36-week check-up

I'm planning to give updates from now to the end of pregnancy. You will notice that our baby is in the last box on the baby counter at the top of my blog! I can't believe we're so close to the end. I washed baby clothes this weekend, and Dany fixed the crib and baby bouncers this morning. I'm really getting excited about holding a new little one soon!

I had my weekly check-up this afternoon. Both of the midwives checked me and decided that Elena is breech. We have an ultrasound scheduled for tomorrow to confirm this. Assuming they are correct (and for once I'm hoping they're wrong!), they want to schedule an external version sometime within the next week. Of course, it would be great if Elena decided to flip on her own!

Please say lots of prayers that Elena will move into a more favorable position for birth!

More Easter pictures

Here are pictures of our afternoon celebrating Easter with our friends, the Kroms.



First, I have one picture of Matteo and Chiara dressed up for Mass. We forgot to bring the camera to church, but we'll try to remember on another Sunday. We celebrate Easter for 7 weeks, so we have more chances for a nice group picture of the kids in their Sunday best!


Here are some pictures of the egg hunt.

And, here are some pictures of the kids playing afterwards while the adults were inside enjoying the wonderful food!

Happy Easter!

Happy Easter!!

Here are the kids digging into their Easter chocolate this morning :)

We're off to Mass this morning. This afternoon we're going to our friends' house for an egg hunt and a yummy dinner!!

A Blessed Easter to you all!!!

Chiara celebrates!

I said that we will not celebrate Chiara's birthday until Monday, but I did get her a little treat at the store yesterday...strawberries!! She actually thinks these are better than cake!

And, here's a video of some birthday cards that she opened today from Grandma and Pipa. You can tell that she enjoyed them :)

Have a blessed Triduum!!

Happy 2nd Birthday, Chiara!

Two years ago today, Chiara Antonia was born on Easter Sunday! We will celebrate her birthday with cake and presents on Monday, so today I'll just share some baby pictures... (I'm sorry that these are out of order, but blogger is not letting me move them around at the moment.)


This was taken on the day of her Baptism when she was 4 weeks old.

This was taken two weeks after she was born. Thankfully, the Church celebrates Easter for more than one day. We spent the 1st Easter Sunday in the hospital, but we got to celebrate on the other Sundays!

I included this picture of Chiara with John Paul, so that we will all remember to pray for him as he undergoes another big surgery today. The Rosamonds visited us a month after Chiara was born.

Here is Matteo's 1st big brother picture! He was not able to come to the hospital when she was born because he was sick :(

Who would've guessed that such a serious baby would turn out to be the funny little toddler we have running around the house today!

Here are the girls with their new little sister on the day she was born!

And here is Chiara in her 1st picture, umbilical cord and all! She was one of our smaller babies, weighing 'only' 9.5 lbs!! (And, I'm hoping that her new little sister will follow in her footsteps!)

Thanks be to God for our precious baby girl!! May He continue to bless her!

Homeschool Week 3/30 - 4/3

Well, I'm very late posting for last week! I know that this is a dangerous point in a pregnancy to start getting behind on blogging! Anytime you miss a regular post, everyone starts wondering why :) Be assured that Elena and I are still gestating away, as we should be! This is my last week without a midwife appointment. Next Monday will begin my weekly appointments until the birth!

Before I get on with the story of our week, I want to request some prayers for friends. First of all, prayer of thankgiving for the happy birth of my friend, Kate's (Momopoly blog on the right side of my blog), new baby, Mary Elizabeth. Congratulations to your whole family!! Also, John Paul Rosamond is having yet another cranial reconstruction tomorrow (Wednesday). Please offer many prayers for him and their family.

I've been busy trying to finish as many things as possible before Elena comes. I've had enough Arcara babies to know that they just don't lie around and sleep peacefully like some other babies I've heard of :) I've almost completed Maria's homeschool portfolio that must be evaluated and turned into the school district. I also spent some time this week looking over math curricula for Maria as she approaches pre-algebra. During supper last night, she expressed her desire to get a Ph.D. in Math, with an emphasis in Fractions (LOL!), so I want find the best curriculum to help her fulfill her dreams :) I've also been trying to complete as much of my lesson plans for next year as possible. On Saturday, I realized that Chiara's 2nd birthday is this week (however, we will not celebrate it until Easter Monday), so I ordered her a birthday gift. I also ordered some history books for Cati for next year. I'm trying to cut down on our library trips, not only for convinence-sake, but also because I sometimes have trouble getting certain books around here because there are so many homeschoolers wanting the same ones! I updated my "Wish List" (on the right side of the blog) to reflect my order.

