First Day

So today was Taryn's first day of full time school. She had thought about it all summer and decided that this was what she wanted to do this year. It's obviously not what I would have chosen for her, but I felt like she was old enough that she knew what she was getting into. I told her that the reason we homeschool is so that she can be in charge of her own education and if this is what she chooses, she's still in charge. The more excited she became, the more I became excited for her. I started looking forward to not policing fighting kids all day and allowing her to have a new challenge. She's been a little bored since our unschooling experiment, and I think she wanted something more. We agreed that she would commit to going until Christmas break, and then we'd re-evaluate.

She is in the 5th grade this year. She's in a class with 2 teachers who split the day between them. Taryn has always responded better to male teachers, so I was glad that one of her teachers is a man. Taryn says he's old and she expected him to have more hair.

Last night she was so nervous about going. She says, "all the other kids know what it's like, I've never done this before." All I could say was that's true, and it's ok to be scared. This morning she woke up earlier than she needed to and was so excited to go she left for the bus 15 minutes early.

She didn't want me to pick her up at the bus stop like the other mom's do, so I waited at the front door. She met me with big smiles and said "that was so fun!".

I loved hearing about her day. She is so much more independent. She's brave and excited about life. I'm excited for her this year and I hope it continues to be fun for her.

Fun with Nature

A little over a week ago the kids found a small green caterpillar on Vic's broken bird house. We looked it up in our new handy dandy Fun with Nature book and discovered it is a cabbage butterfly caterpillar. It sooned formed a crysalis and then we thought it had died. Today they caught another frog and went to put it in the habitat and found the "hatched" cabbage butterfly!
It was really a spontaneous fun event.
These pictures are blury but you get the idea.

You can see the crysalis on this piece of wood. It's that little tiny splotch on the right side.

It's not great visual documentation but it was such a surprise that I wanted to share!

Kids camping trip

Northwest Trek

Yesterday we went to Northwest Trek with our neighbors. I've been there 3 times, and this was by far the most interesting. We were able to see so many animals, and also some new baby animals too.
On the tram the cariboo and deer were so close to the cars! It was really incredible.

We saw three sets of deer with baby fawns.

I didn't get a great picture, but my favorite thing we saw were these baby racoons! You can't even believe how cute they were.

It was a really fun day!

Correction

The lady at the triathalon gave me the wrong time for Taryn's race. Her time was actually 19:23. She still beat her time from last time!

Triathalon!!

Taryn participated in the women's fitness triathalon again this year. It's a 75 yard swim, 2 mile bike ride, and 1/2 mile run. Last year her time was 21:26, and her goal was to just beat that this year. Her time today was 9:23 and she was the 2nd place girl. She is pretty happy and we're so proud of her.

Erik's birthday

Erik's birthday was a big success this year. I was so relieved because last year was kind of a nightmare. He cried everyday for two weeks because he couldn't wait, and then when his birthday arrived, nothing was good enough and he was horribly dissapointed. This year he was so much more patient and he loved every gift he got. He wanted to invite some neighborhood friends over and have a very simple party (yay!).

This is a picture of some of the bionicles that Erik purchased the day before his birthday with money from Delaney and his great-grandparents. He spent almost two hours following every detail on the instructions to put this "ship" together. I was very impresssed. Taryn kept bugging him and he kept telling her to back off and finally he said, "I am trying not to yell at you but you are not listening to me, please don't touch my things!". For those of us that know and love Erik, know that this is a huge restraint on his part not to hit her and call her some nasty names.



We were supposed to have a water party in the back yard, but it just didn't get warm enough. So we brought the kids inside for some last minute make-shift games and ice-cream.

Erik made a pin the helmet on the clone trooper game.

One thing Erik was really excited about was having a dance off. I tried to steer him away from this idea because I just didn't know how it would pan out. He wanted everyone to have their own turn in the spot light and then they all danced together. Almost everyone participated, I was very surprised and pleased. It was a lot of fun.