2017 Memories

I’m slowly going through and removing old posts that are not super helpful or that no one but me is going to want to read. But, I need somewhere to redirect that URL to as I remove the posts. It’s been interesting to me as I read them as I remove them to look at this time capsule. Some of the posts I’m going to put bits of here for the year to remember and be able to look back on.

And there will end up being some affiliate links thrown in here because of that.

January

It was the month of field trips, busyness, and friends.  We celebrated my Mom’s birthday with a murder mystery party, which the kids were incredibly curious about.  We went on a field trip to the fire station, Homestead Village, and the Austin Aquarium.

We made it to our co-op’s park day, and to the two co-op classes.  Of course, all of this busyness probably is why I’ve spent most of this month feeling incredibly behind.

Games we’re playing

With my traveling and such we didn’t play as many games as usual, though I did manage to catch a game with Tara.

• Smash Up, because Jeff got the It’s Your Fault expansion for Christmas
• Castle Panic because Jeff got the Engines of War expansion to it
• Buffy the Vampire Slayer game– apparently they got it early at Gen Con because it’s not releasing for a couple of weeks
• Escape the Room– Thank you, Phyllis, for sending it to us.

February

We headed down to Houston for the Holocaust Museum and then over to Corpus Christi to see the USS Lexington and the Texas Aquarium.  It was super fun, and kept us busy.

Princess also got to paint with a friend of hers as a birthday present for the friend, super popular.

The boys earned their black belts.  That was super exciting, and they worked unbelievably hard.

March

The boys turned 12.  That was a pretty big deal event, it’s really cool to see the young men they are turning into.

In other news, we passed around some kind of cold, which always makes homeschooling hard when 1/3 of the kids are out sick.  We had some storms, which meant we got to splash in puddles.

Bluebonnets!  I always yell out whenever I see a particularly pretty patch as we drive down the street.

April

This is also the week we finished up our history lessons and science lessons (When we read the breakup of Yugoslavia I posted it on Instagram, and had Gina comment she’d just posted about leaving Sarajevo, which made the lesson all the more real).  I’m actually thinking this might have happened earlier in the month, because I’m sure we were finished with those by Easter.   So, this actually happened in week 2, because I know we had two weeks of goofing off.

And for a bit of reading we watched Pippi Longstocking after spending a few weeks reading all of the Pippi Longstocking books*.  The movie version I found* was not the one I remembered watching growing up* and was…. less than impressive.

It was flat out weird.

May

Princess sewed a bat doll, she’s been pinning sewing patterns like crazy (between sending me pictures of cute dogs), and found this one and couldn’t wait to make it.  Then Batman made a shirt for himself that he’s pretending is chainmail.  All in all I’m quite proud of both of them.

We watched BFG* on Tuesday, and while there were parts of the movie that were quite funny, overall I’ve decided it’s not one of my favorite Roald Dahl books.  Oh well, they can’t all be hits. The kids are now reading Around the World in 80 Days* because there’s a local company doing a production of it in June.

Wednesday we went to Schlitterbahn, and since that’s a water park I have absolutely no pictures of that.  It’s also why I was incommunicado for the week because Tuesday was all “fix the car,” Wednesday was water park, and Thursday was recover from the horrible sun burn because the sunscreen was expired (well that and the kids did not do a good job of putting it on my back), and Friday was more of the “Ow ow ow my back hurts.”

This weekend has been spent cleaning like crazy because I was quite done with the disaster.  So we started our cleaning scramble and the kids worked SUPER hard.  To celebrate we had homemade frosted lemonade and watched Anna and the King* (I’d forgotten how much I loved that movie and what a fascinating bit of history it was).

June

There are not 5 weeks in June, but I got off on my pictures somehow. This is Rock the Rock week, that means it is insanely busy here, and then it got more complicated when my sister-in-law went out of town and I was watching her kids on Tuesday. So here goes.

Monday- the calm before the storm, we read, we were lazy, and life was good.

