Since we had Monday off, I got some sewing time in for myself this week. Then during the week, I was able to carve out more time here and there for some extra sewing projects. I made another dress, refashioned another thrift store one, and fix some other things that needed fixing (like my Singapore bag). It’s so relaxing for me to get sewing time in.

These past few weeks I have felt a switch in my heart (from the I’m over it kind of mentality to the it’s crazy but happy kind)  regarding parenting. It’s nothing I’ve done, but God just answering my prayers, and he has answered by giving me more joy. The girls are still a handful, and I still run around like a chicken with its head cut off, but we’ve all definitely been more joyful. So I guess, I’m running around like a joyful chicken with its head cut off. I’ll gladly take that.

I know the days are long and my time with them is short. In those hard moments, it’s hard to remember that though. I don’t want to take them and this time for granted. Right now is a special time, and I need (and want) to cherish this for as long as they’ll let me hold and mold their little hearts. In a blink of an eye, they’ll all be grown, and I’ll be wishing we could rewind to this chaotic time of our life. Sometimes it’s hard to imagine, but I know that will be true.

One week down (almost), 51 more to go. This week beat the crap out of me. It was a total struggle to get back into routine and everyone was (is) off their game. Last year’s word of the year was “focus,” and sometimes I did good and sometimes I did bad. I know that’s normal. This year’s word will be “Jesus” because that’s really what I need more of, so Jesus it is!

I don’t really have any resolutions. As far as diet and exercise, being married to a dietitian keeps me on the straight and narrow (most of the time), and Ben and I have been going strong exercising together every morning (most mornings) for 5 years now. You’d still never ever see me in a two piece though, I think my body just natural wants to retain some mom belly as my souvenir of birthing. Anyway, last year lots of big things happened like my book, Let’s Sew Together, came out. Ben and I traveled to Singapore, where I taught my first workshop, and we had lots of mini vacations interspersed between too. True’s first tooth came out, then second and third, and fourth, and Brave even lost a couple too! These are just a few of last year things.

I don’t know what this year will have in store. I have no plans so far! Ben and I have a mini family vacation planned in the spring, we’re talking about sending the big girls to Texas for part of the summer, my baby sister comes back in June (yippee!), other than that, I’m game for whatever. We also have our 10 year anniversary coming up, so we are thinking of maybe doing something for that. I’m also perfectly content to celebrate by chilling together at home. Since we got back from Texas early Sunday morning, and pretty much took off running back into reality on Monday, I haven’t had much time to think about this year’s plans.

As far as this space, I want Ben to join in a little bit more. I really enjoy his writing and his take on diet and feeding the family, so I hope you don’t mind if he pops in from time to time. He’s also the ones that leads all the gardening, so he’ll be sharing about those things too. Blogging has changed a lot from when I first started, for both good and bad. I’m thankful for the opportunities that have come because of it, and that this is a place where I can share my struggles as well as the frivolous parts of life, and I’m grateful that you guys are so gracious in accepting both.

Cheers to 2015!

Week two done and onto week three… whew! Days are much busier with homeschooling the three (we’ve sort of added Soul to the mix), or as they have progressed in grade, their learning material takes more time. Soul’s preschool age, but I’m not one to push kids to learn everything so early. I think children need a lot of play (they learn a lot through that) and when it’s time, and they seem ready, then we can tackle all that vowel, consonant, and number stuff. We’ve changed things up in our homeschool area to accommodate for her though, so she can feel part of it. Most of her “work” consists of coloring and drawing, but we’re slowly going through the vowels. The important thing is now she feels like part of the team, and she likes being right there next to her sisters as they learn. I’ll have a homeschool space tour for you soon, but for now, let’s talk about why (I’ve shared this before and it really hasn’t changed) and what we use.

I’ve tackled some of the whys we homeschool here, but basically, it’s what we feel is best for our family right now. That’s the same reason I gave in the previous post too. We live in an area with a good school district, and while I don’t doubt the teachers there are excellent, we still feel it best to homeschool our children. I have my bachelor’s degree in Child and Adolescent Development, and went on to get my California Multiple Subject Credential, and I used to teach 4th grade at a public school. I loved being a teacher to thirty, fun loving (most of them) fourth graders, and while my career as a public school teacher wasn’t that long, I think that experience really helps enrich my daughters’ homeschooling.

