Joshua Update Homeschooling Sept. 2020

 

Joshua Mitchell Palmer.

We love you so much in our home! You also need an update:

• You are three years old, will be four in October.
• No grade for you yet! Just preschool age. You will be on the waterford institute program next year since it's your "pre-kindergarten" year.
• You have such a sweet personality - AND you are starting to find your voice. We've had to use the break room space more often because of your independency starting to come out. But you are learning the lessons quickly. 
• You love to read together!
• You love the chickens and cat. 
• You always eggs or oatmeal for breakfast. 
• You are always finding a way to smile. And you laugh really easily. 
• You are learning your colors so fast, as well as the ABC's and numbers. You are catching onto everything around you at a vicious rate. 
• You LOVE puzzles, especially Thomas the Train puzzles. 
• You love dice as well. You like to match up the numbers together. 
• You are just always doing as much as you can to keep up with all your order siblings. 
• You LOVE trains. Always want to build with them right now. 
• You are happy. And you push boundaries. Then you are happy again. Then you push boundaries again... you must be almost 4 years old!!
• You always want a clean and dry treat for going to the bathroom and washing your hands. 
• You love going to nature co-op as well and being around the big group of kids!

I love you my boy!

Gabriel Update Homeschooling Sept. 2020

 Gabriel Brent Palmer. 

I love you son! I want to give an update on you and what you are doing right now and focusing on for the school year. 

• You are 11 years old, will be 12 in October. You received the priesthood in February of this year before Covid-19 hit. 
• You are officially in 6th grade!
• On Monday's you are taking classes at "Fire Canyon Academy". It is an academy that is put together by homeschooling moms that put together the resources for it. You are going to be taking Georgics (leadership), sports, and physics! You will be there Monday's from 8:30am-2pm and you are so excited!
• You will be doing a cooking class on Monday's as well with Mimi, siblings and cousins. 
• You will be doing Ninja Warrior classes again this year. Not sure which day quite yet. 
• You are taking piano and you LOVE it. You are an extremely good piano player, it's fun to see that talent develop as you grow. 
• You are trying out for "Oliver" this week - we'll see if you get in!
• The second semester this year, after the holidays, you want to try more sports, so we'll see how that goes!
• We are part of the nature co-op this year and your best friend, Kurt Shillig, is there and you guys get a long so well. I'm so glad you found him. That whole family is such a blessing for us and your friendships. 
• You are doing choir on Friday's as well and you love Mrs. Brooke!
• We need to continue to find a guitar/trumpet teacher for you - so we'll see how that adventure goes. 
• You are a veracious reader, reading for hours at a time. I want to get more quality books for you to read and learn from. I'm going to dive into that for you more. 
• You LOVE animals and your are starting to take care of the chickens without me even mentioning it to you and I love that!
• You and Elijah either get along great, or you are fighting like crazy. We are going to be working on that as well. 
• You read the Book of Mormon in a month over the summer, so we'll see if you continue that scripture reading streak!
• You will have Young Men's on Tuesday's weekly since it's starting back up again. 
• You are a very serious minded boy. I'm going to try to find a speech pathologist for you because you've started to stutter quite a bit and we need to work on that.
• You are very tender with me, and still always want to snuggle with me. I love that. You will still randomly hold my hand when we are walking together. It's wonderful. 

I love you son!

Elijah Update Homeschooling Sept. 2020

 

Elijah Zachary Palmer. 

You keep us moving! I need to get you an update as well!

