2011: A Quick Review Through Pictures!

2011 was another great year. There was a new family member born, baptisms, parties and just many memorable time spent with family and friends. To catch everyone up on the happenings of 2011, here are some of the highlights. Enjoy!!

Our year always starts with a celebration. If you are thinking, "Yea...it's New Years!" You are wrong! Our year starts with the celebration of the birth of Isabella!! She turned 7 years old just as we started 2011. Wow...time sure flies!

Roses are Red, Violets are Blue. Sugar is Sweet and So Are You! St. Valentine's Day in 2011 meant making lots of cards to give to friends! My sweet bunch of kids and I got a rare photo together, since I'm usually the one holding the camera!

March brought more moments, like losing another tooth for Isabella and having fun with our science experiments. Homeschooling remains the main component of our day.

With a house full of kids, it seems like it always someone's birthday! Marco turned 9 years old and made a huge leap in maturity. He continues to surprise us with wonderful accomplishments and we feel so blessed to have him!

Easter in 2011 was also an awesome day! Mass, Easter baskets, flying kits, cascarones and a fun day full of celebration of the resurrection of our Lord. It was such a memorable day!

May turned out to be an extra special month in 2011. It began with Isabella's First Communion, which happened to fall on Divine Mercy Sunday and was also the day that Pope John Paul II was beatified!! It was absolutely awesome!

You can't end the school year without a field day. 2011's field day was full of fun! From donut eating to relay races and even 1st place! The entire Catholic homeschool community came together to give our kids a fun and memorable event!

The highlight of May was, of course, the birth of Evangeline Elizabeth! She was by far the biggest baby I've had, weighing just over 9 pounds! Of course, all the children were elated when she was born and it was nice to finally give Isabella a little sister. We were so blessed to have our family grow by one...a little piece of heaven right in our home!









The year continued and led into summer. With piano recitals, vacations with old friends, Marco's first tae kwon do belt graduation and just playing in the rain.












Hosting Vacation Bible School in my home was also a great memory from 2011. My kids had a blast with all their friends and learned some valuable lessons along the way! My family visiting, playing with Legos and just being silly were also fun events of the summer. It's almost impossible to document all the awesome moments we had.

The end of summer held some nice moments. Evangeline was baptized and welcomed into the Catholic Church!

And you can't end summer without a trip to a baseball game! All this just in time for our first day of school where we continued the annual traditions of marching through the house and opening schultutes!!

Back to school always means it's back to co-op too! And we started the year on a great foot! The kids continue to love going to their weekly classes and seeing their friends.

More birthday, friends visiting, family and even a new dog! There were field trips, fall weather, pumpkin carving, Saint Day celebrations and Halloween. Art classes at home, end of year programs, traveling and more. So many moments to capture...so many memories made!

































Hope everyone's year was as great as mine was. There were bumps along the way, but nothing that we didn't get through. Praying for another wonderful year!

*And if you notice my pictures got a little sparse and mixed up towards the end...yeah. Too many pictures to go through and not enough time in my day!

Keeping Things Simple.

I still haven't posted my daily schedule and have been working on tweaking it a lot this week. We switched phonics and math, we added a new activity to Fridays and I'm trying to squeeze more time in with Christian's preschool work. Things look chaotic on paper! But it really is coming along and our MOTH (Managers of Their Homes) method is what still continues to work for us. Click here to see some of my previous advice on creating a schedule.

Of course, we know that with a large family it's important to keep things simple if you want to stay sane. It's all about prioritizing. Not too long ago I experience my first burnout. We were doing school, co-op, swimming, dance, piano, soccer and who knows what else. I wanted my kids to be exposed to different activities and to have fun. What I got was a not so happy family. I was chauffeuring kids around 4-5 days out of the week. We were rarely eating dinner together as a family and we were always in a rush. I was cranky so that meant that everyone was cranky. So what happened? I got burnt out. I grew so tired that I dropped every activity besides school and co-op.

It took me almost a year to recover, but I vowed to never do that to myself or my family again. Now I'm learning to keep a healthy balance. My kids are allowed to do 2 activities each. One that benefits them physically and one that benefits them mentally. I combine wherever I can, take shortcuts and NEVER sacrifice family time. The results are working out well so far.

Our extra curricular activities this year? Here's how I have it set up so that I'm able to get all the kids' activities squeezed into our week without sacrificing our family priorities.

