School, life, and other things!

As many people know, we have been enjoying the Christian school this year!  As a teacher, I have been loving the hands on projects, the amazing opportunity to teach the kids, and of course, learning and applying new styles and methods of teaching for each student.  It has given me the opportunity to grow and mature in many areas, as well as see my children in a "typical" school environment.

This last month, Sam and Elijah BOTH won the reading contest at school, which earned them a gift card to Barnes and Noble.  They read 1,000 and 5,000 pages worth of books over the course of 4 weeks.  They worked so hard on this and I am very proud of their hard work and efforts!  They also participated in the school speech contest.  Even though neither of them placed, they both did a great job!!  They are building up their confidence of speaking in front of others, using good expression and strong speaking voices.  As the school year is quickly coming to a close, I am very thankful for the opportunity we have had to be in the school for this year.

Sam loves learning from life of Fred to and from school every day!  HIs dream is to be a great mathematician and artist.

Learning how caterpillars form into butterflies

Now, as many people also know, mine and my husbands health has been a big battle for us this year.  Due to my working full time and being out of the home, it put a tremendous stress on John's health, and mine as well.  Because of our health decline, and other factors, we are going back to homeschooling next year.  We are very excited to go back to being home as a family, and working one on one with our children again!  Even though we appreciated the private school this year, we discovered it was overall not a good fit for our family and our different challenges we face. 

I am looking forward to starting over again this summer/fall and go back to our many adventures as a family with school, home, and life!

Our new house!

Hi everyone!  It's been a little while since I had a big update.  We have been FULL of changes this last couple months. 

Something big I have learned lately is SLOW down, and wait!  I tend to say "yes" to everything and stress out easily, but in the process of this move I have learned to say "no" when I need to, and go at a pace that my family needs.  I no longer feel the guilt of not being enough or doing enough for my family.  I quit needing to compare to everyone else, and just fully love and enjoy my family and what our needs are.  We are a very unique situation and very special family with it's own set of needs and challenges.  Even though I tend to want "it all", I've learned to focus on what MY family needs and not stress the other stuff.

The house we initially planned to build fell through with lots of delays (from the construction crew) and we ended up finding the PERFECT home for our family just a few miles from our previous home.  The adjustment and in between selling and buying was only mildly stressful and the kids were troopers during it! 

Our new home is our dream home for our family!  It was 100% renovated with everything brand new and it had enough bedrooms and rooms that we can never outgrow it.  We were able to buy all new furniture for the house, so it feels amazing to be in a new and fresh home!!

I truly hate the moving process, but with the help of friends and family we were able to move, unpack, and decorate all in two days.  We never could have done it alone and am forever thankful for our amazing friends!  Although this has been a trying time for our health overall, I am very thankful for the new house and for the fact we never have to do this again (at least for the foreseeable future). 

Everything about this home fell into place perfectly.  Even though we had lots of other plans, this ended up being what our family needed and has been an incredible blessing!

Here are some great pictures and glimpses of our new home :)