Book clubs galore!

Last year, with a friend, I formed a book club for some of the girls in our hs group. Ben already belonged to a group that had been started by another mom that turned out to be all boys (although it hadn't been billed as that from the start -just turned out that way). We decided that we wanted something for the girls also, so we got one going. I turned out to be a good thing, although the girls were often a bit quieter and more shy about sharing their opinions on the books than I would have liked. This year we realized we had so many younger girls who potentially wanted to join and this would make the group really too big, so we thought we would try dividing into a younger group and an older group. We've done this, figured out all of the logistics, and chosen the first book (today at an informal meeting at our house). There is also a younger boys group forming this fall as well, so for our little local hs group we have four book clubs, two for boys and two for girls. We all meet on the same day at the same time in a wonderful hs facility in the area which offers space for this kind of thing. We may also be adding an informal "storytime" group for the younger siblings of all of these book club members (the 3-6 yo group) and a "book swap" system for the moms. How fantastic is that? All of these kids (and moms) getting together to read, share book findings, discuss books, etc. One of the greatest things about this (in my mind) is that the kids end up reading books that they normally wouldn't pick up on their own. And since mine tend to be in-a-rut types of readers, this is a huge help to me. They've even liked most of the books they read over the past year with their book clubs. The way both groups are set up, each child is assigned a month to choose a book for the group to read and to act as host for the meeting (provide snacks and lead the discussion with the help of a parent if needed). For next month, Madeline's group (she's in the older group by just a hair, it's for 9 and up and she turns 9 in Sept.) is reading Granny Torrelli Makes Soup by Sharon Creech. Ben's group will be reading Redwall by Brian Jacques. Ben is not at all thrilled about this one. He resisted reading it for many years but recently tried it because a friend loves the series and talked him into it. He put it down after a bit, just not at all interested in the storyline or characters. Now he is dreading reading it for book club, but knows that if he wants to participate he needs to read it or at least give most of it a very good try. It's good for him, I think, to have to read something outside his comfort zone and even not good in his eyes and then to have to come up with the concrete reasons why he didn't like it. He'll do fine in the end, I think. And I think we're all looking forward to continuing with this great activity!

Full-fledged toddler

Time creeps ever forward and takes with it, apparently, my children, sweeping them along and changing them before my very eyes. The most dramatic changes have been seen lately in Sam, my one year old (actually, he is 16 months old as of the 4th - really? already??). I want to try to capture a bit of who Sam is just now so that when I come up for breath in another few months, I will have something to remind me of the just-toddler he is today.

Sam...

• has finally begun to walk. He has toddled about for what seems like ages now, holding onto a finger, a hand, a piece of furniture, never daring to let go. Even at his 15 month (at 15.5 months of age) doctor appointment when we discussed whether it was time to worry yet, he still seemed so timid and shaky-legged and uncertain of his own strength. But not a week later he was finally letting go a bit and now is walking most of the time (as opposed to crawling) and is so much more steady. He can even change direction and walk many, many steps without falling on his bum.


• climbs up onto couches and chairs. Has figured out that he can get on things to get to other things... Uh oh...


• says "mama", "dada", "esss" (yes), "mah" or "nah" (no), and several animal noises, oh, and apparently "beluga" (boo-ga) as in Baby Beluga (the Raffi song and book) - why he is able to say that word but not other more useful ones I have no idea!


• uses several signs to let us know what he wants. We need to learn more to teach him as he seems to be having a lot of trouble communicating all of his needs to us these days and seems rather frustrated often. It's frustrating for us too. If he's anything like Ben (which he seems to be), he'll wait a good long time and then come out with whole sentences and near perfect pronunciation. It's just a waiting game until then.


• loves animals and especially seems interested in birds and dogs. He's also interested in trucks and cars and trains. Makes a great "brrrrmmmm" noise.


• loves anything with bread or cheese. Loves yogurt too and almost any kind of fruit. I think he overdosed on bananas as a baby, though, because now he kind of turns his nose up at them a bit. Mac and cheese is a big hit. Favorite veggies are green beans, peas, and broccoli.


