Thank You!

A huge thank you to so many of you who celebrated Noah & Olivia's birthdays earlier this month with us. We really appreciated the messages, thoughts, and prayers. Not only do we celebrate both their birthdays on the 13th but we also remember Noah's home-going which was the 14th. July is a bittersweet month but knowing there are others walking alongside of us really helps!

We LOVED all the name photos many of you took the time to send us!! It was so neat to see all the creativity. Thank you again to each of you who took the time to spell Noah's name. If you didn't have a chance to write Noah's name, we welcome photos any time! It's always a blessing to unexpectedly receive a photo to add to his name album.

ABeCeDarian- A New Take on Learning to Read

My daughter recently had the chance to review Interactive A Workbook from ABeCeDarian Company. This program goes up to 6th grade and the level we reviewed is geared towards the emerging reader, approximately age 4 to mid 1st grade level. Olivia, my soon to be 5 year old was the one who tried this program out. She is actually familiar with all the letters of the alphabet, knows how most sound and can write a majority of them already.

Patriotic Penmanship Review

It's been 8 years since I had a kindergartner, and in that time I've been introduced to so much new curricula that I didn't have with my older children. I don't think my older children had curriculum specifically for handwriting so we were excited to try out Patriotic Penmanship Kindergarten (manuscript) from Laurelwood Books.

Help Us Celebrate Noah's Birthday!

I can hardly believe we are just 1 week away from Noah's birthday and homegoing anniversary. I remember in the early weeks after he died, not being able to fathom being months let alone years out from his death but here I am. 6 years out and still standing.

While grief ebbs and flows, 6 years has not made Noah's special days any easier to face. In fact, at times it's harder as others expect you to "be better" so they don't acknowledge or remember the day like they did the first year or 2. Missing your child for 6 years is HARD! I've had others ask me what we are doing for the day, I honestly don't know. Olivia also shares a birthday with her big bother so it's a bittersweet day. I've had 1 party for their combined birthday (Olivia's 1st, Noah's 2nd ) but since then, it's been hard to corral others to celebrate Noah like they would Olivia. Which is hurtful. I'd love to host a party for both my babies, but if they both can't be celebrated equally, well, it hurts us all as a family. So most likely, we'll celebrate alone. Again.