25 May 2010

An extra effort

Blogging seems to be falling by the wayside once again these days. I think this is the case for two reasons -- 1.) I'm back on facebook (yes, I know, Amalee -- soon I'll be diseased) and 2.) I have this new little phone that has internet and I can do most everything I ever did on the computer in about half the time with it. The only thing I can't do is type very well on it with its teeny little keyboard. Hence, the lack of blog posts.


Apologies.


Anyway, by way of an update -- we are all doing well.


We started homeschool for Annalivia. Since the middle of the school year will be pretty interrupted with the baby in December, I decided to start now. After deliberations ad nauseum, I decided to go with Sonlight, and so far, am loving it because Daniel can be very involved in it and it just seems to fit our family fairly well. We're also using Math-U-See for beginning math and Hooked on Phonics for phonics, which I never thought I would use, but, for some reason, it has really clicked with Annalivia. And we're going to use A Reason for Handwriting, but I've decided to wait until fall to start it. We'll see how all of this goes and how I feel about everything when we take our big Christmas break.


Annalivia and Daniel have been stuck in the house quite a bit so far this spring/ early summer because we've been getting a lot of rain. I send them out to play whenever the ratio of bickering: play heads in the favor of the former. But usually, they're content to draw a lot and build things out of chairs and tables and such, and do lots of pretending together.


Emmeliese is awfully darn cute. She's also frustrated a lot of the time, in that pre-verbal-yet-definitely-has-an-opinion stage of childhood. She loves trucks, trains, and things-that-go. She loves to climb on things, and especially loves to stand on kiddie chairs which freaks her mother out. She has found that, by pushing little chairs up to the kitchen counter and sink or near a drawer, she can reach or get into all manner of fun, formerly-forbidden things. Then she howls with indignation when others dare move her. We have to keep a close eye on this one. :)


Dennis is working hard on the house and coming up with all sorts of innovative ways to do things. Dad has finished putting a skim coat of joint compound onto the plaster walls, save for one room, and is now working on sanding them. I, of course, just want to slap some paint on them, but I'm deferring to the wisdom of others who think the walls should be more finished than I.

And I am doing fine -- feeling fairly well, though totally exhausted in the mid-afternoon and a little green around the gills occasionally. And I'm really hungry for peanut butter, which is odd. But other than that, I'm having a fairly normal early pregnancy for me.


Anyway, that is pretty much our lives in a nutshell. I wanted to upload a video of the kids being rockstars, but I can't get YouTube to cooperate right now. I'll, perhaps, post it later.


Hope all is well with you and yours!

9 comments:

holly said...

Ah, look at you, and the way " a skim coat of joint compound" rolls off your tongue.

Yep. Definitely in the middle of remodeling. :)

Thanks for the update, so nice to hear how things are going. :) (Even if I do get to see you on fb!)

~liz said...

oh april...i LOVE that you're using sonlight. i drooled over their catalog for months before deciding on a different curriculum (beautiful feet books), but we're classical/charlotte mason/principle approach (ie...eclectic!) so we do lots of reading in our homeschool. math-u-see is a curriculum that so many of my friends use and love so i don't think you'll be disappointed. my husband does math, so it was his choice to go with another curriculum (right start mathematics) and i leave that up to him. :)
i'm having trouble finding a great bible curriculum (in addition to family devotions) next year. i have been scouring the internet for resources...i have a few ideas, but thought i'd ask if you had anything to suggest? :)
~liz

April said...

Liz... I think we're going to be fairly eclectic, too. Sonlight seems very adaptable to me - almost as though we're not "doing school." That is good for us.

As for Bible curriculum, we are sticking with what was included in the Sonlight core. But I've heard goof things about Suffer Little Children. Let me know what you decide, would you? I'm curious. :)

April said...

oops - that was "good" not "goof"

~liz said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
~liz said...

i have been looking at Covenant Home's bible curriculum and I wanted to like it because I love the titles and I grew up steeped (and baptised!) in covenant theology...the sample they have at their web site (<a href="http://www.covenanthome.com/files/Suffer1-book.pdf) makes it look like pure drudgery and i wish they had better samples. i was so close to purchasing it and the sample turned me WAY off to the lessons. i'm hoping someone reading this will tell me that it's nothing like the sample and it was just a bad example and the curriculum is excellent because like i said, i really wanted to like it!! :)

Unknown said...

April, I so love your blog. Thanks for posting. And congrats on the new life developing!

Jim and Amy Rennie said...

Amelie loves to climb too, and also yells in indignation if we don't let her . . .yikes! ;)

Amalee Issa said...

Has anything syphilliticly dropped off yet, April?

Amalee, sniggering