Tuesday- we worked on Knowre math for our summer math. I’m really enjoying it and thinking we might just use it for our math next year.  We’ll see. Then the kids did some reading and writing for a project I’m working on. At 11:00 we picked up the cousins and grabbed a quick lunch, before heading home for the afternoon. At 1:45 my Mom came to sit with the kids so I could drop the boys off for Rock the Rock. I got back home, the cousins continued playing, and at 6:00 we went to Rock the Rock and watched the boys teach. Then headed home where all 5 cousins attempted to convince me to let them stay up, not happening.

Wednesday- the cousins watched Jumanji together after reading it. I told the kids we’d watch it again with fun snacks another time. Then we made a mad dash to Salvation Army to get shirts for our trip to the Navajo Reservation. At which point Princess’ friend came over to play, I dropped the boys off at Rock the Rock, the girls kept playing, and then the rest of the family headed there to watch them.

Thursday- They did their “summer school work” and then a bit of cleaning, and just as we were finishing that up the boys got invited over to a friend’s house for some Dungeons and Dragons, and so I’ll be picking them up this afternoon to take them to Rock the Rock and a quick run for other clothes for the trip (we leave the clothes we wear for the trip there to be given to kids who don’t have enough clothes).  Then Princess is helping my Mom take her dogs to the vet, and then back to Rock the Rock (I’m writing this Thursday morning). And Rock the Rock for everyone, and collapse at home.

Friday (My guesses)- maybe watch Around the World in 80 Days (we finished reading it), Princess might have a friend over, we definitely have Rock the Rock that night, and the boys might have D&D again.

Saturday- collapse in exhaustion

July

Started off getting Superman new closed toed shoes, also known as “giant boots” and the discovery that my boys’ feet are bigger than mine. They are regularly coming up to stand next to me and measure themselves, “I’m almost as tall as you Mommy.” Yeah, that’s happening really soon.

We dropped the boys off at camp, and Jeff and I enjoyed a few days of kid-free time. Then Thursday morning I drove up to Witchita, Kansas to get Princess back, had a blast together, and then drove all the way back down to Austin, only to throw a load of laundry into the washer, and then turn around at 7:00 the next morning and load up to drive off to the Navajo Reservation (which I think those pictures ended up on the next week).

We drove forEVER and got to the reservation Sunday afternoon. The kids love getting there because the roads are all dirt, and you’re bouncing up and down like crazy as the vans careen down roads that vaguely resemble a path.

We split up to our various different projects. The kids destroyed two sheds, painted a house, dug an outhouse hole and painted the outhouse, carefully taking them down so the materials could be re-used. The men put a metal roof on a building, poured concrete, and fixed a broken truck. Meanwhile the ladies deep-cleaned the church and re-organized the kitchen, and put together 232 Christmas presents for kids from preschool to high school.

It was seriously awesome, and because this year we didn’t have any really little kids, we were able to go see some seriously impressive stuff, and see Ship Rock, a place of great importance to the Navajo people.

Friday we loaded up in the cars and made the trip home. We got home Saturday afternoon and crashed.

August

But as to what we actually did, besides me being tired out of my mind. We went on a field trip to Longhorn Caverns, I’d heard there were pictograms from a local tribe and it had a lot of history related to Texas Natives.

Which was partially true. It does have an insane amount of history, and I want to head back there later on, but the tour does not have a lot of Native history, just a lot of history, with one story happening to be about some Comanches who were on the hide from Texas Rangers. It was a fascinating tour and I want to go again when we don’t have to hurry back to pick Jeff up from the airport.

We watched Charlotte’s Web for our book and a movie (after reading it for Reader’s in Residence). Oh, and that picture of Superman covering his ears is because he was convinced the Fablehaven* book we were listening to on Audible* was about to have a kissing scene.

This summer we’ve been watching the cousins for a few hours on Mondays, and the kids have loved it. I particularly love this picture of Batman carrying C out to the car.

For actual homeschooling we learned about the explorers of Texas, including my absolute favorite: Cabeza de Vaca (literal translation: Head of Cow, let me just say that amused my kids way too much, and me if I”m honest).

