Disneyland Day 1

As if I wasn’t crazy enough to sign up for a long race with 2 kids under 3 I then decided that with only 1 day of rest we would spend 4 days at Disneyland.

I loved watching them look at all the new things and explore everything.
It’s impossible to get a picture where we are all looking at the camera and smiling.
Churros!!!! Oh the amount of sugar we consumed.
This was goofy’s house playground. The kids loved these kind of things just as much as the rides.
I love that there were things for them to explore and help their minds work and not just rides.
Daily stroller naps.
Both our arms were dead at the end of each day. Even though we had a stroller half the time the kids wanted to be carried.
I love the wonder in their eyes.
Ducks! My daughter is obsessed with ducks and they are all around at Disneyland.

Don’t know how but we picked a great time to go. During the day, we were almost always able to find a ride that had less than a 20 minute wait. I can tell you anything longer than that and your kids are going to freak out. Even the 20 minutes my daughter would get really fidgety by the end. Snacks are key.

Weekly Workouts

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday -OFF it’s been a weird week hahahaha

Thursday – 3 miles

Friday – OFF

Saturday – 18.5 miles……..was gonna try for 20 but it hurt so much, had to have my husband come pick me up since I was still a little over 1.5 miles from home.

I’m starting to think I might drop down to a half marathon. I’m just so tired. With 2 kids under 3 I have been sleep deprived for over 1.5 years now, I stopped doing cross training or weights because I’ve been so tired. I haven’t 100% decided to drop down to a half yet but I am seriously considering it.

Book review: How to be a Happier Parent

I enjoyed this book. There were some dry moments and I skimmed the parts that didn’t really pertain to me right now…like busy school mornings and homework battles.

It is a lot about how you react to the issues that come up, the attitude you have and setting yourself up for success.

I am by no means perfect so I did learn a lot from this book hahaha. I still have days that are a struggle, I still lose my cool quicker than I want but I am trying and also trying to implement some strategies from this book and I think it’s helpful.

I would recommend all parents read this.

Weekly workout

When life happens……

Sunday -OFF

Monday – 3 miles of walk/run intervals

Tuesday – 2 miles walking

Wednesday – 3 miles walk/run intervals

Thursday – OFF baby woke up with a fever

Friday – OFF baby had diarrhea all day with some blood, ended up in the ER with her

Saturday – baby sick and wanted mommy all day. No long run.

Thank goodness she seems to be on the mend. I was starting to get a little worried. Hopefully the upward trend continues and everything can get back to normal this coming week.

I am a Runner

After so many years of not consistently running; moving in with my now husband, getting engaged, getting married, enjoying being married then kids. I find myself having to remind myself that I AM A RUNNER.

Even if I run slow, even if I have runs where I walk more than I run, even if I have bad training months, whether I finish first or last in a race (I have finished last lol) whether I run a marathon in 3 hours or 7 hours….I ran it…..I am a Runner.

For some reason now, I don’t know if it’s tackling the marathon or maybe having had kids, but I seem to be much harder on myself than I was 5 years ago when I was running. If I have a bad run or a run where I’m really tired or even a bad month of runs suddenly I think I’m not a good enough runner. I don’t remember ever feeling like that when I was training for half marathons before kids.

I think it might be because this has been such a bad month with my kids sleep and my stomach issues that I feel like I’ve backslid in my training a little. But I don’t ever want to be a perfectionist. So I have to continually remind myself that there will be seasons in life where it just doesn’t go the way I want it to.

But I am STILL a runner!!!!!

Weekly Workouts

My kids sleep has been HORRIBLE the past 2 weeks and it is catching up with me. Almost every night I have been up between 2-4 hours with one or both my kids. We have had teething and sleep regressions and who knows what. And for half that time my husband was out of town. I stayed with my in-laws then my mom came to town to help but in the middle of the night it was all me. I am so tired and so frustrated. One day we will get back to normal…….I hope…….please.

Sunday – OFF

Monday – OFF

Tuesday – OFF

Wednesday – 2 miles

Thursday – OFF , went out to breakfast

Friday – OFF

Saturday – 13 miles

Total miles this week – 15

Pre-school homeschooling curriculum

Our first year of homeschooling is coming to an end. I loved almost every minute of it lol. Overall, my toddler did amazing with the curriculum. With a year under my belt now I kind of know how he learns and how he does things. So I will review the curriculum that we used for preschool and in a couple weeks I’ll post what we’re going to do for Pre-K.

Language Arts

Part of timberdoodle curriculum

These were fantastic much more like playing games and doing fun little projects then worksheets

The Good and the Beautiful language arts curriculum

We started this about 2/3rds of the way through the year and will be continuing it through pre-K. These are much more lesson like so we tend to break them up into smaller sections but I have become a big fan of the Good and the Beautiful.

Math

Mathematical reasoning

I didn’t like this at all and neither did my toddler. We found it to be very dry and boring. I wasn’t going to make either of us suffer through it after I decided we didn’t like it. We got about halfway through it then I chucked it in the recycling bin.

Farm land math from Timberdoodle

My son loved this in the beginning and even asked for it regularly to play it. However once his new little sister was big enough to start taking pieces it started turning into a battle so we set this aside as well. But, it did lay a great foundation for us.

Also from Timberdoodle

This was fantastic. Timberdoodle actually added this in their 2023-2024 preschool curriculum kit so I only ordered it about 2 months ago but we are almost done with it. If you do it weekly it is not a full year’s worth of curriculum but it has added a little bit of math back into our study.

Thinking skills

Super sticker

My toddler loved this!!!!!

