Gosh, I'm terrible at this...

It's not that I haven't been online. I just haven't had the desire to share the minutia of our days, I guess.
So, as of today, I am 35 weeks 4 days pregnant with little Declan True. I'm feeling great overall. My hips are starting to hurt while I sleep and my back only if I sit to long. And I'm getting tired earlier and earlier in the evenings. But still, nothing to complain about. :o)
Milo turned 7 on Sept 13th!

He' doing fantastic with school. Honestly, Calvert's 1st grade is a little too easy for him. But I'm pressing on and just adding a page of copy work and a math worksheet to each day and letting him read through his included Reading text books as fast as he wants and he hasn't gotten bored so far.
Autry has been asking to take his training wheels off his bike pretty much since he got the bike for his 5th bday in June. But I was the one dragging my feet about it. I finally consented and the boy was riding perfectly the first day. None of that running behind them holding the seat for balance stuff. Silly Mama. He did run into and knock off a neighbors mailbox, though. :o/ lol (we fixed it, btw.)

He is also doing fantastic in school and loves all the hands on activities. My only struggle is figuring out what to turn in as a work sample for Social Studies. ?? The Calvert is a literature based curric versus last years history based WinterPromise. So, that's where I'm having to supplement for him.

Finlay is just fantastic. He is so sweet and sensitive and empathetic and curious and I can't take his cuteness. It's just overwhelming. I just want to eat him. We do alot of snuggling, reading, tickling and imaginative play like knights and super heroes.
These great photos were a gift from my bestie, Delane, who came down to visit and take some maternity photos with her new camera.

Thank you, Delane!!
My baby shower is next weekend and I can't wait to get together with all my friends and family and have fun. :o)
Matthew is going back to Indiana next week on Oct 3rd! It's been way to long since he's been there so, I'm so happy he's able to go.

mmmmmm

I picked three beautiful eggplant today which means eggplant parmesan tomorrow night. It would be tonight but we're headed down for a bbq at my brother- in- laws tonight. Should be a great time. :o)
This morning's message was great. I love it when a pastor isn't afraid to teach difficult verses in scripture. Like 1 Cor 14:34-35
Well done.
And even more exciting, we have our first meeting with our EF (educational facilitator from the Charter school tomorrow morning and we'll get all of our curriculum for the year! Woot woot! It's like Christmas when the boys open their boxes and get to see all the fun stuff we get to "play with" all year.
After that, we are having some friends from church over to play and stay for lunch. Should be a fun day!

In very sad news, a very sweet friend of mine confided that they've miscarried a second time yesterday while trying for their first child. Please keep them in your prayers. Thanks.

Yesterday

was a pretty fun day! First thing after breakfast, Matthew and Fin left to go see Winnie the Pooh at the theater. Finlay's first movie! He was scared to go into the dark theater but once he saw the screen he was ok. And then he loved the movie. After they got home, I kept hearing him make believe he was eating honey. hehe...

Then Autry went to the garden center and target with him, while Milo, Finlay and I watched Gumby.
the big boys and I also did our second lesson out of their Bible curriculum that came in the mail the other day. I hadn't planned on starting until we begin school September 6th but the boys are excited about it and want to do it. So, I'm definitely not going to say no. I'm hopeful they'll have the same attitude toward their core subjects when we get them next month.
In other news, I had my 24 week appt last wednesday (not sure why I haven't blogged about it till now) and everything is going great. Declan is growing right on track has a healthy heart rate and our only squirmish was my ...ehem... rate of weight gain. ugghh. Up till this appt, I had only gained 8 lbs in the first 20 weeks. But then I gained 7 lbs in the 4 weeks since that last appt. Boo! So I was told to "watch my weight." Now, in my defense, we have had quite the sweet tooth lately and fell for the lemon meringue cake from costco, made smores several times and then with Atury's Birthday week I indulged in 2 birthday cakes, pinata candy, pizza, Sonic and In-N-Out spread out over 4 "birthday parties." Yikes! It's not hard to see how that added up on the scale, eh. So, after doing pretty good since wednesday, I made peanut butter cookies today, my first treat.
That's about it. Much love <3

Updates

So, We are now 23 weeks along in this pregnancy! Little Declan True is a busy boy constantly kicking and flipping around in there. Yay! I'm knitting him a bright royal blue cabled baby beanie right now and starting to gather supplies to begin his bedding set. The theme will be owls. Hooty hoot!
I also just made a list of what I need to make some maternity clothes based on tutorials from diy maternity

Megan Nielsen has two excellent blogs and wonderful easy to follow patterns for both maternity and baby! Go check her out...
The garden is growing tall and bushy (depending on the plant) and the only no show is our lettuce. Bummer. I'm going to re-sow it and a few other bald spots and hope for the best.

We also had a great visit with Matthew's parents who came to visit last week. Which means we also got to spend some concentrated quality time with Gina and our nieces, as well! Yay!

The boys actually asked to do school yesterday. I think they miss the structure. So, we did a bible lesson from Landmark Freedom and a couple math and LA worksheets and games.

Since Wednesday ...

