A day in our life...Monday

Monday morning was a busy one.  

We start each morning with family scripture study and prayer - today we called the kids in around 7:20, because it was Jace's first day of Driver's Ed.  

Aliysa was not too happy that we called for everyone in at that time, because she has been getting up at 7:00 and jogging, actually I can't call it jogging because it is more intense than a "jog".  She warms up for a few minutes, and then runs for 1 minute with the treadmill on its fastest speed, then walks briskly for 1 minute, then repeats.  She does this for 20 minutes.  And she does it every day.  

I told her she should only do interval training 1-3 times a week, but she said she loves it, and pointed out that football players go to practice and play hard every single day, sometimes twice a day.  So, I'm leaving it up to her.  

Anyway, she's been enjoying her nice morning routine, jogging, walking outside, drinking her water, feeding the chickens, stretching out, and making and eating her own breakfast.  So, she was grumpy when Bob called her into our room (right during her jog).  I talked to her and asked what exactly she wanted to accomplish in the morning, and how long it would take.  She agreed to get up even earlier.  

Each morning we read 10 verses in the Book of Mormon.  Right now we're reading about the stripling warriors - one of our favorite stories.  Then we have family prayer and begin our "morning chores".  Here's how the routine goes:

We have 5 minutes to complete each chore.  Some chores take less time, so the kids hurry to start another chore that may take longer.  Bob times them on his watch and whistles when 5 minutes is up.  The kids have 10 seconds to be in our room (he does a short whistle when the 10 seconds is up).  Then he asks them, in order of oldest to youngest, if they completed that chore.  They get 1 point if they were there when the 10 seconds were up, and 1 point for completing the chore (quickly, cheerfully, and thoroughly).  So Bob calls out each child's name, and they answer "Yes, Yes", (or, "No, yes", or "No, no". etc.)  Bob keeps a tally sheet, one mark for each "yes".  When they get 50 points, they get a Yummy Earth Lollipop.

Here are the chores we do: scriptures (they read the Book of Mormon for 5 minutes), prayer (they have to spend the entire 5 minutes on this, not jump ahead to other chores), dressed, hair, make bed, clean bedroom, upstairs zone, trash/hamper/hangers (empty the first two, and gather all extra hangers out of their closet), farm chore, laundry (we sort all the clean laundry, fold it, and put it away.  Since we do this each morning, it really does get done in 5 minutes. Yeay!), downstairs zone.  

So, even at 5 minutes each, this routine takes almost an hour.  It has taken Bob and I a long time to be totally consistent with doing this daily.  It takes some patience, and I've had to learn to not listen to excuses.  Bob pointed out that the worst thing that happens is they might lose one point, so I don't let them say "I was hurrying to get here", etc.  If they report that a chore was finished (like cleaning their room), and it really wasn't done well, then their points go back down to zero.  

This routine has been such a nice thing for our family.  Before breakfast the whole house is cleaned up, everyone is dressed, has their hair done, the animals are fed, and the laundry done.  It is a great foundation for the day.  

Then we eat breakfast, do our kitchen jobs, brush teeth, and lately, we go outside and work in the yard for a bit.  

Anyway... back to Monday.  I was in charge of the chores because we had:

8:00 - Mallory had to be at her activity leader's home to go to day camp

8:30 - Jace had an appointment with the dermatologist for a curious mole on his back

9:00 - Jace had to be at the courthouse to register for Driver's Ed, and then he had to go straight to Driver's ed.  

We harvested our first cherry tomato!

For Family Home Evening, we went to the Lake.  It was beautiful weather and we had such a nice evening.  

 Courtney & Abby

 Mallykins

 Aliysa & Taycie.  Aliysa sat with me on the beach.  She was too sunburned from a YW floating activity to move her arms, so she didn't want to kayak, and it took all the energy I had just to go to the lake and sit.  We had fun chatting and watching our boys show off.

 Taycie loves being outside

 Jace is getting pretty good and kayaking - he was practicing his roll. 

 Abby kept declaring how brave she was to go so far out in the tube. 

 Why the swim goggles?  Best be prepared for anything!

