Our Homeschool Year 2018-2019

Posted on June 9, 2019June 11, 2019 by Amy

Sooo, since we just finished up our school year, I suddenly have more time to write, and I have homeschooling on the brain (can’t wait to start planning next year, anyone with me??). So you might just see lots of posts on the topic for a few days. Or maybe just this one and the last one and then I’ll burn out and go into hibernation again for another five months. Time will tell.

Anyway, looking back on our school year, I’m feeling pretty good about what we did. We got into a good groove and learned a lot. We have stumbled into the classical method of homeschooling, and we memorized the heck out of stuff this year!! We did quite a bit of poetry memorization and John 1, along with lots of memory work from our co-op. Here’s how our year went, in a nutshell:

We participated in a Catholic Schoolhouse (CSH) co-op again this year. We found this co-op halfway through the year last year, and immediately switched from our local Classical Conversations group to the farther-away-but-so-worth-the-drive CSH, which is also a classical program. We did the whole year with CSH this year and I absolutely loved it. It’s great for the kids to be able to be in a classroom with other kids and be taught by other adults for one day a week. They have music instruction (chorus and recorder this year), art class, and science class, so even if I’m not on the ball and putting together art projects and science experiments at home, I know they will at least get to have these things at co-op. The history focus this year was ancients through the Middle Ages and the girls memorized a lot of stuff for our timeline. They even memorized all the books of the Bible, including which councils determined which testaments and in what years. I learned so much with them, and we had lots of fun. CSH has a program where the kids who memorize all of the memory work for the year (they get tested quarterly by one of the tutors) get named “Super Scholars,” get recognized at the end of year show, and get a t-shirt and a trophy. My girls worked hard to earn the honor!

Here are a few other CSH moments from the year:

^^End-of-year rocket launch^^

Every Tuesday we drove an hour to our CSH co-op, then did a Latin class afterwards (we used Our Roman Roots this year), taught by another mom, then would do some sort of field trip or play time with some friends in between Latin class and our parish’s catechism classes (our parish is in the same town as our CSH co-op). We have lots of great memories of these Tuesday afternoons.

At home, we continued with some of the same things that had been working in previous years, such as Catholic Heritage Curricula for spelling, Singapore for math, and All About Reading for reading. The older girls read great books like Mara, Daughter of the Nile, The Hobbit, The Golden Goblet, Because of Winn Dixie, and many others. We did lots of read alouds too, most recently Snow and Rose and the Wilderking Trilogy (which was amazing!!).

We sometimes added in extra worksheets with fun themes for practice. Math facts are a frequent focus for extra practice for us, so an under-the-sea themed multiplication worksheet from Education.com was fun to do after we got back from our trip to Florida and Sea World as a nice little way to ease back into school, and math in particular, after a vacation. (There is a link to the worksheet we used below, and you can check out their other multiplication games and resources here. I think we’ll be using some of them for summer practice.)

multiplication_under the sea

Some things were different than in years past.

We started a weekly holy hour, where I alternated taking one girl with me and then taking her out to lunch afterwards. It was a wonderful chance to spend some on-on-one time with each of them.

Curriculum changes this year included using The Story of Civilization from Tan Books for our history spine. We really loved it. It matched up well with the history work we did in CSH. Previously we had used The Story of the World, but we like TSoC much better. We used lots of mix and match living books for science to cover the topics of botany, chemistry, astronomy, and light and sound. We got a couple of boxes from MEL Science when we were doing our chemistry quarter, and had fun doing some of those experiments.

We went back to Seton for handwriting/cursive (we’ve switched around with other handwriting books for the past few years). I added in IEW for writing and The Good and the Beautiful for creative writing and typing for Miss. We used Seton and the Baltimore Catechism for religion. Sis used St. Joseph First Communion Catechism to prepare for her First Holy Communion.

We studied Europe and Asia in geography. I forgot about our fun with Draw the USA last year, so we didn’t do Draw Europe until the end of the school year and didn’t have time to draw Asia. But Europe was fun and turned out great!

We learned a lot about various European and Asian countries (and memorized all of them). I really think geography is my favorite subject to teach. We had cooking projects to go along with our geography studies too:

^Slovakian Bryndzové halušky – potato dumplings with sheep cheese and roasted bacon^

^Making traditional Hungarian goulash^

^French Croque Monsieur and Niçoise salad (from her Raddish box)^

We did art projects:

We went on field trips:

My husband taught gym class:

The girls did piano, ballet and tap, and knitting as extracurricular activities:

We did some other random stuff too. We had poetry tea times, took nature walks, and played board games (yes, during school time!).

^We did a bit of ice dancing during this nature walk^

We even dissected owl pellets:

And that’s snapshot into what we did this year.

Of course, I’m not showing you the photos of the days that we all melted down, no one wanted to work, the girls whined, and I was a jerk. I actually don’t generally take photos of those days, I guess. We did have those too. Sometimes homeschooling is hard. BUT, it is my fervent hope (and firm belief!) that these moments here, the photo-worthy together-times, will be the more memorable ones. We seem to have more of these anyway.

It was a really good year.

A Year Done and Why We Do It

Posted on June 5, 2019 by Amy

Last Thursday was our last day of school! We went out for a celebratory dinner and ice cream (I actually started writing this post that same day, which gives you some idea of how I never get writing done anymore!).

We had a really good year. First, third, and fourth grades are officially done, and it feels pretty awesome to be heading into summer.

