The Grandparents Are Gone

My parents left yesterday morning {Insert pause and long, sad sigh}.  We actually didn't do a lot.  DC was closed the weekend they got ... (I sat down to blog on Wednesday - that's as far as I got.  The story of my life these days.)

Anyway, to back up, we spent most of our time hanging out at the house and a little bit of time shopping.  Okay, a lot bit.  My mom has been looking forward to the shopper's paradise we live in. It was so good to have someone here visiting.  Our household feels very stressful all the time.  Part of it is the drama that engulfs school every morning and part is me just not having the time (or the energy) to get things done like I like to.  I felt like I could slow down and breathe for the first time in a while.  I cut back Jaelyn's school work to the big 3 (reading, writing and arithmetic).  My mom helped with school leaving me free to get some house work done.  I even cooked real meals since I had people other than kids who are happy with chicken nuggets or scrambled eggs to feed.  Dan even gave up his free day (which isn't really free.  He has no class, but he still spends 12-16 hours at school doing work) to see a movie with me.  It was a good visit.

On the school front, moving and kids is just hard.  Caden has been saying he doesn't like school.  I've talked to his teacher.  She says he's doing fine with his work and seems to have friends.  We just don't have the good friends that only time can bring.  Allie also seems to be struggling.  Hers is school related.  I've seen more Ds and Fs than I care to admit (although her averages are As and Bs, I don't get it).  I was so involved at her last school, but I don't know anyone at this one.  It's hard to feel like I'm on the outside here.  I keep telling myself  "it's only a year, it's only a year, it's only a year."

I keep telling myself that with Jaelyn too.  I am all over the map with her.  On bad days, I want to send her to school and never ever ever consider homeschooling again.  On good days, I want to bring Allie and Caden home and teach them all. I'm insane, I know that.  This week has been a really good homeschooling week.  I think last week's break and different teacher helped us both.  She's been calm and polite.  It's been a real joy to work with her.  And she's learning.  One night, while reading, she pointed out a word that didn't end in -ly (an easy give away) and said "that's an adverb."  We spent 3 days on adverbs....it finally sunk in :).  Last night, she said something with "either/or" in it and said "hey, either/or are conjunctions" (yesterday's lesson).  It's these little nuggets that I need to hold on to.

In order to make our day more peaceful, I'm continuing to tweak our schedule and try different things.  I've been cramming a lot into each week.  I'm backing off.  I've decided to only do social studies or science, not both in each week.  We've also gone to a very structured day.  If it were me, I'd start with the hardest subjects and move to the easiest and get my work done, boom, boom boom, but that's not Jaelyn.  She needs a written schedule (Spelling 9:40, Reading 10:15, snack 11:00) and she sticks to it exactly.  If she finishes one subject with 7 minutes left, she plays for 7 minutes instead of starting on her next subject and I am learning to be okay with that. She's already asking me to homeschool her next year.  She is adamant that she doesn't want to go back to school.  We shall see.

The Grandparents are Here

My parents came last week for a visit.  It's so good to have them here.  We don't get to see family enough.  Travelling home is hard with school in general, but this year, it's going to be especially tough.  I'm not sure when we'll get to go home next. Anyway, we haven't done too much with Jaelyn home during the day.  I did plan an easier school week so we could get out a little and do some shopping.  It's just really nice to have extra people here.  I half joke that it feels like Dan is deployed only I have to do his laundry and we don't get family separation pay.  He's never had a job that kept him at work from early morning to late, late evening six to seven days a week before.  I know he's exhausted, but he's doing great.  He's gotten As on all of his papers and assignments so far.  His first quarter is wrapping up.  3 more and ILE to go...keep praying, because I think it's only going to get worse.

I haven't had my camera out much this week, but I did take it when we fed the fish one afternoon.  I love that this bridge and the lake is literally 100 footsteps from my back gate.

