Thursday, October 3rd

Thursday morning we set off to meet up with several families from our homeschool group to tour Sweetwater Valley Pumpkin Patch in Villa Rica, GA.  I was pleasantly surprised by how well run the farm was - there were several different elements included in our tour and the pacing was done in such a way that we never felt rushed, nor were we left languishing for long periods - this despite the fact that several large school groups were also there on field trips. I would definitely go there again in future years!  

Our event started at 9:30 a.m., and was located in Villa Rica - approximately a 35-40 minute drive.  We also needed to pack a picnic lunch, which is the bane of my existence!  Fortunately, I had help in the form of Jim packing our lunch bag (thanks, babe!), Grammie getting breakfast for the kids, and Nana wrangling the baby.  Phew! I'm always very aware and appreciative of the tremendous blessing I have in family that pitches in whenever needed.  Amazingly, we made it out the door dressed in our school-group shirts and on the road right on time!

Waverly needs a tie-dyed onesie to match, I think ;-)

It's so hard to wait on friends to arrive!

A few families were later than the planned start time (some due to confusion on time, others just because... well, homeschool families are notoriously bad about arriving anywhere on time; not all, but a lot) so our schedule was bumped back a bit and we had to wait behind another tour group.  No problem - the kids were happy for some playground time :-)

So lovely, and yet so completely covered in playground sand from head to toe in the first ninety seconds....

I love how my kids disperse and play with other friends; I also love how they are somewhat magnetized to one another and always eventually wind up playing together, even if it's only for little pockets of time in and amongst playing with others.

Finally, it was our group's turn to begin the tour!  We walked down a nature trail - there were a couple of riddles along the way.  Here, the kids and Mrs. Lawson pause to read the riddle and make guesses as to what the answer could be.

Sweet friends!  N, Victoria, Olivia, Scarlett and Reegan.

At the end of one trail we came across a little seating area, where the kids sat to watch a short presentation.

This lady was a riot.  She was dressed to the hilt as a Native American and did great with the kids, engaging them, asking questions and teaching them a bit... in her full Georgian drawl.  She must have been from a southern tribe ;-)

Passing out samples of freeze dried corn - all of my kids liked it (Victoria initially declined to sample it, then changed her mind when other kids were saying it was yummy), and Lincoln asked the lady for more.

After walking the rest of the nature trail loop, we went to try our hand at panning for gemstones.  The kids had watched other groups do this as we waited to start our tour, and were very eager to get to do it themselves!  They listened attentively to the instructions...

Finally, they all got to follow the steps and see if they had any any treasure.

Lincoln's sheer excitement was awesome to watch - he was truly amazed when the dirt washed away in the stream of water and after shaking his sifter for a few moments, he discovered colored stones! :-)

Victoria was also thrilled to find lovely stones in her sifter.

They were each given bags to place their treasure rocks in so we could take them home!

Lincoln and Judd, goofing around while they wait in line for a chance to stuff a scarecrow.

Victoria and Lincoln both had the chance to help stuff hay in the scarecrow - Scarlett, however, had let a few little kids go in front of her and was essentially at the back of the line.  By the time she got up there, the scarecrow was pretty stuffed and the worker moved on to having the kids yell out name suggestions.  I was proud of Scarlett that she didn't get upset or frustrated due to missing out, instead just rolling with it.  She is growing up!

The crew!

Next, we took a hayride over to the pumpkin patch.  Waverly was having a good time, watching all of the kids and taking sporadic snoozes!

The kids each got to choose a little baby pumpkin.  Lincoln: "Mama!  This one is SO SUTE [cute]!!"

Intense pumpkin selection discussion, hehe

Victoria's winner~

Scarlett was asking my opinion about which one was more perfect.  She ended up choosing the tiniest one she could find, that had the cutest little stem :-)

All four of my pumpkins!

With the tour winding down, my crew was hungry and growing tired.  They opted out of the last stop on the tour (craft - very cute!) to instead begin pilfering the lunch bag while I changed and fed Waverly.  Then we joined our group at the picnic table area for the official lunch and I let the kids play for the better part of an hour while I chatted with some of the other moms.  Eventually, it was time for us to finish up and head home, but not before the kids wanted to stick their heads in the Sweetwater Valley Pumpkin Patch sign! (note the squinty looks from the sun shining brightly into their eyes, haha)

We had one stop on our way home from the field trip, and after we got back in the car both Lincoln and Sissy nodded off.  When we pulled in the driveway, Linc popped right up (like he always does) but Victoria was stone-cold asleep.  I was gathering up my purse, keys, diaper bag, etc., and I heard Scarlett say, "Sissy, you're so smiley" about three times and when I looked back she was making her smile... in her sleep ;-)

Wednesday, October 2nd

The kids and I headed out on Wednesday morning to attend a new show at The Center for Puppetry Arts called "Everybody Loves Pirates."  It was so, so cute!  Afterward we went to our usual - Chick Fil A, where the kids played and played for over an hour.  As we traveled here and there in the car, we listened to more of our Egyptian audiobook and the kids loved it :-)  When we got back home in the afternoon from our fun field trip and lunch with friends, the kids had a bit of downtime before becoming entrenched in a doctor game.  We were planning on going to karate, however Jim had a free chunk of time in the afternoon and Grammie and Nana kindly agreed to a spontaneous movie date - so off we went to see Rush!  