For a short time this year I had some struggles with our choice to homeschool in terms of how it was affecting my girls (and somewhat me) socially. Not that there has ever been any lack of the dreaded socialization. That has never been a problem (really, it’s not a problem). But we have good friends who do not homeschool, and during the first half of the year a couple of my kids had a hard time with feeling left out of the school world of their friends. And if I’m honest, I sometimes struggled with feeling left out of the school-mom-world of my friends too.

It turned out okay. We kept open communication about it. We have great homeschooling friends too, and we made more time to spend with them. I had many conversations with my girls and with my husband. I never had any doubts about our choice, it just sometimes felt extra hard this year. In many ways I think these struggles actually strengthened my conviction that homeschooling is the best thing for our family. My kids sometimes don’t understand why we homeschool, so we talked a lot about it, and I think it really helped them to understand our reasoning.

As I’m closing out this school year, I thought I’d just jot down here why we do homeschool. I’ve been fortunate to have pretty consistent support for our choice to homeschool from the people in my life, but I know there are a lot of people who do not understand homeschooling, who think it is weird or wrong or even dangerous. I also know that there are many, many reasons for homeschooling and the reasons we do it are not the same as for others.

But in case you’re curious (and in case I need a shot-in-the-arm reminder in November of next year), here’s why we do it:

First and foremost, I know that God has called me to homeschool my kids.
I don’t like what I have seen and heard about what is being taught in schools. Textbooks are terribly biased, gender is confused, and schools teach to the test or to the demands of the loudest voices rather than focusing on filling childrens’ hearts with the true, good, and beautiful things of this world.
I want my kids to learn primarily from books, with a little bit of time on screens. That seems to be reversed in many schools.
I also want the books they read to be worth reading, with positive values and powerful messages that will help them engage with the world through well-written stories. I don’t want them to just be handed the current pop culture best-seller, or the books that are horrid but prevalent in classrooms because they supposedly “get kids to read.”
I don’t believe in homework for elementary-aged children.
I want my kids to have more time to play and to eat lunch at a leisurely pace than what they are allowed in schools.
I like having my kids home with me all day.
I cannot imagine having to get my kids up and out the door by 7:30am five days a week. Just the thought makes me shudder.
I want our Faith to be the most important thing they are learning every day and for their education to be faithful to true Catholic teaching.
I like that my kids are each others’ best friends.
I want the primary influences in their lives to come from my husband and me and our family, not peers or teachers.
I like being able to take time off whenever I want if something comes up that is worth taking time off for.

13. Finally, I’m confident that I’m the best teacher for my kids. I am far from perfect, but I know them better and am more invested in the education of both their minds and their hearts than anyone else could ever possibly be. No question.

There are many more reasons, but those are the main ones that come to mind right away.

We have our occasional struggles, and this year was no exception. Homeschooling is sometimes hard work, but it is so, so worth it.

Happy summer!!

2018 in Photos

Posted on January 2, 2019January 3, 2019 by Amy

JANUARY

Failed art project

Head banging to AC/DC

FEBRUARY

Nine

MARCH

Dinner by herself

Six

APRIL

Dressed up by sisters

Multitasking

MAY

May crowning

JUNE

Two

Summer

JULY

“Is that a lion?”

Road trip!

Can you spot the waterfall?

AUGUST

Be still my beating heart

Eight

“Nice baby goat”

First day

SEPTEMBER

OCTOBER

NOVEMBER

Science experiment

DECEMBER

Happy New Year!

For the Love of St. John…

Posted on December 28, 2018 by Amy

I just have to do a super quick share today. I recently got the book “Around the Year with the Von Trapp Family,” and have been poring over it and using so many ideas for liturgical year living already, just since getting it at the beginning of Advent (I highly recommend it!). One thing I love about it is that it was originally published in 1955, so the feasts and celebrations in the book are very traditional and come from a time before all the liturgical and calendar changes of the Church from the 60s/70s. As I’ve learned about lots of things in the past few years, it seems to me that many beautiful old traditions from our Faith have been lost to time and changes in the Church, and I love to learn about them and try to bring them back in our home.

One of these I learned about from the Von Trapp book is the celebration of the Feast of St.
John the Apostle. Tradition tells us that enemies of St. John gave him poisoned wine in an attempt to kill him, but when he made the sign of the cross over the wine, the cup split in half, spilling all the poisoned wine and saving him from drinking it. So, on his feast day (which was yesterday) many traditional churches have a wine blessing after Mass. I discovered that our parish was offering the wine blessing, so I went to Mass and got a bottle blessed (incidentally, most other, more seasoned people took many bottles/gallon jugs of wine for the blessing… next year I think I’ll take more than one bottle!). My main purpose in doing this was to have blessed wine for our St. John’s Blessing before dinner last night.

Here’s what we did, straight from Maria von Trapp’s book:

I poured a small glass of wine for everyone at the table old enough to be able to do the blessing as instructed (so not the two little boys!). The girls got no more than a tiny splash in their glasses, enough for two small sips. We told our kids about St. John and the poisoned wine and then my husband began the blessing. He turned to me and said, “I drink to you the love of St. John,” and I replied, “Thank you for the love of St. John.” We then clinked glasses and each took a sip. Then I turned to Miss (as the oldest child), and she and I did the same. Then she and Lass, and so on until Sis completed the circle by drinking “the love of St. John” to my husband. Then we sat down to eat, the girls got full glasses of sparkling blueberry juice, or “kids’ wine” as they call it, and we continued most of our dinner conversation discussing St. John.

It was a fun new tradition, and we will continue to do it every year.

A New Way to Do Advent

Posted on December 17, 2018 by Amy

Every year since I have been an adult with a home of my own (20 years), I have put up and decorated my Christmas tree on the day after Thanksgiving. I did it when I lived alone, and it became a tradition in our family. I have always rejected getting Christmassy in any way before Thanksgiving, but the day after? We blare the Christmas music, get out alllll the decorations, and go nuts. And then I take the tree down by New Year’s, because by then I’m sick to death of it and can’t wait to have my house back to normal.

