Thanksgiving weekend: the fun, the food, the friends, the flu!

Hey everyone!

We had a pretty great Thanksgiving this year!!  We ended up having a few families over, which ended up a fun, friend-filled Thanksgiving.  The kids helped make the sides thanks to our Raddish Kids cooking course, which included an apple pie, home style potatoes, and stuffin muffins!!  The dads got the Turkeys cooked, so the whole family got involved with cooking this holiday.

This was the first Thanksgiving we did at OUR house this year because we normally go out of state to visit my husband's family.  Doing it at home was much more relaxing, and having a house full of friends and family was so much fun.  My parents, and college brother were able to make it, and at the end of the day we were filled up on Turkey, fun, card games, trampolines, football, and pie!

ALSO my exciting part for the pie was I found a RHUBARB pie!!!  This is a pretty big deal for me because every year I have to track one down, and they are hard to find in the south.  Suffice it to say, I definitely converted a couple of Southerners to the amazingness of Rhubarb-strawberry pie!

Thanksgiving evening, my husband took me out for our first Black Friday shopping!  Normally we don't do this (due to crowds and craziness) but we had a list planned out and everything on it was on sale!!  Took us 35 minutes to get all our Christmas shopping for everyone done, and saved hundreds of dollars, so I say it was well worth it.

Black Friday we got to actually do NOTHING, except watch movies, listen to Christmas music, and decorate the tree.  I cannot remember the last time we had a movies and pajama day, so we all enjoyed that long break after a busy holiday.

Saturday and Sunday our house finally got hit with the stomach bug.  We were the ninth family we knew around us to get it, so I'm glad it came and went quickly.  Little bit of homemade soup, lots of Zeal and lots of essential oils knocked it out fast!  Bonus for us was Mira and I dodged the stomach bug, so I am thankful for that, and I was able to take care of everyone else.  Zealed up a lot and kept my immune system going.

Homeschooling has been great!!  Normally I take the month of December off of "regular" school, but this year our PreK has a Christmas unit, as well as our 2nd grade.  This has been allowing us to focus on Christmas, but not lose track of our school year.  I LOVE that the kids work so well together!!  When the 2 year old decides to join in on 2nd grade, they include him and help him with his things.  The kids ALL got to do a fun painting project all at their different levels, but it kept things together.  I cannot say enough great things about our curriculum (My Father's World) because it allows me to combine so many subjects like Science, Bible, and History for my groups.  While the older kids to handwriting, the younger ones to sign language, and we keep everyone learning and involved all day long!  We had several days where our Kindergartner thought he hadn't done school yet that day, because he was having too much fun with our learning projects and he didn't realize it was all part of our school curriculum.  Having a hands on curriculum that is very flexible makes my prep work easy, which is very necessary for homeschooling six children all at different ages and levels!  We also have been incorporating Nest videos and we love it!!  They have history and Bible that is very accurate and well done.  Bonus for us is each video has quizzes, and other educational features, so these make GREAT reviews after a week of learning!

Fitness for me is hard!  I hate working out, and I struggle to be accountable to a workout schedule.  Last month I joined Camp Gladiator and it has been great!!!  I keep involved with other moms, and our coach does nothing but motivate and encourage us!  I have so much fun and I'm pushing myself harder than I would otherwise.  My husband got me a FitBit over the Black Friday sales, and that has been wonderful for keeping me motivated as well!  It lets me set personal goals, and keeps me accountable to it as well. I started adding walks with the dogs and other small things, where I would normally just crash at the end of the day to watch Netflix.  I love feeling productive and in shape, I just need that small push to keep me focused.

I hope everyone had a phenomenal Thanksgiving weekend!!  There is so much more I could say, but I will just leave it at that for now.

Grocery Shopping with Kids!

So, we have those magical weeks where I can shop alone, or have my husband or mom get groceries for me, and then we have reality where kids come to the store with us!

To make things more interesting and to have them learn more, we have turned this into an educational experience!!  We started using Raddish Kids (www.raddishkids.com) for cooking class, which has been great for teaching them about shopping, planning, recipes, preparation, and food safety!  This is good for teaching them how to be responsible for their own list while I work on my big list.  They also learn how to compare prices, brands, and get coupons to help us save money.

This is at times challenging and definitely takes more time, but it is a good opportunity for them to learn that our food is not free (as some kids think it is) and that we have to plan and prepare to have good healthy meals.  It has also been useful for working on our listening skills, and following directions so they don't get lost in the store.  It can be easy for the kids (and me at times) to just want to buy junk food we don't need, so this helps us all stay healthier and keep accountable to what we NEED, not just what we want that week.  

This month our cooking class is Thanksgiving side dishes!  It's been exciting as we plan and talk about how to cook for a big event dinner for the holidays.  

