A Sonlighting Family

The assignment today for the Sonlight 25th Anniversary Blog Party is to introduce my family, and share where we are on our homeschooling journey.

My students are these beautiful young ladies, ages 19 and 22. Our formal homeschooling days have recently ended. However, the girls do still currently live at home, so the learning continues. After all, thanks to Sonlight, we raised them to be "lifelong learners."

They say homeschooling actually starts at birth... and it does. When I hear a parent say they could never homeschool it makes me wonder what they think they were doing during those early years. However, our formal, curriculum-based homeschooling actually started in 1998 when Laura was ready for kindergarten. That's the year we started with Sonlight... but that's a story for another post.

Fast-forward to 2011... (and the years went by about that fast...) we were pleased to present Laura with her high school diploma at a group ceremony we had put together with a few other homeschooling friends in our area. Laura graduated in Idaho where we had lived since she was in kindergarten. It meant a lot to her to get to graduate with her friends.

Rebecca graduated this past spring (2014) after we had moved to Colorado. Since she only had one semester of school left after we moved, we hadn't connected with a homeschool group here. Instead we planned a special backyard ceremony just for her with her grandparents and church friends.

Over the years as I've shared our homeschooling story at conventions around the country, I tell how learning is a lifestyle in our family, not just something we do during school hours. And though the girls have graduated and are pursuing their adult lives now... the learning goes on.

This post is part of Sonlight's 25th Anniversary Blog Party (January edition):

   

I'd love to hear your story as well!

Do you Instagram?

I've had an Instagram account for awhile but have never done much with it. However, Laura uses it all the time. Now... I'm not into taking selfies, but I started playing around with it a bit this past weekend and I have to admit I've enjoyed taking scenery and still-life pictures. I love the effect of using filters and frames. Here are some fun shots I've taken the last few days.

Breakfast at my desk. #goodmorning #Sonlight

A photo posted by @karlacinid on Jan 21, 2015 at 6:04am PST

Thank you flowers from Judy on my desk this morning. #sothoughtful #Sonlight

A photo posted by @karlacinid on Jan 19, 2015 at 6:27am PST

Enjoying some hooky time by the fire. #relaxing #winterevening

A photo posted by @karlacinid on Jan 17, 2015 at 6:27pm PST

One of Lyle's coworkers made me a cup of tea while I waited for him. #playingwithinstagram

A photo posted by @karlacinid on Jan 17, 2015 at 11:20am PST

Not #Sonlight. #restingmybrain #lovemyman

A photo posted by @karlacinid on Jan 17, 2015 at 10:54am PST

The building above is the print shop where Lyle works. I had just dropped some of the Sonlight reps off at the airport and my work responsibilities were done for the week, so I was running errands with him. It felt good to think about something besides work for a little while.

Let me know if you have an Instagram account, so I can follow you! I don't have very many connections on there yet.

Sonlight Fun

This past week at work was a lot of fun... as well as pretty intense... with our annual Sonlight Training Conference with the convention rep team for the upcoming homeschool convention season. Our reps come from all over the country. I've worked with a lot of the same ladies over the years and have made some good friends, so it was great to see them again, as well as meet our new reps. We laughed, enjoyed good food.. and learned a lot.

I used to fly in for this event, but this year I got to help organize it. Even with all the extra work this time, I came away excited about the upcoming convention season, as I always do. My first convention will be in Loveland, Colorado on March 13 and 14. Lots to do between now and then!

Something else fun is going on at work as well. Sonlight is celebrating their 25th anniversary this year, and they have several exciting events lined up throughout the year. The celebration will be kicking off with a free online event this coming Thursday evening featuring Sonlight's founder and owner, Sarita Holzmann, as well as guest speakers, Heidi St. John and Crystal Paine. This event is called Inspire 25 and will include some great PRIZES as well as inspiring sessions. I'll be there. I hope you'll join me!

And then, the other thing I'm involved in is Sonlight's year-long blog party. On the 25th of each month I'll be joining up with other homeschool bloggers to share my stories with a different topic each month. If you blog I encourage you to join the party. Again, there will be PRIZES! Plus, it's a great way to gain new readers.

