January

For New Year's Eve we went to the Tracey's and made cheese fondue and played games until midnight. Then we had some sparkling cider to toast with at midnight.

On New Year's Day we went to Coventry Park to take the kids sledding.  We thought that Emily would like it, but she didn't so Ryan and I took turns sitting in the car with her and sledding with the boys...

Daddy and Emily

Nathanial going down, Christopher waiting for him

Our boys

Christopher

Ryan took these pictures of Kara and the boys while sitting in the car.  Christopher is sitting in the front, Kara is in the middle, and Nathanial is in the back...

On January 3rd I ended up taking Nathanial to the Emergency Room after he decided to slice open his hand...

 In our basement we have a hook screwed into one of the support beams of the main floor that we hang things on, like Nathanial's birthday pinata. Nathanial and Christopher thought that it was a good idea to use Nathanial's new tape measure (yes it was a real metal one) and try to hoist each other up.  Christopher grabbed onto one side and Nathanial grabbed to the other and pulled. Instead of pulling Christopher up, the tape measure slid through Nathanial's hand and sliced it open. He cut his index finger and the webbing in between his thumb and index finger.  He was gushing blood everywhere.  I wasn't sure if it needed stitches.  His finger wouldn't stop bleeding long enough for me to really look at it so I decided that I would rather be safe than sorry so we went to the ER.

It didn't need any stitches, it was a border line cut so instead they just glued and wrapped it.

We started swimming again and this time we signed Emily up for the parent and toddler swim class, and she has loved it!  Nathanial is in level 4 and working on perfecting his strokes and kicks.  Christopher we ended up moving back to level 2 even though he passed because we felt he was getting more out of level 2 than 3.

Emily and Daddy

Nathanial

Christopher

Another big happening in our lives in January is that we pulled Nathanial out of public school and now we are homeschooling.  I went into Nathanial's class back in December to do a "winter" craft with his class and I felt very negative being there.  I couldn't wait to leave, the aides and some of the teachers were yelling, and talking extremely rude to the students.  I couldn't wait to leave.  After that Ryan and I were talking and decided that it would be better for Nathanial to do homeschool.  We were debating from the beginning whether we were going to send him to school or not.  He decided that he wanted to go so we let him.  He had a substitute from the first day to Thanksgiving that should not have been a Kindergarten teacher (she was not patient and she yelled).  Nathanial still wanted to go to school so we decided we would wait and see what his "real" teacher was like.  We loved her she was sweet and patient and calm.  She is who I picture as a kindergarten teacher.  But after attending school with Nathanial we decided that the negative environment was taking its toll on Nathanial and that we didn't like his "new" behavior or vocabulary.  We felt like we gave public school a fair try but after 4 months we decided it was time for a change.  We were going to keep him enrolled in school until everything came together for the homeschool.

I took Nathanial to school on the 7th after his winter break, it had been one of those Monday mornings and I was on edge.  We were late to school so I had to walk him in to the school.   I signed in and received a visitors pass.  I started to walk down the hall to Nathanial's class when the witch secretary stopped me and informed me that I was not allowed to take my child to his class.  I asked why and she told me it was due to the shootings in Connecticut.  I told her that I was not going to let my kindergartener walk to his class by himself (there are some interesting kids at the school and his class is the furthest from the front door).  She then told me that I could leave him there and someone would walk him to his class.  I turned around to see where she wanted me to leave him and noticed about 20 other kids waiting to be taken to class, all of whom were older (4th and 5th graders).  I said no, took Nathanial's hand, and we left and never went back! 

Ryan and I have been reading Conference talks in the mornings together and the next morning we read a talk that spoke about providing a positive learning environment for our children to learn.  Reading this talk just confirmed to us that we made the right choice to take Nathanial out of public school while we are in Cleveland.

We are doing an online curriculum that another family in our Ward is using.  I really didn't do a lot of research about the different programs but I feel this is fine for the next few months until we move.  We are 98% sure that we will put Nathanial back in school for next year.