Today...

Today a sweet friend kept our kiddos so Jared and I could get mucho business taken care of!

We signed this guy up for school next year. A two day a week private school that we are very excited to be sending him to. We will still be homeschooling on the other three days.





I was wishing I was laying by the pool under this beautiful tree but I wasn't.



I was sitting in one appointment after another with my love. Actually, I really enjoyed being with him all alone for those few hours. We even snuck in a quick bite at Chick-Fil-A.

Right now I am sitting on the couch with my boy who is supposed to be in Karate at the moment but has a major headache. :( So we are watching a movie together instead.

I have so many great things to be blogging about. Such as..

Adelyn turning 2 last month.



Our trip to Georgia last week to watch our nephew, Kyle, graduate from the Army.



And.. Jared, Andon and I all getting baptized together 2 weeks ago. It was amazing!!



And I plan to but not tonight.

Gotta get off the computer and hang with my boy. :)

Legoland and Best Friends

Ok, so I lied. I thought the next post would be Christmas but while going through all my pics I came across our pics from Legoland.

My cousin Heather is a school teacher and her school was going on a field trip there. As are all the schools in Florida this year! But since we homeschool we weren't going to get the awesome price of 5.00 per child to get in! So when she called and invited us to go with her school we jumped at the chance.

I have to be honest, I didn't have much of an expectation of Legoland. Being that we live in Orlando and have Disney World, Universal Studios, Seaworld and lots more theme parks right in our back yard. But was still looking forward to taking Andon who is a major Lego fan. And I have to say that I was totally surprised. There was so much to do there!! So many rides that we didn't get to ride them all. Fun rides for the kids as well as the adults. Even Adelyn was able to ride a couple. They had great little areas for her to play and not feel overwhelmed by big kids and of course TONS for the big guys to do.

There were amazing sculptures made out of Legos. Full cities!! I think that was my favorite part. Walking through Las Vegas, New York City, Miami and lots more all made of LEGOS. So neat! Must have taken forever to build. There was even a full size SUV built out of Legos.

Andon brought along his best buddy Jordan who is also homeschooled. These two seriously crack me up. They were pretending to be brothers all day. They really are the best of friends who get along so well and have a lot of fun together.



We did everything we possibly could before they closed at 6pm but didn't get to do it all. So eventually i'm sure we'll be making a trip back! :)

Froggy Books and Cowboy Boots

We're still trying to get into a rhythm of what our school day should look like around here! Adelyn is switching from two naps at 10 o'clock and two o'clock to now one nap at 12:30. I like to start school at nine but this year haven't been able to start until she goes down for her nap and it's messing up my stilo!!

I had a few days where i'd gotten all flustered about not being on a good schedule. But this week I decided to just go with the flow and see where that takes me. We were still able to get all of our schoolwork done and have lots of fun in the mean time.

So for now our mornings are full of play time, art projects and crafts, book reading, dress up, walks to the park and dancing. (My kids are major music lovers!)

These Froggy books are some of Andon's favorite "fun" books to read. He has all these and more that I couldn't find when I took the pic.





And little miss is a serious lover of shoes!! I got her these cowboy boots when she was a lot smaller. We've tried them on a few times and now they finally fit!



As soon as she wakes up in the morning she starts saying "shoes".



We're enjoying the weekend with Papa over. Taking it easy and not worrying about a schedule! And come Monday i'll continue to work on getting in the groove of this new school year!

Vacation Recap

I love the weekends, actually we all do around here. Andon loves it so much he calls it vacation.

When we're talking about the upcoming weekend during the week he'll ask what are we going to do on vacation? At first I was a little confused now I know that he doesn't think we're headed off on some vaca, just looking forward to the weekend!

We love it because Daddy is home. Yes, he is working from home now but he's still working during the week. We get all of him on Saturday's and Sunday's.

We love it because we get to relax. The schoolwork is out the door and the normal schedule we stick to Monday through Friday go with it.



We love it because of Sunday dessert night. We don't have dessert around here every night so it's fun to go all out one night of the week.



We love it because if we wanted to we could stay in our p.j's all day. We usually don't but we could. Andon usually stay's in his swimming trunks!

We love it because the meals seem so much better. Maybe that's just me. I pretty much do all the cooking around here and on the weekends we almost always grill something. And guess who man's the grill... Not me! :) MMMMmmmm.. I love grilled food.

I love it for early morning long runs with friends. I love getting up really early (5:30) and going for a long run and getting home just as the rest of my family is getting up! I already feel so accomplished and the day is just getting started.

We love it for night time swims in the pool. As i'm typing this Jared just told Andon to hurry and get his trunks on so they could go for a quick dip!

Here's a quick photo recap from this week's end vacation.

We challenged Andon to read 100 books this summer and he did!! (thanks for the great idea Brit!) I think Jared and I had just as much fun (maybe more!!) as him doing this challenge. At every 10 books we celebrated. The prizes ranged from anything from the dollar stop at Target for 10 books to go to the movies for 40 books any restaurant of your choice for 90 books and the last prize was the big one. We told Andon he could pick out anything from the store! We knew it wouldn't be a flat screen t.v or anything so we felt safe throwing that out there. And here is what he chose... He still loves all these Imaginext toys and I love that he does. He's getting so big and I just want him to stay my little guy forever! :)











Our vaca has come to an end. :)

We are heading into our second week of 2nd grade this week. Last week was spent trying to figure out our schedule with Adelyn being older now and SO busy. And waiting on some curriculum to still be shipped to us. So here's to hoping that the coming week goes a bit more smooth and organized!

