Resolution #8 is to post a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014.

I am trying to choose one picture of each of them that hopefully shows what their week was like

Competing in the IBJJF Pan Kids Jiu Jitsu Championship was no joke. He did well!

Wearing her new NRG shirt from last week’s competition to her rehearsal and stretching class today.

Out to breakfast with the whole crew at Coco’s Bakery.

Yet again, a day late. 😉

Every week, I’m looking at my goals for the year and going over my progress one at a time in an attempt to help me achieve them. I intend to do these on Fridays, but I’ve only managed to get it out on a Friday once. This weekend marks the end of the 6th week, the year started on a Wednesday so for this purpose and for counting cake weeks, I’m totally ignoring that week. 😉

I skipped last week because the transition from homeschooling through the local school board to doing it through California Virtual Academy has been more challenging than we had anticipated, but I think we are ironed out the issues in our schedule.

1. stay at least one week ahead of our homeschool schedule
This was my original resolution related to school and then we started a new program (which we love, hooray for California Virtual Academy) and our goal became to stay on top of the new schedule. After two full weeks of this program, we’re finding a groove and we are able to get a little ahead of schedule to allow for some wiggle room and we have found time for review to make sure the new concepts are really sinking in. Today we were working on some assignments due on Tuesday (we don’t have classes or assignments this Monday), so we are barely one day ahead, but given how challenging the move from standard to advanced curriculum has been I think a day is pretty good. Hopefully in a couple of weeks we’ll be an entire week ahead. 😉

2. celebrate everyone’s birthday (local and long distance) with a card in the mail and a little letter an email.
I hate to admit that I can’t follow through with something but it’s so much worse to do too many things half way. I’m learning my limits and I’m changing this resolution to sending everyone an email on their birthday. The idea behind the resolution in the first place was to stay in touch with long distance family and friends outside of holidays.

3. keep our family photo site updated (in the 10 years we’ve had that site, we’ve always been about 3-5 months behind)
I went to start working on this last week and I came across a whole lot of messy code I had left for myself. My husband made it easy to include php files for me (because he is the raddest) making updating so, so, so much easier, but I am going through my folders of pictures to untangle the mess. It should be another few days of sorting through it all before I can actually start adding new photos and videos.

4. start a ‘what we did today’ journal (index card version is cute)
Still doing it, it’s so cute!

5. quit social media that’s not blog related basically I just wanted to quit Facebook
Still not on Facebook! It’s funny though how many people are almost personally offended and ask how we’ll be able to stay in touch without out it! You can just email or text or even use Instagram or Twitter or Tumblr! I have also been asked what triggered the decision to quit, like it had to be some big event and my solution to it is quitting. Really, it all boils down to a pretty simple concept that we all already know. Without Facebook, the shelf life of some friendships (and most acquaintanceships?) would be a lot shorter. It is such a cultural norm to add acquaintances on Facebook from your neighbors to people you haven’t seen in 10 years to randos from the gym and on and on. I had quite a collection of acquaintances that I really didn’t want to have, but every time I deleted someone, I’d get a message from them asking why I deleted them. As if knowing that we haven’t spoken, even online, in years isn’t reason enough.

6. blog 3-5 times a week
Yikes, I only blogged once this week!

7. make a lightbox and get better at food photography
I have been looking online at Home Depot to find some plain tiles to use as backgrounds in food photography. Still need to research more.

8. a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014
Week One
Week Two
Week Three
Week Four

9. bake a cake every weekend
Week One – Nutella Icebox Cake
Week Two – Orange Creamsicle cake
Week Three – White Chocolate Strawberry cupcakes
Week Four – Pink Lemonade cupcakes
Week Five – Red Velvet cupcakes (with cream cheese icing)
Week Six – Dark Chocolate cake with Strawberry Filling

10. participate in sockdown 2014
I mentioned last update that January’s techniques were lace and intarsia, and that I went with lace since I’m still fighting with epic intarsia socks. I have hardly knitted at all in February – I haven’t even finished January’s socks! Tonight is a marathon knitting fest, if I finish January’s socks this week, I’ll cast on and try to finish February’s socks.

11. finally finish my knitted beekeeper quilt
I have knitted about 10 more puffs for this blanket, maybe another 90 or so to go? I laid out my 360 puffs to see how big the finished blanket would be with just that many and decided I’d need about 100 more. I’ll check again when I have another 100 to add.

Resolution #8 is to post a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014.

