Weekly *cough* Monthly Wrap Up - May

Ok, so this is kinda a Month of May Wrap Up, since I didn't really post much this month. It's been a little crazy around here prepping for my surgeries in June (15 teeth extractions and a hysterectomy). We've also been outside a LOT enjoying the totally awesome weather! Enjoy a boat load of pics!

The girls have found their new favorite schooly YouTuber - AsapSCIENCE. They have spent hours watching random videos. Some are silly (like Can You Actually Eat a Bus) but some are really cool (like What if You Stopped Going Outside). There ARE some mature videos that some may not want younger ones watching, so maybe preview before you set kids loose.

Olivia attempted to help Joshua learn how to peddle his bike. He is totally lost lol He never cared to learn to ride a tricycle so he has no idea what he's doing. Olivia is confused as to why he can't peddle. It's interesting to say the least! Olivia herself has some new bike learning to do as we took off her training wheels. She's really struggling with balance but I think that's because her training wheels were so crooked that she rode her bike off centered for so long, she has to learn how to ride upright.

Brianna had her first race of the year. Her training has MUCH improved since last year so here's hoping for a great season! Olivia had her first soccer game of the year too. She's on the red team this year which totally confused her (she was blue last year). We think we'll be signing Joshua up for soccer next year, speech depending.

We'll be starting summer schedule early, due to the aforementioned surgeries. I hope to be able to finish their biology course over the summer still. It was originally planned to be completed *before* summer schedule but life happens. Otherwise, they'll be slowly puttering their way through their various work in math and English (and in Brianna's case, French).

Olivia teaching Joshua to ride his bike

Lee helping Olivia learn to ride her bike without training wheels

Brianna's favorite school spot

Watching for our cat to give birth (sadly one was stillborn, the other we lost 5 days later)

Olivia planted her garden box by herself this year

Playing the "even/odd game" with Daddy

Open hydrants means loads of water fun!

Joshua helped plant the big garden this year

Soccer practice

Progress on my temperature blanket January-April 

Olivia's psoriasis is flaring up :(

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers and The Practical Mom

First Run of the Season

Brianna's first race of the season was on the 23rd. As usual, her first race is a 5K chase. The "chase" being that everyone is staggered in start times by age and sex and statistical ability. Brianna's age group is females 14 and under.

She had a fantastic first lap (2.5k). In fact, her best first lap ever! However, endurance has always been her struggling point and with the lack of training in the last year, the second lap caught up with her quickly and she ended with a fairly slow finish time. Either way, she finished! And she felt really good about it.

Brianna is suddenly the tallest kid in her age group!

46 mins 41 sec final time (accounting for staggered race start)

Loooong Awaited Update

So since I only blogged a whole *2* times last year, there's kinda been a lot missed. The somewhat condensed version...

Dylan: 19, lives with his mother. Dylan graduated high school. He took an intense 8 week course for heavy equipment operator. He is now working at his first full time job, which he loves!

Isaac: 16, lives with his grandmother. Isaac got his drivers license over the summer (which he is super proud of). He got Honours on his most current report card. He is still very geek/computer driven.

Brianna: 13, at home. Brianna had a slow start to the year. We did minimal core subjects and otherwise unschooled. My brain just wasn't having it. While this helped heal my brain, it didn't do much for Brianna. She does great unschooled learning for self taught or guided learning but anything that is required, but she doesn't particularly want to do, she NEEDS to be "sat on" to do it. Thus, she did poorly to failing miserably at several things. After a summer of normal summer schedule, we got back to business for school. She is doing great in all areas other than math. Don't get me wrong, she is actually good at math! She just doesn't like it, so she slacks off.

In November she again took part in NaNoWriMo. Last year she wrote nearly 10,000 words. This year she more than doubled it to 20,000+ words by the end of November and isn't even done her story! She took a couple month break from it and starting next month will be working on finishing it and editing it. She story is Minecraft fan fiction.

