I have so many little matters to tell you of, that I cannot wait any longer before I begin to put them down.
Sep 14th, 2016 by ECM
Kaitlyn and Kelly had visited us before Henry, back when we lived in TO. Today they made it to Malibu! Henry was even cuter than when we last saw him in July.
I’m doing a pretty good job of getting these kiddos to the beach on an almost weekly basis of late.
Couch full of cousins! Poor Henry was sooooo tired by the time they left.
Playing Swallows and Amazons. It is about 60 degrees out, hence the coats.
Sep 8th, 2016 by ECM
I haven’t been very good about taking pictures now that school is back in full swing. On Wednesday, when the formal schoolwork was done, the big girls joined Janie with the Lumi-doh that Aunt Terri got us a long time ago (seriously, that stuff lasts forever!). I’m still trying to figure out how to deal with Janie all morning now that all the rest of the kids are doing formal school. She’s been pretty good about coloring for part of the day and loves to listen when I’m reading aloud, but she’s begging me to learn phonics, too, so that she can read books herself and be a big girl like Susie. Susie finishes her work pretty quickly but likes to linger and listen in on the big kids’ lessons rather than go off and play with her little sister. Meanwhile, the big two are jaded grade schoolers who think that recess is never long enough and wonder why I’m insisting on Latin AND French. So far, I am standing firm, confident that they will thank me in high school for adding a mere 20 minutes to their school day now.
Sep 8th, 2016 by ECM
Since the Hwangs drive even further than we do to get to church on Sundays, we often take advantage of being in the same place together outside of Community Group and grab lunch after church. Last week, I actually remembered to snap a picture of the boys at Chipotle. Tommy and Jonathan are total kindred spirits and love swapping book recommendations and talking about the deep sorts of things that 8 and 9 year old boys talk about…
Sep 2nd, 2016 by ECM
The kids got excited about castles as I was reading aloud their history overview, so they started building and I scrambled to pull up Our Island Story for them to listen to while they expand the castle. This year’s theme: Mommy can be flexible with lesson plans!
Sep 1st, 2016 by ECM
and just to be silly…
Aug 30th, 2016 by ECM
I keep forgetting to upload pictures as we’re madly enjoying our last week of break and I’m lesson planning for school. Here’s a little dump of our last days of summer!
Susie has really gotten confident in the water this year. Here she is, practicing her freestyle (she still needs to get her arms up and out more) while Elizabeth prepares to swim across to me. And look at Janie hanging out in the pink floatie with our friend Amanda Mae!
Our new charter school, Inspire, is already so much better than Golden Valley was. Besides more freedom and trust between the administration and parents and the extra $600/child we’re getting, they also have teachers organizing beach days and meet-ups on a weekly basis all over LA. Last Friday, we went down to a new beach in Santa Monica and made several new friends. And of course the kids loved the beach. We’ve been almost every week since getting back from the Midwest.
Inspire had a park day yesterday, complete with curriculum exchange (I finally cleared out some hand-me-downs that we’ll never use, and came home with about 20 books, including art books I’d just put on my amazon wishlist, Getting Started With Latin which I’ve been wanting to buy for years, a dozen childhood of famous Americans biographies (one of which Elizabeth sat down and read from cover to cover before dinner), two DK-type books about the ocean, and several children’s classics like The Secret Garden!) and a sample Shakespeare class from one of Inspire’s vendors. The kids LOVED it. Here they are, acting out Bottom from Midsummer Night’s Dream (Tommy and Elizabeth to the right, Susie just in front of the guy teacher). Unfortunately, the Shakespeare classes are all about an hour away from us (without traffic), so we can’t take them. But someday we will!
Aug 23rd, 2016 by ECM
Aug 21st, 2016 by ECM
Aug 20th, 2016 by ECM
I’m going to try to get more cousin pictures edited and uploaded this weekend…stay tuned!