Back to School...NOT!

Today was the first day back to school for most kids in the area, but not for us! Our day was spectacular and amazing and fabulous and filled with learning and fun and new memories and gloriousness. I am feeling so energized for the upcoming "school year", feeling so grateful for our incredible and supportive home school community, and feeling so thankful to have the experience of this day with my kids.

The kids woke up this morning feeling rested after a full night's sleep - no alarm clocks blaring, no need to wake up earlier than their bodies naturally woke themselves. 

Joe and I have been talking about trying some new routines to try to bring a little more order to our household, so last night I printed up a "Morning Routine" chart and hung it on the fridge. I showed it to the kids when they woke up and they were kind of excited about it. Most of the things on it are personal hygiene/self care related (go to the bathroom, brush your teeth, eat breakfast, get dressed), but there are also assigned chores for everyone in the family - mom and dad included. For the kids I made a chore wheel that spins so that every day they rotate chores, with one of the slots being a free day. Lily had a free day today, Mary put away all the clean dishes from yesterday, and Joey collected all the dirty laundry, brought it downstairs, sorted it, and started a load. 

I know they will need a lot of help at first, but my hope is that they will gradually learn to do more on their own. I also made afternoon and evening routines. Most of the chores on the lists are things that I was trying to do by myself every day, and while the kids would occasionally help voluntarily or when I asked, lately I had been feeling overwhelmed trying to do it all alone. I'm hoping that this will be a concrete way for me to remember to involve the kids more in the day to day things that keep this house running smoothly - mostly help with the dishes and laundry and general tidying up. They were pretty excited to help out today, but I'm sure that the newness of it will soon wear off. Today was a success, and that's a good first step. 

We ate breakfast together and said morning prayers and talked about our plans for the day. We read a few books together. The first chapter in a children's book of Bible stories - we are going to read through the Old Testament together this year. The story of the tortoise and the hare - we have been talking about the virtue of perseverance. A book I picked up for 25 cents at a book sale recently that I remembered enjoying as a child called How Much is a Million? which the kids enjoyed as well; we were all pretty amazed and entertained by the book's descriptions of millions and billions and trillions of things. We added a new Van Gogh print of a painting of sunflowers in a vase to our collection of his work on the front of the refrigerator and talked about how it was similar to and different from the other Van Gogh paintings that are already hanging there. 

Then, because the weather was hot and beautiful, and because we could, we packed up all of our swimsuits and towels and sand toys and life jackets and floaty things and a cooler full of food and drove to the beach to spend the day with a large group of homeschooling friends celebrating our freedom to NOT go back to school!

Here is Katie being adorable. I'm glad her brother and sisters get to spend so much time with her all day long, rather than spending it in separate rooms of a school building. She adores her older siblings, and they cheer on all of her little attempts at walking and talking and other milestones.

We had a great time hanging out with friends old and new. Here's Joey examining an interesting rock he found. He made a collection of interesting rocks to bring home, including one that had a double ring going all the way around it. I have told the kids of a story I once heard that said a rock with a ring going all the way around it is a wishing rock. Joey said his rock was a double wishing rock worth two wishes!

After we had been there for several hours, Joey came running over bursting with excitement. "Mom, you have to come to the playground and see what I can do!" He wanted to show me that he had learned how to do the monkey bars all by himself! He was so proud and you could just see him glowing with confidence! Just a week and a half ago we were at a playground and Joe was lifting Joey up to do the monkey bars. That day we had tried to encourage him to go across himself, but he wasn't able to do it yet. Today he can! He did it over and over, and I'm glad he had the time today to work on this new skill. I'm not sure he would have been able to do it on a crowded playground surrounded by dozens of kids during recess, but today he had plenty of time and space to work it out, and he was so happy.

Lily had the best time today chatting and playing with her friends. It's so cute to watch them play together. One of their favorite games to play is called "super cats" where they are all cats with special powers. I often hear them talking about what today's variations are going to be. "Okay, so I'm a rainbow cat and we are playing super cats sandy beach!" "Nooooo! Let's play super cats playground!" "Okay!" Adorable.

