When a family has five children under the age of 5, another four between ages 4 and 6 (plus an 11 year old), the best possible place to have a family dinner is obviously the Train Restaurant!
Paul loves watching his food come out on a train.
Who knows when these four siblings will be together again?!
A great time was had by all! (Caroline slept through it in her carseat…)
At the end of June, we went to the zoo with a friend!
We saw the Dolphin Show.
Paul pretended he was a zookeeper.
Paul and Meredith had a fun time!
(Caroline slept in her carseat most of the day!)
Our library’s summer reading program has a theme of “Reading is So Delicious!” Going along with that, we had the chance to check out a carrot named Rooty to take with us on our adventures.
Last week, we took Rooty with us as we went on a “mammal hunt.” Paul has been learning about mammals (versus everything else) so our trip to the Barnyard Zoo and then our Trip to the EIEIO exhibit at the Discovery Center Museum was a fun time to talk practically about which animals were mammals and which were not. We visited the Discovery Center Museum on two different days.
Caroline had fun too. (This is our toy from home.)
Paul and I went to a kiddie amusement park, Pirate’s Cove. It is geared toward 1-8 year olds, mostly 4-6 year olds, and it was simply perfect for Paul’s age. I was too big, and Caroline was too little, so it was a day for Paul!
He wrote up his thoughts on his new webpage. He will be tracking his homeschool projects on that site, and I’m encouraging him to write and type his own posts. I am adding some previous posts that I wrote, but from here on out, it will be his!
Anyway, back to Pirate’s Cove.
Apparently, Caroline was happy to just be in her carseat, smiling at people.
These kids sure love each other!
We’ve been wanting to do something special as a family. With the Memorial Day weekend, we especially searched for the right thing. Ryan felt inspired to take our family on a trip to Kirtland and Palmyra so off we went on Thursday afternoon.We came back Monday.
It was a whirlwind of a trip. Paul and Caroline did great on the way East but I’m sure no one would be surprised to learn that the long drive back Sunday night and Monday was long. Caroline spent most of the trip through Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois on Monday screaming because she was mad to still be in the car. We took lots of breaks and she still was pretty mad. I didn’t put her in the carseat again until Wednesday afternoon but as soon as I did she started screaming again! I think she’s calmed down for now, because she’s been okay since then. Paul did well but got pretty tired of that car!
Our visit in Kirtland and Palmyra was a perfect amount of time. Paul was very excited to see the Sacred Grove. The week before we went, he told everyone. (This provided some interesting missionary moments for me. How great that a family vacation lets me explain to people what Mormonism is, and why we find it so important that the heaven are open to prophets in this era, just as in the past!)
Paul did tire of the old houses and lengthy sister missionary tours, so we did not see everything in Kirtland or Palmyra. We did see the Kirtland Temple with a Community of Christ tour and the N.K. Whitney store and house in Kirtland, and in Palmyra we saw Joseph Smith’s log home, the frame house, the Sacred Grove, the Grandin print building where The Book of Mormon was first published, and the Hill Cumorah statue. (I dropped my camera at the Hill Cumorah, breaking the lens, so the only pictures we have from that are those Paul took.)
The trip was just what we needed to create memories as a family. I think Paul now has a frame of reference. Although not everything will remain memorable, I suspect he will not forget that he has seen where Joseph Smith prayed.
Here are some of the pictures Paul took. He played with the camera as we drove, so he had tons of pictures of Caroline (who was right next to him). My favorite is the ultimate bored look in the second picture of my baby.
Before we went out of town, Paul had his last day of preschool. He got a goodie bag with candy and things to make sure his summer is fun, like yet more sidewalk chalk (I think we have about two dozen pieces of that now). Here are some pictures of the happy boy with his class mates and his teachers, Mrs. Polit and Miss Emily. Paul told me the week before school ended that Liam was his “new best friend.” So I got a picture with him too.
