On Vacation.

It's been a great time bonding with the new baby lately! She is 4 weeks old now and it seems like she's been with us forever! Recently, I've been on vacation (as is obvious by my lack of posts). I first spent some time by myself (but with Evangeline) travelling with friends to the annual IHM Conference in Virginia. It was a great time, although I wasn't too thrilled with the vendor accommodations. It was hard getting around to see all the wonderful Catholic curricula. But I did come away with some gems and have been busy ordering and organizing our books every chance I get, since I've been back.

Soon after I arrived home after a long conference weekend, our best friends came to town for a week. We had a blast! Day trips to museums, parks, and playgrounds were all the kids needed to get away from our usual day to day routines. We also spent some of the week at the Great Wolfe Lodge (highly recommended!!) and camping in our backyard by the fire. We were sad to see our friends go, but are looking forward to our next vacation with them!!

All the kids together for a picture!

Hanging at the Great Wolfe Lodge.

The wave pool was awesome!

Our backyard campsite.

A Little Occupied.

It's been a while since I've blogged and in my defense, I'm shouting "Life Happens!" But I do have some pictures to share to keep you updated on some of the things that have been keeping us busy.

School Lessons

Of course, our school lessons take precedence over much of our lives. Here we have Marco working on some map skills as he memorizes the continents and oceans of the world. This is part history and part geography and lots of fun! If only history and geography were our only subjects to study...but we still have math, science, reading, Latin, spelling, grammar, and all the rest!!

Family Fun Nights

So you wonder how we spend our weekends around here? Well, movie night is at the top of the list (In this case we were watching "Zoom"). So it's either blog the night away or spend some time with the hubby and kids with lots of popcorn and drinks. I think you know which won! But since we've been without cable for quite some time now, we all look forward to watching a movie together on our giant wall. It's a movie theater experience!

Vacation Time

We have been known to take a few days off here and there. This time we decided to go to Colonial Williamsburg in Virginia. Perhaps this wasn't the most perfect family vacation....lots of walking, not many hands-on activities and little children don't mix too well with us. But we still learned a bunch and got to see some really neat things. Do I recommend at trip there? Ask hubby and he would say, "No!" Ask me and I say, "Try it with older kids." Ask the kids and they'll say, "Go to Disney World instead."

Field Trips

There's lots of opportunities to go on field trips around here. This time we settled on taking the kids to the apple orchard. Fun? Oh yes. The kids loved it!! Fun for mom? Not in 95 degree weather with a fussy baby. We'll try again next year and pray for cooler weather. Until then, I'm up to my eyeballs in apples! Any recipes??



American Girl Club
We are still going strong with American Girl Club. Isabella loves it and I love getting to do fun crafts with the girls. This time we hosted. Kaya was the inspiration for our corn husk dolls...a fun craft!



Birthday Fun
With 5 kids in the house, it's only a matter of time before it's birthday time for someone. This time we celebrated Anthony's 5th birthday!!! It was a blast and my little guy had a great time. He is a blessing to our family! And we all loved the cake too! Happy Birthday big guy!

Disney World. Here We Go Again!!!

After coming back to blogging, I'll be taking another small break. We have been planning our vacation for a little bit now and things always seem to be last minute with us. Because DH's schedule is a little different, we don't always get the typical summer vacation; and it's not always a Sunday to Sunday thing. We'll be leaving tomorrow and be back next Wednesday.

During my absence, I'll make sure to take lots of pictures and chronicle every step that we take! We'll be making the trip with some good friends of ours, so the drive will be full of fun and laughter. I'm happy that we'll be doing some date nights as well. We've planned a night in Downtown Disney and are looking forward to Cirque du Soleil's La Nouba performance.

In the mean time, I hope that all visitors get to know me by reading past posts. I hope that I can generate some new and fun ideas to other homeschoolers as well.

Have a happy week!!!

Back to Nature.

This past weekend was the NWF's Make Tracks! Family Trail Weekend. We were lucky to have planned a weekend getaway in the mountains with some friends, so it worked out that we were also able to enjoy a few hikes. The weather was great and the leaves were beautiful! It was a weekend that went by too fast. Luckily, we were able to tie in the weekend events with our planned nature activity for the week.

There were so many great pictures! I decided to make a slide show and then post some favorites.

Yup. It's 65 degrees outside and there is DH & Marco in the cold water. Sliding Rock is located near Asheville, NC.

Looks cold!!

Isabella was not left behind on the adventure. A friend took her down the slippery rock.

Hugging my Little Guy.

Enjoying some free time!

5 out of 7 kids...not bad!

The kids admire a living statue in downtown Asheville.

Exploring downtown Asheville.

Back Again.

We are back from our camping adventure! Although I would love to share pictures, we left the camera due to last minute planning. You'll have to wait until our friends send over their copies!

It was a great weekend and we visited Deep Gap, NC. We stayed in a beautiful cabin with a creek in the back. We enjoyed hiking with the kids and on Sunday we went to Blowing Rock for lunch before heading back home. It was a really relaxing weekend and I'm looking forward to going again.

Now that we are back, however, we are far from settled in. We jumped right into school on Monday, but I still feel a bit unorganized. Yesterday we finally had our granite counter tops installed and it took all day. The whole process left me feeling exhausted, even though I did none of the work. Now I feel like I have a whole kitchen to organize!

So for now, my posts will have to be a little less involved. I'll post our before and after pictures as soon as I load them into the computer.

Chicago.

Well, if you have missed me this past week and wondered why I hadn't posted...you probably guessed right. We were on a little trip! We decided (somewhat last minute) that we would go ahead and take a trip to Chicago to visit DH's parents. It had been about 4 years since we last went. Mostly, we'd grown accustomed to the grandparents coming down to see us and letting us bypass the drama of traveling with little ones.