There's another epic story to tell behind this picture. See the inflatable elephant Lily is using? It's actually one I used when I was a kid. I looked up to check on Lily and saw that she had let go of the elephant and it was floating away. "Mary! Quick! Rescue the elephant!" Mary ran across the beach and into the water, but it was too late. The wind had blown the little elephant out of the marked swimming area and into the lily pads. Lily was so upset. "Don't worry! I'll save it!" I reassured her. I found someone to watch Katie, ran back to the changing area and pulled my swimsuit on, and then charged into the water like a Baywatch heroine. 

I started doing a forward crawl, but I hadn't gone far when I started to get short of breath and realized how out of shape I was and how long it had been since I had actually swam any considerable distance. I switched to a front breast stroke which was easier since I didn't have to lift my arms out of the water. The wind was still blowing the little elephant further and further away, and I was beginning to wonder if I should have thought this through a little more carefully before embarking on my rescue crusade. Still, the elephant was just blowing along the shore in the lily pads, so I reasoned that I wasn't actually heading out into open water in the middle of the lake and could easily turn towards shore if I got too tired to continue. The breast stroke became too much effort, and then I remembered how easy it was to do a side stroke - once in high school at a hotel pool I did over twenty laps using the side stroke without getting tired. This was more relaxing and I was feeling confident that I was going to make it to the elephant. But then my brain was freed up to worry about other things. Were there snapping turtles in this area of the lake? Biting fish? Leeches? What if water splashed in my eyes and I lost a contact - how would I drive home? Is the cold water making my wedding ring loose enough to fall off? Is the water in my ear going to give me swimmer's ear? 

I realized that Mary and Joey and some other kids were walking along the shore following my progress, and that the elephant was headed towards a fishing dock. At this point I was really huffing and puffing and wishing that I would have jumped in at the fishing dock, but it was too late for that. I had to swim the last hundred feet or so through weeds and lily pads and floating green stuff, but I RESCUED THAT ELEPHANT, GOSH DARN IT! I used the last of my strength to swing my body up onto the fishing dock and I felt GLORIOUS. I walked triumphantly back to the beach, and I heard a crowd of kids whispering to each other, "There she is! That's the lady who did it!" YOU BET I DID.

Shortly after that, I took Katie to the bathroom to deal with her poop, and imagine my dismay when I returned to hear that blasted elephant had floated away again. You have got to be kidding me. This time I walked over the fishing dock to get it, only to find that just as I got there the wind had blown it out and away from the dock into the middle of the lake. I knew there was no way I had the energy to make a second incredible swim. Lily was especially upset, and Joey and Mary were also concerned about the poor lost elephant. We watched it and the wind started to blow it towards the shore further on around the corner, so we ran back to the edge and started to follow it. It really looked like it was going to get blown right up to the shoreline and the kids and I were all gathered there waiting for it. Suddenly the little elephant shifted its path and headed back out and away again. "We're going to lose it!" wailed Joey, more distraught than ever. "Hurry! It's your last chance!" shouted Mary. I sighed, grabbed a tiny life vest one of the kids had for support, and waded out once again. This time the elephant was less than a hundred feet out so I reached it much more quickly, but I was so tired I don't think I would have made it without the little life vest. We all walked back to the beach and I deflated that danged thing. I just know I am going to be incredibly sore when I wake up tomorrow, but it did feel amazing to successfully save my beloved toy, and to hear the kids praising my prowess.

I was reminded of a time my own mother had taken us to swim at a pond. One of our floaty toys drifted away, and she swam across to get it. It was only a tiny pond, and not as far as I swam today, but I remember as a kid feeling so awed by her ability to swim through the mucky weeds to rescue our toy. I hope my kids are just as impressed by me.

Here's another achievement for the day. Early in the day Mary and some friends decided to build a wall. Here they are after working on it for a short while.

As the day progressed, other friends joined in and helped out. Sometimes they took a break and played on the playground, swam in the water, ate some food, etc. But they kept coming back to their wall project.

They worked and worked until the sun was nearly set. Here they are putting on the finishing touches. As I took this picture they said, "There is so much scientific engineering that went into this project!"

Finally I had to insist it was time to stop. Katie was tired and needing to go home, Joey and Lily were already dressed and ready to go home, and I was worried it was getting too dark and that mosquitos were going to come out and attack us. Here's their final pose.

And a close up of the river system they built. They had a bridge and a tunnel and split the stream into three different pools.

