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Ninja vanish!

2012-01-28T01:32:00.001-07:00

Only known photos of a ninja:

Poem and Ana are peas in a pod.

2012-01-27T20:29:00.001-07:00

My oldest and youngest are the two most active and crazy of the bunch... Glad they have each other to rough house...

Things Poem Does

2012-01-25T20:33:00.001-07:00

Just a quick list of things 13 month old Poem did today:
-tried to drop Ana's toothbrush down the hole in the floor
-escaped out the door and walked across the road to visit the dog through the fence, then walked down the road (I watched her from a distance to see what she would do)
-filled the microwave with Cam's pajamas
-dumped a whole cup of water on the floor
-peed on Ana's bed
-stole Cam's bag of birthday Doritos and had a private party
-unpacked all of her clothes onto the floor
-took a few balloons to the laundry room and popped them on purpose
-ate a whole adult sized bowl of steal cut oatmeal
-tool Cam's skateboard to the back stairs and sat on it and tried to go down the stairs

And we have only been home for three hours today.

I really lucked out with my other kids I guess, because I've never had such a busy baby.

Life Under Construction

2012-01-24T00:27:00.001-07:00

I am not bragging when I say that Jonah and I have chosen to do some crazy stuff together. Every time I am in the midst of another self-made hurricane, I think, “Wow! This is the top of the crazy cake.” BUT, I really think this, what we are doing right now, tops the crazy cake. My favorite moment (where was my camera?!) was when I walked by the bedroom that we all share that was completely unorganized and disastrous and gross, and on the top of one of the piles of stuff was a big, lovely book entitled, Pottery Barn Home. Ha!

Tonight I brought the kids home after swim team and Jonah was still out running errands, so I made the kids corn dogs and green peas. A friend had cleaned out his freezer and filled ours and so that was what literally fell out onto the sawdust covered floor when I checked to see what I could feed the increasingly hungry children. It was a sign!

I think what I keep trying to teach myself is how to have sanity and consistency despite the crisis. I know we all do this… I excuse myself out of things that should be consistent commitments because of what I think are extenuating circumstances. But honestly, life is one big extenuating circumstance.

I thought a lot about this during Elsie’s birthday party last week—I could have postponed until we had a proper and cute house or until my schedule was free, but really, when is that going to happen?! Might as well get it over with now.

I think about this too with the kids’ homeschooling—I’ll really be organized and involved in their education once we get settled… but then again, why not now!? Jonah and I are the masters of saying, “Well, we wanted to live in Hawaii some day, so why not now?!” but I’m still working on the smaller, more important things.

So, my New Year’s goal is to not have goals… it is to do it. Now. And to keep doing it.

The other New Year’s resolution that we have been working on as a family… because we are loud…

(from: http://mckensiesmith.blogspot.com/2012/01/sighs-in-relief.html)

Big Helpers

2012-01-22T23:54:00.001-07:00

Don’t have much to post about, except that the two older kids have been so helpful this week, fetching tools for Jonah and doing random tasks and helping him build the front deck.

Camden will never just give me a smile for a photo unless I trick him.

Look who is picking up his habit…

Poem playing with her bath toys one last time before I dump the bath water. We don’t have a shower or bath yet at this house, but she prefers plastic bin baths anyway because none of her siblings can crash her party.

Happy Chinese New Year!

Elsie’s Birthday!

2012-01-20T02:11:00.001-07:00

Out of the frying pan and into the fire! That’s how I feel about January with all these birthdays piled up right after Christmas. Between Jonah’s family and my family and our own kids, there are only a few days in January without birthdays. I feel like I don’t get to properly celebrate everyone.

But man are we excited that Elsie turned FIVE this year!! Five years ago I was getting my pedicure and eating sushi, not realizing that my laziness in getting to the hospital meant that Elsie was going to be crowning in the car and born about 7 minutes after we screeched into the hospital parking lot. Her easy delivery was a prelude to her easy going attitude. And she is super cute. She talks, walks, and breathes cuteness. We all adore this girl.

All the crew was excited for the big day and all got up early so she could open her first present. It was from Ana; Ana had bought it two months ago at a garage sale and it had been patiently wrapped and waiting for the big day. It was a big bucket of Littlest Pet Shop toys. Yay. (I say that with the utmost sarcasm that because I’ve already stepped on them about twelve times. Elsie loves them though. So does Poem).

Po was very excited about all the present opening and bagels for breakfast and all the other festivities.

Elsie had a nice simple birthday. She went to Joy School then came home, had mac’n’cheese and chocolate milk, and watched the same Barbie movie two or three times in a row then had pasta for dinner and a chocolate cake with ice cream. It was her day, her way.

Here she is opening a cool art kit from Grammy and Grandfather.

Elsie was lucky because her birthday spanned two days—on Wednesday, she got to have her friend birthday party.

As much as I love parties and birthdays are the one day a year I love to completely indulge and spoil my kids, I get a little overwhelmed with throwing four kids’ birthday parties a year, so the kids get to choose every year—cool trip with hotel stay with the family, cool activity (like a waterpark or fancy dinner) with just parents, or a birthday party with friends with a very limited budget. Both Cam and Elsie chose parties this year, which is hilarious since we are basically camping out in a construction zone in a new town where they have hardly any friends. If it were me, I would choose the hotel. But, whatever. Their choice.

So Elsie decided on a RAINBOW BIRTHDAY PARTY and she made the cutest little invitations all by herself, complete with suggestions what each kid wear to the party (but Tai Tai decided to not dress up as a lightbulb). I found some great ideas on Pinterest for rainbow birthday party stuff, narrowed it down to the 2% of stuff I could actually pull off with my crafty handicaps, then narrowed that down to the 1% that we could actually do at the house in the state it’s in (i.e. bad oven, no kitchen, no room, piles of lumber everywhere). Ana and I stayed up late and decorated the one room in the house that isn’t cluttered and hoped to have the kids in there and out on the lawn. BUT, with perfect timing, the morning of the party was the day the plumbers and carpenter decided to finally show up to get going on their projects. Perfect. We (meaning Ana and I) quickly scrambled and hoped for the best.

Here we are making rainbow pasta necklaces on the 200 s.f. area of lawn that wasn’t taken over by contractors. Thank goodness for Maui’s daily weather perfection.

It was followed by some impromptu games, like “duck duck goose”, “catch the ball with the towel”, and “toss the fallen Surinam cherries into the bucket”.

Then we went inside for some rainbow snacks…

…And to play “pin the tail on the rainbow appaloosa pony”….

Then the kids did a treasure hunt out in the yard.

And finally got to have some cake.

We love our Elsie!! Happy birthday wonderful girl.

Try again...

2012-01-16T00:12:00.003-07:00

For some reason, that link wasn't working. Try this hyperlink:

http://richestpoorman.blogspot.com/

Still living in the midst of chaos... yet, we're in Hawaii, so it's never that bad. We are trying to get it to a significantly improved livable state by February 1st. We just have to survive two kids' birthdays between now and then...

Happy New Year!

2012-01-12T00:24:00.000-07:00

After blogging so well for so long, I did have to take a ten day break to celebrate the New Year and to move!! With one day's notice, we moved out of our rental house and into our new house (which we bought on December 16th and have been working on non-stop since then). I say new "house", but it's actually right now a construction site. Which, with a 13-month-old, means I haven't gotten around to blogging or doing anything, really. I mainly just make sure she doesn't fall into the hole in the floor where the toilet used to be.

If you'd like to see some of the progress, check out richestpoorman.blogspot.com, which will someday be my magical "how to live cheaply and happily" blog, but for now is a dumping place for lots of remodeling photos so my mom can feel like she is here with us because she loves this kind of thing.

Christmas 2011

2011-12-31T02:59:00.001-07:00

You know that panic you get when you accidentally put a new file folder somewhere strange on your computer and you get worried for a moment that you may have lost 100s of photos because you weren’t paying attention…. that just happened to me. Luckily, I found the Christmas photos. Whew.

Don’t tell me you are already sick of all the beach photos I post on here. Too bad. What did you expect when we moved to Maui?!

Anyway, here’s Ana on a paddle board on Christmas Eve. Our friends invited us to join their traditional Christmas Eve at the beach get together, and we were happy to go. (Even if it hadn’t been Christmas Eve, we badly needed a break from our daily attack on the new house.)

As luck would have it, some of our neighbor friends from Sequim called us the day before and told us they were on Maui and wanted us to come see them in Lahaina. We invited them to come paddle boarding at the same beach that our local friends had invited us to and whala! it was a big ole’ party.

Poem is really becoming a little toddler. She really adores her beach time (and all of our friends who cuddle her and play with her). She has also begun climbing on to every beached surf board or paddle board she finds and testing her balance… it’s pretty cute. She thinks she’s a surfer already.

Cam and his friend Ethan. Cam still sticks to the boogie board, even when his friends are surfing. He has been getting much better on the skateboard though, so I’m sure he’ll try surfing someday.

Elsie and her friend Sophie. I really think they are the two blondest girls on Maui. (I could make a blond joke here, but she’s my daughter, so I better refrain.)

Ana and her friend GraceThey are wearing shells on their chins in the photo on the left. We had Grace’s family up to our house for Christmas dinner and then they hosted us for dinner this week and had Ana spend a few days with them in their fantastic condo on the beach in Lahaina. Lucky Ana! Actually, we were all so lucky to have them come visit. We really enjoy their family and had really missed them since we left Sequim.

So Christmas Eve wasn’t totally traditional for us, but it sure was fun! We got home somewhat late from the beach (especially because we saw humpback whales jumping out in the water on our drive back home… they must have been trying to get Santa’s attention), so we just read our last few Christmas books, including The Nativity story, let the kids open one small gift, and sent them to bed. Jonah and I were pooped and fell asleep immediately.

Lucky for us, Santa found our house and the kids sang carols in their room to wake us up at 8 am so they could go see the goodies. The youngest kid gets to go first, so little Po waddled out into the room and found all the other kids’ presents…. Santa didn’t actually bring her anything of her own, but she didn’t notice.

Elsie was a little miffed that Santa didn’t get her the one little specific present she had asked for (explained exactly in person and by letter to Santa about twelve times: “the Barbie Ariel [mermaid] doll with the pink mimi covers [bikini] and the sparkely pink tale and with a little pink sparkely dolphin too”) because Santa said someone else had already bought it for her for her birthday, but I also wonder if Santa went to Walmart too late and they were sold out, but then when he had figured out something else to get her instead, they got that present back in stock but Mrs. Claus had relayed the wrong message to Mr. Claus and he didn’t get the original present. Mr. Claus was mad that Mrs. Claus was being so flakey about the one little present Elsie had asked for, but Mrs. Claus had already got the other present and didn’t understand what Mr. Claus was trying to explain to her during the noisy cell phone call from Walmart and just wanted him to get out of there and come back to the North Pole to help get the reindeer to bed in their reindeer stalls. That’s what I think actually happened.