^Photos taken on November 29, 2013^

A few years ago, I began learning more about the season of Advent, and how it is meant to be more of a season of waiting and anticipation and not a time for celebrating Christmas yet. Christmas is about the birth of Jesus, and Jesus wasn’t born the fourth Friday in November, amiright? I started feeling a yearning to resist putting up the tree right away. To not blare the Christmas music for the entire month of December. To focus more on the waiting for the Savior instead of on the hustle and bustle of the world at this time of year. And then starting Christmas celebrations on Christmas and keeping them going through Epiphany.

I have wanted to do this for the past few years, but I always chickened out. Or I caved to the pressure. Or I was too mentally lazy to figure out how to do it differently. Or some combination of all of these. I was worried how my kids would react if I changed a bunch of our holiday traditions around.

So instead, I added other things. The Advent wreath. The Jesse Tree. The empty manger with pieces of straw for the girls to add for good deeds/sacrifices to pad it for the Baby Jesus. We kept Baby Jesus out of all of our nativities until Christmas morning.

Last year I made a point of trying to extend out celebration of Christmas, by keeping the tree up through the twelve days of Christmas. And I had gifts wrapped for my girls to open for each of the twelve days (one family game for each day).

But even though we’ve added in these Advent activities and I’ve tried to extend the Christmas celebration beyond Christmas Day, we have always still put up our tree and started celebrating Christmas right after Thanksgiving.

Except this year, we didn’t.

This year, I decided we were going try hard to keep Advent focused on waiting, and then to celebrate Christmas really big and for the entirety of the season. We didn’t put up the tree the day after Thanksgiving. We are making a game of not singing Christmas music. I’m trying to start new traditions by putting more emphasis on the wonderful feasts that occur during Advent.

The girls were a little disappointed to have to wait to put up our tree, but overall, they have really taken to the new way of doing things without much resistance. We’ve kept lots of our previous traditions, like doing our Jesse Tree reading, saying prayers, and reading books around our Advent Wreath each night. We still open a book each evening to read together (most old, but a few new). And I think it helps that we’ve added in plenty of other ways of celebrating.

We had a “New Year’s Eve” party on the night before the start of Advent.

We drew names on the first day of Advent for each of us to have a Christkindl throughout the season (someone to do special, secret things for each day). We celebrated St. Nicholas Day as usual with putting our shoes out, but then also added making special Speculatius cookies for the feast.

And we went to a fun St. Nicholas party at our parish.

We had a big feast of all white food (including our dessert) for the Solemnity of the Immaculate Conception.

We had a big St. Lucy Day celebration/procession this year for that feast.

I briefly entertained the idea of making Lussekatter, or St. Lucia saffron buns, for the occasion, and then decided that there was no need to go overboard. Cinnamon rolls shaped like an “S” were a fine substitute.

Then yesterday, on “the pink Sunday” we finally put up our tree.

The third Sunday of Advent, for those of you who aren’t familiar, is called “Gaudete Sunday.” “Gaudete” means “rejoice” in Latin. It is a special day in the midst of the waiting season of Advent to rejoice, because the big event, the birth of our Lord, is almost here. The liturgical color for this day is rose, which is why it’s sometimes called the pink Sunday.

I thought about waiting until Christmas Eve to put up the tree. I know some people who do this. But I figured I would try baby steps this year and just wait until Gaudete Sunday, but not turn on the lights on the tree until we get up to go to Midnight Mass on Christmas Eve.

The girls were so excited to put up the tree and even listen to Christmas music for one day while we did!

We will put up the rest of the decorations gradually this week and I’m going to try to leave them up until Candlemas (we’ll see how that goes).

I have really felt a difference this Advent. It feels more meaningful. I think we have been able to focus more on the important things. It has been a little hard, but I can honestly feel the anticipation and excitement building. Now I just hope we will be able to keep up our celebration of Christmas all the way through Epiphany and beyond, when the rest of the world is done on December 26th!

I hope you are having a wonderful Advent season. Christmas is almost here. Gaudete!!

A Black Hills Family Vacation

Posted on October 3, 2018 by Amy

We just took a family vacation to South Dakota. It was so super fun that I’m determined to ~~over share about~~ document it here, even though it has taken me three days so far to do so. My husband keeps gently reminding me that I have a lot more family memories recorded from when the girls were little and very few for these baby/toddler years with the boys. He likes that I blog so that we have something to look back on. I like looking back on the old posts too, so here are our fun tales of our recent trip (which might even be helpful to someone else who might be planning a trip to SD??).

We decided on the last week of September to go on vacation, because I cannot stand crowds, and I knew the tourist rush would be over with all the kids having gone back to school. I think I’ve told you all before that one of my favorite things about homeschooling is that it allows me to wait until all the kids have gone back to school to take my kids to the places that everyone else goes to in the summer and on weekends. You won’t find us in a museum on a Saturday (or in a grocery store for that matter)! As a result, there were a few things that we couldn’t do because of being “out of season,” but nothing crucial, and nothing that would be worth braving the crowds (and the heat) mid-summer. I wanted a slow-paced vacation so we could focus on our family and not be stressed. My husband’s and my mantra for the trip was, “We aren’t in a hurry.” For us, it was absolutely worth it to miss out on a few attractions in order to also miss out on the crowds and hustle.

