Swimming Lessons

At the end of last summer Jeremiah had started dog paddling without his life vest on. Nathaniel was fearless in the water, which was actually a matter of concern because he seriously thought he could swim even though he sank like a rock. So this summer I really wanted for the boys to start swimming. I wanted them to at least be able to keep their heads above water should they fall into a pool or something.

A colleague of Aaron's used to be a swim instructor and he agreed to teach a swim class with 3 of our friends. It was a cold week, but the kids did great. Jeremiah is confident in the water now, as long as he has his goggles on. He went from trying desperately to keep his head above water while swimming to swimming under water. Nathaniel can swim under water, and can keep himself up a little bit with his head above water.

I am so glad that we did the swim lessons early in the summer so they now have all summer to practice!

A busy weekend

Father's Day 

Goo Goo Dolls concert at Riverbend

Baby shower decorations

Yikes! Taking a deep breath this Monday as we try to recover from a weekend full of festivities. It was a weekend full of exciting events (seeing Jeremiah's favorite band the Goo Goo Dolls live), parties (a baby shower at our house, a big birthday party complete with swimming and creek splashing for the boys), and family (Father's Day lunch and playing with cousins).

This week we are wrapping up swimming lessons. I am so proud that both boys are swimming independently now! We are also working on more projects around the house and hoping to do our annual blueberry picking. Fun summer times!

New Project

The room on the back of our house gets used a lot. It is always an unorganized mess of all kinds of randomness. One of the projects on our summer list is to paint, deep clean, and organize this room. The plan is for this room to not only be our play room but also our main school room. We already have the furniture picked out for it, but it doesn't make sense to go get the furniture until the painting and cleaning is done. We have lived in this house for 3 years and this room gets a lot of traffic and not a lot of cleaning (since it is out of sight it is easy to let it go). So let's just say that new paint and some deep cleaning were much needed. 

Instead of going and getting a new color I decided to save a buck and go with left over paint from our rental property. It's not a color I would normally pick out, Parisian Taupe by Behr, which to me just means "boring tan." But it is a neutral color, I had a whole gallon of it, and it is the kind that already has the primer in it (love that!) so I decided to just go with it. I've decided I like it in this room because there are so many windows and so much sun that the tan doesn't get too dark. It also helps that there is really only one large wall to cover, all the other walls are broken up with windows, closet doors, or a pass through window. 

I spent the day painting while the boys entertained themselves for the most part. Jeremiah did want to help paint a little bit and did a great job. It feels good to have the first part of this project done! I always put off painting because it seems like such a hassle, but then when it is done I love how fresh and clean a room feels and I wonder why I didn't do it sooner. Now we just need to do the deep cleaning and go get the furniture! Did I mention that we have swim lessons this week, are taking the kids to a Goo Goo Dolls concert on Friday night, and I am hosting a baby shower at our house on Saturday? I will probably get the cleaning done, but the furniture may have to wait. 

God's love made visible through a bike

Saturday was a gorgeous day! After the ball game, pizza party and a short rest we decided to make the most of the cooler temperatures and head to the Chickamauga National Battlefield and let the boys ride their bikes. 

Jeremiah has gotten a new-to-him bike. It's a cool story really. The kind that is easy to chalk up to coincidence but when you stop and take a minute you realize that God's extravagant, generous love is made visible even in bicycles. Jeremiah has needed a new bike for a while. He loves riding and his knees were knocking his chin on his other bike. We just didn't have it in the budget to go and buy him a new bike. So we were asking him to be patient while we looked at yard sales and tried to find a bike for him at a price we could afford. He was being patient, but it was the topic of much conversation. We even stopped and looked at a bike that he really liked, but it was used and they were still asking a lot of money and so we asked him to wait a little more. Last week Aaron found a bike on Craigslist. The man was willing to sell it for $10 so Aaron and the boys headed up there. As they were leaving with the bike the man ran out of his house and gave Aaron the money back. He wanted to give Jeremiah the bike. I am amazed how God used this situation to show Jeremiah how much He loves him! And maybe Jeremiah even learned a lesson about waiting and honoring God with your money. 

So I watched Jeremiah take off on his new bike. Peddling hard down quiet roads. Flitting through shadow and light. I know I could feel God's smile. 

Last Baseball Game

 On deck.

Getting in batting position. 

He took this part very seriously. He was methodical, precise and completely serious. 

It was like he had a checklist in his head that he completed every time. 

In this at bat he had a really good hit that got a runner home and tied the game. 

The boy at 2nd got the 3rd out though out so Jeremiah didn't get to run bases, which is his favorite thing.

In the dugout. Aaron was a helper in the dugout. 

Trying to keep thirteen 7 year olds paying attention when they are waiting for their turn to bat is quite the task.  

 The final at bat of the game and season. Jeremiah is up, 2 outs, a few kids on base, our team down 14 to 6. Jeremiah got a good hit, but was thrown out at first. That ended the season. 

 Last coach pep talk. 

With coach Bradford at the pizza party. 

Nathaniel and I sitting in the bleachers.

Well, our first baseball season is over. It was a gorgeous spring-like day with cool temps and a nice breeze. A perfect day to spend at the ball field. Jeremiah had a fun season, but I must say that I much prefer soccer. However, he had terrific coaches who focused on having fun, learning, and being good sportsmen not just on winning. The highlight of any sports season is the pizza party and trophy which now sits in its own place of honor next to the soccer trophies. Now we can take a deep breath and dive in to summer.