But, Elsie is a great little girl and she was still pleased as punch about what she got from Santa and never complained one bit and was so so grateful for what she got. She especially loved the Goldfish crackers and Fruit Loops and Pringles. She loves her some good junk food. Mmmmm.

Cam is just the cutest little guy when it comes to Christmas presents. He had asked for a somewhat expensive, hard to find present on his letter to Santa the night before, and since he never told Santa ahead of time (remember, he only gives high fives to Santa but won’t talk to him), Santa didn’t bring it. BUT, he looked at his great presents and said, “Santa is so amazing. I think I want something, but instead he brings me something that he knows I will like even better!”

Ana wasn’t really expecting anything from Santa because she said she has everything she needs and it was okay if he just brought her something small, so imagine her surprise when she found a brand new American Girl Doll from Santa! I don’t know how he did it. Those things are expensive! Maybe his elves shop on Craigslist and have some gnarly negotiating skills or something. Santa is awesome. Except I was a little mad at Santa for bringing the kids such great gifts because Ana said, “Santa is pretty generous. You only got me one gift, but he got me a whole bunch!”

Santa was generous in an inexpensive but showy way. He knows the way to these kids’ hearts is through one or two nice gifts that may or may not be pre-loved, some sugary cereal or Doritos and lots of candy in the stockings.

The best part of Christmas morning is always how excited Ana gets for everyone to open the presents she got them. She is really really good at selecting gifts. I myself am horrible at gift giving (except for the advice I give to Santa about what to get for the kids)… really truly horrible. Like I have a bad gift giving disability and should by law get a special personal shopper to help me every time I enter a store. It’s that bad. But Ana is magical with selecting gifts and she really feels the full joy of watching someone open them. I might even give her the money to buy the extended family members’ gifts next year.

For example, she gave Poem a miniature American Girl doll since Po always tries to steal hers except they are too big for Po to carry. Poem is trying to brush the doll’s hair. Po loves the doll so much and carries it around all over the house. Nice job Ana!

After we opened presents for awhile, we got ready to go to church. Church was rescheduled to be earlier on Christmas that it usually is so that people could have time in the afternoon to be with family and such. For us, it just added to my stress a bit since I had to accompany a singer I had never played for before and also had to be there extra early to make sure I had everything ready for the organ songs. Surprisingly, we made it there 50 minutes early, yet when we got there, the choir was practicing so I didn’t get to warm up the organ and the first time I pushed my fingers on it for the day was when the congregation started to sing “Joy to the World”, and let me tell you, the organ was NOT set up right. Oops!! And it was sad too because Ana and I had practiced for an hour to be able to do a duet using the bell chimes on the last verse and we didn’t get to do it because the organ settings were all wrong. Darn. I guess no good deed goes unpunished.

Thankfully, all the speakers and musical numbers were sublime and it was a good day at church, except for Ana’s tooth falling out in the middle of one of the choir numbers which caused her to run out of the chapel with a bloody mouth.

Anyway, here is my kids’ version of a pre-church Christmas photo.

They finally settled down and we got the very first photo EVER of all of our kids looking at the photo and somewhat smiling. It was a small Christmas miracle.

After church we had a really fun time opening more presents (my parents and Jonah’s parents are always wildly generous and many many gifts appeared magically on our doorstep in the weeks leading up to Christmas) and Skype-ing with lots and lots of family members and trying to get our kids to stop playing with their new toys so they could finishing opening their presents. I REALLY REALLY love opening presents and I always want it to last all day, but last year (thanks to my “post-Halloween, all costumes 90% off” buying spree) we opened presents until it was dark, and that was a bit of overkill. So, by late afternoon we finally got everything opened and loved and put away and video-chatted with more family while fixing a big dinner for our friends who were coming up. It was a lot of preparation, but the dinner went well, and when our friends left late that night and the kids were finally in bed, Jonah and I sort of took a breath and thought, “wow. that was a Christmas!”. It was a whirlwind for sure. It made me SO SO grateful that we had taken 30 minutes every night in December to quietly read a Christmas story with the kids. It was such a simple thing to check the books out in November, to quickly wrap them, and to invite the kids each night to sit with us under the Christmas lights and decorations and read those good stories. We were able slowly soak in the Christmas spirit of joy and rejoicing and celebration. I’m so glad because I felt ready for the day when it came. I didn’t feel I need to quickly cram for the “big day”. It also helped us not feel so guilty about indulging in the kids’ total delight in opening presents. We just felt so Christmas-y about the whole thing. It was lovely. The kids were also so incredibly grateful for their gifts, and their graciousness was contagious. We just felt that perfect floating, misty joy that you get when the whole family feeling the same comfy warm happiness and the whole world seems right.

As Elsie proclaimed about 20 times, “Best Christmas EVER!!”

Christmas around here….

2011-12-23T00:25:00.001-07:00

Although it is weird to sing all the Christmas songs about snow, we have been loving the Hawaiian Christmas season. It’s so warm and lovely (except for the week Charity was here, of course) and sand at the beach is a nice substitute for snow… Except sand is not as good to eat as snow—but that doesn’t stop Po.

I love when December rolls around and I finally get to play Christmas songs on the organ for church. The only bad thing about being the ward organist is that I don’t get to sing the songs… but that isn’t too serious since my screechy singing voice doesn’t add much. I do love enjoying Sacrament Meeting up on the stand while poor Jonah has to wrestle the kids down in the congregation.

I’ve been trying to do more arts with the kids (thanks in part to my obsession with Pinterest—if you don’t know what Pinterest is, just give me a call and I’ll get you addicted too)… here are some paper bookmarks they made.

We have run into Santa a few times and it’s always the same—Elsie cuddles up on his lap and talks to him forever (I’m talking 5 minutes plus), even if there is a whole line of kids waiting.

Ana is always willing to have a photo taken, but she doesn’t talk to him much.

There are no pictures of Cam with Santa because since he was born, Cam does NOT like talking to or sitting on or by Santa. He appreciates the gifts Santa brings, of course, but Cam says he only has to give Santa ONE high five every year, and that’s it. According to Cam, once he’s done that, he doesn’t even have to say hi to him.

Poem grabs me real tight and her legs start shaking when she sees Santa. Hmmm. It must be the beard.

We went to our town’s Christmas celebrations and had a great time doing random Christmas things like painting a live horse and listening to the Middle School Ukulele band play “Jingle Bells” before the town’s Christmas tree lit up.

Homeschool Choir at Kalama Heights Old Folks Home

The kids also joined a little homeschool choir and had their final performance at an adult residential facility (is that the politically correct term?)… the kids playing the ukulele is only 11! He was a star.

We also have made some great Christmas memories at two ward parties (we are moving to a new ward next month, so we went to both parties). They were both loads of fun, especially the fresh Hawaiian food (like the lau laus above that Jonah helped put together) and hula dancing.

And the other crazy Christmas stuff we have been doing is closing on our new house! We bought this cute little [major] fixer upper near town. We had been looking for a farm, but we changed our minds when we saw this place (anyway, it has a pretty big lot for a big garden and we’ll throw some chickens out in the yard). It needs major remodeling, which is all that we have been doing for the past week since the beaches are all too crowded with Christmas crowds for our taste anyway.

The kids have been a huge help (see Ana above—on her way to go paddle boarding, but Jonah put her to work for an hour first), and although having little Po to tend has put a damper in how much I can accomplish everyday, Jonah makes up for it by accomplishing what would normally take three people. We are putting together a blog just about the remodel, so stay tuned.

Here’s the exterior.

Before we go to the new house to remodel everyday, the kids do schoolwork, and they are a little bummed that they have to do school while everyone else is on break, and then I remind them that they get breaks during other times.

(Wow. This is a random assortment of photos! I put a bunch of photos on LiveWriter last week to blog about and now that I’m actually doing it, I realized there is no real coherence to the photos, except that they were all taken this month…) Anyway, here is Po having her favorite food, avocado. Luckily, it is in abundance here on Maui.

Here is our weakly decorated living room. We have done better since this photo was taken, but I wanted to show how the kids were getting ready every night for our Christmas story reading. I checked out 25 children’s Christmas picture books from the library and wrapped them all and the kids open one each night and we read it together. They used to lay on the ground in their warm blankets (yes, it gets cold enough at night to need a blanket), but now they just all pile on top of me on a chair so they can see the pictures.

Here is Elsie at one of the church Christmas parties waiting for Santa to come.

And here she is talking Santa’s beard off.

I was hoping to finally get Po to sit on Santa’s lap since she was riling away in fear every other time we saw him, but no such luck. She was not a happy elf.

Speaking of Elf, my kids have watched it about a dozen times. Whenever I whisper, one of them says to me in a whisper, “I like to whisper too!” They also like to randomly yell, “I’m singing!”

The other movies I put on my iPhone are The Three Amigos!, The Princess Bride, Charlotte’s Web (old animated version), and Mary Poppins. It shouldn’t be to hard for you to imagine the quotes that have been pouring out of my kids’ mouths since they are the same quotes Jonah and I used constantly to annoy our own parents. Glad to keep the traditions alive.

On Sunday afternoon, I saw Elsie walk out with random items to the carport. After awhile I checked on her to find a blond beardless Santa with a magical flying turtle had taken over the roof of our car!

Our kind dear landlady felt like we were taking too long to get a Christmas tree so she took matters into her own hands. We put the cute little potted Norfolk pine up on a barstool to protect it from Po and it suits us just fine. If our tree seems upstaged by all the multitude of presents, it’s because our kids have overly generous grandparents and because Ana has been raiding garage sales for two months. I can’t wait to see what treasures she found.

We are so grateful to spend Christmas is such a beautiful place, even though we miss our extended families so much!! We hope everyone is safe and happy this Christmas and that you can bask in the joyful spirit of the season and take time to celebrate that glorious First Christmas.

Mele Kalikimaka everyone!

“And above all things have fervent Charity among yourselves”…

2011-12-19T00:28:00.001-07:00

What a treat for us that Jonah’s youngest sister Charity came to visit us for a whole week! And I love the quote from the scripture above, because she is fervent! I can’t think of a better word to describe magnificent Charity. We all simply and seriously adore her.

