling!

We are excited to do more baking today and to have Daddy home with us for three days! Tonight we want to go to a Christmas Eve church service, but it looks like the winter weather might make it not very safe. The girls are going to use the nativity characters to act out the Christmas story as Daddy reads the story. I love Christmas Eve.

Tomorrow will also be great as we celebrate with all of our family and yes the girls are excited for their three presents each under the tree! :)

Merry Christmas Everyone!

Just a weight and height check

Daphne has her 6 month weight and height check, but thinking about it made me curious about the older two. Today we weighed and measured them.

Lily:
44lbs- 61st percentile for weight
48 inches- 97th percentile for height

Wow! She is still staying tall!

Valerie:
29lbs- 38th percentile
38 in- 75th percentile

Valerie is totally a skinny, tall girl!

From the best I could see...
Daphne is about 14 lbs
about 24 inches
If I am right on those it says below 5th percentile for both......she might be just like her mommy!

November Homeschooling!

I am thankful for the ability and time to homeschool!!! I love getting to have all three of my girls home with me every day and getting to teach them and watch them grow. So here is a little update on what we have been doing during the month of November. First, Lily started to get bored with writing in her journal. We decided to make a Thanksgiving writing folder. We worked on poems and writing about things that we learned this month. Here are a few pages from it:

We also completely finished Hooked on Phonics and then we did a workbook from walmart. In November we started using Accelerated Christian Education for our reading. We are really enjoying it. Each book has a memory verse that they focus on each day plus working on the skills she needs. She worked on learning when to use to, two, and too. She also worked on vowels and when to use A or An. She has mastered all of these skills this month. I love it!

We completely finished the Alpha Omega first grade history curriculum in three months. Lily loved it, but it was too easy. So now we have been learning about U.S. Presidents. We simply got this book from the $1 bin at target. It has great information on each president with simple games. Lily loves learning which president is on each coin or dollar.

Now I think we might take a break from some of this next month. I am wanting to work more with Lily on geography by doing Christmas around the world next month. In writing, I have another fun book for her to work on. Hope you enjoyed seeing what we have been up to this month!

Why I love November and Thanksgiving!

November and Thanksgiving mean very little to me when I just think about having a big meal, but when I add in time with family and being thankful, then it becomes a wonderful holiday. I always want to be intentional with my children. I want to really spend this month teaching them about being thankful for what God has given them!

Top 10 things that I am thankful for:
1. My salvation through Jesus Christ and my relationship with God!
2. My wonderful husband who loves me unconditionally and is always there for me.
3. Three beautiful, smart daughters who are so fun to play with and to teach!
4. God's provision...a beautiful house that is big ENOUGH. :)
5. Wonderful, Godly parents who have taught me so much about how to live my life to the fullest!
6. Great extended family to spend time. My sisters who are so great to talk to and my brother-in-laws and my great in-laws. I love having lots of family to love.
7. Five adorable nephews...okay the 12 year old might not like adorable. lol. I love all of them so much and have so enjoyed watching them grow up!
8. My girlfriends have made my life so much fun! I would name names, but that would take a long time! ;) Very blessed!
9. Thankful for my co-op, life group, and mops. These groups have all been such a blessing in my life.
10. Gotta add health. I really am thankful that my family is healthy and able to do so many fun things!

On that note, I have a bunch of recent family pictures! I love family!
We greatly enjoyed spending Sunday with two of our nephews. They came to church with us, had pizza, made fun stuffed animals, and played outside all day! That is a perfect way to spend the day!

Lily and Valerie love hot tub time with their cousin Dylan! Too much splashing for us adults though!

This was Jason's birthday picnic with my parents in November!

Happy Thanksgiving if I don't blog again until then! :)

October and Halloween

Oops! I went to write my thoughts on November and Thanksgiving and I realized that I had not written anything about October and Halloween!


I love Fall! I love the leaves changing and I love the cooler temps. I admit that by the end of October it feels too cold and makes me want Christmas! Halloween is not my favorite holiday for many reasons, but I love playing dress up with the girls.

