Life

Hmmm….so what have we been up to the past month?

I’d say we’ve been up to everything yet nothing! Nothing special, but we’ve been busy.  We have focused this month on school, which has been nice. It is my goal each school year to push pretty hard the first three quarters so when the weather breaks after winter we can enjoy the sunshine a bit on nice days.  We’ve almost made it there. The kids have pretty much completed their yearly reports.  I had them each report on something related to our cruise this year.  Maddie studied coral reef ecosystems, Braden studied Belize, and Kinslee did a report on different types of boats.  I always dread doing these reports because it is such a huge task and takes so much work from me. (Wow..that makes me sound like a pretty lazy teacher!)  All of the hard work pays off, when I see that Maddie could mostly do the report on her own this year.  We’re getting there!

Another thing that has taken a lot of thought this month is our schooling for next year.  We want Maddie to be able to participate in sports, which means a school change for us and a decision on what we want her future schooling to look like.  We can of course make a change in the future, but for her sake, we’d like to not have to switch schools if we don’t have to.  We have decided to pull all three of them from the charter school we are a part of and do straight homeschooling this year.  I am much more confident about this now than I was 3 years ago.  Although we are part of a charter school this year, the only real difference next year will be that we will have to pay for curriculum ourselves.  I didn’t really take advantage of what the charter school had to offer previous years, so not much will be missed there.

Our decision now is whether to have Maddie participate in Northwestern (the public school she went to before) or Emmanuel Christian School. We have met with NW and are setting up a meeting with Emmanuel.  Right now, we are leaning towards Emmanuel because they have more to offer us.  They will allow her to participate in sports and take just one class if she desires.  At NW, the only option she has is to participate in sports and dances.  Ummm…I think I’ll pass on the junior high dances, thank you. So we’ll see what we think of ECA once we meet with them, but that is where we’re leaning. She’s going to be a busy runner for the next 7-8 months, but she is excited!

Our hope is that Braden and Kinslee would also be able to do any activities that ECA has to offer. Braden really wants to play basketball, and they have a 6^th grade team. Kinslee hates all sports and wants to start taking ballet.  As soon as I get around to calling, I think we are going to let her try it.  She and Braden have been putting on plays at home the past month and in the privacy of our home, she is quite the little actress! I don’t know if she’d act in public the way she does at home, but she definitely has some drama in her.  Maybe ballet would let that come out a little bit!

In food blogging news…we’re coming up on our 1 year anniversary for Tastes of Lizzy T’s.  We’ve started making a decent little amount of money, so we’re going to sign on for another year.  It is hard sometimes because it really is a full-time job.  I’m either all-in or all-out with the blog, so Maddie and I work pretty hard to make it a success. We’ve made our media kit this winter to send to potential sponsors.  We’ll see where we get with that.  If this year goes well, a blogging conference may be in our future.  That’s where you go if you are serious about making it a job! I just told Matt that I needed to hire a virtual assistant to do social media for me.  That is the part I despise the most.  It helps to grow the blog so much, but it is a job that is never done! If I could just cook, write, do photography and make lots of money, I’d be good! Unfortunately that’s not the way it works.

Well, I feel like I’ve updated you on our lives so far.  As I said…not much exciting, but that’s life!