Last bonus of this trip was that I found a rhubarb pie!!  This is the little piece of Northern tradition that I hold onto in this deeply Southern household.  It is nearly impossible for me to find and each year I find one of the few strawberry-rhubarb pies left.  I may have been a little too excited when I finally found it because quite a few people in the crowded store gave us funny looks, but hey, I found it!

Friday Fun Friendsgiving!

OK, so apparently there is this new thing called "Friendsgiving."  I personally have never heard of it, but I figure we like to do things with friends, and it's almost Thanksgiving, so why not??

To start with, our curriculum does NOT do school on Fridays.  This makes me have a day for catch up work, field trips, home school co-op, doctor appointments, or personal time off.  I love having a four day school week for this very reason!  We like to call our Friday's our "FUN DAYS" because we more often than not, do something fun with our friends that day.

Breakfast is kind of a big deal on Friday Fun days!  I like to mix it up with banana bread, or muffins, or something a little more fun than normal cereal, eggs, toast, etc.  Today I went with Banana Oatmeal Chocolate muffins!  I am a big advocate for finding a way to have chocolate in a semi healthy way.  Normally it's chocolate protein banana smoothies, or else adding it to my muffins like I did today.  After eating some amazing muffins and drinking Zeal, I was ready to go with an awesome Friday!!

Step one of today was getting caught up with some school work because we did field trips earlier this week and needed to catch up today.  I was so excited today to watch my preschoolers and PreK kids finally get what I was teaching them!!  They sang their songs great, did all their actions, listened to their stories, and did great with their pattern cards.  Ezekiel even was identifying his sizes and shapes correctly.  After two weeks of wondering "do these kids really get it??" today was so relieving to see it all click in and be applied. 

My mom (also an amazing teacher) did a great science project this morning.  The first graders are learning about flowers, plants, and all the parts of them, so we added everyone to the fun!  Life saver in homeschooling is to group things together as much as possible for subjects like Bible, Science, and History!  They disassembled, and labeled parts of flowers and learned a lot about wind (it's SO windy today!!) and weather as well!

After lunch I got kids laid down in front of our FIRST fire of the season!  We have really been enjoying this cool front that came in with fresh, crisp, fall air!  The boys slept by the fire, and I had a very impromptu lunch date with a friend.  

Now, I do have a very blessed luxury that most moms do not have, and that is having two other full time adults (my husband and mother) that help with school and house.  I am SO grateful for this, because it's the only way we get everything done.  I am not a miracle worker, so others that see only that do not see all the behind the scenes that happens.

Lunch date with the girls!!

Due to illness not all our friends could make it today, but we did have fun with the ones that could make it!   The kids thoroughly enjoyed turning themselves into pilgrims, making thankful trees, and then finishing it off with Charlie Brown Mayflower, and hot chocolate!

My favorite part of all these fun crafts is Oriental Trading Company!  They make easy to assemble, affordable crafts which are perfect for the ages that I'm working with.  Anything with stickers, fun colors, and fun themes is great in my book.  These fun friend days are much needed, and I'm very thankful for them.

The days get crazy, the kids get fussy, but at the end of it all STAY THANKFUL, stay happy, and never forget all the little things that make it all worth it!

Making the Zoo New!

So in order to condense my crazy life into one area here goes a blog!!



I truly do love what I do and the last few months have been a crazy adventure as we home-school 8 kids!  Yes, it can be daunting and stressful at times but I wouldn't trade it for anything.

Today was a day where we needed a break! Yes, that morning where it's not even 9:00 and mom is already tired and ready to pull her hair out, meanwhile all the children are hyper and unfocused! We have been busy all week but today as we started school I realized my focus was gone, as well as the kids.  This called for an impromptu Zoo Trip!  Now this gets boring at times when we go few times a month, so we switched things up today.


Somehow the small act of changing which direction we went through the zoo (going frontwards instead of backwards) completely changed the experience for the kids!  We were able to fully enjoy the fall air, watch the leaves changing, and experience a whole new season at the Zoo!  Many animals were awake today that normally are asleep in the summer mornings.



I loved seeing the excitement as different animals were awake today, and they didn't know what was next because we changed it up!  We learned a lot about each animal and they could not get enough of the "new" view. and focusing on animals we normally bypass easily.  At the end of our adventure the Zookeepers were doing an orangutan talk and we got to see the new expecting (pregnant) ape, as well as learn more about them!  The best part for the kids was seeing them up close and active, which we don't often see.

Today's lesson was make changes in the little things and take a breather when need be!  After we got home and did lunch it was amazing at how we were now ready to get our classes done!



By 3:00 I felt accomplished!  Now, the house was a mess but school was done, we got tons of fun stress less morning that we all needed!  Never be afraid to just run crazy and change it up for sanity sake.

Now as it's evening, we still managed to spend most of the day outside, learned new things, and did get things cleaned up!  Not perfect but nothing ever is with our crazy adventure!  What is perfect is a house of happy kids sitting quietly with us doing a fun movie after a successful day.