I find teaching my three daughters (still mostly two though) is much more difficult than managing a class of thirty, but it’s infinitely more rewarding (and did I mention hard?!). In addition, these days there’s a lot of pressure for teachers to “teach to the test” because of the standardized testing and what those scores mean for schools. While we still participate in the state testing, I’m free to teach my children with what I feel is best, not just in preparation for the test. We actually get to fully explore science, history, and art, which is something some schools may not be able to do as much due to class sizes, time constraints, and budgets.

While I advocate homeschooling, it may not be the best thing for your family and your situation. Every situation is different and we are all making the best choices we feel would best suit our family. I’m also thankful for the public school system. I still have many friends who are still public school teachers and they are so darn good at what they do. In regards to homeschool, private school, or public school, I don’t think one is particularly better than the other, but it’s to each their own. There are some parents who shouldn’t be homeschooling and they are some teachers who shouldn’t be teaching, you’ll find good and bad ones in both areas.

We mostly follow Classical Education, and while it really emphasizes facts, memorization, and language-based learning, especially in the early grades, I tweak and change it to what fits my kids best, and I give them plenty of opportunities for creativity. The structure of Classical Education is something we do well with, and I believe the learning of facts as a base is very important, but we always extend beyond the lessons to include creative projects. My children are visual learners, so I accommodate for that in our lessons.

Here is our curriculum information…
Math: Singapore Math
Reading: We go through different books through the year, but currently it’s Old French Fairy Tales since we’re focusing on the Late Renaissance/Early Modern period.
Grammar: First Language Lessons Level 3
Writing: Writing with Ease Level 3
Spelling: Spelling Workout Level C
Cursive: New American Cursive
History: Story of the World Middle Ages (almost done with this)
Science: Adventures with Atoms and Molecules with support from Usborne Sciecne Encyclopedia
Latin: Song School Latin (this our first year)
Art: Child-Size Masterpieces

It’s a lot of stuff, but listing it out looks more than it feels when we are doing it. I will have to break down how we tackle all this stuff, but history and science are taught on alternating days, same with Latin and art. In addition to what we do at home, they go to a full day school once a week (9am-3:30pm) and take a class on the American Girls, Geography, Spanish, and Theatre. They also get to interact with other homeschoolers there. The extra-curricular things they are involved in are hip hop, piano, and swim classes. Our days are full, I feel crazy most of the time, but we all try to find our rhythm together.

Technically, True is in third grade and Brave in second, but we do all third grade curriculum and Brave keeps up just fine. She scores especially high when it comes to informational text (she loves reading informational texts and encyclopedia type books!). I make accommodations for areas where I think they may be different, but they are so similar developmentally, that having them using material at the same level works great for the girls. It will be interesting when Soul joins next year for Kinder (and then Glow the year after) because I will have to become a better juggler. It will be a multi-age school house in our home!

Hainanese Chicken Rice. I attempted make this recipe healthier and use chicken breast, not as much oil, and it tastes close enough to what we remember from Singapore. I think what makes it is the spicy chili sauce. I quadrupled that recipe and we poured that stuff all over our chicken. You know us and spice, we love things spicy!!!

Spicy Roasted Bok Choy. I pinned this on pinterest this week and it sounded easy enough to make, so I did. It’s a great vegetable dish to add to our repertoire.

Spaghetti & Stuffed Garlic & Herb Meatballs. I will have the recipe for my meatballs for you this week! Basically, I throw in a lot of herbs and I think that’s what makes it so delicious.

Roasted Cauliflower Steaks with Lemon Relish. I’ve made it numerous times before (see here), and it’s always good.

Week of 8/25 – 8/29
Monday: Leftovers (we still have plenty from last week)
Tuesday: First day of school dinner
Wednesday: Seafood Pasta
Thursday: Chicken Wings with Angry Sauce with Korean Spinach (made healthier of course)
Friday: Sushi night

I’m so happy that I started meal planning over 85 weeks ago. It’s made such a difference in our family dinners and made me feel more comfortable in the kitchen. I actually think cooking is fun! When I’m cooking, the girls usually are playing together and that’s how I’m able to get time to cook. Ben and I really want to start including them in the preparations though, so I need to plan for that time for them to join me in the kitchen. We usually eat dinner around 5:45pm, and I start cooking between 4:30-5:00pm. If I want to get the kids to join in, I probably should start a little earlier so I don’t feel like I’m rushing around. Do you get your kids involved in the meal preparations?

