She Runs By Faith

Alright, 2020. Who hit the cray button? My last curriculum review ended with some wishful thoughts, that maybe life would return to a somewhat "normal" in the next term. Little did I know, things would get a whole lot more cray!... If you haven't heard of Family Force 5, you need to watch their Cray Button video :) Anywhoo - Our layout for A Gentle Feast Cycle 2, Term 1 looked a little like this: I knew the kids would love the Cycle 2: Wars, Whigs, and Washington readaloud books - and I really enjoy them, too. As it turns out, reading about the American Revolution (especially now in Term 2) is very applicable to this current time in our country. Learning about heroes like Benjamin Franklin and George Washington, along with lesser known heroes as well, has been really encouraging.  We started Term 1 early, as our fourth baby was due mid-September. I had a hunch he or she would arrive a little early so we wanted to work ahead and be ready. As it turns out, on Sep...

 Our dear fourth child, who I did mention a couple times in sporadic blog posts, is now FIVE weeks old! And it's about time he has his birth story written up. Yes, HE . We had our fourth boy on September 18th and the whole family is in love! Let's hop back to just before Baby S arrived... With our first boy arriving very early at 35 weeks, boy #2 coming at 38 weeks and boy #3 at 40 weeks on his due date, my husband suggested that this one was going overdue. I just told him to not dare say that again! I had a gut feeling that this one was going to sneak up on us and would likely be fast (like the last guy!). I had Braxton Hicks contractions on and off starting at around 18 weeks, so my goal was just to carry this little one to full term! I did run up to 35 weeks in this pregnancy and strength trained following a prenatal plan from G Personal Training through the week before baby was born. Basically I stopped running at 35 weeks to spare my pelvic floor some stress as baby ...

Let's just say Term 3 got off to an interesting start. Two weeks in to our new study topics, I jotted down in our school planner that the "coronvirus cancelled the public school throughout the next week" . What a weird thought - school cancelled for, not a snow day, but a "pandemic". That seemed like a short-term ordeal and of course our homeschool studies continued as usual, but I had no idea what this would morph into, and would still linger, months later.  We studied composer Claudio Monteverdi and artist Diego Velasquez. For composer study, we used our Usborne Composers book and listened to specific recommended pieces on YouTube. We used the A Gentle Feast Morning Time binder and having the full-color Velasquez prints for picture study all in one place was so handy! Even the two-year-old was able to participate in picture study. We kept it short and sweet.  Nature study featured a rotation of the Burgess Animal Book for Children by Thornto...

We officially finished the school year today, celebrating with double chocolate muffins from the grocery store and a bike ride! Despite all the craziness of COVID-19, homeschool stayed on track for us and I'm very thankful for that. It's nuts. The fairs are cancelled and we can't go many places (not even church yet?!). One of the best parts of the homeschool life is the freedom to go on field trips, visit friends, meet up with our co-op, go to the library... and we are missing that freedom so much. Though many are "homeschooling" during this time by necessity, not by choice, this "COVID homeschooling" isn't a good representation of what homeschool life is actually like. None the less, we're making the best of what we can do. We did get our own camper - that's cool, right? I'm just praying we can make a few trips to our favorite state park this summer. The school year itself went SUPER fast. I think much of that had to do wi...

We finished up Term 2 of our school year, well, a while ago (March 6th) and I'm determined to get this quick review typed up before Term 3 is complete. Our Spring weather has finally arrived and, aside from all the COVID-19 craziness going on now, we are so relieved. It's been hard to make myself sit down to type this up!  Because this is a Term 2 review, I am not going to touch on how COVID-19 has affected our homeschooling (that will come for the Term 3 review). It hadn't affected anything here back in early March! Our co-op group still met as usual and the Library was open and well back then. Feels like forever ago.  We continued to thrive on the A Gentle Feast Form I curriculum for the term and overall everything has gone rather smoothly while homeschooling with a two-year-old in the house. (He is a huge blessing and also one of trickiest parts of homeschooling in this season!) We also found out Baby #4 was on the way at mid-Term 2 and we are all SO excited! I found th...

When I'm "running for two", I race very sparingly and enjoy the break of lowered mileage and a less rigorous training schedule. The Wicked Half Marathon in Wamego, Kansas snuck into my year as a fun girl's trip with my running partner. She needed a race on non-iced over ground to prep for Boston and I was up for a road trip. At the time, I didn't know baby #4 would be on the way, so I planned to race the half too. Fast forward a couple months and we found out about baby #4 (yay!) but I still planned on jogging the race. Then all of this COVID-19 crazy happened - first Boston was postponed and this race followed suit not too long after, along with basically every other race out there. I don't envy the job of the race directors one bit! This has been new territory to navigate for all. The Wicked Marathon series changed all of the distances to the virtual option and we were still able to get the run done anyways! I had only ran a virtual 5k and 10k prior to t...

We are seeing some strange times, aren't we? It's a weird feeling. Life goes on but we really aren't "supposed to" go anywhere! I'm thankful to be homeschooling, especially at a time like this, as our school routine hasn't changed. It's the co-ops, the playdates, the library and the appointments that we're missing and that just feels weird. I have been trying to make use of the time when we "can't" do so much, to instead DO a lot of things I don't want to do. (i.e. clean bathrooms, clean and restock our fridge that failed this weekend - now fixed, organize old papers, sell books we don't need, etc) The time is well spent but I wonder how long all of this will continue! Like the rest of the running world, my race scheduled for this weekend was swapped for a Virtual Run. Thankfully it's a half marathon - as I'm not sure I could handle running a full marathon on the same old roads in our town! My dear running partne...

After the back-to-back marathons last Fall, I had one more race experience for the year and a recap is long overdue (like from October 2019)! Two weeks after the Blue Ox Marathon, I competed in my first ever  12-hour event, the END (Extreme North Dakota) Halloween Double Feature, with a team of three other gals. When one of my relay teammates initially mentioned the idea, I thought it would be a fun group event, a relaxing day away and more "fun" running after racing two marathons. What I didn't realize is exactly how many miles we would each cover that day. Though our distances per team member varied, it was basically another marathon day! This adventure certainly didn't disappoint. One thing was for sure, we enjoyed A LOT of time on the trails! How much stuff does a relay team of four gals need for a 12-hour event?  Turns out A LOT! Between packing clean outfits to change into after each of our 10k loops, food and drink and rehab tools (foam rollers, rol...