A New Hope

 Here we go! 

Okay, so I'm with Westwind again, so I need to do this blog again, and I kind of like that. Obviously I need the accountability. 

First off, It's so good to be back in the middle of the town of Cardston. This is our town. This is our homeschool group.

The first week of school there was a Waterton Field trip with Westwind. It was just a garbage pick up and a lunch, but it's so good to not feel alone. To feel like there's so many people out there doing things differently because they want to, and getting the support they need.

There was also a parents day where we listened to inspirational or helpful talks and ate a yummy lunch. They even made us "Homeschool survival kits," which were super cute. It's good to be back.

One mom (Laura) even offered to take back to school photos! Isn't that cool?! I'm tellin' ya. Cardston is the best.

I've also started spending money I know I'll get back, including Simply Piano. The boys have really loved playing the piano...except Abraham, who hasn't felt like the piano is for him yet, but along with Simply Piano, you get Simply Drawing, and Abraham has been doing that so much he has almost done everything they offer on their app for drawing!

I have also tried to get organized and actually teach one-on-one school, and so lets go through each child.

Hyrum is doing BYUI and doing math with Khan academy. He's taking Programming with Data Structures, Computer Systems, and General Psychology. I convinced him to take general psychology because he needed a social science credit and I've taken that class, so hopefully that turns out okay. 

It was a NIGHTMARE getting his online textbook to work for his psychology class, but now it's working, so I hope all goes well with it. I can't worry about the other two classes because I have no idea how to help him with those.

Daniel is going to do english with Coursera, math is Khan Academy, and I signed him up with a Spanish teacher that is actually living in Guatemala that has worked via zoom with Cayleen's kids, so I trust her. And maybe I'll have him do typing with TTRS because his spelling is pretty bad.

William is going to do All About Spelling. Maybe typing with Keyboarding Without Tears, Video Text math, and his writing workbook.

Abraham is starting Rightstart Geometry, All About Reading level 4, and his writing workbook.

Abraham is now reading for fun, which is a huge hurdle to overcome for a dyslexic, but William is still not quite there, but I see him more and more with a book in his hands. The books have pictures, but this hasn't really happened before, so I think this actually is the turning point.

We are doing our one-on-one in my NEW SCHOOL ROOM! I love it so much. Dustin made me the bookshelves. Isn't this a glorious space?

And one of the best things about it, is that I got a glass table that I spray painted white on the underside so that it would turn into a white board table! Aren't I clever? Abraham has been drawing non stop. He insists on drawing axolotl after doing each section of school

As far as CO-ops go, we were going to join this Tuesday Co-op, but we are going to be gone for so much of the first quarter of the year, that we went to part of the first day, but that's it. They played kickball and loved it.

But now we are off. 

We had been planning a church history tour for MONTHS but it never was working out. Finally I just asked Jandy if we could ship Hyrum and Daniel out to her, and if she could give them a church history tour herself. She said yes! How sweet is that? I have the best friends.

It was way cheaper to fly them from Salt Lake City, so it was a good excuse to go to Utah to see my parents. Dustin and I are realizing that we don't have very much time with either of our parents. In fact, things are not looking good for Dustin's father, so we are going to spend October with them in Victoria. 

On the way down to Utah, we stopped at BYUI. Before this, none of my kids were excited about going to college. After an hour of touring the campus with Ayana (and finding out you can go to fencing classes,) both Hyrum and Daniel are excited to go to BYUI! 

It was so serendipity to be at BYUI that day. I was trying to figure out Hyrum's virtual textbook, and the help call line said I should go into the BYUI bookstore. Do you know how many times I've been in the BYUI bookstore in the past 15 years?! ZERO times. And yet, we were there! Not that it helped, but it was cool that we were there.

I was a little nervouse about Hyrum and Daniel flying alone, but they did fine, and now they've already gone to Nauvoo!

And in the mean time, the rest of us have been spending time with my mom and dad.

And although it's just Utah, we have been able to go to a Mexican Fiesta. Not very big, but still a cultural experience.

There you go! First post of the school year done! I'm on top of this. Just you wait and see!

Everything Else to Finish off the 2023-2024 Year

 OKAY! We are on the home stretch! Let's get caught up with this blog!

Let's start with the most schoolyish thing from Spring 2024: Math

Daniel got done with Video Text Math. I only do A-D. I think that's good enough. Then they do Khan academy to get ready for ALEKS placement test for University classes. Daniel finished level D so he's basically done with math that I teach. I had to bribe him to get this done, but he DID get it done!

Hyrum hasn't done math for awhile because he's had other BYUI classes, but this semester we will focus on getting ready for ALEKS.