Looking forward to a great year!

The Gift

Two weeks after Christmas.

We were staying with my sister. We had been waiting for a phone call for almost a month. Finally it came.

"Your baby has arrived! Would you like to come meet her?"

The maternity section of the hospital was quiet that January evening. We washed our hands and donned scrubs as instructed, and they led us to an empty patient room. And we waited again.

But not too long. Pretty soon the nurse wheeled in the bassinet. She carefully lifted the tiny, blanket-wrapped bundle and laid our newborn daughter into my arms.

And in that moment, I became a mother.

It is, most assuredly, not a gift I take for granted.

Not flesh of my flesh
Nor bone of my bone,

But still miraculously my own.

Never forget for a single minute,

You didn't grow under my heart,

But in it.

Happy Birthday, Laura!

Happy New Year!

The new year has arrived and as promised, I am sincerely going to try to blog more often. Obviously, it's not going to be daily, but maybe I could manage weekly... or at least, more often than quarterly. How 'bout that? Reckon that will keep my Fan Club* happy?

While I didn't maintain my blog as well as I would have liked in 2014, there are enough posts to give you a good idea of our Year in Review, so I'm not going to do that. However, we weren't able to be together with any of our extended family during the Christmas season, so I thought I'd share some of our recent activities.

We kicked off the festivities early in December with an interchurch Christmas brunch at Country Buffet. The highlight of the morning was the white elephant gift exchange.

The next week we were invited to an Ugly Christmas Sweater party. Rather than going out and buying ugly sweaters, we got creative and decorated some old sweaters we already had. Our family spent one whole evening working on our sweaters. I said, "After all this work, I hope somebody in our family will win one of the prizes!" And turns out... they did!

 Laura's "sweater" featured a stocking with a teddy bear tucked in it, a letter to Santa, sparkly pom-poms and jingle bells... and the pièce de résistance.. an obnoxious violin that played Christmas songs. She won the Ugly ribbon (3rd place.)

And then Lyle won the Ugliest ribbon (1st place) with his tableau of Frosty getting run over by an SUV! He and I had worked on his sweater design together. I thought he could have a scene of a car hauling a Christmas tree with a snowman as part of the scenery, but he decided that it needed a little more drama than that. I guess it paid off because everyone seemed to love the snowman parts flying everywhere!

The actual week of Christmas was pretty rough at our house, as both girls had a nasty round of the flu... Laura early in the week, and Rebecca on Christmas Day. Lyle and I were grateful to not catch it this time around!

 We had a nice day at home on Christmas Day. The day started off sunny and mild. Lyle built a fire in our backyard fireplace and smoked a turkey breast on the grill for dinner. He enjoyed watching the fire while he visited on the phone with his mother.

We didn't know how smoking the turkey on the grill would turn out. My dad has been smoking turkeys for Thanksgiving and Christmas for probably 30 years, so it's kind of a tradition in our family. This year between work, church, and friends, I ended up having three different Thanksgiving dinners... and not one of them served smoked turkey. We haven't been with my folks for the holidays for several years, and I just missed Dad's tasty smoked turkey! So I asked Lyle if he thought it would work to smoke a turkey breast on the grill (since we don't own a smoker). He did some research and said he thought it wouldn't be too hard. He has a little metal box in which to smolder wood chips for the smoke flavor. I soaked the turkey breast in my Dad's recipe for brine for 24 hours, and then added a pan of water for moisture. It worked perfectly! So now we know--a smoker is not necessary! I expect we'll be enjoying smoked turkey more in the future.

And then the snow arrived! The clouds rolled in and the wind kicked up on Christmas afternoon, and the snow started falling. It has been cold and snowed more several times since. But still, we have seen some sunshine in between. After all, this is Colorado!

Thus concludes the synopsis of our Christmas celebration. Looking forward to seeing what 2015 has in store!

*Charter members of my Fan Club include my parents, my husband, and my children... and a few others who have let me know that you miss my blog. I do appreciate your encouragement. It means a lot!