Brianna started working for our neighbour, being a regular babysitter and also doing random jobs around their house. She saved half her money all year and did really well with what she kept. She even took on a couple other babysitting jobs and is building herself a good reputation.

She finally started Rosetta Stone French and is excelling in it. The program doesn't "pass" you unless you have set grade (I believe 75 or 80%), but for most lessons this is easy as pie for her. She is struggling with the writing portion as she's a horrendous speller, even in English. And she has some issues with the grammar portion but French grammar is hard.

Brianna really didn't do all that well in her training or races last year. It's a goal she's working on for this year and thus far she's doing pretty good!

Brianna took part in a science fair with our homeschool group. She put together a project on Earth Sciences, focusing on various rocks. She did really well with the project and even did a presentation in front of the group! She is very stage fright and didn't want to do the presentation portion (not required anyway), so I was super proud of her when she chose to.

Brianna got an undercut and then a short bob in the battle of her amazingly thick and heavy hair. The undercut did a lot over the summer for heat control but the knots she was getting in the remaining length was still a lot to take care of. Once we chopped her hair to jaw level AND kept the undercut, she is both cool and able to take care of it better.

We've started looking into high school and college requirements for the course she wants to take (Environmental Technician). I am not looking forward to high level math. Or writing transcripts. Or high school in general *sigh*

Olivia: 6, at home. Olivia has been working hard at learning to read. She's got a list of 22 words she can fluently read and is excellent with sounding out phonetic words. She is confused over a lot of the English rules, but they ARE confusing.

Olivia took, and failed, swimming lessons last spring. I am very glad she failed as she didn't do well enough to pass. She practised hard over the summer though and I have no worries that she will easily pass this spring.

Olivia joined soccer last year and just loved it! Her favorite position is defence and even got a Player of the Game award for her defensive skills. She can't wait to join again this summer.

She is still excelling in math. She is flying through her Gr. 1 work and will easily be into Gr. 2 work before the school year is done. She loves doing Khan Academy like Brianna.

We chopped off all her hair last year from being almost to her butt. She wanted it "short like Daddy". We convinced her to get a cute bob with bangs. Not good enough, she still wanted it shorter. She now has a short pixie cut, which she loves.

Olivia has started learning French. Brianna's Rosetta Stone requires fluent reading so for now, we'll just be working on the basics. Brianna is doing a lot of the teaching. Olivia can't wait to use Rosetta Stone too!

While Brianna was doing her NaNoWriMo, Olivia decided to write a book as well. She drew pictures then dictated to me what to write. She's not quite done yet but she's done really well so far!

She also lost her first tooth (and now 2nd)! It had been wiggly for a while and the adult tooth was even growing in behind it, but she was very worried about pulling it out. Finally when it was barely hanging on by a thread, she let me pull it out.

Joshua: 2.5, at home. Joshua is not doing tot school yet (though he probably could!). He is mute. No particular reason for it. He checks out medically, has perfect hearing and is at average or is advanced for normal toddler development. Except in speech. Because of this, we are holding off potty training and schooling until we can get some better communication, which is our current focus.

He is excelling in sign language. He consistently uses 22 signs on his own and is learning many more. The girls are also using/learning sign language with him. We (Lee and I) are currently in a parent to child class and after that we'll be doing further speech therapy with Joshua.

Eventually we'll care about school for him. Right now, him being able to communicate is our number 1 priority. He's only 2, we're not worried about the rest.

Lee and I: As we're fairly open about, you may know that Lee has Generalized Anxiety Disorder. On average, it's well controlled. Sometimes he has bad days, some times he has really bad days. Last spring he had several bad months. He was actually so bad he was off work for 5 months. It was hard for everyone, most of all him. He was raised in a "man-up" generation and has always had a hard time dealing with feeling out of control or depressed. With a LOT of support, he made it through. He's back to work, though his first month was really rough, but now is going great.

Towards the end of his time off, we went on our long planned cross-Canada road trip for his best friend's wedding, in which he was the Best Man. It was so awesome to get away, just the 2 of us. We missed the kids like crazy, but thankfully Skype kept us in touch. I'll have a big blog post about this trip later.

