On the sixth day…

I think it’s time I fess up.  There are some absolute truths about me that I feel I need to confess/express/whathaveyou.

1) I will never be a Pinterest mom.  I try to avoid even looking at Pinterest unless I have to.

2) I’m not really organized.  Actually, I’m not organized.  I CAN be and I LIKE to be, but it doesn’t happen often.

3) I live in a house with 7 other people and a dog.  This house was maybe built for 4 people and no dog.  We make it work, but it isn’t always pretty.

4) I can be fun.  We joke and laugh and have crazy amounts of fun here.  I’ve found fun tends to equal loud and messy with my crew, but not always.

5) I don’t blog as much as I’d like.  I like having this as a journal of sorts for our family but I just don’t do it often enough.  Sometimes it’s because I’m lazy but most of the time it’s because we’re doing and I’m trying harder to do more and document less.  Memories are great, but we forget so much.  I like the document part.  It’s a balance and I’m still working to find mine.

Now, on to the subject of this particular post.  School.  If this is your first time visiting my blog, we are a homeschooling family.  Homeschool can mean different things to different people.  So, what you read here isn’t what you will see in every homeschool.  It’s pretty much us though.

Andrew is off on Labor Day.  We’re not usually doing much on Labor Day and it typically tends to be a good day for us to get back into the swing of things and kick off the new school year.  We school year round and take breaks where we need them or where they fit, but the last few weeks of summer are usually busy, so I try to make sure we get in fun days during that time…especially after the public school kids go back to school.  Parks are less crowded, etc.  I love “less crowded” almost as much as I like “free”.

Our first day of school routine is pretty laid back.  I have some things that we do every year and then compare to the previous years.  It’s fun and makes school a little less intimidating to the younger ones.   We missed doing our routine last year because we ended up going on vacation and throwing all of my schedule out of whack.   This is what back-to-school looked like two years ago:  Part 1   Part 2  Part 3  You will notice as you get further into this post though…today was not our first day of school.  The kids were excited and actually asking to get going last week, so today was our SIXTH day of school.  So, I was honest and that’s what you see on their pictures.  I’m not above re-lighting birthday candles to make them try to blow them out again so I can get a picture, but I won’t tell you today was our first day of school…and their giggles when they saw their printout sheets this morning made it all worth it.

I can hear my mom saying “are you going to post pictures yet, Michele?” So…without any further rambling.

Back-to-school Breakfast!  (prepared by Dad…and that tradition to be explained later)

 

Christopher, stop leaning when I take the picture.  It makes your head look HUGE!

“But I like it!  It makes me look like a Bobble-head!”

See what I live with?

MMMMMMMMm, M&M pancakes!

Okay, quick background on breakfast.  A few years ago, Andrew made the kids chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast.  Because we double and triple recipes around here, he asked me how many chocolate chips to use and I said “I’d probably use the bag.”  I said that because I buy the 1 1/2 to 2 cups bag of chocolate chips.  Andrew bought a 3 lb bag of chocolate chips.  You can see where this is going, right?  Needless to say, he won MAJOR favorite dad ever points that day and now “Daddy’s famous chocolate breakfast” is our official breakfast on the first day of school.  He can tell you an entirely different version of this story, but that’s really what happened.  😉

One of the first things I do after breakfast is pictures.  This is where the balance between doing and documenting comes into play.  My son asked this morning “what’s important about pictures?” and I gasped.  I don’t care if anyone ever sees the gazillion pictures I have or not, but I feel the need to take them.  I’m probably afraid I’m going to miss something.  More than that though, I’m afraid I’ll forget it.  I never want to forget any minute of this precious life I’ve been given and I want to cherish as many of the memories as I can hold on to.  Seeing how the kids grow and change and develop and their personalities form is not only an awful sentence, but it is one of the most precious things in this world to me and I love it more than I can express.  So…I take pictures.  Got it, son?  I think he does now. ha!

So…here are the 2014-2015 students of Mountaineer Heritage Academy.

Christopher – Age 13

Erin – Age 11

Sean – Age 9

Kelsie – Age 6

Michaela – Age 4 (one month shy of 5)

Liam – Age 3

Getting their stair-step picture this year was tough.  You can see we had to improvise on backdrop help.

“You can drop the sheet now.”

I love how Sean and Kelsie just kept right on smilin’ for the camera!

and this last one is probably my favorite one of the day…I love those smiles!