And here's a video of the thing in action. Mary was adamant that I post it online and share it with the world, so here you go. Enjoy.

We didn't get home until nearly 9 pm - a truly epic long beach day. On the drive home, Mary said, "I wish I could just keep reliving this day over and over!" We all agreed it was the best not-back-to-school day yet! No need to end the day early in order to wake up early for school the next day! The kids were eager to talk to dad about everything we did today.

After I helped Katie settle into sleep in her crib, the kids had snacks and brushed their teeth and climbed into their beds. Mary silently continued reading Book 5 in the Percy Jackson series, which she had also been reading while we were driving today. I read aloud to Joey and Lily. First Lily's choices: Harry the Dirty Dog and then singing The Itsy Bitsy Spider, and then Joey's choice: The Talking Eggs, another book from when I was little and which for some reason he's been wanting to hear over and over lately. They were both sleeping before the end of the story. 

Here's to many more days spent living and learning together! 

Wednesday, September 18, 2013

This morning we took a field trip to the Wisconsin Equine Clinic & Hospital with our home school group.  We got to see the exam rooms where horses come for their checkups, and look at all of the tools the horse doctors use - they are much bigger than the ones in our pediatrician's office!  We got to see how they take horse x-rays, and horse MRIs.  We also got to tour the horse operating room.  It was really interesting to see how they get such a large animal safely sedated and on the operating table.  We also got to examine actual horse bones and they even had several cross sections of horse legs where you could see the bones, skin, muscles and all the tissues of the leg.  The major down side was the smell of the place - apparently there were some medicines in use that day that had a really strong and horrible smell.

We had packed a picnic lunch and had considered eating it on a farm with some of the other home school families, but after the horse hospital the kids were pretty tired - probably from our big long day yesterday - and things were melting down a little bit.  We ate in the van instead, and stopped at the nearby Imagination Station playground.

It is a really neat playground, but we didn't end up staying long, as the kids said they just wanted to go home - they really had a big day yesterday.  We did stop at Brennan's on the way to our house.  We love walking around that place and sampling all of the produce and snacks and cheeses.  We bought a new kind of cheese to try, and some sweet tomatoes, and nectarines, and two different kinds of plum, including a golden plum which they dubbed the "butter plum," a Minecraft reference.

Having fun at Brennan's

The rest of the afternoon and evening included Lego play, Minecraft, Skype with friends, reading, playing outside, and other things I didn't write down and can't recall now.  For dinner, I cut up a bunch of the fruits and cheese we bought at Brennan's and served it up with toothpicks.  At Brennan's, the free samples are presented like this, and at the store I had told the kids they should only have one of each sample, which was hard if you really liked something.  So we purchased our favorites and brought them home and had as many "samples" as we wanted!

Tuesday, September 17, 2013

Today we were all up by 6:45 am, which is pretty early for most of us, but I think it might have been because we were all so excited for our trip to Busy Barns Adventure Farm! Today was Homeschool Field Trip Day on the farm, and they had some special activities planned for the kids.  There was a short educational lesson on dairy, hayrides, and free pumpkins and animal feed for the kids to feed the animals with.  We stayed all day long and had a BLAST!

Here are the kids on a two-lane obstacle course:

Mary practicing her milking skills on a model cow

Horseback riding Lily

Yee-haw!

Mary and Joey named all of the horses with My Little Pony names :)

Tire horse swings!

Haymow slide!

Hay ride buds

 The farm has the most gigantic corn bin I've ever seen!

There was also a short corn maze where you had to use your knowledge of dairy to navigate the maze. We learned that while Wisconsin is no longer the number one dairy state, we are still the number one cheese state.

This was my view for most of the corn maze.

Walking together :)

We met two of the friendliest cats ever, and spent lots of time snuggling with them.  I have so many pictures of these cats on my camera, because the kids kept asking for me to take their picture with them. They wanted to buy a cat to bring home, until I reminded them that their dad is really allergic to cats.

There were lots of farm animals there to pet and feed and play with, but unfortunately I didn't get pictures of them.  I did capture this video of Lily. I thought it was really cute how she kept saying "pig-a-lets!" and wanted to remember that little two-year-old voice forever.  "Hey! Those pig-a-lets! I love it!"