On Sunday afternoon, we went to our church for their annual Palm Sunday dinner. We ate some yummy food, and the kids had fun making some crafts. Here is a bouquet of Easter lillies they made...




We have to have paper flowers around here because it's too cold for the real ones!! Look at this picture that I took from our window this morning...



I didn't scan in any of the kids' work from last week, but I do have a few pictures.


Chiara continued enjoying her Wedgits. They are great because they are so easy to stack!
She can spend quite a while creating and knocking down towers :)



Cati learned how to draw number lines last week in math.


Each week, the girls give narrations and do copywork (or take dictation) from a couple of passages from a story. Last week, Cati and I read from "Sir Gawain and the Green Knight." Cati was inspired to draw the Green Knight. However, she thought that coloring him all green, as he was described in the book, was too boring, so she took some liberties with the color scheme.

Here is a frog that Cati made in one of her classes at St. Vincent on Friday.

One of Cati's math lessons last week was also about fractions and measuring, so she got to make cookies. At least this lesson came close to the math lesson with the paint :)

Maria's really been into scrapbooking lately, thanks to her St. Vincent class. She spent a lot of time this past weekend working on this. She's made quite a nice book, which I think it great because I haven't had time to put together anything! We have tons of pictures of the kids on our computers, but it is nice to have some printed to look at in a book.

Finally, I have a video of Maria playing the piano. She's been working on this piece for a while. It's not perfect, of course, but it's better than I can do! I think it's great for someone who's been playing for less than a year.

Have a blessed Holy Week!!!

Homeschool Week 3/23 - 3/27

We had a good week. We're getting to the end of our school year. We've been working hard so that we can finish by the end of April (hopefully) before Elena arrives! Our biggest accomplishment of the week was completing Maria's standardized test for state requirements. Yeah! We're glad to have that out of the way!

We continued learning about Julius Caesar this week in history. Here is Cati's narration (in my handwriting) about what we learned.

Here is Maria's chemistry experiment for the week. Write-up is first, pictures below.

Jars on day 1...

Jars on day 3...

Here is some of the kids' work that I usually don't show...

Part of Maria's writing each week includes dictation. It is something new for her this year. Dictation is good because she has to think about handwriting, capitalization, punctuation, and spelling all at the same time, and retain a couple of sentences in her short-term memory. These skills are difficult for a beginning writer and are necessary before a person can really focus on original writing.

Here are 2 of Maria's dictation writing exercises from this week which were from passages about the California Gold Rush of 1849.

This is from Cati's Grammar exercises this week. She began learning about alphabetical order.

Here is some of Cati's cursive practice from this week.





One of Cati's math lessons this week was about symmetry. It was a very exciting lesson because it included paint! Here is a video of what she did.



Here is one of the symmetrical designs that she made.



Of course, all math lessons following this will be disappointing in comparison :) The next day, Cati was sitting eagarly at her desk waiting to begin math and asked, "What are we learning today?!"
I answered, "Today we are learning about subtracting 10 from a 2-digit number and ordering 2-digit numbers."
Cati responds, "But, that's not fun! I want to paint again!"
Oh, well!


Cati finished her spider lapbook this week:

Here are some things Cati brought home from her St. Vincent classes on Friday.

This is her butterfly family from her "Animal Art" class :)

This is an octopus from her "Under the Sea" class.

Something new and exciting around our house lately are pen pals! Cati and Maria recently started writing to pen pals who we found through one of my homeschool email groups. In the most recent letter from Cati's pen pal, she asked Cati what her favorite piano song is to play. In the letter she wrote back (which we hope to mail this afternoon), Cati answered her pen pal and promised a video on the blog so that she could hear it! So, here it is...

Entertaining Chiara in the mornings is one of my most difficult tasks. Thankfully, she had a renewed interest in Wedgits this week!

Here is a funny video her her playing with them. When she 'disappears' during the video, she is coming behind the camera to she her creation on the camera screen.

I'm sorry that I don't have anything to show for Matteo this week! He's still working on his reading and writing. He also LOVES his audio books on CD!! We've heard the Gingerbread Boy so many times, that we can almost recite it :)

Only 4 more weeks of school around here!!!