Christmas

Before too much time goes by, I wanted to post some Christmas pictures. We had a great time decorating, learning about the advent, being with family, and playing outside in our warm Texas weather.

We started the season by opening our Christmas box on December 1st. It had mugs for each boy, hot chocolate, a Christmas book and movie, popcorn, and Christmas pajamas. The boys really enjoyed opening this early.

Then we decorated their door like a snowman!

Every day for advent, we read a story from the Jesus Storybook Bible and did an activity: watch a Christmas movie, have a picnic by the tree, see the Northpark trains, decorate gingerbread men, sing Christmas carols at the piano, dance to Christmas music, etc.

Janette made the boys this felt Christmas tree to decorate. They had fun arranging and rearranging the ornaments over and over again. I need to find a way to make it stick to the wall better, but this will definitely be a new tradition!

Kenny bought a new 10 foot tree this year. She was beautiful! And my heart just melts to see five stockings above the fireplace. God is truly so incredibly faithful! I am humbled to serve such a loving Father.

For Christmas with Kenny's family we decorated gingerbread houses! It was so much fun!

On Christmas Eve, the boys threw out reindeer food!

On Christmas morning, Kenny made his famous eggs (as Joshua calls them), I made a coffee cake, and we had fruit and mimosas! Another tradition for the Wright family.

Later in the day, the Merrimans came over and Kenny smoked a brisket. It was so fun celebrating the birth of Jesus with our friends. I made a birthday cake for Jesus, too!  Unfortunately, I have no pictures of us with our precious friends, but of course we have one of the brisket! (We Wrights don't forget our food pictures.)

And last, our Christmas card:

"Therefore, the Lord Himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin shall conceive

and bear a son, and shall call His name Immanuel." Isaiah 7:14

In all the hustle and bustle of this Christmas season,

may we remember this prophecy has been fulfilled...

Emmanuel: God with us! Let us rejoice!

Blessings to you as we celebrate this Christmas holiday and joyous new year!

love: kenny, sarah jane, joshua, maverick, and anchor

BFIAR: Ask Mr. Bear

This week we rowed Ask Mr. Bear by Marjorie Flack.  It was a really cute story about a little boy who tries to find a birthday present for his mother.

Our companion books with a farm animal theme were:

• Big Red Barn by Margaret Wise Brown
• Pete the Cat: Old MacDonald Had a Farm by James Dean
• Once Upon MacDonald's Farm by Stephen Gammell
• Moo, Moo, Brown Cow! Have You Any Milk? by Phillis Gershator
• Rosie's Walk by Pat Hutchins
• Thump, Quack, Moo by Doreen Cronin and Betsy Lewin
• books by Sara Swan Miller: Chickens, Sheep, Cows, Pigs, Goats

Other companion books about presents/gifts were:

• The Present by Bob Gill
• Mama's Perfect Present by Diane Goode

The first activity we did after reading the book was learning about the colors: brights vs. pastels.  This is a difficult concept to grasp, so I just introduced it and let Joshua draw a picture using each.

We learned about farm and forest animals. Joshua cut out and glued the animals in the correct place. I had hoped to walk to a forest near our house, but it's closed due to construction.

We also worked on the letter Bb and the number 2. 

The next day we matched cards with pictures of animals to their products: cow/milk, hen/egg, sheep/wool, goose/feathers, goat/cheese. Joshua loved this!