We had a great time playing with friends old and new at the farm, and came home happy and exhausted.  After some napping, Lily pulled out our "tracing books," which are some Kumon workbooks that I took apart and inserted in a binder with sheet protectors so we can do the pages over and over with dry erase markers.  Lily loves them!  She is getting better and better at controlling the markers on the page.

We also have a book of mazes, and Joey started working on a couple of those along side Lily and I.

Lily also pulled out the letter book and practiced the letter L:

We watched My Little Pony as we fell asleep.  And those are the bits and pieces I remember from this day.  :)

Monday, September 16, 2013

Last night I put together "Exploration Bags" for Mary and Joey.  I got the idea from this book, which I checked out from our library.  It has lots of interesting nature activities we might try.  Their exploration bags contained a notebook, freshly sharpened pencils, blank note cards for making nature cards, a magnifying glass, and envelopes, plastic containers with lids, and a ziploc bag for collecting things.  We had eggs and toast for breakfast, along with a new kind of red pear we bought last time we were grocery shopping, and while we were eating I showed them the exploration bags and they were all so excited to go outside!  I read the poem "All Things Bright and Beautiful" to them as we were getting ready to go out.

It was a bit chilly though, and at first Joey didn't want to go out in the cold morning air, but we put on jackets and went out anyway.  We walked around the trail in our backyard examining things.  Mary found a leaf with a small baby slug on it and decided to sit down and make a nature card of it.  She initially wanted to collect it and bring it inside, but I told her that it would be hard for the slug to live in our house and it would probably be happier outside, so then she decided to draw it instead.  Lily wanted to make a nature card of it too.

Joey found several small mushrooms to collect, and I picked a hosta flower which we all smelled.  Mary also found a piece of glass and a plastic crystal in the woods, which she collected, along with some leaves and flowers and things.  We didn't stay out for as long as I thought we would on account of the chilliness.

When we came in Joey and I examined the mushrooms more closely.  I remembered that I picked up the book Color Treasury of Mushrooms & Toadstools out of a free bin at a homeschool rummage sale, so we got it off the bookshelf and tried to identify our mushrooms.  They were small puff ball type mushrooms, and we decided it was probably Lycoperdon perlatum, which the book said was found in the woods in autumn.  Joey was interested in eating them, but the book said they were only edible when their flesh was completely white upon breaking open, and ours were brown on the inside.  Even if they were white, I wouldn't have been confident enough to eat them anyway - we will stick with the morels grandpa collects for us!

When we came in Mary started playing some music on Spotify, and picked out the song Tunak Tunak Tun by Daler Mehndi, which Joe had added to our playlist.  I told her there was a music video with some cool dance moves on YouTube, so we watched it together and danced and talked a little bit about India.  This made us want to dance some more, so we put on Just Dance 3 on the Wii to have a dance party!

In the middle of all of that, I happened to look outside the basement patio doors and see a creature crawling by!  It was really neat looking, so we went outside to look at it more closely and take some pictures.

I guessed it was a salamander, so we came inside and googled "Wisconsin salamanders" and found this informative guide.  We decided we had found a tiger salamander, and read a little bit about salamanders together.

While Mary and Lily danced for awhile with the Wii game, Joey and I played some Minecraft together. He wanted to show me some of the cool new things he found in the Adventure Time mod.  Mary and Joey had asked me to download that mod last week, and I did, but I also requested the DVD of the Adventure Time cartoon from the library and picked it up last Thursday, as I had never seen the show and Mary and Joey said they hadn't watched full episodes either.  So we had been watching Adventure Time a little over the weekend and it was cool to see things from the TV show in the Minecraft mod. We also downloaded a couple of new adventure maps and Mary and Joey and I played around with those for a little while.

Then Lily and I went upstairs together and Mary and Joey started talking to some of their friends on Skype.  Lily and I folded some laundry together while we watched My Little Pony.  Everybody was getting hungry so I started making lunch - a new recipe for baked macaroni and cheese.  I had been keeping a close eye on Lily all morning, as she stopped wearing diapers last Sunday, and still needs a lot of help in getting to the bathroom.  However, just as I was busy with getting lunch in the oven, I came downstairs to check on her and found she had JUST pooped on the floor.  Luckily it wasn't very messy to clean up, and it was our only accident all day.  She's doing really great without diapers, and I think if I wouldn't have been preoccupied with cooking she wouldn't have had that accident either.  We are definitely making progress, and it is nice not to have to wash diapers any more.

