Update on the other Little R's!

Since I did a little post on Sam last week I thought I would do a little update on what these cuties have been up to lately...

Let's just go across the row...

Sophie Lou. She will be 5 here in just a few weeks. 5! How can that be? Sophie brings such a fun and girly dynamic to our family. She is girly girly girly, but she loves to play HARD with her brothers too. She has recently been very into Wonder Woman (notice the headband)... that way she can still be girly and play super heroes with her brothers at the same time. Sophie gets along well with everyone in the family. She and Max are best friends but she also has developed a super close relationship with Jack recently too. She loves to pick him up by his armpits and swing him around. She is definitely the big sister!And of course Sophie loves her baby brother. She dotes on Sam whenever he is around and loves to hold him. Sophie is also starting to read pretty well and is very exited to be doing Kindergarten this year.

Max P. is really starting to grow up. He is just a few months shy of 7 and we are really starting to notice some maturity coming down the pike. Max still loves animals and especially loves making up his own animals, drawing pictures of them, and then teaching us all sorts of facts about them. It is especially precious when he pretends to make animal documentaries... they usually involve him narrating in a British accent! Max has been taking piano lessons for a little while now and I have been very impressed with his progress. He loves to go to his lessons and most of the time doesn't mind practicing. He has also really taken off with reading. He has gained a lot more confidence and I think that has made a big difference in his willingness to try to read more difficult words and books.

And Jack Jack. I can't believe he is going to be 3 soon. Jack is such a fun agreeable little guy. Although his new thing is asking to do something and immediately following it with, "don't say "no" Mommy". It cracks me up. Jack's favorite thing in the whole world is his Papa. He constantly wants to go to Papa's house. He even wanted his hair cut so that he would look like Papa and also has decided to have his birthday party at Papa's house. He likes to pretend to be Papa and will insist that we call him "Little Papa". Jack loves Mater from Cars and wants to have a "Cars 2 Birthday" :) He also loves monster trucks and tractors. He really looks up to his big brother and sister. He is also very protective of his little brother. He watches out for Sam and takes his role as big brother very seriously.

Nick and I could not be prouder of our little crew. It is fun to see all of their different personalities and watch as they all start to relate to each other and us differently. Such a blessing!

5 months old

This guy is 5 months old today. 

He is doing some fun new tricks such as; rolling over both ways, taking a binkie (finally!), sucking on his toes, eating rice cereal, blowing raspberries, and basically making our hearts feel like they might explode any moment if he gets even a tiny bit cuter.

Do you like that drool action shot in the last one? Ha!

We sure love you Sam P. Thank you for bringing even more cuteness to our sweet family in the past 5 months. We look forward to continuing to watch you grow and change... but feel free to slow it down just a little bit...

The first week of July!

Here is a little catch up to what the crazy R's have been up to for the past week or so :)

We had a blast celebrating the 4th of July! We started off the day meeting up with some friends at our town's little 4th of July parade. It was super cute and the kids enjoyed playing with their friends and collecting lots of candy!

Sammy's 1st 4th of July

Enjoying the candy already

Sophie and her girlfriends had a blast watching the parade!

After the parade we had 3 families over for a 4th of July Party! We ate lots of yummy food and the kiddos played outside in a kiddie pool and on the playground. We had a total of 16 kiddos at our "little" get together! Which is why I didn't snap a single picture! It was so fun. 

Then, in the evening my Grandma and I headed to the Muny to see Nunsense. We didn't exactly plan to go on the 4th of July but that is when our season tickets were for so we went! Phyllis from The Office was in it which was fun! We had a good time! Although the show itself wasn't that great... so we may or may not have left at intermission...

I love my Grandma and it was fun to have her all to myself for the evening instead of having to share her with the kiddos :)

We loved the fans that they were giving out at the show! Sister Grandma?

This weekend Sophie got to go to a super cute little tea party for her friend London's 5th birthday. London's mama did an amazing job at making everything adorable and perfectly girly! I was so thankful for my girl to have such a girly afternoon since she is always surrounded by boys!

Drinking "tea"... pinkies up!

The precious birthday girl!

Love these girls! So thankful for sweet girlfriends.

And here are a few more pics from the last few days...

The hubs and I had the sweetest date night in. We sat on our back deck , drank wine, and chatted. It was lovely. The deer that walked through the field and all of the fireflies made it even better... sigh... I like that guy.

I love how awesome our cat is with our kiddos. Here he is "babysitting" Sam.

Can you even call it summer without popsicles on the porch?

The big kids had their swim lessons this morning and we like to stay and play for a bit afterwards. Love these little fishies.