She wanted to come for Christmas, but the flights were prohibitively expensive, so she came a few weeks early. We were sad we didn’t have a Christmas tree yet because she did a fabulous job decorating ours last year when she came for Thanksgiving last year. But, we did do some crazy Christmas stuff, like make sand snow men and sing loudly for all to hear.

The day she came in, we drove straight to the nearest beach.

The next morning, we loaded up the surf boards and hit a few spots for some beginner’s surfing and some nice snorkeling.

We also had some Hawaiian Shave Ice… It didn’t last long.

Unfortunately for Charity, but lucky for us because we needed some moisture, it rained heavy and hard for the next two days. We hit some of the towns’ Christmas festivities and when we were home, Charity got the kids hooked on some new card games. We also went to a church Christmas party and stuffed ourselves silly with all the delicious food.

It rained all weekend, and then Monday was Poem’s birthday, so Charity and the older kids went snorkeling and chased the sun as I mentioned in the previous post. On Tuesday the rain finally subsided enough that we all went out to the Lahaina side. The first beach we went to had water the color of chocolate milk because of all the rain runoff, but Po still practiced some stand up boogie boarding.

And although the beach was a dud, Elsie’s loudness finally scored us big time. While I was changing into my swimsuit in the bathroom, Elsie said in her extra high volume, “OH… MY….GOODNESS! I cannot wait to go on that giant bounce house!!” The lady in the stall next to us started laughing and ended up inviting us to come join her company’s Christmas party and enjoy their bounce house, water slide, and free ice cream in the field behind the beach. Despite the look on Elsie’s face above, they all had a great time.

The next beach we went to was much better for swimming.

Charity and Ana even showed off some mad cliff jumping skills!

Look at that Maui sunset!

After that, we thoroughly enjoyed our last evening with Charity in downtown Lahaina, where she fell under the trance of the magical banyan tree and all its Christmas lights. It was a wonderful evening and of course the week with Charity went by much too fast.

(Elsie was getting a little tired walking around… and Ana is always in her swimsuit.)

And to end this talk of Charity, I just want to put it out there that she is currently single and eligible. She is in the Bay Area but will be in Ogden for Christmas. She loves to be set up on dates. She is 25.5 years old. And when you see her, just remember 1 Peter 5:14, “Greet ye one another with a kiss of Charity”. Her blog is at drippingwithpassion.blogspot.comdrippingwithpassion.blogspot.com and like us, she appreciates when you visit her sponsors because she now has a mean guava jelly addiction like I do and will do anything to satisfy it.

Poem’s First Birthday

2011-12-15T18:12:00.001-07:00

Our little Poem is ONE YEAR OLD! We had a delicious day of fun for her, which included letting her take a nice long morning nap without any other kids making noise (they went snorkeling with dad and aunt Charity). WE MISSED HER (THIS IS JONAH IN CAPS) Then we loaded up and met a few families for a simple birthday party at the park.

The theme was POem’s POlka Dot Birthday party.

We were all supposed to wear Polka Dots, but it didn’t end up that way. I HAVE A POLKA DOT HEAD. Elsie decided the night before that she was going to be a polka dot cat.

The whiskers and tape were her own invention, and they stayed on all night! AJA WOULD'NT LET HER PAINT HER FACE SO SHE CUT THESE WHISKERS OUT OF SOME CHRISTMAS RIBBON AND THEY STAYED ON TIL THE NEXT EVENING WHEN SHE PULLED THEM OFF.

THE BOYS DID SOME SKATING AND SAT ON THE ROOF WHEN THEY WEREN'T SKATING. CAM IS A SKATER. AGE DOESN'T MATTER WITH THIS GROUP. THEY ARE THICK AS THIEVES INSTANTLY.

HERE ARE THE INVITES AJA MADE. SHE IS A MASTER CUTTER AND SHE IS NOT AFRAID TO SAY SO.

Here are the kids that we could coerce into standing still for the photo. We have some great new friends here on Maui, and all of their kids love little Po. She just about gets her cheeks kissed off every time we get together with any of these families. Luckily she adores the attention.

She also gets lots of love from Auntie Charity! We are so glad Charity could be here to celebrate Po’s birthday and her own half birthday.

Po was very good about just looking at the goodies and not touching. We had polka dot sugar cookies, cake pops, and a round chocolate cake that was delicious (thanks Charity for all your baking skills and help!!!).

Poem’s walking skills have really progressed—she’s nearly to the point where she exclusively walks (which makes me so happy because now she can wear dresses more often). I WILL LOVE IT AS WELL BECAUSE IT IS EASIER TO PUT HER ON THE TOILET.

Ana kindly wore the polka dot hat I made, since Po would have nothing to do with it.

I love this photo because Po looks so confused about everyone singing to her while there is a fire on the cake. She’s thinking, “What in the world?!”

Po was generously showered with gifts.

Then all the kids ran off to play in the mist that rolled in…

and Po stripped down so she could enjoy her favorite pastime—climbing stairs.

IF THERE ARE STAIRS ANYWHERE NEARBY EVEN IF WE ARE AT THE OCEAN, SHE WILL CHOOSE THE STAIRS.

Charity relished in being out in the warm Hawaiian air, since it had been pouring rain for the last two days.

Ana and her friends made a huge CTR Heart with flowers they gathered.

After the party, we went home and and let Po blow out a candle one more time. Then she opened some presents and then, finally, she got a piece of cake! She had never had much sugar or any chocolate before and she looked at us and said, “Why have you been holding out on me!?”… but after she only slept for about 5 hours that night, we all knew why we had refrained.

We sure love our baby!! I can’t believe she’s a year old!

And to really celebrate, Jonah took me to the nicest Mama’s Fish House dinner that night since we had Charity in town to babysit. Mmmmmmmm. It was simply perfect. We haven’t been able to go on many dates this year, so it was truly a good long breath of fresh air. Mama’s makes some of the best food on the planet. PO WAS SCREAMING AT HOME WITH THE AFTER EFFECTS OF SUGAR SO IT WAS CUT A BIT SHORT.

Okay! More tomorrow! Happy December and Merry Christmas!!!

Cam doing some moves

2011-12-13T02:31:00.002-07:00

Jonah's sister Charity is here and we've been looking through old blog posts and I happened on this gem:
http://onejeeponeboatnollamas.blogspot.com/2007/11/tmnt-moves.html

For those of you who know Cam, you know his moves haven't changed much. What a great kid.

Today, though, we are celebrating POEM, who is now one year old! Photos of the celebrations coming soon.

Christmas Festivities in Seattle

2011-12-09T23:36:00.001-07:00

This is a very random blog post, but I didn’t know how else to distribute this information.

In case any of you are lucky enough to be in or around Seattle for the Christmas season, I thought I’d point out some local Christmas festivities that were passed on to me:

Giant Gingerbread Houses: At the Sheraton in downtown Seattle (1400 6th Ave). Open all day, every day through Christmas. They are made by local architectural firms and proceeds from donations go towards research for kids with Type 1 Diabetes.

Bellevue Botanical Gardens have free admission next Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Check it out here: http://www.gardendlights.org/

Poulsbo is hosting a caroling contest this Saturday, Dec. 11th, starting at Front Street.

Port Gamble has a tree lighting ceremony Saturday, Dec. 11th, that also includes fireworks!

There is also the Argosy Christmas Ship “parade” every night at a different port until Christmas (Like Lake Union, Lake Washington, etc.)

Last year we went to the Seattle Center and had a leisurely time checking out the model train in the Food Court.

We are far away from Sequim for this Christmas, but this is really making me wish we could be in Seattle for at least a couple days to enjoy the crisp Christmasness of the Northwest.

Mele Kalikimaka!

Homeschool Curriculums

2011-12-09T02:15:00.001-07:00

WHAT is my problem?! I am seriously so lazy about posting photos on these homeschooling posts. Sorry. There is nothing worse than a blog post without photos, right? Except burned cookies.

And by the way, that last post made our homeschooling seem so organized and smooth and OF COURSE that next day was the pinnacle of havoc and frustration. I had to badger my kids for about 6 hours and I think they finally eeked out some sort of half-committed effort. I was frustrated, they were frustrated… the day was shot. This is why I have much to learn. I should have just gathered them into the living room and read them a good long book. Or got them started on an art project. Or took them to the library. But, I didn’t. I just got mad. But, I think we have made progress. At first these sorts of days were many, but they are getting more seldom as time passes, so there is hope for us all. In fact, the next day I was gone for two hours in the morning, and they got everything down without me. Maybe I just need to step out of the equation more often.

Okay, our favorites right now:

I really enjoy most of the workbooks we have used from The Critical Thinking Company, especially their math books like Math Analogies and Balance Math. They will mail you a free catalog and are really good about returning or exchanging books you don’t love 100%.

A fantastic, wonderful resource is TIMBERDOODLE.COM. They are a retailer of homeschooling curriculums and products, and they write accurate and generally unbiased reviews of their products. Their mailed catalog is especially good and gets your mind going on what kind of curriculum you really want. Timberdoodle saved me when it came time to start ordering for last semester. I haven’t bought their Complete Curriculum Packages, but I have used them as a guide to which books to get for my kids. If you need more in depth explanations of different curriculums, or can’t find the perfect fit from Timberdoodle, order a Rainbow Resource Catalog (or read it online). They have everything and the write-ups are exhaustive. Plus, their prices are fantastic.

I have never personally used the k12 program. But, I have looked at it and seen kids using it and it looks really great. It is a little more intense and structured for people following TJEd, but is a good program for people who might have their kids go to public school in the future, or for those who would enjoy a more organized program that requires a high level of accountability. I know that the language arts curriculum is especially well reviewed. K12 is an online and real book mixed program, and they send you everything you need that isn’t online in the mail (like textbooks, math manipulatives, novels, etc.) You can also opt to have a personal advisor who checks you child’s progress and counsels with you as needed. Many states and districts actually cover the cost of the k12 tuition since it is so well accredited, but if you have to pay for it yourself, it is about $150-$300 per subject, per semester.

We had a hard time deciding on a math program—we had to order a secular math curriculum because of the stipulations of our homeschool program… and you would think that would be easy because math is fairly secular, right? Nope. BUT, I listened to the advice of a homeschooling mentor and went with SingaporeMath.com. The books are straightforward, inexpensive, and challenging enough to be enjoyable for my kids. Just order the Textbook and the Workbook. There’s an online placement test so you get the right books. Each semester is about $20 and the textbooks are reusable (or resalable on ebay).

As I mentioned before, I LOVE LVOE LOEV the Music Tree piano method for so many reasons. I can’t even begin to write them all. Plus, the books are really inexpensive. You can get by just fine with just the main lesson book which is about $8 a semester.