Love these kids~ they were excited to check out the new show!  We're so fortunate to get great, inexpensive ticket prices via our homeschool group, which allows us to go often and enjoy this awesome storytelling medium.

Once we made it through the whole arrival procedure (getting everyone out of the van, trekking inside, all of us need potty breaks since it's a 35 minute drive, then change the baby's diaper, consolidate a few necessities from the diaper bag into my purse, park the stroller, get seated...) and seating arrangements were hashed out, I asked Judd if he wanted to hold Waverly.  He has such a sweet disposition toward Waverly and always has!  Love it :-)  He held her for a few minutes, but girlfriend is *heavy* haha~ I took her back and she kept lunging for him.  I can already tell that she is going to be wanting to do everything the big kids are doing and won't tolerate being excluded!

Chick Fil A fun!  I so relish this stage - it's a sort of magical one wherein I'm not having to be hands-on with the three big kids while they play and have fun - I don't have to be worried about potty accidents or that they're too small to climb up the playscape successfully, they can open the doors themselves... yet they are still little enough that the play place at Chick Fil A is a fun destination and keeps them entertained for an hour or two :-)

Jim had found a great deal online for kids' cots, and ordered two - one each for Lincoln and Victoria.  It was a great purchase, as they fold up into the size of a kids camping chair and come with a little tote bag - we'll be able to use these in hotel rooms on trips, for camping, etc.  And this allows us to skip dragging around a couple of air mattresses on such trips!  Lincoln thought his was pretty swank and wanted to try it out right away while he lounged and watched a Curious George. 

While at Chick Fil A, Victoria had "doctored" Judd when he hurt himself.  She spent several minutes asking him if he was okay, putting lotion on his boo-boo and placing bandaids as needed.  This transferred home, where she and Scarlett both doctored Grammie for more time than she probably cared to be a patient, hehe.  But she was a great sport!  Then it was just Victoria doctoring up Scarlett, Lincoln and Waverly :-)  So many patients to see!

Tuesday, October 1st

Tuesday was an eventful day for us around the house.  We had school, and I had really, really planned for the kids to take a nap since I knew not much napping/resting would be happening over the next several days.  However, when I gave them the twenty minute countdown-til-nap alert, they started playing extra well together.  I think that when they have the "threat" of nap time looming over them they nonverbally come to an agreement to play awesomely in the hopes that I will just let play time continue.  And it totally worked ;-)  They basically played outside - with a few minor breaks - from 1:30 until 7:30 p.m.! 

I was doing a bit of one-one-one work with Lincoln, and Waverly was being extremely loud and verbal as an almost-four-month old should, so Scarlett came out of her room and asked if I would put the baby in her bed and let her be "in charge" of her.  When I finished up with Linc shortly thereafter, I went in to retrieve the baby and found Scarlett doing a wonderful job talking to her and receiving huge smiles and laughs :-)  

At tea & story time, we read "Down Buttermilk Lane" and "Too Many Pumpkins" - I'd read that book to Lincoln the previous day, but he was riveted again.  Since the Buttermilk Lane book features an Amish family, I had to stop and take the time to explain about who the Amish are, what they believe, and why they believe the way they do.  The kids were just open-mouthed, horrified! Hahaha  "But, but mommy!  WHY WOULD THEY DO THAT?"  I think Scarlett's question sums up how I feel as well, but I tried to be neutral and explain their point of view.  They were just genuinely baffled. 

As we continued our History studies on Ancient Egypt, we learned about the myths that the Egyptian people used to help them explain events in their world - things such as the flooding of the Nile, etc.  We read the myth of Osiris and Set, and the kids were fairly riveted since it plays out like a darker version of a Disney story.  After we discussed all that we'd read and played Skittle Review (it's everything it sounds like it is), the kids colored their Osiris and Set coloring pages while we listed to a couple tracks from the audio book "Egyptian Treasures: Mummies and Myths" by Jim Weiss.  I cannot rave enough about his awesome storytelling!  We will definitely be downloading more of his work for car trips!!

Next, we opened up our new Little Passports packet and started our adventure of learning about RUSSIA!  We found the country and put a pin sticker on it, placed the flag sticker in our passport, then we had Observation Time wherein they try to tell me as many things as they can about the country just from looking at it on the map ("it's really big!" or "it's way at the top of the map, I bet its really cold there!" or "it touches lots of oceans" and so forth).  We also read through "Look What Came From Russia" - a really neat book that does a good job of giving a super brief synopsis on several things Russia is famous for. 

