Happy New Year!

Why hello there lovely people!

We had a wonderful christmas and a very quiet New Years eve. In fact I was asleep by 9:30 last night and I woke up feeling amazing. In years gone by we would of still been partying until the morning and then sleeping our way through New Years day. I don't miss those times one bit. Yes we had fun but everything's different now, we're different. And I'm so much happier for it :-)

I always struggle at christmas. Since we've had the boys there seems to be a competitiveness between mine and Kenny's mums. I'm not sure what it is but they can't just be normal and enjoy being together. It makes family gatherings hard work and tedious. Don't get me wrong they don't not get on, there's just always an atmosphere. It's never easy. Kenny is far more laid back than I am but it really riles me which is why we don't have that many family things anymore. Not that I miss them, it's always me that has to host them anyway. Hey ho nothing will change so there's no point dwelling on it.

Looking forward into 2014, what are my hopes and plans? That's easy. I'm going to be more positive and rid myself of any negative outside influences. My mood is easily influenced so I'm going to make sure that it's only in a positive way! We'll start to be a bit more focused with our time with the boys and our homeschooling will kick up a notch this year and become more purposeful.

Goals for Nathan this year are for him to learn to read and write. This is just the academic part. The most important thing is that he has fun and enjoys learning and stays hungry for it. This will take a lot of work on my part as if I am tired or feeling under the weather I don't have the patience I need to have but I'm a work in progress on that! We're going to follow his lead on other aspects of learning for example we are going to kick off the new year with learning about reptiles as he is very interested in this at the moment. There will be structured reading, writing and maths daily but only short bursts and just to get a small routine in place.

With Ethan I'm going to do a little bit of Letter of the week and some Montessori activities, number recognition but nothing major.

I have just taken delivery of the amazing Spielgaben set which I will post about soon and will include some pictures of it being used. We will also be using more Montessori materials intentionally.

The playroom is going to have a big overhaul and makeover so I will be sure to take pictures of the before and after. This will be a work in progress though. I'm also going to include more arts and crafts, messy play, sensory tubs and we will cook at least once a week.

My personal goals are to stop procrastinating and get all of the above in place, I will also be blogging every day. Yep every single day. Even if it's not much. The idea of this blog was to keep a log of what we had been doing together and this hasn't happened at all, but it will do me good to look back over the year and see what we have achieved, places we have visited and hopefully happy pictures of our family. I'll also be using my camera more. Oh and having another baby of course! I've also joined the Instagram (I'm @lisarye) band wagon and will be crocheting a square a day so that at the end of the year I'll have a beautiful new blanket. I will be doing more crochet generally through the year as it's something I love doing. I need more colour in my life too and need to have a major declutter which will be happening over the coming weeks.

Sounds like I have an awful lot to be getting on with!

Happy New Year to you all and thanks for reading my rambles!

Lisa xx