Catch Up Post (December 2014 - May 2015)

Okay, so A LOT has happened since my last entry (September 2014)…

December 22, 2014 - Ava turned SIX and we turned in the keys to our house in Fort Lee, VA. On the 23rd we hit the road for GA where the kids and I would spend a few weeks while Richard did some training in Kentucky. Ava was such a champ spending her birthday "homeless" and I love that she didn't think anything of it or take it as some form of persecution.

End of January 2015 - We hit the road to drive from Georgia to Arizona. We stopped to visit "Mom Avery" in Alabama, then powered on through Mississippi, Louisiana, Texas, New Mexico, and finally Arizona. We broke the trip up over a few days. We drove the Expedition and pulled the Fusion on a trailer behind us. Again, the kids were absolutely amazing. So flexible and easy-going with the HOURS of sitting in carseats, gas station stops, and hotel stays (the fun (for them) part).

January 29, 2015 - We signed for our house on the evening of 1/28/15 and slept on air mattresses. Then all of our stuff arrived from out of storage on the 29th. Richard was sick as a dog all day, literally throwing up and lying down between loads being brought in that he checked off the packing list. The weather was beautiful so we were able to have the kids play outside and pretty much stay out of the way. The girls were so excited to see their room coming together and to get to help with things.

February 2015 - Richard took command of his recruiting company. Here we go again with another two year command. He is excited yet has quite a learning curve ahead of him as well a good bit of travel and time away from home (probably weekly).
We found a church home. It has a great children's program, including Awana. It has small "journey groups" for closer connection and life sharing with fellow believers in similar stages of life. The pastor(s) are awesome and we feel very welcome and ready to jump in serving here.
I also happened across a homeschool group on base. The kids and I had walked down the street to hang out at the neighborhood center playground and there were a bunch of school age kids playing. I thought "well either school is out today or we have found a homeschool group already!" And it was the latter. It is a relatively casual group that meets for a weekly PE class followed by park time, optional Spanish weekly for reading aged kids, monthly art class, and monthly science experiment/dissection.

March 7, 2015 - Sweet little Rae turned 4! I can't believe our little love is four years old. She is such a delight and was super pumped about the pretend hairstyling kit she picked out with her birthday money.

April 2015 - Richard turned 31 and life is just ticking along. We are coming down the home stretch of Ava's first homeschool year and she is learning and growing so much. I feel like we are close to a breakthrough in the reading department.

May 2015 - We celebrate our 9 year anniversary.

Ava's Book

Ava created this completely on her own. All I did was video her explaining to me everything that was in it. Such a creative girl!

Amazing Memorization

We have known for a long time that Ava has some pretty amazing memorization abilities/skills, but today she blew me away. Each unit we do in her homeschool kindergarten is 6 days long. We started Unit 1 last Monday which means we were finishing the last day of the unit this Monday. One of the daily things we did in Unit 1 was read this poem, My Shadow.

So we read this poem a couple times each day last week Monday-Friday. No school Saturday-Sunday. Today we were supposed to read it one last time before we start a new Unit tomorrow, but Ava told me she already knew it and just started rattling it off.

She recited it almost perfectly without me even reading through it once since Friday! She finished having no idea how awesome that was and was ready to move on to the next thing. I just sat there like WhAt!? Needless to say, I am going to be expanding her collection of Bible verses to memorize and get her going on some whole Psalms. She is such and sponge! And she loves learning! 

Cade's First Birthday

Seriously, all but one (decent) picture I got of Cade all day is of him eating something. I intended to get some shots of him being cute or actually SMILING, but I guess these food shots say a lot about where he is growth-wise right now.

Anyway, we never have done huge, all-out planned birthday parties for the first few years (they don't know or care anyway), so it was pretty much a regular fun day with some EXTRA fun added in. It was a long, full day yesterday. School in the morning, cake-making and naps (for all 3 kids) in the afternoon, then a quick peanut butter sandwich dinner and out the door to get to our first night of Awana! The girls did great and had fun. Richard and I volunteered and ended up helping out in a very full, chaotic 4 year old class. Cade used his good looks and great fussing abilities to milk all the ladies in his room and be held the whole night. (Lots of stories within this one paragraph here, but I shall move on…)

So we got home around 8:45pm tired, still hungry with our half-dinner long gone, and Cade was one cranky fellow. So here's the awesome video footage from his cake time:

He was yelling the whole time we were singing and then when I tried to prevent him from burning himself on the candle I scratched his hand. But once we got past that he sure did enjoy that frosting. I cut into the cake a bit after the video stopped and he ate a ton of that too.

So after the traditional singing and cake we did baths and all. Cade loves bath time, splashing, running around naked afterwards, etc and he's always in a pretty good mood when he gets his jams on too. Here's some fun we were having before bed. (He gets more stumbly than usual when it's late and he's tired.)

After this little game of chase we all sat down for some Bible reading, memory verses, and Cade's last time nursing (there will be a whole separate post for that whenever I get my wits about me). It was a great day and Richard and I are so thankful to be this little guy's parents.

First Birthday Cake

When Ava was turning one she had never had the slightest bit of sugar and I wanted to make a cake for her that we would all like and that wouldn't blast her into a sugar high. After a brief search for "healthy" cakes, I decided on this Applesauce Healthy Cake. I can't remember where I found it so I can't give proper credit, but here's a picture of the recipe itself that I copied down into my personal recipe book. (You can probably google it and find where it originally came from.)

It was a total hit. On her first birthday, Ava ate like literally half the cake all by herself. So it became our traditional first birthday cake and now it's also the one we make at Christmas each year to sing happy birthday to Jesus. Looking at the recipe above, I personally use 4 T sugar, no walnuts, and good old frosting rather than confectioner's sugar.

Today Ava, Raina, and I made this Applesauce Healthy Cake for Cade! It was so fun to bring this tradition out again and the girls are no strangers to the deliciousness of this cake so they were pumped about helping. All three kids are down for naps right now (!!!!!!!whoop!!!!!!!) and the cake just came out of the oven to cool. I am about to get myself ready to take everyone to Awana tonight (kick-off night for the year) and then I'll frost the cake in a bit.

Speaking of delicious recipes, we had a few families over for dinner and just for fun the other night and my new friend, Jen, brought some cupcakes that night. Unfortunately she left them here for us to share with neighbors finish off as quickly as possible. They're called Banana Chocolate Toffee Cupcakes (which doesn't even sound like something I'd like, honestly) and they are AmAzInG. Here's the link to her blog with the recipe for those too. Enjoy!
http://www.bakedbyanintrovert.com/banana-chocolate-toffee-cupcakes/

Cade is Almost ONE

I can't believe our sweet baby boy is almost ONE YEAR OLD! This year has flown by with a big move, trips, and lots more coming to plan for. I will definitely be posting about Cade's cake smashing/eating next week. We're not planning on doing a huge party or anything; just making an Applesauce Healthy Cake like we did for both of the girls and letting him go to town on it.

And here's a little about what I'm doing as Cade passing his one year milestone...

A Whole New Adventure

So… We have officially decided to homeschool Ava, starting Kindergarten this year! I sent in my "letter of intent" to the superintendent of our school district here in VA and I have ordered the curriculum we finally decided on (My Father's World). For a while I was praying that I would want to do what we knew we were being called to do; well now I can't wait! Richard is totally on board and super supportive as well.

I don't have time for a long post today, or really anything to say about it yet anyway, but there will be more to come. :)