For some ridiculous reason, I always start our school year right when canning season kicks in. This year was no exception. Although, I have to say, it is so much easier to get excited/motivated to can this year, than it was last year as a pregnant person. :)
But I should start where I left off last time. On Friday I decided to go ahead with my Story of the World activity, because I already had it planned and printed off. Luckily, I chose to do the maps part of it, because Lincoln is way into maps at the moment, so, besides the readings, I wasn't repeating anything he did in class already. We listened to the the Introduction and Chapter 1 on the CD while we ate snack, and then we each colored a map of the Fertile Crescent. I thought Ivan did a lot better than I had expected him to, and Adelia mostly scribbled on hers while I colored it. (Lincoln liked this activity so much, that a couple days later, he asked for another blank map so he could do it again. Which is making me think that maybe we'll keep doing the maps as we read the book, and then just leave the other activities to Lincoln's teacher.)
*And yes, I am aware that I spelled crescent wrong on the maps, English Major fail. :(




Then we had kind of a wild weekend. Friday night I hosted a movie night for my book club. We'd just read and discussed Life of Pi, and some of us wanted to watch the movie. I love the movie and the book, but especially the book. It's one of those that my brain goes back to, over and over again, at random parts of my life so I can analyze it from new angles. I think it's hard to grasp anything much beyond which story you believe to be true in the first reading of the book, because the shock factor is so high. But this last reading/book club discussion I kept focusing on the part about it being a story to "make you believe in God". And this, in a nutshell, is what I think. I think the second story is the true story. I think that many religions teach using parables. So I think the first story is a parable for Pi over-coming the natural man, and finding forgiveness and strength by being forced to hold the tiger within himself at bay. Pi says he can't tame the tiger, but he can train it. I think that's a wonderful metaphor. Our mistakes of the past don't have to define us, or our futures, if we can accept the grace of God, and work to rise above our animal instincts. In the book, Pi finds God's forgiveness and peace, allowing him to move beyond a horrible deed and start a new and happy life in Canada with a wife and kids and two cats. :) Anyways, I love the book. And the movie is awesome too.

Saturday we had two soccer games in the morning. Both boys played well. Then I drove up to Hooper for Sabrina's bridal shower. She and Jackson are getting married at the end of September. I'm excited to have her in our family. She is really good for Jackson. And they seem really happy together. My mom puts on a great shower. This time she had a really cute table display with cupcakes and candies in little cups. They were shaped in a heart and set on the table as party favors. It was cute. And I always love seeing all of my Hooper people. All the ladies that were my neighbors, primary teachers, young women leaders, etc. I love those ladies. They are a riot. And it's fun knowing them now as an adult, instead of just as a kid. Jack and Bri got some great gifts...makes me want to have a bridal shower again for myself. I feel like when I got married I had no idea what we needed or wanted, and I didn't know which gifts were good gifts. I remember a few things I returned, thinking I'd never need them, that I sure wish I had back now!
I got home from H-town late Saturday night. Then we all had to get up early Sunday morning to be in Salt Lake by 9:00am because Aaron's brother Kelly was blessing their new baby Eli. We almost made it on time. Luckily, Kelly's ward was flexible and let them do the blessing after passing the Sacrament, so that Aaron was still able to participate. We went back to Kelly and Esther's afterwards and had a nice brunch. It was raining so we all stayed inside, but it was still a really nice morning. The kids had fun playing with Asher, and the adults chatted. We left and got home in time for Sunday afternoon naps! Glorious! We have one o'clock church, so we don't get to have Sunday afternoon naps very often. I have greatly missed them.
Monday morning was Lincoln's first choir class as the Scera Theater in Orem. He had a great time. His teacher even made a point to come and find me afterwards and tell me how much she enjoyed having Lincoln in her class. She said that he followed directions very well. I was happy to hear that. The classes are for home school families, so there were a bunch of other people waiting in the waiting area with us while we waited for Lincoln's class to end. Ivan and Adelia soon found a couple of little friends, and spent a very happy hour playing duck-duck-goose, tag, and running up and down the stair case. I was glad for them that it turned out to be a fun adventure. I chatted with a few of the other home school moms, I hadn't met any of them before since they were all from the Orem/Provo area, and most of the other home schoolers I know are from Springville and south, but all the moms were really nice, and I'm looking forward to getting to know them better. Sometimes I think people don't realize how many home school families there actually really are. Home schooling is not a very small minority anymore. And that makes me glad.

