Monday, November 4th

Our week started off with a Monday full of school, play and a surprise Boo gift from us to the kids.

The kids did their usual schoolwork and then played several games with their color-counting bears and a few other manipulatives.  I love watching what games they invent - modern education does not give enough credit to how important play is.  It's a child-led way for them to practice all of the skills they are learning.  There is also an incredibly valuable knowledge trickle-down effect when the older and younger ages play together.

Waverly was in a very happy, content mood and I needed to clean my bathroom so I laid her on my bed and got to work.  The bathroom is line of sight to the bed and she was in the middle surrounded by pillows so she couldn't make any fancy maneuvers and roll off.  I could hear her babbling happily so I tackled a few things before checking on her and I found this - the new little cat sitting on top of a pillow...on top of the baby!  Waverly was pulling and tugging at her fur and the cat was purring and sitting there totally pleased.  I realized it had been the cat that elicited the burst of "talking" from the baby :-)  When she caught me watching out of the corner of her eye she looked at me and just had the most conspiratorial look, like, "This is so amazing what is happening right here, right now." haha

In her high chair at lunchtime, with a little mesh bag full of crisp apples - she really can't get anything out of them but she loves gnawing around.  I think she is starting to teeth in earnest now, and it seems to feel pretty good on those gums!

Jim had ordered a special holiday boo online for Scarlett (one they had looked at together previously and she had loved), so when it arrived in the mail that afternoon, I made a quick run to pick up one for Victoria and Lincoln while the kiddos napped and Gram stayed home. They were really excited to receive their festive boos!

Jim and I haven't been getting much Starbucks lately, trying to avoid the sugary drinks.  However, as a special treat I stopped and picked up iced coffees for the both of us - I asked them to be topped with whipped cream so that they felt more decadent than they tasted :-)

Salty has been feeling much better since taking his prescription medicines - he's all smiles now and even managed to sneak a little forbidden sofa time with Jim when the kids were in bed!

Sunday, November 3rd

Sunday was very full, although it started out relaxed with at home time.  Toward lunchtime we rallied and headed out for a fun family lunch at Texas Roadhouse - the kids had never been before and were quite entertained by throwing the peanut shells on the floor and the spontaneous dancing by the staff :-) During nap time for the kiddos, I headed out to do a quick thrift store run (I've so missed it during the past few months!) and then went home to get the big kids ready for Pajama Night at AWANA.

I don't know why these cats tolerate this girl - maybe they can sense how much she loves/obsesses over them?  But one of her favorite things to do is walk around with one under each arm.  In a weird way it seems to have worked in so far as desensitizing them to one another and they no longer hiss when in each other's presence. 

 While Waverly is obviously her own person with her own unique personality, it's funny to me to see little snippets of her siblings' temperament manifest.  She can be very easy going (like Victoria and Lincoln) so long as there isn't something she specifically wants to do... but already I can see that she often has an agenda, or her own little baby mental list of activities she'd like to do (Scarlett).  "First, the exersaucer.  Then a little light stretching on the ground.  Finish up with a bit of toy/floor time." haha

She loves this new rattle-ball toy that Grammie bought for her!

 Out to lunch and we were seated in this big, long booth - three on each side, and Waverly actually sat in a highchair seat between Jim and I!  Now that she has her own highchair at home we figured she could attempt to sit in one while we're out and about.  Overall she did great and sat happily in her chair for half of our time there.  I gave her a chunk of rock-hard crusty bread to mess around with and she really went after it with a look of fierce determination on her face! :-)

Victoria, Lincoln and Scarlett all did so well, ordering their own food and eating like champs.  I'm not say that they always behave perfectly when we're out to eat, but by and large I think they do an awesome job for their ages and I'm thankful that they are fun to go out with!  After nibbling on a few shelled peanuts, the kids spent a lot of time and effort prying open dozens of peanuts and forcing me and Jim to consume them :-p

 Victoria ordered the kid's ribs and Lincoln was pretty sorry that he hadn't also ordered them.  Fortunately, his sister was sweet and let him have one; he devoured it and then spent time nibbling on the bone. 

I love going to the thrift store - it has been several months since I've been able to go on a regular basis, but I'd like to make an effort to at least drop in one for 15 or 20 minutes a couple of times a month.  Sometimes it can be a total bust, but more often than not I'll find a hidden gem or two.  This trip I found two awesome shoe items.  This pair of (toddler-size) boys' size 12 Keen Boots in really good condition.  Brand new they are $64.95 and they rang up at $2.92 at my local Goodwill.  It's a size and a half too big for Lincoln, but I snagged them anyway as they'll be perfect for either spring or next fall.

