It's Raining! It's Pouring!
Normal people: It's raining. We should snuggle up under a blanket and stay inside all day.

My children: It's raining! Mommy, can we go for a walk?

Of course, I said yes, and we spent almost an hour walking around the block, jumping in "legit puddles!" (as Bug called them), peering down storm drains and discussing their purpose, watching leaves float swiftly down the hill, singing "Sing in the Rain" at the top of our lungs, etc. We followed this up with nice, hot cups of tea and a couple of books about weather. We discovered a chart of the different kinds of clouds and periodically checked the sky throughout the day to see what kind we had.

Run! Run! Run!
Goose ran another 5K, the local Turkey Trot. She kept the same time as the last one--about 35 minutes (and she keeps this pace while also keeping up a steady stream of conversation). This time she wanted me to run with her, and I decided I ought to accept the invitation since she's going to outpace me before too long! She gives me about a year. Out of curiosity Daddy decided to look up the results for a different, much bigger race that happened the same weekend. Had Goose been old enough to enter, she would have tied an 8 year old for second place in the kids' 5K.

This Saturday she and Daddy did a fun run hosted by a local running store. While she was not pleased to roll out of bed at 7:30 and straight into her running shorts, she later declared that it was totally worth it! She loved the 4-mile run on a dirt trail with a few little hills. Daddy's running club usually does Saturday runs in various locations, and Goose has asked if they can make that their usual running day instead of Tuesdays on the paved rec trail.

Beach Bonfire
The girls had a fantastic time at a beach bonfire our church hosted. Our girls brought their headlamps, and another mom supplied glow sticks, so the kids could run around in the dark and still be located. The grown ups huddled around the bonfire and chitchatted, but everybody joined in for s'mores!

Gymnastics
I let the girls talk me into signing them up for gymnastics lessons. Fortunately, Parks & Rec had some very reasonably priced, once-a-week classes that worked for our schedule. Monkey and Bug started this week. Their first class involved a few rough moments, but they each recovered and came away happy and ready to go back next week! I think it helped that one of their friends from church also happened to be in the class. Mommy confession: Goose was supposed to start this week too, and I completely forgot about her class until it was too late. Oops.

New Stage of Life
The past couple of weeks have been confirmation that we have entered wonderful new homeschooling territory. I've had most of the girls' formal lessons organized in binders for awhile now (the big girls have a calendar to fill out, handwriting exercises, spelling worksheets, and math facts pages; Goose's is mostly coloring sheets, dot-to-dots, and little mazes and things), and we've been inching toward independence in their "binder work." Also, I started doing two things just for me lately: running on a treadmill in the neighborhood community center for my second run each week (because Daddy's too busy and it's too dark too early for me to get outside to run more than once a week) and attending a weekly women's Bible study. These additions have been possible and relatively stress-free because the girls can get their work done while I'm otherwise busy! They sit (mostly quietly) in the lobby of the community center and at a table in the back of the Bible study and actually (usually) accomplish things. Amazing!

Social Studies: Civics
The most recent addition to those binders has been a unit that I'm calling civics. It's mostly coloring sheets and some worksheets that will walk us through various national symbols, holidays, and patriotic values. For example, so far we've discussed the symbolism in the American flag, why we have Veteran's Day, and what all the phrases in the Pledge of Allegiance mean.

I've also decided to pair this study with our new literature focus: American tall tales. Since we recently studied international fairy tales with the colored fairy books by Andrew Lang, this seemed like an appropriate next step. They loved the tales of Paul Bunyan that we read this week, but I did have to explain the literary concept of hyperbole after being stopped multiple times by Bug going, "Wait. That doesn't make sense. That's impossible."