 Bob teaching Spencer how to roll

 Oh how I love that guy.

 Yes, even when he looks like this.  We were laughing about how his hair looked when he came up from rolling.  So he gave us this look.

Andrew is such a sweet boy

Home we go, happy and ready for bed. 

And one more picture from today - Abby caring for her dearest doll - Grace. 

A Week In Our Life...Day 1

I'm hoping the next few posts won't bore any readers of our blog, but I want to be able to remember later what our life was like at this point in our child rearing years.  It seems like there are so many details we'll forget.  So, here's a snapshot into a typical summer week for us.  I'm beginning on Tuesday, but I'll start by describing Sunday, and then go day by day from there. We'll see what this week holds for us!

Sunday - getting ready for church.  Oh, the woe of getting 22 shoes on 22 feet on Sunday mornings.  (Okay, so it's not so hard to get Bob's shoes on his feet.)  And making sure those shoes are clean, and match all the suits or dresses.  Really this is more of an ordeal than it needs to be, because I often forget to gather up the Sunday shoes right after church...that's my goal for this week.  In fact, I'll do it today.  I'm going to do what I've planned to do many a Sunday: have a tote to store all the little ones' Sunday shoes.  All the shoes go into the tote right after church.  Brilliant!  The older children keep pretty good track of their own, but I'll tell them that if they ever are running behind schedule because they're looking for shoes, then they'll have to put a pair in the tote too.  However, I was missing a pair of mine this week.  :(  Then I remembered that I left them in Utah when we were there last. How can I expect my kids to keep track of their shoes?  Sigh....

Finally, after eating a hasty breakfast of bread and milk, we're off.  Some weeks we really need to get to church so we can get back into a religious frame of mind after preparing to head to church.  But this week was relatively uneventful, and everyone looked presentable.  In fact, they looked adorable, if you want my unbiased opinion ;)

This was my first week back to church after my surgery, and I was planning to just go to Sacrament meeting, but I felt pretty good and decided to go to Sunday School as well.  We have one certain child who has been having some reverence challenges, and I planned to make this child sit with us in our class, but Bob vetoed that idea and just gave the child a warning of dire consequences if this child did not remember to be reverent.  Talked to the primary teacher...and headed to our class.  It was a good lesson, we have a good teacher.  By the end of the lesson I was yawning incessantly and feeling like every bit of energy had been drained from my body.  So Bob took me home where I changed into pj's and collapsed into bed.  It seemed like a minute or two, but an hour passed and everyone was home again.

Sunday is Bob's day to cook and do dishes (thus the tradition of bread and milk on Sunday mornings).  He decided to make fried egg sandwiches for lunch, and got creative and made me a sandwich with a fried egg, mustard, ranch dressing and lettuce.  It was not his finest accomplishment, and I choked down half of it before scraping my bowl into the chicken scraps.  Mallory, though, had seconds, and even asked for another the next day for her sack lunch at day camp.  :)

We watched a church movie "The Testaments" as a family, and then Bob and I had some interviews with children, including a discussion with the above mentioned reverence challenged individual, who admitted that the primary teacher had to remind once.  So, this child called their primary teacher to apologize, and then Bob talked with the primary teacher to clarify.  The report was that there had been more than one reminder, but there was a big improvement.  We'll see how it goes next week. 

Aliysa is our ward's stake youth representative, and she had a committee meeting in the evening.  They are planning a youth conference right now. 

Bob had a court of honor to attend in the evening, and so evening farm chores and bedtime routine didn't go as smoothly as they could have.  (Exhausted tearful Mom)  By 10:00 we were finally getting everyone in bed.  Whew...

I was happy again to have Bob home.  He was gone Thursday - Saturday for a High Adventure Scout Trip.  Oh, there's a funny story.  The first night he was gone, I was just about to go to bed (way too late), and realized there was a voice message that I needed to listen to.