You also need an update post:

• You are seven years old, will be eight years old in October. You get baptized!!
• You are officially in 2nd grade!
• You are starting piano this year with our favorite piano teacher ever, Tauna Buckway. You started last week and you already just love it. 
• You will be doing cooking classes with Mimi on Monday afternoons with siblings and cousins. 
• We are in the nature co-op again this year on Wednesday's and you have found such great friends there! I'm so grateful for that co-op. 
• You've also made a friend, Misha Vrajich, and you two are "two peas in a pod" and love playing together. 
• You are in choir on Friday's as well!
• You are willing to stand up for anyone at any time! You are not afraid to make your voice known, especially if you've seen an injustice happen. I love that about your personality. 
• You are starting to read so well! You are still VERY embarrassed to read around anyone but our family, but when we read scriptures I'm amazed at all the words you know and that you can do so well. 
• You LOVE parkour, but you are going to take a break from that and take a Ninja warrior class instead this semester. We'll see how that goes!
• You love to boss Joshua around and Joshua is starting to stand up for himself! So that make for interesting conflicts to solve. 
• You are very specific about the things you do. I love watching how intent you are. 
• You are LOVING legos right now. 
• You are earning your own money to buy lots of lego sets. It's adorable. 
• You love our new cat, "Pixie". 

I love you so much! Thank you for being my son!

Natalia Update Homeschooling Year Sept. 2020

 Natalia Jeanne Palmer 

I love you my girl! I love you so much! I love your sass, your spunk, your fashion sense, your friendship, your beauty, your goodness, your love for cooking, all of it!

I want to give an update about you for journal reasons!

• You are 10 years old starting this school year. 
• You are officially in 5th grade. 
• You will be doing a cooking class on Monday's with Mimi, together with siblings and cousins. 
• You will be doing violin and piano again. 
• You will be taking a tumbling class. 
• You will be in choir again (EPIC children's choir) with Mrs. Brooke on Friday's. 
• We have nature co-op again this year on Wednesday's, you have lots of friends there!
• You love doing projects. You want to focus on handicrafts this year as your personal curriculum passion projects, especially sewing. You LOVE sewing and have amazing fashion sense. 
• You love to cook and always want to be making treats for people around you. 
• You have started to become a bit disrespectful to me as your mom, that is something we are going to focus on a lot this year going forward, making sure we have good boundaries in place before teenage years come. And that your love bucket is filled up so we have a good relationship. 
• Your favorite thing right now is the skirt you made at a friends house with sparkles in the back and purple in the front. 
• You are an excellent sister, although you are learning more and more how to antagonize your brothers :-) .
• You are, as always, a born leader.
• You are still figuring out your personal connections to the spiritual world. You fight me sometimes when reading the scriptures on a personal level, so diving into why is going to a priority of mine. 
• You love it when we do personal prayers together. 
• You love it when I tickle your back. 
• You are really good about delegating as many tasks to others as possible. hahaha!
• You love your best friend Ella Wanlass. 
• You learned "Think of Me" on the piano and love it. You love your piano teacher, who is Tauna Buckway. I have never had to tell you once to practice. She is an excellent teacher. 
• You LOVE music, dancing, singing, anything to do with performance! Figuring out how to navigate that in this worldly space we are in will be interesting. But God gave you those gifts for a reason, so that is something else I want to dive into figuring out for you. 

I'm so grateful you are my daughter!

I love you!

Patterns to Break for Healthier Living

 Dear Kids, 

Your mom's thyroid has been crazy sluggish. I'm working on it. 

I get to start new ways of being and living and eating! Really, I just get to "get back" to what I was doing before inside of healthy living. I'm happy about it and breaking my co-dependencies because of it I believe. 

I turn to food to feel good. Now I get to co-create with God inside of getting over that weakness and addiction. 

Your dad does the same thing. I will pray for him to have the same desire to do it with me. 

After allowing my body to be depleted for a while, it is time to take better care of myself, which might be a bit of a full time job. I'm ready for it. 

I want to feel good all the time. I was starting to feel better at papa and mimi's house because I wasn't eating sugar and I was sleeping better and taking better medicines. 

I get to start taking better care of myself. I get to go to bed earlier! I get to break my co-dependencies on when Brent goes to bed because of it. That is a healthy thing. 

Most of this is breaking co-dependency patterns really. Interesting. 

I will pray he will have the same desires to stop screens at night and better eating habits. 