I have been busy with my business. I've been trying out new fabrics and techniques in me sewing to try to get past that "beginner-novice" title. It's been surprisingly easy in some areas, and really tough in others.

My grandma died just before Christmas. She'd been struggling with various health problems for years and open heart surgery (which completely fixed her heart!) seems to have sped up some other issues. The girls, Olivia in particular, took it really hard. It makes me sad that Joshua will never really know her. It makes me sad that we don't get to see her any more. But I'm glad that she's not struggling with her health any more.

Current Curriculum July 2015

This post contains NO affiliate links

Previous post from last Sept here.

We school year round and don't really follow grades. Brianna started Nov 15, 2010 coming from 3rd grade in public school and will go until whenever of whatever year. Olivia started "Preschool" on Feb 6, 2012. We don't follow specific grades but Brianna is anywhere from Gr. 6-10 and Olivia is mostly Gr 1, a little Kindy and some Gr. 2. 

So, since we don't have set grades or set school years, I figure every 6 mths-ish I'll post what we are currently working on. We use a mishmash of traditional homeschool curriculum, workbooks bought at teacher supply stores, stuff made up completely in my head and most subjects are supplemented by printed worksheets from various sites and of course, library books. In a nut shell, we're eclectic homeschoolers.

Olivia:

We have a subscription to ABCMouse.com and Olivia really likes it! It has all the way from Toddlers to the end of Kindergarten. This program added on a couple more levels, but only lists levels not grades, so I don't know where the program ends after Kindergarten. Olivia is still learning to control the computer so she's a little slower going here than in her paper school work.

For printables we mostly use 1+1+1=1 (there's also great tot school and preschool printables here!). Confessions of a Homeschooler also has great printables. I love 1+1+1=1 as they have a lot of themed units. They cover a wide variety of skills but under one theme (Olivia has done cats, pizza, Octonauts and more). Even though most of them are below her skill levels, she really enjoys them so we keep doing them. 1+1+1=1 now has literature units as well.

English:

We'll start dabbling in Brave Writer's "Jot it Down" program which focuses on dictation for Olivia's age group. We'll start up 1+1+1=1's You Can Read program once Olivia is more comfortable in phonics. We feel that phonetic learning is highly important over memorizing sight words so we're spending a lot of effort on letter sounds, blending sounds and sounding out short words.


Math:
Olivia has started Early Math on Khan Academy. She is super proud to be doing Khan just like Brianna. Her computer skills are still lacking, so Khan is definitely something that we do together, though she is getting better at navigating. 

Olivia loves to help take care of Joshua, cooking and household chores. We, of course, encourage her as much as possible!

Phys Ed./Health:
Olivia has started running like Brianna. This year, like last, she ran in the fun run this month and will be taking part in the Cornwall Triathlon, doing a duathlon, next month. She's also in U7 Soccer this year. The kids play weekly and Olivia seems to really enjoy it.

Brianna: 

Math: 
We really like Math Mammoth. It's almost self-teaching once a kid can read. It breaks the new concepts down into step by step instructions in a way that really gets through to Brianna. Math Mammoth goes only to Gr. 7, so once she's done that, I'll be looking for a new curriculum for Algebra and the like. We're also slowly working our way through Khan Academy. Brianna really likes the videos explaining new concepts. 

English: 
We're using Brave Writer's "Writer's Jungle" again this year. Brianna's especially enjoys their Poetry Teatimes, which we'll be starting again in the fall. For spelling, I keep track of words she has spelled wrong in her general school work and base spelling practice off of that. We'll be doing NaNoWriMo again this year. She took part last year and wrote an impressive 12,000+ words. Amazing who someone who often struggles with writing a few pages. This year, we'll be starting early with NaNoWriMo's educator's lesson plans.

French: 
We will be doing Rosetta Stone now that Brianna has her own laptop to install it on. Brianna already knows more French than I do, so thankfully Rosetta Stone is a self-teaching course! We'll be using Living Languages for extra activities. Duolingo has an app for her phone for extra, on-the-go practice. One of our neighbours has offered to test Brianna's French periodically.