On Wednesday, we had a Farm Fresh Breakfast! This included eggs, bacon, goat cheese, biscuits and honey, and milk from a jar! It was so special and I loved that Joshua showed enthusiasm for everything. He notices every detail.

watching the bacon/biscuits 

We then worked on rhyming words and putting events from the story in order.  Both of these tasks were quite challenging for Joshua.  He had trouble remembering the order in which Danny met the farm animals. When I realized Danny met them in order of smallest to biggest (hen, goose, goat, sheep, cow, bear), I tried to get Joshua to put them in order that way. But all the pictures on the cards were the same size and even the pretend animals I have are not to scale. 

side note: I'm so thankful for my years and training at Shelton and the privilege to be Joshua's teacher.  Homeschooling him has taken quite a bit of patience that teachers of a large class simply don't have time for.  I know the gaps Joshua has can be remediated with lots of repetition and use of hands on materials. I am blessed to have accumulated so many resources and manipulatives through my years as a teacher and am so grateful that time was not wasted. I humbled to see yet another way God has used every part of my life for good, no matter how insignificant the enemy makes it seem sometimes.

On the last day, we performed our puppet show for Nana! (see the video here) I made a puppet theatre using this tutorial. Joshua was Danny and I was the narrator/animals. He did a great job remembering his part and staying focused! I was so proud of him!!

The we talked about the concept of an "un-birthday" from Disney's Alice in Wonderland. We had an unbirthday party with pizza and cupcakes!

Our last activity was learning directional words: in front of, behind, between, etc. Joshua cut and glued the egg in the appropriate places. He loves this book!

family verse and goals for 2016

I cannot believe it's 2016 already. And I absolutely cannot believe I have three beautiful boys... SONS!  Husband and I were sitting on the couch watching TV last week and it hit me.

We are parents...

of three boys...

three long awaited, dreamed of, prayed for, and worked for boys.

How did we get here?!?!?  It seems like yesterday I was jumping up and down at the thought of Kenny wanting to be in a relationship with me. I was still living with my parents and had many years of school ahead of me.

Each and every year with Kenny has been amazing, even with the ups and downs of marriage, work, infertility, and life in general.

2015 was difficult with my pregnancy and birth of Anchor, who has been somewhat of a high-maintenance baby.  In the first few months he cried often, spit up his body weight in milk, and nursing was a huge challenge. I've recently switched to raw goat's milk and I think we are making progress!

I'm always grateful for another year.  I see it as a chance to refocus and new opportunities and adventures are waiting to be found. What I'm looking forward to in 2016:

• learning how to be a homeschooling mom of 3, while maintaining my role as wife
• homeschooling Joshua
• new friendships
• family vacations
• training for my second sprint triathlon (in October)

My goal this year is to learn how to juggle all the demands of life: spending time with Jesus (my Maker and Savior), being a wife, being a mom, homeschooling, keeping our house a welcoming home, and developing deeper/more meaningful friendships.  It's important to me to keep my priorities in line and not lose sight of my calling as a stay-at-home mom.  It may not be the most glorious and highly-sought-after profession, but it's been my desire for as long as I can remember. It's where God has purposefully placed me, and because of that, it's where I can honor Him most. In the monotony of my daily life - the laundry, discipline, cleaning, and fight to spend time with God, my husband, and each child - I want to glorify Him, to point back to Him, to be His light and His hands wherever I go and whatever I do.  I'm so grateful I have the Holy Spirit to help me do my job well, because this will be no easy task.

So our family verse for this year comes from Joshua:

"This book of the Law shall not depart from your mouth, but you shall meditate on it day and night, so that you may be careful to do according to all that is written in it. For then you will make your way prosperous, and then you will have good success. Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be frightened, and do not be dismayed, for the LORD your God is with you wherever you go." Joshua 1:8-9

The battles Joshua and his armies fought are not so different from ours.  They wanted to claim the land God had given them.  But first they needed to get the enemy out.  So much of our culture and society looks down on children and motherhood and places value on materialistic things.  But my boys, my arrows, are eternal. And there is no greater war than the one for their souls. And many of those battles are fought on my knees, and in my time spent with them, teaching them about the Lord and how much He loves us. Oh how I long for them to see me spend time with our Maker, delighting in Him and hiding His Word in my heart.

Knowing what last year's verse has come to mean for me and our family, I'm eager to see what the Lord does in my heart this year.