The week went really well and I even got the opportunity to attend the Illinois Catholic Homeschool Conference in Joliet. It was a big plus for me and I had a great time. I was able to hear Father Pablo Straub (the Crucifix Priest) who did an awesome job of saying Mass. The only downside was that the conference was too short. I was ready to come back again for another full day of inspiring workshops!

The trip wasn't all about me, of course, and we got to do some fun stuff with the kids. Besides meeting with family (my kids ADORE their cousins!!!), we were able to take the kids to the Jelly Belly factory, introduce them to an official Chicago-style hot dog, visit Navy Pier, and experience all the fun that comes with living in a big city (trains, trolleys, taxi cabs).

Jelly Belly...mmmm!

Posing with the Jelly Belly Beetle.

Anthony at the Navy Pier Carousel.

Lunch at Navy Pier.

Marco at the Navy Pier Carousel.

We obviously couldn't leave Chicago without visiting the American Girl Store. It was a fantastic day as Isabella and I took off to Chicago via train for a special mother/daughter day. We then grabbed a cab and spent the afternoon shopping at American Girl. We had lunch there and dined with Samantha (an American Girl doll). Although Isabella is set on getting Kit (another doll), I set my limits on shopping only for her Bitty Baby doll. Clothing one doll is pricey enough (doll socks alone were $14!); I knew that if we got another doll, there would be outfits and accessories to buy...none of which would fit in our luggage. Needless to say, Bitty Baby is one spoiled doll.

Dining with Samantha.

Mother/Daughter Lunch at American Girl Place

The boys weren't too left out. While us girls were in the Windy City shopping, the boys got to spend some quality time with their dad. They spent the afternoon fishing and playing outdoors. Marco caught his first fish...followed by another. It was nice that we were all able to have our special time.

Now that our trip is over, it feels SO GOOD to be back home! We were blessed that the airplane trip went smoothly both ways, but travelling with little ones is still not easy. Looking on the bright side, as always, I'm glad that we are able to make such wonderful memories with our children and hope that we continue to travel regardless of the comforts that we may leave at home.

Back Again!

I've been on hiatus this past week. Between dance rehearsals with Isabella, doctor appointments, and packing for a weekend at the beach...it was getting hectic! But now we are back again! We were at Pawley's Island, SC this weekend and it was a fantastic little trip!

Traveling with the kids is becoming a little easier now that they are getting older. Granted, we are moving from trying to console infants to trying to console preschoolers and bigger kids...but they at least can reason a lot better than a baby! I also think that traveling with friends makes a big difference.

Now it's back to organizing and planning for the new year. I have yet to start scheduling our history, but that was expected. In the mean time, enjoy some pictures of our mini-getaway! (And yes...that is Marco dancing with the flower girl!)

We're Back!!

We are finally back from Disney. All I can say is "WOW"!!!!!!!!! We had such a great time and it was really hard to say goodbye! We loved every minute and now I understand why people want to keep going back again and again.

We enjoyed all the parks, but especially loved Magic Kingdom. I recommend Cinderella's Royal Table for meals. It was the highlight of my visit and Isabella's as well. I hope you enjoy the slide show! I tried not to put too many pictures!

It's true. We're going to Walt Disney World! I've known about this for a bit. We actually just started planning about a month ago. It's a very last minute type of trip; something we kept saying we should do, but never really moved on. We leave next week!!

It should be a blast and the kids have been counting down for about 10 days. Now we are less than 5 days away and everyone is getting really hyped up! We are traveling with our good friends and their kids. We like doing family trips together since the kids get to play together while we hang out. It's a win-win situation!

Anyways, I'm trying to get as much done as I can with the kids in terms of school work. Taking a week off is definitely going to be a luxury at this point and I don't want to fall behind. Regardless, we are looking forward to a nice vacation with warm weather and lots of Mickey. I think the kids will have a blast and I'm just excited about having them experience something new. I'm sure my camera memory card won't be enough to hold all the pictures I'm planning on taking!

Ski Weekend.

This weekend we took a little getaway with some friends up to Sugar Mountain. It was our first time skiing and we were hoping for all of us to have lots of fun. Let me tell you!! Skiing with a bunch of little kids is NOT easy! You have to have all the gear: skis, ski boots, jackets, gloves, hats, ski socks, snow pants, and even (if you go all out) ski goggles.

So imagine this scene: 6 kids all 5 years old and under (4 of ours and 2 friends), 4 adults (1 of which is very pregnant...no not me) and all the above mentioned ski gear for all the kids and adults. You do the math and then see what you get. Oh! And add to that going from the parking lot up a hill to the actual ski place. OK, so getting there was not fun. BUT...

I loved skiing and so did the kids! DH did not enjoy it at all, so next time he'll do the tubing while we hit the slopes. Granted we only stayed on the bunny hill, but I really loved trying something new. I think Isabella was the most excited about skiing, although both she and Marco did exceptional!! Anthony on the hand was a bit frightened and only managed to make it half-way down the hill. Christian was very good and took a good nap while I had him in the Bjorn and I was fortunate to have friends around to take turns holding him.

On a side note, let me add that if it wasn't for our AWESOME friends, the trip would have been horrible! Thanks to all the grown-ups who helped our little ones learn to ski, because we surely didn't know the first thing! More pictures will follow as I get them downloaded from our other camera.

Marco all geared up!

Anthony resisted the skis.

Up on the magic carpet to go for another turn down the hill.

Isabella with friends learning to ski.