Practicing Church on the Couch.

We arrived back home from church a couple of hours ago, and do you know what my kids won the privilege of doing as soon as we were home? Sitting on the couch to practice being back at church. This ingenious activity is something my mother used to have us five terrible Beck siblings do while we were growing up, and now my lucky kids have earned the right to the same tradition. 

I'm thrilled to be going back to church. I really enjoyed home church a lot, but it's time to be back. Getting my kids back into the routine is going to take a few weeks though. Today, Gwen wondered why she couldn't crawl underneath all of the pews to go see her friends. Gwen--the SIX year old. When was that ever allowed, you ask? Never. I don't know where she got that idea from. The three big kids fought over two toy cars. And then Harris jerked on the hymn book holder in front of us and it came out of the nails on the pew. And church is right when Beck's morning nap usually is. So they were all out of sorts. 

We brought an elderly church member with us, and I'm sure she was impressed with our great behavior.

But the girls did have nice hair for it.

Dan taught a terrific Come Follow Me lesson. The guy has the best object lessons. I will sit and talk at our children until they pass out, but Dan gets them involved, and we all learned a ton. This week he focused on the Law of Moses being fulfilled in Christ.

Going up the first set of stairs in our house were the pieces of paper with the Ten Commandments on them. The girls read each one, and we discussed how they point people to the Savior and how they still apply today.

On the landing, Dan told the girls that the next set of stairs would contain Christ's law as given in the Book of Mormon (also in the Bible). The lower stairs and Law of Moses pointed the people to the Lord, but the Law of Christ is an even higher law (hence the higher stairs) which takes you even closer to Jesus Christ. 

And then they went up the higher stairs and read elements of the higher law. There's just something about that verse where the Savior talks about never even being angry that gets to me. Being angry is probably the easiest emotion for me to be. I love life; I'm a happy person. But it's so easy to get mad when things don't go well, the house is out of order, etc. It truly takes discipline and understanding of the Savior to not immediately go to that place of anger.

The big big news of our week was--June is riding her bike without training wheels! We have been working on this for yearsssssssssssss.

We had to get pretty inventive for this to happen. We have a balance bike she used when she was younger, but she didn't grasp the concept. Then we bought a bike with training wheels, and she could ride it but still struggled with leg strength to peddle AND keep balance. A couple of weeks ago, Dan realized she was ready for the balance bike again but it was way too small. So he removed the pedals and training wheels from her bike and made a bigger balance bike for her. For the first time in years, she didn't dread when I said it was "bike time". She would kick off the ground to get momentum and then could keep her legs in the air for a really long time while she coasted down the hill. So Dan put the pedals back on, and she could totally balance herself while peddling.

We still have our work to do. Her leg strength is still such that she cannot go up hills. But we're that much closer.

Other updates:

Ever since our excursion to the apple orchard, Beck requests an apple or two A DAY. Not cut up either. That would be for true babies. He gnaws on them and sometimes even eats the core before I can grab it from him. Yes, that is bad parenting at play.

Lots of neighborhood walks with friends as soon as they arrive home from school.

No idea.

And we are putting shutters on the big windows of our house. We did the bottom window yesterday and were attempting to do the top when we realized we had the wrong size for the top. So now it's just uneven and driving me crazy.

The End.

Johnny Appleseed.

We are home schooling this year. I'm not super nervous about the kids getting covid at school, but rather I didn't want to deal with the hassle of the back and forth of regular school vs. online school should the schools open and close throughout the year. Plus, June faced some challenges with the autism program here, and I've been interested to see if changing the method of her education would be helpful or not.

So we are doing our own thing--not virtual learning or anything to do with the school district. I admit this was a tough decision, one that Dan and I went back and forth on all summer. I say Dan, but really it was me. Every day my answer changed, and he would always reply with "Sounds great; let's just make a decision and STICK TO IT." 

So I would promise to stick to it and then would change my mind. I have researched about home school so much I could write a dissertation, but was nervous about my own ability to carry it out. I would picture myself meeting strangers and having them ask where my kids go to school, and my having to say, "We home school" and I would feel sick saying those words out loud. Because it seemed too weird. The idea of actually filling out paperwork to withdraw my kids from public school made me ill. Then I would do more research and get excited about the idea again. And then I had really-really-no-going-back-now-do-or-die decided to home school and had ordered books and started paperwork and then had a bad day with the kids where I lost my temper and backed out. And then while we were in Florida, I felt so much peace about home schooling that I flipped back AGAIN, and had to fill out all of the paperwork while we were on vacation. It was a little crazy, and Dan was more than supportive of my indecisive antics.

I've learned a lot about myself in the process. My inability to make decisions plagues me and hurts my progression. It's definitely given me a lot to think about and change.

So we started to home school a couple of weeks ago. And the first two days were terrible. I know June's principal fairly well, and I thought about calling him up and saying "Never mind--I'm bringing her in fifteen minutes!" but I didn't.

