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Just different

My children are very blessed to have all 4 of their grandparents alive and well, along w/ a great-grandparent as a bonus. Doug and I both came from loving homes, but we had fairly different upbringings. He spent the first 15 years of his life in the suburbs in New Jersey as the youngest of 2 children. I grew up in the backwoods of North Carolina as the 5th of 6 children. I've adopted some of Doug's family's way of doing things, and he has taken some of mine. I like to think our children are a nice mix of the two.

These different backgrounds mean my children get very different experiences when they visit their 2 sets of grandparents. I think this is a good thing; it's a blessing that I hope they will appreciate one day. Time spent w/ one set is not better than a visit w/ the other; it's just different.

This past weekend we visited my parents. They still live in the house I was raised in. We arrived on Saturday night, hoping to get a swim in at the pool down the road where I learned to swim (or should I say where my daddy threw me into the deep end). It belongs to a very elderly gentleman that I have known all my life. Unfortunately, there was a lot of lightning and thunder so we just stayed at the house w/ my grandmother (my parents were out of town until the next day). Chloe seemed particularly fond of my Grandmother Louise (her great-grandmother) and we got some cute shots of inter-generational affection. I think I spotted a little puddle of Grandmother-Louise-heart on the couch afterwards:





After church and then lunch on Sunday we headed over to the pool. The children enjoyed their time in the water. Doug and I entertained them by jumping off the diving board and doing amazing feats of somersaults, twists, and flips before slipping gracefully into the water (making little to no splash, of course). Or maybe not. But I did touch my toes before that belly flop. And I think the children were amused.

My parents returned on Sunday afternoon, and we enjoyed a yummy supper w/ them, my grandmother, my brother Sid, his wife Tina, and their crew of 4 young'uns. Noah and Claire had an absolute ball playing w/ their cousins. Chloe liked to follow them around and got totally filthy in the process:





That afternoon we discovered that one of the nanny goats had had twins the day before. They were so little and cute! But very loud if you took them away from their mama:



My nephew Sidney, Noah, and Claire playing together:



Noah, Claire, Sidney, and Chloe playing:



My nephew Lincoln pulling Claire and his sister Rachel in the wagon:





On Monday, Doug and I went whitewater rafting on the French Broad River while my parents looked after the children. (Wasn't that nice of them?) It was in celebration of our 8th wedding anniversary, which is officially next week. We had a good time but got a bit crispy around the edges (i.e. sunburned on our arms and legs). While we were gone the children got to go fishing and played w/ their cousins some more. They also gorged themselves on tomatoes, blueberries, and raisin bread.

On Tuesday we got ready to leave. But first we had to sneak in a little bit of blueberry pickin'. Chloe did pretty well choosing the blue ones and not the green unripe ones.



But why bother when Mama will pick for you?









My mama loaded us up w/ produce before we left, including tomatoes, peppers, cantaloupe, blueberries, watermelon, okra, green beans, eggplant, pumpkin, and some honey from their bees. She wanted to give us some squash and cucumbers too but we already have a lot of those from our own garden. Mama says she needs to stop planting such a humongous garden every year, but I don't mind it one bit. We'll be eatin' pretty good this week!

For lunch we met Doug's dad (Grandpa Dave) at Olive Garden. This was planned at the last minute so we decided not to tell the children beforehand. I think they were very pleasantly surprised. Grandpa Dave quizzed Noah on what he had done in school the previous week. I'm sure he was dazzled by Noah's extensive knowledge of killer whales. He also gave Doug his birthday present (it's next week, 3 days after our anniversary). We had a nice meal and visit w/ him before we had to head on home. Claire told me in the bathroom at Olive Garden that we needed to come back again w/ Grandma Carol. I'm sure she would agree.

It was a fun weekend for everyone involved.

My kitchen table

So guess what we've been up to this week?

Monday was our official start to school. I wanted to do something special to commemorate the occasion, so that morning the children and I went to one of their favorite restaurants for breakfast: IHOP. I took my camera along to take some pictures but realized the camera's batteries (and the backup batteries) were dead after we had settled into our booth. Then we went to Wal-mart to pick up a few things and then the dollar store. Noah bought 2 items w/ his tooth money and I got a few school supplies. Then we came home to actually start school. We mainly just looked thru his books and talked about what we would be doing this year. We did complete the introductory math lesson as it was quick and easy and I read the page about killer whales to him out of his animal encyclopedia. The plan is to do 1 animal a week for science, 20 animals in all. He's really digging orcas (another name for killer whales) right now, so we started w/ that.

