Peek at our Week (School Starts, portraits, and a visit with Uncle Cody) 9/7

We had the best start to our week - my brother came to visit!





You can see more of his visit by checking out our First Day post here.  The kids had a killer hide-and-go-seek game with him and kept his ears busy with lots of "hey Uncle Cody, guess what".  I got to spoil him with some home cooking and made him his favorite meal.





We officially started our new school year.  Isaac is starting 4th grade, Nate is starting 3rd, Elaina is in 1st, and Olivia is trying out Pre-School.  This is our 5th year homeschooling and I'm feeling a mixture of emotions about this year.  Although I am relaxed about certain aspects, other parts of taking on this big task are much more overwhelming.







The boys have a much heavier schedule to keep up with.  We are going to ease into our full routine after being on our "summer schedule".  We've added Draw Write Now this summer and the kids all love it.  We also added "Journals" for the boys rather than the Calendar Journals they used last year.  They are using them for a bit of free writing, poetry, and sketching, whatever assignment I give them.  :)









It's still up in the air if we will put away science for a while and focus on History, or try to fit both of them in.  We need to continue with our Early American studies, and it just seems more natural to do that in the fall. It kind of rattles my brain to teach so many subjects to each of their grade levels...







Math is definitely going to be harder this year.  Nate has become resistant to learning new things with Math and is requiring a lot of extra teaching time, and Isaac is in that horrible long division stage of math that I really stink at teaching. I think those things and the combination of teaching three different grade levels of math is going to be challenging.








This year the kids are enrolled in The Arts Academy on Wednesdays.  It's an awesome program of integrated, visual, and performing arts and I am so excited that they are part of it this year.  It's right up Isaac and Elaina's ally, and I am hoping that it pushes Nate a little out of his box.  It's going to be fun seeing what they all get out of this experience!




Olivia missed them terribly their first day, and begged and pleaded with me to "go pick up the kids" for hours.  Hopefully she will get used to it soon. ;)  I took them all to Sonic for a slushy and to talk over their day.  They were so chatty, I hardly knew who to listen to...














I decided this summer to go ahead and start doing preschool with Olivia.  We waited until this week and did letter A.  I probably over planned because we had way too many activities to do.  Overall she liked it.  Time will tell if she is able to recall the letters as we learn them!






Saturday I took the kids’ “Back to School” portraits.  The kids were amazing and cooperated perfectly!  (You can see the post here.)











Not much to show for cooking this week.  No doubt because I was so pooped after our long days that we ended up eating whatever we could find most nights.  I cooked a big meal on Sunday for my brother, and on Monday I made Magical Leek Soup, which I thought was neither magical or delicious.  Yuck...





Our friends gave us a bunch of zucchini so I thought I'd whip up a batch of zucchini cookies.  I had to include this picture of my mom's recipe for the soft cake-like cookies....without any zucchini!  I think she wrote this recipe in my book when I was like 10 years old.  Which means I either have never made them before now, or made them and never noticed the error.  They are both equally likely.