It was an 'emergency notification' from the Sherriff's office:  "...[male name] escaped today at approximately 4pm.  Subject is a 39 year old male, that escaped on foot.  He is described as being 5 foot 9, and 190 pounds. He had slicked back hair, brown in color, a goatee, brown eyes, and multiple tattoos.  He was last seen wearing a long sleeved white shirt, with blue jeans, white tennis shoes, and a brown Carhartt jacket.  Fremont County Sheriff's office would like to encourage citizens to secure their homes and vehicles.  Please contact only if you have additional information about the subject."  EEEEEK!  I was instantly so scared!  Of course this message had to come when it was dark outside.  I just KNEW he was sitting in our yard, watching us and noticing that my hubby and oldest son were gone camping!

 I shut every window (we usually leave them open a bit to let the cold air in), locked them all, double checked all the doors, and asked Aliysa if she would mind coming down to my room instead of sleeping all the way up in the attic.  She laughed but did it just to ease my mind.  I saw Spencer's hatchet in his room and picked it up and put it by my bed, turned on all the outside porch lights, and checked my firearm.  After all that preparation and a nightly prayer, I actually slept pretty well, although I did snap awake a few times when children got up to use the bathroom. 

Pretty funny that it had to come the night Bob left.  I'm sure all the other wives of scout leaders in our ward were a little alarmed as well.

Well, it's bedtime for the Lamoreaux kiddos.  And so, this long journal entry must end.  

Hmmm, what is a blog post without pictures?   I'll try to find one...

 Here's one I never posted!  Spencer recently shaved his head...and grew a nappy little beard. 

And here's Taycie in a swing in Utah - oh how she loves to swing!  Lately she has figured out how to climb into her little swing by our front porch.  Even if no one pushes her, she'll just sit there forever.  But usually she has lots of volunteers to push her, and she laughs in delight.  She is a joy to all of us.

Consistency

At the beginning of this school year, I posted our school schedule.  I had high ambitions for how our school days were going to go.  Well, they went all right at first, but never as I had it planned on the schedule.  I kept thinking that somehow we'd follow our schedule a little better "next week".

I should have already known that life with lots of children doesn't go as planned.  Soon, instead of having detailed rigorous days, we were missing more days of school than we were having.  Then I was pregnant and tired, and I wasn't finding as much joy in our school days.  There was always an excuse of why I couldn't sit down and do a three or four hour block of school, so I'd often just give up on it all together, or we'd do devotional and then drift aimlessly after that.

My kids are enrolled in many great classes, and our home environment is packed with educational resources, so it wasn't that they weren't learning.  But the basics weren't getting covered, and I wasn't enjoying "doing school" with them like I used to.  I think I was in an overwhelmed slump.

Bob came to our rescue.  He decided one night that he would plan a fun monthly family activity that anyone who had done their basic lessons would get to participate in.  He would have each child report to him daily about what lessons they had completed.  He decided that the subjects he would ask them about were the "3 R's" (Reading, 'riting, 'rithmetic), and another "R": Religion (personal gospel study).  He told the kids that if they did these four subjects at least 4 days a week for the entire month, they could come with us on our fun activity.

I must admit that I was not too happy about this at first.  For one thing, I kind of felt like he was taking over because I hadn't been doing well enough.  For another, I knew that my checklist for their daily education was for a lot more subjects than just these four.  I thought it would make them do less school than they should.  I protested: "what about spelling, journals, history, science, p.e., etc? etc?"  But Bob explained that he had put thought and prayer into this and he wanted to do it.  I was kind of hesitant about having him check on us every day, but we went ahead.

My kids started doing more school than they'd done in months.  It took our oldest children a little longer than the younger ones, but soon everyone started to be very self-disciplined about making sure their basic lessons were done every day.  Looking forward to the monthly activity was motivating, but the bigger motivation really was the "reporting" to Dad that happened every evening.  Soon, even our 3 year old was saying "Mom!  I need to do my arithmetic!" 

And then miraculous things happened. I started enjoying teaching them again.  I realized that we can fit in their academic studies even during a busy day.  Knowing that I have to watch my little ones report at night made me determined to help them give a good report.  And they weren't just doing those four subjects - they were learning a lot.  Older children were helping younger children with their lessons.  We were discussing the books they were assigned to read, and we were learning about all sorts of things.  I was thinking up fun math activities for my five year old and three year old.  We were writing thank you notes and letters to relatives for writing assignments.  Each of the children were finding quiet time to study the gospel on their own.  The older children weren't resisting me when I reminded them to do their lessons - instead, they were thankful for the reminder.