And while the picture looks dingy, these Sorel boots had only superficial dirt (which I know as I had my ever-handy baby wipes with me and the grime wiped right off!) and were a size 13 which will be perfect for one of the girls in Spring.  Brand new these average between $55-80. Another win! 

The kids in their jammies and AWANA vests, ready to go and have a fun time playing games, hearing a Bible message and memorizing Scripture.

 Waverly and I were going to run a couple of errands, only she decided napping in the car would be infinitely more fun! :-p  Because she hadn't napped all day and I didn't want an overly tired, crabby babycakes come bedtime, I essentially drove to our destination and held her while she napped, then drove home! haha  Babies. 

Thursday, October 17th

Scarlett had been asking for a few months to try rock climbing, after seeing the rock wall at a mall we visited and more recently at the Atlanta Zoo.  Jim had done some searching and found a place not far from us that was running a Homeschool Day promotion with half-price climbing!  It's only once-a-month, so we had the date marked on our calendar and the kids were thrilled on Thursday morning as they would finally get to try their hand at rock climbing.  The promotional pricing was from 12:00 p.m. to 2:00 p.m., so we were able to get all of our schoolwork done in the morning before heading out.  What a great place!!  The kids had a blast and although a touch nervous at first, they eventually found their pace and were scaling the walls in no time. 

Sissy was reading to Lincoln from one of the baby's books, and Cupcake was curled up on the chair with them.

Scarlett is doing such an excellent job of reading!  I'm so proud of her hard work and fluid read aloud style.

Finally, with math, reading, Timeline card review, memory verse work and more over and accomplished, it was time to hit the road.  We were so glad that daddy was able to take a long lunch and take us!  It was the perfect weather to head to an indoor event - the weather was chilly and rainy; also perfect for Waverly to use her new Columbia jacket :-)  She looked sooo cute!

The facility's website had been very clear that only 5+ year olds were allowed to climb, but they were supposed to have a great play area.  But when we arrived, they let Linc get geared up after all!  Truthfully though, he wasn't too keen on climbing and spent almost all of his time in the awesome play space.

These two girls, though, were awesome climbers!

Bottom of one wall. The girls spent at least an hour working this wall - going again and again and again until they could do it fluidly.  We met the Phillips crew there and the kids all enjoyed the challenge, and I was proud that no one got frustrated or discouraged but instead just kept working at it until they mastered it (or close).  Victoria never made it *quite* to the top to ring the bell, but she just kept at it and was really close - at the end on our way home she told me, "I think next time I will get to the top!" :-)

Fun rope swing area~

Lincoln did take a few tries to climb the wall - it was strange, because he was such a smooth, confident climber, but he would get up only three or four feet and say, "I'm done."  That was it.  He would just climb beautifully and stop cold and no amount of cheering him on or persuading him to go a bit higher would convince him :-p

Scarlett was climbing pretty well but would get 25 feet up or so and start looking down and freeze up.  Olivia was the first to make it to the top and ring the bell, and I think it inspired Scarlett to keep working and pretty soon she was scaling all the way to the top also and was so proud of herself :-)  I loved that the kids cheered each other on!  Such sweet friends! (Judd was a funny one, too! First time climbing and he just zoomed right to the top like a mountain goat, lol. Then I don't think he ever did it again - it was like "okay, I did it, now I'm done.")

Fear has been vanquished!

Sis climbing with such focus.  Even though she never made it to the top, she LOVED climbing and asked when we could come back :-)

All smiles~

Back at home, Scarlett asked me to take this picture and send it to Ms. Amanda for showing to Olivia - she had told her friend about the new kitten, but much like her daddy the day before I think she got an "uh-huh, sure" in response and wanted to send proof ;-)

The stare-off :-o

Wednesday, October 16th

Wednesday was an ordinary school, library and karate day... with the exception of a feline visitor setting up shop in our house!  A sweet kitten, probably 5 or 6 months old, followed Grammie on her usual morning walk.  At first she assumed it was Pixie, who often accompanies her on walks because she doesn't realize she's a cat and not a dog ;-p  However, she eventually realized it was too small but by then the cat was traipsing after her in earnest, following her all the way back home.  When she picked it up it seemed, if not completely malnourished, as though it had definitely missed a few meals.  So she brought it inside onto the back porch to give it some food (it ate almost two full cups of cat food over the course of the day - that is an incredible amount for a kitten!) and as soon as Scarlett saw it, she was in full cat-care mode.  The kids begged and begged if we could keep it, and I told them it was welcome to stay... this was careful wording, as I realized there was a very excellent chance that it would simply let itself out of the back screened-in porch door and take off.  I also told them they'd need to talk with Jim about it.

