The Cole Girls

I have not yet been able to get a pic of all 4 kids together. So these are the best I can do.
Here is Laura, Lily and Annie Rose this morning. The big girls are out now with granny going to the library. Annie is asleep (it seems that is all she does, I have to wake her to get her to eat!). Matthew and I are just about to do some history reading. I am reading him a great book called 'Tales of Ancient Egypt'. It has very fantastical tales, such fun to read!

Annie and the big kids

How precious

The house is quiet. All the family have gone to church. I am here alone with my precious new Annie Rose. She is asleep and I just took this photo a moment ago. I am thinking of all the fun things we are going to do in her life!

Annie Rose had a TON of visitors while at the hospital. A total of 8 different families from our church visited her! One of our pastors and my friend Christi were with us all day in the hospital until after she was born. It was so nice to have supporters to come, visit and pray for Annie.
Here is a picture of our pastor, Ted Seago and some of his kids with Annie on Friday.

On Saturday we got to take Annie home. Here is a proud Lily and granny holding Annie just before we set off for home.

Laura meeting Annie Rose

My mum brought the siblings in to see Annie at about 7pm. She got losts of hugs and pats and kisses and pawings. Welcome to the world! She is well loved already.

Introducing Annie Rose

Here is Annie Rose 30 minutes after she was born. Her very first photo.

She was born on Thurday 1/26/06, her aunty Traci's birthday, at 2:32pm.

The delivery was pretty straight forward, minus a little trouble with the epidural. I didn't take too well to what ever drug they gave me and it slowed her birth down. I was almost doubting myself for getting the drugs as labor up to 6cm was pretty easy... but Annie was born face up and the doctor said she was glad I had the epidural as face up births are more painful.

Now we are at home, recovering well.

Girls afternoon at the Ballet

Lily and I went to the Nutcracker Ballet on Saturday. We had been reading the story and listening to Tchaikovsky recently, so we were all prepared. It was really wonderful, the costumes and stage set were great. We took lots of pictures to remember our first trip to the Ballet together. Here is Lily beside a giant gingerbread house. She did not want her photo taken with the dancing mice or live soldiers!

We had lunch in the theatre before hand. We got a southwestern sandwich which we shared. Yummy!

Here is Lily with the Nutcracker she bought. She picked the one that had the most sparkles. She has decided to collect Nutcracker dolls!

Here is Lily in the theatre. We had front row seats. We had a great view. The show ws just long enough for her. She got a little tired just before the grand finale. Lily is a great companion. I look forward to many more years of doing girl things with her.

The latest Lily, Laura and Matthew photo

We were trying to get a picture for a Christmas card but Laura would not give up the blue bucket. This was the best photo.... needless to say we may not be sending out Christmas cards this year... cause what is a card without a photo of the kids?

More diners at Thanksgiving

We moved our sofas and set up tables in our living room so that everyone could eat together.

The kids played a game we found in a book about the pilgrims called 'Hide the Slipper'. The kids sit in a circle with one person in the middle. The middle person closes their eyes while the others hide the slipper behind their backs. When they open their eyes they need to guess who has the slipper. The kids discretly pass the slipper, or pretend to until the person in the middle guesses who has it. When they do the person holding the slipper goes in the middle.

Thanksgiving

We has 33 people over for Thanksgiving this year. All homeschoolers! Lot's of very well socialized kids running around having old fashioned fun. It was as it should be and the food was wonderful.

Homeschool difficulties part 2

Here is one of those things that makes homeschooling with little ones a little challenging: When I was in another room Laura got a tub of diaper cream and smeared it all over the wall in the hall and floor. Here she slipped in her own mess. I couldn't be too mad at her as the day before she had watched me paint a mural in a friends house. I guess she thought she would do her own mural!

Juggling 3 kids and homeschooling

Recently I have been feeling the pressure of the education of my younger kids. OK, I know they are only little, 3 ½ and 1 ½, but Matthew has had 100% of me through both of those ages. He is excelling in his schooling and I wonder how much my enrichment helped. I read endlessly to him, talked to him about all things, showed him flash cards, focused his attention on things when we were out and so much more than I do the girls.

I try to make myself feel better by noticing that Matthew had no one else to interact with, I had to do something with him to entertain him and education was more compelling than anything to both of us. Lily and even more Laura have their siblings to learn from and interact with. I also try to remember that I am 8 months pregnant! I have assigned work to go over with Matthew and I run out of steam to do stuff with the girls… but as Mark says ‘this is a season of our life’.

But I still feel pressure as I see time marching on and I still spend more time on Matthew’s education. We are addressing this: Mark is making a focused attempt to read our very best children’s storybooks to Lily this month and I have been trying to tell Laura the alphabet…. ‘that is a monkey… monkey begins with the letter m’.

With homeschooling there is no one to fall back on. No one to take over when you are tired and let you off the hook. But that very pressure is the motivation to try harder. These are my kids and I will pour in what I have. At least I don’t have a class of 30 strangers whom I can’t ‘really’ care about to fill up. I only have those precious babes that I birthed.

All in all I am pretty sure that high on my New Year’s resolutions, after deliver a healthy baby, will be read to Laura more!

The Cole girls

This was us on a hay ride. Lily, Laura, Shona and babygirl to be being squashed by Laura. Still no name and only 2 months to go.

The other week we went to a Civil War renactment. It was held near our town of Magnolia. It is an odd little world. We chatted to families who do this all over the country. They belong to regiments and own the clothing and tents that they sleep in. I bet many of the people who do it are homeschoolers.