Happy birthday to Jennifer!

Back in Kindergaten

Here are a few pictures of Eleonora’s last weeks of kindergarten, we just didn’t know it at the time. 

She did a project about an arctic animal - the elephant seal. I helped the boys do their artic animal posters back in the day, so I was happy when Caleb helped Eleonora finish putting her poster together. 

The Cat in the Hat came to read to the kindergarteners. 

The last day of school before Spring Break (also the last day of school, period) was the day they celebrated St. Patrick’s Day early. 

(E’s teacher sent me the last three pictures.)

Weekend

We had a nice, relaxing, drizzly weekend. Chris took most of these pictures. Our irises are beautiful. We have 4 or 5 varieties. 

We got some more stone edging from a friend’s house and put that around the blueberries and moved the blueberries’ bricks to the garden in front of the cabin. We just need a few more to finish the job. 

We took out this black plastic edging we had there before because Buddy wouldn’t leave it alone. We had different levels of satisfaction with working in the mist, as you can see.  If anyone is in the market for some free black edging, come on down!

Chris replaces the light fixtures in the bathroom while the kids looked on. 

While we were on our porch Saturday evening, a gigantic tree fell across our street, just a few houses down. 

On Sunday evening, we went for a family walk. It was sprinkling and so windy when we started, but it got prettier as we went along. 










Now it is Monday morning, and we hit the ground running!  Right now I hear one kid doing Mr. Hoffman piano lessons, one kid sorting legos, one kid humming while she does her worksheets, and it is all music to my ears. 

Fun Friday at Fall Creek Falls

Yesterday started out as a normal “home-schooling” day, only even messier because the kids had just unloaded their trash bags of school belongings and I was sending out work to my ESL students as well. Then my dad called and offered to take us on an adventure, and “oh, buddy, he didn’t have to holler twice.”

We originally set out looking for a greenhouse, but Eleo noticed we were heading in the general direction of Fall Creek Falls, and my dad had just read that they were opening up yesterday, so we went!  There were some strange road closings within the park, but you could get pretty much anywhere, just circuitously. We ate lunch on the back porch of this old schoolhouse. (While we were driving-through to pick up our lunch, Eleonora joined in with her Google-Meet kindergarten classroom meeting - the wonders of technology.)

It was gorge-eous!!

The waterfalls were all flowing like crazy!

Caleb got himself a new hat at the FCF General Store. 

Then as we were leaving the park (out the wrong side because of the road blocks), we saw and followed a sign to a greenhouse and ended up in some sort of Amish/Mennonite (?) community. They sold their canning lids in 24 dozen packs for $50. Now that would last you a while!

While we were in there, Eleonora lost her very first tooth!  Here’s Caleb with his missing bottom teeth. I’ll have to find Josiah, too. 

Anyways, their greenhouses were great, and we came home with some fun plants, so now it’s time to hop out of bed and go plant them. We are hosting a little socially-distanced birthday party for Jennifer next weekend, so we’ve got to turn this place into a show place!

Happy Saturday!

Strawberry Girls

A local strawberry farm announced that it was time to come pick this week. 

We had taken our girls to this same place three years ago and we thought we could recreate this cute picture. 

Unfortunately, the ripe strawberries had already all been picked for the day, so the girls found one each to eat, and then we headed to Amanda’s house to bounce, play, and plant a little veggie garden. 

Packed Up

Today was my day to pack up my classroom at school. We had to take our temperatures as we went in the building, and then put all our students’ things in a labeled garbage bag. Here was the gym when I went to add my kids’ ESL stuff to their classroom teachers’ bags for them. 

That was sad. Next week, parents can drive by the school and teachers will bring out their kids’ stuff to them. 

Some of the work I was sending home:

Sunday

We had a nice weekend.  I’ll tell you about Saturday tomorrow, but for now I’ll tell you about Sunday. We started the day by gathering in the living room to watch our church’s service. Don’t tell, but I’ve taken to coloring during the sermon since this ordeal started and it’s quite nice. The kids brought out all the Woodzeez and played quietly. Chris manned the technology (it kept pausing).  Chris and Caleb made hamburgers and homemade French fries for lunch. 

Last year, Buddy chewed up the cushions from our front porch rockers, and since then they’ve lived in the shed, where rodents have helped themselves. (We moved Buddy’s wire so he isn’t allowed on the front porch anymore.)  Saturday when I was at Walmart, a lady was having fabric cut (looked like she was going to make an Ariel costume and an Elsa costume to me) and so I was emboldened to have some nonessential fabric cut as well.  So here is our before and after. Ta-daa!

My mom and I were going to meet at the walking track (so grateful it’s stayed open!), and the kids decided to join us. This was the boys’ first time taking their hoverboards out and about. They mostly crouched as they zoomed around, scared to have a big wipeout in public, I think. 

Now we are about to start school and we are already late because the children seem to be enjoying a luxurious breakfast while I hide out and type this. If you’re wondering how we did on our productivity charts last week, we won’t talk about Eleo, Josiah (and I, if I was playing) earned $1, and Caleb earned $5!  Last Friday, Caleb filled in all his missing holes by doing extra chores to earn his perfect score, but this week we are getting tough, and perfect scores have to be earned perfectly. If those kids will quit chomping, we would get to it. I was just thinking yesterday that this reminds me so much of playing school (usually pioneer) with my sisters and cousins. I really enjoy having an little more authority over my current pupils, it really helps in the cooperation department (I’m looking at you, Lou, ha!).  I need to find some sunbonnets and suspenders and lunch buckets and slates and then we’d really be having a good time. In other news, my sister is FINALLY reading the Little House series for the first time in her life (how is that even possible) and I’m having the best time discussing them with her. And in more other news, the boys and I started listening to ‘Little Men’ and it is just so good. I keep feeling like I could finish the sentences sometimes, I must have read it a lot back in the day. We only heard the first chapter last night but I have the feeling I’m going to learn lots of helpful parenting/teaching strategies as I listen. I’ll keep you posted. Happy Monday!

This Week

Eleonora and Caleb and I went on a little bike ride yesterday.  

Irises in different colors are blooming all over our yard. The kids are supposed to still be memorizing their AWANA verses, then we record them saying them and post them on our church’s AWANA Facebook group. We used these as backdrops yesterday. 

Eleonora has her first wiggly tooth. 

We’ll be finishing up our fourth week of homeschool here, and on that note, I better hop up and get to it!