Fun at the school bus!

Kindergarten!

As I have posted before, we are homeschooling Mia this year for kindergarten but she will also be doing a homeschool program through the Kyrene school district.  She will go to school 1 day a week, she will have a classroom and a teacher and they will do art, music, P.E., computer science and Spanish.  This is a supplement to the core curriculum we will be doing at home the rest of the week.  We are excited about starting school at home but that will not begin until the first full week of September, however her first day at the Kyrene program was last week.  She was really excited and did well.  We are really thankful for this program and hope it works well for Mia and our family!

The picture is of Mia getting ready to go to her first day of kindergarten and in true fashion for all my kids, she got water all over her shirt just before taking the picture.  She still looks cute and ready to go!

Kaden's Birthday

We decided to have a low key birthday for Kaden this year so we set up a triple slip n slide to let our kids and a few friends play on.  After a little while, the slip n slide got moved to the bottom of the slide of the playset, the kids went down the slide onto the slip n slide and flew across it.  They had a lot of fun.  Kaden got all the tools he wanted so he can go on pretending to be a builder, landscaper and plumber all he wants!  

I haven't had much to say......

I guess I have taken a lax approach to blogging for the last few months.  As is the case with everyone, we have had a busy summer and I just haven't had that much to say.  The kids all seem so big now....Piper is moving away from being a baby into full blown toddler phase.  She is talking and repeating everything and has a ton of personality!  Joey is getting to be a big boy, he is potty trained, learning letters and things and is growing up!  Kaden will be 4 this week and he is no longer in toddler territory but is becoming a little boy.  He is getting so big that its hard for me to pick him up now.  Mia is going to be starting kindergarten and is such a big sister!  As most of our blog readers know, Tim and I have struggled with our school decision for this coming year....we have been up and down, back and forth and been reluctant to make to a decision.  I think we have been so reluctant because we have felt the Lord pushing us towards homeschooling this year and we just haven't really wanted to do it.  It is now official.....we are homeschooling Mia for kindergarten, Kaden for Pre-K and Joey for preschool!  We have decided on a combination of Sonlight curriculum and Our Father's World to use for kindergarten and I will be adding the other kids in with most of it!  We do not believe homeschooling is the only way or even the best way for every family but we do believe that it is the best fit for our families situation at this point in time.  I am a little intimidated about beginning this school year but I do believe it will have a lot of rewards!  

It's been a while.......

We have had a busy month........the kids got to see 2 different people that they love from their time in Uganda in the last few weeks, so they have really enjoyed that.  My sister was in town all of last week and the kids loved having her in town, the only thing that would have made that better would have been for the cousins to visit too!  The kids started swim lessons this week and it has been a night and day experience from last year to this year.  The kids are doing really well and are not scared of the water this year!  We have had our usual days full of funny conversations and crazy kids but they are doing really well!

The pictures I am posting are of a few different things in the last month.  Tim and Steve took the boys to veterans graves for Memorial Day, the boys put flags at the veterans graves and Steve taught them how to salute.

One picture is of the dryer with a bunch of little pieces of paper in it.....Kaden left his little Bible in one of pockets........just one of the many things I find in the laundry.

There is one of Kaden holding a cucumber from our garden, this is an average size for the cucumbers we have been getting from our garden!

Mother's Day

I had a wonderful Mother's Day!  Tim took the kids out early in the morning and I was able to take a nice long shower, take my time getting ready in peace and quiet!  The he brought the kids home with breakfast and flowers!  The kids were really excited about Mother's day and then inquired about when it would be daddy's day.  Then they also thought it would be a good idea to have a little boy's day and a baby Piper day!  I wanted to get a picture of me with each of the kids b/c I never seem to do that and then a group picture!  The pictures above give a pretty good glimpse of what its like to get that done, the last two were actually from the night before but the same things happen everytime we do group pics!  I love the kids and I am blessed to be the mommy and 4 crazy kids!  Its funny that it still seems kinda weird to me that I have 4 kids!

Sometimes they can be so sweet . . .

Leala was not feeling well this morning and I had to go to work.  Leala called me later and told me that Kaden got his little step stool, grabbed a glass off the counter, took it into the bathroom, filled it up with water (presumably from the sink), and came back to Leala telling her, "Mommy, I think you need some water.  It will make you feel better."