In addition to all the usual activities and visits with family, July also involved another round of swimming lessons and our church’s Vacation Bible School program.

This session of swimming has been fantastic. Advantage of going to a lovely, small Y: Lion has a private lesson for the cost of a class because she’s the only one who signed up for her age and skill level, and Bug also had mostly private lessons because the one other child in her level switched to a different time slot. Even Monkey's class only had three kids! The extra time and attention clearly paid off: All three girls made obvious progress, and they were each promoted to the next level at the end! This session, Bug was thrilled to be in a class in the big pool for the first time: she swam laps, learned to use the diving blocks, and played wet ball (it resembles water polo). Monkey repeated the same level, because she didn’t think she had the endurance to swim real laps yet. She does now! (This time around she was clearly the best swimmer in her class, which gave her an extra boost of confidence. She’s always been our most hesitant swimmer, so this is a big deal.) Lion's swimming skills took off as well. Like her sisters, she was working on front and back stroke and was introduced to breast and side stroke. This time around she discovered the perks of having a teenage boy for an instructor: things like splashing contests and getting flung into the pool.

Swimming lessons here even involve some boat safety time.

The girls loved their first vacation Bible school experience! This church does VBS in the evenings, feeds the kids dinner, and draws in significantly more kids than are actually members of our little church. The girls were thrilled to get to hang out with their friends, do crafts, learn new songs, and listen to Bible stories every night last week. I volunteered in the kitchen and had a great time getting to know some of the other ladies at church. In the meantime, the girls had a blast getting an extra 45 minutes on the playground while we prepped dinner.

Busy Girls!

Life is so busy I'm behind in my blogging! This post covers all the tidbits of fun things we've been up to. I'm in the midst of writing up posts about big things (VBS & swimming lessons) and visits with family. They'll be up eventually. Bear with me.

We are harvesting! The girls have been watching things ripen with great anticipation, and we’ve picked (and eaten) peppers, tomatoes, and lots of cucumbers. Of course, we’ve also been checking the rain gauge and watering as needed (not much actually).

We happened to stop by the library at the right time last week and caught Game Day. The girls got to join a bunch of other kids to play with sidewalk chalk, jump ropes, bubbles, and balls on the library patio. (The girls have outgrown story time, but we’re still at the library at least once a week.)

Recently the girls have been interested in special effects for live action movies. This actually started because Bug had a bad dream related to some intense scenes in a superhero movie we watched with them. We decided the best cure was deconstruction. A few of our DVDs offered behind-the-scenes special features (how Hogwarts magical creatures are made), and YouTube had plenty of footage to offer for some of the Avengers movies (they learned about motion capture, CGI, stunt doubles, wire work, etc.). Fascinating stuff!

The whole family recently learned how to make paper cranes. Our church will be hosting a 9/11 memorial service this year, and part of the event will be an art installation involving about 3,000 paper cranes that the congregation has been called on to help create. The girls enthusiastically attended the workshop after church one week, and we took a stack of origami paper home with us. We’ve returned one grocery bag full of tiny cranes so far.

We’ve had a couple of fun insect sightings lately! On one of our outside lesson days, the local ant population discovered the remnants of our mid-morning snack, and we got to witness four ants working together to move a rather large crumb of cheese across the gazebo. Later one of the girls spotting an impressive cicada exoskeleton on our front sidewalk. Of course, since they couldn’t identify it immediately we pulled out the field guide and learned all about cicadas. We’ve added the exoskeleton to our nature collection for further examination.

We’ve discovered the local Y steps up their Child Watch program during the summer and provides additional fun activities for school-age kids in a program called Fit Kids. So far they’ve joined other kids in painting (and glittering), beading bracelets, swimming, and running races on the indoor track. They’re also still attending and loving the once-a-week kids’ yoga class. 

The girls are thrilled that the music room is complete! We even have seating for visitors to listen. They've been loving the new rug. With its coziness just steps away from the study, it's become a popular location for lessons, since they can grab their binders and sprawl out in comfort.

Standardized Testing

The girls were excited to discover
that our local Kroger has kid-sized
shopping carts--not toddler carts,
but ones that can actually hold all
our groceries. I just had to
handle the list!

We survived our first experience with standardized testing, and everybody passed! We had a few teary moments (the idea that they weren't expected to know every question was difficult for them grasp, and Monkey ran out of the time in most of the language arts sections). I'm still not a huge fan of standardized tests in general, but the legal hoop has been successfully jumped through.

