The New Normal
The house itself is mostly settled, and we can finally begin establishing something that resembles a weekly routine. Daddy started his usual schedule this Monday (we're pretty excited that it involves 3-day weekends), so we restarted our formal lessons on Monday too, and got to explore some of our new normal places.

The Playground
One of the major selling points of our new house: a fun public playground is a mere one block walk away! We've been there a couple of times now, and even met another military family who just moved to the area too (They have a 4 year old and a 16 month old, so I'm sure you'll be reading about more get-togethers with them in the future. Miss R and I made sure we exchanged phone numbers before returning home.)

The Beach
The girls and I are thrilled to live only a few minutes drive from a beach! Daddy discovered a  mostly empty beach with free parking on one of his bike rides, so I took the entourage to check it out on Wednesday. It's too chilly to get in the water, of course, but we had a great time. We walked through a little canyon in the dunes to get there, and the girls reaction when we rounded the last curve was just priceless. In the hour or so we were there, we took a walk along the beach before the girls settled in to dig holes, and we found all kinds of cool things: different kinds of sea shells, lots of seaweed, driftwood, crab shells and claws, a sand dollar (or a "water penny" as Bug described it later to Daddy), some washed up jelly fish, and a piece of sea glass. We watched the birds diving in the surf and even spotted a couple of boats in the distance.

The Library
Of course, we had to check out story time at the local library. I think it's going to be another great little library! The librarians were very friendly, and they seemed to actually know most of the kids coming in. The girls are pretty excited about the children's section: cushions and a few stuffed animals, a playtable with puzzles, some boxes of blocks, and a file with coloring sheets and crayons. The story time theme this week was wild animals, and the girls enjoyed the books, but this librarian does alot more "stand up and participate" than the entourage is comfortable with (unlike the rest of the kids who need wiggle time, my girls really do just want to sit and listen to stories). We came home with these books:
Shoe Bop
Zin, Zin, Zin! A Violin!
Around the Neighborhood
Hide and Sleep
Tucking Mommy In
Charlie's Checklist
Our Marching Band
Swan Sky
Where Are You Going, Little Mouse?
Penny

Social Circles
One of the perks of being a military family is that we can move across the country and still have friends waiting for us! Two of Daddy's former co-workers and their families moved out here months before we did, and they each invited us over for dinner this week. We all had a great time reconnecting with old friends. The girls particularly enjoyed playing with their friends D and L--especially when Mr. K armed them all with Nerf guns and swords and declared himself the bad guy. Of course, he ended up cowering behind the dining room table being attacked from all sides, but he was laughing hysterically, so we didn't feel too sorry for him.

We've visited a couple of churches already, and we think we'll be attending one of them, but we have one more we'd like to visit first. We met some great military and homeschooling folks, and the girls really warmed up quickly to the Kids Club teacher and the other kids. Unrelated to the church, but involving some of the same people, we attended an Officer's Christian Fellowship small group Bible study this week too. Of course, this is mostly going to be an "educating the parents" thing, but the girls had a blast playing in the next room with the other kids.

The Three Rs
Goose turned three during our road trip out here, and I decided I needed to start being slightly more intentional in teaching her letter recognition. We've been going over the whole alphabet and the ABC song, but I'm going to do more fun activities focusing on just one letter at a time. We started with A this week. She's very interested in writing like her big sisters, so I had her practice making the letter in a tray full of dry rice. She also practiced writing As and Cs on a white board. (She desperately wanted to do another letter, so Bug showed her how to make a C, figuring it'd be the easiest one for Goose to master. Except for being consistently backwards, they look really good!)

Bug and I discussed it (on her initiative) and agreed that she has reached THE major reading milestone: no more reading textbook! She reached lesson 82 out of 100 and realized that her lessons no longer contained phonics clues, she was totally capable of reading real books, and she wanted to start just doing that. She'll still have a formal practice reading session everyday, when she'll work her way through books we chose together. Her first book that she was begging to read is The Alphabet Tree by Leo Lioni. It's a picture book, but certainly not an easy reader, and I've been very impressed with how well she's done. For math, she's been working on pages from her addition and subtraction workbooks. Many of the problems she can work out in her head, and she uses a number line for the rest. For writing, she started copying down a story she made up for Monkey and Goose in her composition book, wrote me a letter (so sweet!), and practiced making letters in the rice tray.

Monkey is now halfway through the reading textbook! It's starting to throw some harder words at her: ones is -s and -ing endings. But she's handling it pretty well, and getting better at knowing when she needs to take a "brain break" and come back to it in a few minutes. We discovered on the first day back into lessons that she needed a review session for math though, and we had fun flipping through some Sesame Street flash cards to brush up on her number recognition. She also practiced writing the numbers in the rice tray (less intimidating than pencil and paper), and completed a page or two in her workbook by the end of the week.