Time

Having my kids home with me all day is great.  But, I've found that in order to have any time to myself at all, I need to get up before they do.  Some of my favorite mornings are the dark, rainy ones.  Seems a cup of coffee always tastes better when you're drinking it in the quiet moments before the little ones get up!  I am by no means a morning person.  As a matter of fact, I would much prefer to stay up late.  But, the pull of having a few quiet moments in the morning has outweighed my desire to sleep in!  Today, is one of those mornings.  It's 9:15 and all my little people are still sleeping. 

 ~It's amazing what I've accomplished already~

Valentine's Day 2011

I have a sweet girl.  While she has a couple of love languages, the most powerful of them is gift giving.  Last year, our first year of homeschooling, she was really disappointed that I didn't make a huge deal out of Valentine's day.  Sure, she got Valentines from grandparents, and from her daddy and I.  But, apparently that wasn't good enough.  So this year I went all out.  We studied a little about the history of the day, painted some themed pictures, and made our own Valentine's bags.  

 Oh how each of my kids love to do art work!  Give them some paints and they are satisfied for hours.  That makes this mama very happy to have such creative little people!

 Everyone had their own bag and each of us made a special Valentine for the others.  I wrote each of them letters telling them how much they were loved and what traits they had that made them so special.  I found Graysen's letter tucked into his nightstand a couple of weeks later.  Avery has hers in her desk.  I hope they treasure these letters and read them over and over again as they get older.  

 Daddy came home from work a little early and had flowers for all his girls and a special Valentine balloon for Graysen.  I think the smiles on my kids faces are proof that I redeemed myself this year!

Jumping In

I've been out of touch for awhile.  I was once the faithful author of the blog Notes From the Craddocks.  But, two years ago I started homeschooling my kids and all my spare time went out the window.  My computer time was used to find new curriculum or exciting things online to go with our current studies.  My free time was taken over by science experiments in my kitchen, math with jelly beans, classifying sentences with my oldest and reading to my youngest.   I tried several times to get back in the swing of blog posting, but after many failed attempts, I gave up.  I just couldn't get the dark cloud from Notes from the Craddocks to lift.  I really want to document all the fun things we're doing as a family, all the things we're learning from our life experiences and the neat places we're going.  So, I'm starting fresh, jumping back on board and telling stories from our 

Little Green Schoolhouse!