Costa Rica!!!

Costa Rica was awesome! We had the most amazing time. We did more adventure activities in that week than we have done in our entire lives. As I read the literature prior to our horseback tour it made me laugh out loud, "ride through the mountains like John Wayne and, the adventurer you are!" Nobody would ever have described me thus but that week we certainly did have a lot of adventure. Ziplining, ATV tour, Horseback riding, swimming in the Pacific, hiking in the rainforest, swimming in a waterfall! It was truly paradise on earth and we plan to spend Christmas there this year. Can't wait to go back. Who knows, one day, we may even take the boat down there!!!

New School Year!!!

We are more than 6 weeks into our school year and it is going great! I cannot believe how well it is going. The kids would tell you, "eh, it's alright" because school is school whether at home or in a school building but they secretly like it, I can tell. Abi told me the other day that she "likes having all of the new books". Aaron said yesterday to Abi, "you know, I guess school is kind of useful" when he was working on a book they are writing together. Just that morning he had told me "school is stupid". Charming brat sometimes that one!!! Aaron prays every morning for a "quick" school day and now that we are into a groove he gets done with plenty of time for himself in the afternoons. Mondays are the longest for us ranging from 4-6 hrs and then each day seems a little less until Friday when we only have about 3 hrs work time because of quizzes, tests, etc. I am amazed at the quality of work I am seeing this year. The new program focuses on composition and the results are already showing. Grammar, the subject I am most picky about, is finally sinking in to these kid's brains and the proof is in the compositions. My son, my terrible speller at the beginning of the year, is producing A+ work these last couple of weeks. Multiplication remains a struggle however, and, it would seem, English is truly his "easy" subject. He rocks the synonyms:) It is nice when the hubby even notices and says, "His vocabulary is actually quite good, isn't it?" Ahh, what can I say, I did feel a bit close to bubbling over with pride. Abi has finished the Trojan War which was a nice challenge for her. After weeks of groaning about the book, she told me yesterday she would like to read it again without having quizzes along the way because it was, "actually, quite good!" Wow, so happy she could get her head into it and appreciate it for what it is - a classic! She averaged 100.5 on her 4 quizzes for the entire book and most of her quizzes are short answer, not multiple choice! Well done to my Abi. She is now beginning Anne of Green Gables for literature and is quite enjoying the humor of it. English she tolerates, doesn't like the parts of speech, word order of sentences etc but is very good at it nonetheless as well as composition. Christian studies has proved to be difficult in that we jumped into a curriculum mid-way. So, we just sort of muddle through it together, discussing along the way and instead of learning some of the longer memory verses we have not had time to learn we learn traditional Catholic prayers instead. Loving the new year, hope we can keep up the motivation:)