School days

On days when we go to school, kiddo starts the morning looking like this:

And ends his day like this:

Still smiling, but exhausted.

He has a great time!  This is a long, tiring day for us, but he loves it!  So happy we only do this once a week.  We are so grateful for this school and the blessing it is to us.  He has amazing classes and learns so much!  

More busyness

Tuesday morning we did a service project with a new homeschool group.  We helped sort medicine for a medical mission trip to Haiti.  I was very impressed with the amount of medication they had collected.  They had given bags with shopping lists to church members to purchase.  We helped sort over 300 bags of medicines.  Each bag had about 8 different medicines in them.  Some had many more, but most had about 8.  We took the medicine out of the boxes and then broke down the boxes and put in a separate bag.  Then we placed the medicine in the proper box.  Eric worked very hard at this.

We had a book club meeting at the library.  They read A Snicker of Magic.  Took me a while to plow through that one.  It's ok, and it had some good elements, but definitely not a favorite of mine!

There were only two kids that day, but they had fun.  

And of course swim.  Lots of swim!

Wednesday we had an impromptu invitation to walk on some trails downtown with another homeschool family.  I was so excited to get this spontaneous invite!!!

The family had an extra scooter.  E has never really been on a two wheeled scooter.  However, he is the most diligent little fella I know.  He worked on that thing for two hours.  Didn't give up.  Didn't get frustrated.  Complimented the other fella who was quite good at it.  Because of that, he was able to do this by the end of the walk.  

That afternoon we had a scheduled play date with a family from church.  The mom and I needed to talk about some homeschool stuff, so we met at the park.  

And then swim.  Church was cancelled for fall break.  (this place shuts down, ya'll.  It's like the entire state goes to FL)  So we had lots of swim.  

Busy, fun week

Oh my we have a busy week this week.  But, we are having lots of different, fun experiences.

Monday we went to Stevi B's.  It's a lot like CiCi's pizza in AR.  It was supposed to be a behind the scenes tour.  It just ended up being a make your own pizza and hang out thing.  But, Eric had a good time with some friends.

I love that this boy is up for anything.  He doesn't have that awkward embarrassment that a lot of middle school kids are currently experiencing.  He may get it some day, but for now, I am going to thoroughly enjoy his fun spirit.  (And isn't he the cutest?)

Each kid had a pizza partner.  Eric's was his friend Steven.  

Love him so!

Then we went to the house of the homeschool family that we swam with a lot.  Eric had lots of fun with the boys, and I hung out with momma and baby girl.  

Then he had swim, where he rock and rolled the dry land that day.  I wish I could have videoed the whole thing.  It was a crazy intense cardio workout, and he handled it like a rock star.  Here is a short glimpse.  

It is fall break here, so most of the kids are on vacation.  They had a hard practice, so most of the kids struggled with this particular dry land.  But, E just pushed through and rocked it.  I was so proud of him.  

Children of the Holocaust

Today we attended the Kennesaw State University Holocaust Museum's Homeschool day.  They do such an excellent job there.  It is one of the best homeschool programs we have ever attended.  Some of the things we did today were similar to a previous day last year, but we still had different experiences.  

We started in the Parallel Journeys room.  I learned this time that the walls were modeled after Hitler's bunker, and the floor was modeled after Anne Frank's annex.  That was definitely interesting. You can see both behind Eric in this picture.  

Here's a better picture of the floor.  

Although we had done this room before, the docent today focused on different people, and Eric had a different passport than he had previously, so it was a completely different experience.  Today he chose Alan Davies, a boy who was evacuated and sent to live elsewhere because of the bombings in London.  

We did the butterfly project again.  It was similar to last time, but we had some different poems this time.  Here are our butterflies. 

Mine is on top.  I chose to represent a field with mine.  Eric's is on bottom.  

These are the words we wrote after reading our poems.  They ask us to write the words we feel after reading.  

Then we watched the video on Anne Frank again.  

Then we had an excellent speaker.  His name is Hershel Greenblat (at least that is the name he was given when he came to America).  He was born in an underground cave in Ukraine.  His parents were part of a resistance against the Germans until his mother was severely injured.  Then his parents decided to flee. He arrived in America when he was 9 years old.  When he arrived in America on Thanksgiving day, a soldier gave him and his two sisters each a shiny, new 50 cent piece.  He kept it all these years.  Here he is showing it to Eric.  

It was an amazing field trip.  I love hearing from the survivors.  They won't be around to tell their stories much longer.  

 

Chlorine

This kiddo had to study an element for a couple of weeks, make a poster about it, and fill out a sheet with many questions about the element.  Know what he chose?  Chlorine.  Yep, the perfume of swimmers.  We learned a lot about chlorine while working on this project.

It's that time again

For the past 7 years, we have always looked forward to this time of year - Soccer Season.  The kid loves it!  E had his first game Saturday.  The other team dominated, but Eric played hard.  He ran more than anyone else in the game.

I tell you, these new uniforms can do a number on the eyes.  ;)

The first picture is pre game.  The second one is post game.  That is one tired kiddo there, but he is still listening intently to what the coach is saying.  I think we have a good coach this fall.  

Per E's request

So Eric wanted to show that he beat his daddy by one point.  I was more than happy to post it on the blog.  Hmm... wonder why?

Field Trip Fun

We had a busy couple of days at the end of the week.  We had book club on Thursday.  Then Thursday afternoon we toured the animal shelter with a homeschool group.

My animal lover was a hit in the cat room.  

Thursday night was his first soccer practice on his new team.  

There were 8 boys there Thursday night - 3 of them were redheads.  

Friday we had a homeschool tour at the Federal Reserve.  It was a beautiful building.  No pictures allowed on the inside, so we took some outside before we went in. 

This kid.  This smile.  My whole heart.

After the tour, we went to a nearby restaurant with a couple of homeschool families.  They had birds around the restaurant in cages.  The owner came out and let us interact with a couple of barbary doves.  

Had one on my head too.  That is a crazy feeling!

Eric and I did not enjoy the food at all.  But we were glad we went.  Interacting with those doves was super cool!

Rush Revere

Eric had a super fun surprise in the mail yesterday.  

First let me say that this boy LOVES the Rush Revere series.  He has all 3 books and we got him all 3 books on Audible.  When he cleans his room, he always listens to Rush Revere.  The series is by Rush Limbaugh and is about the Revolutionary War time period.  Kind of Magic Tree House in feel.  They are great books.  This is Eric's favorite period in history thanks to these books.  

They had a Facebook contest last Thursday where you answered a question they posted by sending an email response with the answer.  Eric knew the answer and knew just where it was in the book, so he looked it up and submitted the exact answer.  

Not really sure how they chose a winner.  But, yesterday, just 5 days after he entered, this came. 

Yep.  That was his reaction.  There was a tag on the bag that showed the crew from Rush Revere.  He knew this was going to be a fun package.  

He won a whole bunch of goodies, including one of the books on CD.  Although he has them all on Audible, he has to use one of our phones to listen.  This way he can listen to it on CD whenever he wants.  

The boy was super sweatty this afternoon.  After school I had a meeting with another mother at the playground.  We had to work on LTC, so the kids played.  He, of course, was super covered in sweat.  You will also noticed my hoe by the back door.  This is my fox and snake defense mechanism.  

All the goodies.  Including a $25 American Express kid card.  Such a very fun win!  We were so surprised and so excited!

Can't wait for the new book to come out.  Wish he could write faster!