Blessed {& Highly Caffeinated}

This is repost of a blog I wrote last year. It gives a little overview of our "unschooling" and how we try to incorporate learning every day activities. Our "school days" are constantly changing and evolving and will take on a little more structure once we start back up this fall with our oldest beginning 1st grade. Painting by Charles Lucy "Sunshine Hours"    Isn't this picture lovely? This may or may not be how I envisioned our homeschooling days looking.  You know, back in my youth, whilst I sat and daydreamed of when "one day" came and I had my own precious brood of little darlings. I can still remember how my mind used to wander....   Classical music playing softly in the background. Teas at 3 o'clock every afternoon--with lovely teacups, of course. Happy little chit-chat with my girls.  "Please, Mommy, just one more chapter?"  "Mommy, may sister and I go play with our dollies now?" "...

Right up front I'm going to put a disclaimer: I do not have my life all together, nor do I pretend to. I am usually one step ahead of full-blown disaster, and the bulk of my life is lived flying by the seat of my skirt and a whole lot of wingin' it. I am not a naturally organized person, or a neat freak, or anything like that. I'm a creative, craftsy type, easily distracted with more projects going at once than should be legal. My house is loud, messy, cluttered most days. And we are getting started homeschooling. It's a madhouse around here.   I am pretty busy gal, but who isn't these days? With our three little people, my dress shop I am in the process of closing, homeschooling, our involvement with our church, all of the crafts and projects and new things I want to try, three loud mouthed beagles, our life is pretty chaotic. It's a happy crazy.   Growing up, my mom made things look so easy. She homeschooled what would eventually be 7 children, was active ...

It's been nearly two years since my first post here. In the busyness of a life filled with babies, my plans of blogging and writing more slipped through the cracks. (In a  war of sleeping vs. writing, for me, sleeping will always win.) But my life and the season of life I'm in is changing. So I'm hoping to resurrect a love for writing and sharing that has been buried and pushed to the back burner while I've tried to just survive the little years.  My oldest is now six and ready for first grade to hurry up and get here. The middle child is 4.5 and a neat freak living in a house with bunch of messies, and my baby boy will be three in two months and HE'S ALMOST COMPLETELY POTTY-TRAINED. My life is changing!   Now I'm navigating life as a brand new homeschool teacher--which is terrifying and exciting all at the same time. My mom (who is a veteran homeschool teacher of over 22 years and has 4 of 7 graduated currently) has been very patient with me and held my ha...

Babies and caffeine. That's the short version of what my days as a mommy to three aged 3.5 years and under are full of. Days that make me laugh and smile, but also days that make me cry a lot, too.  I always wanted to be a mommy for as long as I can remember. A mommy and a wife with lots of babies. I'm grown up now (at least in years) and I have everything I ever dreamed of and then some.  I saw a meme not too long ago that went along the lines of  "I live in a madhouse run by a tiny army of tyrants I made myself." This describes me to a T. I'm finding the learning curve to being a parent is so much larger than I ever imagined. The rewards are greater than I imagined, even though sometimes it takes me a little bit to see them in the midst of the threenager drama, toddler meltdowns, and the exhaustion that comes from nursing a baby who wants to eat way more than his sisters ever did.  I'll be sharing here, mostly just to help me process the process, but al...