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1st Day of Rothacher Academy {2013}

September 3, 2013 by Jules Leave a Comment

I'm tired. But not as tired as I expected to be today. I'll equate that to not being on social media until now and feeling lots better in the sinus department. I have always been curious about what different people's homeschool day looks like so today I wanna share a timeline of what our day basically looked like.

1st School Day of Rothacher Academy {2013/14}:

6:45 I got up {with an alarm 🙁 1st time in years other than Sundays} and shower

7:00 Girls show up in my bathroom bright-eyed. They had already made their beds, put PJs at the end of the bed for a second night of wearing, and dressed head to toe in their "first day outfits" we took separate special mom-daughter shopping dates to pick out.

7:10 I put biscuits in the over and finished getting dressed and drying hair while the girl went to brush teeth and hair.

7:20 The girls returned and got their "chore assignments" for the morning: put away dishes and move wet laundry to the drier and start it.

7:30 We all ate breakfast and finished chores. I had to write my fun HIPPY request for acceptance before our meeting.

8:00 The girls played with computers until everyone was finished {mainly me and my letter} then we finished putting up hair and took 1st Day of School Pics

PreK-3

8:15 We cleaned up toys and headed into the school room to do the rest of our 'morning routine': calendar, season, weather, chore credits, and talk about our routine {combination of our old morning routine and chore chart} for the rest of the day.

8:30 Finished cleaning up breakfast, loading the dishwasher, grabbed shoes and items we would need for our HIPPY meeting, put a diaper over J's "unnies" so if he had an accident while we were out it would be less...clean up.

8:45 Loaded in the van, hit up the Sonic for a morning DP and took off for Library Day.

9:20

We had a discussion about how we behave in a library, unloaded and marched into the new-to-us Faulkner County Library.
At the desk, we got our forms to fill out for 3 library cards {every "School Kid" gets a library card in our house 😉 }
Constant wiggling, talking too loud by the one with no volume control, and poop. Yeah. I was a sweaty mess just trying to fill out tiny forms and correct children.
We turned in our forms to be processed, got to pick out what color card we wanted: I bet some of you could guess, Mags- Pink, Izzie- Purple, Me- Yellow.
She said it would take a while so we headed to the really cool "children's section" where we got to see a "service dog" and read several books.
I let each kid pick one book to check out. Mags got one of her 1st "Level 1" Readers :'(
The cards still weren't ready so I let the girls go into the bathroom by themselves while Jamin and I looked at the sad selection of movies.

10:00 We checked out our books {each with our own cards}, change the nasty poopy pants, and head to library #2 for the day.

10:30 We made it back to Vtown with just enough time to scout out the library here in town. We had enough time in the little bitty library to each check out one more book each.

10:45 We swung by our house and picked up Matt so we could all go to the HIPPY orientation meeting together.

11:00 We signed in, turned in our letter & other documents, set a weekly meeting time, and picked a seat for our meeting.
During the meetings here in Faulkner county, the kids were taken back to...do something while the parents sat and did the meeting part.

11:30 We got our supply & snack bags for the girls and headed home to figure out what was for lunch {we weren't sure if they provided lunch like the other HIPPY program or not so I had nothing planned}.

11:45 We ate ham & cheese sliders, grapes and the juice boxes from their HIPPY snack bag. One by one, each kid finished lunch and showed daddy all their library finds and told him what all they'd done that morning.

12:15 We finished cleaning up lunch, loaded dishwasher, pottied, and headed to naps.

12:30 I started in on the catastrophe that was the school room. I have no idea when all this went down but I feel fairly accomplished having

unloaded the closet of all items the kids had been grounded from and added them back to their rightful place {this is usually the kids' responsibility since Not Cleaning Up is probably why they were grounded from it but I was reorganizing so I went a head and put them where I wanted them.}
organized and loaded book shelves
cleaned out and sorted writing utensil drawers

started the slow cooker for dinner {stew meat and potatoes already in the pot in the fridge from when I thought I'd make it Sunday}

rearranged some of the shelves to work better
hung all the printed/laminated/hole-punched labels on the canvas bins
Sorted, organized, trashed, moved to a new location, etc things like scrapbook paper, stickers, toys to be sold at the consignment event in a few weeks, etc.
traded out drawer organizer for better usage

got together snack and juice cups for when the kids got up from nap

hung kids name canvases and other framed canvases
created a new dress-up center using a quilt rack I've had forever
unpacked a box of "older kid" books and curriculum
lined the wire shelf in the closet with cut up canned soda boxes so the books and curriculum wouldn't fall through
sorted paper/new reader books into bins.
created a new coloring book center
set up pictures of my babies on top of the shelf 😀
made a basket with empty folders {for easy access later}, old center signs {if I ever use those again}, and our laminated letters I plan to hang each week along the top of the room as we talk/learn about each new letter