William FINISHED RIGHTSTART MATH!!! He finished the Geometry book, which includes beginners trigonometry! I'm so proud of him (and me!) This first picture is of him finding out how tall a poll is by doing similar triangles. He's looking at a mirror at the top of the poll, which makes a similar triangle to him and the mirror. (Yeah, not sure if I explained that correctly.)

And Abraham is done with all the typical Rightstart math (the geometry book is very different than the rest of the books and has taken my kids a lot longer to get through than just a year.) He has been doing great. And he continues to doodle a bit on his math pages because....he's Abraham.

I always feel like Math is the easiest way to gage whether I'm actually doing my homeschool or not since there are a certain amount of lessons I have to get through in order to be done with a Rightstart book by the end of the year, but now there are no Rightstart books to gage that anymore! My kids are growing up!

Now English.

Abraham has fallen in love with reading! Specifically, Abraham has fallen in love with reading GRAPHIC NOVELS. His favourite has been wings of fire, which has also been m other kids' favourite.

By the way, that second picture is of him reading a book by our friends Cayleen Blackmore!

There's nothing quite like seeing your child read for fun when they are dyslexic. It's quite fulfilling.

William has been my most severely dyslexic child, and he's been a bit intimidated by Abrahams love of reading. I've caught him looking at books, but I'm not sure if he's reading them for fun yet.

 It's frustrating for him, I'm sure. He's very smart. He's doing basic trigonometry at age 12, but he is learning how to read the word "mountain." I feel a bit bad, because I experimented with him to see how effective some curriculum was for dyslexics, and that made him a bit more behind than if I had just started with a specific program.

However, he did give his first church talk, which he wrote and read by himself in front of over a hundred people!

Daniel is doing fine I guess with English, I haven't done much with him to be honest, but he did have a special Debate class over zoom which he loved! He wanted to argue for the things that he disagreed with the most to see the opposite point of view. He is a deep thinker, that one!

Hyrum has been LOVING Janet's literature class. It has made him obsessed with Ravens (which are in his book he's writing) he has listened to "save the Cat" and "story Genius," and "The hero's journey" to learn about how to write a book. He's often thinking about it, and what he's written has been pretty good! 

But the most exciting news of all is that HE'S DONE WITH ALL UNIVERSITY ENGLISH HE WILL EVER HAVE TO TAKE!!! And he got all "A"s! Whoo Hoo!

Dyslexia for the win! 

Speaking of dyslexia, I've been doing some more Barton tutoring, which I've absolutely loved. My students are the best kids ever.

One of the new things we've doing is to read Harry Potter as a family. I want my kids to read the books before watching the movies, and unlike Maxwell, they haven't been to interested in reading it themselves. I'm done waiting for them to pick it up on their own, so we read it together.

Sometimes one child doesn't want to and another says they love to, but I make them anyway. Then, as a reward for when we're done, we have a Harry Potter movie watching party. So far we've only had two parties because we have only finished two books.

The first party was pretty epic. Dustin even got us magical floating candles from his amazon returns store.

And we had a Chamber of Secrets Party as well. Daniel even made a creepy "chamber of secrets has been opened" sign.

Maxwell really wanted to have the first Harry Potter party before he left, so it doubled as his going away party as well. 

It's a bit surreal to have a missionary.

We also had his birthday party for him before he left. He turned 19. An evidence of how long it took to get his call.

He had at home MTC for two weeks, which was awesome. I'm so glad that's how they do things now. before the at home MTC, when someone asked him how he was feeling about his mission he would say he was nervous, but then after home MTC, he would say he was excited.

It helped that he had awesome support at his farewell.

We went down to Utah to see him off to the Provo MTC. His last night with us, all he wanted to do, was to make steak. What a yummy send off. We sure miss that boy.

That is the last family photo we'll be able to take for the next 6 years most likely.

As a homeschool mom, when your child goes on a mission, you think (or at least I think) that maybe I didn't teach him everything he needs to know to go out into the world. I made this quick history outline that goes over the most important Christian points he needs to know, and we had out last homeschool sessions.

I really miss him when we were needing things to be a bit more special. He made me my birthday cake before he left. It was a huge "ferrero rocher" my favourite chocolate.

 When we were in Utah, after we sent Maxwell off, Dustin and I went to some hot springs in a natural cave. And we also saw another missionary:Bradley Vanva!

As far as other things we've been doing with homeschool, art with Janet is a staple. 

All my boys love doing their art, but none more than Abraham. He's been making a new book, and he's started doing the Photoshop all by himself!

And he and I painted a chest of drawers. I must admit, I took control over this a bit, but I tried to pretend I wasn't being so controling.

