Time For Some Changes

Oh my, it's been awhile since I've sat down to write!

I don't even know where to start with some of the changes that have taken place. Joey is so very grateful that the school year has ended and he is finally done with horrible teacher he had (honestly so am I). By some miracle the teacher passed him to fifth grade. I was really worried about what his report card would reflect having seen the grades that were given on daily assignments. I have never requested that my boys have or not have a specific teacher before this year; I requested that Jacob not have the teacher Joey had for fourth grade. Jacob passed third grade with flying colors, not that I expected anything less from my studious child. Jordan is kind of in a limbo state right now. He chose not ignore the warnings from his teachers and myself, and did not pass majority of his classes. In my opinion I think he really didn't think I would allow the school to fail him. I have to wait for the office staff to return from their break to find out if he will be repeating eighth grade or if they'll just shuffle him to the high school regardless of his grades. There were no notes on his report card as to rather he would need to attend summer school, repeat the grade, or was promoted to ninth grade. I'll keep you posted as I learn what his next school year will look like.

Joey is taking his "drug holiday" so he is full of energy ALL THE TIME. The only issue we have had with this holiday is that two of the kids we constantly play with are also taking "drug holidays" and the kids can not tolerate each other in the least. Actually I think my kids burnt out playing with the same 3 kids everyday before school let out (middle/end of May), so things were bound to change. My boys have been awesome since we took a break from our friends; their frustration is almost nonexistent, there have been none/minimal angry outbursts, and they enjoy playing with each other and the handful of other "non-trouble makers" in our little corner. My friend has said basically the same about her kids, that things have been better since we split up the kids. It is so wonderful to spend hours outside chatting with friends while the kids play without any of the kids fussing at each other. Before we chose to take a break it was literally less than 3 minutes of our everyday friends being out that fists were flying. I'm not talking about the kids roughhousing or fussing, they were out for blood. So a break was way over due. The only reason I waited so long to call a break from our 3 friends is because their mom is my best friend. I could not come up with a way to nicely tell her that my kids were not going to play with her's anymore without jeopardizing our friendship. I just started keeping my boys away from the neighborhood when possible, playing at more parks and taking more walks. I even had them playing in the backyard with other friends so not to cross paths with the friends they were having issues with. Then one night while talking with my friend, she broke the ice and mentioned that she has been keeping her kids away from the neighborhood when she knew we'd be outside playing. It turns out that her kids no longer wanted to play with my kids, more accurately Joey. The only issue we're having now is keeping the kids away from each other during church when they're in the same youth room together. I have talked to the youth pastor and we're trying a few things to see if we can resolve this.

Having split off from the same 3 kids we've played with almost everyday from the past 3 years (yeah, a break was needed) we have been spending more time with other kids in our little corner. Still no one Jordan's age but he enjoys talking with the dad next door and hanging out the the 3 year olds. He's surprisingly very patient with them and they absolutely adore him. One of our new neighbors has become best friends with Joey. Which is so awesome!! They are very much alike and are constantly knocking on each other's door. I'm so glad that Joey found a best friend after all the issues he went through this past school year with his peers. Jacob gets along with all of our "new friends" but still prefers to hang by himself (aka watching Youtube videos). I'm loving the fact that while the boys are outside playing I can duck inside and get dinner started or wash up the dishes without worrying there will be a dispute and I'll need to intervene. Also I know if we're at the park, beach, etc I can leave a kid (or 3) with our "new friends" and not worry there will any issues.

 There's one major drawback to the kids not playing together, I don't get to see my friend as much. We met every night to sit, chat, and smoke. We have done this for years; rain, snow, freezing temperatures, and under attack from mosquitoes we make a point of chatting without little ears around. Our evening chats are the only time we get to see each other. That said, we sit out there longer than we did a few weeks ago and I smoke more while I'm out there (not helping with my trying to quit smoking). I feel like despite trying to maintain our friendship while the kids are no longer friends is effecting our friendship. While we sit out there longer, neither of us have much to say. I don't want to talk about what we did that day with other neighbors, feels rude to me. She text messages her male friend as is their nightly ritual. It's just not the same as chatting throughout the day.