2:20ish Kids began to wake up from naps so they got their snack and juice cups and picked out one of the library movies to watch

3:00 RECESS

Since cousins and bigger neighborhood kids have been over to play, my kids have discovered Recess. They ask me all morning if they would get "recess". Maggie actually ask me last night when she was picking what shoes to wear; "Will we be doing recess?" I kicked them outside after their movie with 2 bottles of water to share. After about 5 seconds they were nonstop in and out the door asking to if recess was over. Yeah. It's HOT! I was still finishing ~~cleaning up my giant mess~~ organizing so of course I threatened to lock the door if they didn't stop opening it and let them know I'd call them in when "recess was over".

3:45 I set up the playdough center in the freshly cleaned and organized school room at the preschool table and "called the kids in from recess". After wiping down their adorably sweaty faces covered in chalk dust, I sent them in to play with playdough and big cups of water.

4:00 Matt came home and laughed that we were "still doing school". Sad ehh. I've been so disorganized that getting out the playdough center seems so structured it must be called school. LOL

4:30 I checked on the crockpot and realized the "stew meat" didn't quite look...done. CRAP

4:45 Matt makes an executive decision to get 1/2 price breakfast burritos for he and I while I shoved tater tots and fish sticks into the oven {over heated for quicker cooking time}

5:00

Kids start cleaning up the playdough center that was starting to migrate into every other room including the living room {Carpet}.
Two empty playdough tubs were thrown away becuase it was impossible to relocate the color that was supposed to return to it.
All the kids loaded up the "tool" basket and playdough tray.
J ~~wondered off~~ helped daddy set the table for dinner and waited in anticipation At the table for everyone else to finish cleaning up.
Mags wiped down the table.
I put the playdough back on the TOP shelf and swept.
Izzie helped sweep up the remains and through them away.

5:15 DINNER Yummy. The kids told lots of stories of "making and watching movies during recess" and I tried to sit. Breath. and Chew. 😉

5:45

We finished cleaning up dinner
loaded dishwasher
Matt and I put the mantel piece up that goes in the middle of the entertainment center
Matt {kinda} hung our new "Library Basket" in the school room where all of our "borrowed" books will be stored so we don't loose them from week to week & have to pay late fees.
I rearranged pictures and randomneess inside/on the entertainment center but still don't love it

6:00

started our "Bible Class". Also known as the newest "What's in The Bible" DVD {vol 8} we just found and opened for the kids.
I vacuumed up the playdough, wood scraps from the mantel projects, as well as snacks from days and days agoswept the odd lil wood floor trail around the living room and the entire dinning room/kitchen
I SAT down! Checked Facebook, email, and started writing this post.

I think not sitting as well as constantly moving leaving me no time for social media was good and helped me stay focused, accomplish lots more than normal, as well as stay more patience with my kids and what really needed to be done today.

Its also kinda dreaded but I realized how much cleaner and well run my house is when I plan. Even simple things like what activity my kids will do and for how long. Don't get me wrong; I think creative, thought-up-on-their-own play is greatly beneficial, but with fewer choices for them to sort through, there was so much less fighting, bickering, groaning, etc today. When ask about their day, they can tell their daddy exactly what they did. No more of this "played" nonsense. There were specifics, details, and joy in what they remembered. <3

6:30 The kids weren't as into "Bible Class" as we'd hoped and were tackling one another on the couch which turned into full contact wrestling over the entire living room and they added dress-up to the mix...ugg

6:45 Matt had to head up to the valley to train someone on the computer stuff and offered to take the kids. WINNING!

