Around Here Week 38: 09/15-21

A glimpse into what it is like to live in our home just this minute.

Intentional Outdoor Hours: 621+ hours (of 1000)
Up 18 hours this week thanks to some beautiful weather. Between sports and trying to snag a few hours outside when we get home from school, we're still soaking up as much time as we can before the snow starts to fly (eek!)

Reading Born a Crime by Trevor Noah and still loving it (so much that I used a quote from the book to open our Hispanic Heritage Month study in Spanish 3/4!) I also borrowed Children of Eden by Joey Graceffa from a student (thanks Emily!)

Braiding hair for the girls multiple days this week because Gem found out if she sleeps in french braids, her hair is wavy in the morning - which is Gemma's current favorite hairstyle. So of course, Violet wanted in on the action - although Vi just keeps her braids in all day because she likes it out of her face.

Loving the sunrises and sunsets - fall brings the most beautifully painted skies!

Enduring the destructive threes with Rustman. If he was our only child, or one of two children - we would be out of our minds right now. But one of four somehow lessens the blow a bit (I don't know how it works - lower standards maybe - LOL). He climbs to unsafe places, swings everything around like a weapon, puts make up all over his own face, dumps tubs full of toys, sneakily eats his weight in chocolate and snacks, writes on walls and tables, cuts post-its into 9 thousand tiny pieces, leaves play doh out to harden in all the places, gets a huge attitude over what he wants but can't have, and stays awake all hours of the night. B and I are just like, 'oh yeah, threenager again' and continue to march on with as much calmness as possible in our explanations of good behavior, and disciplining, and making him clean it up....because thank the good Lord, this is just a stage mommas and daddas; hang on for dear life.

Organizing our first teacher potluck lunch with the Sunshine Committee. Okay, so maybe the Sunshine Committee only consists of me and my school bestie Renee so far - but we're a committee. hah! It was a great first lunch potluck and we had a lot of interest in continuing it as a monthly event - so hooray for community and friendships at work!

Volunteering with the three youngest at the CT color run on Saturday morning. We held down the last station on the run (as is our tradition) and we all had fun cheering on and spraying all the runners before the very last leg of their 5K. While we were at the run, Brandon and Grey participated in the Youth pheasant hunt with our Gilmore cousins. Grey even got a white pheasant that would have been a beautiful full mount, but he hit it right in the chest and there was no salvaging it. So, instead, I just have a pheasant head in my freezer now....faaaaaaantastic.  #outdoorsmanmomma

Fall Sporting with a very sunny, very hot game at Ferndale on Sunday. My cheerleaders did a great job hanging in there despite the sun/heat and our minors team gave another whooping' with a 62-0 win! We had practices and then participated in Youth Night at the Varsity game on Friday. Each youth player/cheerleader got announced and then got to stand on the field before the start of the game and cheer in the football players!

Teaching personal adjectives and ser to Spanish 1 including a walk around writing about celebrities and introducing them to Gimkit (always a huge hit). Spanish 2 continued to learn about Hispanic food and practiced stretching out their writing. Spanish 2 honors worked their way through their novel Tumba and had a great time creating storyboards to review two chapters (they were hilarious and students were so engaged). Spanish 3/4 finished the Biblioburro unit and started a month long study in honor of Hispanic Heritage Month. We had a four day week with an in-service day on Friday.

Making gravy meatballs in the crockpot over mashed potatoes, spaghetti for the kids while B and I had shrimp alfredo (gah, so so good). We ordered in pizza & wings on Saturday night when our Gilmore cousins were visiting and we all ate outside on the patio with a fire.