Lion wasn't actually required to take them, but I was curious about where she would fall. She's been casually doing kindergarten work, but is technically too young to have completed kindergarten. With these scores though, she's definitely cleared for first grade if she's up for the challenge!

So what does an over-achieving 7 year old (Bug) do after spending a morning testing? Work on learning a new language and inform her mother that she really needs to learn about Shakespeare! (So she can understand the literary references in the book she's reading.) Fortunately, I found Charles Lamb's retelling of Shakespeare's plays as stories for children. As I write, she's curled up in the reading nook with "The Winter's Tale," a play that was prominently featured in a novel she was reading. The day of testing she watched a Spanish-language DVD from the library to help with her pronunciation. She's since decided she wants to pursue learning the language a little more seriously. We've added it to her daily assignment sheet, and she's been working her way through alphabet-based worksheets practicing vocabulary and pronunciation.

Music
Monkey has finally officially warmed up to her drum teacher! I actually heard them laughing together about something the other day. We've continued to set a timer for her daily drum practice, so she can build up her endurance and have more fun playing for longer stretches.

Lion is cheerfully plugging along with her lessons. She loves her teacher and continues making good progress.

Bug has recently expressed an interest in switching back to primarily playing violin. The piano wasn't proving challenging enough to keep her cheerfully interested. We stepped it up a little by requesting her piano teacher add music theory to her lessons. I also discovered her teacher had only been teaching her songs by numbered fingers, not by actually teaching her to read music. I'm sure she would have gotten to it eventually, but Bug was ready for the additional info now. Bug, Daddy, and I discussed the possibility of switching her formal lessons back to violin (as soon as next month) and encouraging her to continue studying piano on her own for awhile.

Just Keep Running
Running isn't just a casual hobby for Lion. This child needs to run. Daddy hadn't been able to take her for several weeks, and she was starting to run in circles through the downstairs on a daily basis. A time or two I actually made her put her running shoes on and take a lap or two around the outside of the house. Once she came back in cheering that she "won the race!" Funny little kid.

This week Daddy finally had time to take her out, and he took her to a track to run intervals for the first time (that's training by running very intense short distances). Since our current location is severely lacking in hills, Lion was interested in a new form of running challenge, and she loved it!

Science
Science is one subject that doesn't really get recorded anywhere else, because I don't do formal science lessons at this point. We've always encouraged the girls curiosity and answered their questions about the world around them as accurately as possible (thank you, Google!). With this lifestyle of exploration, we've so far easily crossed off all the science standards for their grades (Monkey actually aced that section of the test)!

Recently, we've discussed bees and the part they play in pollination, the classification and usefulness of spiders, how seeds form, identifying local birds and using a field guide, the differing needs of various plants (shade vs. full sun, enough room, etc.), characteristics of birds vs. mammals, etc.

And, of course, we're checking regularly on our hands-on science project:

Baby cucumbers! Baby peppers! Baby tomatoes!

Happy Independence Day!
We continued our tradition of having a "patriotic" breakfast: watermelon stars and red, white, and blue yogurt parfaits. This year the girls were responsible enough to really help prepare it, too. I sliced the watermelon, but they cut out the stars with a cookie cutter, washed the blueberries and strawberries, cut the leaves off the strawberries and assembled the parfaits. We missed out on fireworks the last couple of years on the drought-stricken West Coast, so we were really hoping to see some this year. The open field behind our house seemed like a prime viewing location. Unfortunately, the trees that surround it proved just a little too tall, and we only saw a few.

Where It Happens: Mid-Atlantic Edition

Music Room: When we started house shopping, the girls had a few requests, and one of the big ones was a dedicated music room. They got their wish! It's not yet fully furnished, but it's a lovely room just inside the front door with the keyboard, Monkey's snare drum, Daddy's bass guitar, and a bookshelf for music books and additional instruments (bongos, glockenspiel, and a variety of whistles and rhythm instruments).

(The keyboard is in the opposite corner of the room.)

Study: Now that the girls are a little older (and formal lessons take more precedence while playtime requires less supervision), we've located the study downstairs, conveniently just off the kitchen. Of course, it's still chock full of books, arts & craft supplies, educational materials & manipulatives, etc., etc. We are loving having the additional elbow room in here though! We even have space for the girls to have a shelf reserved for their nature collection: bones, feathers, neat rocks & sticks, even a pressed lizard (thanks, Granddad!).

The study gets used for art projects just as much as it does for lessons.