My mom dropped the bread bag in the lake...oh, Mom!  And I can't believe I'm sharing this picture, but it is kind of funny.

 

90 Degrees of Fall

It's October so it's fall, right?  That means cooler days and hot chocolate in the evenings, right?  Wrong!  Dan had a free Saturday a few weeks ago; so we took advantage.  I'm learning I have to pack fun into his free time or there will be no fun this year.  Anyway, we googled Corn Mazes and settled on a visit to Cox Farm which had a little festival with it's corn maze.  The kids had fun before we'd even bought the tickets.

 

It was a hot, miserable day.  I don't know how the kids managed to play, but play, they did!

 

They had these little scenes set up everywhere.  Jaelyn loved the Wizard of Oz scene since we had just finished reading the book.

 

The corn maze was at least taller than last year (remember those pictures, waist high and thin), but they should have been honest and called it a corn path.  It wasn't a maze.  You went in the in, followed the fenced path, and came out the out.  That was a disappointment.

 

At least they had fun pit-stops along the path.  This spinning drum was the coolest illusion.  I felt like we were flipping upside down and kept hold of one of the hand rails so I wouldn't fall off.  The walkway, of course, wasn't moving at all.  I must have looked really stupid.  LOL.

 

There were also all kind of statues.  This one was my personal favorite.

 

Pull!

 

 

Who can help?  Is this lavender?  It sure was pretty.

 

The hay ride was bumpy and hot.  I bet it's really fun now that it's getting into the 50s and 60s and people are wearing pants.  Hay itches!

 

 

 

While it was a fun day and I'm glad we got out and did something, it wasn't exactly the best fall, cool weather festival.  I'm hoping we can find another weekend and a real corn maze to race through soon.

 

Schooling Byrd

 

 

 



I had a lot of issues with adding emails for Jaelyn's blog.  For now, it's open for anyone who follows the link.  At some point in the future, I might have to make it invitation only...we'll see.  I'm sure she'd love to hear comments :).

 

Here's the link:

http://schoolingbyrd.blogspot.com/

 

There's also a link in the right hand corner of my sidebar.

Another Day in the City

Today was Potted Potter...a 70 minute parody on all 7 Harry Potter books. I can describe it in one word - hilarious. It was ridiculously expensive, but worth every penny. The kids will be talking about it for months and hopefully years to come.

We got to DC early; so we went in the National Portrait Gallery. Some of the modern art was out there and the older art work had way too many naked people in it, but it was enjoyable to walk through. The kids tried to give us several heart attacks by repeatedly pointing with their fingers inches from the art work. Next time we are in the area, we'll have to go to the outdoor sculpture garden. We passed it and I think we'd enjoy wandering through it. Bring your walking shoes, mom and dad. We have the botanical gardens and smithsonian castle on our list of things to do when you are here!!!

Sent from my iPhone

Another Day in the City

Let's Review

As soon as I say "It's going really well," I'm forced to eat my words.  So, as much for me as for you, I thought I'd make a list of everything Jaelyn has done in the 9 days since the 1st day of school since this morning hasn't gone so well.

• Had 4 meltdowns.
• Correctly spelled around 275 spelling words.  I love the curriculum Spelling Power.  It's organized around a list of the 5,000 most frequently used words and it takes no more than 15 minutes a day.  She gets immediate feedback and she only studies the words she spells incorrectly.  I always have thought it a waste of time to make kids study words they already know.
• Learned about matter and its properties and states.  We did experiments to help understand volume and displacement, density, buoyancy, surface tension, freezing point, and condensing point.  I love Apologia (our science curriculum).
• Read half of the Wizard of Oz AND enjoyed it.
• Read books of her choice for a total of 450 minutes...that's 7.5 hours, folks.
• Studied about nouns and pronouns
• Wrote 4 complete stories and wrote several 5 minute introductions to stories.
• Covered 6 chapters in history (there are only 2-3 pages each) and learned about early man coming to North America, the Inuit, and the Anasazi.  She started a timeline around her school room with index cards on string.  I wonder how many times we'll loop the room before June.
• Worked on reading comprehension
• Completed 2 units in Math.
• AND last but not least...baked cupcakes and made duct tape flowers and wallets.