Monday night, my friend Wynter came over and we canned peaches. She did hers and I did mine, but it was way more fun to do it together and have someone to talk to. I bought a bushel from up in Brigham City this year, like I do every year; but, to my great surprise, my very own peach tree also produced this year. I wasn't expecting it to for a few more years. But I got forty peaches off my tree this year. They were a little bit smaller than the onse I bought from Brigham, but they tasted every bit as good! So I had a bazillion peaches. What to do? What to do? I still have about 12 quarts of sliced peaches from last year. I decided to only do 12 new quarts of sliced peaches this year. With the rest, I tried a new Zesty Peach BBQ Sauce recipe, and it turned out awesome. And I also blended up a bunch with some raspberries and made Peach-Raspberry jam. I've been canning like a mad woman every single night this week. Trying to use up my peaches before they go bad.

Tuesday morning it was my turn to host Ivan's preschool co-op. I set out our Wedgits and Magna-tiles for the kids to play with when they got here while we waited for everyone to arrive. Today we learned about shapes. First we did singing time though. We sang Hello Everybody, Here We Are Together, In the Leafy Tree Tops, and Five Little Monkey's (the alligator version). Then, to introduce shapes, I read them Thumper's Shapes. Then I handed each child cut-outs of the four basic shapes; circle, triangle, rectangle, square. We talked about each one, and said how many sides and how many angles it had. Then I would describe a shape by saying something like, "I'm thinking of a shape that has three sides and three angles." And the kids would have to hold up their triangles. For the next activity, we talked about how shapes can be different sizes or colors but if they have the right number of sides and the right number of angles they are still a square (or whichever shape). We played a game where the kids came up and picked shapes of different sizes and colors out of a brown paper bag, they had to decide which shape it was, and then put it on my flannel board under the right category (circle, square, triangle, rectangle). Then the kids needed some wiggle time. So we went outside on the driveway where I had drawn large shapes with chalk. We walked around the perimeter of the shapes singing Hi-Ho the Dairy-o and changing the words for each shape, like this: "A rectangle has four sides, a rectangle has four sides, two are short and two are long, a rectangle has four sides." Then I gave the kids chalk and they practiced drawing the four different shapes. Next we went back inside and had a snack. I gave them pretzel sticks and had them try to make their shapes out of pretzels too. After snack we did a cutting/gluing activity. They attempted to cut out the shapes and glue them onto another piece of paper and then color them. They did pretty well, but I think our scissor skills need a little work. For out last activity we did pattern block pictures. Each of the kids got a cookie sheet, a pile of magnetic pattern blocks, and a laminated picture to fill in. They seemed to really like this activity, and when they finished with one picture, they asked to switch out for another one. When it was time to go, every kid got to take home a bag with paper shapes and colored sticks in it. The idea is that they can set out the paper shape, and then use the same colored sticks to go around the edge, to practice making shapes. I did a piece of string so they could do a circle too.

Tuesday afternoon was also the first day of our art class. We will be doing a weekly art class at my house with Wynter and her kids. We are using the Home Art Studio DVD curriculum, and I'm really excited about it. Today we learned about Primary and Secondary colors. First the kids traced their hands a few times on a piece of large construction paper. Then they painted each of their hands a Primary color of their choice. Next they learned about mixing colors, and then got to choose which colors they wanted to mix to make a Secondary color background of their choice. Ivan's finished product is bottom left, and Lincoln's is bottom right. I put up a string along the empty back wall of my school room, and am planning on displaying all of their artwork for this year on the string using clothes pins. The kids had a great time with this project, and I am looking forward to it next week and for the rest of the year.
Tuesday night we went to soccer games. And Aaron brought me home flowers, just because. :) I love when he does that.
Also, here's a picture I took of Ollie the other night when he was taking forever to want to go to sleep. I feel like he's been a little bit left out on the blog lately. But seriously, he won't hold still long enough for me to take any good pictures of him. He's all over the place rolling around, and even pushing himself up on all fours for a few seconds at a time. I am NOT ready for a crawler. But check out those beautiful baby blues.
Wednesday we had another great Science Club at Wynter's house. I was only in charge of snack this week, and didn't have to teach, so I got to see some of the lessons. They were all so good! We have some awesome creative moms doing Science Club. We did mammals again this week, but each mom took a different type of mammal. So one class was about bears, one class was about marsupials, and one class was about sea mammals.
Jill taught the sea mammals class. She did an experiment to teach about the scientific method, and I thought it was so cool. She wanted to show the kids how some sea mammals have blubber that keeps them warm in the cold water. She had a bowl full of ice water on the table, and had the kids put their hands in it to see how cold it was. Then she had the kids take turns putting their hands in a plastic bag that had another plastic bag filled with shortening inside, then stick their hands wrapped in the plastic bag back into the water, and the shortening blubber kept their hands warm. I thought it was such a neat experiment.
In the bear class they learned about hibernating. And at dinner, Lincoln explained to Aaron how bears are really small when they are born. And in the marsupial class they learned about kangaroos, and how the baby kangaroos are born as small as a jelly-bean and then live in their mom's pouches until they are bigger.