Kitchen: I love my new spacious kitchen! And the girls love that there's adequate room for helpers in here! We've got lots of counter space, and the island is perfect for pulling up a stool to help me chop, measure, or mix. You may notice the "centerpiece" in the kitchen: a tray full of fresh produce surrounded by everybody's water bottles. This arrangement has made for much more consistently healthy snacking choices, and Bug has even designated herself as the person in charge of making sure everyone's bottle gets refilled (we'll see if she keeps this up once the novelty of the water dispenser wears off).

The Nook: Perhaps the smallest "room" in the house, it just might be the girls' favorite. It's actually a balcony overlooking the stairs that's lined with bookshelves (most of our household's picture books and novels), and further filled with a cozy butterfly chair, a nest of pillows and blankets, and my favorite Ikea chair and ottoman.

Living Room: The primary venue for game days (once a week we set aside formal lessons and play board games instead), movie nights (a Sunday night family tradition), and wrestling matches with Daddy (so much fun).

Playroom: The girls are thrilled to have a playroom that is actually it's own room--with a door and everything! (Previous editions were thoroughfares or a back corner of the living room). They have tons of floor space to create sprawling cities, host a crowd of stuffed animals for a show, set up a restaurant, etc., etc.

Bedroom: Once again, they are loving the wide open spaces! In fact, their bedroom is big enough to unbunk all the beds and still have room for three dressers and three bedside tables (typically stacked with books for bedtime reading).

Outside: Speaking of wide open spaces, we have a real backyard this this time that even has room for their climbing dome and a small vegetable garden! Bonus feature: a screened-in gazebo surrounded by roses. We've definitely grabbed our school supplies and a few snacks and spent the entire morning out there.

How Does Your Garden Grow?
Mostly great! The girls have loved watching it grow, since we're finally getting the right mix of rain and sunshine. We had a few worrisome weeks with all cloudy days, but everything seems to have recovered except for one tomato plant. We even had a little pepper growing for a while, but some passing critter decided it was just too tempting to resist and nipped it off at the stem! We even installed a little rain gauge to help us determine when we actually need to water (not often at this point). The girls have gotten a real thrill out of reading it every few days and keeping track of the measurements in our rain log.

We decided to throw in an experiment in the dying tomato plant's square: One day at lunch,  I sliced into a tomato that had been sitting out on the counter only to discover that all the seeds inside had sprouted! I showed the girls this fascinating find, and they immediately declared, "Let's plant it!" So we pulled out  a trowel and planted the entire tomato. Now we wait!

So sad for the poor tomato plant!

Let's Play Pretend!

Bug even provided reading materials
for her clients.

Rather than setting up elaborate storylines with figures, the girls have lately been creating their own settings to play grown-ups in. Around the house we've had a hair salon, library, church, and a child care center (like at the Y). Some of these have been pretty involved set ups with handmade signs, sign-in sheets, and check-out processes.

I think my favorite of their pretend plays to eavesdrop on is "spyentists." They don their swimming goggles, commandeer the downstairs bathroom (because it makes a convenient time machine), and pretend to be time-traveling scientist who stop the bad guys before they can commit their crimes. Monkey and Bug started it, and at some point Lion joined them as "May O'Neil," a scientist/ninja and daughter of April O'Neil and Michelangelo. Oh, they make me laugh!

Household Responsibilities
Part of our family culture has been that, well, we are one family, we live together in one house, so we all need to work together to take care of it. Recently, in an effort to do a better job of keeping up with the housework, the girls have been given a few more routine responsibilities. For awhile now, they've been picking up their room and the playroom, clearing the table after dinner, and cleaning their own bathroom (supervised, of course). Now, the big girls are also responsible for vacuuming the playroom and their bedroom and Lion helps me sweep the hard floors downstairs. They also fold and put away their own laundry, and I've started teaching them how to sort it. (This is the part of education formally called "home ec".) In fact, lately we've been designating one day a week as chores and games day--we do all our weekly cleaning jobs, go grocery shopping and spend whatever spare hours we have playing board games and working on special projects (liking pulling out the painting supplies last week).

Fun at the Y!
Swimming lessons have finished, but we've still made it to the pool one day week. We've been going during the day, when we practically have the pool to ourselves, but sometime we'll make it to the family swim time when the splash pad is turned on. The girls have a fantastc time practicing their swimming and just messing around in the water. Bug has made it her goal to swim the length of the lap pool (the official goal she has to meet in order to move up a level in lessons). She's got a ways to go, but she's planninng to practice and make an attempt every time we go. Lion has also set goal for herself: to swim the length of the therapy pool. She's almost there! Monkey is also making progress in the water--gaining confidence and slowly improving.
The girls have also spent some time in child watch (the Y's childcare program). The big girls are almost too old for the nursery, but we made it more enjoyable by timing it for them to attend a Music & Movement class. Next week they're going to try a kids' yoga class.

