It's Official! We're hippies!

Well, that's it!  I just sent in our Homeschooling form to the Government of Manitoba... It's official! We're hippies! Hahaha! 

I must say this has been a really difficult journey thus far... and it's only the Journey, to the BEGINNING of the journey... To the gates of the unknown 20-21 school year. None of us know what to expect. None of us are capable of making the "right" decision. None of us are qualified to homeschool and none of us are confident enough to send our kids back to school... end of story... but we have to choose, and so we do... We will make the most of whatever decision we choose, and put our best foot forward, and step into this school year with the confidence we wish we had. 

Yup! No good answers... There just aren't. I even read one parent friend saying they plan on just calling their child in sick for the first two weeks of classes till they know what's going to happen... and EVEN THAT sounds like a wise parenting choice given the circumstances. There's no right answer here, but there's also no wrong answers.

The reality is, if we all had confidence in our capabilities to teach our own children, I think it would be a much easier decision in the end... but we don't. We all know we aren't perfect... this past school year with distance education probably gave us all a bit more of a taste of some of the uglier days of homeschooling than we'd like... and most people who choose to homeschool from the get-go don't have the luxury of actually understanding the bad and ugly parts, like 2020 parents do... the "educated decision" is part of what makes it a really, really REALLY hard decision. 

 Yup... I don't think there's a school-aged parent out there who doesn't view homeschooling parents as super heroes now! It looks so daunting and overwhelming... But what are our choices? Do we really have one?  I mean... really...

That picture above prettymuch sum it all up haha! No good choices... But by now, most parents have made a choice... And like I said, ours was the choice to do homeschool. It was a very close call... in fact many times I just simply kept a mental tally of whether I woke up feeling "pro-public-school" vs "pro-homeschool" and in the end the homeschool days won the vote, but not by a whole lot... Truthfully, we qualified for distance ed, (had we decided that route). Both boys take asthma inhalers on occasion, and with my oldest likely having ADHD and being hyper-tactile (touching everything) The pediatrician didn't hesitate to give us doctor's notes. But still... the decision between homeschooling vs. Distance Ed had to be made. In the end, I decided that having full authority over my children's education (given that I'm the one IMPLIMENTING it) was a make-it-or-break-it issue for me.  I want to decide how we do this... Kindergarten and Grade 2 aren't all that complex, (as far as my academic confidence in my ability to teach curriculum), and being able to do more hands-on learning and time together is important...

That being said, I know I have many shortcomings... and My own lack of confidence in my abilities as an educator played a HUGE roll in this decision taking so long to make.

It's not that I don't think I can do it, it's that I'm incredibly self-aware... I know I have ADHD. I know I have mood swings that are very likely mildly on the bipolar spectrum. I have highly energetic productive days, and then I have days of complete indifference and self-loathing. I have highly chaotic and careless days, and I have very low anxious fretful days... knowing that this pattern may not stop while I home school, is obviously part of my(our) reservations...

But I think my background in child welfare has set me up well for such a time as this... What I mean is that, I understand it's important to know your weaknesses, and accept help when you need it... You see, more often than not in child welfare, the difference between a parent having their child apprehended vs the child staying in a home, was the number of supports the parent was WILLING to engage with. If a parent is open to receiving supports, whether from their own family, or the agency or the like... then the parent could maintain a reasonable level of care for their child... it falls under the "it takes a villiage to raise a child" concept... most people have a villiage. If not, they create one. People who are burned out and floundering, often aren't utilizing their villiage effectively... So when I decided to homeschool, the first thing I thought about was "what is my villiage going to be?". There's a saying I saw floating around the internet in the homeschooling memes that goes like this: 

Well, part of the 2020 homeschoolers stress is that most of us DO like our village. We LOVE the elementary school our kids go to. WE are sad to pull them out. THEY are sad to be pulled out... that isn't even in the question for us (and many other parents choosing to homeschool this year). But the reality is, this decision to homeschool DOES pull our children away from that villiage, and so a new set of supports needs to be established... because we cannot do it alone.

Well, I am incredibly thankful and grateful and blessed to have both my parents and my husband's parents close by and in a position to offer assistance to us as needed. We are also going to utilize a socially distanced music teacher to provide music (MYC) lessons for the boys on a weekly basis. We are also chatting with other homeschooling families and hope to make one or two social connections to help with routinely socializing the kiddo's even throughout the pandemic. So you can see, homeschooling, doesn't necessarily mean "alone-schooling". And when you can get that into the equation, suddenly it doesn't seem quite so daunting.