Bought the trio off Timberdoodle

These were fantastic just like the alphabet books by the same company. They were fun and engaging and quick.

Thinking skills

Another one that my toddler and I thought was really boring and dry. Just like the math we got about halfway through the book and I chucked it.

History and social studies

Love this puzzle, it is super adorable. For a long time my toddler had little to no interest in doing anything except jumping on the pieces to get them together when I set them in the correct place. But in the last 6 weeks that has started to change, with me helping him identify which pieces go where he is assembling it entirely himself.
I thought this book was super cool and interesting, my toddler generally just tolerated it lol. We did not finish it. I might throw it in here and there in our pre-K unit and see if he likes it better.

Nature and science

Love, love, love this. This curriculum is meant to be used year after year after year layering in more information and learning each year. Right now we keep it very basic but I look forward to using it for years to come with the kids.
This is really great for kids that aren’t ready for a full curriculum. We started with this entire program which is made of units. Now we use it mainly for it’s great book lists as well as a science project here and there.

Art

Eh, super cute idea but my toddler was just kind of meh about it. Maybe he’ll become more artistic in the future (though I’m not sooooo….I wish I was but was not blessed in that area)

Skills

This was great in the beginning of the year to get my son interested in learning to use scissors but we didn’t finish it because once he semi knew what he was doing he wanted to do his own cutting lol.

Overall, it was a great year. I loved watching my son grow in leaps and bounds. Which is exactly how it came. He would not get something and suddenly it would click. He was really did go in leaps and bounds and stops and starts.

The great thing about homeschooling his preschool is I was really able to follow his rhythm and our rhythm as a family. There were weeks where we didn’t do anything. We kind of fell out of our rhythm and then we’d pick it back up and have a couple of great weeks, couple great months and then kind of fall off again which worked out great for us. We’re still finishing on time and I just love the entire experience.

We started a little before he returned 2 years old. So it was by no means always easy sunshine but it was rewarding and wonderful. Occasionally I did resort to a little bit of bribery or coercion sort of to get him to come over and start. Once he started. He usually loved everything. But it would occasionally be oh. Can you help Mommy do this? Or do you want to come eat a chip with me while we look at this picture and talk about it? Lol.

Book review- The Brave Learner

Spoiler! I loved it!!!!

This book was so fantastic. It gave so many options and ideas to add creativity to your homeschooling. Take away some of the pressure and add confidence in yourself.

It talks about a lot of different versions of homeschooling, a lot of different options. It gives lots of encouragement and really just is an amazing resource. I checked this out of the library but I fully intend to buy it. Actually. I asked my best friend to give it to me for Christmas lol.

But it’s not just for homeschooling parents. In my opinion. I think it’s really just any family or parents who want to enhance their child’s learning and life. This book will really give you ideas and ways to embrace the spontaneous love of learning kids have.

August 2023 homeschooling reflective

I put on some Nat Geo in the morning while we all relaxed and woke up

I read them a book from the construction unit we are doing from playing preschool

We talked about the date, weather, season, the months of the year and the days of the week

We did some stickers in our math sticker book

And of course we couldn’t leave my 15 month old out of it lol.
They played a little in the sink
Daddy came out for lunch to play
Then he had a meltdown and rage colored lol
I actually did my hair (don’t look at the post partum flyaways lol) and put some mascara on
We hit the library and I got way too many books for me hahaha
Nap walk. This is how I get them both to take a nap currently
Did some worksheet pages
Attempted our first teatime……..ummmmm id call it a half success. He had a huge tantrum (he had a hard toddler day) but we did get 3 short sections and 1 longer section read in the preschooler book
Got a Good and the Beautiful lesson done.

Then we played outside until daddy got off work

Overall I’d call it a pretty good day.

Lincoln City Kite Festival

We took a quick overnight trip to the coast to spend some time with friends and see the kite festival. This was my first time going to the kite festival…….and will probably be my last hahahaha. The kites were cool but I found it pretty lackluster as far as a festival goes.

It will go down as a good memory and I’m glad we did it but it was absolutely not our best executed trip hahaha. We had a fair few tantrums.

The kids napped on the way there.

We played on the beach until we had access to the AirBnB we were going to share with friends

The house was right on the beach and had a great view

We can’t go anywhere without injuries hahahaha

After an early afternoon of playing on the beach and walking around we played on the rental houses deck and ordered a pizza

Little man slept in a big boy bunk bed!!!

Sleeping was absolutely terrible. The room was facing west so we had the sunset which in Oregon is not until 9:30 with full darkness, not until about 10: 30pm and while he doesn’t sleep in a completely dark room, it’s a pretty dark room so it took him forever to fall asleep. He did not go to sleep until about 10: 15 p.m.

Then the casino about a mile and a half away had fireworks and some drunken neighbors decided to sing along to them, thankfully this did not wake either kid up. Then at 11:45 p.m. drunken people on the beach set off a huge fireworks that lit up the entire room for about 30 minutes which woke the baby up.

The next morning was a slow leisurely morning (I ordered Starbucks through door dash because I could not keep my eyes open). Little man woke us all up at 5:30am We had breakfast with the whole house then played on the very windy beach.

There were lots of tantrums a long the way hahahah
Cheese!!!
We went through so many outfits with the sand and water hahahahhaha

My friend and her family were in the house with us too. The babies played together a bit

Then it was time for us to pack up and head home!

Both kids were asleep within about 15min of leaving and slept pretty much the whole way home.

It was an absolutely exhausting trip and I’m still exhausted today even after going to sleep an hour early, but I’m glad we did it. I’m going to try and go to sleep early again tonight