Exploring Our New Home

In the midst of unpacking a thousand boxes, figuring out where to hang our many many portraits of the kids, painting bedrooms and bathrooms, updating and organizing our new home, and in between trips to our little beach as well as Navarre Beach (or the "big beach" as we call it), dips in our pool, and homeschooling, we've made a few trips out to explore our area.
Our new base, Hurlburt Field, has an "airplane park" right at the entrance that I think we'll be frequenting often.

The boys have never lost that infatuation with having another baby in the house.  They love Anna and always want to hold her hand, or hold her, or talk to her, or have her look at them.  In fact, they argue sometimes over who gets to have her attention.  And of course, she has gotten to that age where she wants to do things on her own and gets upset sometimes with them for crowding her so much. 

Leah asked Gabe to carry her baby and this is how boys carry babies...

Anna, who is now 20 months, walked all the way around this airplane park.  I was pretty impressed, but she is pretty determined that she should do whatever her siblings are doing. 

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While it is true that many many houses in Florida come with pools, we still are so thankful that we have one in our backyard.  The kids are in it nearly everyday still.

Gabe has gotten really good at swimming, but he tries so hard to keep up with his big brothers and I have to remind him to rest because he looks so out of breath sometimes.

This is Leah "jumping" in the pool, trying to be like her brothers.  She jumps off the step that is already in the water.  You seriously could barely even tell she's doing anything, but we clap anyways because she thinks she is so cool. 

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My dad (Grandpa White) visited over Labor Day weekend for a week and while we were slowed down by Tropical Storm Lee, (yes, welcome to Florida; enjoy your first named storm!) we still mangaged to get out and do some fun stuff.  Lee hit west of us a ways, so while we had strong winds and lots of rain, there were no evacuations or anything here.

Labor Day weekend is terrible timing for lots of rain, so most of the events around here were canceled, but the Greek Festival in Fort Walton Beach was indoors, so we drove over there in between rain bands.  Greek dancing, Greek lunch, Greek dessert, and lots of vendors' booths to window shop at.  We had a fun time.

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And then one day, we went and got a close up look at the storm, crazy-people-on-the-Weather-Channel style.  We drove over to Navarre Beach to see how big the waves were and how hard the wind was blowing. 

(Again, the storm was pretty far west of us so we weren't in danger.)

There was plenty of space in between the bands of rain and Navarre Beach is only about ten minutes from our house.  The boys were excited to see the waves. 

The boys thought it was neat that they could lean back a little bit without falling because the wind was holding them. 

The girls did not like the wind in their faces.

Especially Anna.

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And then Lee went north to rain on already flooded New England states (lots of prayers going up for them!) and we went back to our routine.  Eat, swim, sleep.  Repeat.

The storm cooled off the weather and our pool water, but Grandpa got in one last swim with the kids before he headed back south.

Have a great week!

Missing Friends

I'm missing this right now...

And this...

And these little friends...

And getting together every Thursday over the summer with more good friends for this...

And I know that before I know it, I'll be making memories to share with new friends in this new place. 

But forget the kids having a hard time with moves.  They were fine from day one.  And I thought I was too, but I think I'm at the point where the newness is wearing off and I'm seeing what is left, what is real.  It's been almost four weeks since we left our Texas friends and it's finally kicking in that this is where I am now; I've started a new season of my life, one I'm very happy with the location of, but it's still not easy to be completley content when so much is different. 

I'm excited for God's plans for us right now, where he has brought us to.  I'll trust that he has good things and good friends in store for us here. 

So I'll miss my friends from Texas, just like I missed my friends from Nebraska three years ago, but I know we'll find some here that we'll miss just as much when it's time to move on again.  I guess I just want finding them to happen quicker.

And It's Here...School Week 0 (Zero)

Gabriel started school this week.  He's officially a school-aged kid.  He's in kindergarten this year, but since he did the kinder curriculum last year for preschool, he's doing first grade this year.  As I've said before, I completely believe in "better late than early" but having two advanced big brothers, this kid was ready and willing to start, and he did great.  We kept the option open last year to take it slow and spread the kinder curriculum over more than a year, but he loved school and was eager to do it on time. 

I have the same willingness this year to let hime take longer than a year if need be.  I've done this first grade curriculum with Matthew and this is where they really start reading the hard stuff, learning all of our crazy phonics rules that may or may not apply but you pretty much have to figure it out by trial and error.  So we'll see what happens.  He is five with a November birthday and is already reading soft vowel words well.

I call this week zero because the older boys won't be starting until next week.  Yes, just two weeks after we've moved across the country from Texas to Florida.  I like to do something special for the first day of school but didn't get to it this week with Gabe (one week after moving), so I want to reserve the title of "First Day of School" for when I'm prepared for a little something special. 

So week zero for Gabe turned out to be a good week, taking about a half hour each day.  I went shopping for house stuff on Thursday, so we ended up doing both day four and day five school on Friday, but day five school for Gabe is strictly an exploration (science) day, so it's easy to make up whatever we need to from the week. 

For Bible, Gabe will be memorizing several verses from the book of Proverbs this year, and his reader is a simplified book of the Bible as well.  For some reason his head starts hurting whenever we work on memorizing though, but I at least get him to repeat the verse for me everyday. 

After Bible, Gabe works on his reading workbook, which for the first couple of weeks is just handwriting and letter sounds review.

He's also practicing even more handwriting to eventually make into a scroll when he's finished with all of the letters.

Speaking of scrolls, Gabe made a clay jar to replicate those used to store scrolls in the past.  It started out tall but ended up short and fat by the time it finished drying.  And the lid somehow got broken to pieces. 

After the phonics part of schooling, we move on to math, which has been a review this week as well.  We've only been doing 'number of the day', Gabe's 100 chart, calendar, and reviewing money so far.  He'll start his workbook next week.  Or I guess I should say he'll continue his workbook.  He was so excited about starting it when I ordered it (actually, he kept begging me to order it so he could do it), that I let him start it this summer. 

As we count up to 100 on his 100 chart, he collects a piece of corn in his cup.  Once he gets to ten pieces, he'll glue them to a craft stick and use it as a ten-counter.

For art this year, we are just going to be looking through some classical art books we have.  There is a drawing book also, but my kids draw so much for fun that they don't care for instructional art books.  The older boys still do one with their curriculum, because they can always improve their tecniques, but having Gabe do one as a requirement would cause a lot of battles I believe, as Gabe is the most stubborn of the boys.  But observing and talking about the painting in this book has been going well.

And science is always popular in this house.  Gabe's using a book called Things Outdoors for the first months of school and the first lesson was about dirt and animals who like dirt.  Good for a boy who always seems to get dirty!

The hands-on activity that went along with this week was a big hit with Gabriel and easy to do, which makes me happy.  We simply poured some honey on a piece of bread, set it next to an ant hill, and watched the ants go crazy eating it.  It was neat to see the first couple of ants see it, go back to the ant hole and tell his friends, and then tens of ants came streaming out. 

Of course Gabe wanted to taste the sweetness too.

I have to admit I was wondering if this would make our yard popular with the ant community in our little city.  Ughh, I've already been attacked once when walking barefoot to the mailbox.

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And that, my family and friends, was week zero of school at our house.

Have a great week!