The library had a wealth of kid's books for Russia - really my ideal mix of folk tales, city/country facts, and cultural/lifestyle information.  There's even a video on the daily family life in Russia, which is pretty cool!.  Because I'm hosting October's Passport Club meeting, I'll be trying to work through all of our material in the next week and a half, giving us another week after to pick presentation topics and practice, which will leave me the last few days to finalize plans (by which I mostly mean, you know, clean the house!) and put activities together. 

The kids highlighted the outline of Russia, then we drew a line to divide the country into two rough sections - main Russia and Siberia.  They also tried to draw, in the correct location, the slender crescent moon shape of Lake Blaikal (with varying degrees of success! haha).  We also found and circled Moscow.

Finished maps - Scarlett on top, Lincoln in the middle (I wrote Siberia for him), and Victoria on the bottom.

We also applied our Russian tattoos - Lincoln was definitely happy to see a big bear included in the mix and selected that one first thing ;-)

At this point, we had been working on Russia for an hour and the kids had done awesomely.  I should have saved this video for another day, because they were getting antsy and ready for lunch; however, I decided to put this on while I was fixing their food, and they had a very hard time sitting still.  The information was great and told from a few different kids perspectives on their daily lives, but the pacing was slow and the kids were hungry.  I ended up cutting it a bit short (it's only 20-30 minutes long) and we'll try to watch it again next week.

Thanks to the Government Shutdown, Nana was home and free to play!  She spent quite a while at various points throughout the day chatting with, holding or playing with Waverly :-)

After lunch, the kids were playing so great outside and doing a good job of making me change my mind about naps.  About an hour into their fun, we had The Chipmunk Situation of 2013.  Pixie either found a nest/burrow of chipmunks OR has been chasing this same chipmunk for a few days.  Either way is sad.  But the cat chased this tiny chipmunk until it just stopped.  Lincoln ran up to it in the yard and *picked it up* at which point it promptly nipped him. Awesome.  I was envisioning an imminent trip to the ER for rabies shots! haha  Fortunately it didn't break the skin.  The kids were frantic for me to agree to them keeping it as a pet (a request I staunchly refused), and when I agreed they could stare at it for a few minutes they all huddled around to watch it playing dead (it was definitely not dead).  Eventually I tried to catch it with gloves on and was unsuccessful, so Grammie got it and heaved it over the fence, which made Lincoln burst into tears despite our explanations that it landed on soft leaves and was happier to be back there than to end up a nice little snack for Pixie.  He has such a soft heart!

However, Lincoln had a good cry about it for a couple of minutes, then listened to reason and pretty much moved on with life and went to ride his bike.  Scarlett didn't seem that upset at first, but then came inside with red rimmed eyes and sat down and started writing.  She must have made 10 pages of drawings and writings.  Here is a page that says (with her spelling), "I am sad abawt the gipmunc" and she said it's a picture of a chipmunk flying toward a tree.  It was hard not to laugh out loud, but she was so heartbroken, and I had to treat it with all the seriousness of a major drama.

Another sheet, after I tried telling her how to spell chipmunk... "I wontid the chipmuc [almost got the spelling, hehe]. Now that the chimunc is gone I am sad even thoe the chimunc is happy to by [be] hom."  She was so tired and despondent and so after a while she came and just sat in my lap and we looked up chipmunk facts on Wikipedia and read through everything there, and even found a website on keeping chipmunks as pets.  As I read through all the FAQs on there, she realized it would not have made an ideal pet and would never have been cuddly like she was imagining.

At this point, Waverly woke up from a little nap and WAS cuddly :-)  Scarlett played pat-a-cake with her for a few minutes and feeling cheered, ran outdoors to join the other kids in riding bikes.

Our good little friend Charlotte came over to play in the late afternoon, and wound up staying for dinner!  The girls were so geeked :-)  Two funny things: 1) With Charlotte joining us at the table, the kids were sitting in slightly different spots than they almost always do, and as both I and my mom took turns holding Waverly, she could not stop looking back and forth at the kids with these huge saucer eyes like, "This is not how things usually are!!" haha 2) For the past couple of weeks we have been doing Roses and Thorns at dinner - we go around the table and each person tells a Rose about their day (a particular good or favorite element) and a Thorn (a challenge they had or something they didn't like).  It's been so fun and the kids love doing it!  However, all three kids' Thorns were variations of, "The worst part of my day was when Grammie threw the chipmunk over the fence." lol

After dinner, I went to the gym and the girls played outside a bit longer while Jim and Lincoln went Barnes & Noble for a bit and then to get haircuts.  It was a long, full, good day!

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!!