I suppose I should say something educational since we ARE a homeschooling family.
We’ve been doing “light” school this week and last. Knowing this was the girls’ last week home and that last week was a Holiday week, I told the younger two that we would begin “full school” on 19 Sept. The older three boys were given one week’s worth of work to finish in both weeks. Believe me, that’s an accomplishment since we’ve had doctor’s appointments in both weeks, holidays, family outings and lots of activity.
We’ve enrolled Josiah and Jamin in North Atlantic Regional High School. This is an accredited private school in Maine that will take our transcripts from AK, will monitor our work at home and will award the boys’ credits. When they graduate they will be receive an official diploma from the school district in Maine. This was important to them. We have to run our curriculum by them, track our hours, save work to send them and PAY. The only real differences between them and the charter schools in AK is that 1. We pay THEM (they don’t pay us), 2. They allow us to work year round and 3. Though we have to send MORE work – we can send it all at the end of the year and don’t have the 9 week deadline crunches. When they called they were unfamiliar with Tapestry of Grace, the curriculum we use. I explained and then sent a list of credits and a web link for them to explore. They called back today to say that TOG looks excellent and that it will be a wonderful program for us to use. We don’t have to count hours if we do the program “as written”. I need to write out exactly what we ARE doing because I’m sure I won’t be doing it as written….I told them not to expect anything from me until the end of next week. I refuse to stress this week as we play with the girls.
The younger ones have occupied themselves this week with play dough, coloring and games….lots of games. One project we’ve been working on is growing crystals. Actually, this was Krista’s project with them. Their weeks of patience have produced some great looking purple crystals.
Bre, Krista, and I went and got haircuts yesterday. I asked for her to fix the gray that was showing up in my roots. She painted it – a new procedure for me. The funny thing is that she painted the roots a “mocha” color which looks an awful lot like red to me….so now I have red roots and such, with blonde and burgundy streaks….I’m telling you I won’t know what color my hair is by the time we move. I told the girls I was going to have to come up with better instructions for her than “cover the gray”. Purple and burgundy last time, red this time….meanwhile the sun continues to bleach it all lighter and lighter. The girls got very cute hair cuts. Krista got some flip up style in the back and they smoothed it all behind her ears but I’m not sure she is going to wear it that way. (I’ll try to add a picture or two when I upload this).
The girls (BreAnne and Krista) are spending lots of time loving on the little ones. We went and bought presents to have a big birthday/farewell party for the girls on either Saturday or Sunday. Shhh…don’t tell them but we are going to have a care bear theme…which is what their nursery was decorated in oh those many years ago. It’s true what they say…wait long enough and ANYTHING will come back into vogue.
Last night was a Protestant Women of the Chapel kickoff. We had 6 present. I did a little talk, we had a potato bar and sundaes and brownies. It sure made me miss friends in AK. It was fun to get out with a few ladies. Our median age was probably 50+ so those of you from Elmendorf can guess that we are a bit more sedate than ya’ all….no kidnapping at all…. I heard of the kick off at Holloman where you all line danced…..
Alex continues to amuse (and challenge) us. He likes to tell us to “be nice to him”…..but he doesn’t seem to quite understand the reciprocal nature of these things. Today when we got home from picking Jamin up from practice, he ran to the door to open it for us. Now, Alex is an escape artist and so we have a host of locking devices on the front door. The screen door has a lock, which he’s not discovered. The door has a deadbolt and a flip like lock at the top of it. When we rang the doorbell Alex came running. “I’ll let you in” and he began to make his way through all the fortifications. The silly lock on the screen door is the one that finally stopped him. I told him to go get a big boy…and he didn’t think that was needed at all. I began to laugh and he said, “Mom – you don’t think I’m funny”. He has a real thing about others laughing at him.
The girls are STILL packing.
I’m doing much better than I expected to be doing at this point. We know that this is a natural transition but I must say it is our least favorite part of parenting to date.
The rest of the day has been filled with a trip to the Oral Surgeon for Krista. Her wisdom teeth have healed fine and she is set for the trip – teeth wise. We’ve also made our weekly trip to the Post Office, I’m really thinking of buying a postal scale and printing my postage off online. We are also scoping out the costumes in all the stores at this time of the year. We don’t celebrate Halloween but the younger kids love to play dress up. We’ve noted that we are very short on BOY costumes so have already decided to frequent the costume sales this year. Nothing real exciting...but that’s our day.
Josiah and Stacia make faces at each other
