We started trying to have children in May 2002. After pursuing fertility treatments, domestic, and international adoption, our daughter Nadia Renee was born on 6-24-08 (at 36w4d). IVF #2 resulted in Ian Alexander, who was born on 12-12-09 (at 34w3d). Oliver Elliot (IVF #3) was born on 8-7-12 (at 31w6d)! Three other pregnancies (in 2005, 2007, and 2013) ended in miscarriage. Our family is complete! We are so thankful for our three miracles!
This is my thirteenth year of homeschooling, and it's my last one in which I have three students. I've had a tradition of taking a picture of the kids at the start of each school year. Below you'll find a picture of Nadia from each of the past years of school. I also have the kids draw a self-portrait every year and write goals for the year. Last year we began the tradition of getting ice cream at Becky's after taking our first day of school pictures. We indented to continue that tradition yesterday, but it started raining a little before we had dinner. Oliver, Paul, and I were walking (in Oliver's case rollerblading) home when we got caught in the rain. Due to the rain last night, we took our annual pictures this evening and got our ice cream afterwards. In this post you'll also find the video I made about our trip to Hawaii (above), and Oliver's 13th birthday video (at the end of the post). I usually make 5-6 videos a year. I've made four so far this year, and I'm planning on making one in the near future that commemorates our trips to all fifty states and then one more in December for Ian's 16th birthday.
Our local school district went back to school last week. The Christian school at our church had their first day of school today. Due to just coming back from Hawaii, I didn't want to start at the same time as our school district although we've done that many times in the past. Many years we've had school on Labor Day, but I decided to ease us back into the school year by having two four-day school weeks the first two weeks of school. So, I decided we'd start on Tuesday this week and take Labor Day off next week. The first two days of school went fairly smoothly. Oliver was overwhelmed by the jump in difficulty from the elementary level science textbook which he used in 6th grade to the Physical Science textbook he's using this year. Yesterday I decided to return an audiobook I had purchased with a credit that we hadn't listened to yet with Audible and instead used the credit to get an audiobook of his textbook so that he could listen to it while he reads it simultaneously. I have to say he did a nice job in the science notebook yesterday and today. Math didn't go smoothly for Ian yesterday. I'm attempting to have him switch to Saxon. He did well with Beast Academy through 5th grade, and then he's been using Teaching Textbooks which I feel is too easy for him, and he thought AOP was too challenging last year when I attempted to have him use that for geometry. Hopefully it will work for him to use this Advanced Mathematics book by Saxon this year. Oliver is using Teaching Textbooks, and Nadia is taking College Algebra through ASU. I'll also do Life of Fred with all three kids, but we haven't started Life of Fred yet this year.
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