Life happens, and you have to roll with the punches.  That’s kind of a recurrent theme around Titus 2 Homemaker, although not always in so many words.  There’s been a lot of life happening around our house of late which has, unfortunately, resulted in an unintended hiatus from the blog.  I wanted to take a few minutes to update you in a nutshell of what’s been happening (and reassure you that I’m still alive!) and give a bit of a heads-up of what might be to come.

Life Happens…

This spring I simply could not seem to stay healthy.  I had one cold after another after another (which is pretty unlike me) and had the flu or something like it during a weekend my husband was out of town.  (Ugh.)  That resulted in a lot “playing catch-up,” and about the time I got back on track, we learned that my oldest daughter’s choir had the opportunity to perform with an internationally-known vocal group.  This was an amazing opportunity, but it came with extra rehearsals near-daily for almost a month, right at the time our local family was headed out for their several weeks of vacation and couldn’t help us with rides.  So needless to say, it’s been pretty busy around here!  (The performance went great, by the way.)

Meanwhile, we are preparing for baby #5 (whose pregnancy has never been properly announced here) to make his or her arrival at the end of July, complete with an overhaul of our house — not only to accommodate five children, but also the new patterns that come with homeschooling a high schooler, an almost middle schooler, a kindergartener, and a preschooler, while nursing/caring for a newborn!

I’ve graduated with a Diploma in Aromatherapy and a Diploma in Holistic Health Practice (HHP), which allows me to begin moving forward on some life goals, but am still in one final semester (online) to finish up my AAS in Complementary/Alternative Medicine, so studying is taking time and mental energy, too.

Sooo…when people ask me, “how do you do it all?” the answer is, “I don’t.  I drop things.”  In this case, it’s the blog that’s been dropped.

Picking it Back Up

Titus 2 Homemaker has not been “out of sight, out of mind,” though!  There are things happening in the background; they just haven’t made it onto the page.  I have a handful of products I’ve tried out and am ready to review for you, but simply haven’t had the time to polish up posts about.  (There are also some products still from last year’s Natural Products Expo that got back-burnered when I got pregnant, because they involve scents, etc.)  I have a few other posts in my head, as well, that are near the top of the list but haven’t made it onto the screen yet.

I’ve been plugging away, slowly but surely, at the Challies reading challenge list.  (That’s one advantage of being sick and/or pregnancy-exhausted.)

We’ve also decided to make a change in our homeschooling curriculum for next year.  Up ’til now, I’ve put together our curriculum plan each year, pretty much “from scratch.”  But implementation has not been as consistent as we’d like, because of my health — and it’s hard for Michael to pick up the slack when the plans are clearer in my head than on paper.

So we’ll be using My Father’s World this year as our core.  It’s similar to what I’d assemble, but already lesson-planned for us, so it will save us some time and energy on the front end, with the planning, while also keeping things clear for both of us.  (This is me taking some of my own advice from Energy Budget.)  I could go on at greater length about why this is what we chose, but I think I’ll give that it’s own post soon so it’s easier to keep track of.  I’m hoping to also give you some periodic check-ins about how that’s working for us, as we’ll have kids in all three major “sections” of the curriculum (one in high school, one in the “Family Learning Cycle,” and two in the kindergarten set).