Happy 2nd Birthday Gracie Mae

The Setting in of Reality

I though I had a pretty firm grasp on what our new reality would look like with Jaelyn at home with me ALL THE TIME and Dan working on his master's degree and ILE coursework 30 miles away.  I don't think Dan had any idea what his new reality would be like :p - sorry Dan, keeping it real.  Even though you know how something is going to be, it's still hard to adjust to it.  I don't like Dan being gone from way before sunrise to well after sunset, especially after the last two years when he was home ALL the time.  He doesn't like the 1000 pages he's required to read every night or the vast amount of papers he's getting assigned to write.

We are half way through our second week of school.  I still need to get a little more organized, but overall, I think it's going really well.  The hardest thing to me is figuring out errands and doctor's appointments.  Take her with me or leave her at home???  That's the dilemma.  She is 11 and plenty old enough to start staying home alone, but I don't like leaving her alone.  I am already seeing positive changes in Jaelyn's work and attitude towards school.  Things that we would have struggled with at homework time last year (not because she couldn't do it), are being done independently without a fuss.  I know it's early on and the work will get harder, but I'm happy with our new reality.  Well, I still wouldn't mind a breakfast alone at Panera some morning or maybe lunch at PF Changs, but I'm coping :).  If nothing else, the stress that getting dressed and doing homework brought has been removed.  Our mornings and afternoons are peaceful for the most part.

We are on the fence with Jaelyn's gymnastics class for a couple of different reasons.  She's in a group with 12-14 year olds.  She's not quite to their level, but she's more advanced than the younger group.  Her instructor seems to be no-hands-on where her Missouri teacher was very active in teacher, spotting and helping. It stinks.  There's a tumbling and trampoline class that's been added to the day schedule.  We are going to watch it tomorrow and she might switch.

Caden had his first gymnastics class last night and LOVED it.  I wish I could bottle his excitement.  There are only 3 boys in his class.  It's late, an 8-9 class, but most of the other groups finish at 8:30 so they could use any apparatus in the gym.  The teams have priority.  Jaelyn's class is very limited in what they can do because of this.

Allie starts dance on Friday night.  She's excited. 

Three Days Down...One Hundred Seventy Seven to Go

Yesterday was rough.  Jaelyn was rude and short tempered.  We made it through her school work, but it was a fight.  She finished with me wondering what in the world I had been thinking.  Today was the polar opposite, even though she challenged me on a few things.   I have no idea what she has against commas, but apparently she doesn't like them.  She didn't like it, but she added commas to the story she was writing. She also didn't want to answer her reading comprehension questions in complete sentences.  I corrected her and sat quietly for about 30 seconds while she thought about it and then erased and fixed her answer.  The rest of her questions had complete sentences for answers without a fight.  We were interrupted a lot this morning with a handyman at the house (the shutter - and everything else - is fixed YAY!), but we finished the bulk of her work by about 12:30 including a lunch break.  After that, it was science time.  I really like the curriculum I picked, especially science.  Every page is filled with "try this" experiments so she can grasp the concept.  Today we learned about density and buoyancy.

Pretty, huh? 

 

We added honey, agave (I didn't have corn syrup), maple syrup, milk, dawn, water, oil and alcohol to a vase.  We gathered up several small objects and made predictions about which layer the objects would stop in.  I was surprised by some of the results.

 

Next up was buoyancy.  We made boats out of aluminum foil and floated pennies in them.  Jaelyn won.  Her boa held 38 pennies before it sunk...mine 33.  Encase you are wondering, she died the water red with left over Kool-Aid from dying a layer in the density experiment.

