TLC: catching up

It's been a long time since I posted last. We are back to school now and I realized that I need to catch up so I can get back in the habit of posting our homeschool adventures. So here is a (not so) quick overview of the end of summer and our start to the school year.

Many (most, all) of you have already seen these pictures of Amelia on Facebook but for the few that only see the blog, I had to share them again. They are just too cute!

My children entered a writing contest at our local library. They each entered a short story and they all won a prize! Isaac won 1st place for his age group, Ian won 2nd and Isabella won 2nd for her age group. I am so proud them! Here they are with the mayor and the speaker from the award ceremony.

The biggest event of the summer for our family was the marriage of my baby sister! She and Joe got married on August 25th. I have so many beautiful pictures from that amazing weekend and I will be making a separate blog post to share them all. This was the happy couple the evening before their wedding at the rehearsal.

This is the beautiful bride on her big day. Words cannot describe what an amazing day this was. The pictures will help so stay tuned.

I just have to give a big loud shout of thanks to Grammy Chris and Papa Ken for housing us for the weekend of the wedding. It was such a crazy, busy weekend and they provided us a home away from home, fed us and helped me with the kids. Thank you, thank you and thank you again!

Amelia is getting so big!! She is ridiculously adorable and (of course) super smart. She has a little routine in the mornings with her daddy. She stands at our window and watches him leave for work and waves to him. It is really cute.

She is also turning into a ham.

I made grape juice. I could write a whole post about this. My mom picked concord grapes with her friend and I got to take them home and make juice and jam. I love doing things like that. My great uncle Ted used to make grape juice and I tried to make it like his. I tried some but it really needs to sit for a month or two at least for a better flavor.

A few weeks before the first day of school we got some excellent news... Miles is back!! He moved back and he is back at TLC Academy. It is amazing how God works and we are just so excited to have him back. The boys are especially stoked about having their best friend back at school!!! Our first few days were a little rocky. School went fine but Amelia was very very cranky and it took some time for her to adjust to our new routine (she didn't like sharing the attention with books and lessons at all). I had planned to take some great first day of school pictures but in reality, getting the camera out was simply not on the top of the priority list that day.

They boys are playing soccer this fall and loving it. Miles is on their team too. They are pretty awesome!

We are using a new curriculum this year called Sonlight. It has a lot of reading time. I read to the kids everyday. It is pretty cozy. Every school should be this comfortable.

Hannah celebrated her 11th birthday last week on our family day at the Big E. It was such a great day. I had so much fun with everyone. Family is such an amazing gift from God.

The best view of the parade was from Uncle Joe's shoulders.

Hannah's favorite part of the day was this giant turkey leg that she devoured. I think she is afraid someone is going to try to take it!!

Uncle Joe and Auntie Kimmy took the boys to play some games and helped them win some great prizes.

So, I really plan to take a lot more school related pictures in the coming weeks. We have something REALLY exciting happening on Monday. I can't wait to post about it. I'm also not the only one taking pictures these days. The kids periodically get assigned a photography challenge. It is done individually. They get a "theme" and they can take up to 20 pictures to capture the theme. Instead of loading up the blog, I am going to post the albums on Facebook and give you a link. Please "like" your favorite photo and the winning photo for each challenge will get blown up and grace the walls of TLC Academy. The photo challenges are are part of the kid's Task Jars and it is one of the 100 or so tasks that will get pulled form the jar periodically so this won't be the only challenge...
Click HERE to see Hannah's Fall Photo Challenge Album