We stayed in Hill City at the High Country Guest Ranch, which was just lovely. I rented a little three bedroom cabin, which was a tiny bit cramped , but mostly perfect for our family. There was room for our kids to run around outside and they loved playing around a little stream that ran right behind our cabin (and the horses right outside were a nice touch too).

I found Hill City to be a great central location, not very far from any of the things that we wanted to do, except Wall Drug/Badlands, and with a very cool downtown area.

Given that we were a bit far from Wall and the Badlands, I had a plan in place that we would go to the Latin Mass on Sunday in Rapid City and then continue on over to Wall Drug and eat lunch/get donuts before heading down to do some light hiking in the Badlands. However, we ended up stopping at Wall Drug on the way to our cabin on Saturday night, because passing Wall happened to coincide with dinner time during our drive.

Wall Drug was weird and fun and a nice way to break up the drive towards the end. But it wasn’t something we felt the need to do twice, so we decided not to go back to Wall on Sunday but to go hiking around Lake Sylvan instead.

Things actually played out like a comedy of errors that afternoon, but we managed to have fun anyway. To start with, I made sure that all the girls brought a change of clothes and shoes for after Mass and then ended up forgetting my own comfy shoes for hiking. By the time we finished having lunch, stopping at Walmart for some groceries, and stopping back at the cabin to put groceries in the fridge and grab my shoes, it was getting a bit late in the afternoon. Recently-potty-trained Bubba had fallen asleep in the car, and though he usually does well to avoid accidents when awake, he’s not so reliable when sleeping. So we got to the lake only to find out that he had peed in his seat, and while I had a change of underwear for him, somehow I neglected to bring a change of pants.

Then when getting changed in the van, my husband realized that he had also forgotten his walking shoes. So he put his dress shoes back on, Bubba put his pee-pee-pants back on, we loaded the boys in the stroller and began to walk, only to find out that the trail quickly got too steep and rugged for our stroller. We rolled it over to the side, I put Brother in the Ergo, my husband carried Bubba, the girls climbed alllll the rocks, Lake Sylvan was gorgeous, and everything seemed fine.

And then, inexplicably, Bubba peed all over my husband while being carried up the trail. I have no idea where that came from, as he has never had an accident like that before. Maybe he figured it was fair game since his pants were wet anyway?? I don’t know.

But since he and my husband were soaked in urine, we decided to abort the hiking plan and just go back down to the beach for the kids to play in the water. This seemed to salvage the afternoon, as the girls made a new friend and played happily with her, while Bubba threw mud into the lake and got his pants even more wet. My husband hid out a little distance away on the grassy shore with Brother, his dress shoes/white socks combo, and his pee shirt.

We made it home in time for my husband to grill hotdogs (after changing his shirt) and the kids to play (fairly) peacefully until dinner, which was a lovely way to end day one.

All of the weather forecasts I saw leading up to the trip said that Monday was supposed to be rainy, so my plan for that day was to take the kids to the Museum @ Black Hills Institute so they could see all the dinosaur skeletons (namely Stan the T.Rex). This was one thing my kids seemed to be looking forward to more than any other, so it had to happen. The Institute did not disappoint.

Happily, it was right in downtown Hill City and the weather was actually much nicer than it had been predicted to be. So after we spent lots of time looking at all the skeletons, fossils, and other interesting artifacts, we took a nice walk downtown. We intended to go to the South Dakota State Railroad Museum, took a very circuitous route to get there, and serendipitously ended up at a neat little park along the way. We did eventually make our way to the SDSRM and then to an amazing lunch before managing to get back to the cabin in time for naps (for both boys and me!!), which was a huge bonus.

In the caboose at the SDSRM

There was lots of playing outside in the afternoon, more hotdog grilling for dinner, and some game time with the new board game we bought at Walmart the day before. (Catan – it’s SO FUN!!) Day two was a very easy, low-key day.

But day three was my favorite. My plan was to go to Mt. Rushmore and do gold/gem panning on the same day, since both are located in Keystone. In fact you could see Mt. Rushmore from the gold mine place, so it was super convenient.

We started the morning with a gold mine tour at Big Thunder Gold Mine. This lasted about an hour and was very interesting. The tour guide did a great job and did not seem phased at all that my two-year-old was being a bit noisy at times during his presentation.

The same guy set us up for our gold and gem panning experiences, which my girls were super excited about. Gold panning was a lot more tricky, and he really helped the girls a lot to find their little bits of gold. I was really pleased with the experience at Big Thunder and would highly recommend it. My girls especially enjoyed the gem panning, which was very easy and fun for them.

Gold panning (you can just see Mt. Rushmore in the upper right of the photo)

Gem panning was much easier

After the gold mine experience we went out for lunch in downtown Keystone and then headed for Mt. Rushmore. It was such a cool experience to actually see this huge monument in person. We were only able to walk part of the Presidential Trail, because some of it was closed, but it was still worth it to get as close as possible.

One part of the monument that I never paid attention to in photos but that was interesting to see close up was the pile of rubble spread out all down the side of the mountain where it fell after being blasted off. You could see where the holes had been drilled for the dynamite to be inserted.

We were able to learn a lot more about the creation of the monument than I ever knew, including why each of the four chosen presidents was selected (chronologically in a nutshell: foundation, expansion, preservation, development). The girls enjoyed climbing the rocks up the side of the trail as we walked back to the information center area. Even though it was chilly, we treated ourselves in the ice cream shop for a perfect way to finish up the afternoon.

The last day was a tiny bit of a failure, but not too bad, because we were all tired and probably needed to have an extra slow day anyway. My girls wanted to go the the Black Hills Caverns, which I thought looked like it would be fun for them, and the best way for them to experience a cave tour in the area (the other caves would not have been doable with the boys). It’s in Rapid City, so we planned to make a day trip and include some other fairly quick stops up that way, such as Reptile Gardens and a new-ish Dinosaur Museum next to Reptile Gardens.