That's really about as far as we've gotten with this. I have chosen curriculum (based on curriculum others have chosen basically! Hahaha!). We will be using "Gather round the table" which covers all the subjects except math. For math we will use a combination of "whatever the heck I feel like doing" and the JUMP curriculum notebooks... 

My intention for the school year to keep it very simple and basic... nothing fancy... this actually goes WAAAAY back to my new year's prophetic vision for this year that God gave me... and that is 

"Simplicity for an Implicit Means"... 

that's the "theme for 2020" that God gave me in January when I prayed about the upcoming year... and it's so applicable here and now. 

Simplicity:The quality or condition of being easy to understand or do. A thing that is plain, natural or easy to understand

Implicit: Essentially or very closely connected with; always to be found in.

Means: an action or system by which a result is brought about; a method

So essentially this is saying the actions I take, the methods I use, need to be done in a way that is plain, and easy to understand, and that creates the closest results, the fastest solution, or creates the most effective result, or draws us closer together...

So in my decision-making process, this has meant that homeschooling = dropping the ukranian program from the boys' education when they return to public school post-pandemic. It also means that I choose my curriculum, and I stick to them. Keep it simple, don't embellish it, just do what we need to do, period. Then we take an un-schooling approach to the rest of the day (learning through everyday experiences as they happen, being intentional to seize opportunities that arise, but not forcing them either). This still involves a certain amount of effort on my part, because I am generally on-or-off... so I'll have to find a way to be on autopilot and not just checking out when our schoolwork is complete for the day.

Lots to think about... I am far from qualified. I am far from educated about homeschooling. In fact I've done remarkably little research on the topic whatsoever! And at this point, I'm intentionally going to put on the blinders, and let this year get started before I let my eyes wander into the homeschooling culture/blogs/etc... I simply don't need to be comparing myself to others yet... I've been told I don't have to, so I don't plan to. :) It's only going to lead to feelings of inferiority. But a huge part of homeschooling (for me anyways) is understanding the loving authority I hold over my own children and what they learn. And the moment I make that about ME (Comparing myself to other homeschoolers) it stops being about them.... and it needs to be about them.

well, I'll leave it there for today... lots of food for thought. My prayers go out to everyone who is still undecided, and especially to those who don't have the privilege of choice at all. You are still loved and protected by God.  And to all our friends choosing public school, Know that I am proud of you for your courage and decision making. Curtis and I are both hugely supportive of the public education system and it's vast benefits for kids. We still intend to enroll our kids back at their elementary school, when the Pandemic has run its course...

To all,
love and prayers.
Krysta
 

Back to school...

Well, the announcements have been made, School will officially be in session come september... This is great news for some, and terrifying news for others, and frustrating news for some, and anxiety provoking news for some, and impossible news for others... What to do, what to do... I saw a really good Meme and shared it on facebook. it goes something like this...

I actually only found out this news through a friend... i'm someone whose stopped watching the news and the facts and the numbers... I'm in a fortunate position that my husband likes to do that stuff, so I don't have to, and I dont worry as much cause I know if something important happens, i'll be informed by him or someone else...

So yesterday I was informed about the schools opening full time full capacity... yikes!! Let me clarify that we've been hyper vigilant up until now. Not attending church, only seeing people in our safety bubble like close family and specific (not all) neighbors whose freindships bennefit our family's mental health and overall well being... no restaurants, click and collect groceries... etc...

so the idea of sending our kids to school with hundreds of other kids, where they can all pick each others noses, run in the same gym room, sing in the same choir room, eat each other's lunches... share water bottles etc... is legitimately terrifying to me. I have asthma. So does my father in law. So does my mother (and to a much more severe extent)... So we HAVE to be careful... If one of us catches corona, it is much more serious than the average adult...

That being said, I am also a mom with ADHD and I have already thoroughly explored any possibilities of homeschooling in my past (more functional) life... I know i'm not capable of doing it... and yet, here we are once again, considering homeschooling as a very real option for our family, for our safety...

and here we are once again, with me using this blog as my therapist-style journal! haha!

Last night I was awake from 1 AM until 5 AM... not a great night's sleep. But I am proud to say I didn't look at a screen once during that whole insomnia time. Instead I read my bible, ate some crappy junk food, took Josiah outside to look at the stars (he was also not sleeping well),  and made these INCREDIBLY DETAILED pro's/con's lists...

