erinee98's Xanga

Summer living and learning.

Tue, 14 Jul 2009 11:32:26 GMT

I want to start this blog up again, mainly because there is always SO much I want to do with the kids in the summer and never get around to doing most of it. I have things swimming around in my head, and I hope that blogging will help organize it and that telling people will motivate me to actually do it.

Zach told me today that he wishes we could unschool, and promised me that he wouldn't just want to sit around and watch TV all day. I asked him what he would want to learn about, and he said history and science. I pointed out that we already do that -- he just goes to school on top of it. So I am really going to try and give him lots and lots of experiences this summer.

So far, both kids have each spent a week in Flint with my mom (separately -- "They do fight," she said), and Zach has been to Boy Scout camp. He had a wonderful time, judging by the state of the laundry I've been tentatively retrieving from his duffle bag. He earned his swimming, art, and leatherworking merit badges.

Both kids have just turned in 4-H projects. Megan did her very first project for Exploring 4-H, the subject being our dog, Freddy. Zach did a computer project, which was a poster illustrating the parts of a computer, and built a birdhouse for woodworking. The birdhouse turned out very nice. I will take pictures of them Friday when we go to see how he did and post them at that time. He was also in rifle club and did a trophy shoot. His target will be displayed at the fair. I am glad to have them done. It's always a bit stressful, but well worth it.

Zach started band today. He has chosen to play trumpet. It's something I feel I can help him with a little more than Tae Kwon Do (he is still involved in that as well -- he's a busy kid). He is very, very excited about it. I am trying to give Megan some piano lessons, but we're not very consistent about it.

Megan played baseball through May and June but is done now. She says she wants to play again next year. She was getting to be pretty good, for it being her first year, so I hope she sticks with it.

So besides all of those official activities, here are some things that we are doing or would like to do this summer:

*Going out to our camper where we can swim, fish, boat, and hike to our heart's content.

*Raising a monarch butterfly. Although we haven't found a caterpillar yet, I do NOT want to skip this activity for the second year in a row. It's such a fun and easy activity.

*Geocaching. We didn't do this last summer, but we went out and had four finds in one day, which got Megan more excited about it than she has been in the past. Her legs are finally getting to the point where they can keep up with the rest of us and not tire out as quickly.

*Sunflower house. The sunflowers are growing, although not as many as I had hoped. I think some bugs and bunnies got to some of the shoots. I still hope it will be a nice spot for the kids to read and play in once they get taller and start to bloom. I'm trying to keep an eye on them. I've never been very successful at growing things, but I truly hope this works.

*Keeping a running list of all the birds and other wildlife we see.

*Reading, reading, reading! Yes, Scott and I still read aloud to Zach, even though he's perfectly capable of reading some college-level material. We all enjoy it, and I will continue to read to my kids as long as they'll let me. Scott and I alternate who reads to which kid at night, and I read to both kids together during the day. I use Sonlight and Ambleside Online reading lists plus the kids' own selections and a few of my own favorites. We have independent reading time every day where we all choose a quiet spot and read.

These are our current read-alouds:

Megan: On the Banks of Plum Creek and D'Aulaire's Benjamin Franklin with me (I'm surprised at how much she is enjoying the latter) and Bedknob and Broomstick with Scott. We also still read picture books aloud, and some of our other standards that we read from over and over are James Herriott's Treasury, Aesop for Children, Just So Stories, The Burgess Bird Book for Children, Anderson's Fairy Tales, and The Blue Fairy Book.

Zach: Poor Richard by Dougharty, To Kill a Mockingbird, and It Couldn't Just Happen with me, and Johnny Tremain with Scott. We just finished The Pilgrim's Progress, which Zach seemed to grasp fairly well.

Both together: Ben & Me (since I'm reading biographies of Benjamin Franklin to both of them), Paddle-To-the-Sea (mapping as we go), a poem a day from Where the Sidewalk Ends, and Fifty Famous Stories Retold. We're almost finished with Ben & Me, and I plan to start The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe next.

Thursday, January 10, 2008

Thu, 10 Jan 2008 15:43:35 GMT

To Sam, "God hears," who left us on January 10, 2008 at 8 weeks' gestation.

Nobody Knew You
Nobody knew you
"Sorry about the miscarriage dear,
but you couldn't have been very far along."
...existed.

Nobody knew you
"It's not as though you lost an actual person."
...were real

Nobody knew you
"Well, it probably wasn't a viable fetus.
It's all for the best."
...were perfect.

Nobody knew you
"You can always have another!"
...were unique.

Nobody knew you
"You already have a beautiful child. Be happy!"
...were loved for yourself.

Nobody knew you
...but us.

