Our Week: 15

Our life.

One week at a time.

2012.

Week 15.

This week. . .

(4.8.12 -4.14.12)

With family in town to visit, our school work kind of just made it's way in to our days whenever it could.  We skipped math, spelling, art, english and anything else except Bible, history, and science this week.  And we would have just taken a complete break except I really want to finish our school year.  Four more weeks now!

So, this week in school...

• We finished up the book of 1 John in Bible time.
• We read more about the discoveries of the Americas in the 1400s.
• We read about the Renaissance and how if produced a new way of thinking...more people thinking for themselves, which also shifted a lot of things from God to self...humanism.  One activity scheduled that we didn't get to but I'd like to next week is painting like Michelangelo did when he painted the Sistine Chapel...laying on our backs and painting above us.  I'm pretty sure the kids will enjoy that.
• In Astronomy, we read about Saturn.  It happens to be Christopher's favorite planet but is the one that we spent the least amount of time on since we were so busy.  I think we'll do some more hands-on stuff this week along with learning about the next two planets.

So...no pictures of school but lots of pictures of "field trips".  Love that we can call them that!

Chris was able to take off three days of work so we could have more time for the fun stuff to do around here.  Wednesday we went to the Navy base in Pensacola to watch the Blue Angels practice.  I was surprised that there were probably a couple thousand people there to do the same.  The girls don't like how long the jets are, so I ended up taking them inside the nearby Naval Museum, where the guys and Grandma joined us later to have a look around.

After the museum we stopped for lunch in  Pensacola Beach and then went over to the end of the barrier island to Fort Pickens.

Here we are exploring the remains for Fort Pickens, used during the Civil War to protect the Pensacola Bay area.  The north actually controlled this fort even though it's down in the south.  We'll be learning about that era in history next year, so maybe we'll head back out there then.

And it seems like we found wild blackberries to eat everywhere we went with the grandparents!

Gotta love their imaginations...this was an airplane in their minds.

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We also rented a pontoon boat that week and cruised around the sound (the water between the mainland and the barrier island).  The boys have been wanting to do this since we moved here, but I'm glad we kept putting it off until family was here.  I'm not sure we can handle being on the boat with the kids on our own.  Grandma held Anna the whole time because she didn't like all the wind, and I spent a lot of time making sure the kids were sitting so they wouldn't go over board.  It probably didn't help that I did the emergency preparedness section of the saftey course Chris had to take before we could rent the boat.  Reading about everything that could go wrong is not the best thing for a slighty over protective momma to do! 

But it was an amazing boat ride and is definately on the to-do list when we have family visit again.

He's not actually driving the boat...it was turned off and anchored at this point.  (Just in case anyone is worried that we are being unsafe...I'm pretty sure it's against the rules for a six year old to drive the boat.) 

Same goes for this picture.

Anna decided it was better to just sleep through the whole thing.

But the boys were excited to jump overboard and swim around for a bit.

As I was sitting there toward the end of the boat ride, I thought about how great the day was...how beautiful God made everything.  And I told God how perfect it would be if he just added some dolphins to our day. 

And boy, did He deliver.  I didn't get pictures because I was trying to video tape at the time, but at least a dozen dolphins started popping up out of the water around us on our way back to the dock.  Some were almost right next to our boat and the kids were so crazy excited.  We've been driving near and over the water for eight months since we moved here and had yet to see any, much to the boys' disappointment. 

And it was a great sight for the grandparents from Arizona as well.

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We also headed over to Okaloosa Island to go to the "Big Beach" as we call it.  We understimated a Saturday during the spring and how crowded it would be.  And we didn't check the conditions since it was a beautiful day.  The flag was red, which meant the waves were big and the current was strong.  The older boys had a blast boogie boarding in the waves, Leah spent her time running away from the waves in the surf, and Anna preferred to stay up by Daddy in the sand.

It worked out well that Gabriel had a birthday party to go to at the same time.  I would not have been comfortable with letting him go into the strong current, even as close in as the boys stayed.  But the older boys were fine.  I think it was more of a yellow flag condition while we were there anyways.

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In addition to the Pensacola activites and the beaches, we also went up north to Milton to where the grandparents were staying at a RV park in their camper.  We spent an afternoon with them at the camper and swimming in a nearby river.  Chris took the boys and Leah back up there later and camped with his dad and stepmom while Anna and I stayed home. 

It was sweet to stay home with my sweet baby girl.  She was very sad when she was left behind with me, but a sucker and a bath made her feel better.  We hung out in our quiet house until bedtime and she just missed her sister so much she couldn't go to sleep.  I rocked her, which was so nice since do it so seldom lately.  She again didn't want to go into her crib so I rocked her again and after she was sleeping, I just held her for a while, taking in her sweet smell and enjoying feeling her belly breathing against mine.  I thought letting her sleep in bed with me would be a perfect ending to our evening by ourselves, but it didn't quite work out that way and I rememered why we don't have our children sleep in bed with us.  Waking up every hour with toddler feet and arms smacking me awake isn't the most relaxing night. 

They are so used to having a room mate while they sleep that I can understand why she didn't want to sleep alone.  I'm not looking forward to the next time Chris is TDY or deployed and I have to sleep by myself. 

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Have a great week!