Biased or not, I know I have the cutest children ever.

We've been taking more walks to the library, and as you can see above, going swimming and enjoying the park now that the weather is getting a little more tolerable.  It's too bad that right as summer is over, the weather is finally nice enough to actually be outside! I'm sure we'll still be enjoying summertime activities in the weeks to come.

We also started school this week. Audri is now officially in second grade, and at the last minute I decided to start Carter in kindergarten this year instead of waiting until next year. So far it's gone really well! Tiring and busy, but well. I can't imagine how boring and depressing my life would be if I didn't have children, thank God for them!  We got more done this week than I had scheduled, so that's always nice. I'm trying to go full steam ahead since I know we'll be taking a break in November or so.  

Carter is really taking off and begs to do school basically from the time he wakes up, until the time he goes to bed. His reading has improved so much and he's already reading the first Bob book and simple phonics books on his own. We've been getting a lot of phonics books from the library and readers like "Green Eggs and Ham". I need to go ahead and buy that one, it was a huge hit. I'd teach him a word and then everytime it would come up in the book I'd point to it and he would say it. Then the next time we'd do 2 words, and so forth. After a few days he was reading most of the book himself! I got him the Singapore Kindergarten math book and he loves that and begs to do it. I'm also going to order the Kindergarten Handwriting without Tears. We did that with Audri and I love the way it teaches writing. That's mainly all I will be doing with Carter this year- reading, math and handwriting. He usually listens in to our history lessons as well, and I print out extra history coloring pages for him.

Our history is the core of our curriculum this year, I'm using Story of the World. I have also based just about everything else we're doing off of the Well Trained Mind suggestions as well. It's very intensive and takes a ton of extra work on my part, so we'll see how it goes. I still think this is what will give them the best education possible, if we're able to swing it through the years.

Today Chad took Audri to the dentist. It's been about a year, and I always dread scheduling the appointment since I know how much she hates it. We scheduled the appointment last week, but we didn't tell her until this morning. I was worried she had a cavity behind her 2 bottom teeth, but it turned out fine and there were no cavities at all! She was really worried as we were getting ready this morning, but when they came back home she was all smiles with a dental treat bag in hand (filled with floss and a toothbrush, of course!)

Something really cute that Eli has been doing is saying to each one of us several times throughout the day "Mommy, I love you with all of my hearts" or "Audri, I love you with all of my hearts" When we answer back that we love him with all of our heart too, he says "no, 2 hearts" Somehow he understands that putting the "S" on the end of a word makes it plural, and he's convinced we each have 2 hearts out of which to love. So he continues saying "no, 2 hearts" until we answer back that we love him with all of our hearts too. I don't mind playing along, but Daddy thinks we need to start teaching him the realities of life, that we all have only one heart for instance. Personally, I think it's adorable.

So things are going really well and we're staying very busy during our days at home. My pregnancy is going well, I will be 27 weeks on Monday. 10 more weeks until I can have my homebirth! Still hoping for that. However, if this baby comes when Eli did, that's only another 7 weeks!! I hope he isn't born early, but it's good to know that in just 7 weeks he'd have a good chance of being healthy if he is born.