Thank You

Thank you for all of your sweet congratulations on our baby news! I was touched to see how excited you all were for us, and although I'm actually on a little quick getaway with my husband in beautiful Charlotte, I didn't want to forget to say thank you. I appreciate each of you for reading and taking the time to comment. Have a lovely Monday, and I'll be back once I'm home and unpacked!

Coming Soon(ish)!

I wish I had a really clever way to announce this, but I'm not coming up with anything other than to flat-out say, we're having a baby!

It still feels surreal, but we are actually, really, truly going to have another child.  After a nearly six-year hiatus, it feels like I'm pregnant for the first time again.  Except this time I'm a lot older :)

We don't have a single baby item--not clothing, furniture, toys, or anything!  But all these years I've always said we had an empty chair at the table that needed filled, and now we're going to fill it!  It's going to take a lot of work:  the Happy Room, our schoolroom, will become the boys' room, and the boys' room will be the baby's room, and the location of the new schoolroom is yet to be determined, although I do have a brilliant plan in the making that I'm still working on.  Come summertime, we'll be shuffling all the rooms and figuring it all out, and begging/borrowing all the necessary baby stuff from friends and family who've recently had babies.  By the fourth baby, you see that all the extra stuff just takes up space, and that there's not a whole lot you need.  It's the dark secret Babies 'R Us doesn't want you to know :)

For now, I'm sick as a dog.  This is the sickest I've ever been, and that's saying something, because I've always been really sick.  This time around, even the medicine I take isn't wiping out the nausea, and there are definitely moments when I wonder what on earth we've done . . . But the thought that we are really going to have another child--possibly a sister for Addie?--makes all the room-shuffling, item-borrowing, and nausea-feeling inconsequential.

I still can't believe it!

(This picture has nothing to do with this post, but I love Carl Larsson, and this camping scene is so fun.  It reminds me of growing up and camping with my family.)

I feel like my posts lately have been very disorganised and rambly--yes, I know disorganised is only spelled with an "s" in England, but the letter it's supposed to have isn't showing up on my computer for some reason.  Cra_y, huh?  (And inconvenient.  You don't know how often that letter is used until you can't use it!)

Back to rambling, see what I mean?  I used to write nice transitions with good flow, but my brain is so scattered nowadays that I can't seem to find any flow.  Case in point:  today's to do list had only very simple things, like school lessons, laundry, groceries.  If you count playing board games as school, I can say I checked off one measly thing.  But only barely.  I don't have a good reason; I'm just very unmotivated toward productivity lately.  This isn't good, but I'm moving like molasses and can't seem to speed up.  If you know me personally, you know this is odd and out of character, and I'm hoping I get a good burst of energy soon.  Until then, my writing is as disjointed as I am.

The point of this post--really, there is one!--is to answer some questions you've left me in the comments recently.  I've had two different people ask about where I find our book lists for each grade of school.  I use Lindafay's suggestions found in her free curriculum.  They are generally the same as Ambleside's, except that American history is studied before British history.  And I make one notable change--Lindafay has first grade begin "This Country of Ours," but I start it in the second half of second grade and just do more each week to finish by the end of third grade.  I'll probably start it in third for Grayson, so that Addie, who will be in second, can do it at the same time.  Two birds with one stone.  Caiden is in fourth grade, so this is our fifth year of a Charlotte Mason/Wholeheart education, and it works really well for us. It takes a lot of prep work, and I usually start making book lists and ordering books from Ama_on (pesky keyboard!) in early April, so that I'm ready.  This year I'm reading all of Caiden's books, so I'm starting a little earlier.  But for a book lover, that's not a chore!  I love "having" to buy books!

Another question, a frequent one, is for book suggestions.  I use several books for ideas for our own family:  Sarah Clarkson's "Read for the Heart" is my favorite, and "Honey for a Child's Heart," "Who Then Shall We Read," and "Books Children Love."  If a book is new, I read it before I let any of my kids read it, but generally very old books are pretty safe reading.  (Another benefit of old books is that they're usually free online or on my Kindle.)  Caiden loves G.A. Henty historical novels, as well as the entire "Redwall" series, which he has read multiple times.  Actually, Caiden loves any book I give him.  His favorite, beside "The Chronicles of Narnia," is historical fiction.  Sonlight has a good selection of books for each grade that I use as free reading for Caiden.  This year he read tons of books on both World Wars; here are some of them:

• Swift Rivers
• The Winged Watchman
• The Endless Steppe
• Snow Treasure
• Escape from Warsaw
• When Hitler Stole Pink Rabbit
• Enemy Brothers

I buy most of our books from Ama_on with its Prime free shipping, and I am thankful for several sets of built-in bookshelves in our house!  Another series we just discovered is "The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place."  I read the first two before handing them over, but they are very funny and very clean.  I always love finding a new series for the kids!  These are pretty short and easy reads; that's my problem with Caiden.  He reads so well and so fast that he needs difficult reading or else he finishes way too quickly.  Henty's books are great for that--they are meaty and full of harder vocabulary, so he can't race through them.  Edith Nesbit also has great stories, like "The Railway Children" and several lesser known ones.  I think Caiden has read all of her books in print, and he says they're all fantastic.  He also loves Eli_abeth Enright, Jean Craighead George, and Eleanor Estes.  "Viking Tales" was another early favorite, and it's the book that got him really hooked on reading back in the first or second grade.  Honestly, he has read pretty much every book and author that he can read at 10 years old.  His reading level is college, but of course he can't read books meant for college students, so he often re-reads old favorites.  I print out our book lists several years in advance so that I know what not to let him read ahead of time.  Otherwise, we will very truly run out of books for him to read!  A wonderful problem, I know.