Then we headed off to the Blanton Art Museum for a field trip with our homeschool group. The moms were all surprised when our kids were fascinated by this weird 30 minute video art piece about nothing. Like it was supremely surreal, if we’d been at home they wouldn’t have sat still watching it, but now they were fascinated by it.

That Saturday we went to my friend Sam’s parent’s house for our annual birthday memorial dinner. Back before he died we would go there every year (since high school) to celebrate his birthday, over the years the number of attendees has changed and grown as people have had kids, but it’s been a great way to keep up with his parents. In the bottom right picture Batman is learning how to play Sorry on their super cool game table (yes, for all that we love to play games we don’t have Sorry).

The final two pictures are a random picture hanging out watching movies, I don’t remember why I wanted to take it. The final picture is notes about a new ministry position I’m involved in: Bible Skills for kid-min.

I feel like I’m missing a week in here somewhere, but we’re at the end of my pictures. SO here goes. We kicked it off with some eclipse viewing with our super scientific homemade eclipse viewers.

We got bits and pieces of Hurricane Harvey last weekend, which is really what has fried my brain this week as I’ve looked at the devestation. The middle top image is our local retaining pond filling up to overflowing. If you follow me on Instagram, there’s a short video of our backyard lake. The big shocker has been the grocery stores. There’s very few families up here that don’t know someone down in Houston, and we had a lot of friends suddenly housing several other families, and the grocery stores were all insane. Our local grocery stores have all put limitations on bottled water purchases. We’re actually stuck at home until local gas stations have gas again because there are no gas stations within 20 miles of my house that have gas.

Side point, for those wondering why Houston wasn’t evacuated, imagine a land mass the size of the state of Delaware, that’s how big Houston and its surrounding cities are. Now in that area put the population of New York City, and give it roughly 12 hours notice. It just wasn’t physically possible to evacuate that many people. Here’s a great size comparison of Hurricane Harvey over other states.

I’m updating our curriculum picks to republish on Monday because I’ve significantly changed several things since I published it in March (or April?). One of the reasons is the picture of Superman at the computer, each of the kids now have an independent project they are working on for the year, somewhat inspired by Angellic Scalliwags.

September

t was intended to be a week of funschooling and field trips, and a chance to start planning for the next units of Texas History and Anatomy. Instead it was a week of field trips, and “Dear God how is September already almost over?”

We went down to San Antonio for a visit to Misison San Jose, and it’s quite cool. We all agreed we wanted to come back with Jeff when he’s off for Christmas, especially since it was SOOOOO hot. There’s actually about three more missions we didn’t make it to, not counting the Alamo.

Funny story for this, we had some problems getting to the mission and after being there for a little bit, everyone was hungry and grumpy, so I decided we were going to take a break and go get lunch. I wanted Arby’s so I put in the directions and followed them, and then it told me to turn onto the Air Force base.

And I thought to myself, “I don’t think that’s a wise life decision to make, I’m pretty sure going onto the base to get Arby’s is not on their list of approved actions.” So I decided to ignore their directions, and it kept trying to tell me to turn there, and I kept ignoring the instructions. Eventually I told the kids, “I’m going to pull over at the next chance I get, and see if I can find a new one,” when I saw a giant Arby’s sign just ahead of where I was going to stop. So we ate at Arby’s and they happily worked on their Junior Ranger badge.

Our other field trips were to the Austin Nature Center and to the Bob Bullock museum to see La Belle, which made the kids happy as clams to see. It actually got me some fun ideas to play around with, which I might have the kids do next week……

The other three pictures with all of the smiley faces are our friends spending the night. I offered to have all of their kids spend the night, so the parents could get a night to themselves at least once before they move to Alaska. Unfortunately, one of their sons needs extra medical attention, so he wasn’t able to stay with us, but the other three kids had a blast.

October

I have been planning for October 2017 since January. October 15 my husband had a milestone birthday, and I planned a big huge surprise party weekend with out of state guests, and I first brought up the idea to some of the guests back in January. I feel pretty proud of myself to not only keep a secret for 10 months, but to have pulled this off. As a result this first couple of weeks of October didn’t feel like we got much homeschooling done.