Oh man this was a tough list to make... What's interesting is that I went about it in a pretty random order... I didn't just sit and say "what are the goods" and then after that make a "bads" list. I just had all four columns in front of me and sorted my adhd spaghetti soup thoughts out as they flooded into my mind... I found this the most raw and authentic way to really process both the anxieties and the hopes for the fall... the realities and the hypotheticals.  We still haven't made our decision though... in addition to our own pro's/con's come family considerations... when our kids are in school and their friends or cousins are in different schools, will they be allowed to see each other? will it be safe to do so when the weather cools off? That's all an extra aside to all our own considerations, but when you're the "crazy safety freaks" compared to most people right now, they weigh pretty heavily on the heart... really... when I'm in a room with someone, I see myself in a room with them and EVERYONE they've seen for the past 2 weeks... so... church? if our kids go to school, absolutely not... cause a room of 5 kids in sundayschool looks more like 500 kids to me...  the anxiety that has reared it's head with covid, is very real, and very legitimate... so how do we even make these sorts of decisions?

I tend to try and look on the lighter side of life, and live from one rainbow to the next... so even for a tough decision like this one, It's fun to look back at last year and see how our time went at home... it was lots of good times mixed in with the bad. overall I look back at the portion of 2020 we've lived so far, with fondness and no regrets...

This is a photo from one of Sammy's first preschool assignments at home, to write out a pets name and take a photo.

He had a unit on pete the cat that was very fun too... both boys would watch the stories together and then sammy would do his school work and josiah did his.

And the book about the coconut tree, which covers the alphabet in upper and lower case....

I specifically remember before covid started that I felt as though we were losing Josiah to the school system... his bus rides are an hour each way so he is gone from 7:40 AM till 4:30 pm... and when you go to bed at 7, that's not much family time during the week, especially once you add in home reading and any other homework, plus supper time... We were at a crossroads with him when Covid started. I was genuinely relieved to have him home when things first started... He needed it and so did we. And I was surprised to realize tha Levi needed it too. Josiah and Levi were practically strangers, and being home was a hugely positive thing for their relationship...

The family time and memories have been amazing... forced at times, strained, a little bit crazy, but beautiful and cherished none the less...

and yes, we went stir crazy, and yes we lost our sanity... and yes, we had to cope like everyone else...

In fact, I ended up talking to my doctor and i have now been taking antidepressants for about 2 months, and I will be continuing to take them likely till next summer now... Covid may have been a catalyst to this, but it's something that I (in hindsight) have needed for quite a while. So is that a positive or a negative? And how does my mental health weigh into the school decision over my physical health risks as an Asthmatic?

The memories were good, and I know if we have to do it all over again, we will make the most of it yet again... here we are, sitting on our front step enjoying some of the first UV rays of the season together... as a family...  A moment like this wouldn't have happened if we weren't all at home together like this.

Curtis taking Sammy to the hospital when he crushed his finger in some scaffolding in the spring (it wasn't broken thankfully). They were in and out in record time, and no waiting rooms...

School work was bitter sweet all the time. They loved it and hated it... but they always did it! It was a blessing for Josiah to have 1:1 time with me and to work on his work that may have otherwise slipped through the cracks as he can fake a pretty good game at school sometimes haha! So academically, having the teachers tell us what to do, but being able to work 1:1 with him was likely MORE beneficial for his learning than if he'd actually been in school.

Learning new coping techniques for the worst chunks was somewhat entertaining... like a bike ride  with grandma while all donning our masks.

Or the reality that Curtis was home enough to put the pedal to the medal and teach Sammy how to ride a 2-wheeler bike! There's a precious moment that happened thanks to being at home together.

Or what about hte fact that I can actually read these letters now Cause I was my son's ukranian teacher? hahaha! Do I know what words mean? no... but I can read'em! :)

Even Levi bennefited from all of this... undivided mom time... never having to be in a car seat or stroller for shopping or errands etc...  and all the time in the world with his big brothers. It's a dream come true for a little bub!

So what will we do? What decision will we make? It really boils down to physical safety vs mental health in the end for us... we are in the fortunate positon of me being capable of homeschooling from a financial standpoint, so that doesn't even factor into the mix. what will we do? we don't know yet... but we are thankful to have a month to figure it out...

and so do you... you don't need to decide just yet.... But know you aren't alone in the struggle. You aren't the only one losing sleep... you aren't the only one who doesn't already know what choice they'll make, in the back of their heads... it's okay to not be okay with this... it's okay to be stressed. it's okay to lose sleep over it...

it's even okay to acknowledge that you have faith (like me) that God won't bring you home till it's your time... and yet you are anxious and conflicted about making a wise decision cause God also gave you a brain...