The funny thing is that the kids play imagination games all of the time and Jim has become very accustomed to just rolling with whatever bizarre scenario they throw his way on his comings and goings ("I'm an orphan with no family because they died in the war...Can I live here now?" or "This is a baby tiger with no mama, so we have to tend to it," etc.).  So as they walked past with a black cat in tow and Scarlett and Victoria rapidly said, "Hey daddy, this is our new cat. Isn't it cute? It's lost and needs a home and we're going to take care of it and it will live with us," Jim smiled and nodded and said, "Uh-huh, okay."  He never gave it another thought because he thought they were holding Pixie and just playing make believe.  However, the kids took this as a binding verbal agreement. LOL

Two black cats!  They're nearly identical upon first glance, although the new kitten "Cupcake Sprinkle Moonlight Wright" is a good 30% smaller than Pixie and has orange eyes where Pixie has yellow/green eyes.  Cucpake's fur is also much softer and sleeker.

The kids flew through their schoolwork in order to get back to taking care of Cupcake and monitoring her every movement to ensure she wouldn't leave ;-)  Fortunately the cat has taken right to life here at the Wright Menagerie, uses the litter box like a pro and eats like a trucker. It pretty much thinks it owns the place.  We did get our new stack of library books for the week that we'll be working through:

"And to Think That I Saw It on Mulberry Street"

"Very Last First Time"

"The Storm"

"Always Room for One More"

"Andy and the Lion"

"Cranberry Thanksgiving"

"Katy and the Big Snow"

"The Church Mouse"

"How to Make an Apple Pie"

I had put out a request to friends via Facebook, asking for reading recommendations and received a ton of great lists, personal favorites and other resource ideas.  It was great!  We'll enjoy working through all of the terrific titles :-)

Sunday, October 6th - Fall Camping Trip, Day 3 of 3

Once again, the kids slept great overnight and even Waverly slept better than usual!  The first words out of the kids' mouths were, "CAN WE PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE STAY ANOTHER NIGHT??" haha  It's great to know they have loved every minute of our camping trip!  We were able to move at a leisurely pace as we worked to pack up and give the kids loads of time to play after breakfast.  Bikes were ridden, walks were taken, stroller rides given... plus lots of time playing with the fire, under adult supervision ;-)  The kids and I finally departed a bit before noon and Jim followed not long after, as most everything was already taken down and loaded up.  Waverly decided she did not want to leave the campground and made that very clear for the next ninety minutes, but I'm just going to block that out of my memory, lol.  Overall, this may have been our very favorite camping trip so far! 

Jim and Victoria, hanging out around the fire.  Sis was taking good direction from her daddy on how to smother a fire and then build it back up.  She really enjoyed using a stick to move the logs around so that they could "breath" and make the fire grow.

Lincoln and Judd, taking a break from bike riding to listen to the fire instructions.

Pretty soon, Lincoln was sure he was a pro and brought Sophie over to "teach" her the finer points.

Phew!  We finally made it back home!  Although the kids had lamented the fact that we couldn't stay longer, they were also very happy to be back.  First things first, Scarlett and Pixie had a joyous reunion - I think they laid on the floor like this for several minutes.  Such a weird, delightful cat :-)

Baths and some unpacking followed thereafter, then Jim and Linc vegg'd out for a while together while the girls played with our neighbor friend for a long time.  I don't know how they could have possibly had the energy to run around more, considering they had never stopped moving the whole time we were camping, but they found those childhood reserves of energy and did just that!

Monday, September 30th

Due to the short week for us school-wise (field trips and camping), I wanted to make sure we had good full school days on Monday and ay; I can squeeze in math and reading on the rest of the days, plus we will listen to our history audio book on our various drives here and there.  All in all, we ended up having a truly great time with our school, the kids had fun playing outside for a while, and we ended the day with a good karate class.

