Slices of Life

This post was first written in November of 2012 when my boys were just 8, 6, & 5.  I continued reading aloud with them well into middle and high school.  I still willingly read aloud to my high schooler whenever he asks.  We tend to read a lot of books in our homeschool.  My boys enjoy listening to stories and often beg for me to read more than I had planned. I'm honest enough to admit I don't always want to read aloud but I do know that it is so important.  Reading aloud helps my boys develop a love of stories, it allows us all to learn new things together, and it helps bond us together. Anytime I feel a homeschool day slipping out of my control, I quickly grab a stack of books and begin reading. It calms us and settles the boys down (most of the time anyway!).  We don't always pick a theme or even read books during the "right" season but we do often read together. Today we read: 1. Another chapter or two in our Hugo book 2. Started reading a few chapters in

 The last time I shared my papercrafts was the end of August and since I really only made a few cards between then and now I thought I'd just share everything I've been making this fall. I played around with some spotlight stamping. Made a birthday and anniversary card for family... And tried out a new technique with my card making stencils to make an offset shadow effect.  I made my double embossed Christmas cards (where I stamped and embossed the saying then cut and pieced them together to make one multi-colored saying).  I learned about a technique called bokeh for cardmaking and played around with that; I am LOVING these cards! I finally got up the motivation to tackle our family trip to Shenandoah National Park in June and got all 12 pages done.  Linking up with:

 I haven't written a weight in post since Sept and have been doing so well!  After wanting to skip my September post entirely I am so pleased with how I've been doing in October and November (thank goodness this post is coming out before the long holiday weekend!).  As of writing this post I am weighing in at 161.6; so I am down a few pounds and more importantly the last time I've seen 161.anything on the scale was last May! Oddly I feel like I have been eating more carbs and supposedly "high point" food versus my usual array of zero point fruits and veggies.  BUT I do think I have been eating less overall since most days I am only eating 2 meals instead of 3.   I am finding those high point meals to be rather filling and I'm just not hungry.   I haven't been great about logging food on my Weight Watcher App at all and am even debating about dropping it... we'll see.  I figure I'll keep it until the New Year (and probably until after our cruise!) a

  I originally wrote this post in November of 2014 (when Ian was 10), it's more of a parenting post than a homeschooling post.  Thankfully he ended up LOVING his season of basketball!   I admit it, I don't like to be that mom that forces my kids to do much of anything. I never used to be that way:  I was perfectly happy making us all miserable because I believed there wasn't another way. I believed that to raise caring, thoughtful, productive children I had to force them to do everything that I thought was best for them. I believed that, as the parent, I was the boss; always.  I truly thought that having complete authority was the only way to teach my kids how to behave.  Perhaps if I had to go back and do it all over again I would.  They were younger then and my way of dealing with things now might not have worked when they were younger.  I don't know.  I just know that I'm not like that anymore (or not ALWAYS like that).  I still force them to do chores

This Saturday is the last Saturday of the month & time for the  Share 4 Somethings link up with Jennifer.    Since I won't be blogging on Thursday or Friday or Saturday, I thought I'd tackle my post today.  As always we're looking at what we  Loved, Learned, Read, and Ate  this month.  Loved: So many things... let's see.. Alec got his first official college acceptance in the mail, Ian and my husband had a wonderful day of fishing and stocked our freezer full of pollock, Evan and I have gone on many hikes, I've had lots of lazy days around the house to read, we got the boys' bathroom and hallway repaired and repainted (post coming soon), and this weekend the WHOLE family pitched in to clean the entire house!  Help with house cleaning is always loved.  Ian with their fishing buddy posing for my husband Learned:  At the last minute, my husband and I began planning a cruise to the western Caribbean for January and I have learned a lot about the ship we're ta