First Day of Kindergarten and K4 preschool

We had a great first day of school yesterday. Since we started on a Tuesday it dragged out longer than it would normally have. Tuesdays we have gymnastics for the younger boys and piano for Vincent in the middle of the school day. Vincent loved his first piano lesson with my sweet friend Kate.

Both boys enjoyed school...even if they didn't want to do a picture to prove it. :)

It is such a privilege to be able to teach them at home. I have been really nervous about being the one to provide their education, but now that I am closer to the material, I am realizing that we're just learning together. The program we chose is literature-based, so we are just reading and discussing a lot of really fun stuff! It is so fun to see Vincent get really interested in what we're learning. In Science, we're talking about the earth, and we used a flashlight and a globe (thanks, Nana!!!) to show how it spins and why it's day on one side of the earth and night on the other side. He just couldn't get enough of it! And that was before we even got to the material in the book! He loved looking at the diagrams of the earth's core and photos of a sunrise and a sunset. I could just go on  and on. I am so excited to see him excited!

Vincent is reading really well, so he is using First Grade Language Arts material, which means SPELLING WORDS!!! Those of you who know even a little about my dorkiness can guess how fun this is for me.

Today's Laguage Arts lesson was supposed to incorporate story-telling (him making up a story) and before we could even get to it, he wanted to write a story about astronauts because of what we were reading during Science! So instead of moving on to the spelling words right away, we changed our course and wrote a story. He dictated and I transcribed. He is working on the cover of the "book" right now and we will put it all together when he's done. This is why we are homeschooling. I love that we could just adjust our course and move on to what he's excited about. We will circle around and cover they other stuff later today, but for now, we are loving the book we have put together and he feels so proud of what he created.

Anthony is in Pre-K this year, and he listens in on all our stories and works on things that develop his skills for his developmental level. He's my hands-on guy, so we get lots of fun stuff to play with for him!

Beautiful Brooke

We have always been so blessed with wonderful babysitters. I met Brooke when she trained me in the nursery at MyChurch. I knew right away that I needed to have her babysit our babies. Not only was I impressed with her uncommon maturity, but she was also already babysitting for half the families in our church! That says something! Sadly for us, she's leaving for college soon; so some of the families she babysits for got together and threw a surprise going away party for her. We all had a fantastic time eating and swimming together. These kids love her so much, and we parents are in awe of her. She has blessed our babies in unspeakable ways!

I love how our friends are always holding someone else's kid. Everybody just loves on everybody around here. 

What a beauty.

The Whitis Family with Brooke: Eli, Brooke W., Brooke K., Brandon, and Finn

Ali Murphy, Brooke, and Karlisa (I am so sorry I didn't get a pic with the whole Lopez family! Not sure how I missed that.)

The Harrison Family with Brooke: Jocelyn, Kelsey, Aiden, Brooke, Josh, and little Whit

Brooke and her kids, minus a few siblings (and a few families).

Brooke with three-fifths of the Murphy family: Jeff, JD, and Ali

New Website

I know you're thinking, "Wait a minute. This is supposed to be the new one!" It was, but I keep getting messages that I'm using too much space. So, I'm moving over to www.lacyripleydesigns.com, which is a shorter name, so hopefully easier for you! I will be transferring all my posts from here to there, so please stay tuned! If you are interested in scheduling your family's next session, please contact me any time. You can email me or visit the new website and post a message. Thank you for your support!

Eight Years Down, 80 to go.

Dan and I celebrated 8 years of marriage earlier this week. It's funny how fast time goes, and I know that the next 8 (and probably the next 15, for that matter) will also fly by. We went on a date tonight, shooting guns, eating yummy food and even yummier frozen yogurt (we are officially hooked on Sweet Frog, but don't tell the kids we went without them!). It was nice to be out and about. This is the first anniversary in a while that we haven't watched our wedding video (because our DVD player is a dork, and annoying to set up), so instead I'm just going over some memories of the day, funny ones that I sort of expected to forget.

For those of you who don't know, we were married in California with just one friend there, Joan, who lives in Cali. Joan and I stayed together in a hotel the night before (it was a dump, because I was apparently either too broke or too cheap to spring for a decent place) while Dan stayed at the Naval Base in San Diego. Checkout at the hotel was really early, so I was going to have no place to get ready because Dan and I were going to stay at a different hotel the night of the wedding. Neither place wanted to let me use a room, so Joan and I called Dan Alan (I have no idea how we knew how to get in touch with him). He was the director of the San Diego Summer Project when Joan and I met in the summer of 2000, and he was still the director that year. He and some of the other Campus Crusade for Christ staff arranged for us to use their condo to get ready before the wedding. It was so sweet!

Anyway, after using their room, Joan and I headed out, only to get lost on the way to the beach. It was a mess. Dan and I were fighting on the phone as we each drove separately, each trying to figure out where the other was. We were both late, but I was later. Not that it really mattered. The only guest was with me!

Before I arrived, and without my knowledge, Dan and the pastor had asked a bunch of beach-goers to vacate the area so that we could get married! They were all very kind and left, but I would have just let them stay, had they asked me. The beach area (Shell Beach in La Jolla, for those of you who know the area) was at the bottom of a cliff. It was truly beautiful. I had to walk down a really tall staircase to get down to where Dan waited with the pastor. By the end of the ceremony we had a huge audience looking down on us, and they all applauded when Pastor Lauer said we could kiss.

The rest of our wedding trip was lovely (except one unfortunate round of food poisoning, but no honeymoon would be complete without that, would it?), and we can't wait to get our toes back in the San Diego sand some day. For now, we're grateful for God's grace in the 8 years since we made that covenant with each other and with God, and we are content to be right where he has us: in each other's arms.

Reading

I just have to say, I feel so overwhelmingly blessed to have the privilege of teaching Vincent to read. Maybe it's the book-lover in me. Maybe it's the mommy. Whatever it is, I am so grateful for the chance to see Vincent's eyes light up when he realizes he has just read a word. I was terrified of this process at first, until a sweet friend told me about this book. It takes all the work out of it. I don't have to do any planning. It's even scripted (and you're supposed to follow the script exactly). It may sound daunting, but it truly is the best thing we've done for homeschool. Anthony even wants to participate, but I can't figure out a good way to teach them both at the same time, so I'm going to start with Anthony at the beginning of the school year.