I was reminded in a comment that The Well Trained Mind is an excellent resource for homeschoolers, and it is! I got my copy from the library. I should check it out again soon now that we have been in the trenches for awhile.

We try not to have the kids on the computer too much, both because we try to limit screen time and because we only have one working computer right now. But, there are a few online resources that have been indispensible for us this year:

Our homeschooling program provides us with a free subscription to Rosetta Stone Homeschool Edition. This is a fairly awesome program, though I don’t know how I’d feel about it if I was paying for it because it is very expensive. It is a terrific, everything-I-would-want in a foreign language learning software, except that it doesn’t teach any songs or rhymes, and it doesn’t really have any fun games for the kids or any kid-based graphics. If anyone out there has a good suggestion for a free, completely perfect language learning software, please share.

My kids are rewarded with Brain Pop which is an animated educational video site. You really have to watch the videos to appreciate them. Subtly funny and amazingly accurate and nonbiased. To say my kids would watch them all day, every day is an understatement. It is sort of like khanacademy.org in a totally kid-friendly way. (Khanacademy is a free site with thousands of educational videos about nearly everything). Brain Pop does have a subscription fee, but it is covered by our Homeschool Program; I don’t know if it is worth it to everyone to pay $300 a year, but my kids have definitely absorbed $300 worth of learning from it in the last three months.

Another subscription based site that Elsie' uses is Reading Eggs. It’s $75 a year and until last month was only appropriate for pre-readers and early readers, but they just expanded their site to cover readers up to age 13, so I need to get my older kids on there too. I like it much more than Starfall, which I know is a popular educational website, but I didn’t feel like my kids were learning much for the amount of time they would spend on there.

For typing practice, the kids and I love the free BBC typing program, Dance Mat Typing. In fact, the BBC website has lots of free learning tools you should check out.

As I mentioned before, my kids like to “log in” their fiction reading on Magic Treehouse and Book Adventure.

If you have favorite curriculum or websites, please share!!

So, to recap: if you are just starting out with homeschooling or are thinking about it in the future, just order the Timberdoodle catalog and it’ll show you how cheap and easy it can be to get started. I am NOT a book or curriculum hoarder—I was told by not a few homeschoolers that the homeschooling materials would take over my house. This has not been the case. We get ALL of our reading and resource books from the library, I don’t buy materials or manipulatives unless I know for sure they will be used constantly, and we never keep anything the kids created unless it needs to be framed and hung on the wall forever…. we just photograph (much faster than scanning) everything, put it on the hard drive in their school folder, and recycle the original creation (fire or paper recycling). The kids don’t mind one bit, trust me. It is SO liberating to be done with folders and files and piles of paper…. but that deserves a whole ‘nother blog post, so I’ll just leave it at that.

Best to you in your homeschooling adventures. Happy Trails! Thank you for your comments and suggestions and for supporting our sponsors.

Jonah’s youngest sister just arrived on the island today! She is in for some crazy adventures—I’ll keep you posted.

Our Homeschooling Method: A Work in Progress

2011-12-05T02:58:00.001-07:00

Thank you for the nice comments on the last post. I really really appreciate them. Every single one. I'm going to try and follow up on the homeschooling specific comments because they brought up some good points. I even appreciate my mom's comment that pointed out my typos. I have many typos. If you listened to me talk, you'd know why.

OUR METHOD AND GUIDELINES

This changes weekly, so don’t take it too seriously! When we homeschooled Ana in New Zealand a few years back, I had no curriculum and no support… and it was hard. I don’t think she really suffered from the lack of structure or consistency, but it sure made me a little crazy. We basically just looked at the work she had been producing in school and chose to work on the things that we felt like she was missing, like spelling, handwriting, and multiplication tables. Pretty basic and not too exciting for her or us, but we also spent a lot of time outdoors farming and hiking, so her academics really took a backseat anyway.

Since that time, I’ve found out about lots of different curriculums and methods. The group I was hanging with in Washington were big Thomas Jefferson Education (TJEd) fans. I won’t go into too many details, because I’m no expert, but the best thing I learned from that method is that you should mentor (not lecture) your children in their learning adventures, provide a learning rich environment, be a model of a lifelong learner yourself, and let them choose what they want to study. TJEd also recommends that the best learning comes from great literature, and when kids are reading, discussing, contemplating, and writing about great literature, things like spelling, vocabulary, critical thinking, and reasoning come naturally . TJEd has many great ideas and it’s a good place to go if you want to be kicked in the pants towards homeschooling. But, it’s not a perfect system for us; I won’t go into my qualms with this method or even try to sum up the many books about TJEd (I’ve only read two of them anyway), but I do really like two guides in our family’s homeschooling method that have come from it:

1. Kids enjoy learning better when they get to be in charge

2. Children (and adults) learn loads from good books

If I was a total TJEd’ed, this would mean that my kids would be free all day to learn as they please and I would facilitate their interests. (For example, if the kids wanted to learn about castles and nothing else, that’s what we would do. They don’t want to practice math? Then it’s not the time to practice math. They don’t want to work on their handwriting? Who cares—it can wait a few years.) I know some great TJEd moms who have been homeschooling much longer than I have and they make this work with aplomb and grace. Right now, I can’t. So, these are some other points that we’ve worked into our framework:

3. Work with your kids to choose what subjects they will study and keep it simple

4. Make end goals together, but let the kids dictate the means

There are some things my kids would never choose to practice on their own: math and piano. My kids are actually really good at math and we are a math loving family, but they think they don’t like practicing, even though they do. The important thing for us is to keep the math challenging and fresh.

5. Math is fun when it is hard but doable

My kids would probably choose to only play the harmonic and the drums, but in our family, we all play the piano. The end. We all wash our hands. We all make our beds. We all play the piano. If they want to be miserable the whole time, that’s fine. Luckily they usually enjoy it, and someday they will thank me.

6. You will play the piano. That’s what we do in this family.

I’m sure over time we will add to this list of homeschooling guidelines for our family. I’d love to hear yours!

THIS YEAR’s SCHEDULE AND SUBJECTS:

7-8am--Wake up, breakfast, normal morning chores and routines (make bed, brush hair, etc.), family scripture study... sometimes the kids don't get up until 8am, but that's okay

8am-Noon –Homeschooling

The kids set the timer for 30 minutes each subject and choose which subject they want to do when. There is lots of extra padding for breaks, doing extra time in a subject, helping with chores, etc. We just try to get the basics completely done by noon because they are not as attentive in the afternoon as they are in the morning.

Noon-5 –Lunch, adventures with the family, reading, games, playdates, or research projects. Or, if we’ve had to skip a day of homeschooling because of some pressing adventure or travel, we double up and do it in the afternoon of another day.

5-6pm --PE (Right now it’s Swim Team, every day)

6-7pm – Dinner

7-8pm—Reading and play

8pm—Bedtime

THIS is why I love homeschooling. It’s a perfect schedule for us… very simple, very flexible. The kids are very content with it as well. Plus, Po naps for most of the homeschooling time, and I have an hour to myself to exercise or read while the kids are at swim team. I hope we can keep this schedule all year because it is like graham crackers and milk.

We (Jonah, the kids and I) chose five subjects this semester because that’s how the homeschooling program we are a part of requires us to delineate. Here they are and what we do:

LANGUAGE ARTS:

1. DAILY SKILLS PRACTICE
The kids both have workbook based curriculum that they work out of and come to me for help. If I knew for sure that they would never be going back to public school ever, I would probably not use any language arts workbooks. But, I want to them to be able to score well on standardized tests, so we do it. They don’t mind it anyway. The workbooks have names like Daily Skill Builders and Language Smarts. I haven’t found any I just love, so I won’t make a recommendation, but I will say that it has helped to have three or four workbooks per child that are at their level. I used to require them to work out of each book each day, but now I just require them to spend 30 minutes a day working out of the books as they choose. They can even skip around within the books if they want to. The books help me see what the kids may not understand and need further instruction in, as well as giving them daily handwriting practice, whether they like it or not. I do not give them any sort of language arts lesson, but instead teach them through critiquing their work both in the workbooks and in their research projects.

2. RESEARCH PROJECTS
Which brings me to the second portion of language arts, which is the kids’ self directed research projects. For each month or so, the kids choose something they want to study in depth (they’ve chosen “The Solar System”, “Dinosaurs”, and “Greek Myths”, for example), they check out books and watch movies and read and read and then they take notes, make a works cited, and plan out a way to display what they have learned. For the first month when the two kids worked together on a project, they made nine “short films” about the Solar System and the planets. This month, they both wrote puppet shows about their different topics. (I would love to see them do a formal report, create a portfolio of creative writing and art pieces about the subject, or do a formal presentation, but I let them choose, so I keep my mouth shut.) I like doing this because the kids love it, it gets them reading non-fiction material, and they are putting their creativity to work. Plus, it gives them a reason to drag me to the library twice a week. There is no time limit or requirement for them with this portion, but they usually spend about two to three hours a week.

3. READING
Finally, the kids love reading. (**I should point out that I am horrible at teaching kids to read. Both my oldest kids learned to read at public school. I tried and tried at home, but both of them resisted. However, a few months after being in school, they magically caught the reading fire and were off… I take no credit for their love of reading except that my husband and I love to read too, and we don’t own a TV and only one working computer. In fact, if we didn’t have iPhones, they’d probably be reading Les Miserables by now**) So, they read for a few hours a day, including in the car where each of them usually has 2-3 books on their lap. Lately, they have liked taking tests on the books they read online, on sites like magictreehouse.com and bookadventure.com. I also ask both kids to read aloud to the younger kids a few times a day.

MATH:

We finally received our math curriculum, which took two months to arrive. We use singaporemath.com. It is straightforward, simple, and quietly challenging. We (meaning Jonah and the kids…it’s great having a dad around to help!) do a math lesson every day. It’s about 15 minutes long. Then the kids complete the exercises in the singaporemath workbook that accompanies the textbook lesson. I also have about three math workbooks per kid that are from the Critical Thinking Company. These are math puzzle type workbooks and the kids love them. What nerds, right? Takes one to know one. Again, I just have them do 30 minutes a day of math. They do the singaporemath daily and the other fun workbooks if they have time or want to keep going beyond the allotted time.