I am trying to choose one picture of each of them that hopefully shows what their week was like

Out for a Chipotle date after meeting his new online learning advisor.

4th place & the pink award at the NRG Golden State Championship!

Weekly library haul, fresh bedtime stories every week.

Yet again, a day late. 😉

Resolution #8 is to post a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014.

I am trying to choose one picture of each of them that hopefully shows what their week was like

On the lawn of our local library, middle school is so much reading!

This was taken on the way to her first photo shoot. Super fun!

Sometimes, just sometimes, she sleeps.

Ha! A day late again. 😉

Every week, I’m looking at my goals for the year and going over my progress one at a time in an attempt to help me achieve them. I intend to do these on Fridays, but you know…

1. stay at least one week ahead of our homeschool schedule stay on top of our new homeschool schedule and attend social events
We have been struggling with wanting to send our kids to school so they have a ‘normal childhood experience’ and with wanting to keep them home because we have seen the benefits (both academically and socially believe it or not) that have come from homeschooling. We have finally found a hybrid alternative with an online virtual school. We finished up our last day with the LAUSD’s ISP program on Friday and we start the new program today! We have chosen this both because while the kids are still at home and have our full support, they are lead by teachers online which is especially helpful for our oldest who is in his last year of middle school and will soon be tackling subjects I’m a little rusty with. Trigonometry, anyone? And also because this program has field trips and social events with the whole group which is really the only thing lacking in the program we are were using. There is a high school graduation ceremony and even proms, sporting events and dances. Who knows if they will want to do any of that, but having the option is what matters. I’m changing this resolution because as far as I can tell, you can’t get ahead of schedule with this program. If one of the kids understands a concept already or catches on right away, they are able to move on to the next concept. Once we start I will be better able to know how to word this goal!

2. celebrate everyone’s birthday (local and long distance) with a card in the mail and a little letter
I think I will make a little page to keep track of the birthdays and the cards we send out to see it coming together. Last week we sent out cards to my dad and Melissa. This week we sent out cards to my husband’s long time friend Jon and the first friend I made online (waaay back in 2001) Nichole. I should note that these four always get birthday cards. I am usually really good about this until sometime in March or April. Then I tend to totally forget about it. I know, terrible! So far, so good!

3. keep our family photo site updated (in the 10 years we’ve had that site, we’ve always been about 3-5 months behind)
It is so embarrassingly behind! I haven’t touched it at all this year. :/

4. start a ‘what we did today’ journal (index card version is cute)
I’ve been keeping up with just writing a line about what we did each day! This will be especially cute next year so we can look back and see what we were doing a year ago. Cute! I got index cards and a date stamp, and have been pretty good about making notes every day.

5. quit social media that’s not blog related basically I just wanted to quit Facebook
I currently only use social media as ‘soverydomestic’ and so most of what I post and do is blog related (though really, since this blog is mostly about what I make and do, it’s kind of the same thing).

6. blog 3-5 times a week
I blogged 4 times last week!

7. make a lightbox and get better at food photography
Next week? I didn’t even think of this much this week.

8. a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014
Week One
Week Two
Week Three

9. bake a cake every weekend
Week Three – Neapolitan Cake

10. participate in sockdown 2014
This month’s techniques are lace and intarsia – and since I’m still working on my Ravenclaw Pride socks, I went with lace. The pattern, Anna, is a 10 row repeat with something a little different on the first row! You knit two stitches together, leave them on the left hand needle and then knit just the first stitch and slip both new stitches off. What? Really simple and looks good. It has a 33 row cuff which is something that would probably dissuade me from wanting to knit these socks, but once I saw the cuff coming together I loved it!

11. finally finish my knitted beekeeper quilt
I have knitted about 10 more puffs for this blanket

I also planned to replace alcohol with coffee, I thought it was a great idea and then my husband who drinks alcohol only once every few years, suggested we start having a drink with dinner. We had both recently read about a slew of health benefits to having one drink a day. So maybe we’ll alter that to having one a day and try to make it fun? I should note that 27 days into the new year and neither of us has had any alcohol so who knows which way we’ll go with that.

Resolution #8 is to post a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014.

I am trying to choose one picture of each of them that hopefully shows what their week was like

Caught having fun with his sisters in the backyard! Hazah!

We could all learn about life balancing from this one! Busy dance and school schedules and she makes time for fun.

She ‘invented’ a game where she throws a ball through a hula hoop held up by a sibling. So cute!

Only a day late on this project this week! Progress!!