We were in love with learning again.  And we were all starting to remember that it really takes a short time to do these basic subjects.  If something came up in the morning, we didn't just give up on school, instead we took time in the afternoon to do our "homework". Even during my miscarriage and recovery, school was getting done. 

I think I had been hung up on the "ideal" school schedule in a way that made me just give up on doing school when I was tired or our days got busy (which they almost always do). 

We went bowling for our family activity in January.  Two of our children had missed a week of doing at least one of the subjects.  They did come with us, but they didn't get to bowl.  They were a little grumpy about it at first, but everyone learned a lesson from them.  No one has missed doing all their subjects so far this month. 

Bob and I are even doing this ourselves, adapting the subjects to our responsibilities ("'rithmetic" for Bob is working on his business, "reading" for me is making sure I read aloud to each of our children, etc.). 

Bob has added one more subject for each of the older kids.  He wanted them still to be "R's", so he had to be creative:  "rhythm" (for those children who need to practice piano, violin, cello, or recorder), "reconnoitering" (scout requirements for our boy scouts), "retiring" (for himself and our daughter who has a hard time getting to bed early), and "recreation" (daily exercise for me).

I've pondered a lot on how good it has been for us to do these basic things.  Simplifying and reporting have helped us to accomplish so much more than we were before.  Here is a quote by Elder David Bednar from this article that describes what we've been learning: 

"In order to better understand this principle, please consider Aesop’s fable “The Hare and the Tortoise.” After being taunted repeatedly for being slow, the Tortoise challenged the Hare to a race. As the race began, the two started off together. However, the Hare ran rapidly towards the goal and, seeing that he could easily win, lay down and fell asleep a short distance in front of the finish line. The Tortoise maintained a slow but steady and consistent pace toward the finish line. When the Hare awoke from his nap, he started running as fast as he could, only to find that the Tortoise had won the race.

The Tortoise is a classic illustration of steadiness and persistence. The Hare, on the other hand, is an example of a “spurter”—one who is given to short bursts of spectacular effort followed by frequent and lengthy periods of rest.

A spurt may appear to be impressive in the short run, but steadiness over time is far more effective, far less dangerous, and produces far better results.

Consecutive days of fasting, ultimately, may not be as spiritually edifying as successive months of appropriate fasting and worship on the designated fast Sunday. An attempt to pray one time for several hours likely will not produce the same spiritual results as meaningful morning and evening prayer offered consistently over several weeks. And a single scripture-reading marathon cannot produce the spiritual growth of steady scripture study across many months."

The Ideal Schedule

Here's our school schedule, as planned:

	Mon	Tue	Wed	Thu
8:30	Mallory's kid class	Zach's kid class	BAJ at seminary	Devotional
8:45			C-Leave for piano
9:00	Devotional		Financial Peace Jr.	Personal Gospel Study
9:15
9:30	Children's Personal Gospel Study			Journals/spelling
9:45				Writing & Workbooks, math
10:00	Journals & Spelling
10:15	English  (grammar lesson, workbooks, writing)		Get ready for iFamily (dinner in crock pot)
10:30				German (JCSMZ), Chinese, Typing, & blog (A)  Little ones lessons & read alouds
10:45	Math		Sandwiches/soup
11:00			Leave for iFamily
11:15	Bean soup/salad	Chic. soup/Salad bar
11:30	Clean up	Clean up		Bkd potato bar/chili
11:45	Kid classes: Courtney, Aliysa	Kid classes: Spencer, Jace		Clean up
12:00			iFamily classes (12-5)	Abby & Andrew's kid classes
12:15
12:30	Readers	Readers		Readers
12:45	Quiet Study time (iFam assignments, reading, music) Ages 7 & younger-quiet time on beds			Quiet Study time
1:00
1:15
1:30
1:45	Bathrooms	Laundry & read-alouds		Laundry & read-alouds
2:00
2:15	Veggie plate	Muffins	Granola Bars	Snack sandwiches
2:30	Read-alouds			Read alouds

I'd love to say that it goes like clockwork every day (ha ha).  Of course, it doesn't.  But this plan helps me to get a lot more done than I would otherwise.  It gives us something to shoot for.  This morning we spent a lot more time on our first "kid class" than planned, just because we were really enjoying it and learning a lot.  However, I believe in Charlotte Mason's philosophy about the value of keeping lessons short, interesting, and focused.  That's why we plan only 15-30 minutes for some subjects.