The last two pictures are Caroline, aged 3 months, hanging out in her crib. She’s wearing a boyish outfit that Paul wore when he was her age. Compare this picture to Paul wearing the outfit. Of course, the comparison doesn’t really work since Caroline is three months here and Paul was only one month in that picture, but anyway. Does Caroline’s face look feminine enough to pull it off? What do you think?
Maybe this is still unintentional on Caroline’s part. But she is getting pretty consistent: I know if I put her on her tummy she probably won’t stay there! As much as I’m not looking forward to Caroline becoming mobile (I like her to stay put, thank you very much), I am so excited to watch her blossoming and developing into her own personality.
And what a personality she has! She seems to be a social bug: she loves to see a smiling face and will almost always return a happy smile. She wants to be near other people, even when they are not smiling at her. I’ve already pulled out her high chair so she can be table level when we’re eating — not down in her rocker or crib! She wants to be where the action is! She knows what she wants, be it food, a smile, or a clean diaper, and she will scream herself red in the face to make herself heard. If she simply wants a smile, she’ll stop crying as soon as someone approaches. Daddy says he will not give in to this “drama queen” behavior and I’ve overheard a lecture or two about it.
Paul usually wants to tell me what she needs as much as he can guess: “She’s still hungry” or “She has a messy diaper, Mommy.” But on occasion he’s informed me that he’s “tired of all that crying.”
Here are some pictures from our trip to Grandma’s house May 18, 2012.
Paul has one more day of preschool and then we’re off for a whirlwind weekend in Kirtland and Palmyra. And then summer officially begins, as well as my homeschooling years. I’m really looking forward to not having so much on my schedule: we’re going to take each day and each week as it comes, making fun plans to keep us interested and leaving plenty of open time on the schedule for imaginary play and running around outside.
We have decided to not send Paul to another year of preschool. There is a year before he’s officially kindergarten age, but we’ve started already. I’m really looking forward to learning and growing with him in the coming years. While I can’t say for certain we’ll home school forever, I’m planning on staying with it for the long haul. I believe that although it will be a lot of work, we are certainly going to have a lot of fun also!
Caroline is busy being adorable. Here are some pictures from April 21, 2012, the day before she was two months old.
One of these days I’ll get a good picture of her gorgeous smile. It’s so adorable! I treasure her little coo’s and goo’s!
Paul learned about his birth country, Australia, this month. Here’s the giant Australia cookie we made at the beginning of the project.
Beyond making a giant cookie, we didn’t do much other than reading lots of picture books about Australia. Are we There Yet? by Alison Lester was a child’s perspective of a month-long road trip around Australia. Paul enjoyed learning about the various landmarks and it was fun to show him the family picture in the Victorian mountains and a picture of himself with me by The Twelve Apostles when he was about six months old.
A number of books were about the animals of Australia. Koala Lou by Mem Fox, Wombat Stew by Marcia Vaughan, Snap! by Marcia Vaughan, Possum Magic by Mem Fox, and My Grandma Lived in Gooligulch by Graeme Base. I wanted to do more with the learning about animals, but Paul did not have much interest beyond reading the picture books. We did watch a brief documentary about the Great Barrier Reef and then we enjoyed watching Finding Nemo and making a Finding Nemo game based on the Great Barrier Reef facts he remembered. (He is already forgetting these facts, but it was fun making the game anyway! He will remember what a “predator” is at least.)
I also tried to give him a very basic introduction to Aborigines and culture, but it didn’t go over so well. We liked Big Rain Coming by Katrina Germein, which had Aborigine style artwork. We looked at the boomerangs we purchased when we lived in Australia and we talked about how the art of dots and lines created symbols. He didn’t much care, so we’ll have to return to that sometime! And we read a very silly folktale called Whale’s Canoe (by Joanna Troughton) which is supposedly based on a Dreamtime tradition.
And then he summarized all he learned in this video.
(Yes, Caroline is crying in the background. Ryan was holding her, so it wasn’t like I was just abandoning her. But my, it sounds pretty bad watching the video and hearing her crying!!)
It was fun! He wants to move on to Asia now, although I must admit, I’m not sure which direction to go in first as “Asia” is a huge continent!