Week 1 of October, it’s finally birthday bash week

This was the week before Jeff’s birthday celebration. That meant I was busy writing an entire storyline for this weekend for how the King came into power (I’m working on putting it up on our gaming blog, I’ve got the stuff that happened before the session written out, kind of, this is my big goal for NaNoWriMo), and planning all of that, not to mention how to pick up and deliver out of town guests.

Princess and I went on an excursion to map out a trail for everyone to follow at night with flashlights. I thought it would take them about 15 minutes to find it, but in reality they were about 45 minutes. They had the map upside down from what I’d intended.

Way back before Jeff and I had kids I created a language. It’s a visual language, sort of like hieroglyphics. Then we moved a few times, and the notebook I wrote it in disappeared. Then I found it again last spring, so I had a blast giving them a note written in the same language they had to translate. I gave them the notes one of our former players had made of his attempts at translating for their dictionary. They spent about three hours working on translating it. It was awesome.

I had a physical challenge for them, inspired by a video I saw on Facebook for a classroom exercise. Kids had to follow a taped line that curves back and forth while holding hands. I did the same thing except it was a chalk path, about the size of a footprint, and it was full grown adults holding hands. They kept missing the path, and having to defend themselves against monsters that showed up.

November

This was a busy week of field trips and some fun hands on lessons. We reached the point in our history book all about the Texas Revolution, and so of course we had to head down to the Bob Bullock Museum and check that out.

After the Bob Bullock we walked down to the Susanna Dickinson house. She is one of the few survivors of the Alamo massacre, and was let go by Santa Anna to tell the rest all about what happened there. Of course the news had the opposite effect of what he wanted, but that’s another story.

We also had a brief simulation of the Runaway Scrape. That’s where the Texans basically abandoned their homes ahead of Santa Anna. The kids thought it was both very fun, and immmensely frustrating at the same time.

Princess helped with a Veteran’s Day ceremony with AHG, and then on Veteran’s Day itself we helped at a resting home, where we both got to hold a baby kangaroo.

In a strangely sad note our church had their last Sunday in the YMCA. We have been meeting there since Princess was a baby, and on our last day I took pictures of all the rooms I’ve taught a Sunday School class in.  As you can see most of them are not the most ideal of circumstances to teach in. Sadly we missed the first week in our new building because we were driving up to Iowa to see Tara and for the funeral.

December

Our first week of December we got back from our whirlwind trip up to Iowa and Wisconsin (see November homeschool happenings) and proceeded to decorate our Christmas tree. Because we were going to be replacing the back door we opted to put up our artificial tree upstairs. I’m glad we won’t have to do that again next year because it didn’t feel as Christmasey to have the tree upstairs. We also kicked off our annual Wandering Wisemen.

We played a fun round of Smash Up. I played the Greeks and Robots (from the original Smash Up and the It’s Your Fault Expansion). They don’t quite work together, but I really like both of them individually.

Princess took a friend out for her birthday, and they happily sat and painted pottery together. I still need to deliver the cup to her friend. I really love that place, it’s a lot of fun.

We all went to the church to participate in the dedication. We spent 30 minutes reading from the Old Testament. I swear I was jinxed the kids would read these great verses and it would get to me, and I would get, “Better to live on the roof of your house than with a nagging wife,” or some similar verse. We were just about to get to Proverbs 31, and our turn was up. We went upstairs to pray over the church for the next 30 minutes. It was quite a cool experience.

We went to the Bob Bullock to see the Muppet Christmas Carol in 4D, a total disappointment in the experience, but it’s still my favorite Christmas movie.

And somewhere in the week, Batman made challah bread from scratch. This week is suddenly so much busier than I remembered it as I’m writing this up.

We got a surprise snow day. The kids especially loved it because our entire trip up to the frozen North we never saw a speck of snow.  They felt vindicated.

We finished up the week with Princess’ birthday party. She planned the entire thing, and all I had to do was provide food and large amounts of sugar. It quite amused me because she wanted smoked chicken for the dinner, so Batman undertook the job of smoking the chickens. It was delicious.