Feb. 22, 2008 - The Medieval Times Great Feast
Izzy and Noah's Medieval Feast was yesterday! It was the culmination of a 6-week class where they learned about Medieval times and did some fun arts and crafts!
This was Rosie's first feast! I got her costume off eBay for $4.00. Hopefully she will be able to use it for All Saints Day next year as well!

As has become our tradition, one of my sons was the bishop at the feast. Noah added his own flare this year. He could give the sign of the cross in Latin!


He got to sit at the head table too.


He was really into it.


You don't want to disagree with Bishop Noah!

Izzy. Izzy is just... I don't know. She takes my breath away sometimes. She is so beautiful, sweet, kind and loving. She escorted guests to their chairs. She also let it be known that she was the palace's midwife.



Both kids were "knighted"


and even Rosie had a blast!

See Medieval Feast Slide show
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Feb. 21, 2008 - High School woes
Teaching high school this year to Sam has certainly been a challenge. I had hoped that he would take on the responsibility for his own education if I gave him guidelines (and deadlines). But that hasn't always happened. Sometimes he skips things just because he does not feel like doing them!
On Tuesday, I discovered that Sam was TWO WEEKS behind on his history and I thought maybe it wasn't because he was lazy or incapable, but maybe he simply did not know how to work through a textbook and workbook by himself. I told Sam that he was going to have to make up THREE WEEKS worth of history this week, but that I would help him catch up. So I spent most of the day Tuesday helping Sam get through two chapters of Christ the King, Lord of History. These chapters dealt primarily with Cortez through LaSalle.
As I read the text too him I became enthralled with the stories. I think tis is a very well written and interesting text book (as texts go) and I found lots of opportunities to stop and discuss much of what was going on with him. Long story short, we made it up to Chapter 6 - which is the chapter he is supposed to work on this week. I'm hoping to find some library films to help Sam as well, maybe some that we can even watch this weekend!
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Feb. 7, 2008 - Grace Under Pressure
As expected the end of the week is getting busier and busier and full of extraordinary pressure. Mr. Pete is super busy at work, Calvin has his swimming sectionals TOMORROW, I still have one more speech to write for Saturday and of course, there is standing in front of that unknown crowd of engaged couples on Saturday, and last but not least my mom's 80th birthday is tomorrow but we are having her party here on Sunday! Besides all of the above I have my regular work and homeschooling stuff to do.
However, that doesn't mean homeschooling has to be the regular stuff! Today we put aside academics for a prolonged lesson on Lent and then our annual Lenten wreath for our table. This year I wanted to make the braided thorn wreath super big!! SO we tripled the recipe. Here's what we did and how it turned out.

Mixing the dough.
After braiding the wreath, we all helped put in the toothpick thorns.



Gabe takes a break.

Our final product!

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Jan. 7, 2008 -
Well - I made it! I survived the first day after Christmas break and even got in a bit of exercise!!
I reviewed all of Sam's work that he needs to complete for his first year of high school and he is progressing well in Algebra and literature of all things! Not so great in Science and History but we'll keep working on it.
Noah is my little work horse and he got all of his assignments and completed them all too!
Gabe has improved so much in math that I really think I can start letting him work more independently. This second half of the year I want to step up his reading skills. He told me today he would like to go to Hoban High School, which is our local Catholic High School. I told him if he can get a scholarship, he can go. I suddenly saw much more incentive! Let's see if that carries through.
Izzy got through Math and a little reading. I will start with her tomorrow.
The kids went with me to run in this gorgeous weather! Sam 2.6 miles in 30 minutes. He said he felt nauseous when we were done so he knew he got in a good walk! Noah ran almost 2 miles. Izzy ran 1.3 miles and then felt whipped. I walked 1.3 miles in 30 minutes and felt pretty good. I hope to eventually get in 2.5 miles in 30 minutes.
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Jan. 3, 2008 - Homeschooling Through Medieval Times
Homeschooling through Medieval Times

One of the things I did want to keep going during the Christmas holidays was the children's literature class. Since we just finished the The Martha Years Set (Little House in the Highlands, Far Side of the Loch, Down to the Bonny Glen, Beyond the Heather Hills)
Our community center has a class on Medieval times every two years. Sam has taken it and so has Gabe.