It's okay to feel guilt about making a choice that has compromises to it... because there's NO CHOICE without compromises to it in this mess... Each choice serves your own needs a little, and your kids needs a little... Each choice deprives you both a little bit too... each choice is both selfless and selfish, and that's okay..

Until theirs a cure or vaccine out there, normal isn't going to be what it once was... but we are now being faced with the timeline that we must choose what our new normal is going to be... like it or not, this decision isn't just about a school year, it feels a lot more like a life decision... like a career path choice, or marriage partner decision... if that's the level of stress you're feeling, you aren't alone... I'm right there with you, and I'll be praying for you as much as I'll be praying for myself in all of this...

Take  care, and stay safe.

Social distancing and covid19 - blogger is my therapist :)

Hello folks! I haven’t written on this blog for quite a while! Let’s see… We have a third child, and he’s 14 months old already!

We are now a family with three boys! One in grade one, one in preschool, and one baby.

 Just like pretty much everyone around the world, we are housebound these days due to the flu pandemic of COVID-19.

personally, I have asthma. So the idea of catching Covid itself freaks me out a little more than the average 30-year-old. To top it off, seeing cases of healthy 30-year-old people being hospitalized makes me even more anxious about it. I’m not afraid to talk about the anxiety, I think it’s important and healthy to voice it. Yes I fret and lay awake. I actually invested in some melatonin to help me sleep on nights where I feel myself being jittery before bed.

The other anxiety I have is school being closed for the rest of the school year potentially. My oldest son is in grade one, which may not seem like a big deal. But he is a lot like me, in that reading doesn’t come naturally. I genuinely worry for his academic success if he’s not in school. I am simply not a teacher. And having them home for the last two weeks has only affirmed my decisions NOT to homeschool.

Every time someone posts or suggests an online learning resource, It raises my blood pressure because it just reminds me that the responsibility is entirely on my shoulders, whether my child will be able to progress to grade 2 or not. I remember being in grade 2 and not being able to read a Franklin book properly, being bribed with stickers, and taking almost a week reading one page a day to earn those stickers.

My oldest son has ADHD like me. We haven’t diagnosed it yet, but I am 100% certain on it. I don’t think I’ll feel the need for a diagnosis until he needs medicating.

Those are my two main anxieties, otherwise we are healthy and happy and have everything we need.  I am generally a plan ahead kind of person, so I stocked up our pantries and medicine cabinets well before the anxiety struck the rest of the nation. This has resulted in me being able to shop at times that are dead. Even now, when we are fully stocked I have planned our grocery shop using click and collect for two weeks from now. It feels weird to plan a grocery shop when you have all the food you need, but that’s just a reality right now.  Especially as an asthmatic, I am trying to be extra cautious. I am not simply worried about corona, I am worried about catching other viruses, and then catching corona. It is my suspicion that this is what has caused young healthy people to end up being hospitalized. My goal is to have my asthmatic lungs in as healthy estate as they can be, so they have a fighting chance if I were to contract corona.

Curtis is fortunate enough to continue working during this pandemic. His crew is only made up of a few guys, and as they do construction outdoors, most of the time they are more than 2 m apart. Also with the weather being cooler generally they are wearing gloves still. As much as possible though Curtis is trying to do separate tasks at different sites than the rest of the crew. I know he is worrying and being responsible for our families safety as well.

Regarding our mental health, we are all still doing quite well, all things considered. Yes I have a bit of anxiety, and curtis is equally a little bit frazzled with everything going on, and him being a responsible protective husband, worrying about his family’s health as he works. But the kids so far are doing well, and nobody is depressed or having crazy cabin fever yet.

The boys and I have structured our days pretty rigorously, by the hour. They have scheduled recess times and play times, One hour of school work in the mornings, and an hour with reading at home reading and crafts in the afternoon, TV time is scheduled so they’re not always asking for it, and there’s even a chunk of time or they can choose what they want to do with me, one on one. This results in a happy family and a messy house since I never have time to clean with this schedule ha ha Ha!