Gone for a Month

It seems as though i've been pretty quiet lately. But really life has been extraordinarily busy and full of change for us.

To name a few...

My husband has made a huge change in his career. He has been the Creative Director for a great company for the last 12+ years. Over the past year we all have been feeling like the season in our lives call for us to spend more time together, focused on the important things. To say we are excited is an understatement. He will continue to work for them but on a part time basis and from HOME! He also started his own design business a few years ago and is going full force with it. I am so happy for him and so proud of him. It is a lot of hard work and stress for him right now but I know the payoff will be great!

We are so happy to have him home with us. He's in his office A LOT but that doesn't stop us from visits throughout the day and family lunch together.

The next thing is that we moved...again. When Jared's company moved us to Tennessee a couple of years ago we rented out our house. When we moved back her lease was still in effect. So some sweet friends of ours rented us a house that they owned. After lots of thought and prayer added with the job change and our tenants lease coming to an end we decided to move back and put our house on the market. So when this house finally sells we will be looking to rent a small cottage style house with a fenced in yard for the kids to play in. We are in the process of simplifying our lives. Focusing on what is important to us.

Some other news.. Andon started 2nd grade this week!! We are very excited about this school year. With Daddy working from home he is going to be able to be a little more involved in school. He is going to be covering Science and of course, Art. His office looks half way like a school room too with Bones of the Body posters and books and posters of the solar system. (Sorry no pics tonight.)

And our sweet Adelyn is literally running around the house all day just a talking up a storm. She attempts her ABC's and 123's! She loves to say "Mom" "Mama" "Ma" over and over. But my favorite thing she say's right now is "I LOVE YOU"... Oh my, it's adorable.

Thanks to anyone who hangs with us here on this blog. I certainly love having a place to update and talk about our life (just not the most consistent blogger out there!! :))

The only pics I have tonight are a couple of Adelyn I snapped before she went to bed. I haven't even used my camera in the last month. But don't get me started on Instagram! Love it! So those will probably the majority of pics I post for a bit! :)







To anyone who's interested. Here's the link to my hubby's website!

Another Homeschooling Post!

Andon and I are relaxing on the couch and watching one of his favorite shows (American Idol!) I wrote in the last post that I had already written a homeschooling post but had realized that I never did.

Well.......

I was just going through photos while watching TV and found a bunch of pics that I had taken for that post! So, this will be a photo heavy post of pics of my sweet boy and our awesome homeschool classroom! :)
These are from the week we learned about Johnny Appleseed. That was so fun!!


One of the great things about homeschooling ~ school work doesn't have to be done at home!! We had an appointment at the car dealership that day so our work went along.

Andon teaching Adelyn some Animals.

Andon with his buddies Addison and Bryce at the Rep Theater to see the play Pipi Longstocking. We have gone a few times but this play was my favorite!


Here we are at our friends Bradley and Anna's house for a first day of Fall party.



At Book Club ~ We read the book Flat Stanley and all the kids made little flat people to send around to family members. Our Flat Andon is currently held up at Nana and Papa's house. :)



Music with Granny is one of our FAVORITE things to do. We go every other week and learn to play the piano and sing songs. The kids also play lots of other instruments while marching along to Granny's music. It is so much fun! :)





Really, I could just post a ton more pics!! And I could write a whole post about what our days are filled with. We love having the opportunity to educate our children at home. I know that is not a possibility for everyone or even a desire but I do not take a minute of it for granted!

I'll leave you with two more pics of the sweet kiddos that we do most of our school with. :)

A Day In The Life {School Day}

I think I may do a post each week titled this. Just for fun and to look back on when my sweet ones were little. Our life is pretty laid back around here but also on a very consistent schedule.

I wake up around 7:00 every day and very soon after, both Andon and Adelyn do too. I usually take Adelyn to my room to feed her while Andon plays in his room. After that we all head downstairs for Andon and I to eat breakfast.

After breakfast I pick up the house a little while Andon makes his bed and cleans his room. Before we know it, it's 9:00 and Adelyn is going back to sleep for her first nap. This is when Andon and I head to the school room to do our school for the day.

We usually do school until 11:00 which is right around the time that Adelyn is waking up. Now we all get to play and hang out together. After lunch Addie goes down for her second nap and Andon and I get back to school until around 1:30 or 2:00 (just depends on when Adelyn wakes back up.)

From here on it's whatever we want to do... Riding bikes, going for walks, running errands, meeting up with friends, snuggling and watching movies, etc. (This is my favorite time of day besides awaiting the arrival of my honey from work around 5:30! :))

Of course, there are the exceptions when we have plans and are away from the house the whole day and school goes with. We also have lots of recreational homeschool stuff we do like ~ P.E and Music Class and Book Club and Field Trips. :)

With all that said... I took some pics while doing school last week. I thought that I had already written a post on our classroom but looked back on the blog and didn't see it.

So, I guess I wrote it in my head. :)

We learn a new Bible verse each week. And Andon usually decorates the marker and chalk boards to his liking. As you can see, Hulk and Iron Man are singing praise to God!! :)


One thing we love to do is read a story together and then either paint or draw a picture about the story.

This is his picture from the story "Bugs in Our Backyard"

I LOVED his little Bee!


And after he's done doing the artwork I want him to do he likes to do what he wants.

This is a picture of "The Joker throwing gray bottles with poison inside at the scarecrow. And Venom broke Spidermans legs!!" Those were Andon's interpretations. :)

So there you have it, a fun day school day in the Mirabile household! :)