This is a dress I made earlier this summer to take along with me on our trip to Singapore (and to wear many more times after that). It’s inspired by this Ace & Jig dress I’ve always liked, but I’m not a fan of racerback tops, so I did my own tweaking and tinkering to come up with one that would work for me. I thrifted this linen fabric at the thrift store and knew it would be perfect for a summer dress. There are no darts since it’s just a loose dress, but I did do simple pleats all around the skirt. I really love being able to make my own clothes. To me, it’s like shopping, but without spending any money, especially when this fabric was only $5 for 5 yards of it!

wearing: necklace, shop miquez. bag, thrifted. clogs, c/o lotta from stockholm.

We’ve done a lot of traveling this summer, at least for us. Ben and I left for Singapore, then the whole family went to the East Coast, and we were off again for a few days this past weekend. There’s been a lot of packing, unpacking, and laundry set on repeat all summer long. When we left for our D.C. – Williamsburg trip, we wanted to pack as light as possible. We were flying into D.C., then taking Amtrak to Williamsburg, then flying out of Richmond with lots of taxis and shuttles in between, so we didn’t want to have to lug around a lot of stuff. Four kids going to and fro was already going to be a handful.

This was our first time flying with all four, while we have the whole road tripping thing with four kids down, flying with them is something we aren’t familiar with. Somehow, I managed to get 5 days worth of clothes (for all of us) in one carry-on suitcase. My mom was pretty surprised at how little we packed, and another mom on the flight who packed for the same amount of days (for a family of 5) was surprised how we were able to do it with no bags checked-in. I’m not an expert at all, since it was our first flight as a family of six, but we seemed to manage well enough, so I’m glad to share what worked well for us here with you all.

We took a red-eye, since it was the most economical and direct way to get to D.C., but I had no clue how the girls were going to do on that flight. Once the plans were in place, I tried to do a little training beforehand. For a couple months leading up to the trip, every time we saw a plane, I would ask Glow, “What are we going to do on the airplane?” And I trained her to respond, “We’re going to sleep!” So that’s what she said every time I asked. I hoped if she said it enough, she would do it when the day came.

Our flight left at 11:45pm (the kids are normally in bed by 7:30pm), so it was already a late night for them, and we didn’t let them sleep on the drive to the airport. I was thinking it was going to either backfire and she would be so tired and cranky that she would wail on the plane, or she would just fall asleep. All the girls were so excited about flying, and take-off was pretty exciting for them, and after take-off, Soul went to sleep and the big girls knocked out soon after. There were some kids sitting in front of us who were watching cartoons (and Glow could see the screen), so she would try to watch, I had to do some maneuvering to block her view between the seats, and after some tossing and turning, she fell asleep. Whew! Then, I fell asleep once I knew she was done for the night. Since it was a direct flight it was only about 4.5 hours, but the kids seemed to sleep well the entire time (it was a different story for Ben and me) and we woke up just a little bit before landing. Once we landed, the girls were so excited and ready to go. We had a shuttle pick us up, and thankfully, we were able to do early check-in at the hotel, so we spent about half an hour just reorienting ourselves with the area and plans for the day before we set off exploring with only about 5 hours of sleep in all our bodies.

The plane ride home was just as smooth, even though we had a layover, and all the girls fell asleep on the plane ride again. I’m thankful that they didn’t throw any plane tantrums and they all did a really good job on all the flights. You just never know with kids, so this first experience with all of them turned out really well.

Now for the packing tips, I packed the exact amount of clothes needed (no extras), one set of pajamas for each person (we bathed each night, so I figured they would stay clean), and I think what made the biggest difference in getting it all to fit into one carry-on suitcase is that I ironed everything. I ironed all the clothes to free them from wrinkles, then folded them to be put in the suitcase, and ironed them all again folded to flatten it even more. I totally think that did the trick! Everyone pretty much only had one pair of shoes and those were the shoes we wore on the plane, so we didn’t have to worry about packing any shoes in the suitcase (though I did throw one extra pair for the girls just in case). All our toiletries were travel size and Ben had them in his messenger bag (not in the suitcase), and I put enough diapers in the carry-on suitcase to last the 5 days we were gone. We didn’t bring any laptops, just an iPad, and I made each of the girls their own mini backpacks and in it were their books, crayons, and a light sweater. I had one backpack, and in it was my camera, wide angle lens, and wallet. We also brought our light umbrella stroller with us too, and that’s that for everything we brought along. Packing light made it really easy!

The girls knew they were each in charge of their own backpack, and since we only had one stroller, they knew their little legs had to do all the walking and complaining wasn’t going to get them very far. I’m pretty proud of them because they were such troopers the entire trip. Sure, we had to stop here and there to break up a fight or put one of them in time-out, but overall, they all did a fantastic job.

What are some of your tips and tricks for traveling with children?