This year it is Izzy and Noah's turn. So in preparation, I decided to take the children through Karen Cushman's historical novels - The Midwife's Apprentice
I blogged about the controversy surrounding the Midwife's Apprentice before. The discussion is here.
I still love the Midwife's Apprentice and am looking forward to reading it next week. I think Izzy will like this book best of all.
Izzy did NOT like Catherine called Birdy but Noah and Gabe enjoyed it very much. I liked how Catherine marked time in her journal by mentioning the feast day and what it commemorated in each of her entries. I told the boys that some people still write the name of the feast on letters and cards that they write and I thought that was a lovely habit to get into. I don't think Izzy appreciated the fact that she would not get to choose her own husband and I also think it bothered her that Catherine did not have much love or respect for her father and some of her brothers. Perhaps the part about the mother being sick after having a baby (as well as mention that she had lost many other babies before) bothered Izzy as well. Or maybe the fact that she is only 8 put this novel a little beyond her. Somehow it did not engage her, but it did her 9 and 12 year old brothers.
The all enjoyed Matilda Bone, however, I would not recommend that book to a Catholic family without a parent to give a lot of support and explanation. Karen Cushman wrote some subtle anti-Catholic things in her first two novels, but in this third book I felt she took quite a few swipes at Catholicism. Nonetheless, I think I was able to turn a negative into a positive as I explained to the kids that as Catholics are imperfect people, we can't expect all of the Catholic characters in our books to be perfect either.
Matilda is far from perfect. She has been raised and educated most of her life by Father Leufredus, and while her education has taught her to seek "higher things" one could say that she is so heavenly minded that she is no earthly good! Father Leufredus basically abandons her at the home of Peg the bone setter to work as an assistant, however, Matilda has no idea how to cook, clean, or even go to the market and she tends to look down on people who do. In the end Matilda does come to value some of the skills and the education she obtains by living and working with Peg but it is a slow process. Matilda Bone is a little anti-Catholic, but it pokes fun at higher education and lofty physicians as well.
However, for my purposes of introducing my children to the way of life people had back then, these historical novels have worked out very well and I am very pleased that at least in some way, we kept learning fun over Christmas!
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Dec. 17, 2007 -
Today as a homeschool we started to read Matilda Bones in preparation of the Midieval art class starting next month. We also read the story of Samson and Ruth as well as Matthew's Genology for Jesus! I got all the academics done for Noah and Gabe. I'll catch Izzy up tomorrow.
Sam spent most of his time reading White Fang,
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Dec. 17, 2007 - Art Show
I have truly been blessed in my homeschooling to have a local community center with wonderful art classes available to the community. For the past five years or so my children have had the opportunity to take classes in arts and crafts, drawing, clay and ceramics, and studying artists and emulating their styles. It has been a wonderful experience for them and a real time saver for me in that I could use this as part of our art curriculum.
This year, our art teacher, Miss Alice, is expecting a baby. (Miss Alice is really a nice married lady but the kids just call her last Miss Alice because her last name is a bit more difficult!) Miss Alice and her husband had been told that they probably would not be able to have children and the last summer at the age of 45 they found out that their little baby is on the way! A wonderful miracle.
Because of the impending birth and maternity leave, my kids might not have an opportunity to be in one of Miss Alice's classes for a while, but they went out with style during this session!

Miss Alice and the class.

Miss Alice answers Gabe's question.

Izzy, Noah, Gabe and their classmates. (Gabe is the biggest one in the class but not the oldest. He has always been off of the growth chart and by looking at the picture, I think that has probably held true!)

This was Izzy's first art show! The boys are veterans.
And now some art samples!


A Study of



And these are my favorite!!!



