Vacation, School, and Neighbor

So, I need to tell you what's going on.  There were some cliffhangers in my last 2 posts.  Well, at least that's what the kids would say:)

We did go on vacation and had a wonderful time!  We drove up Friday night to George's brother and sister-in-law's house.  It was so nice to visit and see some of the cousins and they actually gave us beds which was SO wonderful, because I would have had to unpack the whole car to get to the sleeping bags...thanks, Teresa! 

We arrived Saturday at dinner time and it was raining...of course.  Luckily, it didn't rain much, just that night and short showers a couple of other times.  We had a blast catching toads and frogs (at our "personal beach"), we made s'mores and popcorn over the fire, we hiked, we swam in the lake, we found a snake, we explored and visited some favorite sites.  We enjoyed our day in town, eating fudge and candy, window shopping, and playing at the local pizza place's arcade. Good times! We loved being up there with my parents and just today, Seth said he was ready to go up there again, in spite of  the 10+ car ride.  Yay!  A kid after my own heart...and my dad's heart...and his dad's heart:)

Since then, we have gotten back into school.  We did do Olympics earlier, but I couldn't motivate myself to do school while prepping for vacation, so we took a break:)  Tons of activities and field trips, including a bee-keeping one with Harry and Linda...thank you!  We have art class, gym class, Lego club, group library days, and are starting music class this week.  We are working on cursive, still doing unit studies, spelling lists, reading, Chinese and hopefully some creative writing. I am trying some copywork to help improve our printing and work on our spelling.   Math is happening, though we are transitioning a bit.  Levi to Math-U-See from Singapore and Natalie to second grade LifePac from first grade.  We'll see how that goes.  If it does not go well, I may check out Kahn Academy or Teaching Textbooks.

I am a bit bummed as I thought I could get more done with Sam and Kindergarten.  Sadly, that is the first thing to go.  I need to take the time to get prepped and then it will work.  We are working on reading (he is doing very well) and he loves math, so we try to fit it in wherever we can.  He figured out the 9th number in the Fibonacci sequence in his head the other day and I was crazy impressed!! You don't know what that is?  Neither did I, but it was cited in the back of a book we had read aloud and he just figured it out and explained how he did it.  That is what really blew me away.  He divided 13 into 10 and 3 and first, added the 10 to 21 in his head and then added the 3 to get 34.  What kind of math do K kids do?  I don't think they add double digits in their head!! (Wow, that's some serious shameless bragging! :)

The neighbor situation is better.  George actually went and talked to her and she seemed not so grumpy.  But she did promise to come talk to me and hasn't yet. She may have said that to get him to leave.   I have not seen her outside very often, and when I come out, she goes in. It's ok.  I am thinking I will write her a letter that explains what I did/saw and see if that helps.  If she can't get over it, I am sorry for her that we will probably be in this house forever.  Ah well.

Hope life is good for all of you.  The next post may be only pictures...I have a whole summer's worth to post, you know:)