Since Reptile Gardens and the Dino Museum are on the road to Rapid City, we stopped there first before going to the caverns. Oddly, I think the two favorite things of the morning were the bird show at Reptile Gardens and the mirror maze at the Dinosaur Museum.

As we got ready to head to the caverns after these stops, I called and found out that they are only open on the weekends during September, although their website says in one place that tours are offered daily May through September (the actual calendar page of the website shows the correct information, but I didn’t see that). So, my mistake for not researching the hours better, and we couldn’t do this one.

This turned out to be okay, since my girls mostly wanted to have a chance to go back to the Black Hills Institute again, which we did while the boys were napping.

We got to spend a lot more time looking at the exhibits, they all finished picking out their souvenirs for the trip, I got a few early dinosaur Christmas presents for Bubba, we treated ourselves and got a gift for my parents at a local sweet shop, and got home for more game-playing (Taboo and Catan) and relaxation in the evening.

There were lots of things that we just couldn’t fit into a four-day trip, but the one thing we felt truly bummed that we missed was the Badlands. It was over an hour to drive out there, and we did not make the trip during our stay. However, we had to drive right north of the area on our way home, and decided to go ahead and take the scenic drive through the national park so we could at least see it before heading on home. It was worth the time it added to our drive for sure, and if we ever go back, I absolutely want to make a point to take a day to spend there exploring it more.

Overall, the trip was a wonderful success. We all had a lot of fun and didn’t get stressed out or overly exhausted from doing too much. I think the key to this for our family was to go and do activities mostly in the mornings, get lunch out somewhere, and then go back to our cabin for playing/resting and an easy dinner in. And also crucial was that my husband and I made the above-mentioned point of reminding each other before and several times during the trip that we were on vacation, and we absolutely did not have to be in a hurry to get anywhere. My favorite part of the trip was actually playing games together every evening (seriously, check out the game Catan).

A close second in the favorites list was enjoying lunch out together each day. We tried some really great, interesting new foods, went to fun restaurants, and enjoyed this time together a lot. There was only one restaurant that we went to for lunch that I didn’t think was all that great, and it was one that I hadn’t looked into ahead of time or had recommended to me. Here’s a quick run-down of the restaurants:

Stonewalls Kitchen in Rapid City – We went here for lunch after Mass on Sunday, and it turned out they were still selling breakfast. Breakfast is my favorite, so this was good news. The food was wonderful, and the highlight of the meal was their serve-yourself coffee bar, where Miss and Lass tried decaf coffee for the first time ever, doctoring it all up with cream and sweetener and cinnamon (??) to their liking.

Alpine Inn in Hill City – This was our lunch destination on Monday. The food was phenomenal. Everyone tried something new (Monte Cristo sandwiches, spaetzle, etc.) and it was all so, so good. Plus the dessert was amazing. I’m not sure about the dinner experience, as they seem to only have two items on their dinner menu (we tried to get takeout from there on Wednesday evening so we could enjoy our lunch favorites again and couldn’t get them!), but the lunch was well worth the stop.

Ruby House in Keystone – This is a restaurant that is said to have been a former “house of ill repute,” though if you look on the website, the history does not include this in its story. It does have interesting antique decor and a good menu, and the girls enjoyed being able to get “fancy” drinks there.

Tally’s Silver Spoon in Rapid City – This place is very highly rated and the food was fine (though it seemed like they were trying too hard to be “edgy” with some of the items). I didn’t really enjoy our lunch here because the restaurant is not well-suited to accommodate a large-ish family. They sat us at a huge round table right by the kitchen/food prep area in the back. The table was large enough for 10-12 people, so we only sat around one side of it, and couldn’t really have a conversation with each other very well. Then an older couple came in and got seated at the table with us, which was weird. So, while I can’t say that I wouldn’t recommend this place, if you have more than 4 people in your family/party, just be aware it isn’t well set up to handle you.

And that’s it.

I realized when writing this that this was the first vacation what we have been on as just our little family since we went to Arizona when Lass was six months old (or maybe we could count a short, overnight stay at Disney when Miss turned four, though that was part of a larger family-visiting trip in Florida). We have traveled a lot to visit family, for various family functions, and for big family reunions (we went to Steamboat Springs, CO this summer with my husband’s whole family). I have also taken the kids plenty of places by myself when my husband has been working. But this type of straight-up vacation (not visiting) just for our family hasn’t happened much at all, and certainly not in recent years.

We have learned that this type of trip is priceless. The time spent together as a family, just me and my husband with our five kids, making memories, is something we will always hold dear. Experiences like these have just climbed to the top of our list of travel priorities (though we will always make time for visiting family too).

According to my girls, our next trip will be to Crater of Diamonds State Park in Arkansas. Let the planning begin…

Like an Old Friend

Posted on June 11, 2018 by Amy

It’s been a really long time since my last post. I have been thinking about posting. I swear. But every time I try to round up my thoughts to type something out, it all seems overwhelming. And the longer I go without posting, the harder it feels to get back into it.

So, instead of worrying about typing up a well-thought-out post. A clever post. A coherent post… I’m just going to type and hope for the best here.

Feels kind of like coming back to an old friend. There’s a lot of catching up to do, so I’ll start there I guess.

Remember this guy?

He’s five months old. He’s a so-so night sleeper and a terrible napper. He is super sweet, but he mostly just likes to be held, which means I get nothing done ever. Ever, ever.