Today was our second day of hosting preschool co-op. My subject was handwriting. Most of the kids in the class are pretty young, so I decided to go with a fine-motor skills approach, rather than an actual hold the pencil and do handwriting approach. For our first activity I used a piece of the Handwriting Without Tears curriculum. They have these wooden blocks that you can use to build any capital letter in the alphabet. I've never bought the blocks, but I have cut the shapes out of card stock, and that works just as well in my opinion. So I cut out a set of shapes for each kid in preschool. We sat in a circle and practiced building the first letter in each child's name. Once we had built the letter we traced it with our fingers, and used the verbal cues from HWT, which go something like this: "Ok we're going to make the letter P. To make a P we start in the top left corner, then we make a big line down, then we frog jump back to the top, ribbit! Then we make a little curve to the middle. This is letter P." In our class, we happened to have two I's, two A's, a P, a J, and a D, so those are the letters we worked on today. But I sent the shape sets home with the parents, so if they want to practice more with their kids they can. I didn't get as many pictures today, because Ollie was awake and wanting to be held. I wish I would have been able to get one of all the kids making their letter shapes, they did so good!
Our next activity was letter lacing cards. Again I chose to focus only on the first letters of each of the kids names. So I made a block letter for each kid, and laminated it, and hole punched it, and tied a piece of yarn to it. The kids got to "sew" their letters, which is a great fine motor skill, and helps develop the hand muscles needed to hold a pencil. Then it was definitely snack time. :) I did pretzels again, because that's what I had on hand. Then we did a cutting sheet. Cutting is another fine motor skill that helps with handwriting. I had planned to go outside and write letters with sidewalk chalk, but the weather did not want to cooperate with me. It was pouring rain. Instead, I took black sheets of construction paper and wrote each child's name in big block letters, then they took the sidewalk chalk and traced over the pencil. It went pretty well. About half traced their letters, and the other half just had a great time making a chalk picture. Either way was fine with me. And that was preschool today.


This evening Lincoln had soccer pictures and a game. Lucky for us the weather cleared up a bit, the sun even came out during the game. It was lovely out. I love Linc, and he is getting better, but man! that kid is an awkward athlete. I think he might be a little too smart for sports. Not that athletes are dumb, not by any stretch...but Linc's biggest problem is that he thinks about it
too much. He could probably repeat to you verbatim, everything his coach has ever told him about soccer. But he lacks that natural athletic instinct. When the balls comes his way, he freezes, and you can just see the wheels turning, "Ok, the ball is coming my way, I'm playing a defensive position right now, so that means what I need to do is kick the ball away from the goal and towards an open member of my own team..." and by the time that processes and he goes to act, the ball is long gone. He's also not super aggressive, but I think that has more to do with his age, than his ability. He's still fun to watch though, and he does a little better at every game, and he has a good time, which is what really matters.
And of course this is a typical soccer game position for Aaron and I, kids climbing all over us, I'm surprised we even see any of the game.
"Go my favorite sports team! Score a goal/basket/unit! Go team! Go team, go!"
Uh-uh, no you didn't! Cut that out! I do NOT want a crawler!
So that was an extremely long post. I don't mean it as a way to brag or show off, but just as a way to document. We are in a happy place right now. Life is beautiful. We've traveled some rocky roads to get here, and I know that more rocky roads are ahead. But right now, this day, this moment, I am content. Things are going smoothly. I am not over-whelmed or under-whelmed. Things are wonderful, and I am grateful. I want time to stop right here. I want to remember. I want to soak it in, and breath it back out, and love every precious moment while it lasts.