Homeschool Update

This month, we have returned to our homeschooling schedule after taking most of August off. I find I am struggling with motivation right now. We have completed a Zoo Unit that ended with a combination field trip/birthday party at the zoo on Fia's 6th birthday. Some of our new vocabulary words are mammal, herbivore, carnivore, omnivore, pride, herd, and pack. Here are some pictures from our trip.

Noodle and Daddy riding the zoo train

L to R: front row- Noodle, Moo Moo, JJ Monster

back row- Fia and Pander

Getting as close to the animals as possible without falling in!

Me and Moo Moo, by our favorite animal, the giraffe!

Noodle and Pander by the orangutan, Mahal. Pander loves him!

All 4 of my crazies next to the baby gorilla, our annual zoo picture!

 

Now that all the excitement of the zoo trip is over, I find myself feeling blah about returning to our normal curriculum. The sense of excitement the crazies had when we learning about the animals and looking forward to our zoo trip is missing. And while they still have a great attitude about learning, I find myself struggling to do the same. I think I need to come up with a new unit to bring back the excitement, to give us all something to look forward to. My next idea is something involving fall, pumpkin farms, and Halloween. I don't have any specifics yet, any suggestions out there?

Summer Wrap up

Near the start of July, I allowed myself back onto Facebook, and immediately began to neglect my blog again. Seems the life of a homeschooling mother of 4 crazies can only make room for one social outlet! Anywho, here is a run-down of July and August for you, complete with pictures.

The last weeked of June/first weekend of July, we went on our annual trip to WI Dells with our extended family. Personally, it is one of my favorite times of the year, because it brings back so many memories from my childhood. We used to go there with my aunt, uncle and cousins and now my kids go with their papa, aunts, uncles and cousins. Gotta love tradition! This year, Pander was tall and brave enough to try a ride called Howlin' Tornado, so my bro-in-law, future bro-in-law and I went with him. Here is a picture after we finished the ride.

Pander told me "I liked it, I wasn't too scared, only my tummy was sick for awhile!" Later he rode it again, so  it must not have been too bad. I was terrified to let him ride it, especially since I wasn't in the group that went with him the second time. I mean, 6 is a bit young, he's really tall for his age! And here is a pic of the ride, so you can see why I was sort of freaked out.

I have a feeling this whole "letting go" so he can grow up isn't going to be all that fun for me!

 

Later in July, my sister J and I started prepping for the upcoming birth of her second son by cooking and freezing a bunch of meals. The day started off well, J, JJ-Monster, Noodle and I went grocery shopping and started cooking at J's house. Later, Jeff dropped Pander, Fia and Moo off by us on his way to work. Shortly after that, it started to thunderstorm. Now, we needed the rain, since it has been such a dry summer, but that storm didn't just rain, it put us into a power outage in the middle of cooking day! We had to pack up all 5 kids, 2 full, hot crockpots, several bowls of food, tons of bags of groceries and move it all IN THE RAIN to my house, where we still had power. I have to say it was one of the most memorable cooking days I've ever been a part of!

 

July ended with the Jeff and my dad taking Pander and Fia on a road trip to Green Bay to see the awesome Packers stadium and Superbowl trophies. Actually, only my dad and Pander were Packer fans (I am too, but I stayed home with the little ones). Jeff and Fia are both avid Vikings fans, but they like football enough to want to tag along. Here is a pic of my dad, Pander and Fia with the trophies.

 

August was a busy month for us. We took several outings to the park, children's museum, and bowling and did a bit of homeschooling every week. One weekend, my in-laws came to visit from out of state. We had a great time swimming, playing cards, and hanging out together. My father-in-law helped Jeff put up a brand new front door and storm door, it looks awesome and we are so thankful for his help!

 

Another weekend, Jeff and I travelled out of state so he could stand up in his best friend's wedding.

 

It was our first full weekend away from the crazies in about 5 years! We had a great time at the wedding and got to catch up with some of our old college friends and the time away was much appreciated. My sister B and her hubby UBJ stayed at our house with the 4 crazies while we were gone, and surprised us by doing a bunch of extra projects around the house, too. I have to say it was very nice to come home to, thanks guys!

 

The last full week of August was the busiest one for us. Jeff and I celebrated 9 years of marriage on Aug. 23 and as a great present, my sister J had her new baby boy, EJo. He is the absolute, most adorable combination of a little old man and baby bird that you could imagine! Here we are together, just hours after he was born.

Two days later, we celebrated Pander's 7th birthday and after that we had a joint birthday party for Pander and Fia, who turns 6 in two weeks. First is a picture from Pander's bowling event on his birthday, then a picture from their joint party, and then one from Pander's family birthday party at Papa's house.

I made the Dinosaur Train cake for the crazies' joint party, and UBJ made an awesome Mario Kart cake for Pander's family party (after I am able to edit Pander's name off of it, I will post a pic!) As soon as he saw the Mario cake, Pander was sure to run over and reassure me that he was thankful for the cake I had made him, and that he would have been happy with just that. I said, "But you like the Mario cake better, right?" and he nodded. I love that boy's heart, even when he was thrilled with his special Mario cake, he was focused on making sure my feelings weren't hurt. He's such a sensitive sweetie.

 

Now that the summer is over, we are starting to focus back on homeschool. We are starting a zoo unit and switching to a new math program that I think will be less teacher-intensive and faster moving. Tomorrow Jeff goes back to college, so we are headed back into "business as usual." I'll let you know how the semester goes, pray for our busy upcoming school year if you think of it, please!

 

 





 

 

 

 

Shake Your Booty!

Both Fia and Moo had their dance recital this month. It was Moo's first recital and she only took beginner ballet. Fia is in her third year of dance and took ballet and tap. Both girls looked beautiful and did a great job dancing. Moo's song was "Under the Sea" from the Little Mermaid, and the youngsters in her class provided hilarious comic relief during the recital.

In the above pic, Moo is 4th from the right

 Here, Moo is second from the left, saying "take it from me!"

This is how the dance ended, Moo is second from the left.

Fia's first song was the country song "Let them be little". It was adorable, and they danced so gracefully! I was impressed by how well Fia did (she was in a class with much older girls, remember?)

Fia is in the middle.

I love this pose, Fia is second from the right.

Look at how graceful they are! Fia is 4th from the right.

Fia's tap song was "Mama, I'm a big girl now!" from the musical Hairspray. It was a lot of fun, and it was Fia's favorite dance.



Here she is tapping away, on the left!

The only thing she still has to master is smiling while dancing! Still on the left.

Final pose, Fia is standing on the left. She did such a great job!

After the recital, we went out to eat with Papa, Auntie Jeni, UBJ and Auntie Becky. Here are some pictures of them (and us) with the girls.

Camping!

We took the 4 crazies on our first family camping trip to Lake Bemidji State Park. It was a 10 hour drive, but well worth it to have a nice place to camp while visiting old college friends and convenient to make a stop on the way home to visit their grandparents. We left on Tuesday and came home late Sunday, one of our longest stays away from home yet.

I have never camped in a tent. As a youth, I worked as a counselor at a summer camp, but always had cabins. I didn't realize how much more effort it would take to tent camp, but we had a fun time. The first day, we had fun setting up camp with help from our friends, the Johnsons. We had a campfire and smores, too. The kids went to bed, Jeff and I waited out the fire then joined them.

About 4:30 am, Pander woke up sick. He gets sick all the time when we are away from home, and he announced, "I think I am just homesick!" Poor guy was up most of the night, and so was Jeff. At 6:30, Jeff ran to the laundry mat to take care of the things that he got sick on, and I got up and got the kids ready for the morning. The sickness passed, so we were able to enjoy the beautiful weather and take a hike. We saw so many cool things- about a thousand ants helping decompose a tree stump, a natural sink hole in the forest, a huge tree with 3 connected stumps that Aleks loved standing in, and a beautiful overlook of the lake.

After our hike, we drove to the airport to pick up Uncle Ben, Jeff's best friend who flew in to hang out with us. We were so glad to be able to spend time with Ben, Zak, Katie and the kids, since we only see them once a year, sometimes less, and it was great to reconnect. We had dinner at Zak and Katie's place, and stayed until dark. Then we headed back and had another campfire with cookies baked over the fire. Noodle was so tired he asked to go to bed instead of staying up for dessert! In fact, everyone but Moo fell asleep before the cookies were done. Moo has serious FOMO (fear of missing out), so that isn't a huge surprise!
At about 3 am, it started to storm. Thunder, wind, lightening, the whole kit and caboodle. The kids slept through it, and the tent stayed dry, thankfully. But the next morning everything was soaked. We couldn't cook, we had nowhere to sit down, it was just miserable. So we made the most of it, went to breakfast at Perkins, walked around Walmart, and then went back to the campsite when things were at least dry enough to hang out at the site.

In the evening we went to the Johnson's again and had pizza. The kids loved hanging out with G and K, and Fia told me that "K is such a tough girl, I really like her!"even though at one point Fia nd K were playing and somehow K let go of a pine branch and it flew back and hit Fia in the face. Fia was ok, but had a pretty nasty looking set of pine needle scratches on her face for a bit.
After a long few days camping, we spent an afternoon at the park in Bemidji and took pictures by the statues of  Babe the Blue Ox and Paul Bunyan (or Bald Onion, as Pander calls him!)

Here we are at Lake Bemidji, above to the right, the kids are learning to skip stones, and to the left Noodle is standing below "Bald Onion", realizing just how far he has left to go before he can reach his greatest goal of being a giant!