I get to start tracking every dollar. I get to break my co-dependencies on how Brent reacts to money because of it. that is a good thing. 

I will pray he will have the same experience to have a good healthy relationship with money. 

We have improved a lot. 

And we have so much more to work on. Please God, help us. Forgive us. Help me keep my chin up about breaking all of these patterns that have to be addressed for my soul to be alive and flying again. 

Most importantly, I want to have an unbreakable relationship with my Savior. I regretted a bit the other day going through the darkness I have in the last 6 months, feeling like I have "lost out" on so much more spiritual growth that I could have been having. But the spirit told me, "Andrea, you experienced exactly what you've needed to. You had to go through all of that attack for more foundation to be laid out. You are exactly where you need to be, AND keep trying."

I can do this. I can endure. I can hold on. Please God, hold onto me. 

I love you, 

Your Mom

Thoughts and Visits

 Dear Kids, 

(picture from Fiddler) We finished up being in Fiddler, had a couple weeks of down time and then headed to Idaho to see Papa and Mimi. 

It is always rejuvenating for me to be up there and feel of the home I grew up in. Mom did an amazing job creating an atmosphere of happiness and uplifting thoughts and words. It is something I feel like we can do better in our home, starting with me and your dad. Your dad grew up in a home that was very critical and cynical... and I feel like we have spilled over into that culture a bit too much as a family. 

I really want to focus on happiness, gratitude and optimism more in our home. I want to focus more on the gospel. I want more of the spirit in our home. 

I know we were supposed to do Fiddler together as a family. I know it was a fulfillment of many things to do that together, especially for your father. He got a blessing from Papa where he was promised that his voice would touch many people and teach many lessons because of singing. Your dad listened to that blessing again the other day and said, "Fiddler was the fulfillment of that promise."

We made lifetime memories and friends. 

With that said, we allowed many bad habits to take place in our home. We were lazy about scripture study and how we were talking to each other and our rhythm of spirituality. It's fascinating to see that at the same time we were experiencing so much growth and success, I was also being ATTACKED mercilessly by Satan. 

Satan eroded my soul during that time in all the spiritual ways. I never lost testimony, but I couldn't believe how HARD he was fighting that I would. He worked hard to keep me from more spiritual experiences. I have written about that before. I wish my words could express really the attacks I was receiving. It was bad. Really bad. 

But, I kept praying to the Lord to hold onto me. I just kept asking Him, "Please don't let me go. Hold onto me." And I know that prayer has been answered. 

We went to Sarah Ashworth's house to visit her and her kids on Friday. She is a woman who has worked very hard on her relationship with God, and with the struggles in her marriage. It was SO REFRESHING for me to be in her home and hear her talking of God so much. 

I want to do more of that. She talks about God in everything. It is just so common place for her, more than anyone else I think I've ever met. She teaches me every time I hang out with her because of her humility and her faith. 

She is scientist and she has had to really disassociate herself with science because it was for her, "relying too much on the arm of flesh"

As I was talking with her the spirit confirmed to me that I have been doing that. Too much. Looking for answers in science a bit too much. Looking for explanations on "how" God does things in science and rules of the universe a bit too much. I know He works within laws, but there are so many things that God understands that we simply just don't understand. I've been relying on the arm of flesh a bit too much with that. 

I am going to repent of that. And feel free to be carried away with the spirit without trying to explain itself to me in scientific ways. I am fascinated by Quantum Physics... I and I know there is so much God science there... but that is not where I find faith and my answers. Trying to find an explanation as to how faith works within my body is noble, but I can't let it take away from my faith either. 

It was so good to sit and talk with her and be rejuvenated by a faithful follower of God. 

I want to do more of that. Talk of God more. Preach of Christ more. Especially to my family and my kids. 

Getting back on a better rhythm definitely helps with that for sure, and we are going to be focusing solely on that as a family before trying to get back into any curriculum. We just have to find a rhythm again, with the spirit. 

I Love You, my kids. 

Love,

Your Mom