His brother is hilarious and also a miniature Incredible Hulk. Hulk smash? Yes. Frequently. He’s into dinosaurs and trucks/tractors and his newest loves are sharks/fish/whales.

He turned two a week and a half ago.

He’s ornery and sweet. He’ll hit you in the face with a truck, and then when you say “Ow!” and tell him no, he makes the cutest little sad face and gives a hug with a “sowy.”

With the girls I recently wrapped up another school year. I absolutely love teaching them at home. I was also beyond ready to be done with it for the summer.

They are going to a day camp right now for a week. Every summer when they do this, I get a little glimpse of what my life would be like if they were in school, and I don’t like it. It’s weird to have them gone all day!

Lass had her First Holy Communion this spring. This girl has such a beautiful faith. I just love that she finally got to receive Jesus in the Blessed Sacrament.

We switched parishes officially after her First Communion, so next year Sis will be receiving her sacraments at our new latin rite parish.

We went to the Farm a few weeks ago, for the first time in what seems like forever. It was exhausting (Little Brother did not sleep well), but really fun. We had lots of beach time and the girls fished a ton, every night in the boat with my husband.

My mother-in-law has kept all of my husband’s old Tonka trucks since he was a boy. He got them out for the kids to play with, and they were a big hit.

The only other big news I can think of is that my parents are going to be moving here by the end of the month. This is such an amazing, wonderful, game changing thing for me. I have never lived near my parents since becoming an adult (except for one year between undergraduate and graduate school, at which time I think my classification as an “adult” was very questionable). I keep daydreaming about what it will be like when they’re here and my kids (and I) get to spend time with them regularly. It’s going to be fabulous, and I can’t wait.

There. That was just like a quick catch up over coffee. Or wine. I’ve missed this. Hope to do it again soon.

An Old-School Baptism

Posted on January 27, 2018 by Amy

In October, I went out of town for a weekend by myself. My husband watched the kids, and I booked a room in a lovely hotel in Milwaukee for a little bit of a vacation before the arrival of our little guy. I spent the weekend mostly reading, sleeping, and eating delicious food while it was still hot.

The other thing I made sure to be able to do while in Milwaukee was to attend my first ever Latin Mass. We do not live near a church that offers a Latin Mass, and my husband and I had been talking about trying to go to one for quite some time (the closest one to us is an hour away). I was excited to have an opportunity to attend one in Milwaukee, at a parish run by the Institute of Christ the King Sovereign Priest.

I had no idea what was going on for most of the Mass, but I loved it. It was beautiful and reverent and kind of indescribable if you’ve never seen it in person.

Image credit

After I attended the Mass in Latin, my husband and I tried a few times to plan a trip to the closest Latin Mass parish in our diocese, also run by ICKSP, but various circumstances (i.e. sick kids) got in the way of us making the trip.

In the meantime, we continued to try to learn more about the extraordinary form of the Mass. While perusing the internet on the topic, my husband came across some information about the traditional form of Baptism.

He sent me a link about it and casually mentioned that maybe we should think about having the baby baptized in the Latin Rite. I was hesitant at first. I thought it would be strange and confusing for us to have our baby baptized in a language we don’t understand. But I looked into it anyway and found that I loved the wording of the old rite. It is so much more beautiful and powerful than the newer version.

I liked it so much better that I asked our regular parish priest if he could do the old rite at our current parish but in English. He is a wonderful priest, and he actually looked into this for me, but said that the person in charge of such things from our diocese told him that if we wanted to have the old wording of the sacrament, it had to be done in Latin and done at the one Latin parish that we have in our diocese.

So, I decided to call the Latin parish and find out if it would be possible for us to have our son baptized there, even though we weren’t members. I called on a Thursday evening, expecting to leave a message for a secretary and get a call back the next day. I got a recorded message saying that the secretary is only in the office on Tuesdays, which I thought was kind of fantastic in a world of huge modern parishes with tons of full time staff members. I left a message and was shocked to receive a call back within about ten minutes from the priest! He had a heavy French accent, and was completely delightful, and told me that of course he would be happy to baptize our son, and asked if we could meet with him after Mass that weekend.

At this point, we still hadn’t managed to make it to a Mass in Latin as a family, but I told him that yes, we would meet with him, so that we would be forced to just buck up and go.

And we did. And we have never looked back.

That was the first Sunday of Advent. We have driven over an hour to that parish almost every weekend since then. We even took our girls to the midnight Mass there on Christmas Eve.

And yes, we did have our son baptized there. And it was amazing.

The priest started the Baptism outside the doors to the sanctuary, saying that this was because our son was not yet a member of our Faith. He informed us that our son is a little saint on earth, since Baptism washes away original sin, and he is too young to commit any actual sin yet.

Then he began. The words he spoke, some in English, some in Latin, were beautiful. The gestures and symbolism were so moving. There were some parts of the old rite, like when the priest breathes on the catechumen three times in the form of a cross, or when he puts a bit of salt in the catechumen’s mouth, that I thought might be weird. But these were not strange at all. In fact, they felt very laden with history and meaning and beauty.

(You can read the whole Rite of Baptism here, in Latin and English, side by side. The link also has the newer rite at the bottom for comparison if you’re curious).

After we all went into the nave, the intense feeling of the tradition and holiness in the rite continued. The priest said a prayer of exorcism, which was part of the reason we wanted to have the Latin Rite instead of the newer, watered-down version. I think the only mention of Satan in my Baptism or that of my other children was when the priest asked if we reject him, and we said, “I do.” This renunciation is present in the old rite as well, along with several other explicit prayers of exorcism. I especially liked when the priest said, “And this sign of the holy Cross, which we make upon his forehead, do thou, accursed devil, never dare to violate.”

