This season has required everything I may have gained in the way of superpowers as a military spouse and homeschooling mom (superhuman creativity and flexibility just come with the job, right?). Over the next week I'm hoping to post about our adventures in the holidays, moving across the country, and adjusting to our new home, along with the usual homeschooling fun that we've had over the past several weeks. Here's the first installment:

Thanksgiving: Goodbyes and Moving Day
Last year we celebrated Christmas in a hotel as we transitioned into our new house in California. This year we celebrated Thanksgiving in the same hotel as we transitioned out of that house and prepared to move clear across the country to New England! For the feasting day itself we actually joined several other military families at a friends's house, and the girls had one last day to hang out with some of their best friends. (It was quite the gathering: at one point we realized we had 14 children aged 7 and under all gathered in their living room!). We also managed to meet up with a few other families at a local park for a farewell picnic earlier in the week.

This photo doesn't nearly do justice to the crowd of people or
the vast quantities of food that day.

The cactus garden did make for an
excellent alien landscape.

For the most part, the girls enjoyed our almost week-long stay in the hotel (although Bug did grab a pillow, blanket, and book and turn the bathtub into a fortress of solitude for a while). Their favorite part was probably exploring the formal and cactus gardens. My favorite part was eavesdropping on their play while doing so: They were walking in circles around the cactus garden trapped in a time loop! They eventually discovered they could escape the time loop by changing their identities! But, when they did, they landed in a parallel universe where magic is real! This, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when you take the toys away from children who've been fed a steady intellectual diet of classic science fiction and fairy tales. We're calling it a parenting win.

The day after Thanksgiving the real adventure began, and the girls got to take their first airplane flight. Of course, this involved more than just an airplane--the girls also experienced moving sidewalks, a tram between terminals, and a hotel shuttle for the first time. They were a little nervous about going through security, but we tried to prep them as much as possible for what they'd need to do and they did beautifully (fortunately, they don't make kids go through the whole body scanning process, just a metal detector). They thought the whole taking off and landing process was pretty exciting. Getting to see a birds-eye view of the city lights of our temporary hometown as we came in for a landing was also a highlight. The low point was the crew's discovering that the cargo doors were stuck shut on arrival. About an hour later someone managed to climb through a vent, I think, and we finally got our bags--well, except for that one that ended up in Kalamazoo (literally, the one in Michigan).

Some friends we knew from California who moved here a few months ahead of us picked us up from the hotel the next morning, and we finally got to see our new house! Living in a furnished house is a weird adjustment, and the girls are definitely building the virtue of flexibility that's so crucial for military kids! (More on the creative ways we're making do in a future post.)

All buckled in for our first flight!

Dinner in the airport between flights (Monkey's excited
because we were finally far enough east to find an Arby's--her favorite)

Thanksgiving: The Formal Educational Segment
Of course, Thanksgiving segued nicely into our next history unit about Colonial America. Before Thanksgiving, we read a book and watched several videos (a reenactment, a virtual tour of the living history museum of Plymouth Plantation, and a retelling of the story while touring the modern locations where these events happens). We didn't just cover the first Thanksgiving; we got into whole story of the Separatists/Pilgrims from persecution in Scrooby, England, to the flight to Amsterdam to their migration to Massachusetts, the hardships they experienced upon arrival, their interactions with the Native Americans (good and bad events), and the establishment of a successful permanent colony. To conclude our study about this particular colony I had the girls tell me the story (with a few prompts) and write a few sentences about it.