New school year & life as I know it

Only 2 days to go. I may or may not have chewed my nails down to the nubs. Yes, in just 2 days we will begin our homeschooling adventure. I'm not sure if I'm brave or crazy. I will be homeschooling my 14 yr old & 6 yr old as well as entertaining my 3 yr old. My 16 yr old has decided to stay in public school since he's just got 2 years left. I am glad that I've found a great homeschool curriculum at amblesideonline.org and I really think the kids are going to enjoy it. I love that it's a Christian based curric. and that we will be doing a lot of enrichment type work (art, music, & some form of foreign language, possibly adding in sign language at some point) and a lot of outdoor activities. I'm taking the first week slowly and even thinking about spreading it over a 2 week period since this is so new to us and quite a bit more intense than what they're used to in public school.

There have been a few frustrations and obstacles in my planning. First, I've been having computer & printer problems. DD,  3 yr old, got ahold of the laptop when I wasn't looking and did some interesting things to it. I'm lucky that my best friend's husband is a computer genius and was able to fix the problems with the laptop. Sadly, it looks like the printer has printed it's last item. He seems to think it may have been dropped, did I mention I have 4 kids? Of course I didn't find this out until after I bought brand new ink. I'm hoping to get the other printer up & running tonight, which means I'll be printing everything off tomorrow or later tonight. Second issue, all my books haven't arrived yet. They were supposed to be here today, but didn't make it. Hopefully they'll arrive Monday. If not, we'll just improvise and work them in as they arrive. Either way it will be an interesting, and exciting, adventure.

It's been an exciting an somewhat strange summer. We had about 45 days of 100*+ temps which landed us inside more often than not. I'm actually looking forward to some cooler weather, which is odd for me because I generally prefer the warmer temps. My aunt has been home since the end of July, she's a Missionary in China. (not sure if that's actually safe to post here, hmmm) We've had a lot of fun with her and are not looking forward to sending her off next weekend. This year she's going back as a student rather than a teacher. She'll be attending the University where she lives to study Chinese and attempt to become fluent. After she's done she gets to come home (to the states) for 6 months! Woohoo!!! This is huge because she's been in China going on 3 years and was in Taiwan 9 years prior.

My weight loss is going pretty well. I'm down 22lbs since June 30th, and 17ish inches since July 17th (silly me forgot to measure from the beginning.) I'm excited to be down where I am now. I'm finally around the weight I was while pregnant with T (he's 6 now) and looking forward to losing more. I'm finished with my 1st round of hCG and will be starting another one mid-October. Praying I maintain what I've lost until then.

Well there are lovely children climbing on me as I try to type so it's probably best I wrap this up. I'll try to update more often and keep up to date on how our homeschooling adventure is going.

FYI: for those who have been posting comments, blogger is giving me issues in responding for some reason. I'm not ignoring and really do appreciate those of you who take the time to read my little blog. <3<3<3