I had to take a quick snapshot of the island counter, because as I was laying out the ingredients for a yummy breakfast scramble I did a double take, noticing the large toy assault rifle nonchalantly resting there.  Ah... life with boys ;-)

Lincoln almost has all the letters in his name mastered!  Today he worked on "O" - I had thought this would be the most difficult letter for him (out of his name) due to the two curves inside of the limited space.  However, he didn't struggle at all with it and "C" remains his nemesis.  He gets so frustrated when he can't write "like mommy" and I'm like, "Buddy, you're THREE.  There's still room for improvement." haha

We spent some time doing bears - I'd put the first part of a pattern together and he'd repeat it two times.  There are bears of several different sizes in the bin, and without me mentioning it he made sure that all of the bears he place matched not only the color pattern but size as well.

When I was pulling out manipulatives, Linc asked if we could get the colored size worms out.  When we'd finished his other work, I let him just play with them and he spent some time sorting them all out by size.  He had different "worm teams," as he explained.  So funny!

The girls did their one-on-one school work with me, and it was definitely time for a tea & story break! 

Our library books for this week - having an abbreviated amount of school days, as well as having a stack of books on Russia (the next country we'll be studying) that we'll be working through, I only pulled seven story time books for us:

"Down Buttermilk Lane"

"The Stranger"

"Too Many Pumpkins"

"The Little House"

"The Lonely Scarecrow"

"Ox-Cart Man"

"Kids Camp! Activities for the Backyard or Wilderness"

During Lincoln's one-on-one time, I often do a separate story time with him.  He really wanted to read "Too Many Pumpkins" and loved it - several times throughout the day he (repeating the book) said, "I really, really HATE pumpkins!" and would laugh.  Then together at tea time we all read "The Stranger" and "The Little House" - as we read the latter, Scarlett said, "Hey, this book reminds me of the Mike Mulligan book."  Very observant!  They have the same authors and illustrators and both the pacing and vernacular are similar.  It was really a good book and the kids felt so sorry for the little, sturdy house.

History time!  We moved on from the first farmers to begin studying about Egypt.  The kids loved learning about the Nile flooding every year and how the two kings of Egypt had an epic battle to determine who would rule all the land (later becoming the first Pharaoh). I thought they might have trouble remembering Upper vs. Lower Egypt since they are seemingly backwards to our mentality with the upper in the south and the lower in the north, however the book so clearly and succinctly makes it known why they termed the kingdoms in that way and the kids grasped it easily.  We did some map work, tracing the Nile and highlighting the Nile Delta, then we read "Croco'nile" which was a charming little book about two ancient Egyptian kids.

While I was reading the story book, Scarlett was busily drawing on the back of her map.  When I was finished, she came to show me her free-hand drawing of the Mediterranean, Red Sea, Nile, and the two kingdoms (see the crowns on the left? one says Lower and one says Upper - next to Upper she wrote "Wun" as in, that king won the epic battle).  She also drew a king sitting on a throne  smiling and wearing two crows, and the defeated king frowning and bowing down to the other king.  I was impressed!  It was like six-year-old note taking, or a nice little summary of the lesson via drawing. 

Once finished up with our school, the kids hurried outdoors and got themselves organized into some sort of farming game.  Scarlett was digging holes while Lincoln and Victoria were finding things to "plant."

Please note that the small black blob is actually a cat sitting on the middle of the pool cover.  I wonder if the cats spend all summer wondering why they can no longer walk on water...? ;-)

Pixie's new favorite place to be in the backyard, because... cats are weird.

The kids came back in after a while and I had forgotten to put the box of BoB Books away, so Victoria decided she was going to teach Lincoln to read while I played pat-a-cake with Waverly.  They stayed in this weird position on the sofa for a long time.

Since he wasn't mastering the concepts quite to the speed Victoria wanted, she figured she should probably go over sight words with him and pulled out the sight word cards and bears for him to match things up.  This ended up with both parties a little frustrated, as obviously Lincoln could not find the words he was being quizzed on ;-p

But Victoria is an incredibly patient teacher, and took him up into her bed to practice some more :-)  Lincoln picked the book to work on ("Frogs") and Victoria would go sound-by-sound and then blend the word.  She could probably actually teach him to read if she put her mind to it.

I had started wondering if the Halloween costume we ordered for Waverly was ever going to arrive!  Finally, it came in the mail and I couldn't wait to put it on her, but she was taking a nap.  I should note here that I put it to all the kids regarding what the baby should dress up as and Victoria thought about it for a minute and said, "A baby bottle!"  That tickled me and so we looked to see if such a costume existed, and of course!

Oh.My.Word.  Too hilarious and cute!  She was not amused :-)

Finally, the kids had a terrific karate class.  They found out that the testing to possibly receive their next belt is on October 24th - they are all excited about this and hopeful that with enough practice they will pass and be able to get their orange belts.  We will see!!