Three R's

One of the joys of home schooling: lessons in the screened-in
gazebo on a beautiful sunny day!

In the past couple of weeks, I've refilled their binders and we've picked up our normal full schedule of formal lessons. Nothing terribly exciting to discuss here. We transitioned back pretty smoothly and everybody's making progress! If you really want details on what the day-to-day academics look like, message me and I'll happily fill you in! I haven't been detailing those here because I have actual records of those lessons elsewhere, and I figure it's just not as interesting to read.

Nana's Visit!

We knew it wouldn't take long: a few weeks ago Nana made her first visit to our new house! As usual, we went shopping. The girls were very excited to acquire their summer wardrobes; it's been over two years since they've needed to wear shorts! We also went antiquing and found some fantastic furniture for our new house. The girls were great sports about wandering around antique malls for an entire afternoon (it probably helped that we acquired a few new female action figures along the way).

Why, yes, I think we will buy that bench.

We couldn't miss another Nana visit tradition: pizza and movie night for Nana and the girls/date night for Mommy and Daddy! The girls had a great time introducing Nana to one of their current favorite movies, Home. They quote that movie on a daily basis, so they thought it was important that Nana get the jokes.

For little Lion, though, the real highlight of the weekend was getting to run a 5K with Girls on the Run. This was her biggest race yet with 1500 participants, mostly other girls between the ages of 8 and 13 along with their coaches, parents, and some siblings. I think it rained for most of the race, and true to form (and unlike most of the other runners) Lion ran straight through the puddles! As a result we spent a fair amount of time in the bathroom afterward, laughing as we wiped the mud off her legs. She had a blast!

Stretching before the race

Lion triumphant!

It's the classic children's museum
big chair photo!

Back to the Routine

Well, not quite. The routine is sometimes interrupted by awesome things like visiting the local children's museum with "long-lost" friends we followed her from the west coast. The girls had a blast exploring the museum that included things like a bubble zone with people-sized bubbles, theater with a light & sound board they could control, a physics-based circus where they could lift an elephant using a lever among other cool activities, a town with a bank, library, store, fire station, etc., etc., etc.

When we are attempting to establish the routine, we've been slowly easing ourselves into it. The girls have been learning tons of practical housekeeping things  as we've been settling in, and of course we had a "science intensive" with Grandma's gardening visit, but here's what we're up to in some other topics:

Reading: At the girls request, this was the first subject to be added back into the routine. Lion continues to insist on primarily sight reading and has been avidly reading our anthology of Dick & Jane stories. She's also picked up a few easy readers (like Bears on Wheels) that we found at the local library. Monkey is still not a completely confident reader, but we've changed tactics and so far have met enthusiastic success. Rather than looking for something mildly interesting among   easy readers, we checked out a book I knew she'd love--the first book of the Spiderwick Chronicles. It's certainly beyond her ability to read on her own, but with assistance on tough words and my reading every other page outright, she's cheerfully struggling through and her reading skills are definitely improving! In fact, her reading lesson is usually the first thing she wants to do! Bug doesn't actually have reading lessons per se. We just have an understanding that she should spend some time reading every day. That's never a problem: she blitzed through all five Spiderwick books in a matter of days, read an anthology of Aesop's fables, several stories out of a book of Norse mythology, a Kate DiCamillo book, most of my complete collection of Beatrix Potter stories, etc. etc.

our happy little drummer!

Writing: We've been working on composition lately, though we haven't been doing much actual writing on paper. We've done lots of rounds with Story Cubes  (roll picture dice and tell a story based on what lands).  Monkey and Lion enthusiastically weave elaborate fairy tales; Bug groans when I pull them out, but she can usually come up with at least a few sentences. I also recently pulled out the story cards, and taught the girls about the 5 Ws. This exercise seemed particularly helpful to Bug, who often struggles to even get started with story prompts. We did recently pick up a spelling unit at Bug's request (She was writing something on her own and getting frustrated with having to ask me for help spelling things: "Mom, if you teach us spelling again, I'll know more of these words all by myself." Well, ok then.)

