August

Well hello, strangers. In the tradition of keeping a 3-4 month back order on my blog posts, I will now write about August while in the month of December. Taking pictures as I go is the only way I can remember what goes on in our life, and thankfully the date they were taken automatically attaches itself to each photo. Otherwise I would be lost. Who the heck knows what happened way back in August? My swiss cheese/doily/colander brain doesn't hold onto much.

The last post had Mom H. here visiting. While she was here we went to the Women of Faith conference in Atlanta. Aunt Sherry picked her up the night before so they could work at a World Vision table (as is their tradition), and I rode the scary church van with some ladies from Concord. (Anything above 50 mph made it shake like it was going into warp speed. She can't take much more, Captain!) I roomed with Jenny D. and her mom again, which is always a treat. Mom rode back home with us in the scary van Saturday evening, stayed over Sunday, and we had to tell her goodbye on Monday.

We started our new school year the next day, Tuesday the 15th. I spent all day Sunday, Mom's last day here with us, getting our first week down on paper. I was also acting like a crazy person, pretty much scowling the entire I was working on the schedule and school plan, and I'm sure she feared for my sanity. I've always considered myself a pretty go-with-the-flow person, but the transition from summer to fall/school year has always been a difficult one for me. It started way back when I was a kid having to start a new school year after a summer of playing outdoors, didn't improve any as a college student coming off of an awesome summer of camp and going back to school, and has YET to improve even now as an adult, again coming off of a summer of camp and fun, again going back to a school year! The amount of planning involved with home schooling is vast, and I had all summer, but I just didn't want to do it because I was playing with the kids was so busy with summer responsibilities I just couldn't get to it. This summer I will do better, and I'll also try to remember the degree to which I usually kick and scream going into fall and prepare myself for it a little more. (I may as well since it's inevitable, huh?)

All that said, I really do love home schooling and spending so much time with the kids. Once the planning is done and it's rolling, it couldn't be better. I am extremely blessed to be able to do it, and thank the Lord every day for His blessings of these kids and the privilege of being their mom.

Amelia made a sign for each chair. The first day of school is kind of a low key affair around here.

Officially a third grader.

Officially a first grader.

Got a Pre-K'er too, if that counts as a grade. Avery is learning to read this year. I've found that teaching them to read their pre-k year makes Kindergarten a breeze.

Here are the people I get to spend my days with!

I am still piecing a curriculum together instead of ordering one pre-packaged. I've found programs I like for math, science, and history, and for language arts we use a variety of workbooks from Amazon, Barnes and Noble, or wherever else I can find them. We also do a lot of reading, both independently and aloud together. It's time consuming to plan each week, but the freedom is nice. The oldest two are continuing with piano, and we've just finished the fourth and final book in the Music for Little Mozarts, a great series for beginners. Now we'll move on to another series for older kids. They haven't out-learned me with piano yet, which is good news since we're saving money on piano lessons. I'm sure the day is coming when they'll need to move on to a "real" piano teacher! I plan to start Avery and Elizabeth on piano together next year.

When our school year started we were part of the home school co-op we participated in last year. Every Thursday Amelia took ballet and drawing, and Shannon took Art and Karate. It was a good time for me to sit for two hours in the nursery of the church it was held at and work on reading with Avery and on this blog, and the kids enjoyed their classes very much. One week in October I got a call from a friend who was a part of it telling me not to come the next day...the co-op had imploded and no longer existed. What?! I'm still not exactly sure what happened, but apparently it had something to do with poor leadership and an accusation against an unsupervised teen. So...we stay home on Thursdays now. Days are full and busy enough without going somewhere all the time, so for now it's okay.

We continued to enjoy swimming and playing outside all we could in August, and pretending it wasn't really the start of a new school year. Weekends since camp has ended have fallen into a pattern of James riding his bike most Saturday mornings, then heading in to work with groups at camp for the rest of Saturday and Sunday until lunch time. That's usually when they check out. Sunday afternoon is finally family time, and one Sunday afternoon toward the end of August we headed to Lake Lanier to join part of the Davidson crew on their boat (Jenny and Lydia skipped out on us due to headaches/needing naps/etc.). We had one last hurrah before the fall weather set in, and it was a lot of fun.

Ring Around the Rosy in the green lake water.

Bennett and Shannon tubing. Apparently Shannon was taking a floating nap.

Whoo hoo!

 

 

Snack time.

Avery's first ever tubing excursion with James. He thought it was a blast.

Ruthie and Amelia.

Maggie and Amelia.

Getting brave..

Look Ma, no hands! Eventually Maggie stood up.

She could use a couple of phone books to boost her up. Drivers too short to see over the front are a hazard on the lake.

Curtis had bought a pair of tiny skis so the kids could start learning to ski, but no one had tested them out yet. Nor had he ever pulled a skier. So, having the month before proven that I could still get up and might not embarrass myself too badly, I gave it a go.

Big ole wide skis make it easy! They were let out on the last setting and I wondered if I would go head over heels since they were so short. (Since clearly that is the only reason I could possibly fall.) :) It was a lot of fun. If we weren't in the camp business with full summers I would love to have a boat. I love being on a lake.

Bein' stoopid.

August moved quickly (and warmly) into September....and hey, looky, I finished another month's worth of blogging!

Following are two things I heard from boys in the last week. Both are representative of how each views the world.

Avery drew a picture of our family, all stick figures, and then he explained it to me. "Here's me, the king, and Shannon, the prince, Amelia, the queen, and Elizabeth, the princess. Daddy's the knight. And here's you, Mommy, the servant." (Jesus did say the last will be first....)

Most days the kids get short writing assignments to work on their writing skills. I have a book with several writing prompts to get them thinking creatively. Shannon is and has always been a very literal and concrete thinker, and he sometimes has trouble coming up with imaginative things to write. I think he may write instruction manuals some day. Last week one of the prompts said, "Imagine you were walking to school and saw a house made completely out of candy canes. You knock on the door. What happens next?" I was thinking this one had a lot of creative and fun possibilities. My literal thinker immediately responded, "It falls down."

Look for a little boy to turn five and other exciting happenings in the next installment of The Happy Himstedt Home. (I've always kind of thought my name choice for this blog was kind of dumb. Anybody got any better ideas?)