Arts: 
Brianna wants to learn guitar and we have a child's guitar and a great book - The Complete Guitar Manual, hopefully we can get around to that. She also wants to get back into playing the flute (which is currently under repairs). Hopefully she can be encouraged to put in a stronger, more frequent effort this time.

She has expressed interest in learning about some Shakespeare, so we'll  learn about him and read/watch some plays. 

Phys Ed/Health: 
Brianna runs with a local MultiSport club. Her last run of the year is her Terry Fox run on Sept 14th. She actually bikes the Terry Fox run, but as she chooses to do the biggest route (10km), it's certainly nothing to laugh at! Once that is done, she's done until May. She'll spend that time doing training at least twice a week (running, yoga, strength training, cardio) and of course, we live in Canada, so there's always snow to shovel! 

Computer: 
Brianna and Olivia both have Minecraft accounts. I'm currently looking for cool educational ideas for it as I know many are out there. But for now, both girls are just working on computer skills and building. Brianna is learning to use the MinecraftWiki to research how to do or use various aspects of the game.

Civics:
This fall we're doing a study on Canadian government and our Prime Ministers from Confederation to present. We have a federal election this fall and will be tracking the candidates and their platforms. We're using various books and sites like Canada Votes, Exploring Canada and a cool Prime Ministers of Canada set that I got from the Library and Archives of Canada

Life Skills: 
Brianna has taken on babysitting and dog poop scooping jobs from our neighbours. This is teaching her a great deal about responsibility and money. Because of the sudden influx of money, she's learning about comparing prices and smart spending. She's also becoming more responsible for getting her schoolwork and chores done with less interference from us. 


Both:

History/Geography: 
Lee and I are driving across country at the end of August and the girls will be tracking us and learning about various places as we go.

We're continuing to do Country Studies. The kids have really enjoyed them so far. We read about the countries, find them on maps, watch videos about them and make a bunch of food from that country. We'll be using History of the World and Geography of the World at home and whatever oodles of books we can snag from the library. World Atlas is fantastic for maps and National Geographic Kids has a bunch of videos and articles I made both Brianna and Olivia's country reports on Microsoft Word because I couldn't find anything I liked that wouldn't cost me an arm and a leg. If I can figure out how to share them here, I will.

Science:
For the most part, science is done through day to day life with no set curriculum. We'll be doing a lot of interest based topics. Both girls want to do the human body. We'll have to do a refresher in a few years for Olivia, but with the random stuff she picks up on of Brianna's school work, I'm not worried about doing a joint class with them. Brianna got an ant farm for her birthday and the girls are fascinated with watching it.  

Arts:
I want to work on art some more. Brianna loves it but is fairly terrible lol So she wants to learn little ways to make her art better. Olivia on the other hand, has this idea that her drawings aren't good enough. No telling her otherwise changes her mind :( So for both girls, we'll be doing some basic art lessons, using a variety of mediums and styles.

Joshua:

He will to continue to be cute and get into stuff and steal school work *wink*


Linking up with the iHomeschool Network

*sigh*

Ok, so I suck at keeping up with the blog. Christmas got nuts in my shop and I barely had time to breathe. Even homeschooling took a back seat for the most part.

Brianna did NaNoWriMo in November. She really struggles with writing. We set the lofty goal of 12,000 words. She has struggled before with writing 500, so 12,000 would be a miracle. She did surprise me though with 9,388 words! AMAZING!

In December we completely broke off of scheduled school work and just did homemade gifts. Brianna made a set of wooden blocks for Joshua and a pair of mittens for Olivia. Olivia learned how to hand sew (and super assisted machine sew) made Brianna a set of bean bags for the bean bag toss game. (Pictures later)

This month we're easing back into "real" school work. Brianna's working on Khan Academy and Olivia is working through some kindy workbooks she was given for Christmas. Joshua, unlike Olivia, is completely uninterested in "schoolwork". Meh, whatever, he's 18 mths old.