Another homeschool group thing has been going over to Amy Bay's for "Down by the Bay's" school which they sometimes call "forest school" which my boys have loved, although it's not always outside.

We became residence of Canada the first of the year, but it was too late to sign up for most things. But to keep us saine, we went ice skating quite a bit. One of the funnest things was to ice skate on the Campbell's pond.

We could also officially become members of the local wards. My boys LOVED Leavitt ward. It helped that we lived across the street from the chapel. We were homeless for an entire year. First we lived in our trailer, then we lived at Bear's watching her kids, and then we lived in Leavitt for six months while our friends were in Mexico. And lastly, we lived in the Proffitt's cottage. We felt so incredibly blessed to everyone who helped us during that crazy time of our life.

Hyrum went to winter camp with the Leavitt ward.

And all the boys went on hikes with the young men's groups.

And there were many holidays to brighten our days as well.

We had pie on pi day:

Daniel insisted on helping me with St Patricks day, and he made the entire basement into a trap.

And there was April fools

And Easter

And General Conference counts as a holiday, doesn't it? We invited all the teenagers over for a General Conference debrief/Ice cream split party.

We have discovered we like parties...or rather we have confirmed that we like parties, and Hyrum has started to really create the party spirit. He seems to have a crowd surrounding him quite often.

And now that we were residence again, we knew we needed a party house. We bought a house that needed a lot of work, but we're getting to the point where it's quite enjoyable. Behold the before and afters 

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After

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After

And we also planted trees that we are going to espelier. Dustin researched how to plant fruit trees that will succeed, and so he put a pipe down to their roots, and they are really thriving! Daniel has gotten into gardening. Bless his soul. I didn't help him as I should, and we haven't had too much of a harvest, but he's been loving being outside working while listening to Brandon Sorenson books.

All these renovations turned into our school. It's taken SO MUCH TIME! I have literally listened to about 20 full length books while mudding and taping and painting. And since Maxwell is gone, Hyrum and Daniel have stepped up to be Dustin's right hand men. They've been learning a lot. Including electrical.

While we had everything under total construction, we had parties at friends (like Daniel's birthday at the Bennetts)

And then when just the main floor was done we had movie parties there,

And now that we have a movie room, Hyrum is inviting people over practically every night for a movie night.

And of course all of these renovations continued into the....

SUMMER!

WHOO HOO I'm done with the 2023-2024 year, but let's finish talking about the summer too.

One of the best things about this summer was Track and Field. It was almost daily, and very involved, and the kids had a blast. Their coach was just doing it out of the goodness of his heart because he enjoys it, and his enthusiasm effected all the kids.

Another highlight of the summer was Hyrum and Daniel going to Martin's Cove trek. It was supposed to only be for kids 16 and up, but they had some extra room, so they were including youth a from a certain grade in school.

Daniel desperately wanted to go, so when they texted me and said "what grade is Daniel in?" and asked "what grade does he need to be in to go?" 

I mean Honestly! Who cares about what grade you're in when you homeschool? He's starting BYUI classes in April, so....whatever that means! 

Thankfully the let him go, and they both had a blast.

Hyrum and Daniel also went to For the Strength of Youth as well. A whole week for $100 that's soul purpose is to inspire spirituality? Yes please! They loved it of course.

This summer Dustin has been very busy with his business. He even got a car to match:

Just kidding, Dustin said we needed another vehicle, so I said I wanted a hybrid, and this was the only hybrid available: an actual taxi! We even say to the kids now: "Get in the Taxi!"

Perhaps Dustin's working so much is why we didn't go camping as much as usual. But we did go a bit and we went to Wally's beach when the water table was super low so we could have mud baths. And we also went to the huckleberry festival in the mountains.

But Dustin was able to go away with me to my niece's wedding in Victoria where we met up with our friends, the Walshes, who took us to Butchart Gardens. I hadn't been there for years, so that was so special.

It was a wet summer, and it even rained on Canada day.

And we had the Berries visit for a SHORT visit, so we had another mom get together

And it was William's birthday where he got his ULTIMATE dream gift of a QUAD! And where I made an epic fail of a Pokemon cake.

William turned 12!!! How did he get so old? He's been going to the temple from the start of the year!

And another schoolyish thing we did this summer was to have William and Abraham take dance lessons from Hope Peavoy.

And last but not least, what my boys really wanted to do every second of every day all school year and all summer:

Yep. Thant's right. D&D. They have so many campaigns going, I can't keep up with it. I was reading out to them our plans for this next semester, and they said "WAIT! When are we going to play D&D?" 

D&D is first priority in their minds.

Wait! What?! Did I just get caught up with this blog?!? 

YIPPPPPEEEEE!!!!!!