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Dec. 3, 2007 - Baking Bannocks
In honor of St. Andrew and to correlate with our enjoyment of the Martha Years Series of Little House Books, we made bannocks!
I used the recipe that author Melissa Wiley so generously gave on her blog.
They weren't quite as easy to make as I thought, but then it occurred to me that they probably didn't use Quick Oat oatmeal! But they were still loads of fun to make, and fry up and they taste pretty good too!
Gabe adding baking grease to the mixture.

Izzy kneading the mixture as Noah looks on.

Noah fries em up!

Our first few bannocks.

Probably more like what Martha would come up with than Cook, but a good effort nonetheless.

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Oct. 29, 2007 - All Hallows Eve and All Saints Day - Celebration, Education and Fun!
This is a copy from my other blog at My Domestic Church
All of my previous posts and pictures about All Saints Day/Halloween can be found via my del.icio.us links here.
Some Christian blogs and even some Catholic forums have been vacillating about whether or not it is right to celebrate Halloween. My answer to that is absolutely it's okay to celebrate! as long as you understand exactly what it is that you are celebrating! There is really no historical connection between the setting of this feast to November 1 (naturally placing the Eve to October 31), and the Pagan Celebration of Samhain other than Pope Boniface moved the feast to the same time of year when Samhain is celebrated. But I like to look at it another way. The change of seasons and the harvest are gifts from God, even if the ancient Celts didn't quite see it that way, and as the scriptures say, "Test everything. Hold on to the good," and Finally, brethren, whatever is true, whatever is honorable, whatever is right, whatever is pure, whatever is lovely, whatever is of good repute, if there is any excellence and if anything worthy of praise, dwell on these things.
Christians have long honored the martyrs who have died for the faith and the Christian aspect of this feast day comes from 4th Century on as All Martyrs Day. It use to be observed the first Sunday after Pentecost and then it eventually came to include all of the saints known and unknown and the feast was set for November 1, making the vigil of course All Hallows Even, October 31.
Mary Reed Newland in her book "The Year and Our Children" put it this way:
The Feast of All Saints is one of the greatest of all feasts because it celebrates what could have been impossible. The cross is a tree that bears fruit. This is the feast of its harvest. The celebrations of the mysteries in the life of Our Lord are glorious and there is no detracting from them. But he was God. This day we celebrate the perfecting or human nature by grace pouring form the side of Christ on the cross, through His Church and His sacraments, remaking men after their despoiling in the Garden.
Aside from all the lofty things to be said about the saints and to the saints on this day, we want our children to understand in the marrow of their bones what the principal idea is: "We are so glad for you. Now pray, so we'll be there too!" And they must add to this and to every feast and endless: "Thank you, Lord Jesus, for making it possible."
For the Catholic family I believe preparing children for All Saints Day really is a year-long activity. Our liturgical calendar is full of feast days all year round and it is important to remember and acknowledge these events as they happen throughout the liturgical year. Parents should take the time and the opportunity for just a few minutes each day to educate our children about the holy men and women who have become saints. This year I was inspired by Cottage Blessing's Spoon saints and so we tried to make a spoon saint for each saint that we talked about in depth during the year. Before Halloween I hope to have the children add each of the saints that they are portraying this year to our collection.