8:30 - 3:00 seems like a really long school day, but in all actuality, this includes all of their subjects, plus learning about the gospel, writing in journals, eating together, reading together, and even some housework. We're actually only spending around 3 hours a day on the "academic" subjects.

Fridays we go to gymnastics, and the kids do their gospel study on the way there.  We bring some learning activities, games, or "homework" to work on while we're there.  My older children also get to do baptisms at the temple that day, and we're planning to start going to the library on Fridays also.

We try to have some "outside time" every day, either right after read-aloud time, or after dinner.  I am a sane mother when I get a daily walk (the kids ride their bikes, rollerblade, or bring scooters).

Some mornings we don't get going on time, and that's okay.  The beauty of home school is that we can make it work for whatever is happening in our home, with our family, on any given day or week.

2012 School Schedule

This is our daily school plan for this year:

"Kid class" or Art 
Devotional

Personal Gospel Study

Journals

Spelling

English Lesson

Workbooks

Writing

Math

-Lunch Break-

Kid Classes

Readers

Quiet Study Time

Laundry & Read-alouds

Music Practice

Each day we are getting more and more of this schedule completed.  In future posts, I'll explain each of these subjects in more detail.

School 2012

We are getting so excited for school to start!  This year all of our children were able to get into classes with our weekly homeschool group.  Here is our schedule for iFamily this year:

Tasha	Aliysa	Jace	Courtney	Spencer	Mallory	Zach	Andrew	Abby
Teach Personal finance	Advanced acting	Personal Finance	Science Alive	Boys Sewing	(Babysit for Mom)	Book Bugs	(Play quietly in Mom's class)	Music to the core
			Project Knitting	Narnia	Love of Music	M&M	M&M	M&M
Teach Nature Study	Chemistry	Chemistry				Nature Study	Nature Study	Nature Study
			Sewing		(Nature Study)
				Geography	Music Around the World	Music Around the World
	Worldviews	iShakespeare
			Teach Creative Corner		Spanish		Creative Corner	Creative Corner

I am teaching a personal finance class for junior-high and high-school aged students, using the Dave Ramsey course.   I am also so excited to be teaching a "nature study" class for little ones up to age 8.  We will be going outside every week, and learning about insects, seeds, flowers, clouds, etc.  Registration for iFamily was crazy this year (we need a bigger building and more classes!).  I had around 50 children wanting to sign up within a few minutes.  I was able to split the class, use another room, and find another mom to take the second class.  So, now there are around 60 children and their moms looking forward to nature study!

All of the kids will also be taking gymnastics each week, and going to do baptisms at the temple each week after gymnastics. 

This year we're starting a new thing in our home school - called "kid classes".  Each child gets to choose something they want to learn about, and then they get time during homeschool to have a "class" on that subject.  Any of the other children can join in if they are interested, but if they aren't, then they can go study something else during that time.

The topics our children chose are: Aliysa-Tonga, Jace-Marine life, Courtney-Engineering/electricity, Spencer-Ancient Rome & Greece, Mallory- still deciding, Zach-Black holes (he is an outer space buff), Andrew-Choo Choo trains, Abby- (she took about 1 second to decide what her "kid class would be)  "Hummingbirds!  That fly around in the sky, and are so pretty, and drink from our hummingbird feeder!  Then I want to learn about butterflies! And then..."
Aliysa is looking forward to school this year. She'll be in a play this spring as part of her advanced acting class, she'll be having a great time learning about Chemistry at iFamily and at home, and her worldviews class will give her a great opportunity to learn and grow.  In addition to iFamily classes and gymnastics, she is taking a community class at BYU-I about "Writing and illustrating children's books".