Like placing a shield on our baby. The biggest, strongest, most impenetrable shield possible, the Cross.

The rest of the Baptism continued in a manner fairly similar to the Baptisms I have observed before. The usual symbols and sacramentals were there. The water, the fire, the white garment, the oil. But there was so much more.

After the Baptism Rite itself, my husband and I were surprised that the priest instructed us to say an act of consecration to Mary in front of the nativity. He pulled the kneeler over, and we knelt to say one of the most beautiful prayers I have ever said (he gave it to us to read). At several points during this part, I got a bit choked up as I prayed the words dedicating my little son to our Blessed Mother.

It was the perfect ending to a truly sublime sacrament.

Welcome to the Church, sweet boy.

A Dramatic Entrance: Sweet Boy’s Birth Story

Posted on January 15, 2018 by Amy

Birth story time!

I love a good birth story. This one has a bit of a crazy ending. Enjoy:

All of my first four kids were born after their due date. The third and fourth (Sis and Bubba) were induced five and one days past their due dates, respectively (you can read the birth stories for Lass, Sis, and Bubba here. I’m not sure what happened to Miss’s?).

So, I felt pretty confident that with this fifth delivery, I would be going to my due date once again, when I had an induction scheduled. December 29th was to be the day, I was quite certain.

What’s that saying about what God does when we make plans?

I woke up on December 28th at around 5am with some contractions. They weren’t too bad, but they gradually got stronger as I stayed in bed, half sleeping and procrastinating getting up for the day. Around 6-ish I started to time them, and they were about 7-8 minutes apart, lasting around a minute each. I decided to get up and take a shower, both to see if anything changed, and also, just in case.

Once I was up and moving around, the contractions got closer together and a bit stronger, more like 3-4 minutes apart, but they were shorter, only 30-45 seconds long. So I didn’t know what to think. My doctor always has told me that I should call if my contractions were five minutes apart, lasting one minute each, for an hour. These contractions weren’t fitting the prescribed pattern! I wasn’t sure what to do. It had been over seven years since the last time I had gone into labor on my own, but I figured I should still be able to determine if I was actually in labor or not. I did not want to be the fifth-time mom who came into the hospital in “labor,” only to be sent home.

My husband asked me if he should try to find someone to cover his shift at work. I thought maybe I should call a nurse. But it was early, before office hours, and I knew I’d probably have to wait a while for the on-call nurse to call me back if I called then, so I told my husband to go ahead and go to work. I said, “I’m going to go downstairs and put my feet up. These contractions will probably go away.” (If you have read Bubba’s birth story, you might remember that I started having contractions the morning he was born too, and they stopped on their own).

So, I woke up my Mom to chase Bubba around while I put my feet up and let the contractions go away.

Except the contractions didn’t go away. They gradually got a little stronger (though they never did get to the one-minute-long-every-five-minutes criteria). Since I have had a c-section (and for that reason a nurse once yelled at me on the phone for not calling sooner when I was having contractions with Lass), I figured I should call the nurse and see what she recommended. When I did, she said that my doctor (Dr. K) was off that day, but that the doctor who delivered Bubba (Dr. C, not my usual OB, but the one I went with for his delivery and also loved, because when I was pregnant with Bubba, Dr. K had taken a break from delivering babies for a while) was the back up on-call doctor and could see me that morning.

So, I called my husband and said he needed to come home from work, got my stuff together to go to the hospital, and off we went.

When we arrived, we went right in to see Dr. C, who checked me and pronounced that I was at 5 cm (already!) and that I was in labor and should be admitted. She said she’d come upstairs later that morning to break my water, and we went on upstairs to the L&D floor to have a baby.

As usual, the nurses assigned to me had me get in the bed for monitoring and to get my blood drawn and have an IV needle put in place in case of an emergency. My contractions weren’t too bad at this point, so I was talking and joking with my husband and the nurses throughout this time.

After this part was done, I got up and began to walk around the halls with my husband. We have done this together so many times before. So many laps on this same L&D floor. We talked and joked. He hummed Pange Lingua. Every few laps we’d stop and let the nurses do their monitoring. The contractions were getting a bit stronger, but not too much at this point.

I focused on offering each contraction for a prayer intention, which I had loosely planned out in my head, but had not gotten around to writing down (I was supposed to have one more day for that!).

On one of our laps when we passed the nurse’s station, our nurse told us that Dr. K had called (Dr. C must have called her), and said that she had an appointment that afternoon that she couldn’t miss, but if I hadn’t delivered but he time she was done, she would come in and do the delivery. How awesome that my two favorite docs were both willing to deliver my baby!

At around 11am, Dr. C came up and broke my water.

A few more laps after this and things started to get real. I started to feel like I didn’t want to walk anymore, but when I stopped in the room and sat on the yoga ball (my go-to position from my labors with both Sis and Bubba), things would slow down.

My husband said I needed to stop looking so cheerful when he took my picture

I was torn, because I really liked being more comfortable on the yoga ball, but I wanted things to keep moving, and walking was a good way to get things progressing. For a little while, we alternated between walking and sitting. By about 1:00 or 1:30 or so, my contractions got too hard for walking.

No more cheerful

I have a history of labor-puking, and I felt extremely hot and nauseated, so I made sure the puke basin was nearby, though I didn’t end up needing it.

At some point, I really don’t know when, maybe around the time I decided I was done walking, the nurse checked me again and said I was at seven centimeters. I suppose that was decent progress, but I remember thinking that seven still seemed awfully far from 10.

