Life these days..

Maybe someday I will do post #2 for our California trip, but that's not happening today :) It's been a while since I've updated, and since I keep this blog for me to be able to look back and see what has happened to us over the year, I figured I should do an update on what we've been up to!

First..pregnancy!! We are down to 4 weeks until my due date! While it feels like this pregnancy has taken forever, it also feels like it has flown by. We are SO ready to meet this little boy. Pregnancy has been rough on me the past 2 months or so. It always gets rough towards the end, but I have never had pain with my other 2 like I have had with this one. My lower back and my hips hurt SO bad that I can hardly get out of bed in the mornings. At night, I have to switch sides that I sleep on every 30 minutes or so, so I'm not getting any sleep. Plus, he is taking all my lung space, so I can hardly breath. Any little bit of movement takes all my breath away. Hardly being able to move really hinders me being able to do what I need to do around the house. We are having a home birth, so I want my house really clean and laundry done until he gets here. I don't want to be in labor at home and worrying about having a messy house. But, with these pains and lack of being able to breathe, it's hard to keep up with the messes the boys make or with the laundry. I'm just overwhelmed lately! I'm not trying to complain. I am SO very thankful for this baby and this healthy pregnancy, I'm just ready for a little relief so I can do everything that I need to be doing around here. I feel very useless these days. I haven't had many food cravings at this point in pregnancy. I crave 2 things...ice is #1. I want ice ALL the time. I drink something just so I can eat the ice. I told Bryan when I go into labor, I'm sending him to Sonic to get lots of ice! The other..and this is a weird one..I made my own laundry soap 2 months ago. I crave the smell of it. I'm not sure if it really just smells good so I like it, or if the pregnancy is making me crave the scent. All I know is I can just go into the laundry room and smell it for 5 or 10 minutes at a time. I want to do laundry, just so I can smell the laundry soap.

School is going GREAT with the boys! We are moving right along in the books we are using. Liam is doing so great with learning his letters and the sounds they make. It has taken a while to get there with him. We went through 4 different phonics programs before finding what works for him. I'm so glad we found something that works and we are sticking to it. All I do with Liam during the day is Bible, phonics/writing, math and art usually once or twice a week. Other than that, he is welcome to sit in on my lessons that I do with Cade, but usually he chooses to color or play or watch a movie while I'm finishing with Cade. Cade is doing great with his lessons, too. I love getting to see him learn and catch on to what I'm teaching him. I also just love seeing their natural curiosity. There has been times that we have studied something not on the "lesson plan" just because they show interest in it. We had some mushrooms growing in our yard after all this rain. They were asking so many questions about the mushrooms, so we just did a project and learned everything we could about them. That's the great thing with homeschooling..we can break from our normal routine and study something that they want to learn about. We are all loving it! The co-op we are joining starts in a few weeks and I can't wait. They will have so much fun. They are going to do an art class, possibly music..haven't decided if I'm signing them up for that yet or not. Each month they will be doing a different sport as well as a class where they will learn things like cultural studies, science labs, creative writing...each month is a different focus. And, each month they will have a family field trip. I think we are going to have so much fun with this! So, we will do school 4 days a week and one day a week will be set aside for our co-op day. We also have the option to sign up for a foreign language class. I haven't decided yet if we will do that this year or not.

We had maternity pictures taken 2 weeks ago by our favorite family photographer. She did such a great job! I can't wait for her to do our newborn pictures in a few weeks! Here are a few of my favorites.

This little boy has one awesome daddy!!