A new journey begins with this step...

 

Something I never thought I would post about....

This past year has taken me on quite the journey of discovery. One of these days I plan on blogging the entire thing- the how's and why's of it, but for now I will just document the fact that this month brought us to this point. 

The girls and I resigned from our old church. I went back and forth between whether I cared enough to do it or not, but my girls both made it very clear in December that it was a step they wanted to take. I made sure Doug was okay with it (he is no longer a believing member either, but isn't sure he wants to do this),  and then I did it. 

Honestly, it was such a great feeling. Like the main girl in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, I expected to feel bad or sad. I waited for a feeling of regret to come. But it didn't. I felt lighter than I had in years. I felt celebratory. It was not closure exactly, because I don't think you can come out of a high-demand religion and have closure easily, but it made me feel like I had made a step in the direction that I want to go. They can't count us as numbers anymore. And that felt good. 

Valentines Day

The week before Valentines Day, we started out by having a Valentines themed poetry teatime with some donuts from Krispy Kreme. I was right next to the store, and we don't get them very often, so I grabbed a box. 

The day before Valentines day my parents stopped by with some goody boxes for us. They gave each of the girls a cute little plush gift. The animals did school with us for the rest of the week...

I couldn't find the little Valentines gift holders I made, so I grabbed some last minute Valentines bags for the girls' surprises. They didn't need bags this big, but it was kind of funny. 

I set them up with some heart shaped waffles for breakfast (Doug's mom gifted us a mini heart waffle maker the day before). 

We usually do teatime on Thursday, but that week we did it on Valentines day so that it could be another Valentine's themed one. I made some heart shaped cookies, and then put out some mini-cupcakes from Target. We also had some fruit punch for a nice, red drink. 

 

January and February 2023

These are a few of our memories from January and February: 

We had orange chicken, rice, and fruit for Chinese New Year. 

We have a few family members that own Crumbl cookie stores, and we have tried Crumbl cookies quite a few time. We all agree that they are okay, but they aren't our favorite thing in the world. The girls really wanted to try Dirty Dough because they think their billboard and ad campaign are funny. I surprised them one day by coming home from shopping with a box of Dirty Dough cookies to try. 

I forgot to take a picture of them as we were trying them, but we got one of each except the different chocolate chip cookie ones. We cut them up into eighths and the four of us each sampled the ones we wanted to (Abi was the only one that didn't try all of them I think), and we came to the conclusion that they are gross. One of them tasted like play dough. Two of them were okay, but nothing I would buy again. Maybe we hit them on a bad flavor week, but we have no interest in trying them again. I think we all agreed that if we are going to eat a cookie, we would rather have any of my homemade ones over any of these specialty cookie stores that we have tried. 

I signed the girls up for a free homeschool karate class. Abi enjoyed it; Maddy did not. 

I thought Abi might want to go back, but she doesn't. I think it's hard because the kids are mostly so young, and she felt out of place. 

Also, in January, I read Katherine Reay for the first time. My two favorite books of the month ended up both being from her. I have since read two more that I have also loved, so I plan on buying all the rest of her books soon. 

 

Our first 2023 week back to homeschool

We had a really fun winter break, but it was finally time to get back to homeschool. 

We are studying paleontology in science this year. One of the topics this week was dinosaur egg fossils. A fun activity that the curriculum suggested after the egg lesson was to do an egg drop. 

I gave them a day to come up with their ideas for the drop. It was really fun that both girls came up with completely different ways to approach this assignment. 

Madeline went first. I had them drop them from the top of the stairs, over the ledge into the hallway below. 

Madeline hoping for the best....

I was pretty sure that Maddy's egg would be just fine with how packed inside so many layers of blankets it was.

She had the egg nestled in many layers of blankets, towels, and a pillow....

The egg was finally surrounded by wet toilet paper. She unwrapped it carefully, and we found that the egg was just fine!

Abi went with making a hot air balloon/ parachute. She created the basket with popsicle sticks, wrapped the egg in dry toilet paper and put it in a sock, and then placed the sock on the basket. She put tape just over the sock so that when it was dropping and would lift a bit, the tape would keep it in the basket. The basket was attached to a garbage bag with yarn. 

It fell fast and hit the ground hard! We were all expecting the egg to be harmed. 

But it survived!!

We also played a fossil battleship game after talking about the "fossil wars". 

Another fun activity was that for our speech course they had to come up with a poem or speech (famous or one that they wrote) that they could present together. It had to have three parts: one for Maddy, one for Abi, and one that they would have to say together. Maddy ended up writing the poem, and they used stick puppets that they made a few months ago for a different presentation to represent the different characters speaking in the poem. They did a great job, and Maddy's poem was really well written and creative. 

It was a good week and I'm glad to be back in our routine. 

A little bit of an update

 I had the best of intentions once I finally got this new computer and started updating my blog.  I still do. The holidays came and I thought, 'I'll catch up in the new year'. Then the new year came and we started our new term in school, and I thought I would catch up during our break. But then I was diagnosed with thyroid cancer, and everything has been kind of thrown up in the air. 

I will have surgery in a couple of weeks and then a few weeks recovery time. Hopefully at some point I will be back to continue getting the blog up to date!

Maddie's 11th birthday

We set up her presents with Birthday Bear in our family room so that she would see them as soon as she woke up.

I also had her cake out on the table. This is how it turned out.. and the picture she gave me of what she wanted .

I let her pick all the meals for her day, so breakfast was cinnamon rolls and hot cocoa. 

After breakfast she and I got ready and went out on an adventure together. We picked her up some Pokemon cards. 

Then we went to Barnes and Noble where she picked out a new book and got a free birthday cupcake. 

On our way home we picked up Little Caesar's pizza and breadsticks for lunch. She changed into Christmas jammies when we got home. 

In the afternoon, Grandma and Grandpa stopped by and we opened presents and had cake.

the first gift she opened up (in the morning) was the gift from Abi.

She made her some little stuffed animals. 

Her gifts

For dinner she wanted McDonald's. She got the 'big' meal of two cheeseburgers and fries. She wasn't able to finish the whole thing.... but she felt pretty special. 

 

Random November

As soon as November hit, I took down all of the Halloween decor (leaving up the generic fall stuff) and put out our few Thanksgiving things. 

Another small storm let Maddie play in the snow again. 

On a sunnier day, she and I planted daffodil bulbs.

We voted. 

We enjoyed watching the Young Women face to face. 

We waited to put up our main tree until after Thanksgiving, but I did put up my library tree in our library/bedroom. 

Abi wrote a book.