MUSIC:

I used to teach piano lessons, so this is an easy one for me. The kids were in piano lessons with a different teacher at the beginning of the year, so that did have to be worked into our schedule, but now I just give them a 30 minute piano lesson as they ask for it, which is usually once a week. I use the Music Tree piano curriculum, and I love it. I had all my piano students using it back in the day. My kids had been doing Bastien with the other teacher, but they are really enjoying the new Music Tree books after the initial learning curve was surmounted. I also have Ana do exercises from Hanon even though she is not at the level where Hanon is usually introduced. I’ll let you know how that turns out…

SPANISH:

We are fortunate to have Rosetta Stone online provided to us through our homeschool group. For two years, I had tried unsuccessfully to keep Ana’s Spanish progressing (she had been in a Spanish immersion school up until 2nd grade), including hiring a weekly Spanish tutor. Rosetta Stone has been straightforward and enjoyable. Cam didn’t love it at first since he was jumping into it with no Spanish background at all, but he’s finally getting the hang of it. I don’t know what the ultimate outcome will be, but at least they are getting exposed to a second language in a positive way.

PE:

The kids took some serious swim lessons at the beginning of the year, and now they are in swim team. We only let our kids do one affordable sport lesson or team at a time, and we will stick with this one until they have a serious desire to try something else. It is great for me to know that they are getting lots of outdoor exercise every day, plus they are so clean when I pick them up, thanks to the pool’s steaming hot showers. The way our swim team works is that you pay a flat fee for the month and the kids are allowed to come as often as they like. We usually make it to four out of the five days. There are also Saturday swim meets, but we [thankfully] haven’t been able to do any of those yet because of a mix up with our paperwork.

Soooooo, what about the other subjects? This is a hard one for me. I would LOVE to teach my kids more ART (in fact, I had them in an art class last year, but it was too expensive)… and what about Science?!… Social Studies?!!….History?!… I was very worried about these too. VERY WORRIED. This is what scared me the most about plunging into homeschooling—HOW CAN I TEACH IT ALL?!???! BUT, the more I thought about it, the more I realized that they are still fairly young kids. I can teach them all I want to about physics and world history and drawing… but unless they want to learn it, it’s not really going to mean anything to them right now. There is no context for them yet. Plus, a lot of this comes up in their research projects and fiction reading, so we discuss it and answer their questions as they come up. Creative endeavors like art and creative writing are explored in their loads of free time that they now have. I’m trying to relax and just let age and experience be the teacher, and I’ll be the scaffolding. Plus, you really have to relearn everything about history, science, and social studies when you get to high school, and then again when you go to a liberal arts college, and then again when you are married and reading Freakanomics while nursing a baby and making dinner at the same time.

So, yes. It is that easy. Did I make it sound easy? It' really isn’t that bad. It requires some time, but hey! I have all that time that I was spending driving the kids to and from school (well, they rode the bus, but it still felt like I was driving all the time), plus the time at PTA, school events and doing that blasted homework. As long as your kids can stay motivated, it is really enjoyable. Keeping kids motivated requires a whole blog post on its own, but so far, it has been easier when I let them be in control of their own learning.
Tomorrow or the next day, I will actually add some PHOTOS to these posts and quickly go through some of the best places I’ve found for curriculum and materials.

Homeschooling

2011-12-02T18:08:00.001-07:00

This is a post I’ve been meaning to write for awhile… I’ve wanted to record about I feel about it this early in the game, and it’s something I get asked about a LOT—almost daily it seems. so I’ll do my best to be thorough yet brief (that will be a small miracle, because I am never brief…). I’m going to divide it up into a few posts. Today I’ll talk about some pros and cons. In a day or two, I’ll talk about some tools and curriculum we use. And after that, I’ll give some ideas for people who want to homeschool but haven’t done it yet. SORRY there aren’t any photos today… Po has TMS (like PMS, but Teeth are Major Sore… three teeth coming in) and I can’t spend too much time here on the computer.

So yes. We homeschool. Only our two older kids are school-aged, so they are the only two I am going to talk about in this post. Ana would be in 5th grade this year and Cam would be in 2nd. Elsie will be in kindergarten next year (!!).

We just started fully homeschooling this year. My kids have mostly been in public schools until then. Ana went to a Spanish immersion elementary school for K-2nd and then had a brief homeschooling experience for six months when we lived in New Zealand (she’s not a NZ citizen, so she couldn’t go to school there). Cam went to New Zealand public school for that half year before he went to public school in the USA for kindergarten and first grade.

Last winter we started investigating homeschool options, and I found a great state program that provides me a stipend to buy curriculum and pay for private lessons and activities. We also have a certified teacher who guides us and checks in on us, which I really appreciate. So, we felt supported enough to take the leap.

Here are some of the main reasons why we wanted to homeschool:

1. I didn’t want our travel or adventures to be constricted by the school schedule.

Since neither Jonah or I have conventional jobs, we were basically planning our life daily around when the kids left for and arrived home from school. We also had to plan family trips, hikes in the mountains, going to the lake, etc. around when the kids were on holiday—which is when everyone else travels too. This probably doesn’t seem like a big deal, but when you rearrange your lifestyle to live more simply and give up a more luxurious life you might have through working a 40-hour+ a week job and then you send your kids off daily to do the same grind you abandoned, it just doesn’t match up.

2. School isn’t perfect for everyone.

I LOVED school. I went to public school all 13 years and I think I loved every single minute of it. Part of this is surely because I was in a great school district with nationally recognized teachers and brand new schools, but I think I also just loved it. I loved my friends, I loved learning, I loved my teachers (about 95% of them), I loved the regimen, the competition, the expectations. It was heaven for me. I also aced the system, which always feels good. Then I married Jonah who did not like school. Not one bit. In fact, he had some fairly traumatic experiences with some bad teachers that shut down his scholarly motivation for years. Jonah also loves to buck the trends and hates competition. I respect his history and have tried to be open minded about schooling from his perspective.

We didn’t really think about homeschooling at first because when Ana turned five, she and I were both ready for a break from each other. She went to school and loved it. She also did really well. Same for Cam. In fact, Cam does extremely well in school both academically and socially. My kids LOVE school

But, after a few years, we felt that Ana just wasn’t blooming like we knew she could. She was coming home from school every day exhausted and belligerent. She was much more enjoyable during holidays when she was able to detox from the regimen. She would regularly point out to us that they were only spending 1-2 hours a day in class learning stuff, and the rest of the time was spent disciplining other kids, cleaning up, reviewing old material, and moving from class to lunch, lunch to recess, recess to class, class to library, desk to rug, rug to desk…. she said so poignantly that she felt, “like her youth was wasting away in the classroom”.

3. From a mom’s perspective, I felt like I was sending my kids’ best selves to school and getting the leftovers at home.

Most kids are SO awake, aware and ready to learn from about 8am-12noon. And that’s when they are at school. That’s great for academics, but what about the real joys of life? Wouldn’t I rather have her reading a great piece of literature during that time than doing math worksheets reviewing something she learned in 2nd grade?

4. I didn’t like the homework.

The other problem I had with Ana’s schooling was homework—she didn’t have a ton, maybe 45 minutes a night, but it was always tedious. It was always worksheets or busywork. I don’t bemoan homework as a rule, but why not have something that we can work on together, or is at least has some sort of real world application. How about a book report? Science project? A research report on chimpanzees? Preparing a class speech? A math project on the cost of making the family dinner? Nope. Most schools have to teach for state tests to keep their funding, so they’ve got to stick to the basics. I totally understand. I totally understand too that kids need to both practice and reinforce the things they learned at school and be able to show their parents what they are learning at school so they can get help if needed. But this sort of homework is rarely enjoyable or memorable or even helpful for anyone. I know that some schools are good at not having homework, or only giving quality homework, but we didn’t go to those schools.

5. I wanted my kids to have time to learn about things they were interested in.

I wanted them to have time to pursue their interests. I wanted them to be able to do crazy stuff, like start a business or build a robot or learn to surf. With the school schedule, plus play time with friends, plus some sort of exercise (which was not provided at school), we barely had time to eat dinner together and read a book before bed. Somehow I remember spending hours by myself reading ZooBooks or encyclopedias, or wandering the neighborhood, or rollerblading everywhere, or playing with a dozen different friends… and sometimes all that on the same day. My kids were saying to me that there wasn’t enough time in the day to do what they wanted to do. That’s something moms say, not kids.

6. Homeschooling has become pretty cool in the last few years.

There are great non-secular curriculums out there that do all the hard work for you. There are also some really cool families homeschool that have been great mentors for me.

7. I wanted my kids to work at their own speed.

When my kids did well in school, they were held back so they didn’t get too ahead or give their teacher more work. The best thing about homeschool too me is that you get to move at every student’s best speed.

Reasons we didn’t want to homeschool:

1. I loved school. My kids loved school.

I didn’t want them to miss out on the memories I had acquired, forever friends I had made, experiences I worked through. I wanted them to experience all the different cultures and personalities you experience at school. Who’s to say that the memories and cultures they are experiencing at home and abroad with their family aren’t richer? I don’t know. I’ll get back to you on that. It’s different than how I was raised, so it’s scary nonetheless.

2. I didn’t want all my kids’ mentoring and teaching to come from the two same adults their whole life.

I love that there are other adults who teach and mentor and love my kids at school (and church). I didn’t want to deprive them of that. Hopefully I will be able to provide opportunities for them to work with and learn from other adults.

3. I worried about not teaching them everything they need to know and learn.

This is something I’ve gotten over though—thanks to some other long-time homeschoolers and just my own research, kids don’t HAVE to learn certain things by certain ages or all is lost. In fact, a lot of things schools are “teaching” can be just magically learned over time. Spelling, for example, gets better and better without spelling practice if kids are reading good books and writing for enjoyment. A rich learning environment is much more fertile for young minds than drills and skills practice. Does this mean I ignore state standards and requirements for my kids’ ages? No. But I don’t worry about much because so many of those skills come naturally as my kids become more well read and better critical thinkers.

4. I worried my kids would drive me crazy.

But guess what… we actually all get a long much better now that they are home all the time! Instead of frantically sending clean, fresh kids out the door every morning and getting tired, bored kids at the end of the day, I get fresh and excited kids all day long! Plus, without the pressures of juggling the social difficulties of being a preteen girl, Ana is SO much more polite, secure, and content. They aren’t as needy for attention either, which was a big way they managed to drive me crazy.

5. I worried that Cam would be bored.

He is so easy going that he often borders on unmotivated. These first few months of homeschool have been hard, but he’s finally into a routine and his reading skills have progressed so much that he devours his books with great excitement. He misses school much more than Ana does, so we may send him to school for third grade. We’ll see. We’re leaving the decision up to him. But, in the meantime, we are going to really pursue his talent in math because he was fairly bored with math when he was in school. We may be setting him up to be ultra-bored next year, but we’ll burn that bridge when we come to it. (See point #7 in the previous section).

