Preschool at Home

Being a stay at home mom it is hard for me to justify sending Amelia to preschool every day or even a few days a week. I know some people do it but we are on a strict budget. Plus, what would I do with those few hours or all day? I know I could run my errands, go to doctor's appointments, grocery shop or clean (I'm not the best house keeper, ask my husband) but I can do all of those things with Amelia around. So the dilemma was what to do about early learning? Starting Monday we will begin "Preschool at Home" (not sure if that is a registered trademark or whatever but we aren't using a strict curriculum or any special plan so I am not sure what to call it). Anyways, I found some resources online and I have a plan in place for us to begin with the basics. Amelia already knows some of her colors and shapes and she knows a few sounds of letters and can identify a few letters but I want to have a more "formal" approach to her education, where I know she is learning all that she should be so that she is ready for Kindergarten eventually.

I've got the lesson plans together until the end of February and we are taking things easy. One letter, number, shape or color and theme per week. I don't want to overwhelm her with a ton of information at one time so we will just work on school stuff for as long as she shows interest each day.

I am loosely basing our curriculum off of this website for her preschool. That will put us in to July and I will decide what to do from there.

I plan to post once a week, probably Friday, on how the week went and what we enjoyed or a good idea, just something pertaining to home schooling. I hope you will follow along with us!

Happy Birthday Nanny

Today would have been my Nanny's 73rd birthday. She is celebrating in Heaven this year. You never think when you are celebrating birthdays that it could be the last one, I know I didn't think that last year would be Nanny's last birthday on Earth.

Not a day goes by that I don't think about her. She meant the world to me and I know that she knew that and she knew that I loved her so much. It is still so hard to believe that she is gone.

I still catch myself picking up my phone to call her with some exciting news or to just talk. I miss those conversations that we would have and I miss eating lunch with her. But most of all I miss watching Amelia play with her. Amelia was just shy of 17 months when she passed away, I worry that she won't remember that time with her but to my surprise she does. She will ask me about Nanny or say that something was Nanny's favorite, like popsicles. I want her to always remember Nanny and all of the fun that we had over at her house.

I am so glad that my mom, sister and all of our kids (minus Hew, he wasn't home from the hospital yet) had lunch with her that day. I'm glad her last memory was of all of us eating together. 

This evening we are having dinner in her honor. We are wearing our pajamas because that is what Nanny wore unless she was going out somewhere. And we are having popsicles for dessert, one of her favorites. 

Happy birthday Nanny! I miss you so much and I love you to the moon and back!

New Year

I am not one to make a resolution in the new year but this year I have set some goals for myself and my family. My first big goal is to get this house in order. I'm talking cleaning, organizing, and getting rid of stuff. I want us to simplify our "stuff" and organize the "stuff" we are keeping.

I started with the organizing before the end of the year. I ordered several utility totes and storage bins from the Thirty-One Outlet Sale to store Amelia's toys in. What will fit in those bins/totes will be what she plays with, I will keep a rotating stock of toys in her closet in her toy chest but the amount of toys in her room is overwhelming, so it must be simplified. We will pass some down to Hew and Hollyn and we will donate some and some of them just need to be thrown away.

I also want to be able to park my car in the garage again. I haven't been able to park in there for years. We started the process of organizing/getting rid of stuff yesterday and we got half of it done. We have so much stuff out there that we are storing for family it is hard to make it work but we are determined. We have a motorcycle that belongs to some cousins that lives out of state so we are taking it to them soon and that will free up some space. We have some furniture that we will be keeping out there to store things in so that is going to free up a bunch of space once those boxes are empty.

We got a new to us desk from my husband's mother so we moved the computer back out in to the living room. It is a roll top desk and it has so many nooks, drawers and doors. It makes my organizing heart happy. I've needed more drawer space to store my Thirty-One stuff like order forms, catalogs, past orders, fliers, and so on. This desk works perfectly for that.

I also started a home organization notebook for us and in the process of getting it in order, this will be good for me to keep up with so many of the little things in our life.

The big goal that we have this year is to get our house ready to list in the spring. We have a few projects that we need to do before we actually list it like painting and some landscaping. I've been praying for the perfect buyer to come along shortly after we list it, we will see how that all works out.

Those are our short term goals for this year. We have some long term goals but that is a post for a different day. Did you make goals this year? Did you blog about them? Leave the link in the comments and I will stop by to check them out.