On Tuesday we did a full day's worth -- math, reading/phonics, recess, handwriting, and then a trip to the public library to get more books about killer whales and Noah's very own library card. We've been doing Bible/history time after our main meal w/ Daddy everyday.

Here are some pictures from Wednesday's recess:









In case you're wondering, this is what "kitties playing soccer" looks like:





We combined today's recess w/ a lesson in auto mechanics, taught by Daddy. It's an integral part of every proper kindergarten curriculum, you know.



Today I had Noah tell me what he has learned about killer whales while I typed it into the computer (a narration). I had to do some prompting, but it is really quite neat how much he has retained. Then we found a spiffy picture on the internet, put that at the bottom, and printed it out for his science notebook. Doug suggested I look on YouTube for some killer whale videos. There were a couple of really neat clips from SeaWorld that the children enjoyed thoroughly. Also a few National Geographic-type videos of orcas in the wild.

Overall, he has been very receptive and cooperative about school. He tends to get tired after math (he has 1 worksheet to do every day and writing seems to tire him), so I do reading/phonics first, then math so that he has a break after that. He is holding his pencil correctly now, thanks to some triangular crayons and a special pencil grip I got for him.

It's quite satisfying to hear him talk about things he has learned outside of "school" time. He was playing like he was a killer whale today and told me that Chloe's pajama bottoms were his "prey"; he then started to "eat" them. I praised him and reminded him that he was the predator of the pajama bottoms. Then Claire held up a pillow and said she was going to eat and pray. So I guess she's learning something, too. :)

A too-fer, Part 2

Noah found his tooth on the floor on Saturday night. I also found out the rest of the story on how it came out. He had been playing and slipped and hit his mouth on a chair. This totally dislodged the tooth that we knew was loose, and it fell out on the floor. It also must have hit the tooth next to it, and all it took was me wiping Noah's face to have it completely fall out. It had been a teeny bit wiggly, so I guess it was going to come out in the next few months anyway.

I learned all this on Saturday night from Doug. Evidently I hadn't asked Noah the right questions. Questions such as, "Did you fall and hit your mouth on a chair?"

A too-fer

So I told you about how Noah started loosing teeth a little under a year ago. He lost 2 more back in May or June, and then about 3 weeks ago, one of his top front teeth became noticeably loose. He's been working on it, so today when he told me that it had come out, I was not surprised. He had a little bit of blood above his lip so I got a damp paper towel and started to clean him up. Then all of a sudden another tooth popped out! It scared me which I think scared him. I looked at the tooth and it didn't look decayed or anything. I asked him where the first tooth was and he said he didn't know. So he showed me in the playroom where he had been when he noticed it was missing and I looked all around to no avail. I asked him if he had swallowed it and he said he didn't think so. Doug suggested that maybe Chloe had eaten it. Ick.

He has 2 adult teeth w/ 4 empty spaces. I told him he was my cute little snaggletooth now.

On on an interesting side note, I recently found out that my niece lost 2 teeth at almost the exact same age that Noah was (approx. 4 years 10 months). Maybe it's a genetic thing.

School is (almost) in session

For those who don't know, we are planning to homeschool the children. For years now, we have been asked if we are homeschoolers and I would reply, "Yes". Then I would usually have to clarify that my oldest was only x years old, but I would be homeschooling him in the future. We were homeschoolers at heart, if not in action.

Well, the future is now. Noah's birthday is in late November, so he was not eligible for kindergarten until this school year. Honestly, I've been dreading it. I've briefly looked at homeschooling methods in the past, but none of them really grabbed me. And don't even get me started on choosing the curriculum. There are dozens of websites and 2"-thick catalogs filled w/ thousands of choices. It's just so overwhelming, especially for someone who doesn't know what her homeschool ideology is besides "I don't want my children to be ignorant."

A few months ago I realized that I absolutely had to get cracking on this. I again looked online at the different approaches to see if I could narrow it down any. A few I could eliminate immediately as unsuitable candidates for our family. I knew I didn't want to order a bunch of textbooks and have public school at home. I like the idea of using "whole" books instead, where possible. (Though textbooks are necessary w/ subjects like math, in my opinion.) I also am not big on unit studies or "unschooling" which seems like it could become very hit-and-miss. So I ordered books about the Charlotte Mason (CM) method and the classical homeschooling (CH) method.

