4th of July: We were fairly lazy and possibly unpatriotic. We did reading and math school work (yes, on a holiday!). We did a bit of backyard swimming. We went to Barnes and Noble to use some gift cards. Then Jon fired up his grill and made us some grilled veggie burgers and veggie skewers. After that we watched a movie. No parades. No fireworks.
July 5th: We celebrated my mom's birthday by bringing her a blueberry coffee cake for breakfast. Moving 35 miles away sure has messed with how often we see each other!
July 6th: School as usual with homeschool park day thrown in. The flowers above were gifts from reading camp. Ever since being a volunteer tutor for a month, I have been frantically researching and reading and educating myself about teaching reading to those who struggle. I want to continue to help, but I haven't decided how to go about it. For now, my own daughter gets to benefit from all I am learning.
July 7th: Fun with cousins and their parents! We played some games (where my brother won a few too many times), and the kids did some splashing. We then did some school work. Our evening was spent at a church staff party to welcome our new associate pastor and new pastoral intern. It is nice to now have been here a year, so these events can focus on someone else. They bring back memories, though, of an exhausting month of being on display at countless church services and get-to-know-the-new-senior-pastor-family events one year ago. Wow. It's been a year. In some ways I feel totally settled and in love with our new life. In other ways I still feel the loss of what once was.
July 8th: I have no pictures of July 8th because I took the day off!! I educated my kiddos in the morning and then headed out on my own in the afternoon. It has been FOREVER since I really had some time on my own, and it was lovely. I went to a free used bookstore. Did I mention it is free? Teachers, homeschoolers included, can choose 25 free books and unlimited teaching resources. That's my kind of place, indeed. Not only did I walk out of there with two bags full of books, I also got to enter a drawing for Harry Potter premier movie tickets. Shortly after leaving, I got a call that I was the winner of 4 tickets. That means we get to watch the new movie on Monday before it is released to the general public. We had already made plans and bought tickets to watch it at 12:01am, the opening minute, so now we will get to watch it twice.
We took a break yesterday for 3 1/2 hours of Saturday Tae Kwon Do. I took the picture above to show Basia's sparring class. When we started at this school a year ago, there were only about 6 kids at most sparring classes. My how the school has grown!
The funny thing is that Brishen's sparring class was right after Basia's. His class only had three kids, and one left partway through class. The elite team just competed in Nationals last week, so they are almost all taking a break this week. That meant the two guys who were there got lots of one-on-one teaching, several chances to spar each other, and got to feel the frustration of having/getting to spar the world-class master. He is not exactly Brishen's favorite person to fight! Add to that the fact that the other guy in class proved to be one of the best in the country in his weight division at Nationals, and you will see that Brishen got some really good practice yesterday. I could go on and on about how good this sport is for my kids!
After watching another Harry Potter movie in the afternoon, we took a break for church. Saturday night services are now contemporary, so I am a very happy attender these days.
We stayed up late watching the third movie and already have the fourth one going this morning. All-in-all, a very nice week indeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment