A Week in My Life as a Homeschooling Mom {January 24, 2016 Edition}
“I guess ‘baby Daniel’ is growing into BIG BOY Daniel. He’s such a joyful and busy guy!” (on Instagram)
Did you notice anything new? Yes, yes, that’s right – the URL above is now TheEncouragingHomeschoolMom.com! I went with the tagline “Inspiring Homeschool Moms from the Blessed Trenches of Real Life,” because you know I live real life around here and my heart is to encourage YOU. You’ll also notice the graphics have been switched out to reflect the new name here on the blog, on The Encouraging Homeschool Mom Facebook page, and Twitter. I’m waiting for updated graphics for YouTube and G+ and we’ll be good to go.
One of the new things I want to share here most weeks is a wrap up of A Week in My Life as a Homeschooling Mom. I just love how my friend Crystal shares 5 Things I’m Loving This Week, and how Mandi shares her Weekend Reading (which also gives a little review of her week). I know on YouTube many viewers have loved my Homeschool Mom Life – with a migraine for “extra fun,” Day in My Life As a Homeschool Mom {September 2015}, and Our Homeschool Routine When Real Life Happens. So on the weekends I’m going to share a rewind with you. I’ll share snippets of what we’ve done over the last week, some of the meals we’ve had, books we’re reading, and other mishaps or adventures from a week in my life as a homeschool mom.
So let’s do this, shall we?
A Week in My Life as a Homeschooling Mom {January 24, 2016 Edition}
House Hunting Dealings
This week started out with uncertainty about the latest house offer we put in on this property. We’ve been excited over this property, but had several roadblocks when we went to put in our offer. It literally took two weeks to even get the offer turned in. Mainly because I’m self-employed, even though I’ve been approved for the new house for months, I pretty much had to run my entire business (and seemingly part of my soul and my next born child, ha!) through underwriting again.
The day after our pipes froze and everything went wrong, we finally got our official offer turned in. Then the moment our offer was turned in, of course, another offer showed up. All of this just led to more Surrender on my part because there’s only so much I can do and it’s in the Lord’s hands.
I had moments where I thought that maybe this property wasn’t going to work out. Even with our offer on the table I called on other properties this week. And would you believe this – here I sit at the end of the week with a ratified contract on a new house? Praise God! They counter-offered us once, and then accepted our counter offer. I know there’s a long road between now and closing day, but I’m so thankful to be this far!
Earlier on Instagram: “I almost forgot my praise report from earlier today! Between #snowmageddon and everything else in life our offer was accepted for a new house! This *Lord willing* will officially be my new front porch soon for our country porch chats. Thank you for your prayers. I know so many of you have shared your house hunting encouragement with me since it’s been over a decade since we’ve done this. ❤️❤️❤️”
Our Homeschool Week at a Glance
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In our homeschool this week we started and finished reading The Sign of the Beaver. We also started, and are still in the middle of reading Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. We finished listening to The Horse and His Boy through The Complete Chronicles of Narnia: The Classic BBC Radio 4 Full-Cast Dramatisations during lunch time as well.
We’ve carried on with our regular homeschool routines and had a solid and steady week of homeschool. We generally homeschool gently year round, but during these coldest months we do extended hours. This makes it a great time of year to do extra read-alouds, learn new games (for instance I just taught Naomi, Gabriel, and Liam to play Blokus), and work in more time-consuming larger projects like lapbooking. You can read here about the lazy and easy way to do lapbooking, written by my friend Kirsten. Over on FreeHomeschoolDeals.com I also have the Biggest List Of Free Homeschool Lapbooks just to make lapbooking in your homeschool a little easier.
Blokus is the perfect strategy game for the whole family – less than a minute to learn with the depth to challenge all ages.
Since we can’t run through the field every day as we’re used to doing, we make an extra effort to weekly go bowling, roller skating, snow tubing at the ski resort, or some additional outings with friends. Night time roller skating at our local roller rink is our current weekly favorite. We also had our homeschool group this past week which is always lots of fun.
More from A Week in my Life as a Homeschooling Mom
I’ve been really impacted by this verse, “I depend on God alone; I put my hope in Him,” Psalm 62:5. I’ve been chewing and thinking on it throughout each day. This habit of having a verse to ponder is very special to me. I can’t always read for hours on end, or finish many other books besides the books I daily read to my children, but I CAN focus on ONE verse at a time.
I’ve also been gently reading Keep a Quiet Heart by Elisabeth Elliot. This book is another treasure to be savored. Read this:
“Heaven is not here, it’s There. If we were given all we wanted here, our hearts would settle for this world rather than the next. God is forever luring us up and away from this one, wooing us to Himself and His still invisible Kingdom, where we will certainly find what we so keenly long for.” (shared on Instagram)
Snowmageddon 2016
And now here we are with a huge blizzard in our part of the country, being called Snowmageddon 2016!
I cooked us up a huge stack of large family style pancakes while we watched and waited for the storm to arrive.
When I finally made it outside the snow was up to my knees and still coming down. You can see that even Miss Amelia is enjoying her first real snow fall. If you’re snowed in like we are you might also be in need of The Massive List of Indoor Activities for Homeschooled Kids! Over 100 ideas!
LIVE HOMESCHOOL Q&A THIS WEEK!
Friends, this wraps up some snippets of A Week in My Life as a Homeschooling Mom. Coming up this week I’m going to share more about homeschooling and answer your homeschool mom questions LIVE on a Homeschooling Live Stream with my friends Tim and Dana Schmoyer of the beloved YouTube channel Schmovies. The LIVE Q&A will be at 8pm EST on Tuesday January 26. Check The Encouraging Homeschool Mom Facebook page for more details and the link to the event if you’d like to join us!
I hope you have a lovely upcoming week, ladies.