7:15 I'm wondering how much longer I have the quietness of my house with nothing but my thoughts, the humming of electronics, running refrigerator, and the therapeutic clicking of my fingers on the keyboard...

~~~

7:50 ...still now sign of them and we are supposed to be loading laundry, taking baths, brushing teeth, drying hair, going potty, taking/applying medicines, getting PJs & night time diapers on, and arguing with the kids about going to sleep...hmmm

We'll see what tomorrow holds 😉 Hope the peak into our day wasn't too mundane.

Filed Under: Cleaning, Decorating, Homemaker, Homeschool, Organizing, Parenting, Projects, The ones about the Rothacher Home

Living Room: Mantel {Settled In September}

September 3, 2013 by Jules 1 Comment

When working on the “collage wall” from yesterday, I decided I needed some other items to break up the crazy amount of frames/pictures as well as to display other items in a different way.

Today's project came about because I chose not to use this mirror from our bedroom set a while back. I was monstrous and I was afraid my growing littles were somehow going to knock off this thing and get smashed. {lil dramatic…I know} Really, it just kinda dated the furniture.

This mantel started as a, "what in the world can we use this ugly mirror that we're never going to use again" project.

I also recently bought a dresser for more storage and it came with a similar mirror piece on top. With these bad boys stacking up, I figured I should find something to do with them. Other than removing and framing the huge mirrors, I had to get real creative…AND get the hubs involved.

I intended on chopping off the bottom and top off these mirror/shelf pieces after removing the actual mirrors. After talking through it with my hubby I suggested we try prying trim pieces off the top so we could save the other parts {in tacked} for another project 😉 When those came off easy enough he decided to try tapping off the bottom part as well.
After removing the pieces I wanted, I went to town spray painting a couple coats of white on the trim while Matt hunted down some wire cutters to get rid of the jaunting nails protruding what will now be the top of the mantel.
{Here's what that looked like: Matt, with wire cutters in hand & wood on kitchen counter. Locates his nail of chose, places wire cutters around said nail, grips with both hands, turns head to the side, closes eyes tightly, snaps off nail only to hear it flying across the kitchen. Locate next nail and repeat.}
After all the nails were removed I took that big piece out and gave it a couple quick coats of paint.
When they were all dry, Matt used our friends nail gun to assemble the pieces, placing the trim pieces off what used to be the bottom of the mirror that would have sat flush on top of the dresser.
With these parts now together well, trim hanging downward to make the appearance of a thick mantel, I used wood puddy in the nail holes, giant holes where the weird decorative parts used to be, as well as the tiny joints between the boards. NORMALLY I'm a that's-good-enough kinda girl but since I had the puddy already from having to fill the gunshot holes in Big Betsy, I figured it would make this look that much more quality.
The puddy dried for about 30 minutes, I sanded it lightly and wiped it down before taking it back outside for the last 3 coats of white spray paint.

Now...how to hang it on the wall...

My hubs and his buddy took a while discussing what would be the best way to hang this on the wall. We didn't need something Huge but also didn't want it falling off the wall if we placed things actually on the mantel. lol
The final decision? We went retro, old school floating shelves were hung int his manor- building a box that would be mounted to the wall in which the mantel would slide over and then be nailed to.
For my mantel, they made the frame 3 foot by 7 inches. This would insure that we could screw the frame into at least 2 studs assuring a maximum hold.
My hubs screw the box frame onto the wall into 2 studs.
We then used a nail-gun to mount the faux mantel to the frame.
Now we are continually praying it doesn't fall off the wall in the middle of the night causing bed urination or unexpected heart attacks.

SEE, I got to play with the GUN! 😀

I hope this tutorial made sense. If not, ask away!

find other post in this series HERE

Filed Under: Cleaning, Decorating, Homemaker, Settled In September, The Ones about Post Series, The ones about the Rothacher Home

Living Room: Collage Wall {Settled In September}

September 2, 2013 by Jules 3 Comments

I love having pictures throughout my house. Most of the time, the things in my house at least have a practical purpose even if they happen to be cute. I want to live in my house. I don’t like the idea of being uncomfortable, especially in my home. I mean seriously, if you know me well, you know that I don’t own “real clothes”. I wear t-shirts and comfy shorts, pants or jeans, and flip-flops.

So when it comes to my home , I’m fairly practical…and cheap. Hehehe We try very hard to get the same age pictures of each of our children. Or at least close to. We did 3 and 6 {and possibly 9} months and then every year. With 3 children and one on the way, that’s a lot of pictures. We also tried to do a family picture once a year. We’re totally slacking on all of these. We haven’t had professional pictures taken in a year and half. Ya know, all this church planting and commuting business had us a little distracted from our photo sessions. We have MORE than enough snap shots in this time. My Facebook page is packed full of daily moments captured.

All this to say, in our old house, we had a huge hallway upstairs that you could see downstairs through the balcony opening thingy. I had tons of space to sprawl out the kiddos. In our new home, there’s not that perfect hallway for the “family portrait wall”. We do however have giant blank walls in our living room. A while back, I ask you guys on the as Jules is going Facebook page “How many pictures of your kids was too many in a public room?” Most of you said there’s never too many. I went with it!