I have several tools that help me keep on top of the liturgical year. Of course I use the links from Universalis on my blog, as well as Saint of the Day from American Catholic.
I also use this lovely Catholic Woman's Planner, and have a calendar from the Shrine of the Immaculate Conception up on my wall. With these tools I can see and plan for the liturgical year, all of the feasts and commemorations, almost effortlessly.
Most days we read something about the saint for the day and we ask that saint to, "Pray for Us" after our prayer before meals.
During the year, I like to read more about the saints to the children.
I particularly like, 57 Stories of Saints, by the Daughters of St. Paul, the Picture Book of Saints by Father Lovasik.
A new treasure for me last year was is Father Phillip Tells a Ghost Story, from Adoremus Books (HT to the Happy Catholic for writing about this.) This really does a nice job of incorporating the other connection with ghosts and the dead with their proper place in Catholic life with prayers for the dead and purgatory.
Throughout the year I try to encourage my children to choose which saint they would like to be for All Saints Day and then we decide about costumes. work on costumes. I have had a lot of success in the past with Simplicity Pattern 4797 Bible characters are easier to make because you don't require a lot of extra detailing or fitting. Please see my past links for examples of our costumes and how I made them.
Perhaps the easiest costumes we have made were the archangels. I had my boys wear white sweat pants and sweat shirts and just put the wings on their back. Gabriel had a trumpet, the Archangel Raphael carried a plastic fish and St. Michael had a breast plate and a sword! Another favorite was John the Baptist. I took white long johns and died them brown and then made a tunic from fake fur. A wild wig added to John's rustic look and he also carried a honey jar and some fake books (John ate wild honey and locusts. A simple tunic with a set of keys and you have St. Peter! A block of wood with some holes to stick arrows in, hidden under a tunic and you have St. Sebastian! Martyrs are lots of fun and little boys like them because you can use lots of fake blood and that seems to appeal to their sense of gore that goes with Halloween. Calvin once appealed to his sense of comedy by stuffing himself with pillows and a skull cap, which we glued fuzzy hair to, so that he could portray Thomas Aquinas! He carried a big old fashioned Ledger book as his Summa.
I'm to a point now that I have A LOT of boy's costumes in our costume box. Gabriel wears a black medieval frock that I bought for a a buck at our local community center's yard sale . With that he has been Saint Isaac Joques and Father Damien the Leper. This year we added a beard and voila - St. Ignatius Loyola! For Noah we added a beard to our St. Francis robe and we had an instant St. Anthony of Egypt the Hermit. I bought a costume for Isadora last year and we are getting lots of use to it. It too is a medieval costume so we go down the list of medieval female saints and she chooses from that. An addition bonus is that she will get to wear it for the Medieval feast that the community center throws every other year and of course if we take good care of it, Rosie can wear it in the future too!
This year the kids are St. Anthony of Egypt,
Blessed Imelda (before she entered the convent!) and
St. Ignatius Loyola


The kids with Grandma for the Halloween Brunch!

Izzy as an angel, and Rosie as St. Kateri.

I use cards from a collection called Ordinary People, Extraordinary Lives. I can't find that available anywhere on the net. Old holy cards or other pictures you can find and save on the net also work very well.


For us I put them on the table cloth and cover them with a plastic covering, that way the kids can talk about them during meals. I also put up some of the children's other holiday art including pumpkins and spiders!

All Hallows Eve, All Saints Day and All Souls Day are a wonderful Christian time of the year. With a little thought and creativity it can make wonderful memories for families and provide our children with more education about their Catholic faith and Christian heritage as well as deepening their faith.
Other Links:
Women for Faith and Family.
A great article by Scott Richert here.
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Oct. 23, 2007 - Izzy's Journey to Reading
Last week I blogged about some of Izzy's speech and vision problems and how they were impacting her ability to read.
This week I thought I'd blog about the program we are on just for reference and also to encourage other moms who might be having similar situations.
Izzy's reading specialist, Dr. Holinga, is very particular about where she wants her clients to get their eye exams. She prefers optometrists who will help the parents to work with the kids and also specifically test for problems with reading. For example, Izzy's vision is 20/20. It's perfect. Up close it's even better at 20/25. But that doesn't mean she doesn't have other visual problems that could affect her reading. When they did the visual perception tests she scored as a 6 year old on one and as a 9 year old on the other! So our optometrist wanted to err on the conservative side and gave us the glasses just so that Izzy can have the extra help her eyes apparently need to make sense of the letters, numbers and symbols she sees on the paper.
She also gave us a geo board and geo bands to help Izzy develop better visual perception.
The geo board they gave us looks like this!

I think a crafty tool person could whip one of these off in no time!
They also gave me pages with directions, a laminated paper that mimics the geoboard, and a dry erase pencil. I follow the directions and draw a pattern on the laminated page.


Then Izzy copies it on the geoboard with the rubber bands.


If she does it right, then I erase the laminated page and turn the geoboard 1/2 turn. Izzy then gets to draw what she sees on the laminated page.