• loves to play with Madeline, Ellie, Ben, and especially Daddy. There is one special game that Daddy plays where he "bench presses" Sam up and down while singing "One little, two little, three little Sammy's..." Sam loves this and giggles like crazy.


• loves to be read to but is very picky about books. He'll get a few favorites and demand to be read those over and over again. Then he'll completely tire of those and move on to another few favorites. Right now some of his favorites are "Goodnight Moon" and "The Big Red Barn" and "The Tallest Trees" (about the redwood trees in Muir Woods) and Byron Barton's "The Three Bears".


• has a bit of hair, still wispy, but actually enough to "comb" with my fingers. Very much a reddish, "strawberry blond."


• is working on (well, I am anyway) transitioning to one nap. Having a hard time with this as he still wakes pretty early (usually around 6:30) and therefore is getting tired (and cranky) by 10 or so. Usually sleeps 2-3 hours. But this means a very long afternoon and not always getting to bed as early as he would need to because of older kids' activities. Hopefully it'll work out more smoothly soon.


• gives big, tight hugs around our necks and sloppy open-mouthed baby kisses too. Sweet as can be...

What a blessing and an amazing addition to our family he is...

(I'm going to try to get a picture on here soon, but I just realized that I have no recent pics of Sam! Yikes! Better get snapping!)

The Great California Adventure

June and July have been busy months, full of the usual summer fun including swimming and swim team, visits to family, and frequent playdates with friends. But the greatest adventure of the summer happened in the middle of July when our family had the wonderful fortune to take a trip to California.

My grandmother wanted to be able to take us all (her three children, their children and children's children) on a vacation to a beloved spot in the Northern California mountains, a place where she and her family had vacationed many times. So after much planning by my grandmother and my uncle and others, off we went! First the 13 of us from the East Coast (my family, my brother's family, and my parents) flew together to Oakland, CA. We stayed at a motel near my grandmother's home for a couple of days, enjoying some sight-seeing in the area including a trip to the beautiful Muir Woods.




We drove through San Francisco to get to the coast north of the city, stopping after crossing the Golden Gate Bridge for a quick look around and a few pictures. A typical cool and foggy day there.

Then we arrived at Muir Woods and took a walk around this beautiful park. The pictures cannot do it justice.




We then traveled from the woods to the coast, stopping at a beach for a picnic and a short playtime on the beach.

After a couple of days in the San Francisco area, we journeyed to the Lassen Volcanic National Park where we stayed at the Drakesbad Guest Ranch for 3 nights. At this location we enjoyed hiking,

horse-back riding,


swimming in the hot-spring-fed pool (a bit hard to see in this picture taken from a trail),

beautiful views,
The Meadow

Mount Lassen - two views

Drakesbad from a trail



The Meadow - another view



campfires complete with s'mores,

playing games and relaxing on porches and in swings,

wonderful food in the dining hall, and just general fun with family that we don't get to see very often. The kids had plenty of time to play with their cousins and get to know some of their older relatives. We even received t-shirts designed and made specially for this occasion by my uncles. We all had a really fun time despite the usual complications that come with traveling in large groups and with many different personalities and small children. This is an adventure we'll remember for a long time to come! Thanks so much, Gram!

Our cabin - The Annex


The Lodge

Mystery Class solved at long last!

Recently we finished a big project called Mystery Class. It's sponsored by a program called Journey North which is an organization that tracks migration patterns of various animals and helps students learn about these patterns as well. The Mystery Class activity involves trying to discover the mystery locations of 10 different sites around the world by using the changing amount of daylight (which helps to determine the latitude) as well as clues about longitude, geography, and culture. We started working on this project at the end of January. We had no idea what it was going to be like, but it turned out to be really fun.

Here are the mystery locations:

1. Sapporo, Japan



2. Johannesburg, South Africa



3. Pigeon, Michigan, U.S.



4. Campina Grande, Brazil *



5. Ny Alesund, Norway (in the archipelago of Svalbard north of Scandinavia)



6. Kuwait City, Kuwait



7. Rothera Research Station, Adelaide Island, Antarctica



8. Bonn, Germany



9. Chengdu, China



10. Lima, Peru
    
    

*We missed this one, but we were close! We thought it was Jaboatao, Brazil. We got all the rest correct!