From our family trip to great wolf lodge in February 

If you are a praying person and looking for a prayer request from us, it would simply be the prayer of thanks for our current situation in this troubling time. We are truly fortunate, dare I say blessed. (It’s so hard to use that word these days at so many people take offence to it for random theological reasons… But I’m not sure what else to use as a term of spiritual thankfulness, and giving God the credit). I do you want some prayer for my own personal level of discipline. I am learning more and more that’s what I eat changes how well I function with my ADHD and hormones. When I am eating fillet of low-carb, my brain feels clear and functioning on all cylinders. When I stress eat and have a lot of carbs or sugar‘s, it’s like I am living under a cloud and I am more anxious and scatterbrained as well. Me and the boys get a lot less done on those days, and the general mood in the house is less ideal. I have also relayed this to my spiritual life. When I am fuelling myself in healthy ways spiritually, by reading my Bible, by prayer journaling, by teaching my children about the Bible… I have less doubts I have less anxieties and I have more confidence and joy. But when I feel myself with the world, reading the news, going on Facebook, watching YouTube, then my spiritual life is foggy, and full of doubts about prayer, and about whether or not God truly excepts me for who I am. It’s really quite simple, and my dad has been telling me this since I was a child. “ Garbage in, garbage out.”  So prayer for me to be disciplined both physically and spiritually would be my biggest prayer requests right now.

I hope you are also doing well, and if you’d like to shoot me an email or Facebook message I would love to reconnect. We all have plenty of time on our hands to do so, so let’s use it to bring us together. :)

Media Fast, Pregnancy, Christmas, Etc..

Hello to one and all! I hope your holidays went smoothly and were filled with families and love!

Well, Christmas time is here! I did a bit of a media fast over the last 6 weeks. Call it my Christmas-lent! I went off blogging, instagram and facebook. Though I have been checking facebook the last couple weeks, but not posting. I’ve learned that The bigger struggle for me is in the out-put on social media, not the in-put! Haha! It's not the first time i've done a media fast, so it's not super mind-blowing for me anymore. More of a necessary evil for every-day life. I have ADHD and I know that gives me an addictive personality. So to keep my social media in check, I tend to take breaks from it. It's the same reason I tend to do better with extreme diets (Like keto) as opposed to "eat well and exercise". One requires real focus, and one I can slip (get distracted) pretty easily.  Anyways, that is that!

I'm also pregnant, in case you weren't aware. Baby #3, boy #3 :) . I am due January 30'th which makes me  35 weeks along in this photo! I am almost 36 weeks now.

 There's two important "week marks" for me. 32 weeks (when i went on bed rest with Josiah) and 36 weeks (when Josiah was forced into this world by c-section cause of my pre-eclampsia). Date 1 has come and gone thankfully! and date 2 is only a few days  away! This pregnancy has been much healthier than my other two so far. Though it’s not without reason. This pregnancy would have landed somewhere between my other two boys I believe, if I hadn’t made the decision to eat keto, and if God hadn’t blessed that choice. By 22 weeks, I was getting blood pressure readings of 140/90 at home, higher in the OBGYN's office. They wanted to put me on blood pressure meds, and I pleaded with them not to. That’s when I went on keto. My blood pressure dropped to 120/70 in the same day, that first day of keto during pregnancy. I shed the water-retention, and the rest is history. It was clear to me that this was an important part of this pregnancy. So now I take my blood pressure daily, so I have something to show my OBGYN to assure her the in-office readings are higher than my average resting heart rates at home.

It does seem as though my blood pressure is beginning to rise, now that I’m almost 4 weeks away from d-day, but the reality is, pregnancy hypertension is caused by a mal-formation of the placenta and there is litterally nothing you can do about it. My heart will continue to push harder and harder, as my placenta ages, trying to force nutrition through a slightly mangled chunk of space. (imagine trying to suck a very thick smoothie through a kinked straw. Thats roughly what's going on between my heart pumping and the "Notched" chunk in my placenta. They are able to test for these notches during a fetal assessment, so we do know that I have some.).  No amount of diet and exercise can fix this. The only fix is to remove the placenta (aka child birth). What keto is doing, is keeping off the water retention and excess weight gain. This, at least, helps my heart to not have to work harder for THOSE reasons. But if my pressures are going to spike, they will spike. So please keep this in your prayers. As I’m phasing our my aspirin therapy these days, my pressures are definitely rising. If this keeps up I know I’ll be on blood pressure medication at my next appointment. So please pray. I would really like to make it to full gestation.

Side note: Aspirin therapy is a medically researched and prescribed form of prevention for pre-eclampsia. By using blood thinners during placenta-formation time, it can potentially help the placenta to form with fewer issues. This is used as a therapy for preventing Pre-eclampsia as well as for people who have frequent miscarriages related to the placenta not attaching well.