Math: Since we don't yet have internet or a functional printer, the big girls haven't been doing their usual combination of Khan Academy and math drills worksheets. However, we've been doing lots of flashcards, and I've been throwing in practical math at every opportunity (for example, at the grocery store the other day, I had the girls pick out four pears and figure out about how much we'd have to pay for them--find the price per pound sign, weigh the pears, then round both numbers to easy-to-work-with numbers and multiply to find the total). Meanwhile, Lion and I worked our way through a kindergarten math assessment (I was reading through a list of published standards, and would occasionally call her over, "Hey, Lion, can you . . . ?" She would prove she could do it or admit ignorance and move on.) As expected, she's all but done with kindergarten math, and I now have a short list of topics we ought to focus on.

(Because a frame on my desk needs
a new photo and it's too cute not
to share!)

History: For history/civics we're continuing our study of the U.S. Presidents by making our way through a workbook and getting some additional sources from the library.

Bible & Religion: Now that we're no longer travelling and keeping crazy schedules, we've been much more consistent with our morning Bible readings. We're now in the book of Acts in their story Bible. Our church here doesn't have a program for kids' to memorize Bible verses, so we're on own again. Now that we're in a liturgical church, the first thing I had us work on was the Lord's Prayer. We talked through the meaning of every phrase as well as why we say it together in church every Sunday. It took a couple of weeks, and now the girls can proudly participate in another part of the service! Speaking of which, the girls and I also took a little time one morning to go through an order of worship, so I could explain each aspect of the worship service and why we do it. I also made the big girls ribbon bookmarks to bring to church with us: they spend the prelude and welcome/announcements time looking up the hymns we'll be singing that morning. Lion loves hymnals! During the service she follows along with me and does her best to sing along, then frequently spends part of the sermon leafing through a hymnal. In fact, since our church is getting new ones, Pastor R even let Lion bring one of the old ones home to be her very own!

Personal Projects: Of course, the girls always have their own things they're doing. The three of them together have been regularly organizing restaurants in the playroom, coming up with elaborate story lines involving ALL of their stuffed animals, and performing readers theater versions of Elephant & Piggie books (hilarious). Monkey has spent lots of time drawing and practicing her new drum (she is so excited about having her very own real snare drum). She and Bug even collaborated on a duet with one of Bug's songs from her piano lessons. Bug has lots of interests: she's still practicing typing, she's watched several silent films, she had me teach her a basic crochet stitch and made a cape for one of her dolls, she and I are both learning how to use the sewing machine, she reassembled her balsa wood house and finished decorating it (she even designed and built a poolside pergola out of clothes pins and Popsicle sticks).

Grandma's Visit! (May 3-5)

We packed a lot of fun into just a couple of days! Grandma was here for a purpose--as a "guest lecturer" to help us set up our first vegetable garden. She arrived Tuesday afternoon and was excitedly given a grand tour by the girls. We spent the afternoon hanging out, chitchatting, and starting to think about gardening things. Then she accompanied the girls and I to their first music lesson here. Her presence was invaluable! This music school is much bigger than their last one, and  I was supposed to be in three places at once!

That evening we pulled out the books and charts she brought, and really set to work planning the garden and writing our shopping list. We spent the next morning at Lowe's filling the trunk of my car with various bags of soils and tomato cages, every cup holder with a plant, and a small plastic bag with seeds and gardening gloves. We were set to go!

The girls and I spent a good part of the afternoon digging up the garden plot. Lion was a great little digger, and worked really hard to help me get it all turned over and broken up. Monkey and Bug did a little digging, but they quickly decided it was more fun to rescue earthworms (which they kept in a flower pot with some dirt until the worms could continue doing their good work in our garden) and to kill "greedy grubs."

We topped off the day with swimming lessons, followed by Wednesday night supper and a hymn sing at our new church. This was particularly fun to take Grandma along to because there were still people who remember her from when she was a member decades ago! (I have to admit it's fun--and a little weird--to be in a church where people remember me as a preschooler!)

The next morning the real planting began! We put down hardware cloth to keep out the moles we discovered at the other end of the yard, mixed in the gardening and topsoil (Lion and I had to make another run for a few more bags, while Monkey and Bug stayed to help Grandma pour it in), and planted our plants! That day we planted three pepper plants, three sweet potato plants, and four tomato plants. The girls were great gardeners: they helped cut off the pots and followed instructions about how deep and wide to dig and much of the plant to bury. It was a bit of a chilly, wet day so we decided to go inside for hot tea and hold off on planting the seeds until we had nicer weather. (We have since planted cucumbers, cilantro, and basil.)

