A Year in Review: Top Posts from 2022

We hope everyone had a very Merry Christmas and we pray that you have a Happy New Year! Our house is full as we’ve had some older kiddos visiting but that makes our hearts full as well so we have a good balance going on.

It’s hard to believe that this year is almost finished and a new year is about to begin. It’s definitely been an interesting year in many ways… the past couple of years have been interesting and have brought lots of hardships and trials but they have also brought us lots of unexpected blessings.

I read something earlier about letting out tears from 2022 be the seeds for 2023 and that sounds like a good idea to me. I know that 2022 has been a year of major adjustments here in our household. After spending most of 2021 in the hospital with Shyanne and away from our family, it has been quite an adjustment for everyone. I’ve also been dealing with some health issues but hopefully, I am on the way to getting better. It’s been a tough year for sure and it’s definitely been a struggle to get this far but we survived and I have faith that next year will be even better!

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Getting your calendar organized!

Do you ever feel like you are running a day late and a dollar short? I know this past year or two have been like that for me. Our lives were completely turned upside down for a bit and it has taken me quite a while to figure out which way was up. I have found a lot of comfort in going back to some of our old routines and they are helping us to get better organized.

It’s almost a new year so I am trying my best to get our home running even smoother which will help alleviate a lot of the stress that we have around here.

One of my best organizational tools over the past several years has been our Cozi Calendar. I also like to keep a large calendar handy for everyone to access so there is less confusion about what is happening and who needs to be where and when they need to be there. I haven’t tried out some of the newer scheduling systems because the one I currently use seems to work pretty well for us and I don’t really want to try to implement a lot of new changes while we are still trying to find our way back to ‘NORMAL‘.

We do pretty well about keeping our doctor appointments and such straight but sometimes it’s the other things that get overlooked… I actually almost forgot one of the kid’s birthdays last month! Thankfully I had already bought the supplies I needed so I was able to pull it all together fairly quickly.

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St. Nicholas Day 2022

Yesterday afternoon I had the kiddos help me dig out the Christmas decorations and the tree. I’m so thankful that we’ve used color-coded totes (dark green for Christmas) for our seasonal decor as this makes it much easier to find the necessary items.

The kids were a little upset that we didn’t put the tree up last night but they were super excited to find some early gifts on the table this morning.

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Color the Classics Tests

We have been using these books as part of our Art/Music studies. They make lessons so quick and easy and the kids love coloring the pictures while they listen to the various music selections.

We will often add an educational video from YouTube if they seem to be more interested in a particular composer/song.

The one thing that I haven’t found was tests to go along with the lessons which aren’t absolutely necessary but sometimes I like to have them just to see if they are really paying attention to what we are learning about or not.

Here are the ones I’ve completed:

COLOR THE CLASSICS – GODLY COMPOSERS (September – October – November)

GODLY COMPOSERS – CHRISTMAS CAROLS (November – December)

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Orange Kefir Smoothie

I don’t know if you have gotten in on the Kefir craze or not but we’ve been drinking it for a bit now and we love it! The slight tang reminds me a bit of buttermilk and we weren’t really crazy at first but now we can’t seem to get enough of it.

The kids are especially fond of their water kefir but we make and use a lot of milk kefir as well. We were doing a lot of different smoothies but the kids got a bit bored with my lack of creativity until recently.

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