When we first started homeschooling through the LAUSD, it took a little while to get into the swing of things. The way that I ended up finding it best to organize our work was binder style. Once a week, we meet with our check in teachers and hand in the work from the week before.

Since the work is organized by week, I organized the binder the same way. The start of each section had a sheet protector with that week’s assignment sheet in it. Then, all the work for each subject is hole punched and put in the binder – and each subject is paper clipped together to make handing it in easier. When I’m setting up each week, if I am missing something I remind myself to print it later or order missing items by putting a sticky note on the sheet protector so it’s the first thing I see for that week. For assignments that don’t fit in a binder, I write down the assignment on a sheet of paper and put it with the other assignments. I do that honestly so we don’t forget to do it, or come back to it if we have started it and set it aside to work on something else. Generally, we were easily able to finish what was assigned for each day long before it’s time to call an end to the school day.

That was a good thing and a bad thing. It was a good thing because we supplemented with other curriculum to both fill in some holes and to reinforce concepts we were working on, and it allowed a lot of free time to work on things that are important to us but not part of standard curriculum, like programming and their physical pursuits like competitive dance and jiu jitsu. It was a bad thing also because while the free time was good in a way, I feel like there was too much free time because the kids were not being challenged enough, also because there is not a lot of opportunity for social interaction.

Socialization with homeschool kids is for sure the biggest issue, both to us personally, and it seems to other homeschoolers as well (and to all the randos who want to weigh in on this kind of thing). I have met a lot of homeschooled kids at meetups when we first started doing it and were searching for ways for the kids to make friends. Some of them were great kids – and some of them were the version of weird that is the stereotype of homeschooled kids. I mean obviously there are weird kids in public school, Catholic school, and private school too – but we’re not talking about them. 😉

It’s been almost two years now that we have been doing this and I absolutely feel that I am way more focused on my kid’s social lives than I was when they were in school. Between dance, jiu jitsu and playgroups, all three of them have found great friendships here and unlike friendships cultivated at school with kids I don’t know from families I don’t know, I have a much better understanding of what they are up to. I understand that when they are older they need to be able to judge for themselves who they should be spending time with, but I really believe that they need more time than just elementary school and honestly even middle school to be able to make those judgments. I’m a big fan of The Mommy Mess, and back in September she posted this about her kids not having formed their social circles yet – and I totally agree that it is a good thing!

Next week, we are starting a different homeschooling program, based mostly online. There are two big reasons we decided to switch programs, the first was the community days in this program where we will have the opportunity to meet other kids doing the same program, in a social instead of academic environment (knowing that there is a traditional graduation ceremony for high school was a pretty big bonus too). The second reason was the curriculum, this program has great curriculum that I am looking forward to starting. The more I looked into the program and the more research I did, the more excited I got about it. As soon as I was officially able to log in and check out the interface this week, I was impressed. Every morning the kids will check in online and they have a list of tasks to do and a list of materials they need for those tasks. I have already sat in on a few workshops that were full of great ideas.

This program being mostly online with some offline schoolwork to be done each day fits well with us as a family. We’ll update as we get into it!

Ack. Our tiny dancer had her first dance competition this past weekend so that’s what I was up to instead of blogging. Worth every second of all the planning, for sure!

Resolution #8 is to post a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014.

I haven’t done my resolution check in for last week either. If I don’t do it later today, I think I may just skip it. I’ll aim for the accountability of getting it done today. 🙂

A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014 – Week Two
I am trying to choose one picture of each of them that hopefully shows what their week was like

When he’s not feeling it, and I can’t get a decent picture, he’s stuck with one of him and his sister. 😉

All her hard work and training really paid off. She won first place for her jazz solo at Miss Dance Drill Team California.

This little lady is learning to read. Watching her start to understand and see it clicking is incomparable.

I reeeeally hope I develop the habit of posting these every Saturday instead of Monday!

Resolution #8 is to post a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014. I took the pictures in the first week and then totally forgot about posting them on Saturday. Ahem.

A portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014 – Week One
I am trying to choose one picture of each of them that hopefully shows what their week was like

Our oldest is on the move so much it’s hard to get an actual ‘portrait’, but this is what his week was like

Our tiny dancer is seriously devoted to her training

Our littlest is madly in love with this baby doll she got for Christmas, she brings it all over South Bay with us

I hope I get into the swing of this self imposted challenge and remember to post these every Saturday!

