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!

Saturday, September 14th

Jim had found a fun Grand Store Opening for us to attend on Saturday, but it didn't start til closer to noon, so we enjoyed a lazy morning and then got dressed and headed out.  Afterward we did a bit of research-shopping for our upcoming camping trip and made a short list of items to pick up closer to time, then headed home for the late afternoon and evening. 

Everyone is loving these chairs that Jim bought for the back porch.  There are only two of them as the intent was for Jim and I to relax and lounge together in the evenings once the kids are in bed.  Instead, there is a mad rush out to the screened-in porch every morning to see who will score one of the best seats in the house ;-)  Of course, an adult gets one if they so desire, and Scarlett has the longest legs, so it ended up a daddy (and Waverly) and Scarlett sit-together time.  Camping was the main topic of conversation, as the kids want each and every detail.

The grand opening event that we attended was for a beautiful new gun range/club in a nearby town.  The kids are the ones who called it "beautiful" and they, being the good sports that they are, were happy to check out all of the festivities and make a fun time of it.  Lincoln's whole face lit up when he saw the pistol door handles at the entrance.

We toured the inside of the facility and the girls ooh'ed and ahh'ed over the pink and purple handguns, while Lincoln tried to get a compound bow off the wall, but thankfully it was mounted there.  When we had seen all there was to see, we moseyed outdoors where there was free food - hotdogs, BBQ, a dessert bar and drinks.  The kids all felt super cool, because they were allowed to go and order their food by themselves and get their drink refills themselves. 

Victoria and her hat!  Love this girl :-)

The kids were thrilled with the dessert bar, especially these one items which were called (I kid you not) "frosting shooters."  They were everything the name promises - namely, cavities in a cup.  Little plastic cups filled with frosting and a few sprinkles on top.  It's what Victoria is eating daintily with a spoon in the picture.  Yuck! 

Waverly makes a nice chin-rest for me when she dozes off ;-)  Scarlett, also rocking her hat, was enjoying her dessert selection(s).

At home later that afternoon, Lincoln found the most warrior-fighting-garb he could and spent some time punching various walls.

Nana returned home from a haircut, sporting a new, shorter and stylish 'do.  She avoids pictures at all costs, but here is the back of her stylish head :-p

Bath time!  I think these two pictures sum up about 80% of Lincoln's personality, haha

The kids' Halloween costumes had all finally arrived, and we agreed to let them try everything on.  Well, of course, that ended with some advanced negotiations that resulted in them playing in their costumes for nearly an hour ;-)  They were eventually retrieved and put up until trick-or-treating day, but daddy scored a preview shot of SilverMist, Pink Ninja, and Captain America!

Tuesday, September 10th

With a lot on our docket school-wise for Tuesday, we dove right in and had a fun time getting it all accomplished.  In the evening after dinner, I went to workout and Jim played outside with the kids - practicing important skills such as bike riding and gun shooting ;-)

Bible Lesson #5 - discussing the Fruit of the Spirit.  We started out in their bedroom and I gave them each a little strip of crepe streamer.  I explained that the old Hebrew word for the Holy Spirit was "wind" - and like the wind, we cannot see the Holy Spirit.  So how is it possible to know it resides within us if we trust Jesus?  I asked the kids to put their hand in front of the fan and tell me what they felt ("wind"), and then how they could prove that wind was real if someone were to say, for instance, "Well, I can't see wind, so I don't believe in it."  They were quick to catch onto where I was going with my point and told me, "Well, I can FEEL it!"  True, but that's not evidence.  Next we held up our streamers in front of the fan and a-ha!  We had some evidence that there really is wind - we can tell because it moves the paper.  This was the perfect tie-in to discussing how the Holy Spirit is evidenced in us by how it moves us toward ever increasing fruits (love, gentleness, kindness, etc. - Gal. 5:22).

Meanwhile, Jim was busy getting his usual morning exercise in... at the golf range :-)

Timeline practice with two new event cards.  These events and the song are ingrained in Lincoln's brain.  He sings this song from sun-up to sun-down! lol  One of their favorite shake-out-the-wiggles things to do in between other school work is to run around the living room as fast as they can in a lap while yell-singing the Timeline Song.

Next we started our second SQUILT lesson, on Francois Couperin's Chaconne.  We had a good discussion on the difference between writing a piece in Major vs. Minor and how that changed the mood of the music so dramatically. 

Scarlett's "Draw What You Hear" sheet - people and animals all crying in the rain, haha. That's how it made me feel too!

For our next portion of History, we read on the Earliest People - Nomads.  Even though we are early on in the text, I cannot say enough good things about Story of the World at this point! It's written so well and engagingly that even Lincoln loves to sit and listen and ask questions, and the girls are very absorbed by it.  Per their recommended "extra literature" section, we read "The First Dog" and "It's Disgusting and We Ate It!"  Both were big hits.

The text and one of the story books highlighted the fact that pre-written-record, stories and events were often depicted on cave walls, and that some still exist for us to see today.  So we crumpled up some brown kraft paper to represent the rough surface of a cave wall and using only natural colors, the kids all tried their hand at creating a cave painting.

It was more difficult than they thought to paint neatly on the "cave walls."

Victoria painted a chicken and trees (she said, "They probably hunted chickens back then." lol)

Scarlett tried her hand at a cave bear and added artistic elements.

When the kids asked for some pink paint, it was a good opportunity to discuss how they had to use natural elements around them for paint pigmentation.  This had them pleading for bowls to take outdoors so that they could find things to make their own natural paint.  They picked flowers, dirt and grass and tried their best to grind it up into a paste with rocks :-)

Waverly wanted to be sitting up in a chair-type position, and I had a cave-painting mess to clean up, so we tried out the sling and achieved a workable balance.  I'm just not as comfortable with slings as I am with wraps, but it did the trick this time!

In the late afternoon, the kids begged to watch "3 Ninjas Kick Back," so I turned it on for them and they joined Waverly, who was already on the floor in the living room.  It was so funny, because when it came on, she immediately whipped her head around to watch and assumed this stance - like she was a karate baby, lol!

Chillaxing~

I left to head to the gym right after dinner and Jim took the kids outside - allegedly to help Lincoln on his bike, but it was no time before he had the kids practicing with the AR-15 airsoft  :-p

She manages to make shooting look adorable! :-)