Friday, September 27th

Every once in a while I have this really good "bad" problem, in that the kids will start playing beautifully first thing in the morning... Actually, the kids often start out the day playing really nicely together, but I have no trouble pulling the plug and getting school underway.  However, on Fridays I tend to be more laissez faire with how much we actually get accomplished, and that Friday Attitude coupled with excellent playing + a spontaneous invitation to Chick Fil A from Grammie resulted in a whole lot of fun and very little (only math and reading!) crossed off our to-do list ;-)  In the late afternoon we went to our friends house to play and ride bikes for an hour or so and then back home for dinner and a relaxed evening.

Victoria woke up having slept on her leg weirdly and Scarlett set herself up as doctor/nurse, tending to her patient all morning long.  Pillow fluffing, mandatory rest, cool washcloths, sips of water... the whole nine yards.  Lincoln was often in there as well, sometimes being her assistant, sometimes finding unique ways to pest the girls, and other times just sort of lounging around.  When her medical duties permitted, Scarlett would grab her guitar and serenade the baby in a melodic but never-ending, made up song.

When Grammie offered to take the kids to Chick Fil A, they totally livened up and were running here and there trying to get shoes on as fast as humanly possible!  While they were gone, Waverly and I did important work on the computer - mostly banging on the keyboard, which is a critical skill for all babies in this technological age ;-)

As previously noted, Waverly has two expressions - smiling and poker face.  When the poker face is engaged, there is almost no amount of crazy antics I can do to warrant any reaction at all, haha.

So sleepy-faced, but not giving it up.  A little sling time while clutching her giraffe was in order.

The kids laid down for naps, but I let Scarlett get up - after she did a bit of schoolwork she was happy to play with Waverly.

I had to wake up Lincoln and Victoria - they were totally crashed after our few days of no (or little) naps - but they were eager to get dressed and head to our friends to ride bikes!  Lincoln, Victoria and N. 

I made a fruitless attempt at getting a group picture of the kiddos on their bikes.  Not pointing fingers, but one kid's bike didn't want to be in the picture (or so I was told).  I told him that's the problem with having a "Dinosaur" bike - they're very unruly ;-)

A sweet/ew sidenote: Lincoln brought me this pretty golden-yellow flower - he was so sweet about it and it had a delicious scent!  I put it behind Waverly's ear as she was waking up from a quick snooze in the sling and snapped this picture. (sweet) Then, I was chatting with Mrs. C and looked down and realized there were five confused ants scurrying about inside the flower (EW!), so I quickly snatched it off the baby and tossed it aside before doing a once-over on the baby for any stragglers. Eek!

After riding bikes for a few minutes, the kids hopped off and played "can I cross your golden river?" for a few minutes before aggravation ensued and I suggested they find something else to do.  This led to them winding up in the backyard for a bit - Mrs. C and I (mostly me) decided we would let them have a few moments of unsupervised play.  After a couple of minutes, Mrs. C went inside the house and while there she peeked out the back door to check on the kids and found Lincoln poised and ready to leap off the top of their playscape onto the trampoline.  I think she almost had a heart attack!  Welcome to my life...

Jim had spent a bit of time in the morning putting in his application for a CPL (carry pistol license), and in the evening he was going over the ins and outs of why someone might want to carry a gun, the safety one takes with a gun, procedures for what to do if you ever just find a gun ("Do you ever pick it up?" "What if you just want to hand it to an adult for safety, do you pick it up then?" a variety of scenarios), and so forth.  The kids were enthralled!

Friday, September 20th

Friday was a return to the normal schedule after two field trip days - we took our time, mostly focusing on math, reading, passport club (Argentina studies), and making sure to fit in tea & story time.  In the evening, Jim was finished with work just a bit earlier than usual and thrilled the kiddos by loading them all up and taking them to a huge, empty church parking lot to ride bikes for over an hour!  When they got back we ate dinner and I went to the gym, then came home to snuggle everyone right before bedtime. 

Victoria has really hit her stride with reading during the past couple of weeks, using what I am going to call my foolproof Skittle Program.  It's very scientific.  Essentially, we had a few frustrating spells wherein she was not wanting to put the required mental effort into reading, while I knew that SHE knew exactly what the words said.  I tested this theory by telling her that I would give her one Skittle at the end of every page she completed by herself and with no whining/fussing.  Amazingly, she started flying through books! ;-)  Here she is, sticker'ing yet another book she completed.

Waverly's expression every time Victoria reads "sawL" instead of "saw."

We do not think that word means what you think it means, Victoria ;-)

For passport club time, we discussed when Argentina gained it's independence and the meaning behind their national flag.  The kids were given blank flags to color, however Lincoln chose to use the time to practice writing his letters.  He is doing so well!  Look at those "N"s - superb! 
 :-)  I was hardly going to force him to color while he was writing so nicely, haha

Scarlett and Victoria busily coloring in their flags. 

The library books I had checked out for Argentina were due back, but while they finished coloring I read a couple of the books one last time.  In the "My Mama's Little Ranch on the Pampas" book, a family buys a ranch out in the Pampas of Argentina but when the school year starts they have to live in their apartment in the big city and the kids hate being away.  Scarlett said, "That doesn't make any sense.  Why wouldn't they just homeschool?"  Fine point :-)

During tea & story time, we drank a chai mate blend from Teavana - one of my favorites - and read "The Little Engine That Could" and "The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything."  I think we've read that book 12 times this week!!  They love it.  It will make a nice kids'-level-scary ghost story at camping next month.

Before they left to go bike riding, Lincoln made me "leave a kiss" on him - I gave him a big smooch on the cheek and he ran into the bathroom and came out and said, "I can't see it really good! Put more lip stuff on!"  So I coated up and gave him another big smooch and he was finally satisfied that the world would see he was marked with mommy-love! lol 

Jim took a panoramic shot of the epic empty parking lot at the church down the road from us.  Perfectly flat and zero traffic! 

Jim and the kids invited Mr. Young and Charlotte (our good neighbor friends) to join in the biking fun - Lincoln thought this meant he needed to try to ride into Mr. Young as many times as possible :-p

Riding his big boy bike like a pro!