Anyways, i’m not going to waste this blog post on sharing all the wonders of keto during pregnancy. But safe to say it’s medically safe. My diet is approved by my obgyn and is only slightly lower in carbs than what a person on a gestational diabetes diet would be recommended to eat.  So worry-not my medically stressed friends and family! Haha! What I am doing is safe and healthy for me and baby. I’ve gained about 15-18 lbs in this pregnancy and I hope to keep it limited to that if I can (But if I gain, I gain. Baby comes first). The change in my diet has also had an impact on my immune function I believe. So far this winter I’m the LAST person in our family to catch viruses as opposed to the first. As an asthmatic I’m generally the immune-compromised one around here. I’ve even skipped a couple of bugs all together. If you were around for Sammy’s pregnancy you will remember how insanely Ill I was with viruses and asthma. Lots of cortico-steroids, puffers, antibiotics, hospital visits, prednisone, bruised and popped  ribs...etc... not pretty. I thank God for protecting me this time around. I don’t know what his plan was last time with all the illness... and that’s something He and I have had to work through... but I am thankful he’s sparing me so far this time.

If you pray though, please continue to keep this pregnancy in your prayers. I am having a difficult time keeping my numbers reasonable the last few days. I'm sure it has to do with the fact that by body is fighting the long-winded cold that the rest of my family has already dealt with... But none the less, it's raising my blood pressure readings to low 140's/90's again, and I see my OBGYN on thursday this week. If it doesnt' go back down before then, I'm very certain, i'll be on that slipperly slope of blood pressure meds, tolerance to them, followed by maxing them out before getting serious symptoms (usually from the meds more than the blood pressure) that require baby to be born earlier than it wants to. So please please pray! :) 

To change gears a bit... It’s also Christmas time! We have had a very nice Christmas so far this year. Christmas went long for us this year, as we didn't have christmas with Curtis's family until the 29'th and an extended gathering yesterday still. So for us it’s been one of those 12 days of Christmas! Hehe!

 I love Christmas. Probably too much. I don’t try to make it all spiritual anymore either. I fully admit that I simply enjoy being festive and celebratory! I love that this is a time of year when different faiths and beliefs can actually unite and you know that everyone is able to celebrate SOMETHJNG, even if it’s not the same thing that I celebrate. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still very careful to include Jesus in everything we do, especially for the boys. But in all honesty If I analyze the holidays, it’s utterly ridiculous to me that we spend more time on Jesus’s birth than we do on his death and resurrection. As Christian’s that ought to be our bigger holiday really. And I do practice lent, to prepare my heart for Easter. Some years I fast between Good Friday and Easter, other years I do a personal retreat day etc... my faith is incredibly important to me and I place its value where it belongs. But Christmas... well it lands somewhere between “keep the sabbath holy” and one of the many many arbitrary feasts that God declared the Jews to celebrate in the Old Testament! I think God wants us to party, be silly, be merry with friends and family. Let loose. I don’t think everything needs to be a huge emotional epiphany. And honestly, trying to make Christmas be serious has always given me stress. But just like we delight in seeing our children delighted... God delights in seeing us celebrate Christmas! Even with Santa and all his reindeer! :) he wants to see us delighted in the gift of his son. And it’s really just that simple. So simple a child can do it just as well as you or I. (If not, better).

So... on that note... as a generally self-proclaimed “maximalist” (opposite of a minimalist), we take advent very seriously in this home! :) my boys made themselves mail boxes last year. Painted them, decorated them... and every day of advent I put a little surprise in it! Usually a Hershey kiss, a dollar store craft, and a small letter about the day and our devotional reading for that day. The boys love it and look forward to it every morning. Saturday’s and Sunday’s are family-related activities instead of crafts. It might be a gathering, it might be decorating the tree together, playing a game together... we also did the Fred Penner Christmas concert this year and Prairie Theatre Exchange’s “munschtopia “ play.

So by the time Christmas Day rolled around, I’m pretty “Christmassed out”! Hahaha! But we carry on, because it’s important to me that my boys understand that a “day” isn’t Christmas, Christmas is about the season, and the time we spend with family, and celebrating Jesus birth. Just like each of them might have a couple of birthday parties (one with family and one with friends) on days other than their birthday, we can celebrate Jesus's birthday on different days too!

We’ve had lots of fun though. And part of that has been how well this pregnancy has gone thus-far. Curtis has also been able to take some time off work this last week, and that has been so good for the boys and I. They are both daddy’s boys 100% so they have been thrilled to have him around. And so have I. His patience and parenting skills are far less hormonal than mine these days! So it’s been a real blessing all around to have him home more.

