Happy New Year!

Hey, hey dear readers! Sorry for the lack of updates. It's been a hectic New Year Week as I anticipated in our previous post. We still have one more party this Saturday (plus our eldest is sick!) so I'll keep this post sweet and short. I'm pretty sure your home is quite busy too as the holidays are wrapping up :) Without further much ado, here's our family Happy New Year card:

THIS 2015, CHERISH YOUR FAMILY.

Aren't our kids adorable? Haha! The youngest is such a ham. That's her new pose: eyes closed with tongue out, lol! This wonderful photo of ours was taken in Samal last December 27 during hubby's family reunion. So happy we finally had a decent family picture before 2014 ended! Thank you so much Joebert for taking a lot of photos of our family :) If you're reading this, your effort is very much appreciated.

The lovely frame and wordart, by the way, is from the awesome Rhonna Designs app. I highly recommend you install this app asap if you like to play with your photos like me, hihi! It's available in the Apple App Store and Google Play. It also has a partner design app called RD Magic which I haven't tried yet as it's only available for iOS. Can't wait for the Android version to come out! <3

And before I type more photo editor app recommendations (I have lots!), let me close this post already, haha! Have a wonderful and prosperous 2015 everyone! Homeschooling posts will be back next week. So stay tuned for that dear homeschoolers! :)

FREE Homeschooling Resources - MOOCs 1

One of the many reasons why I am thankful for the internet is that tons of educational sites are literally just a click away from me and my kids. And because of these sites, I've started "homeschooling" too :) The websites where adults (or highly advanced kids) can learn university-level subjects or courses are called MOOCs or Massive Open Online Courses. I have tried and finished (some, haha) different courses from different MOOCs, and loved it all! I'm a lifelong learner so it wasn't a surprise that I'd take to this new learning tool like fish takes to water ;-)

I first heard about the term "MOOC" in 2011 when Sebastian Thrun made his artifical intelligence class available online. I think I saw the link to his class being passed around in Google+. He's a much-respected Stanford professor so a lot signed up for his free, QUALITY course. I was one of them. But alas, I wasn't able to finish it as I became pregnant with our second child (plus a hyperactive toddler) which left me with no energy at the end of the day. Due to the popularity of his course, Mr. Thrun soon founded Udacity in 2012. I signed up there and took CS101 or Introduction to Computer Science. I love tech, CS and programming* but my teen brain was stuck on making my childhood dream of becoming a doctor come true so I took BS Biology in college instead of BS CS. But thanks to Udacity, I was able to self-study CS at my own pace in 2012 :)

What's in a name?

In my previous post (which also happens to be this blog's first post), I related why I decided to blog again. But instead of updating my old blogs with new write-ups, I made a brandnew one~ Davao Homeschooling Family :) It took me awhile deciding what to name this blog, and I was thisclose to parking it at www.melissaelbanbuena.com to establish my married name. Everything is about branding in this day and age of the Internet, and having my own .com will be a great boon.

My old personal blog was at melissasolito.blogspot.com and I wanted continuity, i.e. from blogging my experiences as a single girl to sharing snippets of my married life with two kids. However, when I thought of the posts I'll write in this blog, a pattern emerged~ it's either about our experiences in beautiful Davao, the girls' homeschooling adventures, or assorted family matters. Can you see now where I got this blog's title? Hihi! Davao Homeschooling Family, simple enough words, direct to the point, and sums up our family perfectly as well! ♥