Back to School

Oh you know just a couple months past when we started school. That is how we are moving in this house. See in order to keep up with school and stay on track I miss out on things like blogging:)

I didn't talk much about school last year because well it was hard. I about gave in the towel more times than I care to admit. We all couldn't wait for our summer break. I probably started too early after the babies being born and it was a bit of a wreck trying to find my feet with 5 kids with two babies at once and just growing in motherhood. It took us from the end of July to Christmas to finish an entire term which is scheduled for 12 weeks. That may have told you how bad it was. In order to finish up and be done which goes against everything in my being plus the method we used. I doubled and tripled lessons from January until May to finish the last two terms early. I don't recommend this. For us it was necessary though. There is no way mentally I could have drug school through summer. I also was not going to allow Eli to be behind. So homeschooling definitely has it's challenges.

This year I questioned so much and deep down had a very inward struggle with how I was going to manage adding Lilliana into a full schedule and Ari. I buckled down though and we got even more organized. It is still chaos a lot of days so don't let me fool you:) Either way the hard work of prep and planning through the summer when inwardly I wanted to give up and just hand out worksheets paid off. School started and it has gone smoothly!! We even started a week later than I usually do because I felt too much pressure after getting back from vacation. That was the best decision I could have made. It made our start smooth and so much better. I have happy kids who are LOVING school. They are enjoying their subjects and not complaining. We also are getting in more riches than we ever have which has been nice. I am managing to do this all while still working. My house isn't immaculate but compared to where we were a year ago it is going well.

This pictures were taken the first week of school. I also made them all their shirts per their requests.

Eli Year 3 Ambleside Online (3rd Grade)


Lilliana Year 1 Ambleside Online (1st Grade)

because I found this funny....I had been looking at posing guides for me for some things I needed to do. Little did I know Lilliana had also been watching me look and began emulating the poses. I went with it. 

Ari Year 0 Ambleside Online (Kindergarten)

I am so thankful for a good first beginning to school. Hopefully as we continue on it goes just as smoothly. 

Vacation Post 3-Time at the River

It has almost been two months since our vacation, but such is life these days. Blogging gets put on the back burner. The twins keep me so busy. They are always into something and with two I feel like I just can't ever get away to blog. At this point it is 5:30 in the morning and I have been awake since 4:30 when Daphne had a fit about not being able to sleep with me. Going back to bed was just going to make me more tired so here I am finishing our vacation posts. So maybe I can feel like posting more. I have an OCD about the order of things and it is why I have not moved on. You can read the first post here http://reutherfamily.blogspot.com/2017/09/vacation-to-idaho-part-1.html

The second post is here. http://reutherfamily.blogspot.com/2017/10/canyons-cows-caves-and-cars-vacation.html

We could not visit Idaho with out spending time at the river waterskiing with my parents. My kids have come to love this and look forward to it. By the time we left though they were so tired and done. Ari we discovered at this point was so ready to be home in Michigan he was not going to be social anymore. He did good for 10 days, but 14 was 4 too many. 

We camped out in a tent and I realized I am waaay too old for that. Anthony says I am a baby, but I had two girls on top of me and woke up every morning with sore ribs. We only did it for 2 nights. The view upon wake up was wonderful though. 

The kids all spent 2 days ski tubing and tubing. Lilliana we discovered is the dare devil which we kind of knew. She tubed non stop. I laugh though because tubing now days to when I was a girl and teenager are way different. Now they have couches. We had tiny round tubes that were near impossible to stay on, but it made it that much more fun. I can't tell you how many times we flew across the water. They I don't think ever fell off which I am sure is good to keep them going.

Also there is nothing like seeing your oldest child where the life jacket you wore all through highschool and some of middle school. It makes you feel old. I realized this trip how big he really is getting.

My niece was able to come while we were there. Lilliana loved having two other girls to play with. The other girl is a friend of the family. We also were able to see my other two sisters and all my nieces and nephews which was so nice. The kids loved playing with each other. Grandma and Grandpa have all the cool toys so of course the kids had to take turns riding the four wheeler.

This truly is just a snippet of the fun they had. My parents love to have fun and do all sorts of things for all the grand kids when they come. They didn't spare any excitement this time. We also visited my parents at their business. The kids loved that.

The biggest and most talked about highlight may have been the eclipse. Had we been in Michigan we would have only seen I think 30%. Maybe a little more. It just happened that our trip coincided with the Eclipse. Where we were was 97%. The kids loved it! They thought it was so neat. Of course the area we were in was a buzz with it and people traveling all over. We enjoyed it from my grandparents back yard.

Eclipse Shadows

We really did have such a great time. It was so good to get away and see a lot of family we had not seen in years. I'm looking forward to the next trip when the girls are a bit older and it is a bit easier on me. 

Canyons, Cows, Caves, and Cars Vacation Post Number 2

If you missed part1 of our vacation to Idaho you can find it here http://reutherfamily.blogspot.com/2017/09/vacation-to-idaho-part-1.html


There are so many great places to see by my home town. We took the kids to Canyon and watched some BASE jumpers jump off the bridge. We got our one and only family picture and probably the only one I was in thanks to a homeless guy that spends his days at the bridge jumping and just talking to people.

We also went to visit my grandma and grandpa. The kids helped her feed the cows.

We had really wanted to take the kids to Craters of the Moon. Unfortunately it is a bit of a drive and in the desert plus mostly lava rock so we figured it would be hot. They just wanted to see a volcano. So instead we took them to the Shoshone ice caves. This is where I failed! I actually forgot my camera in a diner in a small town. We got to the caves about 20 minutes away from the diner and realized it. So I just had my phone. This is actually a lava tube from the volcano so they got as close as we were going to get. They loved it. We left the babies at home.

After the ice caves we went and visited one of my grandparent's friends that collects rocks. It was a great follow up to us studying rocks last year for school. He even sent us home with some rocks for our nature area.

The other thing they were fascinated with this trip was my grandpa's old car he has redone through the years. As a kid I use to see him in his shop working on it. It is good to see him actually driving it now. They thought it was the neatest thing. He loves it because it reminds him of his youth. 

I have one more post to share of our trip. It probably won't happen for another week! Although I may surprise myself and get it done! School is in full swing and I am busy with that plus sewing and life! More to come soon....