This is A LOT OF FUN!! We're supposed to get to it twice a day.
Besides that, I am retraining Izzy on the alphabet using the Writing Without Tears method, starting with the lower case letters. She is writing them in the air, on the chalk board and then on special WWOT paper.

I ran out of the paper Dr. Holing gave me but I can make more using my Start Write Software.
Izzy is also doing a lot of mazes and word searches. I swear we have done every Halloween related maze and word search available! But this is all very good for her visual perception.
The very last thing that we do is actually read. Izzy had been through the Pathway Reader Primer twice so I put her into the Dick and Jane Book. (This is the reprint of Dick and Jane that some of us old fogie's used back in the day!) We're enjoying it and I actually remember some of the stories!
Her handwriting, math and reading are all progressing nicely now.
Adding speech therapy is going to be our next step!

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Oct. 16, 2007 - The Weekly Report

I have been wanting to update this blog regularly with our homeschool happenings. Unfortunately with all of the sporting activities, and trying to get homeschool off of the ground this year, this blog became a low priority. What I needed was something to compel me to keep writing. I think I found it with the Weekly Report.
The Trivium Academy started this by reporting weekly on their own home school. The idea caught on!
A few bloggers have caught on to our Weekly Reports and decided to do them as well. This is fabulous because it is a virtual open house each week.
So count me in as well. First report will be up this Friday.
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Oct. 16, 2007 - Cross Country Season memories
Gabe's Cross Country

Noah's Cross Country

Izzy's Cross Country






















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Oct. 16, 2007 - Izzy Eyes

P1000731
Originally uploaded by elliemom.
After Calvin, Izzy has been my slowest kid to learn how to read. Jr. Analyst that I am I thought perhaps it was because Izzy had had such a traumatic birth. Perhaps even a slight bit of oxygen deprivation affected the centers of the brain that learned to read. That would explain why both Calvin and Izzy would be my slow readers.
But in addition to that, Izzy knocked out her top front four teeth when she was almost four years old. (I always thought it was ironic that after four sons, it would be the little girl that knocked out a tooth! Knocking out four at once was unbelievable.) That meant that Izzy had to learn to talk all over again. It's hard to imagine how much we need those front teeth to make sounds until they are missing, but it is very difficult to make the f, v, s, sh and some others that are escaping me. Izzy improvised. Instead of saying Food, she would say Pood. We knew what she meant.
The problem was that once her big teeth did grow back in, it was hard for her to start making the sounds correctly because she had trained herself not to. For some reason the K and g sounds were also difficult for her. I don't know if that has something to do with how the tongue has to be trained, but I know that Izzy says "Dirl" instead of "Girl". She can say "Girl" but she has to be coached, however, it's good to know that the ability to make those sounds is there.
Surprisingly despite Izzy's problems, she didn't come across as having a reading problem at first. We did pretty well through the first 30 or so lessons in 100 Easy Lessons to Teach Your Child to read. Izzy wanted to read a real book though, so when we got to about lesson 50 we jumped over to the Pathway Readers. That actually went pretty well too. I had some concerns though. Izzy could not remember the number or letter names or sounds. You could show her the symbol for 7 or 8 and she would guess at what that number was called. It was very puzzling.
After her reading exam with our reading specialist last year, Izzy stopped making progress in her reading. I took her right back to the beginning of the Pathway Primer and started over again. By our visit this year, Izzy was essentially right where she was the year before.
Our specialist then suggested that we start using her version of Writing without Tears and that I retrain her on all of the sounds of the alphabet starting with c, a, d, g, s, j and then moving on to l, k, f, t etc. She had to write these letters in the air, on the chalk board and finally on simple paper with out a lot of lines because if she is having vision problems the extra lines could help to confuse her.
We also went down to a special children's optometrist near Columbus for a complete eye examination. Izzy has excellent vision 20/20 for distance and 20/25 for near. Her visual perception was interesting. The doctor gave her two tests. On one test she scored as a 9 year old, but on the other only as a 6 year old! This was very unusual. Since she was borderline for needing a prescription the doctor went ahead and gave her one thinking that just that little bit of help and support would push her reading. She also has exercises to do with the geo board in making shapes and copying the shapes I show her. Additionally, she is supposed to do a lot of mazes and word searches. I have seen improvement already and she loves doing the work.
So today we pick up her eye glasses. We have already started reading from the Dick and Jane book which she loves. (I didn't want her to sit through the Pathway Primer for a third time!)
My next step is to find a good speech therapist hopefully without getting involved with the public school.