And baby brother slept in his stroller the whole time. :)

On tap for tonight is going to the Lincoln County Fair with my parents! This is one of my kiddos very favorite events of the whole year! So, here's hoping we have a great time! We probably won't stay too long because of the heat! But, I did promise cotton candy if we have to leave early!

Sidenote: I have started a little weightloss blog to track my progress. These baby pounds have gotta go! So, feel free to check it out right here. :) But, be warned, it is just pictures of food and not of cute squishy babies... :)

R Family Update (with lots of Instagram pics!)

So, I realized Instagram has sort of replaced blogging in my life. I LOVE Instagram. It is such a fun way to document what is going on in day to day life and it is super quick and easy to use (definite bonuses for a busy mama)! So, if you don't already, feel free to follow me over there. My username is "katieramsey".

But, I still do love blogging from time to time. So, I thought I would do a little catch up post on what we have been up to these days!

We have been really enjoying summer this year! Including spending almost every minute outside, staying up way too late, eating food off of the grill, spending tons of time with family and friends... basically I am not sure I ever want fall to come...

We started off our summer with a trip to Kansas City to visit my sister and brother-in-law... Sam's first road trip! (We had a blast and the kids are begging to go back!) Here's a picture of Max enjoying some real KC bbq...


Then a few weeks ago we had friends come visit us! One of my very bestest friends ever, Christina, and her two sweet kiddos came up from Springfield to spend some time with us and we are still talking about it everyday. We loved having house guests and I was so blessed by our time together. Our Springfield friends were basically our family when we lived there, so it was so special to have them visit us. We miss them so much! I love these pictures from their visit!



And now for a giant photo dump of pics from our summer so far... :)

Jack thinks he is big stuff when he rides his big boy bike

We took the kiddos to Indian Camp Creek to play and then followed it up with Lulu's Shaved Ice. It was a big hit and might be one of our new favorite treat!

The kiddos were invited to a sports themed birthday party so they went decked out in their Cardinal's gear!

Nick and I got to go see Spamalot at the Muny. It was so good! And, basically any date night with my man is a big win in my book!

Nick and Max went to their second Father/Son campout with our church. They had a great time.

While the boys were at the campout, we had some girls over for a little ice-cream and p.j. party. I love this pic of Jack right in the middle of all the girls.

We had an irrigation system installed and it provided lots of entertainment for Jack and Sophie!

Max and Sophie also started swimming lessons.

Sam also got to take his first dip in the pool! He really liked it.

Max and I got to have a Mommy/Son date. We went to Crushed Red for dinner and then to the Muny!

It was Max's first time to go to the Muny. We saw Shrek the Musical and he loved it! We still talk about it everyday!

We are loving our neighborhood pool this summer. One afternoon last week the big kids and I snuck away while Daddy was at home with the little boys for an afternoon swim!

My parents (Papa and Grandma!) blessed us big time with a new (to us) swingset. The kids basically spend every moment that they are awake outside playing. Last night Sam was super cranky so we went out for him to swing and he was instantly in a better mood!

Homeschool Curriculum for 2013-14

I finally did it... I chose our curriculum for 2013-14 year. And I took the plunge... we are going with Sonlight!

According to their website:

Sonlight Curriculum is a Christian homeschool curriculum company specializing in literature-based homeschool curriculum programs. We provide complete homeschool curriculum packages and individual resources and materials so you can build the preschool or K-12 homeschool curriculum that best meets your family's needs. Sonlight is based in Littleton, Colorado and serves homeschoolers in over 150 countries worldwide.

Instill in your children a life-long love to learn. Prepare them to engage new ideas. Challenge them to impact the world.

I am very excited about our decision. I considered using it last year, but because of it's higher price tag I went a different direction and used an eclectic approach. I was planning to go that route again this year but after talking to a few other homeschool moms I realized that at least for the season of life we are currently in I need to have everything handed to me. I don't really have the time and mental energy for lots of lesson planning, running to the library every week, etc. So, a plan where I am given everything including all of the books I will need for the year was very appealing.

My husband also lovingly pointed out that we will definitely get our money's worth out of buying all of the books since we will have 4 kids going through our little homeschool (Lord willing!). We  are going to use Sonlight's Core A: Introduction to World Cultures. Max and Sophie will do most of their school together although I did purchase separate readers (Kindergarten for Soph and First Grade for Max) and handwriting programs for them.

The only thing I didn't purchase through Sonlight was their math curriculum (although it is one of the ones that Sonlight recommends). We are still working through Saxon 1 after we switched from Horizon's last year and then I was able to purchase Saxon 2 second hand so we will move onto that whenever we are ready.