*I colored my hair red again

and discovered that my hair has finally reached the point that I need 3 boxes to cover it all. Gaah!
*Joyously found out that our charter school has decided to make an exception and pay for the entire Calvert curriculum for BOTH boys and even cover the difference beyond the $700 they typically allow by rolling over Milo's remaining EU's from this year! Praise God!
*Our seeds have sprouted in the garden boxes! The boys and I are always excited to see seedlings popping through. It just feels good, for some reason.
*We Enjoyed a "graduation Sunday" carnival on the back lot at church yesterday. It was a great time and the boys were surprisingly well behaved. They partook in inflatable fun, hot dogs/ corndogs (eeew), a train ride and even jousting.

Autry got in ONE good hit before...

his inevitable defeat.

Then at the car they ALL decided they just had to pee. They're 6, 4 & 2. Don't judge me...
Then we had a great time with my brother, Mike and his sweet girlfriend, Rachel, who came up to help out, hang out and devour some In-N-Out with us. Mmmmmmmm....
*I had my 20 wk prenatal check up. I took Finlay with me and the older boys went to pick out plants for the back hill with Matthew. It was actually quite fun having him with me. He helped Mary, my midwife, find and listen to the baby's heartbeat and asked 100 cute questions and even got four Spiderman stickers for being so good. Then he and I went to Starbucks for treats on the way home.
There was more mundane stuff but who wants to know that much about us, really?
Much love,
The Bennetts

aaaahhhh.....

Today was a pretty relaxing day, actually. After breakfast we went out back to work in the yard some more while the kids ran around on their new grass and jumped on the trampoline and Fin played in the playhouse. It was really nice. Matthew stained Peppers fence and I started planting veggie seeds in my new garden boxes that have finally found their permanent home.

We took a break and ran to Lowes as a family to get more stain and buy some starts that I didn't already have seeds for, and I made out like a bandit.
I planted:
lettuce, peas, carrots, green and yellow beans, broccoli, bell peppers, cucumbers, eggplant, garlic, chives, tomatoes and strawberries. And I still have our zucchini and straight neck squash to plant tomorrow. I'm so excited to finally have started planting. I've been chomping at the bit but haven't been able to plant any veggies because of all the other yard work. Fortunately our long growing season here in Sunny southern California gives me a grace period. And Matthew has decided that I do, indeed, need more garden boxes. So, although I doubt I'll see anymore before next Monday, I'm very excited to have more space to plant. I'd like to actually have enough to can this year. Last year, we ate everything as it came up.

A very tired gardener :)

These raspberries were gobbled up seconds later.

I, also, wanted to share that despite my excitement about the Calvert curriculum, finances and a change to the schools curriculum buying process have scrapped the Calvert idea for us. While we still get $700 or EU's to purchase curriculum from our charter school, it is now broken up into $400 for the Fall semester and $300 for the Spring. Calvert requires that you purchase the entire curriculum at once and thus we would have had to front the difference for both boys. Yikes. So, on the hunt I went for a new curriculum that was not only secular (already a bummer) but a complete package, within the $400 Fall budget AND that I liked.
And I found Oak Meadow.

http://www.oakmeadow.com/curriculum/first-grade.php
It's a Waldorf education style and I like everything about it although it's VERY lenient (and thus far below Milo's current level) in language arts. So, I'll be supplementing with A Reason for Handwriting for both boys(http://www.christianbook.com/Christian/Books/easy_find?event=EBRN&N=1030439&Ne=1030439&Nso=1&Nu=product.endeca_rollup&Ns=product.number_sold) and AOP's Lifepac Bible worktexts (http://www.aophomeschooling.com/product/bib0100/)for Milo and This other workbook (http://www.christianbook.com/bible-story-puzzles-lessons-goodness-grades/linda-standke/9780887248658/pd/48650?event=1016BIB|1776486|1016#curr) for Autry.
Those supplements are out of pocket but so worth the money. So, now that that's settled in my mind and ordered I was at peace about it today.
God is good all the time and all the time God is good.

New Curriculum!

Last year, I really wanted to use a Charlotte Mason method Christian curric. and found an excellent one called WinterPromise.
We homeschool through a local charter school and they will purchase up to $700of school stuff for you. They bought as much as they could but, being part of the public school system, they couldn't buy all of it because, of course, they can't buy "religious items." Although I initially planned to just buy the rest myself, time got away from me and it never happened. I either borrowed comparable items from the charter's resource center or had them buy acceptable items from Amazon. I loved everything that we got from WinterPromise and would highly recommend them to anyone. Here's just a small sample of what we got from WinterPromise.

However, through our process this year, I've learned so much about my boys and what they respond to best and how they most enjoy learning and we've decided to take a different route next year.

We will be using Calvert K for Autry and Calvert 1st for Milo. And honestly, I couldn't be more excited. It is a complete curriculum that our charter can purchase in full and it will make homeschooling the two big boys so much easier once I also have Fin plus a newborn. I had our EF (educational facilitator) order them today so we should have them before the summer and be ready to go next year. Woohoo!

So we've survived...

our first ever bout of pink eye!! Yuck! After cleaning everything in bleach solution and washing all of the soft toys, Im hoping it doesn't resurface. And then, Mama caught some kind of crazy cold/ sore throat bug. But now that everyone is feeling better, we're getting ready to go buy Milo's school uniforms. Everyone (especially Milo) is really excited about school starting on the 25th! He asks everyday if he can "go to school today." Ill post some photos when we get back.

Mother's Day Program at Horizon Prep

They sang several Rob Biagi songs for us with sign language. He was the cutest one up there, of course!

www.flickr.com