August 10

 

 

Yesterday was our first day of school. We're easing back into school with an Olympic Unit Study. Next week we will hit the ground running. Here's our curriculum and co-op classes for the 2016-2017 school year:

Julia (6th Grade) & Kat (5th Grade)
Bible: Old Story New
Math: Singapore 5B & 6A
Science: (Co-op) Elementary Chemistry and Physics
Language Arts: Editor-in-Chief & Fix It! Grammar
History: History of Our United States & Constitution Celebration, supplemented with Liberty Kids DVDs, Netflix Documentaries, and field trips
Civics: (Co-op) Elections/American Government
Writing: (Co-op) IEW American History
Geography: Visits to Europe 
Health: Easy Peasy
Vocabulary: English from the Roots Up
Logic: Balance Benders & Chess
Computer: Easy Peasy, Level 5
Typing: Typing Instructor
PE/Art: (Co-op)

Elliott (1st Grade)
Reading, Science, Handwriting, Spelling, History, Music/Art, & Bible: My Father's World 1st Grade: Learning God's Story 
Math: Singapore Math 1B & 2A
Science: (Co-op)
Geography (Co-op): States & Stories
Phonics: Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading
Literature (Co-op): FIAR
PE (Co-op) for 6 weeks/ Bible Heroes (Co-op) for 9 weeks

Lucy (Pre-K)
Letters & Numbers: Easy Peasy & Co-op
Bible/Art/History/Science: My Father's World (with Elliott)
Phonics:Explode the Code Primers
Handwriting: A Reason for Handwriting
Learning Centers, Sign Language, & Story Time (Co-op)

August 9

 

 We got a new-to-us van yesterday! One of my favorite features? Being able to see what time it is at night! Our old van's clock light went out years ago! 

 Shortly after purchasing the van, Clay headed to the airport.

Mamaw and Aunt Jessica took the kids to KY Kingdom for one last hurrah this summer. Julia and Kat both got brave and rode several of the big roller coasters that they had never ridden before. They had a blast! 

August 8

 Lucy colored this picture of her and Elliott at church yesterday. I think she captured Elliott well with brown hair, skin, and clothes.

Ummm.... this chick needs to stop growing! She's moved up to the youth department at church now that she is in middle school. As her mother, I felt obligated to take a picture to commemorate this milestone (with the added bonus of embarrassing her slightly). I think I am going to enjoy the teenage years with this one (not-so-much with a couple of the others).

Here's a few pictures that the church captured of the Kids' Olympic Day Saturday:

 

 

 

 

August 7

We dropped Julia, Kat, and Elliott off at church for an Olympic Day Camp. This means that from 9am-4:30pm, it was just me, Clay, and Lucy. How did we celebrate!?! Car shopping, of course. Because who doesn't love car shopping? Me. That's who! We need a newer, more reliable car. We have three cars right now, the newest one is a 2003, the least mileage of the 3 vehicles is 180,000. It's time. We visited four car lots. Four. We now know what we are looking for, so it was a productive day.

 

 

 Elliott's team (Turkey) received gold out of the three teams in his division. Kat's team (Romania) also received gold in her division, beating Julia's team (Russia), who got the silver medal. The kids had Bible lesson time, had lunch, competed in different games, and then we gather for worship and a cookout.

As a reward for being good, we took Lucy to Chuck-E-Cheese for lunch.

August 6

 Elliott got to play with Matthew and Jonathan all day yesterday. The boy time was good for him - thanks Tracy! You are my hero!

 

Camryn came over for a play date (although I have been informed by Camryn that when you are ten/nearly ten, it is no longer a play date. The girls were "hanging out"). I say that if you play with dolls when you are hanging out, it's a play date!

Julia wrapped up her last day of zoo camp. She had a great time and got to see alot of behind-the scenes places and have several cool animal encounters daily. I might be a little jealous. She made 3 sweet friends this week too.

 

 

 

 

August 5

 This kid. We love him. We will miss seeing him regularly. I will miss how I find selfies that he secretly takes of himself with my phone. I will miss his piano playing (the kid's got mad skills).  He's such a good kid. He may not come to our house in the summer anymore, but we plan to kidnap him from time to time so we can torture him. He's going to move mountains one day.

 After dropping Julia off at zoo camp, we went to Shannon's house. The kids played while Shannon and I worked on a co-op class that we will be co-teaching (Elementary Chemistry and Physics).

 Kat ran 3 miles during cross country practice. Three! When she was done, she begged me to let her run another 1/2 miles. She's nuts! (She's wearing her old tennis shoes Grandpa Tim, because it rained and I didn't want her new shoes to get ruined).

 

 Lucy enjoyed playing in the water play area during Kat's practice. Elliott is somewhere on the playground.

 We saw these awesome sun rays coming through the trees. Elliott said it looked like Jesus was coming down from Heaven. 

Clay comes home today - Hallelujah! Single parenting is no joke! The kids go a little crazy when Clay leaves town. The bickering has reached a maximum! Time for school to start and get these crazy kids back into a routine. By the end of tonight, we will have spent about 13 1/2 hours in the car just driving to the kids' (mostly Julia's) different activities this week (450ish miles on the van since Monday morning). I need a vacation!

August 4

 This is called a rip. It's from doing uneven bars in gymnastics. Julia gets these frequently. Ouch! Compared to some injuries in gymnastics, this is minor.

 Elliott loves Jiu Jitsu. He earned his second belt stripe this week.

 I may have bribed them, that if they (the girls) were good during Jiu Jitsu, we would get ice cream. Mama wanted ice cream! 

 

 Julia's hair has green streaks in it from swimming. So we are trying a hair treatment that will hopefully remove the green.

August 3

Monday night, after zoo camp, Julia made this poster for a poster contest. Her gym is having a big week next week to celebrate the Olympics.

Yesterday Mamaw Pat took Kat, Elliott, Lucy, and Jonathan to KY Kingdom. Clay was home until about 1pm before he had to fly out of town for work. This means that Clay and I got to eat alone at lunchtime... we could actually talk and not be interrupted! It's amazing how rarely that happens. Anyways, he left for the airport, which gave me a couple of hours to myself. I went school supply shopping and then got all the kids' binders, etc organized for the school year. 

When the kids got home, we turned around and headed to Kat's cross country practice and then to pick Julia up from gymnastics. 

August 2

 Julia gets to attend zoo camp this week because she won 3rd place in a contest. 

This week is going to be crazy hectic. Like one of our usual weeks, but on steroids! Monday-Friday, from 9-4, Julia will be at zoo camp. On Tuesday, Thursday, and Friday, we have to pick her up from camp at 4, and take her to gymnastics from 4-8. She will be scarfing down dinner in the car. On Monday and Wednesday, Elliott has jiu jitsu from 6-7pm. On Tuesday and Thursday, Kat has cross country from 6:30-7:30. Jonathan is coming Monday-Thursday, and it's quite possibly his last week with us, and his last summer with us (cue the sad tears). And have I mentioned that Clay is out of town for work this week? I am planning to put our portable DVD player in the van and let the little ones watch movies. Poor Lucy will be in the van for hours this week just dropping big siblings off at all their activities. I guess that's the life of the littlest sibling. 

On the upside, having to be at zoo camp at 9am will have us getting back into a routine of waking up early, which is a good thing, since school starts again next week (WHAT!?!). 

August 1

Clay took Julia to the library Saturday night to celebrate the release of the new Harry Potter book.

"Ummm.... Kat, this wasn't exactly the makeover I had in mind!"