Our next big adventure is New Years! We are actually going to a family-friendly party last year. We did one at our place last year and it was a lot of fun. This year, friends of ours took up the torch and are speer-heading things, which is wonderful! No it won’t go till midnight, but hey. Young parents can’t stay up past 10 anyways without passing out from fatigue haha!

I did decide to do some New Years resolutions this year. They mostly center around self-control and my addictive personality again.  They sound extreme, but like I said at the beginning of this post,  extreme works better for me than moderation. So my game plan is this:
1)  no Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, or BLOGGING for a full year. (social media fast)
2) no online shopping whatsoever for the year. If I really need it and can’t get it in store, Curtis can buy it. And if he won’t, then chances are, I don’t need it! Haha! But the main point will be to be more aware and get things in stores where I’m price conscious, and it’s inconvenient. :) Less impulse spending, if I have to drag a newborn and a 3 year old along to go buy it!!
3) no Netflix, movies, or YouTube-ing (other than to take my blood pressure) before the boys are in bed at night. This one I already do, but let’s be honest... I’ve been a "new" mom twice now. I know that the temptation for Netflix marathons during those sleep deprived breastfeeding days is strong.

The goal of these three resolutions is pretty clear. To reduce my screen time in a healthy way. And by doing so, increase my face-to-face time with my family, my on-the-floor play time with my kids, and to make my transition from 2-3 kids go smoother. Instead of sacrificing the time my kids get, by dividing it by 3 after baby comes, it’s my own personal distractions that need to go. Not their time with me. So I’m hoping this will help with that! And of course, when we remove the other pulls in life, it allows God to pull us deeper instead. When we remove the chaotic chatter of social media and all the voices that spin in our head as a result, things quiet down. We are forced to actually think our thoughts and process them instead of distracting ourselves from them. And in those moments, we can sometimes here a new voice, the voice of Christ... And that’s a voice I’d like to hear more and more clearly every day.


Well, I think that just about sums up life’s moments for the last while! I wish you all happy holidays and New Years! :)

Family update

(I appologise right now for my spelling and grammar. If it bugs you, file a complaint with "blogger" about their spelling and grammar check. it's not great lol)

Boy! It has been a whirlwind month for us in the Harder household. I should probably back track though, since I haven't written one of these for a while. i'll toss some random pictures from the last little while throughout the post to keep you interested!

Summer with a sandbox and retro tractors galore!

This summer was fantastic! Really. Not a negative thing to say about this summer. The boys loved it. They played outside almost every day, including the rainy ones. Curtis built a huge in-ground sand-box around a play structure we scored off kijiji. we stocked up on old rust-bucket tonka trucks, and thats all you need for a flock of happy boys!  I had fun in the garden, and curtis...well... he found trees on sale in july.... so like...15 trees later!!! haha! We planted plenty of new trees in somewhat strategic places (for curtis's master-plan for building a deck and an addition... its a 10-year-plan lol).
3 apple trees, 2 lindens, 3 elms, an oak, 2 maples... I'm missing some now...but lots!!

Sammy always finding a new way to play

We also started to tame our out-back (Curtis is not a fan of that name lol), the back 1/3-ish of our yard that was farmer-field. Curtis mowed it regularly to help grass grow in, we tilled and planted a bunch of berries (Saskatoon, raspberries, strawberries) and a couple sour cherry trees. The idea is to keep the wasps behind the tree line. And in the fall, Curtis dug up a bunch of ditch-pine's and planted those around the perimeter. So we'll see if those took or not! I also popped in some acorns and silver maple sappers... who knows what'll come back! :)

My little garden thieves all summer long!

 The garden was a blast for me. Switching from a small square foot garden, to a large in-ground garden was a big adjustment. Luckily I find weeding somewhat therapeutic, and I took on my mission with the thistles like an Olympic athlete... But more on that in my gardening blog to come! :) The boys loved it, and I'm hoping to grow green thumbs in them yet!

Josiah started preschool in the fall

 Josiah started preschool in September which was a big change for us all! R O U T I N E! something I hadn't had in 4 years! So that took some adjusting, but it's been good. He was so excited and proud.

Another big change was christmas. We declared our claim over christmas morning, as family time. That was such a good idea!