Around 2:00 or so, I started having a lot of back pain and couldn’t sit on the ball anymore. I had my husband adjust the height of the bed and I stood up and leaned over onto the bed on my elbows, which helped a little bit. I had my husband squeeze my hips during each contraction, which helped some too. He was reminding me to get through one contraction at a time and to offer up the pain, which was also helpful, though I was beginning to really struggle to get through the contractions around this time.

The nurses came in, and I told one of them something like, “I think I’m starting to maybe feel a little bit of pressure.” I was definitely feeling pressure, but afraid to get my hopes up or to have my progress checked only to find out I had made minimal gains. I was experiencing a strong fear of the end-of-labor despair. The nurse asked if I was feeling pressure all the time or only at the end of my contractions, and I didn’t really know the answer to this, so I just said “only at the end.” She suggested maybe waiting 15 minutes and then checking my progress. I think she too was concerned about my reaction if I had made little change.

Within a few minutes of her saying this, I asserted a bit more confidently that I was feeling pressure and really felt the need to push. One of the nurses said something like, “Hop up on the bed then, and we’ll check you.” I remember thinking how ridiculous that idea was, and I said, “Okay! I’ll just hop right on up there then!” with the tiny bit of a chuckle that I could muster.

Then things got crazy.

The next few minutes were a complete whirlwind as I barely managed to get myself onto the bed between contractions (I think my husband and/or one of the nurses might have had to half lift me on there?), then I immediately said that I had to push. My nurse checked me, and told the other nurse to call Dr. C, and suddenly there were tons of nurses in my room, but no OB, and I remember thinking “Please don’t try to tell me I have to wait until the doctor is here!”

I noticed that my nurse was gowning up and there was a senior nurse who had come into the room who basically told me to just do what I needed to do, which was good because I had already been covertly pushing as everyone was hurrying and getting things ready.

A few minutes and a few more contractions later, Little Buddy emerged, delivered by the nurse, in a dramatic entrance to rival that of Sis (in which I did manage to wait for the doctor to come upstairs).

The doctor came in a few minutes later. Everything was fine. Baby was healthy, I was fine, we all had a good laugh about it. My two OBs had been willing to deliver the baby and neither of them made it in time.

The nurse who delivered him told me I did a good job, and I told her she did too. Then I asked her how many times before she had had to do the delivery. She said, “Technically, that was my first” (She had had one other situation when she could have delivered the baby, but she deferred to the more senior nurse that time).

And there you have it. My first ever delivery before my due date. My first delivery without an OB present. Not my first fast-ending delivery, but perhaps the most dramatic.

Sweet boy was 8 lbs, 13 oz (my smallest baby) and 21 inches long, born at 2:32 on Dec. 28th.

We are all soaking up the newborn days. The kids adore him, and we are happily (though sleepily) adjusting to life as a family of seven.

Mom Guilt: When the Baby Isn’t the Baby Anymore

Posted on January 1, 2018 by Amy

I fully intended to write this post last week on Thursday, before my scheduled induction for Friday morning. Before the little Peanut arrived. However, little guy decided to be the first of my children ever to arrive before a due date, and Thursday found me in the midst of labor and new baby heaven, instead of here. That’s a story for another post, though, which I will write soon.

Last week, before Thursday, I found myself in a familiar, yet always slightly unexpected place. That place of, “I’m about to have a baby and my life is going to change drastically,” and more specifically,”My little baby is about to not be my baby anymore. I feel so [insert one] sad, nostalgic, guilty, afraid-he-will-never-forgive-me-and-be-scarred-forever-by-this.”

I’ve had this experience each time, in slightly varying ways, before giving birth to another baby. This feeling is always accompanied (and largely overshadowed) by intense joy and excitement for the upcoming birth of a new little person, of course, but these wistful/fearful feelings creep in a bit nonetheless.

This time, I found myself trying to spend a little bit of extra time with each of my kids. I tried to still do most of our holiday traditions:

Visiting Santa and having ice cream for lunch at the mall

Constructing and eating gingerbread houses

Baking and decorating Christmas cookies

Going to see the Nutcracker in the Castle and then having cupcakes and dancing with the Sugar Plum Fairy

I took each of the girls out for a one-on-one lunch with mom.

I tried to spend some extra time with Bubba too.

But in the last few days leading up to my delivery date (or what I thought was going to be my delivery date), I found myself feeling especially nostalgic about the idea that my little man was about to not be my littlest baby anymore. I snuggled him extra. I read to him more than usual. I got all sappy about putting him to bed each night, rocking him longer and singing his song more slowly. I felt so worried that he might feel abandoned by me when I went to the hospital for a few days and then brought home a new little person who would take up a decent mount of my time.

The other day, I talked to Super Friend about this. I knew she would understand. Of course she did. And not only did she understand, but she gave me the most perfect reminder to help me not feel guilty or worried about Bubba (I think she said it came from her husband when she had similar feelings before her second baby was born).

She said, “This is the best gift you will ever give him.”

Of course I knew this. But that little reminder was exactly what I needed to hear in that moment.

And she was absolutely right.

He sure does love his little brother.

My girls are crazy about him too.

Plenty of people say things to me (and about me sometimes, I suppose) about how crazy they think I am for having so many kids. “Better you than me!” is something I’ve heard not infrequently.

I know I might not get to spend as much one-on-one time with each of my kids as I might if I only had one or two. But I also know that their relationships with each other are one of the best things I’ve ever given them. And by that I mean not just by physically birthing a new sibling, but also through encouraging and guiding them in their interactions with each other, helping them learn to value and care for each other, to compromise and problem solve and be loyal, so that they will have this group of people to always depend on, no matter what.

I’m so glad they all have each other.