Every Friday is Donut Day!

     This last year Sage has been working through her 2nd grade homeschool curriculum  Adventures in My Father's World.  This is the first year we have used this curriculum and so far we have loved it! This year we were able to travel back in time and explore U.S. history and patriotic symbols from a Christian perspective with fascinating stories, hands-on activities, a timeline, and a student created history notebook.  I absolutely loved the math curriculum we chose this year.  We also studied some U.S. geography, Bible, science, art, music and more. This year for math we chose something that I think is super exciting!  The curriculum is called Teaching textbooks and it's great because they were designed specifically for independent learners, which with two other busy little guys on the run its great to have something that Sage can sit down and do pretty much by herself, with the occasional help from Mom or Dad.   We have already purchased the next years worth of curriculum through MFW and as soon as Sage finishes level 3 of her TT we will purchase level 4.  We are looking forward to digging into that as soon as we get back from our EPIC road trip to Texas this summer. 
  
     So as we grow in our ability to motivate our children to get their school work done we have sought many different methods to help them get their work done in a timely manner.  This year we found having our fridays to focus specifically on building our family closer together and closer to God was a hit.  One of the ways we do this is by having a special date with the kids every friday at the local donut shop.  Von takes Sage early and they spend time reading a chapter of a special devotional book together.  They talk about the week and generally just get some quiet time together with no other interuptions.  Here is a pic of Sage on one of her Friday trips to the Donut Shop. 

Sage 8yrs

 After Daddy and Sage have had some time together at the Donut shop, the boys and I head over to join them.  Usually after donuts we split up again and Sage heads off with Von for another hour or so to tackle errands that need to be done before church.  The boys and I find a local park to play at and occasionally we take a craft to do while we are there.  Here is Toby enjoying some Donut love as well :)

Tobias 3yrs

 Toby is finally Potty Trained!  What a joy it is :)  He is a hoot and still a giant kid for his age.  He is surely long and lean.  The 11lb 9 oz baby he was at birth has continued to rock the growth chart at his annual visits to the doc.  He has another one coming up next week so we will see what they say as far as if his growth has continued on that same curve or not. 

Malachi 5yrs

This May Malachi turned 5!  In our house that means its time to start learning to read.....  The curriculum that we love is called T.A.T.R.A.S. which stands for Teach America to Read and Spell.  We used this with Sage and she has been an amazing reader ever since.  It is a very holistic reading program.....teaching all the sounds that every letter and blend of letters makes in order of their most common use....(hopefully that makes sense?)  So the child learns to decode a word starting with the most commonly used sound of that letter or blend and then works through each of the other sounds until they find the appropriate match.  Malachi has mastered about 31 of the letter sounds and blends also known as Phenomes I believe.  He is about halfway through the list and we are working on them very very slowly.  Usually I try to find natural reading opportunities for him throughout the day that highlight the sounds he is working on.  He is definately not as interested in reading as Sage was but with some fun incentives such as stickers and game time he is progressing and is able to decode the words in some typical early readers with some help and motivation from Mom!  Anyone who wants to check this program out......I stronly suggest talking to someone who has used it.  It is a great program but the instructions are not as simple to use as I think they could be.  We have taken it and morphed it to fit each childs learning styles as needed. 

Well that was a doozy of a first post.  I'm hoping to start blogging more regulary about what God is doing in Tomasini house.  It is a wild ride on a daily basis but we are loving life and learning more about who God is calling us to be every day. 

Blessings today and remember to focus on what you CAN do not what you Can't!~

Ashley :)

Test blog from iPhone.....

This is a test to see how Blogger works on my iPhone. It's been forever since I've posted and actually a little over three years.

Why Do We Have Our Babies At Home?

It seems that people always seem ask the infamous question...."Where will you be delivering your baby?". It is always interesting to hear the run of responses when we answer...."we have our babies at home". Sometimes people are supportive with the "hey my sister did that!" or even the rare person who share's the love for home birth. But, most of the time the response is....man you are "brave", "crazy", or my favorite of all times was "don't you know you could have had a dead baby!".....that one was special. So I thought I would take a minute to tell people why we have chosen so long as we are considered "low risk" to have our babies at home.....