She is quite interested in writing books.  (We're hoping she'll come up with something a little more marketable than her recent endeavor - a child's book about a tapeworm that gets cut in half by a boy's shovel.  He goes on with his life and eventually meets up with another worm, that turns out to be his back end, grown in to another worm.  Her illustrations for that book were darling - it was such a cute little tapeworm. (!)  I honestly don't know where she comes up with these things.)

Jace has been working lots this summer doing yard work for neighbors, and helping Bob remodel the triplex. He is on the 9th grade football team, so he practices with the high school team now.  He just finished "2 a day" practices.  It was grueling, 4+ hrs a day, but he survived it and is looking forward to his first game next week.  He is also taking German, working to earn his Eagle Scout award this year, and will be taking driver's ed.  He was hired to be an assistant at gymnastics this year, so each Friday he'll be helping in all the classes.  He is looking forward to his Shakespeare class - the women who teach it are incredibly talented.  Last year's production was excellent! 

Courtney taught a preschool this summer, which she enjoyed and learned a lot from.  She continued with piano lessons this summer, and is quite diligent about practicing.  She is also teaching herself to play the violin.  She is helping her friend Keziah teach a class at iFamily for preschool-aged children called  "Creative Corner".  She'll also be taking Science Alive (studying Galileo), Project knitting (she has such a fun teacher, she loves her knitting class!), and sewing from her sewing teacher who she adores.

Spencer has been Bob's right-hand man this summer, helping to remodel the triplex we purchased.  He is such a hard worker!  When he's not working, he spends a lot of his time playing in the river with his friends.  He also started his first year of "Grid Kid" football, with Bob as his coach.  Their first game is tomorrow.  Spencer surprised me by choosing "boys sewing" over a science class at iFamily this year (he loves math and science), but he told me that he loved his sewing class so much last year, that he has to continue with it this year.  He is also taking "Discovering Narnia", where they will read all the Chronicles of Narnia, write papers about them, discuss them, and look for the symbolism and meaning in the books.  His geography class looks like fun, they'll study US geography first semester, then World geography the 2nd semester, and end the year with a Geography Bee.  Spencer has been enjoying his last year of Cub Scouts - he has great leaders who've helped him earn all 20 of the Weblos badges, plus earn his arrow of light, and work on his Faith in God award.  He is learning German again also with our fun teacher, Brother Breckenridge.  

Mallory is excited to be taking a "Love of Music" class where she will learn to play the recorder, plus learn about different instruments and some music history.  She will help with my nature study class too, and take Music around the World where they study different cultures through music and dance and other activities.  She is taking a fun Spanish class as well as learning German here at home.  Mallory will be involved with a "Liberty Girls" group (girls her age) again this year.  They are reading the book "Understood Betsy" this semester, and they get together twice a month to discuss the book and do fun activities that go along with it.  She is also taking piano lessons from Courtney.

Zach continues with his two main interests - sports and outer space.  He reads his space books over and over, and excitedly looks for constellations.  It is so fun.  He is excited to take classes at iFamily:  Book bugs - where they read a children's book, then have activities to go along with it, "Music and Movement" which is basically a 1/2 hr. music and dance party for little ones, nature study, and Music Around the World.  He has been joining in a bit with German class as well.

Andrew will be taking Music and Movement, Nature Study, and Creative Corner.  He is still my cuddly little guy, who always wants to be with me.  He loves writing, reading, and is so excited for school to start because he gets to learn about "choo choo trains". 

Abby is just as cute and talkative as ever, and has all sorts of plans for "school".  She spends a large part of her day in pretend, imaginative play with her dolls.  She is always tucking them in for a nap, nursing them, or putting them in the shopping cart or stroller.  Taycie is happy when Abby is pre-occupied with her dolls, because when she isn't, she is trying to haul Taycie all over the house.  (Abby is undeterred by Taycie's loud protests.).

We are excited for this upcoming busy school year!!  I'm not ready for our summer evening walks to end, but I am ready for more of a structured schedule.