2012 Year in Review

2012

A Year in Review

2012 has gone by so fast. We started out the year struggling to try to get some sort of school time in as I was not feeling the greatest being in the third trimester of my pregnancy. It was hit and miss for quite a while. There were quite a few ups and downs during the year, not just with our lesson time, but with health issues, getting adjusted to having 4 children to take care of, and trying to figure out what in the world I was doing with my blog. As this year comes to a close I believe our school time is slowly being organized, we are all doing well health wise, mommy has gotten closer to being able to deal with four children and I am trying to bring my blog back to what it was meant to be. Here are several special memories from each month (boy was it hard to narrow it down).

January

I think what I am going to remember most from January of 2012 is how little snow we received. It was cold, but we hardly had any snow. (Of course one of the reasons I remember this is because we were using Five in a Row and I was all ready to do the book Katy and the Big Snow...and the snow never came.)

 Well, it did. Sort of. This is one of the heaviest snowfalls we had.

Can you believe they got me, a very pregnant mama, to make a snow angel. 

As I mentioned, my plans for our lesson time got thrown out of whack and I never really did get into Five in a Row again. We did however spend quite a while focused on pizza. We loved the book Pete's a Pizza. 

One of my favorite activities I created in the past came back out again. 

Of course, the highlight of January happened at the end of the month when Tabitha turned 5.

I made a "5" Muffin tin.

And we went to Chuck E. Cheese. Which we have decided will be a tradition for each child when they turn 5. 

February

I can't write about February without mentioning our Super Bowl party.

And how the girls helped my team, the Giants, win the Superbowl by playing along with them on their game controllers. (Didn't know that was why they Giants won, did you?)

Of course the main event in February was the arrival of our precious baby Harold, whose arrival the girls were anxiously awaiting.

He was born on schedule via c-section on February 17th.

I will always remember the short walks we took down the hallway.

My sweet family.

Of course having the baby put some things on hold, like being able to go to church for a while because of the c-section. So, we had church at home.  This was their Sunday School time. We focused on learning the 23rd Psalm a verse at a time.

March

March found us slowly getting back into some lesson time. Of course we had to have Kids and a Mom in the Kitchen. We were still focusing on Pizza! This dessert pizza was a-ma-zing! 

And I created a Word Family Pizza Game.

But one big highlight was the arrival of our My Father's World Curriculum. It was our 1st "Box Day!"

Of course the curriculum had to go away until the fall.
But the girls were still learning.
Or should I say, Tabitha was teaching.

Amelia had to take her turn.

 February also brought a need for this reminder of God's faithfulness.

This rainbow was seen right as we pulled up to the emergency room with baby Harold and Amelia who were both very sick little children.

Amelia had pneumonia, but was able to go home with medicine.

Harold had to stay as he had the pneumonia and RSV.

After a short stay, we went home, only to be sent back.

I was in the ICU for a week with our little guy. A very stressful time for all.

We were all glad when we were finally able to bring baby Harold home.

April

The weather started warming up and the girls got to play outside more.
Here they are collecting stones for our Resurrection Garden.

Resurrection Sunday brought a special breakfast,

and an egg hunt after church.

One day when Amelia was playing with the magnets on the refrigerator I noticed that blending sounds to read words suddenly just clicked for her. 

As she was showing more interest in reading I made her some food word cards for her to read as a part of our Kids and a Mom in the Kitchen time. 

Oh, can't leave out baby Harold's big smiles.

And Hannah turned 2 years old on April 11th.

May

In May I took advantage of the spring weather to create an art project/lesson focusing on patterns.

I even extended our lessons into our muffin tins.

Not only did we focus on patterns, but we made word family flowers.

And color matching flowers for Hannah.

On Mother's Day I received some beautiful flowers.  The girls actually got to make the bouquets themselves.

 June

In June I decided it was time to try to get healthy again (unfortunately, it didn't last).

June also brought gardening time.

Which of course, means digging in the dirt.

Speaking of digging in the dirt, we also got our ants.

And on June 18th Amelia turned 4.

Big brother Floyd surprised her with this huge bear.

Also in June baby Harold learned how to turn 360 degrees.

It was also the start of our summer reading program.

Hannah had fun on the playground,

while her sisters were in VBS.

July

In July the girls were able to participate in the Summer Reading Program in a nearby town, same as they did last year.

We also got to go blueberry picking. I have lived in this area for 19 years and had never had a chance to go. I was more excited than the girls I think.