And we will always remember
...You.
- by Jan Cosby

Poem that comes with the Reunion necklace I am ordering:

Since heaven has become your home
I sometimes feel that I'm alone;
And though we now are far apart
You hold a big piece of my heart
I never knew how much I'd grieve
When it was time for you to leave
Or just how much my heart would ache
From that one fragment you would take
God let this tiny hole remain,
Reminding me we'd meet again
And one day all the pain will cease
When He restores this missing piece
For Jesus heals each tiny part
That holds your memory in my heart

We'll love you forever, we'll like you for always. As long as we're living, our baby you'll be.

Back to school pictures.

Wed, 05 Sep 2007 00:56:13 GMT

Mr. Cool wearing his signature look:

My big kindergarten girl *sniff*:

Siblings-turned-schoolmates:

Best buddies:

The gang at the bus stop (our house):

Here comes the bus -- look how excited Megan is!

All aboard!

And finally, Zach took my first-day-of-school picture on my first day of preschool:

First day of preschool was a mixed bag.

Tue, 28 Aug 2007 23:09:06 GMT

But what went was right about it was so right that it will carry me through anything!

One little guy came in refusing to join the group. When we left for snack, I told him he could not stay in the room by himself, and if he wouldn't walk, I would have to carry him. So I did, even though he struggled all the way. He sat on my lap during snack (didn't eat), and I just talked to him quietly the whole time, saying I knew it was scary, I was a little scared, too, and maybe we could help each other not to be so scared. At about that time, he started playing with my watch, so I let him wear it. By the time we got back to class, he was all smiles. I gave him a high five before he left and told him how proud I was of him. He said he would come back Thursday and wouldn't cry. There is no better feeling than that!

Another little girl was in my summer class. Her mom came late to pick her up, because she thought it was 11:30 instead of 11. I talked to her for awhile, and I told her I just love Kailey, and her mom just beamed and said, "She loves you, too! all summer she kept saying, 'Leitner is my favorite teacher,' and she kept wanting to play 'Leitner and Brickner'." I wish I knew how a 3-year-old portrayed me in her pretend play! I told the mom how great she did, and she hugged me and said, "Thank you for being such a blessing."

I will carry those words with me no matter how things go the rest of the year. I know I'm a good teacher. My co-teacher knew what the director had said to me a few weeks ago (that I need to be "sillier" with the kids and more down to their level, which I've never found necessary; I think sometimes that people assume that's what all kids want but that it's not necessarily true), and she said she thought I had a great rapport with the kids and she totally loved what I did with the little boy who was crying.

There were things that didn't go so well, but nothing can destroy how it felt to hear those words: "Thank you for being such a blessing."

Now to see how subbing goes tomorrow!

The kids are so excited about school starting!

Tue, 14 Aug 2007 18:54:55 GMT

Zach woke up thinking today was Wednesday and that school starts tomorrow. He groaned when I told him it was only Tuesday! He can't wait to see what Mr. P's class is like and how it will be actually going in to class with friends for the first time. Megan is so excited that she gets to eat lunch her very first day and that they're having chicken nuggets and green beans!

I'm so happy for them. I hope they have as great a year as we're anticipating. I hope it goes okay for me, too. I'll have my job at the preschool Tuesdays and Thursdays, and I have my application in to sub both in the school libraries and the classroom at any of the elementary schools on the other days. I'll probably be giving up transcription and the doctor's office altogether if I get plenty of subbing, but I'll hang onto them for now until I see how things go.

It's hard to let go of this way of being that I've enjoyed so much. I'll miss having a small child around me most of the time (I say as I prepare to teach two classes of 14 three-year-olds -- but of course it's different from being with my own). Being pretty much a stay-at-home mom has been the best time of my adult life so far and the happiest I've been. I'm trying to keep in mind the story from my grandmother's funeral about the woman who told, as each phase with her children passed, that it could never get any better than right now, and it always did because of the lessons she taught her children along the way. I'm sure that's the way it will prove to be for me, too, it's just hard to see it from here.

Vacation to da UP

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 17:31:25 GMT

This was an amazing spot we found geocaching. It was called "A Wall of Falls." The water ran down in little streams. It was like being in the mountains and just beautiful!

Glass-bottom boat tour of the shipwrecks:

Zach on deck -- I LOVE this picture!

They pointed out an eagle's nest to us from the boat -- you can make out the bald eagle up there. A lovely sight to behold:

Friends the kids made while waiting for the boat. The golden retriever (Rip) loved jumping in the water after his toy and kept bringing it back to the kids to throw (with the owner's permission, of course). The German shephard (Jedi) was not so sure about jumping in, but he loved the toy and kept trying to take it away before it went into the water:

Another very cool place we found geocaching. The water dropped off beyond this wall of rocks, and Zach loved jumping in. It reminded me of cliff divers. The whole spot looked like Grand Cayman or something.