6. I worried that I would be a lousy homeschooling mom.

This one is somewhat true. Luckily Jonah is home most days and makes up for a lot of my shortcomings. I have a friend who doesn’t homeschool but is a perfect “learning rich environment” mom. She always takes her kids’ interests and questions and helps them run with them. She is so involved with everything they do. Her kids are awesome. I’m sure they have meaningful conversations in the car too. She loves spending time with them all the time. She is awesome and I’m trying to be more like her. I’m much more: “Go get your math done.” I’m hoping to improve on all accounts in this area.

7. I didn’t want to lose all my free time during the day when the kids are at school.

And sadly, I don’t know if there is any way around this. Plus I spend a lot more time cleaning up, even though I have extra helpers here all day. But, on the other hand, I never go shopping for things I don’t need. I don’t waste [too much] time on the internet. When we go places, it usually involves something fun and outdoors. I also have a babysitter here during the day in case we need to be sans children for a couple hours. But naps, wandering around Costco, and other worthy pursuits? Out of the question.

8. I worried my kids would be un-socialized and weird.

Since I think this is more a product of the family culture than if they go to school or not, my kids’ weirdness level probably won’t change much. Are homeschooled kids weird or are the homeschooled because they are weird? Chicken and the egg.

9. I worried I wouldn’t be able to find good homeschooling groups for activities and support.

Unfortunately, I left a really really great group in Sequim to come here to Maui and I haven’t found a group that we really fit in with yet, but I’m working on it. A lot of homeschool groups are very Christian based. This is fine, but I don’t teach my kids from secular curriculum; also, Mormons are often unwelcome in Christian homeschooling groups. Some of the homeschool groups I’ve been to spend a lot of time together bashing public schools and the government. I am not anti-government, anti-taxes, anti-school, anti-liberal, or really anti-anything. I don’t mind some good discussion, but I don’t enjoy just sitting around and bashing. All-in-all, I think it’s just a matter of finding a good group, which I’m sure will happen soon.

So, now the kids are done with their homeschool for the day and we are out on adventure. More tomorrow! Let me know if you have any comments or questions you would like me to address.

Mahalo

2011-11-28T00:11:00.001-07:00

November was a lovely blur of homeschooling, garage sales (they do them year round here!), and lots and lots of beach time!

We also found a great house that we are trying to buy, but for another month or so we are still in our cute little rental. Our landlady is the nicest, most fun lady ever. The kids love her and she lets them come help her with her jam company. One morning she taught them to make cinnamon rolls. Mmmmmm.

On good mornings, the kids get up early and get their homeschooling and piano practice done by noon so that we can go do something like go to the park or library or beach. Then at 5pm, we head back here so the kids can go to swim team, which is every day for an hour. (Even if she’s been surfing and boogie boarding all day, Ana still swims like a maniac for the whole hour. Cam more easily tuckers out, but he’s getting stronger.) Then we come home and have dinner and send the kids to bed.

Po gets up early at 6:30-7 every day and eats non-stop until she takes her morning nap from 10-Noon. Then she takes an afternoon nap either at home or in the car for 2-3 hours. She goes to bed right after dinner at 7-7:30.

Elsie’s the only one without a schedule. We try to get her to practice reading or coloring during the mornings, but the other three kids require a lot of supervision, so Elsie just has to fend for herself. During swim team, I usually take her to the park, but sometimes she just has to sit in the car because Po is asleep. We are excited to move to a more cozy neighborhood where we will hopefully have some other kids around for her to play with. We’ve been doing some Joy School with her individually, but we’d love to get a group going here on Maui if we can. Next semester will be her last before kindergarten, so I really better get going on that…

We’ve loved having such a lax schedule, and we’ve tried to use it to enjoy the simple surprises of life, like this double orange—gorgeous.

Po has been getting more and more interested in efficient ways of destroying the whole house. Here she is attacking Ana’s new favorite toy, an American Girl doll.

Speaking of the American Girl dolls, Ana just woke up one morning and wanted a doll. She’s read all the books and checks out the American Girl magazine from the library, but she’s hasn’t been interested in dolls since she was two. Well, she woke up, decided she wanted one, found one on Craigslist that a lady was selling, tracked the lady down and harassed her with emails, set up a time to go get the doll, gave us directions, counted out her money, and then we went there and she negotiated the purchase and got the lady to give her a good price on some accessories too. I was still puzzled that she wanted a doll, and she had already bought one. Anyway, now she divides her obsession between American Girl, horses, making money, and surfing (more on that later).

Thanksgiving with the Cobines

We were so thrilled to have our good good friends from Saint George come all the way to Maui to spend Thanksgiving with us. We also got a visit from them the day after Thanksgiving last year, so I guess they knew what they were in for… except that we didn’t have new baby piglets to play with or farm-fresh turkey leftovers, but we made up for it with lots of sunshine and warmth, which we didn’t provide last year at all.

Anyway, Cam was glad to reunite with his buddy Hadley, and we only really heard from them when it was time to eat or sleep. They’ve been friends since they were three, so they just blend together like no time has passed.

Also, my step-brother Max came over from Oahu where he is studying at BYU-Hawaii. My kids loved hanging on and playing checkers with Max. He was great fun to have around!

The Cobines rented a house up in the mountains and it was perfect. It had a big kitchen and lots of sleeping space, so they were nice a comfortable up there. We used the kitchen to cook Thanksgiving dinner since our kitchen accommodates one and our table sits four. We went to the beach every day, spending each day on a different side of the island. The first day we were in the Kihei area.

And on Thanksgiving we were on the North Shore and Ho’okipa… where we saw about a dozen turtles in the surf!

Everytime you looked in the curl of a wave, a turtle was there swimming around. I even saw one almost get hit by a surf board. It was gnarly.

Not the best photo, I know, but I wanted to remember how Elsie never hangs out with her own family at the beach. She always looks for a family or group that looks like they are having lots of fun and they might have a mom who is more willing to play in the waves with her than I am…. then she zones in and acts extra cute at first so they will adopt her for the day, then she becomes more and more demanding as the day goes by. When I see that look of desperation on the mom’s face as Elsie is wrapped around her neck in the waves, I usually step in and make Elsie rejoin her real family.

Eventually we made it back up to the house for a delicious and sublime Thanksgiving meal made by Amy. Mmmmmm. I would single out one dish, but it was all perfect. She is a true master.

Friday was the last day with the Cobines, so we went to the Lahaina side of the island so they could show us their favorite beach. But first we stopped at one of our favorites so the kids could try some surfing.
Cam and Hadley just practiced diving into the waves.

Po has FINALLY stopped eating sand by the handful. She’s got other problems to worry about now….

Ana hasn’t caught too many big waves, but she is getting really good at paddling and getting up on some good sized pushers. She’ll spend hours out there and it makes me worry that she’ll get addicted before we know it. But I have to say, her hair was made to be on the beach...so we may just have to go with it.

After some car troubles, we finally made it to the Cobine’s favorite beach at Kapalua. It was a gorgeous beach and the sunset was spectacular.

I know, I know. I am one lucky girl.
Ana wants me to point out that this photo makes him look like a giant carrying an old lady by the head.

If Elsie overcomes her balance issues, she may love surfing too. For now, though, we’ll keep her on shore.

AHH! Babies falling from the sky!

Sadly the Cobines had to leave on Friday night, but they were on their way to Waikiki for a week, so I didn’t feel too sorry for them. Max had to leave Saturday afternoon after we took him up to the top of Haleakala so he could experience icy cold temperatures while still in Hawaii. He also was going back to Oahu, so I didn’t feel too sorry for him either.

We are so THANKFUL for friends and family and for this beautiful earth! Happy Thanksgiving!

Updated Layout and Other Logistics

2011-11-18T19:25:00.001-07:00

So, trying out some new stuff now that Blogger is so much easier to use. After all these years, I just didn't have the patience to do the web page reprogramming (even though I do love all you 35 dedicated readers and wanted to make it as good as possible for you). But thank you Blogger (finally)! Nevertheless, if you have any suggestions or want me to switch back to my five-years-old-black-based layout, just let me know--especially if you don’t like the fonts because there is nothing worse than bad fonts.
Also, I have to apologize, but I added ads to the site. Gotta pay for my new guava jelly addiction.

October 2011 Move to Maui

2011-11-13T01:14:00.001-07:00

Ana and the puppies that were born at our house in August. This was right before they left their mama and went to their new homes.

October was a mixed bag of emotions. We were SO SO SO sad to be leaving our friends in Sequim. We were also so sad to be leaving our favorite time of the year in the Northwest, because it is truly a Harvest Celebration! Fresh fruit and vegetables are just pouring into our home from every direction in October, and we had to say no this year and give it away. (And let me tell you—Hawaii has some good food, but it has nothing on the northwest. You can get EVERYTHING you eat, except rice, from within the state of Washington… fresh and tasty. In fact, where we were in Sequim, we figured that about 60% of the food we ate was harvested from within 5 miles of our house).

But, even though it was sad, we were SO excited to be done with all the moving and cleaning and to move forward to new adventures.

While I’m on the topic, I’ll explain a little of what I DO know about this whole move. 1. We had been planning on moving to Hawaii at some point in our lives. 2. With neither of us working and the kids in homeschool, why not now? 3. We knew we needed a different home and a bigger property anyway, so why not sell the farm and take a break from the long dreary winters? 4. Since property prices are still low, this might be our only chance to afford something on Maui, so we might as well go now and check it out.

We haven’t been calling our Hawaii move a permanent move because we still have our base and residency in Washington, but we are glad to be here for the whole winter in the very least.

OKAY, now let’s get back to the blog. Go back in time. It is the beginning of October and we are still in our house in Sequim:

Lego instantly looked all mature once she had kittens. She was also confused as to why we kept letting her in the house, but I think she eventually figured out that is was because we wanted to play with the kittens.

Awwwwwww. This one we nicknamed Tiger. He actually moved with Ana’s horse Cocoa to a farm near Tacoma. By the way, let me tell you that the feeling of relief I felt when Ana finally sold her horse was similar to the elation I felt when I finally birthed my babies. I was not only anxious about it because we had nowhere for the horse to go over the winter if we didn’t sell her, but also because Ana was SO emotionally invested in getting her to a really good and loving home AND (if not more) getting her money back out of the horse. We were again royally blessed and a lady bought Cocoa, the chickens and chicken coop, and all the tack and drove away with it all in a giant horse trailer. Cocoa did have a few freak outs at her new house, but I think she’s all good now. In any case, no refunds.

