| If you've been following me on Instagram, you know I've recently been sharing a picture almost every day with a "5 Things You Should Know About This Picture" caption. So many, many of you have told me how much you love me sharing this real-life, behind-the-scenes, every day stuff, that it sparked an idea for a new Saturday series called "5 Things I'm Loving This Week". This series - which I plan to post on Saturday nights - will be random things I've been digging the past week. It could be a link to an article I loved, a recipe I loved, a book I loved, something we're doing as a family that I loved… or any other thing or idea or something that I've been loving that week. I'm going to try this idea out for a few weeks to see how it goes! It may or may not be something that I continue long-term. We'll just see! 
1. Berries - I'm on a berry kick right now and have been eating a big bowl of berries every night before bed as a late-night snack. So yummy! I may also have a wee bit of whipped cream with the berries, too. Ahem. 2. Sonlight Homeschool Curriculum - Y'all. My kids have never been more excited about starting a new homeschool curriculum. Never. And we're headed into our sixth official year of homeschooling. We are completely and totally eating up Core D (Intro to American History)… we love the read alouds, the history, the geography, the Bible, and even the creative writing. Kathrynne has already begged if we can please continue doing this curriculum every year until she graduates. We'll see if the momentum continues, but I have to say that I am just soaking it up and enjoying it right along with them. 
3. New Schedule - In addition to a new homeschool curriculum (we school year-round, so our 2015-2016 year started this past week), we also have a new daily schedule (or probably more of a "routine" since it's not rigid.) One of my big goals for this new school year was to find a way to work quite a bit fewer hours each week and to be completely offline for more hours in the middle of the day. I wasn't sure how it was all going to work, but I'm finding - so far - that being much more compartmentalized and turning off all electronics for chunks of the day actually means that I'm a lot more productive and relaxed in all spheres of life. I'm really hoping this continues because this past week was one of the best weeks I've had in a very, very long time! 
4. Podcasts - I dabbled in podcasts for the past year or so, but didn't really fall head-over-heels in love with them until this past month. I'm not sure why, but I now see why people love them so much. I've found a handful of shows that I really love and a few times during the day when I'm finding it so fun to turn on a podcast and listen while driving, while folding laundry, while working in the kitchen, and while straightening the house. It's also inspiring me to start seriously considering the idea of producing my own podcast sometime down the road. We'll see!  5. Tough Mudder photos - So I know I've talked about this quite a bit, but the official race pictures were released this week and it was SO fun to look through them and relive the highs and lows of the race. Plus, get to see our reactions as we did different things - like come up out of a huge tub of icy water we had just plunged into or trying to climb up out of a mud pit. The picture above was taken right after we'd gone through the Electroshock Therapy and were almost to the finish line. You can tell we are exhausted but oh-so-happy! What about you? What 5 things are YOU loving this week?
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