I am really excited to get everything and start checking it out. I am not sure when our official school year will start. This will be our first year logging hours (for Max) and that can start on July 1. Missouri state law requires 1000 hours, 600 of which have to be in the core subjects.

So, I am feeling excited for this year. I am hoping that Sonlight will be a good fit for our family. I feel like it really fits well with a lot of our goals in homeschooling our children. But, as always, I will keep you posted!

Why we homeschool...

At the end of this current school year I found myself totally discouraged. So discouraged I found myself actually researching public school and private school alternatives... Despite my discouragement I told Nick I would give it another year and see how it went. Then maybe we would give a university model school a try (where students go to school two days a week and then parents act as tutors the rest of the week at home) next year.

Then this week I hosted a end of year wrap up party for homeschool mom's at my house. We were blessed to have a couple of experienced homeschool moms who had graduated several children from their homeschools. We also had a few moms share their successes from this year. I heard several stories about the closeness of these families and especially how close the siblings were to each other. I found myself saying, "this is why I wanted to homeschool..."

And then it hit me. I had forgotten why I had chosen to homeschool. I had gotten wrapped up in all of the "academic benefits" and totally forgotten the rest. Our culture is obsessed with academic excellence and whenever I chatted with people about our choice to homeschool it became about academics. If they agreed with my choice they would list the academic benefits. If they didn't agree with my choice, I would list the academic benefits... Desperate to justify myself and for approval of our choice.

But, here is the thing: I don't really homeschool for academic reasons. At the risk of sounding over confident I think I have really bright children who could achieve "academic success" in almost any setting. In fact, despite numerous studies stating the success of homeschoolers there is a chance my kids could receive a better education somewhere other than in my home.

So, of course I was feeling discouraged. I was doing something really challenging without ever thinking about why I was doing it..So, after chatting with my friend Crystal this morning, she suggested I create a "mission statement" for why I homeschool so I would have something to look back at throughout the year and be encouraged by.

I decided to start out by listing out my reasons and thought I would go ahead and share what I came up with!

We homeschool because...

• We value family unity and want our children to be each other's best friends
• We believe that developing character in our children is more important than academics
• We believe that God has called parents to teach our own children about Him throughout the entire day
• We want to give our children the time to explore their own personal interests
• We want to give our children a low-stress childhood with lots of time to play and imagine
• We want to be the ones influencing our children along with other adults we trust and respect rather than our children being influenced mostly by peer pressure
• We want to physically and emotionally protect our children during their young and formative years
• We want to be the ones with our children during their "best" hours of the day when they are awake and alert and ready to learn
• We want to determine a schedule that is best for our family and not be at the mercy of the school district
• We want to give our children the opportunity to have friends of all ages based on shared interests and values rather than just age
• We want to choose resources for our children that are glorifying to God and beneficial to them as individuals

This is just a handful of reasons that I came up with this morning. I am going to try to put my top reasons along with my husband's into a mission statement and then I will share that here!

*Disclaimer: This is why WE homeschool. I do not believe that everyone has to homeschool in order to achieve the ideals listed above. I just believe for us personally that this is the best way to do it at this time.  :)

End of May catch up!

I know I say this every week... but I am SO excited that it is FRIDAY! For some reason starting Wednesday I thought it was Friday so this has kind of been a loooong week! Not bad, just long! The best part of the week was that Tuesday was my mom's last day of school for the year. So now she is free to play with us whenever we want ;)

We started her first day of summer vacation off right by taking her with us to the O'Fallon Public Works Fair! It is basically just a lot of large equipment sitting around in a big parking lot that the kids can climb on and sit in. There was also a little train to ride. It was PERFECT for our little truck man. He was in heaven sitting on different diggers and tractors.

Yesterday ended up being kind of a crazy morning. I meet for discipleship with my neighbor so we had our Bible study and then I had to hurry home because I had an appointment to get an estimate for an in-ground sprinkler system. When we got home the guy was already there and he wanted to sit down and talk me through everything. My house was a mess and Sam just wanted to scream the entire time! It was pure crazy town... So, we went out to my mom's house for the afternoon so I could have a little help and regroup my sanity. It was lovely.

Thankfully, this weekend is a three day weekend! I have big plans to get lots of housework and little projects done around the house. Next weekend we are going to Kansas City (first little road trip with a baby! bring it on!) and then Nick has two, one week trips to Chicago this month so I want to get things in order around here before he abandons me has to leave for business. ;)

I will leave you with some double chin cuteness... P.S. This little guy is now 3 months old!