School - Wrapped Up & Looking Ahead

On Sunday (Mother's Day) Nathaniel came running up to me exclaiming, "Look mama! I wrote you a card!" I was in a conversation with someone, and had never seen Nathaniel actually write any letters at home, so I took the card, glanced at it, assumed it was his scribbling "writing" and continued my conversation. As I sat down and looked at it closer I realized that he really had written! The card says, "I love you mom" going counter clockwise. I was so surprised! He had copied it down from the board during his Sunday school class! He had never written any letters (other than N) at home before. This, coupled with his sudden reading, just goes to show that when a child is ready to read and write he will. 

I was determined to finish our Core B Curriculum from Sonlight before we headed to Pensacola. We had already been winding down our school year (Math had been finished weeks before) and I didn't want to come back from a week at the beach and still have school work to do. It sure felt good to finish up with the fall of Rome and put all our books and binders away! 

We really enjoyed this past year of school. Sonlight Curriculum is a perfect fit for our family. (The boys picture even made it into their catalog, page 35!) We spent our days mostly reading good books, marking up maps, and filling in our Book of Time. Even Nathaniel enjoyed participating in our Core studies and can tell you what a viaduct is and who Marcus Aurelius was. Jeremiah sped through the Horizons 1st grade math with very little help from me. We both enjoyed Language Arts, Jeremiah likes to write stories and is proving to be a great little speller. I am enjoying actually learning some English grammar rules this time around. 

Aaron and I spend some time every year thinking and praying about what to do the next year. After talking and praying we still feel that schooling our children at home is the right choice for our family right now. However, next year will look a bit different because we are adding an outside science class for Jeremiah and a bit more "formal" work for Nathaniel. 

I was initially a tad concerned about adding more formal work for Nathaniel. But he has shown so much excitement and is initiating so much learning on his own (see the reading and writing) that I think we will all adjust very well. He is super excited to have his very own work books. 

Jeremiah will be attending a science class one day a week at Hilger Higher Learning here in Chattanooga. We visited the facility a few months ago and were very impressed with the teachers, staff, and students there. He will be studying Astronomy this year and is pretty excited. 

Here is what the rest of our next year looks like:

Sonlight Core C - the fall of Rome through modern history. This will include history, geography, and some Bible memorization. Nathaniel still seems to enjoy and keep up with the basics of the core work, but for geography he will be focusing on learning the continents, oceans, and points on a compass rose. 

Jeremiah:

Language Arts - Grade 3 

Handwriting - A Reason for Handwriting, Transition

Math - Horizons  2

Science - Hilger Higher Learning, Astronomy

Nathaniel

Reading - Teach Your Child To Read In 100 Easy Lessons, BOB books

Handwriting - A Reason for Handwriting, K

Math - Horizons K

We definitely were ready for a break. But our new curriculum is here and all the shiny new books are tempting us so we will continue some things through the summer like reading and handwriting practice. 

Pensacola Trip!

We got back from Florida on Sunday night. It was a great trip! It was relaxing and fun for all of us. Here are some of the pictures:

Loaded up in the van. 

I was surprised at how smooth the traveling was. I guess all our kids were old enough to entertain themselves and we just had to be patient with all the bathroom stops. It was about an 8 hour drive (including lunch, dinner, and bathroom stops), not too shabby. Of course, it helps to have the Wii set up in the van, our boys thought that was amazing! 

 The view from the back patio of the condo. 

Our condo was so nice! It was located on the ground floor and just steps away from the beach access and both pools. This little grassy area was right outside the door and a perfect place for the kids to hang out. Having the patio in the back meant that we didn't have to bring sandy, wet beach and pool things in the house! Everything just got dumped on the patio. Perfect!

The swing was a popular place to hang out. 

You can see our condo behind the kids, to the left. 

One of the pools. 

Our set up on the beach. 

We decided to just leave our chairs and toys on the beach for the week. In the evenings we would fold up the chairs, consolidate the toys and move everything beyond the tide line. It was never disturbed. It was so nice not to have to haul all the sandy stuff back up to the condo every night! 

(Behind the chairs you can see the beach access, wooden walkway on the right, and our condo, to the left.) 

 Jeremiah made up a game in which they all had to jump the "poisonous" waves. 

 I call this Jeremiah's Baywatch pose. 

He looked like a little surfer! 

 My friend Kendal. 

 With my boys on the beach. 

The beach in the evening. My favorite time. 

Unfortunately we only went down there once. By the time we were done with dinner the kids were usually pretty worn out so we did a quick swim in the warm pool before bed. 

Our little routine was to go down to the beach in the morning before it got too hot. The kids would play in the waves while Summer and I sat in our chairs with our feet in the water finishing our morning coffee. We would head back up to the condo for lunch and then do some swimming. At some point in the afternoon we would have rest time. Then dinner, more swimming, and bed. 

One of my favorite parts of the week was getting up in the morning (our kids all woke early, go figure) and taking my coffee out to the patio. It was so relaxing to start the day with the sound of water and the sights of the beach waking up. Sigh....

One evening we went out to dinner at the Crab Trap. A seafood restaurant on the beach with tables in shade outside and a play ground for kids to play on. All the kids got buckets and shovels and were happy to play while they waited for their food. It was one of the most relaxing meals out I have ever experienced. Summer and I just sat, talked, and watched our kids play. Who ever thought of that was a genius! 

Nathaniel and Clayton were good buddies all week! 

It was fun to watch them always up to something together. 

 While we were there Carter celebrated his 7th birthday. 

The boys thought he needed some Nerf guns. 

 We went out to lunch at the Shrimp Basket, my kids ordered grilled cheese. 

 Pretty cool dude.

 Off the beaten trail we found this amazing playground! 

Birthday cookie. 

We are sure the neighbors appreciated the horn blowing. 

Before Carter's birthday we realized that we were traveling with kids aged 3, 4, 5, 6, & 7 years old. 

So we did a little craft and took some pictures. 

Kendal, Nathaniel, Clayton, Carter, Jeremiah