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Teach Them Diligently
This year I only spoke at one convention due to some schedule conflicts. I normally attend 3, so it felt weird! I just returned from speaking in Atlanta and enjoying my experience at the convention as a homeschool mom. I have given a lot of thought to changing some curriculum publishers for my middle son specifically, so I spent a lot of time talking with reps.
As I thought out my plan I realized we have two non-negotiables right now. Meaning, I love these curriculums and have no plans of changing! One is Teaching Textbooks Math and the other is IEW Writing.
At this point the rest is negotiable, some more than others. Mostly for my younger two kids.
One I am looking into pretty seriously is Alpha Omega LIFEPAC for my middle son – rising 7th grade. I will share more as we progress with our plans. I was only planning to look at this for science but then liked what I saw with the history/geography. I ignored the Language Arts at first since I love IEW and plan to continue using it. After speaking with the awesome reps I learned that I could use the LIFEPAC language arts for grammar/spelling/vocab/comprehension, etc. and just ignore the writing portion. This would eliminate 4 other workbooks for him, which is my goal – to try to make his schooling simpler to go to and from the gym since he trains for his gymnastics so much.
We didn’t purchase anything yet, we are still deciding, but this is on our radar for now!
We enjoyed talking again with the Charleston Southern University rep, who is just wonderful, and my son is really liking this college option! We found them last year here at the convention and have them on our very short list of schools he is thinking of attending! He is a rising junior, and we are trying to plan his junior/senior year around the college he plans to attend {as much as possible}. We plan to visit CSU this summer and are very excited about this possibility for him!
We learned that CSU has just launched their dual-enrollment online classes for High School juniors and seniors and provide scholarship $ up to $1000 if you end up attending CSU. We are strongly looking into this for at least 2 of his dual enrollment classes in the upcoming final years of HS!
One of the highlights of TTD for me is getting to spend time with one of my long time friends, Jolanthe from Homeschool Creations. We normally room together for a couple of conventions each year, but this year we each brought one of our teenagers with us so we had separate rooms. We soaked up as much time as we could together!
Our poor unsocialized homeschool kids with no friends. 
Baxter – A NEW Puppy!
If you follow me on Instagram, you know we got a puppy at the end of January. He was an accidental addition. You know, we were just “going to look” at how the rescue/adoption process worked. But there he was, the perfect puppy and he just had to be ours. <— That is my husband talking! I was totally fine coming home without a dog, but he insisted that Baxter was the one for us. So we have a new dog! He’s a small pit mix and the smartest sweetest most awesome dog. I am so thankful my husband followed his instincts! You can see all of Baxter here on Instagram with his very own hashtag!
State Champion
Once again, our son took home the State Champion title! He won the All Around, Pommel Horse, Parallel Bars and Floor! He got the silver for high bar, rings and vault! His Level 8 team also won 1st place team!
We head to regionals in Georgia where he hopes to qualify for Nationals for the very first time! He is competing level 8 elite this year, and that is the first level that goes to nationals! Follow along with us on Instagram, using his hashtag #krashthegymnast.
Below you can see some videos from his state championship meet…
Chicks
We have CHICKENS!!!!!! I won’t elaborate much more since they have their own blog posts and their own Instagram hashtag: #chickens4thehinsons! See our journey so far by clicking on the images below.
Another Gymnast
Much to our surprise {huge surprise} we now have another gymnast joining a team in our house! Our daughter has taken classes since she was little but never really loved it. In fact, there were a few years recently where she begged to stop but I kept her in one simple class a week simply for exercise. Then one day last fall, she announced that she liked it and wanted to take more classes. We talked with the coaches and they placed her on the low-level pre-team – Starlets, and she began attending twice a week and had in-gym competition last December. Recently she was asked to join the AAU Bronze team and she is over-the-moon excited! She has one more Starlets meet in a couple of weeks and then she will begin training with her new team. Follow her journey here on Isntagram #LFHgymnastics
Oily Kids
For the past 3 weeks I have been leading an Oily Kids event on Facebook with two of my great friends – Jodi and Jolanthe! The live events are complete but the content is still there for about another week. It’s not too late to watch the videos, download the PDFs and grab the fun printable pack for kids! There’s even a giveaway still open right now!
I led sessions on FOCUS & SLEEP and also told my story here – which shares about how I went from a total oil skeptic to where I am now over 5 years later. Be sure to see the Table of Contents here where you can see all of the topics and direct links to everything! Just don’t wait, as this event will be removed, it will not stay up indefinitely!
Here’s direct link to my live videos. In the event you’ll find much much more!
Family Stuff
My husband and I celebrated our 19th anniversary in early March. God is good! Got the family together for a quick Easter Sunday photo too!
See more of what’s been going on lately in our life here on Instagram!
See our other Lately in Our Life posts here!