Wow, what a walk down memory lane! 5 Years ago life looked so different! I won't have much to say other than my quick 5 year old notes to remind me of this season of life and the activities we were doing. Even though I'm soooo behind, I decided to keep going with these posts because they are my digital scrapbook and it's fun to look back.
Happy 33rd birthday to me! Jane made sure I was celebrated. She made me a card and a necklace and gave me some money. I bough a Kindle paperwhite for myself with some birthday money, that way I could read manga that was only available as an ebook at the library. I was reading Black Clover and One Piece at the time. I enjoyed a birthday l lunch at Italianos with Alexandria and my dad. It was a great birthday. <3
Sam was still in the middle of his health difficulties! He had his 2nd back procedure and was able to feel ok enough to go back to work! His road to feeling his best again was a very long one and wouldn't be done for another year, but at least his pain was manageable!
Jane loved doing new hair styles at this age. Her hair was really easy to work with as well. But! I grew up with just one brother and was a tomboy. So I had no experience! I did my best! We still do hair every so often, but we did it the most when she was 7.
Just a pic of regular life to remember, washing the car together. They loved it! Flynn would rather try to sit in the soap bucket. ;)
-First co-ops of the school year! For our first lesson I did a few simple experiments that felt a little like magic. The pencils in a of water, floating grocery bag and such. Jordan led a nature walk and we collected pieces of nature to make self portraits. Mindy led a co-op class on dental hygiene which was very informative for the kids!
My note here is "into fall routine!" School, messes and outside time sounds about right!! Flynn dumped out the most boxes of food than all of the kids combined. He was so opportunistic!! This was one time that he dumped out almost an entire brand new box of cereal. I just let them all sit on the floor and eat off the top of the pile.
The note here is "Best park days since Covid" I also commented that they were beautiful fall park days. So awesome weather and the biggest attendance in over a year! Fun Fun!
Our pumpkin patch field trip got canceled, so we had a play date with the Cotas instead. I remember the house being set up for a costume shop and the kids had fun dressing up together.
Our homeschool group when on a field trip to the Houston Interactive Aquarium and Animal Preserve. The kids LOVED it. Lots of fun animals to touch and interact with. Xan loved feeding the Kangaroos!
We made it out of to the small local Pumpkin Patch on our own for our annual visit. We didn't even plan it out, but we ran into the Combs while we were there! The kids were so happy to see their friends! Flynn was such a cute pacifier baby! He was my only one.
We did a nature walk and painting with watercolor co-op. The kids always enjoy painting.
This is when Jane got really into Anime! She started watching Naruto and we found a Boruto costume at the thrift store!! (she still hasn't finished naruto or watched boruto to this day!) She was so excited! She even paired the jacket with normal clothes and pulled it off. She's always been my stylish girl. I used that leaf village headband for a Kakashi costume last year.
My sweet friend Kae knew I loved manga and asked which one was my favorite. I told her Attack on Titan. She decided to give it a try and read it all! She found this pin of my favorite character and sent it to me! Part of her letter said "May we have grit like Levi, Wisdom like Armin, Loyalty like Eren, Strength and steadfastness like Mikasa, Humor and bravery like Sasha, Curiosity like Hange, redemption and change like Jean, enthusiasm like Connie, and be team focused like Marco." I loved how much this showed that she really understood the characters and leaned into being invested in the story. I love you Kae!!
Annual Pumpkin Painting!
Heart had a costume party in the fall. It was fun to see all the kids costumes. Jane did some Naruto runs for me!
Atlas was so proud that he learned to do the monkey bars! I was proud of him too!
My friend Brandi hosted a Fall Fest at her house and we had a great time! Flynn won cutest costume for his Office inspired Jim as Dave costume. :D
I'm not a big fan of trick or treating, but to try to spread light and joy on a day that can be more focused on darkness, we had a costume dance party on the driveway for Halloween! They picked their favorite costumes and we turned on our favorite tunes and danced around in between handing out candy. We don't get many people down our street, so it was more dancing than candy.
The most memorable thing of the whole fall season was my GIRLS WEEKEND with Esther and Kae!!!! We've seen each other a bit through the years since working at Tejas together. But once we started our families it became harder to make it happen. We finally made plans for both of them to come visit me and for my kids to have a sleepover at my parents, so we could have the house to ourselves. It was such an amazing time!! Kae arrived first and Flynn came with me to pick her up. That afternoon I finished up some work while she read the last Attack on Titan volume. We went and picked up Esther and had dinner at Torchy's. The next morning we slept in and then had brunch at La Madelines. We took a walk a local park and talked. The rest of the time we spent cooking while we kept chatting! It was such a sweet time together. I felt refreshed and ready to serve my family with even more joy.
One of our Co-op lessons that fall was learning about the Library. I remember my mom taking the kids for me. I think I stayed home with Flynn because he had a stuffy nose or a cough and COVID was still to fresh to be indoors at all with those kind of symptoms.
We took a field trip to Old McDonald's Farm with our Heart group. The kids had a blast! But I do remember Flynn almost getting trampled by an angry sheep. Being a person that is concerned about how animals are treated, I'm not confident they do a great job at it. They don't monitor how much these animals are eating or how many people are in the small concrete pins at one time. I think this makes for not a great environment for them. I haven't been back for this reason. I would rather support places that is more attentive to the animals needs.
In November I read Take Back Your Family by Jefferson Bethke. It was a fantastic book. I highly recommend it! It gave so much encouragement and practical ideas for taking your family from a group of individuals living in a house to a family team on mission for Jesus! Our family was more connected and in sync because of the inspirations in this book.
Jane finished out her first semester of Super Friday with a performance with her "All About Rhythm" Class. (her favorite class that year) Body jam and bucket drumming was their activity. They were supposed to do Tinikling too but it ended up being too much for the kids to learn and do well enough for a performance.
Heart had two fall events a week apart. One was a Thanksgiving feast and the other was a Fall festival at a park. We went to both! I do remember the little two getting very messy with cupcakes at the fall fest! ;)
This was the height of my drawing time! Flynn was almost 2 and sleeping so well at night and the older 3 were in one room and easy to put to bed. Little did I know it, but I was already pregnant with Piper here. I would find out myself in about 10 days. Once I was pregnant with her my drawings dropped off to just birthday cards for the kids and have stayed there until just this past year I have started making time for some friend birthday cards too. This drawing of my favorite anime character, Captain Levi, is probably tied with Ken Keneki as my favorite drawing I've ever done. It's fun because he was also the first anime character I tried to draw as an adult and I love a good progress pic!
That's the end of our Fall 2021 happenings! Hopefully it's not another 2 years before I post another one of these seasonal recap posts!
Psalm 19:14
Let the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart
Be acceptable in Your sight,
O Lord, my strength and my Redeemer.
