What are we up to?

Well, we've been having a lovely lovely summer here.

Ever since I did my 40 days internet fast during Lent last year, I have found it hard to return to regular blogging.  I don't spend nearly as much time on the computer as I used to and I rather enjoy being free to do other things with the kids like build train tracks and make princess crowns.

Here's a little bit about what we've been up to over the summer:

We almost went camping on the May long weekend... but chickened out at 10:30 the night before when we were packing and it was cold.  The only problem: the kids had already gone to sleep and were dreaming of how much fun we were going to have in the morning... so we quickly phoned around and booked ourselves into a lovely condo in Canmore for the weekend. :-)  It was so much fun! We had 2 bedrooms, a kitchen, eating area, DVD player, washer/dryer, balcony with BBQ and even a swimming pool.    We enjoyed our trip so much we want to make it a yearly thing.  Going up to the Nordic centre and challenging their orienteering course they had set up was a definite highlight. We rented a compass and a map and had to bushwhack through the trees to find the hidden checkpoints.

We went real camping for a few days at a catholic family conference in July where the kids stayed up until the sun set (around 111:30pm!) and we had marshmallows every night... SO much fun.  We've been to Drumheller to visit the dinosaurs with the kids and enjoyed another visit to Boston Pizza (they now serve gluten free pizza, thanks be to God).

VBS has come and gone, we went to a horse race Palio event that our local diocese put on where the kids enjoyed the bouncy castles for hours on end, and  we even got in a few afternoons of tossing around a ball in the park.  I even learned how to catch a football (and THAT is a big deal).

The baby is the -sweetest- baby I have EVER had. He sleeps through the night (for months now), hardly ever cries, laughs at my jokes, plays with his siblings, and eats whatever I give him.

We always joke that we got the 'Buy 5 get one free' special with Sammy.

On that note, we thought maybe God would throw in another perfect, happy baby if we were crazy enough to try... so we are happily awaiting his little brother or sister sometime next april :-)

In schooling news:  I'm up to my eyeballs in planning for next year.  Now there is a real sense of importance in getting my files done so I can school without having to use my brain too  much LOL. (pregnant brain PLUS nursing brain is really dopey).

Next year, we are looking forward to learning about:

math (if we have to) (Horizons)

spelling (AAS)

writing (Writing with Ease, Classical Writing Homer)

handwriting (HWT)

history (ancient history ala History Odyssey, Connecting With History and Story of the World)

science (Exploring Creation with Zoology 2: swimming creatures)

Latin (first form latin).

Crazily enough (is that a word?) my favorite subject is Latin and I am enjoying working ahead of the kids trying to grasp the grammar of that very strange language.  There is a fabulous book for teaching language using an inductive approach that I have come across. It's called Lingua Latina, and I am thoroughly enjoying it.

Wow that was a mishmash of a post if I ever read one.

Now back to filing LOL