Andelin Adventures – Page 72 – A blog about Kyle and Rebecca's family

First Day of School- Home School Style

Today is officially the first day of school! A few weeks ago we decided it was time to tell the kids that we would be home schooling this year. It’s a terrifying thought for me, but it is something that I have been wanting to do, and putting off for several years. With all of the problems we were having with Tyra last year, being problems that had just built off of problems the year before, I decided that I didn’t want to have another year that was just worse than ever because it was building off of the problems of multiple years before it, and therefore it was time to just kick myself in the butt and do this home school thing!

The kids had various reactions. Ethan was VERY upset about the concept of home school, probably because Ethan is a creature of habit and when things suddenly change from what he is expecting he does not like it, no matter what the change is. Tyra was upset as well, but mainly because “I will miss my friends”. So she is upset about missing out on the social aspect of school. Jeremy, just shrugged his shoulders and said “ok”. He doesn’t seem to be upset about it at all, but he isn’t excited either. I kind of wonder if maybe he was being picked on at school. He used to ride his bike to school, but then one day he REFUSED because it had training wheels on it. So we took them off, and tried to help him practice learning to ride without but he hadn’t got it down and just refused to ride his bike to school ever again, which is what makes me wonder if someone picked on him for having training wheels or something. Dinah also wasn’t very excited about the home school idea, but she wasn’t sad either. I did preschool with her and a group of other kids and each parent took turns with the teaching, so sometimes the preschool was here, and so learning at home isn’t really a new concept for her.

So I was determined to make today special even if they weren’t going to the public school. I made special crepes for breakfast:

I decided we would kind of take it slow to begin with because I am still figuring out what I am doing and the kids need to adjust to the idea of this is home school, not extended summer vacation. I didn’t want to just jump in and try to do a million subjects every day and burn myself and them out, so today I just explained the concept of ‘copy work’ and had them do a bit and we called it good. Hopefully we can make that part of our morning routine and then add something else after a bit.

Here they are on the first day of school:

My big school kids:

I am glad that they aren’t so mad about home schooling that they at least smiled for the pictures. 🙂

Utah County Fair

Last year I found out that there is a Scout Expo at the Utah County Fair, and I really wanted to go, but our schedule was so crazy, and I was so close to having Adam that we decided to not go, but to plan on going this year. So I am SO excited that we got to go this year. I am a little disappointed that the website said it ended at 1 and it really ended at noon, so we had to rush to get to as many booths as possible before everyone packed up.

We didn’t get very far, before the boys just wanted to stay and stare at what was in front of them. The first booth we stopped at was a display of a scout camp made out of legos!

There was a booth with a big scout quilt on display, the front and back had all kinds of patches on it and the back had neckerchiefs put together to make up the background. The kids got to shoot off some paper rockets that were left at another booth. There wasn’t any more paper for the kids to make their own and that’s ok with me, because all they really wanted to do was launch them, and not making their own rockets meant more time to see the other booths. Next the kids got to make some sand and glitter art by drawing a picture on a paper with glue and then pouring colored sand or glitter on it so that you could see the design. At another booth some of the kids got to plant some seeds, and some learned to tie a couple of new knots. At the last booth we were able to get to before everything was packed up was a booth where the kids got to make necklaces with boondoggle and a leather fob. Lydia was excited to show me hers (I actually made it for her so I already saw it, but she was excited about it anyway 😉 ).

I’m sad that we didn’t get there until the expo was almost over but I am very glad we got to go. Someone gave Tyra, Ethan and Kyle patches for the scout expo which I think is so cool, but I’m kind of sad that Jeremy (who is almost a scout) and Dinah (who is already a scout) didn’t get patches. I guess I will have to see if I can hunt a couple of extras down. It was rather disappointing that this was supposed to represent scouting across all of Utah county and as I think about the lay out and count the booths that I saw there were about a dozen booths total. Granted I am coming up with that number as I think back on it, and I might be missing one, but it was really very small considering it was supposed to be for all of Utah county. I would LOVE to see our pack or boy scout troop or both, have a booth there next year.

Once the scout expo was all packed up we decided to walk across the bridge and check out the county fair. The first building we went to was another huge distraction for the boys:

All three of them are drooling over the lego display. 😛 We walked around and checked it all out, then we walked around the rest of the building and I took pictures of crafts that I thought would be fun for the kids to try to make.

Next we went to see what animals were being shown at the fair. There were FAR less animals here than there usually are at the state fair. The state fair usually has several buildings of animals of all different kinds, and there was only a small tent of animals to check out at the county fair today.

There were some animals that some girls were allowing kids to sit down and hold or pet. One of them was a baby pygmy goat. It was so cute.

There was also a rabbit.

