A Week of School

Well, the first week of school is over. I'd call it a success. Maybe not an unqualified success, but a success.

Allison is homeschooling this year. This has been something we've considered for some time and finally decided to bite the bullet. Gymnastics is such a time suck that it will be wonderful having her around more. Now, the gym had this first week of school off so we haven't actually seen how it will all work together and I think she got a bit bored, but overall it's been great. She's been a great help with Evelyn and has done reading, writing, math, vocabulary and typing with a minimum of complaint. We even set up her own email address so she can practice writing to family and friends. Email me if you are interested in getting her email address.

We also did started a series of experiments on crystal formation that came from Costco and spent a visit to the library learning how crystals and geodes are formed. I think the biggest lesson is one in patience, since the experiments are designed to be done one at a time and each takes about a week. Right now we are forming multiple "ruby" clusters on a rock and the solution is so dark that we can only see the crystals by shining a flashlight through the container. Pretty cool, though.

Alexander started first grade at Triggs and is so far loving his teacher and his class. She's very positive and uses a reward-based motivation system which is perfect for him. He keeps telling me that he has learned to listen and learned how to respect others which I suppose is what school is really all about, right? And it's amazing how peaceful and quiet it is around here during the day with just one less child.

Living in the desert in certainly a change, too. In North Dakota, the kids learned about hypothermia and frostbite. Here, they learn about dehydration and heat stroke. On Alexander's first day of school, I asked him what he learned and he said, "I learned that when my pee is white I'm drinking enough water and when it's yellow, I'm not drinking enough water." Words of wisdom from a first grade teacher.

Life in Las Vegas

I've been struggling with blogging lately (well, obviously. For like the last year) because it seems like there are so many places on the internet to share information now. It always seems silly to post pictures in 3 different places, but maybe someday I'll figure it out.

Anyway, I should probably update the last 8 months of our lives in summary:

(1) Peter volunteered for a job at Creech AFB that should mean he deploys much less and shouldn't really travel at all.

(2) Peter deployed in February, got back in April, we went house-hunting in Las Vegas for 3 days and put an offer in on a house before he went off to New Mexico to train for this new job.

(3) The bank approved our short-sale and wanted to close within 30 days. I panicked. We decided it wasn't worth making double house payments for 2 months until Peter was done and so the kids and I moved by ourselves. With 4 weeks notice. I'm still not sure that really happened, but I hope it never happens again.

(4) I dropped the two older kids off in Norman, OK to spend some quality time with Peter's parents while I Evie and I got the house somewhat habitable (well, Evelyn mostly just put stuff back IN the boxes and made messes)

(5) I got obsessed with building furniture thanks to www.knockoffwood.com and have nearly given myself heatstroke working in the garage in this ridiculously hot climate. But, we are rapidly accumulating new furniture that we desperately need since no one in the family had a bed since we moved. Plus, my mom came out and did some awesome painting in the kids' rooms.

(6) Peter got done with his training early, drove BACK up to North Dakota to out-process and picked the older kids up on his way back. We spent two fabulous weeks all together as a family.

(7) The kids and I packed our bags and headed up to Washington for a week-long family reunion at Birch Bay, where we dug in the wet, sandy beach and enjoyed being able to wear jeans and jackets. Aunt Emily traveled with us, which was a lifesaver and we added a gratuitous peach-picking trip on both the way up and the way back.

(8) We made it back, got Alexander enrolled for school, ordered homeschooling materials for Allison (yes, I'm taking the plunge this year) and she's trying out a new gym for gymnastics tomorrow. It's starting to feel like we actually live here!

Allison's artwork

Mommy was generous last Saturday and we got out the watercolors and let the kids paint (they ask to do this a lot, but since our kitchen table sits on carpet, I usually just don't want to deal with it.) Alex and Evelyn pretty much just made a mess and used a lot of paper (and were subsequentially banished to the bathtub to play with shaving cream) while Allison spent the entire time working on a couple of trees. But they are gorgeous trees!

We decided it needed something in the middle so I inserted her into her own artwork. What do you think?

Picture set on flickr

I've been really bad about updating the blog. I'm just not feeling the motivation for it right now. But in case you haven't seen it, I'm doing a daily photo set on flickr this year and it's probably the best way to keep updated with our family (at least at the moment, I'm sure I'll change again) If you click on the slide show, it will take you to my flickr account, where you can read the descriptions I've written to go along with each photo.