Saturday and Memories

Lately I have been thinking about how to spend the holidays. I LOVE this time of year and want to spend every day immersed in the holiday spirit. However, I will talk about this more in a future post. Thinking about making memories led me to read some of my old journals and I wanted to share some of what I wrote here. I think my parents will get a kick out of reading it. I left out the more serious and inappropriate stuff lol. Still excuse some of the language. I was anywhere from 17 to maybe 22 years old.

First of all, here are some pictures from Saturday. Naia had her end of season softball tournament and we visited with my mom. The weather has been cold!

Ade had to work on Saturday, but I still got all of the kids out to the field by 8:00 am! I thought about skipping a few times.

 Naia was very excited to get her very own medal after seeing Eaden get so many in gymnastics.

 Naia's team lost the first two games in their tournament (yes!) so we went to visit Grandma.

The kids found a frog smushed under a log.

 They collected grubs, worms, and slugs.

 Played nerf gun war.

Mirek is attempting to walk on the "bridge."

 This picture is from today, but I'm unloading the camera so here it is. In the 30's!

 And a few excerpts from my journals.

I was going to try to put them in order, but it is proving too time consuming.

This is from a journal I kept while visiting Banff in Alberta. I went there for a hockey camp when I was 17.

This is from my countdown to Alaska journal. I was about to move to Alaska without ever having been there before. I thought this was funny because of what I wrote about my mom.

In Alaska.

 

9-11 happened while I was living in Alaska.

After moving back to Texas, I saved up to take a backpacking trip in Denali.

This next part is for my mom. Sorry it is a little blurry.

This is from when I went camping at Big Bend by myself.

Here is a bit from my journal when I was working at the cannery in Homer. I was staying with a friend and working crazy hours. Pretty much from 6am until whenever we got off. Lots of overtime and a ton of entertaining characters!

Keep diaries! They are so fun to read later on.

A Typical Day

We had a pretty typical day today.

We usually start with folders where the kids write the day and track the weather. They also put a sticker on a chart for each day we meet. We used to do daily math but it got too repetitive.

Sometimes we skip folders and work on writing/memorizing poems or do some other activity.

Today I added a little creative writing. I thought it was very clever for the girls to connect their stories. This activity came with some pre-writing as well (not shown).

 Writing = hunger.

 On Fridays, the girls always want to do spelling first because it is test day. So exciting right?

 On other days we do math first because it takes the longest.

 Friday is a science day so we learned about turtles.

 Phonics and reading were last today. We did a couple of phonics lessons and then reading. The girls are making their way through Robinson Crusoe.

Today we homeschooled from about 9:30 am to 2:00 pm. There are long breaks in between each subject. Lately, during "free time," the kids play with walkie talkies or play hide and seek. There is always music and dancing as well.

In other news, Naia has started reading! She was never interested in reading much so I was pretty surprised. I was resting on my bed reading Game of Thrones one night last week (rare moment) when Naia walked in and asked to "do reading." We completed a little of her Horizons workbook and the reading just clicked. Then she picked up a Bob Book and read it too! This is one of the most awesome aspects of homeschooling. Waiting until a kid is ready and then watching everything just come together is the best. Amazing!