It took me forever to decide how to display these piles of frames on my big wall. I was scared to make a catastrophe of awkward groups, one kid bunched together in a pile, too many of the same color near one another, and so on.

Finally, I just laid them out on the floor and played with them for an entire day. Staring at them, moving, adding and taking away other decorative items to break up the frames. THIS is what I finally came up with. Its a work in progress and still missing some pieces but this is at least a start & frames are laying around in piles 😀
To make sure I had them in the same placement as on the floor, I used THIS technique from Pinterest.

I flipped all the frames over so I could see the hooks they needed to be hanging from. I then used a long piece of wax paper to mark where that row of nails needed to be placed with a colored sharpy. {Sadly, I went through all kinds of other materials to mark the holes on but I couldn’t come up with anything else transparent and lightweight.}
After marking that row of hooks, I taped the wax paper to the wall at the height I wanted and made sure it was level. I started with the top row and worked my way down from the tallest row. I wanted to make sure they started near “Big Betsy” and weren’t crazy high on the wall so I measuring how high I wanted the bottom row off of "Big Betsy" and the mantel {to come} and then added the height for the next 2 rows.
I repeated this process with each row but using a different color marker for each row…because I’m cheap and didn’t want to use an entire roll of wax paper. Don’t forget to measure the distance from the the top nails to one on the next row to make sure they are spaced appropriately when you start putting up the next row of nails. Use a level both for hanging the wax paper with nail placements as well as after hanging each frame.

Here is the after pictures minus the mantel we were still working on as well as the fabric, quote, and picture for the frame where the glass broke in the move.
Hope you enjoyed day one of Settled In September. Come back the rest of this week to tour the rest of the living room. Over this month we’ll walk through the entire house.

EEeeekk. I’m excited to show you guys around!

Filed Under: Decorating, Homemaker, Organizing, Settled In September, The Ones about Post Series, The ones about the Rothacher Home

Settled In September: BEFORE Picture Gallery

September 1, 2013 by Jules 1 Comment

Our New Home BEFORE we were Settled In September Picture Gallery

Living Room

Dinning Room

Dinning into Kitchen

Kitchen

Laundry/Mud Room going into the garage

Kitchen Pantry

Refrigerator

Kitchen into the Dinning Room Play/School Room off of Dinning Room

Girls' Bedroom

Guests' Room/Office Boy Bedroom

Hall Bathroom

Hall Closet

Living Room from the Hallway

Master Bedroom

Master BathroomBack Deck

Awesome Back Yard

Filed Under: The ones about the Rothacher Home

Settled In September: Introduction to this Months Series

September 1, 2013 by Jules Leave a Comment

In our world today, many times Christians are encouraged NOT to settle down. I hear it even more so in or about ministry. "As pastors, you are never settles. Never in one place for long. Always on the move." To some extent I totally agree. As Christians, not just pastors & family, we are to be willing to follow God's will even when that means a physical move. Location should always be determined by God's plan for your life at the time. How He wants to use you in a specific season of life. WHERE He sees fit for you to be for the most growth in you.

Sadly, when we finally started moving our essentials into our new home, my youngest daughter kept asking when we were going "home". My oldest daughter nervously ask if we could "never move again" because she was "tired of moving in circles". I felt their pain and confusion. Although I wanted to promise my littles that we had found our forever home, I couldn't. I did reassure them that this is our home & do not plan on but moving. BUT as a follower of Jesus Christ, I always had to keep my heart and ears open for if and when God was leading us somewhere else.

Every time the hubs and I move, we plan to stay. After our first move as a married couple, we were there 5 years. That may not sound like long but regretfully, for ministry families {especially youth pastors} that was eternal. We started our lives there together. We bought our first home there. We started our family there. But, God ask us to be willing to give up that comfort and head out to be apart of His grand plan somewhere else.

We've talked a lot about not wanting to move again. How our 5 and 3.5 year old have lived in 4 different houses. Our 2.5 year old has now lived in 3 different houses. Our prayer this time? Our prayer is that of Jeremiah's word from God for those carried into exile from Jerusalem to Babylon.

"Build houses and settle down; plant gardens and eat what they produce. 6 Marry and have sons and daughters; find wives for your sons and give your daughters in marriage, so that they too may have sons and daughters. Increase in number there; do not decrease. 7 Also, seek the peace and prosperity of the city to which I have carried you into exile. Pray to the LORD for it, because if it prospers, you too will prosper." -Jeremiah 29:5-7

As I begin this Settled In September series, I want you to keep all this in mind. With conflicted hearts after "settling in" to our Big Blue house and moving after only 2 years, it brings joy and anxiety to settle down again. Fear of moving. Excitement over a forever home, neighborhood, community, friends, and a growing church family. This month, I want to show how my family is trying to settle as quickly as possible so we can get on to the seek the peace and prosperity {doing life with} of the city to which God has carried us!

All the posts in this series HERE