Without explaining what these different approaches involve, I'll just say that I had to make myself read the CM book. It took me 3 weeks to get halfway thru -- it just wasn't sparking my enthusiasm. So I put it aside and picked up the CH book, The Well-Trained Mind. WOW! Now we're talking! It actually got me excited about homeschooling, which is exactly what I needed. In particular, the approach to history is just so awesome and novel. Instead of jumping here and there, it's done chronologically! What a concept! :) I remember disliking history because it seemed so disjointed; there was no flow at all.

The authors have lots of book recommendations (some of those books having been written by themselves), which I wrote down and then researched online. I also used the website for Classical Christian Homeschooling to get book ideas. In the end, I picked some from each. We will also, of course, become good friends w/ our local public librarian.

So now I have half of my book choices sitting on my kitchen island, w/ the other half on a United States Postal Service truck somewhere between here and Atlanta. I'm going to really concentrate on improving Noah's reading and handwriting skills this year (he can read simple stuff but he is not very confident about it). We'll also be doing some math, ancient history, and science. I really like his history storybook; it mainly focuses on the Bible w/ some information about the surrounding cultures woven in. For science we'll be studying different kinds of animals, the human body, and plants. I'd like to keep the science light, interesting, and fun w/ plenty of hands-on activities and experiments.

We'll see how it goes. We may get 2 weeks into this and realize the classical method just isn't going to work, or we may love it. Noah likes to learn but gets discouraged easily. My job will include giving him lots of encouragement, I'm sure.

I told Doug I was kind of excited about learning all the stuff I should have learned all those years ago. My public school experience wasn't too bad overall (hey, I can write a semi-coherent blog post), but I know it was pretty deficient in a few areas. Hopefully Noah won't be able to say the same thing about his education.

Can't we share?

The other day we were at Office Max to look at copiers and also to copy some math worksheets for Noah. I was standing at the copier while Doug was watching the littl'uns. I guess Claire was bored or tired or both, because she started sucking her thumb and rubbing her neck. Chloe saw her doing this and decided that Sister looked like she was having a lot of fun. So she came over and tried to rub Claire's neck, too. But Claire swatted her hand away as if to say, "No way, it's mine! Get your own neck."

Fun with Family

My children are not lacking in the extended family department. Besides having the perfect number of grandparents (4), they also have 1 great grandmother, 5 uncles, 6 aunts, and 16 cousins.

I enjoy seeing the children interact w/ their various family members. Because I love my children and I love my family, it's nice to see them getting to know each other. In May my little (as in younger AND shorter) sister, Sandra, came to visit us for a weekend. Usually when the children have seen Sandra it's been in a new environment w/ lots of other people around. So this time they got to interact on their own turf, w/ more individualized attention. Over supper we told them some riveting "How Aunt Sandra broke her arm the first, second, and third time" stories, in addition to "How Uncle Sid almost killed Aunt Sandra the first, second, and third time (unintentionally, of course)". All very exciting tales, indeed.

Here we are at Dollywood (that's Claire on the right side):



And then after we ate at Brumley's (a fantastic Sunday brunch buffet place):



Then this past weekend we went to my parents' house for the Fourth of July.
In addition to visiting w/ Grandma Sandy, Grandpa Louis, and Grandmother Louise, they also got to spend some quality time w/ their Uncle Sid, Aunt Tina, and cousins Sidney, Lincoln, Rachel, and Prairie. Sid and Tina took us thru the woods to see their beautiful new house (not quite finished).

Claire and Rachel w/ Uncle Sid:



Feeding the goats and donkeys (and mosquitoes) w/ Grandpa Louis:



Having some sort of cousin convention:



Claire "helping" Grandma Sandy in the garden:




Every year there is a neighborhood pool party and potluck at Papa Henry's house on the 4th. This is the second year I've gone since Doug and I got married (we went just about every year while I was growing up). We went a little early so the children could swim for a while w/o lots of other squirmy little bodies splashing and screaming around them.