I had to remind myself that the first day of anything is usually terrible. And also sometimes the second.

And it's been pretty great ever since. Not perfect, not without hitches and not necessarily something I'm committing to for more than this year. But we can do a year.

We studied Johnny Appleseed this past week and went to an apple orchard as a field trip.

And afterward, we bought a fresh apple pie and a shoofly pie from the bakery and came home and enjoyed.

The truth is, only Dan enjoyed the apple pie. No one else likes it. We love lots of apple things, but not pie. So he was the winner of everyone's leftover apple pie. But the shoofly pie was a winner. If you don't know what that is, you need to visit Amish Country and get some Pennsylvania Dutch cooking in you! It's like a pecan pie without the pecans.

Today's Come Follow Me lesson was brought to us by Dan. Yes, this is a spiritual lesson even though it resembles the scary Scarecrow scene from Batman Begins.

You know the game--mask the person, spin the chair and then have them follow your directions to avoid upcoming obstacles.

The end goal was to successfully sit in a chair without falling on the floor.

The moral was--Follow the prophet! He knows the way! Or as my kids used to sing the song when they were too little to know better--Follow the prophet, and he'll go away! Sigh. Parenting is hard.

I don't know why June was wearing one of my snow gloves for the game, but I also don't know why any of my kids do any of the things they do. I'm going to put that in my parenting book I'm writing and I'm sure it will fly off the shelves for being the only honest parenting book ever published.

The End.

The Tower Hike.

 We've been back from Florida for awhile now, and I'm going to try to get back to regular blogging.

We came back to a different neighborhood. We live in a new development, and many houses were started while we were gone, and a whole new road was completed.

Harris has decided to join the world of scootering, and much to my happiness, does not mind a hand-me-down princess scooter. 

We have not lived in Florida for five years, but I'm still surprised by the seasons up here in the Northeast. And then spending some time down there again threw me off even more. I always expect that it will be warm in March (it's soooo not) and that it will stay hot through October (it so will not). But it's been a very pleasant mid 70s, and I'm loving it. And trying not to dread the upcoming winter. I promised Dan I would "try to get into it" this year, which will be a hard goal to achieve because there are no specific parameters. Does this involve smiling every time I freeze my buns off as I scrape my windshield? Does it mean leaping in the air with glee every time I go for a run and can't feel my face? Do I have to make snow angels sans clothing in order to prove my "getting into it-ness"? I know not. 

But I'm totally great with autumn, and so we've been late-summer/autumn baking this week, which involves lots of zucchini.

Zucchini bread, muffins and cake have all been on the menu this week.

And we went for a hike. There's a famous local hike that involves a site-seeing tower at the end that has been recommended to us many times. The tower has been closed due to Covid until just recently, so we took advantage and went. We had a neighbor with us, and I was quickly reminded that I'm much more protective of other people's kids than my own when they are under my supervision. My kids fell on the hike (there was a steep hill), and I was my usual nurturing self ("you're fine you're fine you're fine"), but when our friend fell, I picked him up and carried him and worried that I wasn't being a good enough caretaker. 

We arrived at the tower, and I was excited to climb the stairs to the top. I actually love stairs. But then we saw this:

The down arrow is probably confusing. There was an "up" side and "down" side, and I took a picture of the down.

Yeah, a ladder! No stairs. It was apparent that one of us would have to stay down with the baby ("I volunteer as tribute!"), and the other would get to lug a bunch of kids up the ladder. I tried my best to convince the boys to stay down with me and nearly succeeded. They went up a rung or two, got scared and came back down with tears in their eyes. I was relieved because Dan plus the two girls would be a much easier scenario. But at the last second, the boys joined back in the group and begged to go. So Dan plus an 8 year old, 6 year old, 4 year old, and 3 year old made the trek up the very tall tower.

As the baby and I waited down below, other families arrived to climb the tower. Each and every single time, they would approach the inside and exclaim, "A ladder!?!?! Where are the stairs?" And then they would debate whether they were going to climb it or not. 

Usually the dad would say, "Well we all need to do it. We didn't drive and hike all the way up here for nothing!" And then someone else would say, "I hate enclosed spaces!" or "My equilibrium can't handle that!"

And I always felt obligated to inform them that my husband was in there with 92384727 kids, and they were taking a really long time and would be holding everyone up. I hated to add to the family conflict already taking place, but also wanted them to know what they were in for.

Every time one of our kids arrived at one of the "windows" (slits in the wall), they would stick their head in and tell me how awesome it was. Dan never stuck his head out. I don't think he thought the whole thing was super awesome.

At the top:

When they all came back down, they said that they loved it, and even Dan said it was worth it. He's a champ.

And here is our lovely Sunday photo from this morning. Harris was in timeout because he wouldn't stop screaming, Beck was down for a nap, and Gwen didn't want to take a picture.

The End.