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a new school year: our routine.
We’re 30 days or so into the school year, and this fall semester is always the best part of the year. We’ve found our daily routine, the weather’s turning cooler, and we have all the fun holidays to look forward to. I haven’t taken time to list our curriculum in a few years, so I thought I’d do it now. Since this post ended up getting long, I’ll post the curriculum list separately for easy reference. Curriculum changes So far, this is the year I’m happiest with all our choices, and I can tell because I actually look forward to helping the kids with their subjects each day. Every year…
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2020-21 school year: curriculum.
You may notice that I don’t include Bible as a school subject, although we do Scripture memory together. The two older kids read their Bible each morning; David assigns different books and they meet from time to time to discuss their readings with him. We are starting this new edition of Pilgrim’s Progress together as a family in the evenings. The Curriculum List Judah: 7th grade Math: Saxon 87/PreAlgebra (DIVE lessons online) Grammar: Analytical Grammar Writing: Lost Tools of Writing, Level 1 (Classical Village) Literature: Memoria Press’ literature selections: The Bronze Bow, Treasure Island, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, To Kill A Mockingbird, Shakespeare’s As You Like It (CV)…
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myrtle beach, 2020.
Thanks to some friends at church, we got a lovely, week-long lake vacation back in May. Typically we take our family vacation in September, so David and I decided to do a shortened version this year. May was only four months ago, but we were exhausted and in need of some rest. Our Classical Village co-op, meets Tuesdays and Wednesdays, so we planned a Myrtle Beach trip from Wednesday afternoon to Monday. From the very beginning this vacation was less-than-ideal. About an hour into the car trip, I realized I forgot the neatly packed bag with my Bible, journal, and books to prep for teaching when we got…
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running and river-ing.
This summer was the summer of running together and exploring the river together. Both of these activities are now firmly entrenched in the culture of our family, and I have David to thank for it. I love family time. But my idea of meaningful family time is endless games of Farkle and Yahtzee at the dining room table, a good read-aloud, or movie night. David’s idea of meaningful family time, on the other hand, is adventure, adventure, adventure. It’s getting outside, being active, pushing ourselves to try new things and discover new places. This has created some tension in our marriage over the years when it comes to how we…
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a new school year: classical village.
We’re two weeks into our new school year, and thus far, it’s been a much smoother start than last fall. If you remember, last year at this time, we were still neck-deep in our kitchen renovation, and I despaired of ever having a quiet, clean house again, much less starting school. This month feels delightfully quiet in comparison. We’re still homeschooling, but we’ve made a few changes to our routine and curriculum, which I’ll tell you about. First of all, like I mentioned in an earlier post, we’re no longer apart of Classical Conversations. It served us well for many years, but when it was time to quit, I knew…
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bookshelves & the evolution of our living room.
Well the living room is officially finished. The most finished it’s been in 7 years. But before I show you, let’s take a little trip down memory lane, shall we? 2013 We bought our house in July 2013. We bought it as a house we liked, not loved. It was one we could afford. And it had good bones. We bought it with a vision of growing it into a house that suited our family exactly. When we first saw the far wall of our long, spacious living room, we thought, That’s a great spot for built-in bookcases! They were fresh on our mind, because we had built-ins in…
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june 2020.
We kicked off June with a road trip to Florida to meet my family at the beach. But before we left, important decisions needed to be made. My anniversary gift from David was living room bookshelves, which is something I’ve wanted for the seven years we’ve owned our home. But as we took a good long look at the living room, we realized that it could use a new coat of paint. This turned into, more or less, a total living room update. Cue hours spent on Pinterest, trying to find the perfect paint color. I settled on two favorites: Sherwin Williams Anew Gray (left) and Agreeable Gray (right). I…
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may, 2020.
Hi there blog readers, if there are any of you left by now! I don’t blame you if there aren’t, I’ve been a fair-weather friend. Since I have some serious catching up to do, I’ve decided to do it by month. Here goes the end of May: 16-year anniversary Very few restaurants were open for our anniversary on May 22, so David and I decided to celebrate with an at-home date. We shopped together at Whole Foods for ingredients for a fancy dinner: a cheese board, filet mignon with roasted potatoes and salad, and a sampling of dessert from the bakery case. It was delicious, and very relaxing to…
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a little back porch update.
Hi there friends! After reclaiming our porch from Pip the squirrel (who’s still happily living in our backyard), and getting to add a couple of fun touches for my Mother’s Day gifts, I decided to take some pictures. David and I realized the one of our favorite features of having a blog is documenting the way our house evolves over the years. If I waited for each room to feel completely finished before posting pictures, we wouldn’t have any! So here’s our porch at the end of spring, 2020. Several of you have asked about our furniture. It’s the IKEA SOLLERON series, here’s the link to the loveseat,…
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a week at the lake.
We’re happy to announce that CPC plans to resume in-person worship services at the end of this month. So before work picks back up for David, our friends gave us the gift of six nights at their lake house in Chapin. It truly couldn’t have been a more perfect week, and it’s hard to beat a vacation that’s just 40 minutes away. David drove back to Columbia mid-week to get a few things done, and he could bring back the things we’d forgotten at home! We’ve never taken a lake vacation before, but decided we might like it even more than the beach, simply because we could all come…