The girls have been diligently checking on and when necessary watering our garden. I'll confess now to having a black thumb. The girls are really excited, though, so I hope we can pull this off!

Settling In (April 18th - May 3rd)

"Today is best day ever! Why? Because today is moving day!" --Lion, spontaneously quoting Oh from Home during our drive to the new house.

They were so excited to be moving into our new place! They were bouncing like it was Christmas morning on the front porch before we let them in to see it for the first time. They immediately rushed through the house, naming all the rooms and marveling at how much space we have now (literally twice the square footage of our townhouse on the west coast).

We arrived on Monday afternoon in order to receive the fridge on Tuesday, but the moving truck wasn't going to arrive until Wednesday. Rather than wait around an empty house all Tuesday morning, the girls and I acquired library cards and YMCA memberships,  got them signed up for swimming lessons, and came home with a stack of books to read! As usual, we hit the ground running!

Move-in day was just as exciting as Lion anticipated! The girls were particularly excited about figuring out where their beds and dressers would go: their room is big enough to accomodate three twin beds (nobody had to be bunked this time!), and we were able to buy them each a new dresser to replace the two they'd been sharing (which had fallen apart and been ditched before the move). Also for the first time ever, their playroom is an upstairs room (with a door and everything!), so we put them in charge of arranging their playthings. I did eventually pitch in to help them sort out the bins and organize the closet, but they were thrilled to be taking responsibility for some of the unpacking!

(Just a note about our move-in process: We make the movers unpack and take all the empty boxes with them. Not only do we not have to deal with discarding a ton of boxes, but I'm much more motivated to clear the piles of stuff from the middle of the floor--or our bed--than I would be to empty neatly stacked boxes. Within a week we had it all put away and most of the pictures hung.)

Among the prioritized settling-in projects, the girls were also able to help Daddy construct their climbing dome (we haven't had room for it in two years!) and a raised garden bed. Unfortunately, since then it's rained too much for them to get much use out the dome yet. (I'll talk more about the garden bed in my next post about Grandma coming to visit.)

The climbing dome in progress!

The girls contemplate the tools for the job while waiting for Daddy to help with the garden bed.

While the girls didn't actually get to help with the next project, they were very enthusiastic observers of the process of Daddy finishing their dressers. We decided to buy good quality unfinished furniture, then Daddy found a stain that reasonably matched their beds. Everyone is very pleased with the results!

(At some point I'll do a "Where It Happens: Mid-Atlantic Edition," and you'll all get to see photos of our new digs!)

Now the round-up of new activities:

Church: We surprised ourselves a bit, and already found our church home! It's a liturgical church only a mile from our house (and coincidently, the one I was baptized in as an infant). The congregation is small and friendly, and the girls immediately made friends with the pastor's kids, who interestingly enough, sat with us our first Sunday there! The pastor's husband was out of town that weekend, and when their mom instructed them to "find a grown up to sit with during the service," they beelined for the new family with three little girls. (What's a couple more, right?) On our second visit, we attended Sunday school (They have that here! Hooray!), which includes children's choir for the kids. The girls went their separate ways with their new teachers without hesitation!

 Swimming: The girls are thrilled to be back in the pool! I even managed to get them signed up for back-to-back lessons two nights a week. Their first lesson was all very basic, and they were a little disappointed. I assured them their teacher was just figuring out where everyone was, and sure enough their next lesson was more challenging--just enough to keep everybody interested. By far their favorite part about this pool is the indoor splash pad! Mr. C turns it on for free time, but there are also family open swim times that we'll be getting in on!

Music: We also got the girls started with their music lessons already! God worked another miracle: not only did we find a music school where all the girls can study, but they're even scheduled for the same thirty minute time slot! This, despite the fact that two of them are now playing piano. Bug decided to break off her love/hate relationship with violin and try piano. So far she is loving it, and she and Lion both really like their teachers. Monkey is cheerfully sticking with drums (and thrilled that we finally have room to get her a real drum); however, she's less than cheerful about her new teacher. Mr. R is actually great, but he's very high energy and talks loud and fast. He's going to take our introverted Monkey a little getting used to. Also, he had her trying to play standing up at a real snare drum, when she's only ever played sitting with either a full electric kit or drum pads. It was just too much, and the poor girl broke down. We discussed the situation, and next week is going to be much better. She's been practicing enthusiastically, so I have high hopes for a relatively smooth transition going forward.

