This and That

Since I didn't manage to post last week, I thought I'd take an idea from Celeste and put a few things together into one post.

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Last week my husband and I celebrated our 15th Anniversary!

15 Years Ago - Anyone recognize this place?

We celebrated by shipping the kids to my parents for two nights and staying home all by ourselves!  It was really nice having the house to ourselves.  We like our house (we ought to, we built it!) and it was nice to get to enjoy it together like that.  We went out to dinner in town on the evening of our anniversary, and then the next day we drove about an hour further up into the mountains and went snowshoeing together.  We both really enjoy hiking and snowshoeing, but we don't get many opportunities to do it.  The weather forecast predicted rain, but thankfully it turned to fine snow shortly before we reached our destination.   

15 Years Later!

It was absolutely gorgeous out, with the trees flocked with snow and a light snow falling.

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Ever since the last storm system came through and dropped almost 30" (!!) of rain on us, we've had beautiful blue skies.  The kids, understandably, are not particularly interested in lessons.  Hours out of doors are definitely a good thing, but so are things like Math, Latin, and Spanish.  I've tried lessons outside, but anything involving writing is not working outside.  We are at least doing our readings outside in the sun, which has been lovely.

We've also taken the opportunity to plant some seeds, which has become far more enjoyable for everyone now that I've stopped caring if the seed trays are labelled correctly or planted evenly.  Right now the various trays are labelled with the children's names, and if that's good enough for them, it is good enough for me.

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In a recent blog post Celeste mentioned her Calendar of Firsts, and it galvanized me to finally get our new year printed out and up to date.  There's two main styles of a Calendar of Firsts, a perpetual one where each day has a page and you can see entries for each year, and one where you add a new set of pages each year, and can see all the entries for the month on a single (or double) page.  There are advantages and disadvantages to both, but I decided I liked seeing all the entries for a month at a glance and went for the second type.  The main drawback is that I have to remember to print and add the new pages each year...  which seems like such a minor thing, but yet can stymie me for months! Ridiculous, I know.  But at least it is done, and after consulting my photo library, we're all caught up.  Here's a glimpse of ours:

Our completed page for February - The red tabs on the right are for the years.

The template is from Immaculata Designs, but it doesn't look like she has it up on her site anymore.

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And last but not least, I should mention that CM West has a Facebook page.  I'm not a big fan of Facebook, but I'm going to try and post information there as well as on the mailing list and website.