Ana was pretty sad for awhile, but she’s had about six months to get used to the notion that she would have to sell her. Plus, not to sound callous, but money in your pocket can really help you get over stuff.

During the first weekend in October, Jonah’s brother Tal had the fortune of being our last visitor at our little farm, but also the misfortune of coming after we had sold all of the animals and most of the furniture and the weather was horrible for the two days he was here. But, we had a good time anyway and got to watch General Conference together and go see some of our favorite spots around Sequim. He especially liked the kittens. I’m not kidding. They were cute.

Pile of kittens!!

If you need more kittens, watch these videos on youtube: “I love cats eharmony” and/or “Kittens! Inspired by kittens”.

On October 7th, we finally had everything gone and sold and packed and we gave the keys to the new owners. We drove our trailer of stuff to a friend’s house and left for Redmond to stay at my aunt and uncle’s house for one last hurrah with our cousins before we left.

My kids are completely enamored with my aunt and uncle and my cool cousin Jenye and her boys. We even got to watch superstar Nicco in one of his soccer games. They also built some massive lego mansions and got to eat all sorts of yummy kid favorite food. Thanks Velas/Youngs! You are too good to us.

While we were Seattle-side, we also got to go on a field trip with our homeschool district group. It was a cruise through Lake Union, through the Ballard Locks (think mini Panama Canal without mosquitos), and back around through the Sound to Seattle. It was a perfect trip. Gorgeous, warm, informative…. maybe I should apply to be a tour guide for the cruise now that I think about it….

After our too short weekend at the Vela’s house, we came back to Sequim so the kids could go to their piano recital and do their last few swim lessons (I forgot to mention that they did daily swim lessons in September for 1.5 hours a day… just because we didn’t have anything else to do, I was like, hey! swim lessons!). Here is Elsie and her friend Audry jumping on the trampoline at the piano teacher’s house.

So, we stayed a night at our very dear friend’s house in Sequim, and then we took drove our two cars that we are keeping as well as the covered moving trailer we own to our friend’s house about half way between Sequim and Seattle. They have a few acres and have generously offered to store the vehicles until the spring or whenever we make it back. They also let us stay at their house overnight, which the kids all loved since they have four kids our kids’ ages. We got all rested and then had another friend pick us up and drive us to the airport where we spent the night in a hotel next to the airport so we could get up early and catch our flight. I had packed and repacked and repacked and I still felt like we were bringing too much and we had to check four bags for a fee darn it, but it could have been worse. We felt pretty light as we flew to Hawaii!!!

When we landed in Maui, Jonah called a friend who took him to get our car that Jonah had bought back in June when he came to check stuff out and see if we could make this work. He assured me it was on par with my mint condition maroon 1984 Mercedes Station Wagon that he had just sold in Washington. Well, it was on par in that it was a Mercedes station wagon… but let me tell you, it was in a condition that doesn’t even register on a condition report. It was below poor. The rust holes in the car were big enough that you could use them to order at the drive thru. The interior of the car was literally caked in mud because it had at one point survived a flash flood. The rattling ensured that no one would miss the announcement of your arrival. Also, there was a gecko living under the seat. But, it runs! It’s our Maui Cruiser and at least no one suspects that we are tourists.

(Over the last few weeks Jonah had done some major work to the car so that it isn’t so scary looking; I’m feeling better about it, but it isn’t my “forever” car.)

For our first few nights on Maui, we camped at a campground on a beach within walking distance of the airport. Besides the homeless families who took all the best camping spots and the Tongan Ward who threw an all- night party in the campsite next to us, it was a great little spot. The kids basically lived in the waves for two days straight.

Then, my mom Tess and her husband Ken arrived! Ken had a kidney transplant last spring, so they were excited to take their first trip since then and to see the kids again. My kids LOVE their Luvy…. so much that it is almost painful to them. It is certainly painful for them to have to share her with anyone else, so we have to work out a way to take turns loving Luvy.

Ken and Tess had traded their condo in Dana Point where they live with someone for a beachfront condo in Kihei for a week. Score! We got to finally relax after months of crazy. Well, we relaxed for a couple days, then Jonah and I got in a panic that we had no where to live once my mom left so we frantically found ourselves a rental that would let in a family with four kids for a short term lease. After some fairly disheartening experiences during our search, we magically drove into this driveway with a FOR RENT sign and found the most loving, generous, funny, and kind landlady ever and she made sure the rental agency put us to the top of the list. Once we signed that lease agreement, we relaxed again and haven’t stopped since. Ahhhhh.

Here’s the car! This photo doesn’t do it justice though. Well, see the grill in the back window? That’s a small token of its state.

The kids instantly tanned and acclimated to Maui culture. They even got the hang of snorkeling and boogie boarding in about 30 minutes. In fact, Ana and Cam loved snorkeling SO much I thought they were going to drown with all the shouting they were doing to each other through their snorkels. They couldn’t believe that a whole world had been sitting in the ocean all this time and they were just finally getting to see it in person. It was magical. I loved experiencing the wonder of a new world through their eyes (and muffled yells).

Cam was thrilled that the condo complex had a beach across the street AND a pool across right out the door. He and the girls just moved from one body of water to another all day every day while Luvy and Ken were hosting us.

Elsie didn’t dare to try snorkeling, but she does have a love of floating in the waves. She just puts on her floatie and bobs up and down in the waves with Jonah or me. For hours. It’s pretty cute. She also loves the pools.

Po was happy just to watch. She was having a hard time adjusting to the sleeping arrangements, so I didn’t want to push it. But she is getting better and better at enjoying our time at the beach and has finally stopped eating handfuls of sand.

Happy Birthday to me!! The day before my mom left was my big 33 birthday! Everybody made it such a happy day. Jonah got me a rental house for my birthday by signing the lease agreement. My mom got me some Hawaiian mumus among other things. The kids got me some candy since I hadn’t eaten any since Jonah’s birthday, and Ken took us all for some Hula Pie in Lahaina. Mmmm. This is making me hungry…..

So yep. It was monumentally sad when my mom and Ken left. But, we tried to take our mind off of it by getting settled in our rental and participating in loads of Halloween activities. Here we are at the church Halloween party. The kids and Jonah are all birds and I am a cat (not on purpose… I just forgot my pheasant costume). Jonah is a bald eagle, btw. That was Elsie’s idea. Ana is a swan and Cam is a crow if you need some help on those two.

I had been so worried about the kids having a hard time being away from Sequim and their friends, but after about one day here, they were really happy that we were going to get to be here for awhile. They have all made some good friends already, thanks to church and the Halloween parties. Also, they joined the swim team so that they get some kid interaction every day. Homeschooling is going much more smoothly now that we are settled and know a little better what we are doing. Things overall are just feeling right. I’m sure that our path from here will be clear to us soon, but what a glorious place to wait to figure it out!!

Aloha! by Elsie

September 2011

2011-11-12T23:54:00.001-07:00

I’m going to jam through the next two months until I’m finally to the present month. Besides, September and October were basically a lot of packing, moving, and moving, so I don’t want to bore you too much.

One of the most exciting events was the birth of Lego’s four kittens!!! In the last 12 months, we have had the following born ON or next to our farm: chicks, piglets, a human baby, rabbits (twice), wild birds, more chicks, cows, puppies, and kittens. We also had a baby lamb move to our farm at ten days old. So, I’m speaking from experience when I say that kittens are the VERY cutest newborn babies. It’s true. Argue me all you want. I’m not even a cat lover, so you can’t claim that I’m biased. We all melted with cuteness every single day of September.

Lego was a confused mama cat at first, but she was a star once she just relaxed and went with it. She used my sideways box with blankets in it just as I had hoped. She had the kittens while we were at Blakely, in fact. She LOVED nursing them and was such a good mom. Apart from the fact that she’s so small she wasn’t strong enough to pick the kittens up (even when she grabbed them by the nape and not the forehead as she usually tried), she was perfect. She is a great cat. The people who bought our house thought so too, so they offered to let her stay there and live with them. They also kept one kitten and the other three went to our friends.

Right after Noah and Kristi went back to San Diego, Jonah’s cousins and uncle came to visit for a couple days. Aubrey and Rennie had a hilarious experience pulling up one of Jonah’s crab pots that had been out past crabbing season… Jonah was making fun of them for having such a hard time pulling the pot up… and then they got it in the boat and there were 42 crabs!!! (It’s a good pot if you have five or six). Too bad crabbing season was over and they had to throw them all back. Sad.

Since the kids started homeschool in September, we had “loads” of time to go see some of the wonders of the Olympic Peninsula that we had yet to explore. Here we are on a hike at Cape Flattery… the western most tip of the continental US.

Elsie with kittens!

Okay, back to Cape Flattery. (That kitten photo was inserted there to knock you out with cuteness). You get to the end of the hike, and the Cape Flattery lighthouse is even further on its own little island. It was SO cool. Washington State really needs to stop hogging all the gorgeousness.

Luckily we had a nice warm September! We had just a little panic getting EVERYTHING sold (we only kept one bin of toys for each kid, one bin of clothes for each person, some kitchen stuff and our wedding china, and Jonah’s bike… so about half of our little covered trailer which we parked at a friend’s house until we decide what to do with it)…. but we had a HUGE two day garage sale and did some flash action Craigslisting and had some pretty miraculous occurances, including one guy who bought three of Jonah’s cars and our fantastic house buyers who were so excited about the whole deal and said “no problem!” to any new problem we ran into with the house sale. We also had to get going on homeschooling, sell Ana’s horse, and find time to swim in the river, do our annual hillbilly slip-in-slide on the blue tarp, harvest the garden, eat all the meat fish and crab out of the freezer, and do all the last minute dentist and doctors visits. How did we survive? Lots of good food and LOTS of prayer. So, thanks for that. Whew.

August 2011 Noah and Kristi Visit

2011-11-11T15:41:00.001-07:00

We were so sad when Sonna and family left Blakely, and then we left Blakely and we had a day to be sad and then Jonah’s brother Noah and his family arrived from San Diego for Labor Day weekend. YAY!

Jonah knew Noah and family were up for something exciting, so he picked them up late from the airport and had them help him pick up a Mercedes he had bought a month before but didn’t run too well. Basically, it didn’t run in first gear, so Noah had to get out and push it anytime they stopped. He was a very good sport about it and they made it home in good time.

Everytime we see a bald eagle (which is at least once a day), Jonah calls Noah and leaves a message for Lyla, “I see a bald eagle flying!” I don’t know the origin of this whole thing, but luckily Jonah took Lyla to the Audobon center after church so she could see one up close.

We took some good walks with the other Eyres. That’s our roof in the middle of these lush fields.

