Since I will be writing about homeschooling quite a bit, I thought it might be a good idea to give a little background about our homeschool style and what we have done in our homeschool over the years. R is 10 now, almost 11. We have homeschooled since the very beginning. She has never been in public school, and I don't regret a moment of it! Some people might say the "messiness" of our lives extends into our homeschool. I am very much an eclectic homeschooler, and lean more towards unschooling. Those boxed all-in-one curriculums have just never been a good fit for us. I have a background in education. My college degree was elementary education. When R came along, I was working part-time as a receptionist at a doctor's office, and I had been doing a lot of subbing in the school systems. I knew what the public schools were like, and as R grew, I didn't feel like public school would be a good fit for her. Here's the funny thing, for a lot of years, I said I wou

 One of those things that I struggle with as a mom is too much screen time. Too much screen time for me, too much screen time for R. I want to get off the screens and get outside in the fresh air.  So, this year we started a 1000 Hours Outside challenge. I printed off a beautiful tracking page from the 1000 Hours Outside website. We are off to a really slow start. April is almost over, and we haven't even made it to our first 100 hours yet! We aren't even to 50 hours yet. Yikes. A lot of our April hours came from a Saturday that we spent at Pokagon State Park, one of our local state parks. It was a beautiful day! We are definitely anxious to go back. I have a really hard time motivating myself to go outside when it's cold. My depression kicks in, and I just want to curl up inside with my phone or with a book. I'm hoping that this summer we will be outside more. We have a vacation coming up, and I plan to spend a lot of time outside that week. We will be at an amusement

You know those blogs where moms have it all together? Where their homes are immaculate, and their children are perfect? This is not that place. My life can be a bit of a mess sometimes. My house is never perfectly clean, but it's our safe place. My family isn't perfect. Sometimes we yell, sometimes we cry, and sometimes we spend too much time on our screens. But we love each other. If you're anything like us, this blog might be the place for you. My husband and I have been married for almost 20 years now. He works hard, and takes good care of me. I am so thankful for him. We have been on adventures around the world together, and now our big adventure is raising our daughter. For purposes of the blog, I'll just call him B. I am a mama to one beautiful, sweet, sassy girl. She is full of imagination. She loves animals, theater, and art. I love watching her grow. In the blog, I will call her R. I work part-time as an office manager at a gymnastics facility. It's a fun j