Right now I'm reading "Around the World in Eighty Days," for the first time.  He'll be reading it in fifth grade, so it's the first on my list.  I love Jules Verne but had never read it, and somehow thought it was about traveling the entire world over in a hot air balloon.  So far Phileas Fogg is more than halfway around, and no balloon to be seen.  It's quite different than I expected, and the vocabulary is ama_ing--words I've never even heard of, and I was an English major!  This should be a fun book to discuss with Caiden next fall.

So that's what's going on of a bookish nature at our house.  I hope that answers some questions, and as always, I'd love any great book suggestions you have, too!

Pardon My Progress

I'm not sure this is actually progress, but I'm changing up my blog's look, and it may look odd the next day or so as I figure it out.  Just in case you're wondering!

This morning I am, as I told my husband, getting my life together. He asked what, exactly, that entails, and I explained that it starts with making lots of lists. A list immediately makes me feel like things are getting together. (The hard part, we all know, is actually doing what's on the list.)  And he nicely asked what things in my life aren't together, which I thought very generous, since he had to ask for clean underwear this week.

So I'm upstairs, in the newly-tidied Happy Room, writing plans for meals, our overall schedule, what I want to accomplish in school lessons, and what extras need to be fit in, somehow.  I have water with a straw (my favorite), Andrew Peterson singing, and lots of looseleaf paper.  It really doesn't take much to make me happy!  Actually, it just being a sunny Saturday makes me happy, so everything else is a bonus.

I started reading "Around the World in Eighty Days" last night.  It's on Caiden's 5th grade reading plan, and while I love Jules Verne, I've never read this one. My goal is to read all the books on his list, even the ones I'd read years ago (Island of the Blue Dolphins, yay!) and take notes on what I want to remember to discuss with him when he reads them in the fall.   The list is immense, and I have no idea how I'm going to read them all and still do the laundry and feed my family!  But it's a goal I'm excited about reaching.

In non-school related reading, I finished "Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet" yesterday, about a friendship between a Chinese boy and Japanese girl in Seattle during WWII.  I love historical fiction--it helps fill in gaps I have from having had history teachers who were football coaches first and teachers second (We actually watched deer hunting videos in class when my freshman history teacher, the varsity head coach, was out.  That's what he planned for his sub!!  Good grief, it's no wonder I don't know anything about history!)  Anyway, the book is a really sweet read.

I keep waking up in the middle of the night and am currently occupying myself by redecorating our little guest house in my mind.  It works wonders for falling back asleep, and I think I've come up with a great plan. I have to convince my husband to move my treadmill to the back porch, and give away both the old big screen TV and our little loveseat so I can move in different furniture, but I think if I can cast enough vision, he'll agree.  We've never decorated the space at all, and in my mind it's going to look really pretty and welcoming when it's done!  Decorating the guest house is all part of a bigger plan, but I'm not ready to reveal all that just yet.  More thinking and planning first . . .

Texas is proving to be her typical warm, sunny self this winter, and my beds are filled with blooming daffodils.  Whoever planted them years ago loved them, and they are planted abundantly along our entire driveway bed, which goes for about 100 feet.  They're so cheery and beautiful in the winter, and they make me want to get out there and weed!  (You know you live in Texas when the weeds grow in the winter!)  Somehow, I'm going to fit in weeding this weekend.  I know that sounds ironic--weekends are supposed to be relaxed and slow.  But I'm married to a pastor, and our church has services both Saturday evening and Sunday, so my weekends are full!  Caiden is in winter basketball, with a few more weeks to go, and his games are on Saturday, too.  So it's hard to add extra things to an already-full weekend.)

Here are a few random pictures of what we've been doing this winter:

Climbing trees,

reading, reading, reading, (Where are Grayson's covers?  Probably in a fort somewhere.)

learning and building and creating and playing together,

teaching our kindergartener to read!

and, insanely, starting a quilt.

I saw this quilt and loved the vintage, scrappy look of it.  That's my favorite kind of quilt--one that looks like Grandma made it out of her old dresses and housecoats, with no planned color scheme.  It's hand-appliqued and paper pieced, so each of those squares is hand-sewn before being machine pieced together.  It's going to take 252 of those little squares, which felt impossible when I started.  But I just work on sewing them at night when Chris and I watch TV together, and I already have two of the nine rows finished.  I already love it.  If you look, you'll see the four-piece blocks form a circle, but when the blocks are set next to each other, they also form Xs, see?  So Grayson and I decided to call it the Love Quilt, since it's made up of Xs and Os!  It's insane to think of making a hand-sewn quilt right now, when I'm having a hard time keeping up with the laundry, but making beautiful things keeps my soul happy.

