Schooling, camping, and friends

The weeks are filling out nicely...!

Monkey and Roo are in "school" Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday this year. The are participating in a group-homeschool type of situation in which a professional educator oversees the individual learning plans for twelve elementary students, grades K through 5, one of whom is her own son (grade 1). She's a remarkable teacher with years of experience and a custom-built home schooling facility which takes up the ground floor of her house, complete with its own entrance.

We discovered this offering through the realtor who sold us our home, whose own son attends our teacher's school. Most of her clients do their schooling with her full-time, but she does take some on a 3/5 basis, meaning she schools them three days a week and their parents school them the other two. This is the arrangement that we are doing. She is phenomenal. Warm but strict, detail-oriented but able to make learning come alive, high standards but doesn't overwhelm the kids in expecting them to reach it, and very knowledgable about how to reach kids. It is a very wholesome and learning-rich environment, and the kids are thriving there.

I am a half-time homeschooler at heart (or at least that has been my preference to date), so I love having them go to "school" half the time and be home half the time. I hired a wonderful babysitter who drives the kids to school Tuesday and Thursday mornings (and Goose to preschool); both are about 20 minutes away but very close to one another. Our sitter watches the Mouse during preschool hours and brings the little two home at 11:50. Thus I get 8:25 to 11:55 to myself those mornings. I will be starting work this week during those hours, consulting to Prison Fellowship Int'l. But for September, I simply used those hours to regroup, get some systems in place, and catch up on everything in life that had fallen by the wayside for the past 9 months. It has been fantastic and energizing at every level.

Every 2nd Friday we participate in a morning homeschooling co-op with 15 other families that meets at our church - a great entree into the local homeschooling community. Wednesday nights we are doing AWANA at a local church. Most Monday night the Moose has cub scouts. So our week is falling into place...

Our scout and some of his sidekicks at the site

Speaking of cub scouts, the Monkey had his first overnight campout with HF last weekend. We all went for the Friday evening portion - the camp ground is only 20 mins from our house - but we left the boys to themselves thereafter. They slept in the Land Cruiser, HF's favorite sleeping venue (he knew from prior road and camping trips that it was a hit). Reports were good on the sleep, as well as on the boy-ish, run around, outdoor activities that occurred. Monkey left a little early in order to attend the 8th birthday party of his good friend Seth, who sadly is moving overseas in Dec. All around a full weekend for him.

On Sunday afternoon, our old friends the Marburys stopped in for an overnight visit. Justin and HF were co-counselors at our camp for several years, both lived in NH, and became close friends. He was a groomsman in our wedding and HF was the best man in his. His wife Kari and first met at age 10 as campers at said camp...! They have been living in NM for the past 15 years but just moved back to NH this summer in order to plant a church (Justin is a pastor). They were in VA for the wedding of Justin's brother, so they came and saw us afterwards. HF had seen them a number of times in the past few years, but I hadn't seen them since 2007 so it was a fun reunion.

Their four children, ages 4 to 11, are lovely and as toe-headed as most of ours (actually more so). They could be related. They all enjoyed each other's company mightily!

We have now hosted four friends in the past 5 weeks, which has been so fun. Our location is excellent for stop-in visits of folks who are down this way, and it's wonderful to have our house now set up in such a way that we can welcome folks in and make them feel at home. Thankful for the space!

Check-ups

Annual wellness exams for the August birthday girls this morning... Thankfully HF was available to watch the other two, especially because it took a very long time. All well, however. 

Thankful to have found a good pediatrician we like right here in town... Many people schlep all the way into Fburg, which I try to avoid whenever I can!

Heard this morning: 

--"Last time we were here, the doctor almost stuck a Popsicle stick down my throat" (check for strep). Very good description by Roo, I thought...

--"Mommy, why did she put a hole in my skin?" The goose, in tears after shot. Again, aptly put. 

New library, and our own library "event"

We are library people. Driven by our insatiable-reader eldest, we generally visit twice a week. Since we moved to VA in Jan, the town library has been in a temporary location in the old middle school building while the actual town library was undergoing renovations. It closed on July 5, just in time for us to have no place to get new books for the past 2+ months (difficult!)

The new one is finally open. And it is awesome. And, bonus, it's located more than 5 minutes closer to us than the temoprary site we've been using since we moved here... Which adds up, since  we're miles from most everywhere.

We popped in today after our Saturday dump run and farmer's market visit. Here's the goose in the new children's room:

And the mouse working on a puzzle (her new favorite thing to do), also in the children's room:

Unfortunately, moments after I snapped this shot on my phone, this sweet girl proceeded to have her first ever Very Real and Fairly Significant toileting accident... all over the floor of the brand.new.library. Really, Mouse? Really? 

She has ample control and is very verbal about her potty needs, AND she'd had a grand total of only 3 pee accidents, and all on day 1. Today was day 3, and it had been nearly 48 hours since she'd had one. So I thought we could make a quick outing and be ok. I brought the potty chair and tried her on it (in the van) at both the farmer's market and the library. Nada. Then twice in the library she said she had to go, but she couldn't make it happen in the library bathroom... Hence, the carpet instead.

Oy vay. Rookie mistake on my part... and thankfully, the library was virtually vacant, the carpet was dark and patterned, and the staff were very nice...

