Talmage being loved

The girls love holding Talmage. Rachel and Amaya probably love it the most. I never really talked about my mom coming up to help after Talmage was born, but she was a great help and I'm so thankful for her. It was really fun being able to spend a week with Grandma Smith at the house. Thanks again for coming up. We love you Grandma!

Exercising with 5 kids

My family is doing our own version of the Biggest Loser in order to lose weight for my sisters upcoming wedding. I like working out anyway, but that gives me more of an incentive to exercise right now. Yesterday I exercised to a video. This is what the kids were doing while I was exercising: Madeline was working out with me. I was impressed that she was able to do the v-sit. She stuck with it for most of the time. Aliza laid on the couch and fell asleep. Rachel held Talmage and did a great job. Amaya laid on the boppy and watched us. It was fun and worked out surprisingly well.

Kingergarten Graduates!

Last Monday Madeline finished her last assignments for Kindergarten! What an exciting day for both of us! Probaby more for me than her :) I told her when she finished all her school work we would have a celebration, which included a family dinner at McDonalds and a Cupcake Cake. She was so excited about the cupcake cake and talked about it all week leading up to finishing school. She kept coming up to me and telling me the colors she wanted her cake to be. (It actually was different than what she wanted, but she was still happy) On Tuesday we had our McDonalds dinner because it was half price night for happy meals. The girls chose toys over lots of food, much to Jared's dismay :) but the toys were cute and the girls were all so happy. That night I was suppose to go to a Relief Society Activity for our church at 7:00 but we got home from McDonalds and I didn't really have time to frost the cake. The girls REALLY wanted to have the cake that night though. I decided it was more important to quickly frost the cake, and I'm really glad I did. It was a horrible frosting job, but Madeline didn't notice and was just so happy. It made me happy.

Whew! I'm glad we're done with home schooling for now. Notice the plural in the heading- Graduates- I feel like I've graduated from teaching! Whoo!! :) It was a good experience. I'm glad we did it, but we do plan on having the girls go to public schools next year. It was very nice having Madeline home for one extra year. It was fun seeing her learn and grow. I think homeschooling has good things about it and I am nervous to send our kids to public school, but I also don't know if I would do a very good job being totally in charge of teaching my children with 5 kids.