Lily was Strawberry Shortcake, Valerie was a genie, and Daphne was a lil baby monster. Fall is a great time for fun playdates. One of them was with Moms like Me Magazine at the library and the girls all got in the magazine this month!

We also had fun at the pumpkin patches. We went to two of them and had fun with the hayrides and pumpkin picking!

We also finally took a family picture. Daphne was 3 months and I realized that we hadn't taken any pictures as a family! I love having three girls! Aren't they pretty!

Three Months old

I am just wanting to wish my sweet little Daphne a Happy 3 month old Birthday! She is getting so big. I haven't had her weighed in over a month, but I would guess that she is about 13 lbs now. She has been my hardest to get on a schedule, but I waited patiently and now she is on a schedule. She goes to bed at 8 and she wakes up at 8 with one or possibly two feedings during that. She then takes a 2 1/2 hour morning nap and like a two hour afternoon nap. She is also getting very into playing with her toys. She rolls onto her side and grabs the toys or kicks at them. She is also so sweet and happy. I am such a blessed Mommy! :)

Also her three month birthday happens to fall on my Dad's birthday so Happy Birthday to my Dad. I am so lucky to have had him as my father. I truely love talking to my dad. He is so smart and insightful. He always has interesting topics to discuss. He also gives the best and most compassionate advice. I love my dad!

September Homeschool Highlights!

I love the month of September! In August we started back into the homeschool year, but September is when it really feels like school time. We have been busy again with F.A.I.T.H. Co-op and Mops. The girls love school. Valerie is even becoming so independent. She no longer cries when she gets left in her room. She is just so ready and excited for it! We are breezing right through Lily's first grade school work. She just has such an excitement for learning. It makes it hard not to fly through it. I already need to get Lily into second grade curriculum for reading here in the next few weeks. Also the main highlights to this month have been field trips. We went on three very fun field trips this month. The first one was to Laura Ingells Wilder's home in Mansfield, Mo. We went with friends and had such a great time learning all about her. Lily already loves the little kid versions of the books. I can't wait until she is a little older and we can get into all of the Little House on the Prairie Books!

We also went on a fun field trip as a family to the Missouri Sports Hall of Fame! Lily and Valerie had both received family passes when they did the library summer reading program. The girls' favorite part was the race car. It had a racing game inside it so they both liked playing that. Lily came in 30th place every time. Valerie played it and got 20th place. Wonder who will be our race car driver? :)

There were areas on each sport. Lots of things to read, but also fun things to do. There was a putting green and a basketball shooting area. There was also a very cool football throwing area where you tried to throw the football through the wholes. Jason really enjoyed that. I think we could have left him there for half the day.

There were also statues through out it. Since I am a Yankee fan, I posed next to a Yankee coach or player. Okay so I am not a very good fan!!!

Jason was very quick to then show me what he thinks of the Yankees! Not funny!!

The girls posing by a female basketball player that was outside with some other statues. Okay not sure how educational I truely made this field trip. Sports are not my thing, but we still had fun learning a little. lol.

The last fun field trip of the month was to the Harvest Festival at Rutledge Wilson Farm. We had a great time. Here the girls are posing for a picture. I love their new Fall hats!

Lily also learned about how to get the corn off the cob and ground up for the chickens. She really loved that. The girls both got to ride horses and pet different farm animals.

The girls loved looking at the honey bees. As a treat, we got them little honey stick candy.

And ofcourse we needed to pick out some pumpkins. How fun! The girls even painted their pumpkins as soon as we got home.

One of our favorite times is doing science together. We just love how hands on it is! The other day we read books on volcanoes and learned how they erupt. We then had a model volcano and we used baking soda, food coloring, and vinegar to make it erupt. How fun!

Just wanted to share a little of the highlights of our educational experience. There are lots of other things that we could share but these are some of the best things we did this month!

Precious Daphne!

