Pioneer Day

One thing I love about living in Hurricane is the small town feel. It seems like Hurricane has a parade for everything! Which means a lot of chances for my kids to take part in fun traditions. The other thing I love about Hurricane is the downtown area with all of the beautiful mature trees and charming old homes. I tend to have a "grass is always greener mentality", which is something I'm trying hard to overcome, but I really love the feel of it down here.

 Maybe I'm just a little more hick than I thought.

Lots of pictures of my beautiful girl, because my cute boy had a week-long sleepover with his cousin, Paxton this week, and was a little too tired to be...(ahem) photogenic.

There's a snake in her boot...

Well, maybe it's just an ant.

All clear.

I love hanging out at events like these. There were free games, food, and lots of families. Jake and I always have a laugh, though, about all the pioneer day floats. Some of the themes were, " Free to Preach!" and "The Book of Mormon!", which is, I suppose Pioneerish depending on how you look at it, but there were hardly any floats dedicated to the actual pioneers. And of COURSE lots and lots of candy. The only way Lily would get into the back of the truck was with the promise that she could throw candy at me.

And with that, it's time to get my house back in order after the party-fest/go to bed whenever you feel like it/sugar filled/no bath week that we just endured.

Wish me well.

unschooling

I have a friend (Megan) who does such an excellent job of keeping her kids busy doing all sorts of enriching summertime activities that I swear her kids don't know the meaning of the words "brain cobwebs." I really really wanted to do something similar with my kids, but had a hard time getting started. I found a resource that I really like (teachervision.com), and so I decided to come up with a little lesson plan for today.

The verdict:  I will never, ever homeschool my kids. Period.

At least not in the sit down and do projects and activities in any sort of organized way, way.

For example, Alex has wanted some venous fly traps for a long time now, and we found some at Harmons yesterday, so we've been looking up stuff about them, and I decided to move forward on that thread and do some homeschooling activities involving plants. Alex was cool with that (lily was busy elsewhere), so I asked him to go get a paper and pencil, and he FLIPPED! The minute I ask him to do anything it's like this major power struggle, which I should have seen coming, but I figured he'd be OK with this because the homeschool thing was kind of his idea. So we didn't get very far with my plans, but when I watched them and followed their lead, what they really wanted to do was hang out by the tadpoles that were turning into frogs that Amy gave Lily for her birthday.

My kids are like that. I guess they're going to be natural leaders, because they sure don't want to be led.

Here are some pictures of our morning.

This is the product of the failed sunflower project that was supposed to be so cool.

His body language pretty much says it all. Like, "ok fine, here's your dumb sunflower." I'm glad he's not like this with he teachers at school (yet).

We have a sunflower outside. He was supposed to answer these questions and then come in and draw it from his answers. Not sure this is too accurate.

This is where Lily wanted to be the whole time. I was cool with that.

Here's the venous fly trap. They are really fun, and will forever remind me of my friend Cindy who's mom always had one in her kitchen. We loved sticking things in it to make them close.

They are pretty dang cool. Although I kept thinking we had tons of little flies, but since we've brought this home I haven't seen any. Hopefully it will get enough nourishment in my window,

So the moral of the story is that traditional homeschooling is not a good fit for my kids. Maybe I'm not giving it enough of a chance, maybe I truly don't want to bother with it, but either way I'm going to say we tried and not stress about it anymore. But if I keep cool things around the house, I might actually trick them into a little summertime enrichment. As long as they don't show up to school this fall mumbling and drooling, I'm going to call summer school a success. Just trying to keep that bar low enough to be attainable.

scenes from the roost

Now, I'm usually OK with bugs. I mean, crickets are just annoying, and roaches are gross, but the occasional daddy long leg, or big old "skeeter eater" as we called them as kids are just fine by me. These are beneficial creatures and I don't make a habit out of killing them for sport. This, however...

does me no favors whatsoever. There aren't very many critters that freak me out as bad as scorpions. So needless to say, there is now a VERY poisonous wet spot on my wall, and the framed piece of art that it fell behind that will never ever come down again.

Amen.

I think I said July was all about Lily

Here are some cute pictures I took of Lily today.  I really want to spend some time recording what an absolutely adorable little girl she's growing up into, but I seem to be limited due to a series of migraines that have plagued me over the last few weeks, so I'll save that for another day. I will just say that I love this girl, and while I can't be certain that any of us will survive her rearing,  she definitely makes life interesting and fun. And she's pretty adorable...did I mention that?

July is all about Lily