We also went to see the gazebo in the park where Jeff proposed to me over 9 years ago. It was nice to remember and share that memory with the crazies.

On Friday, we left town a bit earlier than planned, because Fia woke up with a high fever and allergy issues. We headed to my in-laws house to visit for a few days. It is always nice to visit with family and the kids had a fun with grandpa and grandma. All in all, we had a great trip, learned alot more about what we will need for future camping trips, and made great memories!

Summer Sun

We have been spending alot of time with the crazies out in the sun lately. On Memorial Day, we attended the shortest parade of the year (seriously, it is only about 10-15 minutes long, tops!) We spent the rest of the day at a family picnic with my sisters, brother-in-law and soon-to-be-brother-in-law, nephew, and many cousins and their kids. I love spending time at the park, grilling out, and hanging out with family. I grew up as part of a large family and I enjoy opportunities to share that experience with the crazies. Pander played some baseball and frisbee with the other boys, Moo and Fia spent most of the day on slides and digging in the sand, while Noodle ran around doing everything and nothing all at once.

This Saturday we had a playdate with my high school friends, Jenny and Marta, and their kids. Three moms and 8 kids at the park, what a great morning! Then we had a "camping rehearsal" in our yard that evening. Jeff built our new tent so he and the crazies could sleep in it before we head out camping next week. As part of our caming practice, we hosted a fire for my sisters, their families and my dad. UBJ brought his guitar so we could sing a few campfire songs. The kids loved it, especially when he played Noodle's request "the one with boy and the girl chipmunks"- if you have seen the 3rd Chipmunk movie, you may understand he was asking for "Kumbaya". My sis Jeni brought marshmallows, always a big hit, and the filling to make apple pudgie pies in our new pudgie pie cookers. My other sis, Becky, and UBJ also had the inspired idea to grill shish kabobs. We all jumped on board and enjoyed the tasty goodness! At bedtime, Fia was pretty cold, so she decided to wear a sweatshirt and her slippers into her sleeping bag. She is a huge slipper fan, and one of her birthday requests is a new pair of slippers and a robe! After everyone settled into the tent, Fia was a bit scared and Moo said she couldn't sleep, so I went into the tent and told them a story. Moo requested that I sing a Jesus song, and I started to sing. She interrupted me and said "Not that one, Mama, the one about when I am afraid I will trust in you!" I guess all the crazies had a bit of fear sleeping outside for the first time, so I'm glad we did the practice camp out. Once everyone fell asleep, they stayed asleep. No one came in, no one cried. I call it a success, and I think our upcoming camping trip to Bemidji will go well.

Sunday we had the same group over to celebrate Jeff's 33rd birthday. His birthday isn't actually until 6/7, but we always celebrate on Family Sunday, and next week is the girls' dance recital, so we celebrated early. The kids had water wars thanks to the water launchers their cousin, the JJ Monster, brought over- with a little help from his mom. We made more kabobs and had a yummy chocolate cake. Happy birthday to the father of my little crazies, love you bunches hon!

At the end of the weekend I was reminded that too much fun in the sun can be a bad thing. While we have no sunburn or major injuries, we had a few people down with a fever and Noodle is a mess. He is very sun-sensitive and has an allergic reaction to almost all sunscreens we've tried on him. We were out of the very expensive, all natural sunscreen we used for him last year and tried a different brand, but no luck. He has had flame red cheeks and hives for the past 3 days. It reminds me a bit of the saying, "You play, you pay!" No worries, we have his special sunscreen on order and I plan to stick with it from now on! After all, it is pretty awful when he walks around sadly saying, "My face is a fire."

Swim and Hike

Well, mostly this post is about our hike through the 7 Bridges at the park, but I couldn't resist posting this pic of Moo and Fia in their new swim caps. They start swim lessons in mid-June and have to have caps for their longer hair. They ran around the house wearing them all day, inspired by the movie Hop to yell "We are the Pink Berets!"

Tonight after a nearly free dinner at TGI Friday's (we had a terrible experience with burnt kids meals once and they gave us a bunch of free credits for our next visit), we took a family hike through the park. Our favorite spot is the 7 Bridges, Pander always wants to count the bridges to see if we crossed them all, while Noodle prefers to do all the steps on his own and yell "I did it!" at the bottom of each set. Here are some pictures of us at the bridges, and a few pictures of the trees I thought turned out well.

Here is Jeff with the Crazies, Pander is trying to peek around the tree like Dada.

Here is Noodle, so proud of walking the crooked steps by himself!



 A nice woman offered to take a family picture, so nice!

Me and the hubby on a bridge.

Moo, Fia, Pander, Noodle and Mama!

One of my favorite pics from the walk, I love the tree branch in the middle, what beautiful creation!

Last pic! Praise God for the wonderful gifts of beauty he gave for our family to enjoy together.