Library: Our local library is a mere mile away, and right next to our church and the Y! It's a nice little branch library with a kids' wing that has several kid-sized tables along with lots of armchair seating and bean bag seating. The girls have decided (accurately, I believe) that they are too old for storytime. However, we're still there every week for our usual large stack of books!

Martial Arts: They're not actually signed up for any yet, but Daddy visited a couple schools. We think we'll be going with Brazilian jujutsu at an MMA school. We were hoping to find another Japanese-style dojo, but sadly that doesn't seem to exist around here. I'll keep you posted!

Coast to Coast (March 26-April 18)

Time to hit the road! This time around we decided to take the northern route all the way from the Pacific coast to our final destination on the Atlantic coast. That is a lot of driving time! For their actual time spent in the car, I prepared a binder for each girl containing a set of Easter coloring pages, an itinerary and map of our route, a coloring page for each state we'd be traveling through (featuring a state map, state bird, and other local icons), a road sign scavenger hunt, a license plate check list, and a set of mazes, dot-to-dots, sudoku and kenken puzzles. They also had the usual collection of small toys and travel games, books to read (including a fully-loaded nook for Bug), and they acquired a couple sets of paper dolls along the way. By far one of their favorite activities was creating things out a massive bag colorful pipe cleaners. Proud parenting brag: They didn't watch a single in-car movie for the entire drive! Instead we listened to Adventures in Odyssey and Chronicles of Narnia audio dramas (the first four books). They loved them! (which is especially good because my lighter went on the fritz a few days into our trip, and I couldn't have powered the DVD player anyway).

Of course, we had to have adventures! We turned this into a three-week road trip in order to visit friends and family and see the sights along the way. Here's the itinerary:

Reno, NV: We met up with a college friend of Daddy and mine and his family at a local park, so all the kids could play, then went out to dinner with them.

Nampa, ID: The girls were thrilled to get in a quick visit with some of their friends on this stop! Our former pastor and his family recently moved there, and we got to catch up with them before they headed back to church in the evening.

Craters of the Moon: This was an unplanned stop along the highway. We started noticing increasing numbers of distinct, starkly black rocks. Monkey and Bug called it: These looked like volcanic rock formations! Sure enough we soon noticed signs for Craters of the Moon National Park and stopped to tour the visitors center and take a walk around.

Yellowstone National Park, WY: This was another visit with a college buddy, who happens to live and work inside the park. It snowed overnight, which made our morning walk to admire the hot springs quite chilly and a little slippery. It didn't take them long to figure out which spots on the boardwalk were above the hottest springs! We also enjoyed the visitor's center, which had lots of good info about local history, geology, and wildlife as well as taxidermied specimens of the latter. Since the bears were just waking up for the spring we decided not to risk any actual hiking, but we did drive through the park to admire the scenery and look for wildlife. During our driving in and around the park we spotted bison, elk, coyotes, magpies, pronghorns, and bighorn sheep. We also went looking for owls: we spotted their nest and poked through some pellets, but we think the owls themselves were probably hunkered down in the nest to escape the biting wind.

Bison own the road!

Everyone enjoyed the warmth of Mammoth Hot Springs.

 Bozeman, MT: Another meet-up with old friends--this time one of Daddy's friends from high school and her family. It was also another chance for the girls to get some running around and playground time.

A Highway in South Dakota: I don't remember where we were exactly, but we drove into an unexpected snowstorm and discovered my car does NOT handle snow well! Two of the girls and I skidded across the left lane and ended up in the median. Fortunately, there were no other cars around, and Daddy pulled over to wait for us to get back on the road. We said lots of prayers and drove very slowly to the next exit with a hotel. (FYI, Daddy parked the car at the hotel and confirmed that I wasn't a bad driver; my car really, really can't handle snow!) So, what does one do when snowbound in South Dakota? Go swimming, of course! The girls had a blast in the indoor pool, and by morning the roads had cleared up.

Mount Rushmore: The girls were skeptical about this stop, but when we rounded a bend in the road, and saw the four massive heads of Presidents looming above us, Bug exclaimed, "That is the coolest thing I've ever seen!!" Mission accomplished. Of course, we stopped to get a closer look at the monument, watch a video and wander through the museum about its creation, history, and maintenance. We decided to stick around for lunch and sample some buffalo! Between the five of us we tried buffalo burgers, hot dogs, chili, and stew. Yum!

Jewel Cave: That same afternoon we took a guided tour of the third longest cave in the world. The tour covers a mere fraction of its depths but features some very cool rock formations and taught us not only about its geologic formation but also its history as a public attraction and national monument.