Brianna has joined Lee and I in a healthy living diet. Brianna doesn't have a lot of weight to lose (though some wouldn't hurt) mainly she just needs some eye opening lessons in nutrition and keeping up with her winter training so next running season isn't as bad (for lack of a better word) as last year.

Weekly Wrap Up

I've been slackin' over here! Not surprisingly, it's been crazy busy. With my business and getting back into the school routine, it's been pretty hectic!

Last Monday, Brianna did her final running race of the season. She knocked 2 minutes and 22 seconds off her last 5K time! She bikes a 10K for Terry Fox then is in off season training until next May

Olivia insisted on running with Brianna for a stretch

On Tuesday (first day of school for local public schools) our local homeschool group did our Not Back to School picnic. It was a small group, only 4 families, but I'm trying to get more activities going! The kids had a blast and Brianna even met with another girl her age (most of the homeschool kids in our area are much older or younger than her).

Brianna, 12, age-grade "7"

Olivia, 5, age-grade "K"

On Wednesday, the girls did their first real day of school. We decided to start slow with them only working in their new daily books for the week as it was only 3 days and Daddy was on vacation time so we had extra distractions!

This week, I did a homeschool assessment for a friend's daughter who is Gr. 1-2. It was great for me as it gave me a sneak peek into the next couple years with Olivia. We only started homeschooling with Brianna in Gr. 3, so I have only homework knowledge of Gr. 1 and 2.

Olivia seems to be loving doing school work every day. She does often complain about her arm hurting if we do too much (in her opinion) writing, but I think that's because she presses too hard with the pencil or crayon. Any ideas to get her to lighten up?

Olivia loved this graph from A Teaching Mommy

Brianna's excited about the new things we'll be doing this year, starting with Brave Writer's Poetry/Tea Time Tuesdays. We may do it a little different than Brave Writer at first, but Brianna expressed interest in learning about poetry when finding out that poems do no have to rhyme, so we're running with it!

Linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

Brianna's Fitness Change

Brianna had a big week fitness wise. Last year, around this time her and Tanya did a fitness test. Brianna did pretty damn good considering her age and that it was an adult fitness test. This running season Brianna has done as little as possible in the training dept and as much as possible in the food dept. As an end result, has gained a scary amount of weight and is very much out of shape.

Her triathlon is next month, Aug 23rd. She agrees that in her current shape, she probably couldn't complete it. So enters, boot camp (12 year old safe). I am doing a fitness challenge with one of my healthy mama groups (Joshua is 13 mths old, I'm losing ground on the I just had a baby excuse) and Brianna will join me! Brianna will also be running a LOT more regularly. Since her season started in the middle of April, she has run a total of 6 times. That includes the 3 races she did. Not cool.

Swimming has always been her struggle area for the triathlon. She goes to the local pool 3-4 days a week, but it's a free swim, so it's packed with other kids. So we hit the beach. One area of fitness that I've never had a problem with is swimming, so this is one area that I can train with her. Her 2 main strokes are breast and back. She has no real swim training, so these are the ones that come naturally to her. I hope to get to the pool that they do the triathlon swimming in at least a couple times before the big day.

So Brianna has made a list of goals (with my help) for this week and this month
Week:
- lose 2lbs (should be easy water weight)
- exercise every day
- 1 non fruit/veggie snack per day
Month:
- lose 4 lbs
- walk 45 mins 3x per week
- 4L of water per day

I felt it was important for Brianna to make her own goals to "own" her lifestyle change. She's old enough to take part in keeping herself healthy.

Summer Curriculum

Here's a look at our plans over the summer in regards to school.

Because we homeschool I, of course, plan to lock the kids in closets all summer and beat them with books. We can't have them socializing, now can we?! Ok, so maybe I've heard the S word too often lately lol Here's what's really going on.

