Magic Moments

Sage is six and it's hard for me to believe that this is the year he was supposed to go to kindergarten. He's grown up so much this year and learned so many new things. He surprises me almost everyday. Friday night was the talent show for our homeschool coop. Sage and Tom worked on the song No Longer Slaves and played it together on stage. Sage was nervous, but he did great and at the end said he thought it was really fun to be on stage. I hope we have opportunities  in the future for him to play on stage so he can share his talent and grow his confidence. I LOVE hearing he and Tom play together but maybe next time Sage will be confident enough to do it himself.  This is just the beginning for Sage and his guitar. Sage idolizes his teacher and I hear daily about the electric guitar he wants to have just like his teacher. Sage has surprised us this year with his more serious interest and effort in soccer. Aiden has taught him some things and you can see Sage on the field tryi...

Aiden turned ten and I feel like my life flashed before my eyes. I'm just not sure how a decade passed by so quickly. I also can't believe I have such an amazing son. Aiden is my dependable, steady and consistent child. He isn't moody, his interests and likes don't change. He's predictable and even though he still has a need to MOVE, he's pretty chill and easy going most of the time. I don't know what I would do without his help. He entertains Cade, is Sage's best friend, and helps with anything from dishes to carrying in groceries to mowing the lawn to cleaning bathrooms. He is so perceptive and will often say, "Mama, do you need help? You seem stressed." He is a justice seeker and needs people to do the right thing He's developing some great critical thinking skills and LOVES to read, LOVES animals and likes history and science. Soccer is his passion and his skills have developed so much this past year. He's gotten a bit of a competit...

Sometimes I think the art of motherhood lies in how well you keep the massive amount of toys confined, organized and picked up. It takes the mind of an engineer some days because I hate the mess, I hate it when the toys are unorganized and I refuse to have toys over every inch of my house. That being said, Cade has outgrown some of his toys and those have all found a new home at my sister's house. I have a few toddler type toys still on the shelf mostly because they were toys that required a skill I wasn't sure if Cade had mastered yet, and since I'm kind of a perfectionist about some things I wanted to make sure Cade had actually mastered them before getting rid of them. I pulled out the classic Fisher Price shape sorter the other day...a toy he NEVER chooses on his own, to see if he could do it so maybe I could get rid of a few more toys. Even though this toy seems to be a classic toy people give babies and young toddlers it requires some higher order skills. Anyway, Cad...

A couple weeks ago a Christian school in the area hosted the Scholastic Book Fair and invited families. During my elementary years book fairs were just about my favorite thing so I talked up the experience to the boys we got in the car with high hopes. I'm going to be honest, the book fair was a disappointment and wasn't worth the thirty minute drive. I thought book fairs came with stellar prices. But this was like shopping at Barnes and Noble. I don't shop at Barnes and Noble often because with the number of  books I purchase I just can't. Thriftbooks.com has become my new best friend and with shipping free after you spend $10 you can't beat it. Sometimes I have to wait for a title to be instock, but overall I've been pleased with their selection. Anyway, aside from the prices the shelves were stocked full of pop fiction and less than quality titles. The boys did each choose a book, mostly because I felt weird walking out without making a purchase, and then we ...

It felt like Easter came up on us quickly this year. We had bigger and better plans than just being home but our plans sadly fell through. Then we made back up/ last minute plans but then the two littlest boys got sick. So....we stayed home. Staying home for Easter is what we did last year and last year we vowed we would never stay home again. Then this year happened. And on the way home from church Tom and I renewed our vow. Never would we stay home again for Easter. But....we tried to make the best of it. I dropped the ball during holy week and we didn't accomplish all I had hoped. We did our resurrection eggs, we read some new Easter stories and then on Saturday night we had a very last minute and chaotic Passover dinner and we dyed our Easter Eggs and we laid our Easter baskets out for the bunny. We never got around to making resurrection rolls because I couldn't come up with a last minute gluten free option for my gluten free boy. So....Easter was hodge podge and maybe not...

We're only six hours from Washington, D.C. I've been considering the idea of taking the boys for quite awhile. Initially, I only wanted to drive into Mt. Vernon and take them to Homeschool Days at George Washington's planation. Last year I didn't go because Cade was so little and it sounded too overwhelming to do by myself. This year I just couldn't pass it up. Tom was able to take a day off work and we went for a long, but really jam packed weekend. I have thought the boys were really too young to do the whole D.C. tour. It's so much walking and I figured they'd appreciate it more when they were older. But, I didn't want to drive six hours and just do one thing so we committed to hitting the high points in D.C. We studied all about what we would see before we left so the boys would have an idea of the significance of what they were going to see. We arrived Sunday and toured the Spy Museum. The boys had a challenge as they went through the museum in ...