• Karate fulfills our physical requirement. This is done together so that I don't have to go back and forth with different sports. They get to help each other and they love it!
• Piano is also done at home. Our piano teacher comes over once a week and takes turns doing the lessons with the kids. That means I don't have to take time off from teaching; so while one child is doing their lesson, the rest are working on their school.
• Art is our new activity this year. It's once a week and the kids also do it together. While they are in class, I walk down the street to the library and load up on books for the week. It works out great!

But what about the littles? I can't take credit for toting around 6 kids with me all the time. I have a nanny who comes in 3 times a week. She mainly takes care of little Jimmy and Christian, unless I have to go somewhere and I leave the whole crew with her. I am hesitant to admit to having this help, but I don't want to seem like super woman. One thing I will add is that to have her over means that we sacrifice in lots of other areas. Again...priorities.

So how do you keep things simple for your own life? Here are some tips.

1. Make a list. Grab a piece of paper and make a column for each child. Under each name, list all the extra curricular activities you would like for each of them to have. Don't be afraid to include yourself and your spouse! It's important to keep in mind all the things you want to accomplish as well when making a schedule.


2. Prioritize and Rank. Rank your activities. Take into consideration all the things that are important to your family when ranking. Are weekends together as family important? Then perhaps soccer might not rank high because of all the Saturday games. Is having dinner together a top priority? That might weed out all evening activities.


3. Minimize. Look over your list and trim wherever you see an activity that is not in line with your family priorities.


4. Pencil it In. Look at your calendar with your new activities penciled in. If your calendar still looks too full, perhaps it's time to go back and minimize some more.


5. Pray. Prayer is a powerful tool when deciding what activities will benefit your family.

In the end, don't be afraid to say "No!" There is absolutely nothing wrong with keeping our kids at home and enjoying our families. It's important not to fall prey to the materialistic culture that plagues our society. More is not necessarily good and our children will not benefit from having a full schedule that keeps them away from family. We have to remember that in teaching our children, we want to prepare them for heaven above all else!

Family Time, Happy Kids or Over-scheduled, Cranky Kids

New Pup?

We are finally settling into the routine of being back to school. Co-op started this past Monday and it was great. The kids were so excited to be back! It was a great first day and I was happy to see all the kids and my friends!

Of course, things are never dull around here with school, co-op, a new baby and just our daily routines. But I decided to throw in a little curve ball this past week. We are fostering a dog!! I know it's crazy of me to even think of adding a dog to a family of 8, but I couldn't justify not allowing my kids to get a pet. After all, I have very fond memories of growing up with pets myself.

So enters Sierra. This little pup is a year old and the sweetest thing. We actually weren't planning on adopting a dog just yet. We were waiting to see if we could swing buying a nice poodle mix so that I wouldn't have to add vacuuming dog hair to my list of chores. But as I took Anthony on a mother-son lunch date, we decided to stop by the humane society just to look at the puppies. And there was Sierra. More timid that my own little Anthony (he's a shy one!), but just so sweet. We fell in love with her! Now we are fostering her for a week or so to see how she adjusts to living with our family and how our family adjusts to having her around. So far, things are going great!

Yea...she sheds. She's not a designer dog. But the kids love her! I'll have to let you know if we decide to go through with an adoption and having her become one of the family!

She was so shy at the shelter. She was almost afraid to be pet.

As soon as we got home, she opened up. She loves the kids and is excellent with them! She is not one bit shy anymore!!

With 6 kids, she gets plenty of attention. Here she is taking a nap after a long walk.

Evangeline!

So I've been missing again, but this time I have the best reason ever....our baby girl, Evangeline, was born on the 18th of May!! My biggest baby, she weighed just over 9 pounds!! Sweet little baby; we've been busy cuddling, feeding, loving her, and trying to get some sleep in between.

She is lovely and all the kids constantly hover around her, wanting to hold her and kiss her. She is our littlest angel. My biggest adjustment has been trying to keep the younger kids from loving her too roughly, as our little Jimmy gets so over-excited with the baby that he wants to hug her and never let go.

And even with her being so new and all, it feels like she's always been a part of our family...she fits right in! We have taken the last two weeks off, spending time with grandparents and just being a big family. It's been great! But now, we must return to the daily routines that make up our little domestic church. Chores, school lessons, and our daily routines.

Evangeline...our newest addition!