Badlands National Park: The girls loved getting to do some rock climbing in this impressive park! We had to cut their rock scrambling short and have a good conversation about stewardship and conservation when we realized how much damage our explorations were doing to the formations. They were disappointed, but they perked up when we headed for a mile and a half hike that began with warning signs about narrow ledges and a long ladder. Once again they proved themselves awesome hikers and conquered another tough trail! This was also the first trail they've been on that involved the necessity of looking for trail markers and the practice of walking as far as you can within sight of the last marker to try to find the next one. As usual we also toured the visitors' center and learned about fossils, ancient local wildlife, erosion, and herbivores vs. carnivores. During our hiking and driving around the park, we also spotted rabbits, pronghorns, and innumerable prairie dogs!

We conquered another tough trail!

Wall Drug: You can't see the Badlands without stopping in at Wall Drug! The girls were highly entertained by the endless billboards leading up to it, and had a great time exploring the little shops and displays and getting in a few fun photo ops.

Minuteman Missile Historic Site: We happened to spot the sign for this site and decided to stop in. It turned out to be an unexpectedly neat site, featuring a tour of the missile command center by a former operations commander. A few days later, at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, we got to see one of the actual minuteman missiles.

Wheaton College, IL: This was another stop to see friends from college (both now professors at Wheaton). Daddy actually gave a talk to one of their classes about his career path (he majored in the subject she teaches), and we also got to view the college's extensive geology and taxidermy exhibits as well as explore the Wade Center, which features things like the original wardrobe that inspired C.S. Lewis to write the Chronicles of Narnia and his and J.R.R.Tolkien's writing desks. We ended our visit with dinner at our friends' house and more time for the girls to play outside with their son.

Sadly, you can't actually climb into the inspirational wardrobe.

Uncle P & Aunt S's house! The girls had a blast getting to play with their little cousin R, and just hanging around the house with family. We also took the opportunity to take a short, brisk hike through the woods and along the shore of Lake Michigan. Then we experienced the local delight of shopping in Grand Haven and eating at Calvers.

Cousins!

Ann Arbor, MI: This one wasn't an overnight--just an extended pit stop to eat lunch with some friends we knew from a previous location who moved there recently. Good times!
National Museum of the U.S. Air Force: This was a huge museum that traced the history of flight from the Wright brothers to modern stealth bombers and space flight by having us walk through hangars full of representative aircraft. We had fun comparing the different planes and seeing how and why the technology developed.

Wright Brothers Museums: This stop was actually two different locations: one near the flight field where the brothers did a lot of their work and featuring a flight simulator of one of the first  successful planes. All three girls got to try it out with some assistance from the docents. The other museum located at the brothers bike shop in downtown Dayton was much more extensive and went into their personal history and the development of their work in flight.

Grandma & Granddad's House: Our penultimate stop and certainly our most extended--the girls at least got to spend about a week! (Daddy and I left for a couple of days in the middle to close on our new house and buy boring things like a fridge.) Aunt K and her son H were also able to drive in for a visit, so they got to see both their cousins on this trip! The week's activities included: exploring all the old toys and Aunt K's old dance costumes, playing on the playset and around Grandma's little pond, harvesting dandelion greens as an addition to dinner, helping Granddad plant a tree, decorating and eating a belated Easter bunny cake, going for walks along the River Walk, exploring the local science center (including getting to release the new butterflies into the butterfly garden! Grandma's got connections!), and exploring the trails in Grandma and Granddad's woods (they identified lots of plants including wild grape vines and blackberry bushes, found beaver-gnawed sticks and tiny river clams, watched preying mantises hatch, and spotted minnows in the creek). We even got to visit their church on Sunday and see more college friends! Last, but not least: Bug donated 12 inches of hair to Locks of Love! She was so excited and loves her new do!

She was very hesitant about touching butterflies, but look at that sweet little smile!

Aunt K has the best dress up clothes!

My outdoorsy girls LOVED exploring the woods with Granddad.
(And, yes, that is indeed Granddad's machete Monkey's holding.
Proper safety precautions were discussed.)

 Just for the record: For homeschooling purposes, these were not wasted vacation days. I actually counted most of our days as school days. By my count we covered the following subjects: geography, art, reading & literature, math, life skills, Bible/religion, character building, geology, natural history, biology, physics, history, civics/social studies, and music. And chances are good I missed a few!
On to the next adventure!