I'm thinking this is from our canoe when we paddled out to Pictured Rocks, just before my camera stopped working. We were able to go right up to the rocks and see them in fantastic detail. It was amazing!

This is Miner's Castle, from our canoe:

This is a free roadside park we stumbled across, called Lakenenland. Tom Lakenen created these amazing junk art pieces and put them up at this park. There was a place to make a donation at the end, and it was well worth it!

This is Miner's Castle from the lookout. You can see some people swimming down there into the little caves. We did try that when we took the canoe out, but we couldn't find a good place to land -- our canoe isn't flat enough.

Lake Superior at sunset is a breathtaking sight. This was from our camp site:

Look how clear that water is! You can also see by the kids' faces how very cold it is -- that's why it's so amazingly clear. Algae and seaweed can't grow there, which the kids like. It really wasn't as cold this time around as it has been other times. It's been hot with very little rain to stir up the deep water.

Our beach at the campground. That's Grand Island back there, and we did paddle out there in the canoe one day, some of the roughest canoeing we've ever done. We didn't tip, though!

The kids made great friends with this brother and sister, an 11- and 4-year-old. Any time we were at the campground, they were playing together:

This is what a typical geocaching discovery looks like:

Another geocache showing a beuatiful view of Munising, with Megan holding the GPS. We had walked about 2 miles up a lot of steep hills, and it was very hot and very dusty. We were wiped out.

Another waterfall we found while geocaching:

Not sure why Megan looks so scared here -- she was just being silly:

The silly Leiters:

I've finished Don Quixote!

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 15:10:37 GMT

It's taken me a good three years, but I finished! It was a *great* book, very funny and very modern ideas (I still love the bit about actors being a favored people -- this before mass media!). It was just so long, and I had other things I wanted to read at the same time.

Pilgrim's Progress is next on The Well-Trained Mind list. Not really looking forward to that one, but I think it will be a faster read at least. But first I'm going to start And the Ladies of the Club with another group of friends. It's quite long, too!

Rocket launch!

Sat, 11 Aug 2007 14:58:58 GMT

Zach's rocket is the blue and silver one, and you can see the card with his blue ribbon award.

Adding powder to make a cool puff of smoke at launch.

Setting up the launch.

Counting down.....3, 2, 1 blastoff!

A successful mission!

Zach got a special award at TKD tonight.

Fri, 08 Jun 2007 00:28:13 GMT

He had his belt testing tonight. We were the last of the orange belts to get there, so when they called the orange belts up to test, I guess they didn't have room for Zach on the floor. When they didn't call his name, I assumed they were doing them in two groups, but when the first group was done, they called Zach out by himself. They asked him if he'd rather do it with the white belts or by himself, and barely hesitating, he said by himself! There was a bit of a murmur, and the instructor said, "Wow, you're brave!"

He did *so* well! Usually if you're a little stuck you can kind of watch the others out of the corner of your eye, but he didn't have that advantage. This is really formal, too; the judges are all sitting in front of you at a table dressed in suits with all their medals all over them, and there is a huge crowd of parents and other kids. And there was Zach, stuck out there alone. He did his form perfectly. He hesitated just a bit on the sparring segments, but other than that was flawless.

Everyone was awarded their belts, and Zach got his yellow belt. Then they gave out performance awards for each belt color, and Zach got the performance award for the orange and yellow belts (they tested together)! They said, "For being so brave...." He got a really cool pin to wear on his uniform. Can you even imagine how I beamed?

This is the kid who couldn't succeed in baseball, basketball, or soccer. We didn't think he'd ever find a sport -- not that sports are terribly important to us, but it is hard to be a boy and not be able to play sports on the playground and be the worst in everything in gym class. We've seen such an improvement in his overall coordination, agility, and balance since starting TKO -- not to mention his self-confidence and focus. His grades came up, too. He brought every grade up a grade since last marking period.

I'm such a huge believer in martial arts now. I didn't dare hope it would be a miracle cure, but it has almost been that!

Megan got a haircut!

Thu, 31 May 2007 23:59:40 GMT

She's had it trimmed at the stylist once before, and we've trimmed her bangs at home, but this cut was far more dramatic. She had long pretty "princess hair" -- she sometimes called it her "Sugar Plum Fairy hair." But I love it, and so does she! She couldn't stop primping in the mirror while I got my own hair cut -- and I couldn't stop crying because she looked like such a *big* girl. I had all the stylists crying, too!

So, here are before and after pics: