Happy New Year!

I hope that everyone had a great holiday!

We had a very low-key Christmas and New Year's. I made a lamb and feta lasagna that was very good; the recipe is from Emeril. Deb, Craig's mom, brought over a salad and we had apple pie for dessert. Lasagna is Craig's favorite dish, so he wants this to be a Christmas dinner tradition now; a different type of lasagna every year.

Gabe got many nice presents, some of which still have to be bought since a few came in the form of gift cards and we have to decide what to get. Some include some cool games and puzzles we got from Lakeshore Learning. I got myself a new purse and wallet from Kohl's (it was on sale, woo-hoo!) and Craig got a pretty stylish messenger bag for work.

I am getting bigger and slower, lol. I continue to do a LOT of reading with Gabe or outings where he has lots of engagement to compensate for my lack of physical involvement. Storytimes and playmates are a lifesaver! He is also getting better at playing alone for longer periods of time.

We've been doing a lot planning in various areas with the house. We just bought new mattresses for our room and Gabe's soon-to-be room. We are also making the dining room a playroom for the kids, since we have a eat-in kitchen. Then, we are going to buy a few pieces of furniture for the living room, since currently that room is not functional (our tv and couch is in the family room).

Of course all of this is very budgeted and will occur over the course the year.

Craig and I have been thinking about what to do about education for the kids. We've been going back and forth on whether to homeschool or not (which would involve me not working outside the home) and we're leaning towards homeschooling, but are specifically getting interested in the concept of unschooling. This is where there is no curriculum and children learn by being involved in everyday life activities.

For instance, by simply baking a cake one learns math and chemistry (these are the two subjects that immediately come to mind, I'm sure there is more). As they get older, parents basically guide the learning experience by what children are interested in (maybe they really like comics, so they can create a comic or they want to create a video game, so they learn the programming language and other things that go along with that).

Speaking of education, I wrote a post on my Cafe blog about editors changing the n-word in Huck Finn to "slave" in an upcoming edition. I do not agree with this at all. Read here. There is also a link to the article about it in that post.