Celebrating National Lemonade 
Day with homemade frozen lemonade
with strawberries.

Shall we play a game?

Since the hiking trails, parks, and beaches are closed, and playing with friends has been banned, we've been spending more time inside, which has led to the girls taking a much greater interest in video/computer games. And, no, I'm not viewing this as a waste of time or brain power. They're getting experience in working with technology (two different game consoles with a variety of controllers as well as laptops with different operating systems and games that have required keyboard controls, touch pad, or a mouse that they'd never used before). They're also working on hand/eye coordination, problem solving, and even specific academic subjects (math, geography, and history come to mind). They were even fascinated by a Netflix docu-series about the history of video games.Of course, they're still playing board/card games too--cribbage, Settlers of Catan, and Star Wars being the current favorites. Fun times! 

Hello. My name is. . . 

It's an important milestone: The girls assembled
a piece of furniture! They outgrew their shoe
baskets, so we purchased a storage unit, which
they built with minimal supervision.

Maybe it's just a quirky way to relieve the Covid-induced boredom, but we named the laptops and the printer. It's actually proved quite practical! We recently purchased a new laptop (Frederick) to replace the hand-me-down from Aunt E that finally, truly died. Frederick is a sleeker, lightweight laptop, but doesn't possess the processing power of Janice (previously, "Mommy's computer" though I spent less time with her than anyone else in the family did). Janice is the current favorite; not only is she the only one on speaking terms with Alexander, the temperamental printer, but she's also the only one capable to running Age of Empires. Finally, we have Kevin (Anyone remember 3, 2, 1, Penguins? You have to say it like that Kevin.) Kevin's a bit chunkier, slower, and runs on a weird processor that won't cooperate with certain programs; however, he's still proving himself useful.

Math

We're in the process of entering a whole new era of math learning! Bug has officially finished arithmetic with Mommy! Daddy will begin teaching her and Monkey Algebra 1 as soon as Monkey finishes too. (Monkey was a bit behind Bug, but the recent reorganization of Khan Academy seriously slowed her down.) In the meantime, Daddy's introducing Bug to discrete math. Yes, the college level course--she can totally handle the concepts and the math skills, but the vocabulary of the text itself can be a bit tricky for her.

One-on-One with Mommy

We were thrilled that Covid restrictions didn't stop our long-awaited mother/daughter beach time! We rented a beach cabin about 30 minutes from home, and I got two days and nights with each of the big girls. Daddy and Lion came for an overnight visit, so Monkey and Bug could trade places. Everybody got boogie boarding and beach time along with burgers and s'mores for dinner!

My time with Monkey and Bug revolved around Focus on the Family's Launch video series and workbooks (the videos themselves were silly and covered the topics very superficially; however, they served their purpose in helping structure our conversations). We had talked about all the topics before as they arose in life (and we'll keep talking, I'm sure!), but this gave me a weekend's worth of uninterrupted time with each of them to talk about big things and just hang out together--taking long walks, swimming, visiting the climbing structure, eating treats, and watching Sense and Sensibility in the evenings. The exciting unpleasantness of the week: I found a Portuguese man 'o war the hard way! Fortunately, it was just a baby one, and the cashier at the nearby mini-mart was very helpful with some sting relieving spray and treatment advice. Overall, though---it was a great week!

Monkey's sand village survived the night's high tide!

We discovered a man-made boulder! They miss
the climbing gym, so we spent a good amount of time here.

Bug and I found some really neat trees.