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Showing posts from September, 2014

A Busy (But Abundant) Life Right Now

I thought I would just post a general update about life right now.  We have a lot going on around here. I home school my kids.  As many of you already know, I home school my kids.  This is my full time job and it keeps me very busy. I have many, many reasons why I teach my children myself, but the main reason is that I want to provide them with a great education. It has taken me years of work to redeem my own education and years of research to find out what I need to teach my kids, when they should learn it, how best to teach it and why, etc. I tutor them in many subjects myself. They are also taught by professional tutors with groups of their peers.  If you are interested, you can read about our home school at myeclectichomeschool.com Home schooling is very effective and rewarding, but it is very time-consuming. "No governess! How was that possible? Five daughters brought up at home without a governess! -- I never heard of such a thing. Your mother must have been quite

Fitness Update

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I'm trying not to be a total girl about gaining muscle mass. But it's definitely happening. For the first time since I started eating healthy and exercising, I am no longer losing size, but gaining it. My quads no longer fit into my jeans.  Note: I don't call my thighs "thighs" anymore- I call them quads, because, well, that's what they are mostly. Actually, I call most of my body parts by their muscle name now. And it isn't just my lower body.  My upper body is so much bigger than it was a few months ago that my shirts (with sleeves) aren't fitting well anymore.  They don't go down as far over my waist since they are being stretched around a bigger set of shoulders and a broader chest. When I lift my arms, they look way too short.  I know guys are usually thrilled with this sort of thing, but it's messing with my head a little bit since I am a woman and culture says we aren't supposed to get bigger, etc. I am trying to focus on

A Productive Weekend

We had a very productive and restful weekend for which I am thankful. We needed it!  After teaching Bodypump on Saturday morning, I came home and weeded my flower beds while my husband mowed the lawns and covered the garden with black fabric for the winter. He also cleaned and prepped our garage for winter, moving the snow blowers, shovels, etc. to the front and the lawn mowers, weed whackers, etc. to the back. The girls and I also did a lot of needed cleaning and organizing inside as well.  It's amazing how much easier everything in life is when one has a well ordered house.  We ate all our meals together around the table on Saturday so we had a lot of quality time together and in the evening, after dinner, we built our first fire of the season. The wood we were burning was all natural, so we made Smores inside, something we do as an exceptional treat. Note: We make the girls take them to the kitchen and eat them around the table.  No way they are eating Smores anywhere ne

Bodypump Update

I've taught a lot of Bodypump classes at this point, but always as a sub for someone else's class.  I have never been able to teach a class as the official, scheduled instructor.  But that changes tomorrow.  The Saturday class at my gym is on a rotation and a few instructors, including me, are taking turns teaching the Saturday class this fall and winter.  It's my first turn tomorrow! It's a small step, but it's another step forward toward my dream of teaching two-three Bodypump classes somewhere, sometime each and every week.   In other Bodypump news, today I bought my ticket to my very first Les Mills Quarterly!  I can't wait! I had the time of my life the weekend I got Bodypump certified- I loved being able to do Bodypump for an entire weekend.  So I know I am going to really enjoy being at the Quarterly.  The gym where I currently teach has Bodypump and Bodycombat, but I've actually never been to any of the Combat classes, so in fact,

Two Birthdays This Weekend

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My oldest daughter was born the day before my twenty-fifth birthday. So it's always easy for me to figure out how old I am. She and I are almost exactly twenty-five years apart. This weekend, she turned ten. That means I turned thirty-five that next day.  On Friday night after dinner, I left my youngest daughter with my husband and took my two oldest girls all around town, picking up their friends from church. I took everyone to get froyo and then the girls opened gifts, etc.  I tried to fade into the background and just let the girls be themselves and enjoy one another.  On the way home, the girls sang "Let It Go" from Frozen while I tried not to laugh. They were so loud, they couldn't hear me giggle anyway.  It was a lot of fun and a preview of the teen years. My daughters and their friends are growing up too fast.  Here's a photo I took of the "party." On Saturday, I fed my family, went to an early exercise class while the kids stayed with t

Another Beautiful Weekend, This One With Family

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My husband needed to be in New Jersey for a business meeting all day today. His sister, Michelle, and her husband, Steve, live minutes from where his meeting was going to be, so my husband decided to take advantage of their proximity to his meeting and stay with them instead of being in a hotel. Since he was going to be staying with family, he also wanted to be able to visit them, so he left on Friday in order to be able to spend Saturday and Sunday with family and of course, the kids and I came along to see family, too.  When my husband went off to his meeting this morning, I loaded the kids in the van and drove home because I needed to be here for a meeting I have tonight.  My husband will be able to ride back to Connecticut later tonight with coworkers who also had to go to New Jersey for the meeting, so all in all, it worked out great because we all got to visit family and he still got his work done and I am also back in time for my meeting.   My sister-in-law is always a great

Adele in a Box

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I got a picture of my youngest daughter Adele in a box.  She was just hanging out.  I'm sure if you scroll back far enough into my blog archives you will see pics of all my kids in boxes.  They love boxes at that age and I love them at this stage.    

Another Fun Weekend with Friends

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On Friday afternoon the girls and I walked up to our neighborhood park for their friends' Jack and Travis' birthday party.  I am good friends with Jack and Travis' mom Vanessa and Vanessa is friends with some of my other good friends, Kim and Deltra, and all our kids are friends with one another, so while our kids enjoyed time together, we moms enjoyed ourselves just as much.  Here's a photo of me on the far right with my friends Deltra in the middle and Kim on the far left. On Saturday, I went to Bodypump and I exercised next to and got to know some of the people who regularly attend the class I will get to teach on rotation this fall/ winter. That was the highlight of my day.  I spent the rest of Saturday catching up on laundry, housework, grocery shopping, and running errands.  Since my weekdays are occupied with teaching my kids at home, I try and make the most of the weekend just like working moms have to do. On Sunday, we attended church in the morning, as

Hover Scars

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Hover scars. I'm quite proud of these bad boys. They develop on my forearm/ elbows because of all the hovers (also known as planks) that I do. I usually always have big, rough patches of skin/ callouses on my elbows, but sometimes they get so thick they even scab over. Word.