Dad came home from work early right before we sat down to lunch, so it was nice to have him home with us all afternoon.  During lunch we read The Magic School Bus Shows and Tells: A Book About Archaeology. After lunch Lily was pretty tired so I took her to her bed and helped her fall asleep.  Joey and Mary and I played Minecraft for a little while, and then I got out the Moon Sand and Joey and I played around with that for a bit.  Then we decided to go outside again and I hung a load of laundry on the clothesline while Joey played with water and mud and leaves and grass.  We came back in and played a few board games together, Aargh! and Chutes and Ladders.  Pulled out the Cuisenaire rods and Joey played with those for a little bit and Mary and I played Minecraft together; we started a new world and built a survival shelter and explored a giant underground cavern we found.  Joey called me upstairs to see something he made with the rods:

He ran out of table space for the letter Y, so he put it at the beginning of his name instead.  Lily woke up and we went outside to play again.  Had a pretty relaxing rest of the day.  Made homemade pizza for supper, and read the introduction to Story of the World: Volume 1: Ancient Times while we were eating, which talked more about history and archaeology. Then I went to a parent meeting for our homeschool group and everyone settled in for the night.  We have a big day planned tomorrow at Busy Barns Adventure Farm!

A long overdue update!  I have pictures and news to report from February-December 2012.  I'm going to break it up month by month.  Here is the first installment - a summary of February 2012 in the life of the Yatzecks, as best I can remember, with the aid of our family wall calendar, photos, and facebook status updates.  Enjoy!

February 2 - We went to LaFleur's Gym for open gym.  Gymnastics fun with friends!

February 3 - My brother Adam and his girlfriend Devin came to visit us before Adam leaves to move out to Seattle for his new job.

February 6 - Mary had a small birthday party at our house with a bunch of her homeschool friends.  We had cupcakes baked in ice cream cones - yum!

Some time during the first half of February, Joey put a shirt on all by himself for the first time.  It was inside out and backwards, but he did it on his own and was very proud.  Lily, on the other hand, is already showing an interest in dressing herself at just 10 months old.  She will go into her drawer and pull out leggings and try to get them on her feet.  This is totally a personality thing, and quite amusing actually.

February 13 - We went to a Valentine's Day party with all of our homeschool friends.  Lily looked adorable.

February 15 - Mary turned 6 years old!  Grandma Terri took her to the movies, and told Mary she could pick whatever movie she wanted.  She picked Star Wars Episode 1 3D!

They also went out to lunch at McDonald's, where they happened to have Star Wars Happy meals!

It was a fabulous day.

February 18 - Mary had a birthday party at our house with a bunch of family members and friends visiting.  Every year we let her pick out whatever she wants for her birthday cake and try to make it for her ourselves.  This year she really wanted a Dr. Who birthday cake!  We told her that almost none of her party guests were familiar with the show, so they wouldn't know what the cake was supposed to be, but she didn't care.  At first I was a bit reluctant to make a cake that none of the party attendees would "get," but then I came to my senses and realized that it was MARY's birthday party.  None of the party guests would probably ever remember what sort of cake Mary had, but Mary would definitely remember a totally awesome Dr. Who cake!  We used up all of our blue food coloring.

Joey also enjoyed the cake.  In fact, he ate so much of the frosting that later on when he went poop it seriously looked like blue-green play dough.  At first I was worried, but then I remembered the frosting and made the connection.  Didn't seem to bother him at all!

Fun with party friends.

February 21 - Lily is 11 months old!

She is eating lots of foods now, and is super happy about it.

Time for our monthly photo shoot - these just get more and more interesting!

Joey really wanted to be in some pictures too.

And so did Mary.

And Lily again.

February 23 - I took a picture during bath time!

February 25 - I don't remember the story behind this picture, but it's pretty cute.

I also found this picture on the camera that Mary took of herself and thought it was neat.

February 27 - We took a tour of a Pizza Hut restaurant.  It was really cool - they led us all around the kitchen and showed us the walk in freezer and refrigerator.  Then we all got to make our own pizzas for lunch.

And that wraps up February!  Hopefully a March blog post won't be too far behind!