It all started with a couple we worked with in Stephenville....Marc and Cara Phillips. I remember when I got pregnant with Sage for some reason I asked Cara about her birth experiences, and come to find out she and Marc had chosen to have their children at home. I truly don't remember anything about the conversation at all or even why I was intrigued by this idea but, I began to research homebirth and midwives in our area. When I shared with Von my discoveries about homebirth being a safe alternative to a hospital birth in low-risk pregnancies he was all for it! Maybe even more gung-ho than I was. So we searched and found our first Midwife.....Mollie Roe!

Mollie began training to be a Midwife right out of High School and had her own practice for about 9 years when we hired her. She was young and bubbly but equally experienced and well educated. She believed in the importance of Doctors and Hospitals but she also knew that low-risk pregnancies weren't in need of either. One of the things she taught me that I have never thought of before was that Pregnancy and Birth were normal parts of being a human. Neither needed to be considered a sickness or brokeness necesitating a Doctor who was trained in Healing the sick and broken. Her confidence and knowledge kept me at peace....as well as lot's of praying!

My water broke with Sage almost 36 hours before I actually had her. Had I been in the hospital I would surely have had my labor augmented to speed things up. But Mollie was consistently checking my heart rate, Sage's heart rate and my body temp to make sure there were no signs of infection etc. and I was allowed to let labor progress at the rate which my body desired for it to.

Contractions didn't start until 27 hours after my water had broken, and they didn't even become really intense until the last 4-5 hours or so, but boy when they did it was pretty difficult. I pushed for about an hour and Sage was born with her little hand up by her face giving a Military Salute to the world!

Was it hard? Heck yes! Did it hurt? Absolutely! Was it worth it to not have access to any pain meds or epidurals?....100%. "However I completely see the reason why they are so popular". Sage was 8lbs 8 oz and 18.5 inches long, a little chunk if you ask me.... but I had no tearing, no need for forceps, or a vacuum because I could feel the whole thing. Every contraction that I pushed with was efficient because of the fact that I could feel the power of what my body was doing and try to work with it. And after it was all over it was amazing. Sage was alert and rosy cheeked a 10 on the APGAR. Afterwards I was able to walk myself to the bath and get cleaned up with relatively little pain for the circumstances. Sage was never taken away from me and we all ended the night eating King Ranch Chicken and Birthday cake. After Mollie cleaned everything up and made sure Sage was nursing well and that I was doing well she left us all snuggled up in our own bed to begin our new lives together in the intimacy of our own home.

Update on Life

Well I often post pictures but usually don't take the time to update much about life these days. So here is a little blurb. As many of you know we are building a house next door to the house we live in now. It is such an amazing blessing in the making and I can't wait for it to be finished but in the meantime it is tough! Von is working long and hard hours on that house as well as campus ministry and finishing up some classes. To say the least he has been stretched thin.

We just celebrated our 7th anniversary this last weekend and it was awesome! We went to a great hotel in Portland thanks to our friends Freddie and Shelly who watched our kids for us, and we both had a massage and pedicure! Yes Von even got a pedicure complete with nail polish! He of course picked a manly green with slight sparkles. It was the most fun we've had in forever!

Sage and Malachi are doing great. Sage is turning five next week, my how time flies! Malachi will be two in May. Sage has started her math curriculum which is the first part of her official homeschooling adventure. Three days a week we are doing a lesson out of her new math curriculum and she will start on her reading/spelling curriculum sometime in the next few months. My theory is if we start slowly introducing the concept of a homeschooling schedule then it won't be as much of a shock. She seems to be really receptive when I say it's time for math. I think she will be the easy one that's for sure. She is a really fast learner and soaks things up like a sponge. I'm sure it will be a learning process for all of us!

Malachi is hysterical and loud, and kinda bossy really....hmmm yah gotta work on that. But he is talking up a storm, and loves his sister, "most of the time" and wants her to watch his every trick and move. I'm a little nervous about how he will be around the baby. He's just such a rough and tumble boy....we shall see.

All is well in Monmouth we'll keep you posted!

The House now!