First Day of School

Today was our first day of homeschool for this year. I've been preparing for a while now. Praise the Lord the kids were excited:) might have had something to do with me getting them presents for the first day and new snacks...hmm. What a blessing that I am able to stay home with my kids and have this option of homeschooling. I am SO thankful for this time with them and getting to see how they learn and help them as they struggle. And struggle they have. I haven't been very into writing about our homeschooling journey, or much else, in a few years. I realize that when you only post pictures you don't give a very accurate view of your life. A lot of times people see the smiles and think your life is perfect. It's not, we are blessed and love our life, but most people who know us know its not perfect and our kids are not perfect. Blogging and instagram can leave such a different view of peoples lives. All that to say, I've enjoyed being my kids teachers and its also been hard. They are not way above grade level like many homeschooled kids are, or teacher's kids are. They are perfectly "normal" with challenges in learning of their own. We are excited about our curriculum this year (last year we didn't actually DO any certain curriculum). Today was our first day, and only one child had a spanking...I call that success! It was a good day, fun and challenging and worth every minute. We were done in a little under 2 hours, and they even had time to put on a "Christmas show" for me. Before school stared we took pictures of the kids. My parents had just left to head back to Dallas since they had been in town for the weekend. Last week I called a friend who has been homeschooling for a while and I admire, she came over and poured some wisdom into me! What a blessing and something all mamas need. My three goals for the year are: Consistency, Discovery, Simplicity Our verse for the year is: Galatians 5:22 The Fruit of the Spirit is Love, Joy, Peace, Patience, Kindness, Goodness, Faithfulness, Gentleness, and Self Control. We are not doing any more chore charts, but simply "zone cleaning". They each have a zone (room) that is theirs for a month and each afternoon we do zone time to clean up their areas. simple. and great if you have lots of kids:) In other news we are off to the UPS store to send off our i800A (immigration) application for the adoption, finally!!! This will still take around 60 more days, but so glad to get this going.