Death of a Mailbox

Last night, we had a bit of vandalism at our house. A few hours after I put the kids to bed, I heard someone out front in our entryway area, past the front gate. When the motion detecting lights in the driveway went on, 2 people ran away. As I went for the phone to call the police, my neighbor came over ringing the bell to give me the information that I needed to give the police. How on Earth did I get so lucky as to move into another neighborhood with such great neighbors? As it turns out, the vandals jumped onto my mailbox, breaking the post in half. When Joshua was checking it out this morning, he told me that we had termites. He said, "I think those bugs that eat wood have eaten our mailbox post." I thought that was a pretty clever deduction for a 6 year old. I didn't tell him that some punk kids messed with our stuff, because I thought that was too heavy of a burden for him to bear - I don't want him to be afraid in our home.

A Walk in the Park

Daniel wasn't feeling well all day Friday and most of the day Saturday. By the late afternoon, he finally started perking up a bit, so I loaded the crew up for a walk at the park. Grandma and Grandpa met us up there for the last little bit of our walk.The littler kids wanted to bring the strollers to take their baby's for a walk.

I'm not sure when we transitioned from me pushing them in the stroller to them now pushing their own strollers. It makes for a longer walk around the park.

When it got dark, we went up to the shopping center and grabbed some Subway. Daniel was thrilled to much some apples. Joshua was thrilled to eat Daniel's sandwich.

Our Return to Homeschooling

I meant to write about this last night, but got interrupted by a night full of our youngest child vomiting. Yuck.

We've been batting around the decision to return to homeschooling for a few months now. Truthfully, we haven't been thrilled with having the kids back in outside-of-the-home school. There haven't been any huge issues, but a ton of little things that slowly add up to leading us to feel as though we need to take more responsibility in armoring our children before sending them out to the battle. That's what it boils down to - helping our kids build up their strengths.

Some of our plans are still pretty foggy, and we aren't 100% sure about how we are going to pull it off. Keith is pretty excited about the whole thing. With good reason to be, since he'll be doing most of the schooling with the kids. We've gotten a few great suggestions for homeschooling materials and are now wading through all the information.

We used Calvert in the past. We'd like to try something different this time around.

I'm really interested in reading about what other families are using for their kids, whether it be a boxed curriculum or on-line.

When we narrow down our plan, we'll be sure to share it. For now, the kids will finish out the school year at their school. Daniel starts full-time daycare on Monday with a facility that I am very pleased with. I return to work on Monday as a full-time employee for one of the hospitals in our area. This is an important step to secure health care benefits for the family while we transition from being a military family back to being a civilian family.

Game Night and More Changes to our Routine

Joshua has decided that Thursday nights will be game nights. With all of our big changes going on, the kids now have a longer day at school and aftercare. So with just a few precious hours together in the evening, Game Night seems like a great use of our time.
We got Joshua the game Blokus for Christmas. We tried it out tonight and it was an instant hit. Megan couldn't quite get it, but Joshua was all over it. It really is the kind of game that's right up his alley.

Keith and I are now researching our homeschool options for the kids next year. We're both really excited about teaching the kids together. We'll be teaching Joshua 1st/2nd grade and teaching Megan Kindergarten.

Saturday Night Children's Program

Saturday night we went to a children's program that was taking place while Grandma and Grandpa were at a banquet for Grandpa's work. The program was fun. The clown was really enjoying herself going around making balloon creations for the kids.

After the clown, the science guy was ready to start his show. He did quite a few really cool experiments with the kids.


It got a little wild in there, as there were many kids that just weren't able to control themselves. When Joshua started crying because he wasn't chosen to ride on the hover craft, I decided it was time to go. We are trying to find the right way to deal with the crying from Joshua. We've noticed that it is starting to become manipulative...not just crying because he's disappointed, but crying because he knows that the other grown-ups in the room are going to jump through hoops to ensure that he enjoys himself. I guess Keith and I have an unusual view on that. We feel as though we provide the opportunity to have a great experience and it's up to Joshua to enjoy it. If he's crying or trying to manipulate the situation, then it's time to go. I know it's not the popular train of thought among our peers, and sometimes it makes it really hard to follow through. We follow up with plenty of cuddles and discussions about emotions and that it's okay to feel sad, disappointed, unhappy, angry, etc. Boys are sooo complex.

Lunch with the Cirigliano Family

Whew, I'm still catching up from the weekend. After church, we had the pleasure of sharing our lunch table with the Cirigliano family. I don't think I've seen them since Amy and Joe got married about 9 years ago. Now, between the two of our families there are SIX adorable kiddos! The Holloways and Ciriglianos hanging out on the porch in the swings.

Megan and Sophia. I was coming back up the stairs with Daniel and Megan and Sophia were checking out the pictures hanging in the hallway.

Aren't they cute? They look like they could be brothers. I really should have gotten Daniel in this picture, too, since he was also wearing an argyle sweater.

Fernbank Museum of Natural History

Friday afternoon last week, Grandma and Grandpa took us to the Fernbank Museum of Natural History. It was pretty warm and loud in there, so I was glad we were planning on hanging out for just a couple of hours. Each of the kids took a turn at making a flat penny.

They are really into the flat pennies. We also made some flat pennies at Stone Mountain.

This museum was chosen because of Daniel's love for dinosaurs. He loved seeing the huge dinosaurs in the main exhibit hall.

There was a really cute Arctic animal exhibit filled with polar bears and penguins. Each of the kids took turns on the penguin slide.

Daniel didn't want to go down face first. He knows our rule about feet first on the slides!

Here are some shots of the huge dinosaurs.