McKay and Lyla were great blackberry pickers too.

We also did the usual, like crabbing and ear candling. (This is Noah and Jonah).

Even though Noah and Kristi’s kids are almost 2 years younger than ours, they are the same size as ours. They are also very similar in looks, don’t you think?!

Cam and McKay at the beach. I think McKay was expecting Southern California temperatures.

They also took a boat ride out to the light house. Foggy.

McKay driving the little boat.

We took a trip to Lake Crescent and it was a total delight. Warm. Stunning. NO ONE else there. Everybody (except Kristi and I) skiied some good runs. It was one of those perfect days.

Elsie even found a duck to torment.

One of the most beautiful spots on earth.

Go Jonah on the wood ski!

Ana is doing well skiing on one long Maharajah wood ski and one old homemade ski I found in someone’s garbage pile. She dropped the homemade ski, of course.

Rrrarh! Sadly, those Eyres didn’t get to stay for very long, but we packed it in while they were here. Thanks for visiting Eyres!

August 2011 Blakely

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We had some fun adventures getting to Blakely this year since my dad didn’t have his boat in the water or his little plane to come and get us like last year. There is no public ferry to the island either. But, we did make it! And perfect timing, too. The weather was gorgeous the whole time.

Blakely Island is up in the San Juan Islands near the Canadian border. My grandparents on my dad’s and then parents have had property there since the 1970s. We were lucky enough growing up to get to spend summers up there and escape the Las Vegas heat while relishing in the magic of summer in the Northwest. Jonah and I got engaged on the island on New Year’s Eve 1999. Needless to say, it is one of my most special spots on earth.

It was extra special to have all the cousins together, too. We were just missing Tyler’s girl Riley. Next year we will have to make sure EVERYBODY is there (hint hint, Tyler).

For the last few years, my dad hasn’t been able to take much time off to come up, but we did get him for a whole week this year. The kids loved all the Papa time (and Dodie time too!). Plus, my grandma Nonie was on the island for the whole time so we got lots of fun Nonie time too.

We had some great late August heat, so we spent a whole lot of time up at the lake. Poem was working on her tan lines.

Bum crack!

When I looked at this photo a few days ago, I thought, “WOW! I have a LOT of kids!” Then I realized there was one extra in the photo.

This is up at the peak—our special spot to go and watch the sunsets.

Sonna and Sloan (sorry about the blur… their romance automatically added a softening filter I guess).

No explanation necessary.

Hudson loved the island. Good to have a dog around again since poor Dozer assed away in 2000.

Ana and her annual Peak Teepee.

Can’t beat those sunsets! Golden!

The teepee with moss roof.

We also did some good tidepool exploration.

On our way across the lake to the rope swing.

Ana was so lucky and got to have her 10th Birthday on the island! I’m so jealous (to be ten again, AND to have a birthday on Blakely).

Happy Birthday ANA!

She was so good about not having a friend birthday party this year (first year every), and it probably helped that I had let her have an end-of-the-year party, and I let the kids choose between a friend birthday party and a special trip.

Anyway, we can’t believe our baby is ten!!!

We had a perfect time on Blakely this year! Thanks Dad and Roxanne.

Robisons Visit

2011-11-10T12:24:00.001-07:00

The day after we recovered from the County Fair, my sister Sonna and her family came to visit. YAY! I look forward to such events all year.

Sonna has Ruthie, my niece who is 4.5 like Elsie, and she has Gabe “Reggie” who turned one while they were in Washington. Look at how cute he is! Plus he wore Cam’s hand-me-downs almost the whole time, so it made him extra cute to me!

Sonna’s husband Sloan had a few weeks vacation from dental school, so they drove from Las Vegas to Prove to visit his parents, then to central Oregon to go camping with Sloan’s sister and her family, then to visit us in Sequim, then came with us up to Blakely (next post), thn went to West Yellowstone to visit friends, then back to Vegas! And they camped the whole time! That sounds like something crazy we would do. Glad I could be a good example. :)

As soon as they showed up, that great warm weather we were having just disappeared. But, it came back after a couple days, luckily. On one of the gloomy days, Jonah took them out crabbing. (Jonah had marginal success with crabbing this year… everywhere seemed a little depleted, and people were stealing crab out of our pots to boot!… but we more than had our fill of crab this year. YUM YUM!!)

The Robisons also brought their great dog Hudson with them. He was a little cold they had to get him a wool vest. Poem was is HEAVEN! She loves dogs.

She also loves Gabe… her totally delightful older cousin. He was such a good role model for her.

We also fit all six cousins in the bath! I’ll spare you the photos. Actually… I think Cam opted out of the big cousin bath.

One of the most memorable experiences while they were there was making a temporary corral and catching the sheep. It was exhilarating! We sold four of the sheep and butchered one for the freezer. Sloan got to practice some of his dental school skills during that fun. Our friend Matt (see bear hunting photo from previous post), who is also a paramedic firefighter, came and explained to Sloan all the anatomy they were experiencing. Sounds gross, but it’s actually pretty cool.

The people who bought the other five sheep picked them up in a Cherokee. Sheep in a Jeep!

We gave them a discount on the sheep because it was so awesome that they fit them all in the car with them for the 1.5 hour ride home.

We also loaded up the boat for a trip to Lake Sutherland.

Where Gabe was not happy about the crawdad we found.

It actually was a delightful trip to the lake and was without hiccup, except for when the fuel line disconnected and it took a little while to figure out what was wrong. Oops.

Ana showed off some more of that one-ski-waterskiing for everyone too. Yay Ana!

Anyway, the Robisons left for Blakely a day before us so we could get organized and clean the house since we realized we actually had not yet recovered from the County Fair and were still exhausted and uncollected. But, what a wonder 24 hours can do and we were able to leave for Blakely feeling excited and relaxed.

August 2011 Canada and County Fair

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Ana and Coco at the Clallam County Fair!

August was packed to the minute. Sometimes I look back and wonder how survived! As I recounted in the last post, I went to New Orleans to see my dad the first weekend of August. While I was gone, Jonah got a great little phone call. We’d been waiting since FEBRUARY for this guy to call us and say when we could meet him in Vancouver to pick up a car we wanted to buy. Of course, he called Jonah the day I arrived in New Orleans. Nice timing, dude. But Jonah worked something out and we ended up going on Tuesday (I had come home on Monday afternoon). Our friend let us borrow his big truck… we picked up a UHaul car trailer at the USA border and crossed to Vancouver to get the car.

And here it is! It’s a green GWagen (like the red one from the GWagen party on Fathers’ Day) and it is pretty awesome. Except unlike our very small and funny engine fire in the red one, this one had a MAJOR engine fire and is inoperable. (No, these cars are not more prone to engine fires than others… )

Anyway, we didn’t go too far into Vancouver since we were borrowing the truck, but we did find a great little campground along the river in the Vancouver suburbs and we tried to talk with a Canadian accent the whole time we were there.

The whole trip went a lot smoother than we expected… apart from the two hours at the border crossing to do all the paperwork for the car import. Oh Canada!

For the next three days after we got back, Jonah went along with his friend Matt to look for bears. Who goes looking for bears?! Exactly. They found some on their trail camera, but none in real life. Whew.

Matt’s brother did get a bear this year though and gave us the claws and pelt. We had some good tricks on the kids with those.

While Jonah was hunting, the kids and I were babysitting my friend’s pregnant dog while she was at a wedding in California. The little dog went into labor on Thursday night and only birthed one puppy! Oops! There were supposed to be six. Although the mama was happy to have only the one puppy, I had to take her in for a C-section the next morning after staying up with her ALL night. But, then there were five healthy puppies, and it was all worth it. The kids loved it, of course. We got to keep them at our house until the following Wednesday. Ahhhhhh… so cute!

August finally brought that fantastic summer weather we’d been hoping for for so long! The kids moved outside into their tent that they made out of every sheet and blanket and piece of fabric we had. They didn’t actually spend the night out there, but they were in it for all the daylight (which is a lot in the summer… the sun’s up until like 10 pm!) of August and September.

The day the puppies went back to their home was the day that the Clallam County Fair began! Ana had been looking forward to this for the ENTIRE YEAR. Seriously. She lived, ate, slept, worked, dreamed County Fair all year. And it was nirvana for her.

Basically she and Cocoa went to the fairgrounds on Wednesday night and were there non-stop until Sunday night. I had not signed up for a camping spot on time, so our family volunteered to sleep in the barn with the 14 horses to keep and eye on them and make sure no one went in or out. It was VERY noisy. Horses do not sleep quietly. They also chomp their hay all night and pee SO loudly. Like a water fall. One of the horses also snored. Luckily, I only did one night of barn duty and Jonah did the other three! I would come to the Fairgrounds in the morning and let him go home, then he would come back at night and I would go home. On the days Ana had events to compete in, we would bring the younger kids and let them watch and go to the carnival and watch the magic show. We also tasted just about all the Fair food, except for fried Oreos. Darn.

Ana had to spend the time doing barn duty (feeding the horses and scooping poop) and introducing the hundreds of Fair visitors to her friendly horse. THAT was her favorite part. She especially loved that she had the most friendly horse of the bunch that little kids could pet and not be afraid of finger bites. Cocoa was a really good sport about the whole thing. She’s a star.

Ana also enjoyed the events, but they were also pretty stressful for her. She did amazingly well, though, considering we made her pay for EVERYTHING herself, including her old mare, all her show clothes and tack, training, and horse transportation. She competed in showmanship (walking your horse around and showing off the horse’s conformation and your own fancy clothes and gear), Western riding, English riding, grooming (it was a race to see which team could clean up a dirty horse the fastest), judging (the kids tried their hand at judging the 4H leaders while they rode Western), Costume, and Pie Eating (Ana and Cocoa were a team and had to eat as many pies as they could). Ana won lots of ribbons and points and she even won money (I didn’t know this, but you actually get a cash prize for your County Fair ribbons! It worked out to be about $100 for all her ribbons)

While Jonah was at home with the younger kids, they had some fun adventures. Here is Elsie the Sheep.

Costume contest: Cocoa is a meadow and Ana is a bee. The Queen Bee.

Needless to say, we were ALL mightily relieved when the fair was over, but it ended up being very fun, very rich learning experience for Ana and the rest of the family. Ana was really in her element being able to tell people all about horses and everything she has learned this year from Cocoa. She also loved running around the Fair with her other 4H friends and just being a kid at a Fair. I’m sure she will joyfully remember it for the rest of her life.

Finally, aren’t these just gorgeous? Our big chickens laid at least a dozen big delicious eggs every day. We are so grateful for fresh eggs!