I thought checking in once a week would be a helpful way to stay on top of my resolutions. Or maybe make me feel like an epic failure. Only time will tell – stay tuned!

1. stay at least one week ahead of our homeschool schedule
School in our district technically doesn’t start until Monday, but I started the littles this past Monday, so goal #1 of being one week ahead of our homeschooling plan is in full effect! Maybe I can get even further ahead at some point so we can take longer breaks? I’m sure they’d love that!

2. celebrate everyone’s birthday (local and long distance) with a card in the mail and a little letter
There are six birthdays in our lives in January. On Monday, I got out cards for the first two – my dad and my good friend Melissa. Yay!

3. keep our family photo site updated (in the 10 years we’ve had that site, we’ve always been about 3-5 months behind)
Ok so when I made this resolution last week, I didn’t realize just how far behind I was with it. The photo section is updated to Jan of last year, the video section is updated to May of last year, the house tours page is updated to 3 houses ago. The mobile galleries and blog pages are totally bare. This week I fixed some code that was making it take longer to make new additions so hopefully I can make some progress next week.

4. start a ‘what we did today’ journal (index card version is cute)
I just got 365 index cards and a date stamper. I’m hunting for the perfect box to put them in still. I was using The Happiness Project but I need a little room to ramble. 😉

5. quit social media that’s not blog related (this is part of a bigger move to be more present in all of my relationships)
I am officially only using social media for the blog. Though to be honest, I am still chatty on Instagram and Twitter with some friends and family, the main objective was to get away from Facebook as the world’s biggest time suck and I accomplished that! It was pretty tricky actually. Facebook doesn’t allow a page (like the one for this blog) to exist without a Facebook user as an admin. I read a lot of blogs explaining different ways to go about doing this, so naturally I thought I knew what I was doing. I converted my personal profile into a ‘page’, and the instructions I was following said that after I did this, I’d be able to merge this page with my existing blog page. Buuuut, I had no such option and was the proud owner of my So Very Domestic’s FB page, and also a page that looked similar but had my name instead. Ugh. I poked around the settings on my personal ‘page’ and changed it’s status to unpublished. This way, I am not on Facebook as a person, but my blog can still be there.

6. blog 3-5 times a week
Today makes 2! This was our first week back doing school and dance and jiu jitsu. Hopefully, I’ll find a groove!

7. make a lightbox and get better at food photography
I have been reading about lightboxes and I love the idea of getting tiles to use for backgrounds and all kinds of fun stuff I want to put into play. I’m still researching and learning.

8. a portrait of my children, once a week, every week, in 2014
Every Saturday morning, I’m going to post the best picture of each kid from that week.

9. bake a cake every weekend
Week 1 – Nutella Icebox Cake

10. participate in sockdown 2014
Sockdown is, essentially, a knitting challenge within the Sock Knitters Anonymous on Ravelry (which is sort of like Facebook for knitters). Each month there are different sock knitting techniques, sock pattern designers and every other month there is a mystery sock (it’s a mystery because you’re given the pattern  but no pictures). For example, this month the techniques are lace and intarsia and the designers are Stephanie van der Linden and Heatherly Walker. I am casting on this afternoon a lacey sock. I think probably this one or maybe this one. Hopefully this will get Work in Progress Wednesday happening again. 😉

11. finally finish my knitted beekeeper quilt
My beekeeper quilt is sitting in a bag, in about 360 pieces. I am not going to like writing that every Friday until I put it together. This weekend, I am going to lay out all the hexipuffs I have knitted and see what it looks like. I don’t think I need more puffs but I will make sure, and if I do I will estimate how many I have to knit and start knitting them. If I don’t need to make more, I will work on piecing it together. So exciting! I started knitting this before we left Canada!

The two other things I’m working on are replacing alcohol with coffee and working on my vitamin levels and cholesterol and 10 days in, I’ve been successful with the coffee over alcohol! Though really, I haven’t had any alcohol since a Christmas party in mid-December. As far as my vitamins and cholesterol levels, I had my bloodwork done on the 2nd and yesterday I saw my doctor about it! Only my D is low, everything else is good so maybe this is a short lived goal haha. I guess it’s about keeping my levels good, my cholesterol is actually higher than it was! I think I got kind of cocky when I first had it checked in July and when it came back good I thought, hey look eating just ok is perfectly healthy for me, and then I started eating even less than just ok. Ahem. I am having my bloodwork done again in April, so I will compare numbers then.

So far, so good I think. I’m off to a decent start. Now, to edit that pesky photo site!