Fall Break

 We are very determined to post on time this week! Hopefully you received this Sunday evening.

Our Classical Conversations community had their first-quarter break this week, and it happened to be Ellie and Aelfric's fall break too, so Grandma Julie was very excited for the cousins to get together and play. The girls got to go play with Ellie on Monday, Wednesday we spent all day with them, and Thursday we all went to see the witches at Gardner Village and then went back to Grandma's house to spend the rest of the day together. It was a great fall break!

Mike got a cold and was sick for a lot of the week. He doesn't usually get sick, so this was annoying. (Alison has arranged our lives so that things are OK if she's sick, but it's much harder when Mike is down!) But we made it through and he's feeling better now.

Alison started getting sick Friday. She went to nature group, but she was the only adult there. Rea and Sara's friend Marissa rode her bike over, and that was it. The big girls took Boo with them, and Alison turned on a Minecraft audiobook on her phone and fell asleep in the sun while the boys laid on her and listened. They went straight home and Alison slept the rest of the day. Mike was feeling well enough that he and the kids had fun.

Saturday Alison slept a lot again. Mike and the kids went out and bought Gideon's birthday presents after Rea got done setting up for the Spook Alley the youth were doing. Then Alison went to a training for CC, which is always nice, and then wanted to sleep the rest of the day. Mike and the kids went to the Chili Cookoff and Trunk or Treat and Spook Alley at the church. They all had a great time. The kids got lots of candy, the Spook Alley went very well thanks to Rea, and they had fun costumes. Mike was Smee, Rea was a red panda in the Spook Alley, Sara was a jellyfish, Gideon was a pirate, and Timmy was a military man. Boo didn't wear a costume and didn't want to go trick-or-treating but Papa Mike eventually made her go and she got tons of candy.

Sunday was our Primary Program. The kids worked hard to learn their parts and did a great job! They were some of the best singers, and they tried hard to sit still and be quiet. Both sets of grandparents came, which made them very happy.

Alison has decided to change our homeschool to a winter schedule. We have to wake up early this year so that we'll be on time to CC, but we're having trouble getting going in the morning now that it's colder and darker. 

So on every day but Monday, we're going to start memory work at 7:30ish and then everyone will move into Mom's room. We'll snuggle up and do an hour of school without really getting up (the subjects we do all together - literature, science, history, and writing [well, that last one everyone takes turns working with Mom - we'll see how that works out]). 

Then when Amy gets here at 9, we'll get up and eat breakfast and walk the dog and do all our getting ready for the day. That will take till 10, when we'll do reading and math until lunch.

 After lunch we have a little more time Tuesdays and Wednesdays for more hands-on science and the Latin that Alison now wants to add, and in the evenings we'll still have our language arts time. 

It's a lot of hours of school, but we kind of need that as kids get older. Hopefully it works as well in real life as Alison thinks it will in her head.

That's about everything. Sara made her own batch of fruit leather this week, and Papa Mike gave us an old computer that Gideon promptly claimed. Now Rea, Timmy, and Gideon have computers, and so if Sara is using the Chromebook and Boo has Mom's phone, everyone has a device (and Alison can still use her laptop if necessary). We've tried tablets in the past, but they just don't work for more than a year - they stop holding a charge. We decided that buying computers will be better in the long run than buying new tablets every year. The kids are really excited to use Minecraft Educational Edition on their computers (because Minecraft on tablets is really glitchy).