Magic and Mayhem

Things are going much better this week (month) than last! Everything is feeling more hopeful and good things are beginning to do their best to outweigh the bad.

Here’s a few of the things we’ve been up to this week…

• Jack and Anna each started a month-long horse camp that meets a couple of hours on Wednesdays and Thursdays.  Jack goes in the morning and Anna goes after lunch.  They really love it so far.
• We explored a secluded park with a 100+ year old abandoned stone house and wonderful trails.
• Jack, Anna and Victoria are all devouring books from the library like crazy.
• Fiona is happily saying lots of da-da-da-da and flapping and trying to scoot/crawl.
• We finally got some herbs and veggies and have started our garden at last.  Of course, the morning after I planted my beautiful new herb garden by the back door, the city came and dug it all up and put it in a pile by the driveway, but that’s another story!  And Daryl lovingly got down in the dirt and rescued all those baby plants and helped me do it all over again. 
• The oldest 3 kids and I watched Super 8.  It was great fun!  It’s a little scary at times but it was a really good movie.
• Anna is doing a lot of Spanish on her iPod.
• Victoria has been researching all sorts of subjects.  She teaches me more than I teach her these days.
• Alex and I have been doing speech practice together to work on some of his letter sounds.  We’re also doing phonics and alphabet fun, plus he loves doing addition to pass the time.
• We all went to the art museum at the Washington Pavilion in Sioux Falls and the kids played in the art room.
• Alex, Fiona and I went to the science museum in Sioux Falls.
• Daryl, Anna and Jack taught old fashioned music and games at the Hubbard House in Mankato.
• Victoria is still doing a ton of art.
• Victoria, Anna and Jack are still doing oodles of photography.
• The middle three kids are spending lots of time outside with water play — water balloons, water guns, the kiddie pool…
• And so on and so forth!

Here’s a collage of pictures since I’m too lazy to blog them all (and there’s a happy baby flapping in my arms as I type!).