And baby Harold was just about rolling over.

August

August began with a trip to visit grandma. The children enjoyed watching her next door neighbor ride his bike with his dog Marty along for the ride.

The next day, baby Harold tried his first baby food. He wasn't too thrilled at first.

Then he decided he liked it.

Hubby would be very upset with me if I neglected to share baby Harold's first Bill's game.

We started back to school on August 13th.

My Father's World Kindergarten curriculum starts with the story of creation. We made creation books, one page for each day of creation.

At the beginning of the school year I was very organized. School Boxes and folders were organized. Through the rest of August and into September I made sure we got our lessons done and we did quite a few activities. Obviously, I will not be sharing all of those in my Year in Review post as everything is recorded in my Weekly School Time posts.

Baby Harold was just about sitting up by himself in August.

September

In September baby Harold started putting some weight on those legs in an attempt to stand.

He was most definitely rolling over.

We visited the grandparents and before we went home we went out for ice cream.

The Three Harolds

Definitely standing up with help.

I surprised daddy with a cake for his birthday.  I had won a gift certificate and ordered it and picked it up behind his back. I think he was okay with it. Chocolate and peanut butter...yuuummmm!

In September our lessons were Ss-Sun and Mm-Moon. 

I was still nicely organized for these lessons.

October

Harold was slowly starting to get around better. 

One day Amelia wanted to feed Harold his lunch.

So, Hannah had to try. Eeek.

And Tabitha needed her turn.

Fall was in the air and the children were playing outside in the leaves after playgroup. 

Suddenly I was getting attacked.

In October baby Harold also had his first chance to sit in a high chair (we used a Bumbo at home).

October also brought the first regular season Bills game. The children were excited because that meant we got to go in the field house, where they could watch daddy play trivia games.

And they could get their faces painted.

They also got their long awaited for bunk beds.

And near the end of the month daddy decided it would be fun to get baby Harold to creep by tempting him with my phone.

It worked.

Now that the girls had the bunk beds, Hannah was moved out of the crib and into the toddler bed.

I hadn't realized there was so much going on in October. School wise we completed our Ll-Leaf unit, started our Aa-Apple unit and started going to co-op. Co-op does really take up a bit more time than I thought it would, even though it is only 1 day a week. There does seem to be a correlation there, between my being less organized and us joining co-op. 

November

However, I also just realized the other reason why I fell behind. I spent a week at the beginning of November quite sick with a nasty cold and cough. In fact, I was feeling so bad the one night I allowed Tabitha to make the popcorn because there was no way I was getting off the couch.

It was finally time to remove Harold from the portable crib. He was starting to pull himself to stand.

And another milestone for Harold, he started using the booster seat instead of the Bumbo.

I tried taking my own Christmas pictures again this year.

We got to meet the new grandbaby.

And see Harold's older children for a while.

And Harold started cruising the furniture.

(Notice the block instead of a phone being used for temptation purposes.)

Oh, and he started crawling too!

We have had more snow so far this winter, than we had all last winter. 

In November we had enough snow for the girls and I to make this tiny snowman.

And the girls are helping me teach baby Harold sign language, as an ambassador for WeeHands.

He also started to eat finger foods.

Wow, that was quite the month.

In our school time we finished the Aa-Apple unit and started the Nn-Nest unit. 

Now, onto December.

Baby Harold had his first big tub bath. Wasn't too fond of it.

While we were at playgroup he decided to learn how to climb steps.

And he found the steps at home pretty fast. 

We made picture frames for grandparents.

The one day when I came downstairs Amelia was already feeding Harold breakfast she had made him.

The girls went out to play one day and I had them act all sad because there was no snow (remember last winter). 

Then when it did snow they were so excited.

They seemed to think the yard needed shoveling.

There wasn't all that much yet. But the day after Christmas, the snow came and it kept falling.

The girls were thrilled.

As for school lessons this month, we had been focusing on getting ready for Christmas and on our SchoolhouseTeachers.com curriculum for the review. We will be continuing with some of it as we start up the new year. I plan to start with a quick review of the 5 letters/units we completed and then we will move into our new letter while adding in at least the spelling. I miss how organized I was at the beginning of the school year, so I have the rest of this week to get organized. 

I realize that this year in review got really really long. There was just so much we have been doing and the children have been accomplishing, especially with all the milestones baby Harold was passing. 

I am adding this post to the Schoolhouse Review Crew's Blog Cruise. 

Stop by to see how others have looked back at 2012.