On the night of the 4th, we went to Tina's niece's house to watch fireworks and enjoy some ice cream and yummy blueberry cobbler (made by Tina's sister, Brenda). We headed back home on Saturday after having lunch w/ Sid and Tina and crew at Fatz Cafe. By the time we got home, the children were exhausted (and so were Mama and Daddy).

From Grandpa and Grandma, with Love

Have I ever mentioned before what generous in-laws I have? I mean, you'd think they love us or something. Well, this week we got something very special from them. A new playground for our backyard! They ordered it while they were here for Mother's Day. On Wednesday a homeschooling family (father, mother, 2 teenagers) came and installed it in 3 hours flat. They didn't even have to look at any directions. The dad said they had been doing it for 9 years. It would have taken us fo-evah to have done it. Or at *least* 2 very long days assuming there weren't any cute children around to distract help us.

On Thursday we had 13 cubic yards of playground mulch delivered. We've got it spread out pretty well now, but need to make it thicker in some places. We'd also like to get a bench for us big folks to sit on while we're out there supervising the li'l folks.





The playground is in a nice spot as there are trees around. It's pretty shady in the morning and then again in the late afternoon. It had a bit of a slope, but our friend David Gaut (of Gaut Construction Company fame) brought his BobCat over a few weeks ago and leveled it out for us. He also got us a bunch of used railroad ties to use for mulch containment. For FREE! He and his son even spent the good part of a hot Saturday afternoon putting them in place (Doug helped). What a blessing he has been to us!

Here's Claire keeping a safe distance from the BobCat work:



Nice and shady in the morning:



The weather has been gorgeous this week (low 80s w/ clear skies) so we've been outside every day. On Wednesday they spent 3 hours playing on it. They've been a lot more tired lately, begging to take naps and go to bed at night. There's just so much for them to do on the swingset -- 3 swings, a slide, rock wall, 360 degree tire swing, Jacob's rope ladder, trapeze/rings, ship's wheel and binoculars, and a cool little clubhouse.









So I have a message for Grandpa Dave and Grandma Carol from Noah, Claire, and Chloe: THANK YOU!!!

Down on the farm

Last night we went to our new milk source to pick up milk for the week and to witness the evening milking. The children always enjoy our trips to the various farms we patronize. We've gotten milk from several different places, and they always find a new way to differentiate between them. There was the "farm w/ Bullet" (Bullet was a big, sweet German Shepherd), then the "farm w/ the swimming pool" (self-explanatory), and now the farm we visited last night. So far they're calling it the "farm where we watched them milk the cow". I hope they find a shorter name for it soon.

Besides the 2 Jersey cows (Milly and Tilly), this farm has a Jersey calf, 5 or 6 steers, a duck, a turkey named Tom, numerous chickens, a chocolate Lab named Buddy, and a cranky chihuahua that we didn't actually see but heard yipping like mad in one of the bedrooms.








Here are Chloe and Tilly sizing each other up. My money's on Chloe:



I like this picture because it looks like Tilly is giving Chloe a big kiss (though she's not):



This strange-looking contraption is an invention of David's, the farmer. He took an old washing machine and made it into an automatic butter churn. He just puts a gallon-sized jar filled w/ cream in the tub, selects the "Delicates" cycle, and presto! You've got butter in just 8 minutes.

The Schneider Beauty Parlor

Chloe was sitting on her little potty the other day and so I sat next to her to keep her company. Then suddenly I was the victim of a vicious attack by 3 hairbrush-wielding cutie pies. (Notice the pink brush that Noah is using. This is one of a set of triplets, separated at Wal-mart. Aunt Sandra and Aunt Laura have its long-lost sisters.)



Honestly I have to say that I enjoyed it except that it made me very sleepy. They did a pretty good job of not ripping my hair out.

Summer fun

So what have we been doing lately? Having fun, of course!

Yesterday was a gloriously beautiful day. Sunny skies w/ a few wisps of clouds. Doug and I trimmed the bushes in the front yard while the children played outside. Chloe climbed on the tricycle and Claire decided to give her a little push like I do sometimes:





After their naps we took them to the Splash Pad, which is basically a glorified concrete sprinkler here in M-town. It's much better than those glorified lawn sprinklers since the children don't end up w/ grass clippings all over them. And it's free!

They had an absolute blast. Although they were pretty cold when they stopped playing long enough to think about it. The wind was blowing slightly and it was only 80 degrees at most. It was perfect for Doug and I while we sat watching them.