Here are pictures of some of the tools we used during this project... our world map and atlas:






...our charts that we used to keep track of the amount of daylight in each place. Also, we had a chart to figure out the longitude of each location.

...our graphs that showed how much daylight each mystery class had each week. The number of hours of daylight is on the left side and across the bottom are the dates.






If the line is going up, that location is gaining daylight meaning it is in the northern hemisphere. If the line is going down, that location is losing daylight meaning it is in the southern hemisphere. At first we thought Mystery Class #5 would only have a tiny bit of daylight because for the first few weeks it had no daylight at all. But it turned out to be the fastest gainer, gaining about an hour and a half to two hours each week (one week it gained 3 hours!). From the start we knew that Mystery Class #7 was going to be a fast loser (of daylight). We thought it was going to be on the tip of South America, but it turned out to be on the Antarctic Peninsula. We didn't know that there were any populated areas in Antarctica, so when we looked it up in Wikipedia we were really surprised. There are actually about 30 year-round residents at this research station (in the summer there are about 200 residents).

We're all looking forward to doing this project again next year!


(co-written by Madeline)

And while we worked on our Mystery Class project, this is the kind of thing that Sam was up to...

Gotta get that cabinet latch fixed!

Really, really long overdue update!

Wow, the days are just flying by and while I knew it had been a long time since I'd updated this blog, I had no idea that it had been this long! Since I last posted, Ellie celebrated her 5th birthday, we've had several holidays, Ben and Madeline earned their yellow and orange belts in Tae Kwon Do, and Sam has had several month-birthdays, has learned to sit up, crawl, and pull up to standing and is eating table foods. Here are a few of the highlights:



Ellie had a farm theme for her birthday party with her friends. Dad made an adorable pig cake, the girls dressed like cowgirls, and they had a lot of fun doing crafts and games and eating cake.

We had a visit from Great Grandma Matthew (all the way from California!). The kids hadn't seen her for a few years, and she and Sam were able to get acquainted.

Sam had his 7 month birthday (November):

And his 8 month birthday (December):

And his 9 month birthday (January):

And his 10 month birthday (February):

And his 11 month birthday (March):

He is such a sunny little guy and we are all really having fun getting to know him. He loves his sisters and his brother and is quite entertained by them (sometimes because they are purposely trying to entertain him and other times because they are just fun to watch). He also loves Daddy and begs for Daddy to play with him whenever Daddy comes near. He just knows the best games.

Ben and Madeline earned their yellow belts and also their orange belts in Tae Kwan Do. They are both really enjoying this and have learned so much in just the short time they have been doing this sport (since September). Here they are with their orange belts:

Other news? Lately we've been busy getting bedrooms switched around so that Sam now has his own bedroom (he'd been rooming with Mom and Dad since he was born and it was time for him to have his own space and for us to reclaim ours). Now Madeline and Ellie share a room and so far it is going very well!

We also recently took a family daytrip to Colonial Williamsburg during their Home Educator weeks where we followed up a unit (at home) on Colonial history and life with seeing for ourselves what life in a colonial town would have been like.

And to cap this all off, Sam just celebrated his first birthday yesterday (April 4th)! We had a small party today with all the grandparents in attendance. Just cake and ice cream, the birthday song, and a few gifts to open. The birthday boy definitely had a lot of fun!

Long overdue update...

I have so many things to post to this blog to catch you all up on everything we've been up to this summer. We've been so busy! Just wanted to start by putting up these last few "month birthday" photos of Sam who is growing like crazy and is just a bundle of fun. Here he is at four months:

Starting to roll over...

With big sister Madeline...

And his new favorite thing, standing up...



Here are some pictures at five months...

Mr. Smiley...



And with big sister Ellie, who, as you can see, is missing a few teeth ;)



And at six months...



And up on hands and knees and rocking back and forth... watch out world, here he comes!

So that is Sam for now, although his seven month birthday is fast approaching so I'll need to be on my toes to update again! Hope to have some more photos of other family activities between now and then! Come back and visit again soon!