Just before we left I took Lydia over to see the pony. She got SO excited and said “is horsey!” and I just happened to be trying to take a picture of her with one hand while I held her with the other and got her super excited face as she was exclaiming that it was a horsey:

Boys Mowing

I decided that we need to push Ethan to be more independent about mowing the lawn this year. He is getting older and therefore bigger and is more capable of doing it on his own, than in the past when he was smaller. Kyle has trouble mowing the lawn because of his bad ankles and his allergies, and I really have a hard time doing everything for everyone all the time, so I was really anxious to have Ethan step up and learn to help with the yard work so I can be doing other things without worrying about my yard falling apart. Kyle and Ethan and I talked about lawn mowing as being worth extra money too. When I was young, about 10-11 years old, I mowed the lawn at our house in Fullerton and I got $2 for mowing the backyard and $3 for the front yard, because it was bigger owing to the fact that we were on a corner lot. Kyle and I decided that our front yard would be worth $3 and the backyard $5 since I believe they are both larger than what I had to mow as a kid. So Ethan got to mow! I had to start the lawn mower for him, he could pull the starter string, but not hard enough and fast enough to make it turn on.

This week Jeremy decided HE wanted to try mowing, so I said that I would let him mow the front. Ethan wasn’t too happy about this because that meant Jeremy earning the money instead of him, but really Jeremy needs those opportunities too, and if he WANTS to mow the lawn when it is in need of mowing, I’m NOT going to say no!

It was very hard for him to push the lawn mower, especially when he came to an uneven part of the ground, but he did it with minimal help from me. I had to help him turn it around and show him how to line it up so that he wasn’t skipping any grass, and I had to help him get the lawn mower out of a few ruts. He was very worn out when he was done, so I had Ethan do the backyard this time, and I don’t think Jeremy is ready to be mowing the lawn on his own regularly yet, but I think we will let him try every now and then and eventually it will get easier for him. 🙂

Raingutter Regata

Our pack held it’s FIRST Raingutter Regatta tonight! Actually I don’t think it’s the first one our pack has ever done, but it’s the first one our pack has done since the people that are in charge now, have been in charge, and it’s the first one that they’ve had since Ethan has been in scouts. I was really excited when I saw this on the plan of pack meetings for the year. As we got closer though, they were saying that there wasn’t enough money in the budget to buy Raingutter Regatta boats and they decided to just make boats out of sections of pool noodles instead, which was somewhat disappointing to me. These are cub scouts not preschool kids! Well as it turns out, someone donated enough Raingutter Regatta boats for the boys in the pack and so they got to use those, and the siblings of the cub scouts got to make their own pool noodle boats. 😉

Ethan received the Handyman activity badge and a compass point before the races began, and since there is a pirate theme for tonight’s back meeting, they made him “walk the plank” to receive his awards.

Ethan didn’t place anywhere near the top, but he had fun making and racing his boat and that it really all that matters. He probably won’t ever get another shot at participating in a Raingutter Regatta, considering he is in Webelos now and next year he will be in the 11 year old scouts group, which is part of boy scouts not cub scouts, but I’m glad he got the chance to do it at least once.

They finished off the evening by shooting handfuls of candy out of a candy cannon that one of the Wolf den leaders made. The kids REALLY enjoyed that.

Sneak some Zucchini onto your neighbors porch day

During the latter part of July I had been taking the older kids with me, and visiting the ward garden every morning. We have filled, many bags with weeds from the pumpkin patch, and we have started harvesting green beans and squash. But it kind of feels like we are the only ones going to work in the garden. I don’t know this for sure, but we have never seen anyone else there, and every time we are there we check on all the produce that is growing, and none of it seems to be getting picked, unless we picked it. We have been picking everything that is ready every other day or so, and we have been taking it home and planning meals to include squash and fresh green beans, but there is no way for us to eat all that we pick and really I don’t want to eat all of it. It came from the ward garden and I felt like we should do our best to share it. So we have been putting squash and green beans on our porch and asking the neighbors to come get whatever they want, but that just isn’t working either.

This morning when I was on Facebook, I noticed that a friend of mine from my home ward in California posted that today is “National sneak some zucchini onto your neighbors porch day”, and I knew what we had to do. The kids and I planned it all before Kyle got home from work, and when he came home we all got in the van and went over to the ward garden. It was dusk when we got to the garden and we knew we had to work quickly. We were only planning on picking whatever squash was ready, and then leaving but we had to keep the kids together too. On our way to our ward’s plot I heard Jeremy say “snake” as he pointed at the ground ahead of him. I had to call to some of the kids that hadn’t heard him and tell them to stop walking. We saw the snake pass across the path in front of us, and we moved on more cautiously. The older kids and I went to the squash plants, and I picked all the squash that was ready, and handed it to the kids to take back to the wagon. We FILLED the wagon with squash! Then we went home to get ready to start sneaking.

I stayed home with Lydia and Adam, it was getting late now and they were getting cranky, and I didn’t want them crying the whole time we were out. So Kyle took the older kids after we explained to them that we are TRYING to be sneaky, they cannot make noise or fight with each other over who gets to pull the wagon or who gets to put the squash on someone’s porch. They didn’t come back until they had distributed all of the squash. 🙂

This morning when I got on Facebook I saw that one of my neighbors posted a thank you to “who ever left the zucchini on our porch this morning” and throughout the day more of our neighbors that also received squash commented as well on how excited they were about finding that someone had left them squash too. I am glad that we were able to make so many people happy with squash that we didn’t even grow ourselves, and I am glad that all that squash produced by the ward garden won’t be going to waste as it might have if we had waited for neighbors to come get it off our porch. Considering it went over so well, we may have to make this an annual tradition! 🙂