Brianna has a zillion activities as usual! She's doing a science camp next week and a sewing camp in August. Brianna also goes swimming at a local outdoor pool with friends most afternoons. Olivia would have joined soccer this year, but the only group that allowed 4 year olds was almost an hour away, so we'll wait til next year.

Brianna also does a Park Leaders program at the neighbourhood park Tues-Fri mornings. Olivia even gets to join her this year! Unfortunately this is officially Brianna's last year, but I'm hoping since our park has a small group that she can be allowed to go with Olivia for a couple more years, even if it's only as a "helper".

Brianna and Olivia both joined the Read to Ride program with the library. In exchange for giving weekly oral book reports to the librarians, they get a sticker on their library cards that allows them on the city buses free (with an adult for Olivia!). Brianna loves it because she can go to the library any time without worrying about the heat and humidity (the library is quite a hike away) and Olivia just loves the bus!

Both girls ran a fun run today (which also happens to be Brianna's birthday!). Olivia is over the moon, thrilled for another race! It's all she talked about all week. Brianna has her 4th triathlon next month. She really needs to step up the pace in her training if she wants to beat her time from last year. She has great plans to do training and then forgets them quickly lol We're working on figuring out some kind of schedule for her to follow that works around the heat but still gets her running at least a few times a week.

As for actual school:

Brianna and I are doing a joint writing project. Each day we add to a story. Just 10 minutes of writing for each of us. Brianna thinks it's great both because it's something we're doing together, but also because it only requires 10 minutes of writing (she has a lot of issues putting thoughts to paper so "hates" writing). We've only been at it a few days, but it's fun so far. Sometimes it's hard to figure out what to write after Brianna's sometimes scrambled line of thought, but by reading what I write, she's also (without realizing it) learning proper writing style, grammar, punctuation, ect...

I'm also throwing spelling review at her once a week or so. Which, while I find it tedious, appears to be working as he spelling has *greatly* improved over the last couple of months. What ever works, eh?

Normally we'd slow down drastically in the math department, but Brianna wants to "catch up" her math as she's a year "behind". So we're working our way through Math Mammoth's Gr. 6 curriculum over the summer. I certainly don't expect her to finish it in 2 mths, but by doing a regular amount of pages rather than our summer amount of pages, she'll get a great head start.

We are still doing our country studies but we'll spread it over 2-3 weeks instead of cramming everything into 1 week. I had considered stopping them for the summer but as soon as we were winding down with Iceland, Brianna was harassing me about what our next country was. So we'll continue.

Olivia is in Kindergarten so already has quite the watered down schedule. To be honest, I do school with her whenever she asks for it or I think to ask her if she wants to do some. This works out to be, on average, 1-3 times a week. As she's still technically "ahead" if she was in public school, I'm not worried.

Over the summer, we're working on telling time, calendars, drawing shapes and convincing her to write her name more often. We'll also be working on making sure she's got all of her letters down, capital and lowercase and start working more on letter sounds.

Olivia and Brianna's Fun Run

Brianna and Olivia had their fun run today. Olivia has been watching Brianna run for years so she's loves when races come up that she can take part in too!

Olivia even beat her time from last year  by 19 seconds!

Victoria Day 5K

Brianna and my husband, Lee, ran a 5K this morning with the Cornwall Multisport Club. Brianna runs with them frequently, but last year, for the Labour day race, Lee joined her. The race they do on Victoria Day and Labour Day is a "chase". Here's what the CMS site says about it:

"What is a 5k Chase?  The Victoria Day 5k Chase allows for gender/age neutrality.  Your start time is based on your Age and Gender.  The first person to cross the finish line is the winner of the race.

The race [start] times were determined by using the 67% for each age group from this age grading website."

Pre-race

Brianna had a side stitch for most of the race, something we need to work on as that was her problem with her race 2 weeks ago.

Lee did fantastic for it being only his 2nd race since grade school. He ran the entire first lap (2.5km) and most of the 2nd.

The ended up with times of 31 minutes, 24 seconds (Lee) and 45 minutes, 59 seconds (Brianna). Lee plans to start regularly training with Brianna for short runs. I think it'll be a great bonding time!

Weekly Wrap Up

This week we got into our new schedule full of stuff other than just math and English, which is mostly what we've been doing for the last little while

On Sunday, Brianna ran in a charity 5K. Though she got a big cramp in her side and did a lot of walking, she still beat her time from her last 5K with a time of 42 minutes, 8 seconds

I have the Brain Pop app on my phone that Brianna watches most days. I've started pre-watching the movie of the day and making a vocabulary list from it. This week's movies were:
- Latin Music
- Asthma
- Bicycle Safety
- Seven Ancient Wonders
- Metric Units
- Dance

In geography were doing a general mapping review. It's below Brianna's level really, but we haven't done much with maps lately. She discovered that the grid work she had been doing in math is actually quite useful!

In math we've been working on mostly decimals. Particularly ordering decimals and dividing decimals. Brianna is normally great at dividing, but throw a decimal in there and it's may as well be in Chinese! So she's got various decimals in her Math Mammoth, Khan Academy and her daily binder.

Olivia's working with pizza this week! We found some great printables at 1+1+1=1 and 123 Homeschool 4 Me

Dot letters are still some of her favorite worksheets

She loves anything that involves glue, but also flew through the patterns

Figuring out the puzzle

This was the most labour intensive page of the week and she did fantastically! I traced the first letter of the words so she knew the colors and she did the rest with very little prompting

Both girls love the Brain Quest games that we bought. We might possibly bribe/reward the kids with candy for correct answers. We just started Olivia on the Kindergarten cards and she's having a blast!

We did a neighbourhood clean up this week. Happily, Brianna looks forward to this, and this year, Olivia joined us.

As usual, we're linking up with Weird Unsocialized Homeschoolers

Sad Follow Up to Brianna's Season's First Run

Brianna ran a 5K last weekend in a charity event to raise money for a local mom, Stephanie Grady, who had a rare form of cancer called NUT midline carcinoma. A lovely group of people formed Team Grady to raise money for the cost of her treatments and such. Brianna was so happy to run for this mom and raise money for her.

Today, Stephanie was beaten by the cancer.

Brianna was highly saddened by the news. She's glad to know that the money raised will now go to help Stephanie's 3 young children, but she's also very sad for these little kids.

Please take a moment to think positive thoughts for them, send up a prayer, light a candle or whatever it is you do.

2014 Running Season

Brianna starts her 4th running season this week. She does several organized runs with training in between. Her training is like anyone else in athletics, it involves her actual sport, running, strength training, stretching (in her case yoga, cause she loves it) and cardio.

This year's organized runs:
May 4th - a 5K charity run
May 19 - 5K
July 5th - 4K fun run
Aug 23 - Triathlon
Sept 1 - 5 K
Sept 14 - 10K Terry fox run (or bike)

Some Pics From The Last Year

Since I've been gone for almost a year, I figured I should throw some pics out there!

The one who started the blog hiatus. Joshua Thomas, minutes old, born at home.

Isaac received his Chief Scout Award

Brianna and Olivia in Olivia's first ever race

Grandma teaching Olivia how to swim

Tanya and Brianna hard at work

Brianna and Tanya's "Joshua's Birth" stories

Watching the Perseid Meteor Shower

Learning to crochet

Brianna's Thanksgiving contribution - pumpkin pie made from scratch

For St. Nicholas' Day we made cards and cupcakes for the neighbours

Brianna had a blast breaking into her geodes and finding crystals!

Olivia's first non-parent-initiated thank you note. She insisted on sending this to the cable guy who "fixed the tv" LOL

Brianna and Tanya checking out Brianna's new microscope

Olivia's first writing of her whole name

A Pi Pie for Pi Day

Brianna loves to help teach Olivia. Here, they're working on math

Olivia's first big project

A request for Subway turned into running around the house mooching change off of everyone and having a mini money/counting lesson. It paid off though, she mooched enough money to buy everyone Subway! She was so proud of getting supper for everyone.