I just wanted to write a blog about how much I enjoy my precious little third daughter, Daphne! She is so sweet and so cuddly. I think that she is probably my most challenging baby, but that actually is only because the other two were so easy. I really think that Daphne is pretty easy too. Actually today as I write this, Daphne took a 3 hour nap from 8-11 this morning and then went back down from 12:15- now (1:30) and she is still sleeping. She also sleeps great at night, but she does wake up more often then the other two did at this age. Daphne really is such a smiley baby. I just love how much she lights up and she just is so happy when I hold her. She loves her big sisters and really is good for them. She doesn't seem like she is in a rush with anything and I am not either. I just love her little face so much. I am enjoying our time together so much. I really don't want her to grow up too fast.

I love these pics of Daphne. They really show how different she looks from her big sisters. She has such a round little face and beautiful blue eyes. I am trying to get more into cloth diapers with Daphne...atleast at home. :)

I also forgot to say that Daphne is 2 mths in these pics. I am now looking to find her a cute outfit for our Fall family pics. I can't wait!!!

A little more school stuff

I wanted to add a little more info about the school work that I am doing with the girls. We have been using Hooked on Phonics since last March and we love it. There were 6 boxes in my set and we have almost done 4 of them. I think she will be done by the end of October or a little sooner. She has loved this program. She does great at learning new skills and then there is lots of practice time. Lily loves reading. She is so good at her phonetic skills and she does great with the comprehension questions. I love that she loves it so much!

Math is my least favorite thing to teach. I hate that I am not better at teaching it, but she does seem to learn quickly. Right now we have beend doing a kindergarten full year book. It has lessons on graphing, sorting, adding, subtracting, telling time, etc. She enjoys it. I don't love worksheets, but it is a very good way to make sure that I teach her everything she needs to know.

In October, we are planning to start on the Hooked on Phonics Math program. It looks hard to me. I hope that I can get her ready for it soon. I like that it comes with play money and dice and other fun manipulatives. I also need to be working on other things that I haven't found in the books. I want to work with her on counting by 5's and 2's.

Can't leave Valerie out. She is 2 1/2. I am thinking that I might start her in preschool at 3, but for now I am doing some worksheets with her. She loves them. She has a letter sounds one and a colors and shapes one.

We are starting with our colors. Valerie is doing great!

I love homeschooling my girls!

School is about ready to start

Back to School Time!!!! Our homeschool co-op starts back on September 9th, but we have already started the homeschool year. Lily was just too excited about learning for us to wait. I love that about homeschooling. We can start whenever she is ready and we can take breaks when needed. Due to co-op, we needed a beautiful new backpack. Lily found this monkey one at target and loved it. We then had Poshy Tots Boutique put her name on it. Lily loves it sooo much!! Today the girls tried on their back to school oufits. Don't they look pretty!!

Lily is so proud to finally be a Kindergartner...even though all of her work is first grade level.

This year, Lily's favorite subject is history. She is working on Alpha Omega's first grade history. There is a different book for her to study each month. The first month is all about herself and her friends and her faith. She loved it so we went through it twice as fast as I had planned. So we are already starting the second months book. It is all on different methods of communication.

She reads all of the lessons and then completes the activities. There are also three quizes in each book and one final test. Lily loves being tested! ;)

My favorite subject to teach is bible. She has two devotionals. One of them we just finished and it was so perfect for her age. This next one is just for girls and I hope that it is perfect. We will be finishing the first one soon.

When teaching Lily her bible lessons, I also want to do activities each week that teach her about generosity and giving so we will be looking for ways to bless people around us. I think that is so important for her to learn.

We are also learning about Paul and his journey. Here is a map of his travels and Lily has been practicing reading the names of the cities. That is not easy, even for me. lol.

The last thing that I will share here is just a little bit of Lily's writing and journaling. We do writing every day. Some days we work on getting the letters properly made, but other days, I let her just free write about whatever she has done lately. I try not to be too picky with spelling and such because I want her to learn to try to spell on her own and to have initiative.

That first writing was about her fondue party and the second one is about riding her bike. I am so proud of her already. She is doing great!!

I left off reading and math and Valerie's work from this blog so I will add those soon. :)