That'll be one for the record books, I'm sure. And one I'll remember every time - twice a week - we go to the library, I'm sure!

Potty girl

The mouse is potty training this week... Off to a good start, but I'm reminded how draining this process is for the mom! I was able to spend the whole morning with just her while the older three were at school which helped immensely.

Quite sweet, the way the older kids are now able to get into it with cheering and encouraging, playing with her in the proximity of the potty, and delighting (of course) in sharing in her treats!

4-year-old DIY hair "trim"...

We had our first incident of a child intentionally taking scissors to her own hair today... Goose, in the midst of cutting paper "snowflakes" at the kitchen table as I was washing up the remnants of our group chocolate-chip-cookie-bakeoff, elected to try her hand at her 'do. It seemed to be a fairly innocent case of I wonder what would happen if I did this? -- certainly she made no effort to go elsewhere or hide her actions in the midst of her mischief. She was right out in the open, I just happened not to notice it.

She was very repentant upon my realizing her misconduct and chastising her for it - lots of tears and sorrow. Happily the chunk of hair she chopped out is on the side and mid-level, so it is not immediately obvious upon looking at her.

So. Crossed that one off our milestone list...

(In other milestones, we had our first rooster-induced injury when Zane went for the monkey as he was chasing a few of the hens. Gave him a thin slice just below his right eye- definitely could have been a serious injury; we were blessed that it wasn't... Whereupon HF immediately penned Zane in the coop and broke his neck. It was the second time he had been overly assertive, and we can't have such things amidst our young crew. So we are once-again rooster-less... And happily, Monkey is fine.)

Butterfly girl

This was taken this afternoon at the butterfly-themed 3rd birthday party of our new friend Autumn. The mouse really got into it...

Dog Days of Fall

Visitors. We had such fun visitors over the past few weeks... First the James family coming through en route from FL back to NH - Martin, Lisa, and their preteen sons Jesse and Rhys. We've been friends with them since a year into our marriage, and it was great to catch up with them. Then our recent and dear friends the Schneirs from CA are doing a road trip from VT to IN (with their six children 11 and under- how awesome are they?) and came to stay for one night with us this week. So fun to have them here!

Heat. Man, it has been hot for the past few days... over 90 degrees and humid this week. Lots of sprinkler play after school (more about which soon).

Also we've been shooting our bows and arrows a bit more lately, even me, which has been fun...

The Y. Finally, we joined the local YMCA last week - located less than 10 minutes from us - which has been a great addition to our overall life here. I have been going once a week to work out, and Goose and Mouse like the play area a lot. We have gone swimming in the pool twice so far, which has of course been a bit hit for the whole crew. And they have a homeschool program on Monday afternoons that we'll participate in starting next week... It's a great resource for us, and because we're in a small town it really is a community hub. Love that about it too.

Finished. This week we got the blinds and curtains up in Monkey's room and the guest room. Felt so good to get them up and have those rooms both fully 'working' again...

 Chickens. One of the hens turned out to be a rooster. His name is Zane - so named after the "ninja of ice" in Lego Ninjago... By the monkey, of course.  Names for white things tend to be feminine - snowball, marshmallow, etc - but clearly we didn't fall into that trap.

 And for their part, the hens are beginning to lay, which is good news for our crew...

School went well this week over all; more on that before long.

The monkey had his first sleepover last night, an 8th birthday party for his cubscout friend Bryce. Success!

Settling into fall

Whew. Been back in Virginia now for nearly three weeks following our 4 weeks of intense flood-remediation and 5 weeks in New England (HF was with us for a little less than half that time, spending the other weeks back in VA working hard on the house... And at his regular job too of course). Lots of great visits and adventures while there... Too many to go into.

Here's a view we came home to-- so love the clouds we not get to enjoy on the east coast. Missed them so much while in CA!

It's difficult to describe the level of overhaul the house has undergone in the past 7.5 months since we've lived in our sweet farmhouse. Defies the imagination (at least ours)... So much more than we ever planned, and truly exhausting. But - we can now say - now feeling so worth it. This we agreed as we positively dragged ourselves to bed last night at the end of our final, long weekend of hard work-- the irony, of course, being that we spent 30+ cumulative hours of hard labor during "Labor Day" weekend! But the trim is now all complete and painted (monkey even helped with the painting), the curtains are going up this week in the upstairs bedroom, every room has electricity. Praise the Lord.

The den, newly trimmed-out and with painted windwo

 We did make time for some good kid activities in the children's final two weeks of summer. Monkey and Roo did a week-long gymnastics camp the week before last (9 - 12), which Roo adored and Monkey tolerated. We visited friends in McLean and Richmond last week and went swimming with them on both occasions. And we've had several playdates with new friends here locally as well.

Today is the first day back to school. Monkey and Roo are doing a homeschool hybrid, where they go Tues-Thurs to "Miss Debbie's" (amazing) one-room style schoolhouse for a dozen, elementary-age students. Then they are home with me homeschooling on Mon and Fri. Goose will return to her preschool on Tues/Thurs mornings, during which time the mouse will have a babysitter. And I will return to consulting on Tues/Thurs mornings in a few weeks here, once the dust (literally) settles...