 

 

I finished today thinking "why didn't we do this sooner?"  Dan says I better remember today because there will be lots of yesterdays in my future.  He's probably right, but today, I'm happy.

Allie and Caden seem to like school.  They are slowly making friends and figuring their new school and teachers out.  Allie wants to sing in the choir (Caden would too, but it's only 4th and 5th grades).  There's also a beginning strings orchestra she wants to participate in.  We couldn't find a hip hop class, so she'll start taking Jazz lessons next week.  Caden has tried out two Jujitsu classes and is trying out gymnastics tonight.  Jaelyn starts gymnastics tonight and piano next Wednesday.  There's also the Tae Kwon Do club at school on Monday night starting in a few weeks.  I normally shy away from over scheduling us, but I think it's just what we need for this single year.  We need to get involved and connect quickly :).

Meet the Teachers and 1st Day

We got to meet our new teachers on Friday.  Caden has Mrs. M.  She seemed very friendly.  She just moved from 1st grade and had that little kids nurturing vibe.  I think Caden is going to like her.  He was nervous this morning, but when we got to school, he lined up with the other 3rd graders without a look back at me (Caden, I need a hug at least!).

 

Allie wasn't that thrilled with her teacher, Mr. H (rhymes with Caden's teacher.  I know I am going to have problems keeping names straight).  He seems like he'll be fun though....once she warms up.  One of the pack girls is in her class; although they weren't friendly to Allie at all this morning.  Momma might need to bust some heads if they are mean to my little girl!  Pray for a good friend for her, please.

 

 

Allie's opinionated ways are continuing.  She planned her outfit by herself, but let me add the necklace.

 

 

Jae and her monkey pajamas...crazy girl!

 

 

Today went well me.  I found Jaelyn working on her first math lesson when I was getting everyone else ready.  I like math on the computer :).

 

There were a few bumps in the road and whines over reviewing nouns (ughhh) and doing mad minute multiplication (argghhh) and 30 minutes of SSR (noooo - silent sustained reading for those not in the know).  We worked through all of it and even managed to have some fun learning about volume.

 

 

She started school about 9:00 and finished before 12:30.  I can already see I need to beef up some things, but overall I'm happy with our start.  1 day down, 179 to go :).

Adventure Park Is as Good as Its Name

A friend "liked" the Adventure Park at Sandy Spring on their facebook page and I'm so glad they did.  I've been following their page as well and earlier this week, they posted free tickets to the new "Monkey Climb."  We had so much fun doing a similar aerial course in South Dakota; so I've been itching to try it out.  Free tickets for part of their park was the perfect incentive to plan a last hoorah before school starts on Tuesday.

 

We spent an hour on their monkey climb.  It was AWESOME.  Dan was the only one who didn't participate.  The kids were absolute dare devils.  They climbed all the way to the top on every tree.

 

Jaelyn and I raced on these two trees.  She was in the lead for a while...

 

then she puttered out and dropped...wimp :)

 

leaving me to be victorious!!!!

 

This tree was the absolute hardest.  It leaned and had tiny hand holds.  It was all about arm strength and as it was my 5th tree to climb, I had no arm strength left.  I attempted it 3 times and this was as high as I could go. 

 

 

Jaelyn made it all the way.

 

 

We had lunch after the monkey climb and then went back for their 3 hour aerial adventure.  They say this is the largest park of it's type in North America.  It was definitely bigger than SD.

 

I enjoyed the zip lines the most.  Each course had 2-3 scattered between other obstacles.

 

They had a photographer taking group pictures.  I didn't buy it, but I did take a picture of it ;).

 

There was some pretty hard obstacles...This was my choice for hardest.  It was all about inner thigh strength.  My legs were quivering at the end.

 

Huge, I tell you and this is only a small portion.  The park consisted of 5 different levels with 2 courses for each level.

 

 

So, if you are ever in the Virginia/Maryland area, we highly recommend stopping here.  Save your pennies...it ain't cheap.