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Aug. 29, 2007 - Gabe's Soccer
Great action soccer pictures of Gabe's game from Sunday here!

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Aug. 27, 2007 - Pictures of Calvin for Dr. Holinga
Dr. Karen Holinga is doing our portfolio review again this year. For about 18 months she tutored my older son, Calvin, intensively to raise his reading level to functional adult. Calvin is now entering his senior year in high school at Akron Digital Academy. He would not have been as successful in his academic life and certainly not able to swim on the swim team, if it weren't for Dr. Holinga. So I'm putting these pictures on here just for her!

The competitive swimmer.


Picture perfect Calvin.

Calvin goes to prom
and has a blast!

©
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Aug. 27, 2007 - Some Library Shows we visited this summer!
The Library puts on free educational shows in the summer time and we saw three of them!
At the animal show we saw a lion faced rabbit!

A big snake!


Noah got to hold an alligator!
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A big cock roach...ew...
We also went to the Weird Science Show and solved a scientific who dunnit!


And a really fun magic show that emphasized safety and reading!


Pictures courtesy of mom and Sam - both of whom were learning to use our new Panasonic Digital Camera!
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Aug. 27, 2007 - Summer Swimming Class Fun!


Izzy and her teacher Sarah.


Noah and the back stroke!




Getting ready to dive!


Beautiful Izzy!
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Aug. 20, 2007 - Our 2007/2008 Curriculum plans for elementary school.
Lavictoire Homeschool Textbooks and Programs.
2007/2008
Third Grade: Isadora Irene LaVictoire
Start Write Handwriting Software
Exploring Creation with Astronomy
Exploring Creation with Botany
History via Little House Books.
Reading suggestions From Real Learning and Designing Your Own Classical Curriculum and Ambleside
St. Sebastian's Children's Choir
Fourth Grade: Noah Emmett LaVictoire
Reading selections from Real Learning and Designing your Own Classical Curriculum and Ambleside
Exploring Creation with Astronomy
Exploring Creation with Botany
St. Sebastian's Children's Choir
Sixth Grade Gabriel Ernest LaVictoire
Selections from Real Learning, Designing your own Classical Curriculum and Ambleside
Exploring Creation with Astronomy
Exploring Creation with Botany
St. Sebastian's Children's Choir
Music: Piano lessons, Mrs. Barbara Porter
Ninth Grade: Samuel LaVictoire
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Jun. 15, 2007 - Sam the soccer champion!
Last weekend was the end of an era for my son Sam. His soccer team that he has played with for the past five years or so ended their career with a championship win! This is the last season they will play together as all of the kids will be entering high school next fall and Sam wil continue to be homeschooled. I did sign Sam up for a highschool/homeschool league for the fall. He can make friends with some homeschooled kids his age that love soccer and hopefully this will be a good opportunity for him.
In the meantime, here are some picks from a great soccer chamionship!

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Jun. 15, 2007 - Summerschool
Things have not gone quite as I had planned!
My kids got a chance to attend soccer camp for FREE and I just couldn't pass that up for them. So this week Izzy and Noah have been going to soccer camp all day and then swim class at night. Gabe and Sam (sigh... and Rosie) have been doing school, mainly math and reading for Gabe and math and science for Sam. Next week, Gabe and Sam get to go and I'll have the little kids. But after that I really want to be in full fledged summer school!!!

Izzy at the diving board

Noah up for air!

Izzy and Noah after a hard day at soccer camp!!

Noah getting in some soccer action!



Look at those gorgeous freckles!!




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