So that's what's going on around here lately.  Reading, playing, learning, going, doing, making.  My favorite things!  Now back to making lists . . .

Somehow, impossibly, it's already February.  I am still stuck in the post-Christmas haze, not quite able to find my pre-holiday productivity.  (To be honest, the tree and house lights didn't come down until January 26th, which says two things:  we were those people this year, and now you see why I'm still feeling post-Christmas.)  I don't actually know why the tree was up that long, except that it was.  I consider it making up for all the other years where it was down before New Year's.

I'm typing up in our homeschool room, dubbed "The Happy Room," and it sure looks happy tonight.  Addie's scissors fetish has resulted in nine million tiny scraps of paper all over the floor, along with stickers (another fetish), staplers, markers, pencils, and mirrors.  Not sure how the mirrors play into crafts, though.  No, wait, I do:  this room mirrors the state of things here lately.  My meal planning has tanked, along with my great intentions to work on our 2012 taxes each month, instead of all the night before the yearly tax appointment.  The good news is that I'm only one month behind.  The bad news is that I'll probably be two months behind in a few weeks.

I keep cleaning out the minivan, and it keeps looking like a bomb made up of shoes and water bottles and Legos has exploded in it.  The pets keep showing up with empty food bowls, and my library keeps emailing me that the books are overdue.  I'm not running on very many cylinders lately, clearly, except that I'm not just lying around watching three-hour marathons of "Anne of Green Gables."  (Except for Saturday.  I did, and it was awesome.)  I'm actually working like crazy to get caught up, but I'm somehow falling behind more every day.  Laundry piles up.  The dishwasher is always full.  The milk keeps running low.  And bedtime comes every night, and I fall into my bed and burrow under my covers and wish one more time that I had trouble falling asleep, so I could at least enjoy lying in my bed for more than 10 seconds before I've woken up and it's the next morning.  I'm pretty sure I haven't had trouble falling asleep in, well, never.  It's a good problem, but I think it also means I've been tired a really long time.

We went to the lake to see my parents this week, and I casually picked up a binder off the coffee table.  It's new this visit, and had a picture of Caiden wearing gloves I'd knit him, twirling in the snow, so of course I was curious.  Inside were our family Christmas letters, dating back to 1985 when I was 9, and the letters were typed on actual typewriters.  Most years' letters were there, and almost every one made me laugh.  My mom is a pro at writing a Christmas letter you'd actually like to receive--no brag letters:  none of us were geniuses, we didn't go on expensive vacations, and our life was nice and regular.  Instead were honest, funny, down-to-earth descriptions of our family that year, mailed to friends and family we'd left behind over our many moves.  My favorite one is the first letter, where my mom actually wrote these words:  "... and Danny is still quite the experience."  Danny is my little brother, and he was a tornado when he was two, and it made me insanely happy as the older sister to read those words.  I can't believe Mom actually included that in our Christmas letter, but I'm so glad she did.

Flipping through page after page, I re-read our family's history.  I started out 9, then all of a sudden was in high school, then a newlywed, then bringing home babies.  The signatures on the letters started out with all five of us and have whittled down to just two now, Mom and Dad.  It's a little surreal to see us kids grow up so fast, in a couple decades' worth of letters, and then explode our original family size with spouses and children of our own.  What started out as five has tripled, and family gatherings are really loud.  Shoot, it's really loud just when my three kids and I show up at my parents' house!  (Ask my dad; he's still recovering tonight.)

All of this Christmas card nostalgia has a point, though.  I remember those years growing up.  Three kids, multiple pets, a busy dad, a mom who juggled all of us.  We had such a fun childhood, ate meals together around the table, traveled in a minivan cross-country together so many times.  I'm sure there were messes, unplanned "breakfast for dinner because I forgot to plan dinner" nights, irritating pets, projects that never got finished.  But I don't remember any of that.  And not just because I wasn't the mom and wasn't responsible for all of us.  I don't remember any of it because that's the stuff that just doesn't matter in the long run.  Those details never made it into the Christmas letter because laundry and meals and messes are part of life with family, but they're not the important parts.  The important parts are the four people I live with.  If the Happy Room is a wreck, they don't really care.  If they don't have clean underwear, they don't really care.  (Especially the boys.)  And they love pancakes for breakfast.

What they do care about is having a fun, full, ordinary, exciting life in this house with the four people each of them loves the best.  That's what matters.  That's what makes it into the Christmas letter.  And that's why, when I crash into bed yet again tonight, I'll have made sure I tucked each one in with a smile, and the mess on the Happy Room floor can wait another day.

And I'm already drafting my first annual Christmas letter.