3 weeks with one blow

We haven't published blog posts in a few weeks, even though we started writing them and saved them to drafts. Oops. Here are some highlights:

Week 1 (April 23-May1)

The kids started new math programs. Sara is doing Saxon Math, which is very highly recommended for practicing math problems over and over again until you can do any possible problem. It is working great for Sara: she can read the lesson, do the problems, then let Mom grade it and talk to Dad after work if she's having any problems. Since she doesn't like Alison's teaching style, this works very well. (We're looking into a language arts program that works the same way for her. Maybe science, too.)

The other kids are all using Beast Academy. It uses comic books to teach math concepts and then gives the kids a few very complex problems that take a lot of time and logical thinking to figure out that lets them practice the skill. Rea loves it; she's doing math 2-3 hours a day because it's fun. Timmy and Gideon are enjoying it, too, but not as much as Rea. They both love the logic puzzles "Honeycomb Paths."

Friday our nature group did an orienteering course at Granite Park. Most of us really like orienteering. Alison gets exhausted carrying Boo, but she enjoys it a lot. Maybe someday we'll do a course with Mike. He would probably like it too.

Friday night we watched the movie "Cats Don't Dance", which the kids really liked a lot. The villain was a Shirley Temple knock-off, and she was pretty funny. 

On Saturday April 30 we tried to find Morel mushrooms since the weather was correct for them, however we didn't find any of them growing. Perhaps there hasn't been enough water this year for them. Alternatively, perhaps they aren't growing because the environment at that spot in dimple dell is no longer as conducive to their growth in some other way. The cottonwood trees whose roots they grow on are dying. We ended up having a good walk anyway, so at least we had that going for us.

That week all of Mike's final projects were due for school, so he spent quite a bit of time finishing them up. He got A's on both of them, which was great! The last semester, which is a practical project, starts the first week of June, and then in the beginning of August he'll be done! We had been talking about getting another teaching position and quitting the full time job at that point, but while he's been doing his masters program, he's managed to make the full-time job almost perfect, so we might keep it.

Week 2 (May 1-May 8)

We don't have as many notes from this week. Math continued going well, and Timmy and Gideon both worked hard on reading too. Timmy is reading Frog and Toad for a goal, and he's reading about a page a day and doing really well. The kids are enjoying their science unit on rocks; Timmy really wants to open a geode. He is pounding lots of rocks to see what happens when he hits them, and he loves finding crystals.

On Friday at nature group, Rea found morels! We were so excited, we had to do a video call with Mike and show him. We went to Dimple Dell as a family the next day and searched the area and found 17 morels! So we have a new morel hunting site, which is great! We think we got the tail end of the season - we went back on Wednesday and there weren't any new ones - but we'll go back next year.

Sunday was Mother's Day. Alison got a wonderful breakfast in bed with a vase of lilacs, and after church we went to Grandma Sheila's and Grandpa Mike's house and had dinner. They had to leave to drop something off, and invited us to wait. That ended up taking longer than expected, and Alison and Mike stayed and talked to Sal and Cailin about life optimization and retirement and starting a business and homeschooling and lots of great things. We had a wonderful time and have invited them to our house in a few weeks so we can have another conversation.

Week 3 (May 8-May15)

We have birds nesting in a crack in our carport roof again. We had intended to seal it off after last year's nesting season, but we forgot until Alison had a bird fly over her when she threw something in the garbage.

On Saturday we went to Wheeler Farm with Grandma Julie and Grandpa Craig and Aunt Becky's family. It was perfect weather and we had a great time. We saw a sheep being sheared and had a picnic and enjoyed playing with cousins. We plan to move to our summer schedule in a few weeks (taking a siesta mid-afternoon and going outside 7-9pm every evening), and we plan to go to Wheeler Farm in the evenings then. It's less than 15 minutes from our new house.

Timmy is still really enjoying rocks and especially crystals. We listened to the story "Melting Stones," which has a kid who's a stone mage trying to keep a volcano from blowing up an island. We learned a lot about rocks, and quartz was an important part, so we like quartz now.

Since Mike has so many weeks off school, he has been working on board games again. He's working on his Defend the University game, which has a lot of different sub-games, and he's making a part based on Phase 10 dice. He's now fixing up the laser cutter so that he can make custom laser-cut dice for it.

Alison got her new fashion accessory: a corset! She says: Before anyone freaks out, she's not wearing the kind that is so tight it's hard to breathe. Hers is more for back support (having your breasts grow by 4 cup sizes during pregnancy/nursing is not great for the back). It is incredibly comfortable and she loves it so much.

Most of our berry bushes survived the winter, but the cherry tree did not. That's too bad. We think we might get a few berries this year, but we'll probably have to wait another year or two to really start harvesting.