Been so long....

It's been so long since I have written anything. We have had a bit of a whirlwind past month. We went to visit Gramma Alice in MO and have just now finally gotten back into the groove around here. Besides having a loooooooong car ride and visit to the midwest, we also had Noah's birthday, and shortly after arriving home we had planning for Hanukkah. And know we are on to winter solstice celebration, Chris's birthday, and let's not forget Christmas, which, as much as I would like to avoid altogther, it's celebrated by everyone in our respective families so we will have a day of gifts and probably getting together with Grammy here as well.

So, a brief synopsis of how we have kept up with school over the past month (or so). When we were in MO we did nature studies, which was great because we were in a whole new area of the country, landscape was different, birds were different. Chris's mom has 40 acres and down the hill from her house is a stream which the kids (and their dad) spent a lot of time at, hunting arrowheads and beaver trails. We observed a great deal, winter setting in, squirrel nests and birds nests, collecting firewood, raking up leaf piles. The kids built a birdhouse with their dad. We read books, knitted, played piano and recorder, wrote poems and colored in the main lesson book.

Now that we are home we are on to Language Arts again, which is sort of melding in with nature studies and Solstice activities. And with Chanukkah we have read stories about the macabees, made hanukkiahs, colored pictures, main lesson activites, put on a play or two, learned a new song. We work on word families/spelling everyday. We are moving into winter, so our verses have been winter oriented. Today we made a Solstice spiral for the table and tonight when we lit chanukkah candles, we also lit the spiral which looked lovely, the whole table lit up.

My goals for he week are to spend more time with my kids just being. Taking walks and talking, rather than telling and explaining. I want relationship and relating/sharing.

Noah loved his birthdays, although he was a tired boy for both parties. He has become self-conscious and gets embarrassed at himself sometimes. Seems worse when he's tired, at which point the nervous/embarrassment turns to defensiveness and grumpy faces. We really need t be sure everyone gets a lot of sleep around here! For everyone except Eden River who just seems to always just prance around here with her rosy sunny personality at all hours of the long day!

I will make an entry every day, I pledge. Keeping focus helps me to be a better mother, and journaling our experiences helps me to know what I am doing right, wrong, what to change and how on track we are.