Summer School at Home

This summer, I'm once again asking my kids to do a little writing each day, to keep their minds sharp until school starts again.

Todd is doing his writing by hand, but the older kids decided to do an ongoing creative writing project on computers.  They've made journals in Minecraft, and they're recording their adventures from a fictitious character's point of view.

Joy has also volunteered to teach her siblings a short class every weekday.  She's learning firsthand what every seasoned parent knows: trying to teach young, distractible children is like trying to herd a dozen cats.

Once she switched from abstract principles to an interesting science experiment, the younger kids were a lot more focused.  It was fun for everyone, but we'll see if Joy has the fortitude to teach a different lesson every single weekday for the rest of summer vacation.  Also, you might be tempted to assume that Joy wore her Minecraft periodic table shirt because it's Science Day, but that's purely coincidence.  She'll probably wear it on Social Studies Day next week.

Later in the day, the kids went on a short walk to exercise their muscles and their powers of observation.  For example, can you guess which of these two apartments has a gardener living in it?

Home is Where Your Van Parks

Guess what I got as an early birthday present.

A BIG YELLOW HOUSE!!!

This morning, after spending over a decade as starving students and then job transfer nomads, Phillip and I signed a mountain of paperwork, and become the owners of our very first home.  It has lots of space inside, a big yard for the kids to play in, and tick-infested lovely woods out back for Joy to explore.  And although yellow isn't usually a color I'm fond of, I actually love our new home's whimsical yellow color.

We have about a month to move in before our apartment lease ends, so we're starting to ferry things over from our storage unit this week.  I felt like this house was officially ours when I pulled my minivan into the garage. :)

Thank You, Sweetheart!

As the mother of four children, I have a busy life, and there just isn't much I can delegate to other people.  When my husband asks how he can ease my load, I can rarely think of anything because most things on my long to-do list happen while he's at work.  Recently, though, I thought of something he could do that I would really, really appreciate.

I asked him to fix lunch on Sundays.  For some reason, I don't mind spending an hour cooking dinner, but I hate spending fifteen minutes planning and fixing lunch.  On the Day of Rest, it would be so nice to come home from church and just . . . rest, instead of scrambling to put food on the table for six hungry people.  So Phillip agreed to start fixing lunch on Sundays, and my Sabbath just became a whole lot more restful.  Thank you, Sweetheart.  I love you too.

P. S. You look handsome in your denim apron. ;)

Berry Picking

Playing at home is a nice way to spend most summer days, but now and then it's fun to get out and do something more memorable.

This morning, the kids and I headed to Verrill Farm, where you can pick your own strawberries. The girls went looking for ripe berries in one part of the field . . .

. . . while the boys teamed up in another part.  You can't see any other berry pickers in these photos, but there were dozens of other people there today.  The cashier encouraged us to look on the edges of the field, because the center aisles had already been picked clean.

We ate nearly as many berries as we put in our baskets, which is expected (and part of the fun).  Then I made the mistake of letting Joy hold one of the berry baskets on the drive home.  When we reached our apartment, her basket was half empty, and Joy said she was sick of strawberries.  That aversion didn't last long though. :)

A Special Town Meeting

I attended a special town meeting in the middle school gym this evening.  It was a really interesting experience with local politics and democracy in general.

A business from a neighboring town had circulated a petition that proposed a change to our town laws.  Representatives for each side presented their argument for or against the change . . .

. . . then any citizen who wanted to could walk up to a microphone and voice their opinions.  Most were against the proposal.  One person was for it.  One old guy just cracked a few jokes to make everyone laugh.  After a bunch of people had said their piece, a woman came to the microphone and proposed that we vote on the matter.  The person leading the meeting asked the crowd if we were ready to vote, and nearly everyone said, "Aye!"  Just like that, the discussion was over, and he put the proposal to a vote.

The vote-counting system was pretty unscientific.  The meeting leader asked who was in favor of the petition, then who was against it, and whichever group was louder won.  In this case, it was easy to tell--the nay-voting crowd was several times louder than the aye-voters.  The leader said the motion failed, then hundreds of people made a beeline for the doors to get out of that hot, muggy gym.

Blankets and Blog Photos

We're a few days into summer vacation, and the kids have found some creative uses for our blankets.

Last week they made up a game called "Ghosts."  It's like Marco Polo, only the person who's it wears a blanket over their head.  They talk to the other players, who must respond each time they're addressed, and the ghost follows the sound of their voice to try and tag them.  If a ghost tags you, you have to put on a blanket and become a ghost too.  The last person without a blanket wins.  That may be because we have four kids but only three beige blankets.

The kids also employed every blanket in the house to make a big tent fort.

Meanwhile, I was in the next room taking lots of pictures for my recipe blog.  I throw away ten or twenty photos for every good one I take, but I love how this gnocchi picture turned out. :)

An Out-of-State Organ

This morning we drove to New Hampshire for stake conference (a semi-annual meeting of several local congregations).  I still think it's kind of funny that we go to a whole other state for stake conference, even though it's just half an hour away.

Daniel's Sunday school teacher played the organ for this conference.  After the meeting ended, we went up to say hello, and she gave us a little demonstration of how the organ works.

Joy found it fascinating.