Friday Five

Let's see. We have just completed week number 20 of quarantine. It's mind boggling, actually. Tomorrow starts the countdown to school for the boys. They "start" in 20 short days, although this year they won't actually "go" to school when it starts.

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Speaking of starting school, it is time to get a move on the household projects that still need to be done. We're waiting for our couches still, so we've held off a bit on painting the living room. Jack's room still needs paint. I'd like for us to go through and do another purge of stuff we don't use while we are at it. I doubt anyone else will be excited to move on any of that work! lol

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We finally found a tomato! Two of them, actually!

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We're going to need to find some other something to do to break up the monotony of this life in quarantine. I think we're all going a little batty with all of this togetherness and staring at these same walls day in and day out!

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When you have a house full of boys, you come to understand that Lego blocks are just going to be the way of life. This go cart race track is currently in the living room. It's too valuable to be disassembled or moved. 🤦

Teenager

He's acting more and more like a teenager. Oh boy!

Conversations With 12 Year Olds

Shawn: Dad. It’s 11:00.

Me: What happens at 11:00?

Shawn: (big sigh) I guess it’s math time.

**My wicked plan to have them learn is working! Bwahahaha!

Underwater

Jack hanging out in one of his favorite places.

One of my new favorites!

Summer Learning Update

Summer hasn't been a time for the boys to slack off of their learning. They actual have reading, math, and chores to do each day as part of our daily routine. They are doing so well with everything, too.

Jack:
Jack is on his third Magic Treehouse book of the summer. This one is Tigers at Twilight. He reads two chapters a day and is about 2/3 of the way through.

For math, Jack gets three practice sheets a day. When we first started, he tried his hardest to avoid the work, but now, he gets right to work and does well! He's been doing multiplication drills, multi-digit addition and subtraction problems, division, multi-digit multiplication, and time (think like what is two hours before this time? what time will it be in 7 hours? and how many hours between x time and y time?).

Jason:
Jason is back to reading the second book of the Divergent series. He's probably around 350 pages in so far, but has a little under half of the book to go.

For math, Jason has been working on order of operations, fractions, decimals, greater and less than, multi-digit multiplication, long division, and graphing. He is also getting three worksheets to do a day. He is a bit more reluctant to get started on his math, but he always does well. I think he is a bit of a perfectionist, though, so he wants everything to be perfect.

Shawn:
Shawn just finished a book today, Who Could That Be at This Hour? by Lemony Snicket. It was a pretty lengthy book at 258 pages, so I was very impressed with how well he did with it, too!

Shawn's been doing SO WELL on his math! He's been working on multi-digit multiplication, greater and less than, fractions, order of operations, and division. (As an aside, he really has blossomed during his time at home. He seems to like the looser structure of "home school," and I think is less, for lack of a better term, threatened by it. Shawn also has a perfectionist streak in him, and he does not like it when he gets something wrong. He had developed some pretty strong avoidance strategies by the time quarantine started, so we've been working hard trying to break some pretty bad habits he had developed. I'm proud to say that he is definitely like a different kid in this regard!)


So proud of all three of our guys!

Garden Update

Our little garden is still doing quiet well. It's been a lot of fun to watch it grow this summer!

Radishes:
I think we've harvested all of the radishes now. They were pretty spicy, so I was pretty much the only one who ate them. I'm not complaining, though! Yum!

Carrots:
They're still growing like crazy, but they aren't exactly big enough to pick yet. Soon, we hope.

Celery:
Due to some quality control issues with the planting (ahem), we're not exactly sure where the carrots stop and the celery begins. lol. I do think we have some growing in there, but I don't think they're ready to be picked yet either.

Peppers:
We've finally got some flowers and the beginnings of peppers!

Snow peas:
I think we're on the last of this crop. We picked a ton of snow peas. We still have a few snow peas on the vines and there are a few flowers, but I'm not sure how much more its got left in it.

Tomatoes:
We've got flowers! The plants, themselves, are definitely growing well. Shouldn't be too long before we get some tomatoes!

Strawberries:
I think there is a critter that is coming to eat our strawberries. I'll see a relatively nice one growing one day, but it's nowhere to be found the next. Grr.

Cute Big Boy Saturday

These two...

Friday Five

We've just finished week #19 of quarantine. 19 weeks...whoa.

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This week has been pretty lazy around these parts. It's been too chilly to swim, so we've been mostly indoors this week, too. The boys have spent lots of time playing with Legos, drawing, and playing on their iPads instead.

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Shawn's new Friday activity is to go for a drive. He had a taste of the world beyond our four walls, and now he wants to keep that tasting coming. LOL

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Jason has a YouTube channel that he is quite proud of. He mostly posts videos of him playing his games. He even has five "followers"! It's fun to talk to him about his stats, too. :)

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We had some arguing and fighting this week, so we proposed to the big boys that we could change the sleeping configuration around to separate them. Let's just say that they didn't think that was the best idea and are still together in the same room. Seems that they may just like each other a tiny bit more than they realized. Go figure. 🤷‍♀️

A Boy and His Cat

These two have finally developed a pretty sweet relationship. 💜

Waaaay Back Wednesday

This week, 5 years ago. He was 7 and so tiny!

Hard to Believe

Today I discovered the littlest's shoes fit on my feet. They are only a tiny bit big on his feet. Where did my baby go? He's only 9!

Camping

This last weekend, we managed to sneak away to go camping (totally socially distant, of course).

The boys loved the loft area. They spent much of their time up there when we
were in the cabin.

First camp fire of the trip.

Shawn and dad stayed at the cabin to tend our fire while Jason, Jack and I went to explore. The site was beautiful. This was the view from the hill above our cabin.

We were almost back from our stroll when we came across this guy.

He was just walking across the path like he owned the place. It was all I could do not to burn the whole place down and leave. LOL

Jason and dad making s'mores.

We came across this guy next to our cabin.

The boys took turns cracking some geodes we had.

They were surprisingly tough to open!

Here's Shawn in the loft area. He also thought it
was fun up there. He kept calling it "a crib." lol

We went for a short drive to the lake. This praying mantis hitched a ride on our windshield. The boys named it and everything. We almost had a new pet. haha

The park area near the lake.

We hiked a trail around the lake to check it out. We were searching for the perfect place to throw rocks into the water.

Water break. Jack is checking out an ant trail. Shawn is hunting for rocks.

We saw this cool flower while we were out.

As we were leaving the lake area, we saw this spot. Of course we had to stop and get a picture.

Then we saw a deer and her two fawns. They really do camouflage well, don't they?

It was a fun time and definitely a welcome change from the monotony of home!

Stinker!

Look at this kid's smile...

It's like he was doing something he shouldn't be doing...

Yep. That is exactly what he was doing! The stinker! LOL

Daily Chores

Daily chores are my favorite! lol