Opening Stockings with Daddy

We were very relaxed and enjoyed our low key time together. It made the other gatherings more enjoyable too, knowing we had special time set aside for our own family time. Our Christmas was pretty basic and simple, but that's what made it special. I also did a pretty involved advent activity with the boys so that stretched out the season, and helped teach Josiah what it was all about.

 

Finally a decent family photo!!

 Kaiser turned 1 year old just yesterday! :) hard to believe this big dummy has been with us for a year already. He's smart enough to love and dumb enough to love lol! Definitely not the sharpest tool in the shed, but still a German Shepherd, so easily trainable and fiercely loyal. He's a big suck though, so dont let his size throw you off. Kaiser passed basic obedience prior to going insane with hormones. He's levelled out since then, but has developped a pretty serious tail-chasing problem.  I'd be worried ,but it's not like we walk him or give him anything to do all winter so.... we really brought it on ourselves. We're getting him a "special new collar" ;) to help jolt him out of it when he starts his spin-cycles. So far, we've gotten as far as training him that I personally dont like the spinning. So he doesnt do it around me. Its mostly when he's excited about something like the kids going down the slide, or the snowmobile turning on, etc... He's also had 2 $400 ear infections...which has been a real pleasure... :( so on those two notes, we've decided we'll fix him this summer. Not breeding material, but we love him to bits!

Our very own snow dog!

 Josiah's birthday also happened in January! We've had his friends party a couple weeks ago, and his family is coming over this weekend to celebrate. We did a snowmobile party, and it happened to fall on that gorgeously warm weekend! And since we live outside wpg, we still had enough snow! The kids and parents spent hours outside having fun.

Snowmobile birthday!

 Josiah wanted banana pops instead of cake (if you've never tried it, you have to! Freeze halved bananas with a popsicle stick in the cut side. Once frozen, dip in melted chocolate. I swear, you never need ice cream again...you're welcome!)

Josiah turned 5!

 And that brings us roughly to now! Sammy has been a fun little trouble maker lately. I feel like he's phased himself into "terrible 3's" a little early. He's gone from ignorant cave-man defiance, to willful and intentional defiance. And with such a strong will and personality, it's been a bit of a trick. Josiah was a follower, and his personality worked well with our parenting style, but we'll have to change things up for Sammy since he needs more control to function properly. It's all a work in progress.

He's potty trained though! And it was a cake-walk! I dont take any credit for that though. It's just straight-up his own independence that made it so easy.

The most recent thing on our plate was kindergarten registration for the fall! Being outside Winnipeg presented it's own challenges like figuring out our catchment schools, busing etc... Curtis ended up taking a day off work so we could take a tour of our top 3 schools. Dugald (french immersion), Oakbank (our catchment) and Calvin Christian (on the table for obvious reasons). We really haggled back and fourth over this one, and ended up choosing Oakbank, because it was over-all the best school from what we could see. The academics were high, lots of supports and resources, excellent music program and growing opportunities, a high focus on moral values, and (somewhat irrelevant to the decision) a Ukrainian language program! Weird right? well...

Josiah at children's museum with his new best friend from preschool.

Haha! We put Josiah in the Ukrainian program! Neither of us speaks Ukrainian, and it's not our  cultural background (other than what the Russian Mennonites stole from the Ukrainian culture). It's nothing like french immersion though. The principle said that by grade 5, maybe 10-15% of the year is taught in Ukrainian. So it's a much slower learning curve and there's also a focus on the culture. So they do lots of cultural field trips and events to learn about the culture. We thought this was a neat little addition since it still grows the language part of the child's brain without being an overwhelming immersion experience (which some kids are fine with, but i'm hesitant about, knowing josiah's personality, learning style and academic level currently). He will still take basic french, so I'm curious how the dual-language-learning will go. we may end up just putting him back in english for grade 1, but we figured it was worth a try! :)

well, that's about it, other than me eating dairy/nut-free Keto, but that's not terribly exciting, just difficult. It's just my "next thing" (i've come to terms with it... I'm a "thing-doer"... lol). I'm working on what I suspect is a "leaky gut" issue by eating keto (look it up... too complex to sum up what it is lol), plus eliminating dairy, nuts, caffine and vinegars other than ACV and citrus juices. Sounds specific and random but it's not. Basically the idea is to not consume anything that could cause inflammation in your gut for 3 months, take some suppliments like probiotics and magnesium to help tend to the gut and let it heal up, and then former food intolerances, and body aches and pains should disappear with the return of those foods within a healthy intestinal track. Hey, it's worth a shot, and if it doesnt work, it was still good for me in the end. :)

Thanks for reading! Have a good night!