My *more specific* goals for this year are:

1. spend time in the Word daily
2. be up before kids (around 6:30) especially on weekdays
3. keep house clean and welcoming (worship music and candles!)
4. homeschool Joshua
5. spend time with each child individually every day
6. establish bedtime routine
7. make four homemade meals each week
8. exercise three times per week (at first, gradually increase to five)
9. blog two to three times per week
10. extremely limit Facebook - on Saturday only!

I hope to blog periodically about how I'm doing with these goals. I don't want to call them New Year's Resolutions because I'd be a complete failure at all of them already.  

To Him be the glory!

BFIAR: Caps For Sale

I officially started homeschooling this week!! It's something I've dreamed of since we got married ten years ago, and probably even before that.  I've researched, planned, shopped, organized, and planned some more. I knew with Anchor being born in September it would be best to wait until January to start school with Joshua.

The first day of school finally arrived... with a hitch.

Maverick needed to see our pediatrician because we were concerned his testicles had not descended. I freaked out and wanted him seen ASAP.  Turns out everything is fine... his testicles are descended, they're just up in the canal. They still have time to drop, but if not there's nothing we can do until he reaches puberty. Oh the joys of boys.

That took up all of my morning and I watched my cousin's kids while she and Kenny went to work on a job. So the day I had been so eagerly anticipating came and went with no homeschooling to be found.

(As a side note, we also decided to transition Anchor from sleeping swaddled in his Rock n Play to sleeping on his tummy in his crib... this meant four nights of little to no sleep either listening to him cry it out or getting up to give him his pacifier and rock him back to sleep. Needless to say, I was extremely sleep deprived at the beginning of the week, so it's a true miracle that any homeschooling was accomplished. Thank You Jesus for Your grace!!)

On Tuesday, January 5, we began rowing our first Before Five in a Row book: Caps For Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina.

Joshua has been so excited about this book! Our companion books were:

• Circus Caps for Sale by Esphyr Slobodkina
• Monkeys by Valerie Bodden
• Do You Really Want to Meet a Monkey? by Cari Meister
• Spider Monkey by Dee Phillips
• Five Little Monkeys Reading in Bed by Eileen Christelow
• Five Little Monkeys Sitting in a Tree by Eileen Christelow
• Stormy's Hat by Eric Kimmel

First we practiced walking with lots of caps on our heads.

We talked about how the peddler fell asleep under the tree "for a long time" and that's when the monkeys stole his caps. We read Proverbs 6:10-11 and talked about how sleeping for too long can be troublesome.

Next we learned about the different ways to make fifty cents. He loved learning the names of the coins and especially the coin rubbings.

On Wednesday, we colored and glued caps on the peddlers head in the same order they were in the book.  Then I let him buy caps from the tree. He did a great job counting out his money.

As a special treat, we made banana split cookies. I *hate* bananas so I can't comment on how they tasted, but the boys sure loved them!

On Thursday, we played a game where he graphed the number of times each coin was rolled. He LOVED this and keeps asking to play it again. He thought the gold Sacagawea coin was super cool and lit up every time he rolled it.

On Friday we painted a tree and practiced making the letter A. He knows the upper/lower case and two of the sounds /a/ makes. I'm so proud of his hard work!

Today we put thumbprint monkeys and leaves on his tree.

We also did a mustache photo booth. We talked about different kinds of mustaches and how the peddler had a handlebar mustache.  GrandDaddy even showed up for a picture!

We've learned a lot about monkeys and even about how the railroad hat was invented. I've been amazed at how much I've learned this week too.

I am LOVING Before Five in a Row. My mother-in-law used it with her kids and spoke so highly of it. She said it taught her how to incorporate learning throughout the day and how to tie everything together. This is not natural for me, as I am such a structured, scheduled person. But I know I can learn how and truly feel it will be the best learning environment for our family.

I'm looking forward to next week and need to get busy planning!