 While I'm updating about the change in friendships around here, I may as well include that we lost another friend (and fellow blogger) just a few weeks ago. It's bitter sweet for us, while we'll miss seeing them we are very happy about the adventure they have begun. Our friends at Growing into Me have moved to Florida!! We look forward to following all the fun things they discover while they are there, as well as their journey of homeschooling for the first time.

Wonderful Waterfront Town

We tend to clump together some of our bucket list activities, sometimes on purpose and other time just by chance. It happened to be a little bit of both when we visited a lighthouse which so happened to be in a city we've never been to, which just so happened to be the same city our friends live in. (We'd go straight to our friends' house and never pass through the town).

Living in Michigan leaves us with many lighthouses to visit (we love the Great Lakes), but we were looking for one that would be relatively close by. Turns out that approximately 20 minutes up the road is the Peche Island lighthouse, who knew! Peche Island Lighthouse was established in 1908. It was originally displayed at Peche Island near Belle Isle. In the 1980's the lighthouse was nearly collapsed and was rescued by the Coast Guard and taken to Marine City where it stands (60' tall) inactive on the banks of the St. Clair River


 Where we found parking was a short walk for the lighthouse, but ended up being right across the street from a school our old varsity team played their tournament games at. We had been parked in the same parking lot a little over a year earlier and had no idea that we were less than a couple blocks from a really cool little town.

 

We walked the boardwalk to the Peche Lighthouse and took many pictures along the way. Then kept right on walking straight into town that had many antique store and little shops. We happened upon a candy store that had just about every kind of candy you could think of, including chocolate cover bacon! Jordan took a spin of chance on a Jelly Belly game where you picked a candy that matched the picture the pointer landed on. Sounds like fun, right. Where is the chance in that, you may ask? Well not all the flavors are pleasant. Jordan landed on a white bean with yellow dots, there were two flavors you could pick butter popcorn or rotten eggs! You have no way of knowing which flavor you grabbed until you put it in your mouth. Poor Jordan and Jacob they picked the rotten egg!!! Lucky for the other two of us, we tasted buttered popcorn (which tasted just like buttered popcorn). We ventured into many little shops while we there, just to look around. The boys got a real kick out of called Earthstar Wisdom. where there was meditation music playing and asked many questions about what crystal healing was all about. They had gone in ahead of me (I stopped to take a picture of the shop on the outside) and I was greeted by all 3 of my boys sitting on the floor in the lotus position. We walk through many antique stores, some of which I walked through with just one kid at a time so I could make sure they didn't accidentally bump into anything breakable. There was a cute little beach tucked away in the corner of town, but we hadn't thought to bring our suits with us.

Is it a museum or a house?

The museum hidden in a neighborhood.

My GPS notified my there was a museum nearby so we set off in search of it. Along our way we found another new playground/park. Actually a friend of our told us that the park was so new that it didn't even have a name yet. The boys played for a bit then we were back to our search for the museum. Sadly when we found the museum it was closed, there was a huge "house" across the street that had a historical sign in front of it so we investigated. It was difficult to tell from outside it was an open to the public house (like the Octagon House) or a real house people were living in that had historical importance. We thought just in case, we better not try the front door. (Later we learned from our friend that people actually live there, but sometimes the host tours of the property.) Being in a new place means there are new places to try for a meal. Well, my kids, being kids, chose McDonald's off all the places!! We rarely eat at fast food places, so to them getting Mickey D's was really special.




Our friend that lives in Marine City seen when I posted it on Facebook that we were in the area invited us over for a visit. It seemed like a great way to conclude on tour of the city. After our lovely meal of burgers and chicken nuggets (only the best for my kiddos...LOL) we stopped to visit. We pulled up just as my friend was filling water balloons for her kids. Knowing that she is a much better pitcher than I, I proposed the idea of playing a bit of water balloon baseball with all 6 kiddos. So we managed to mark that off our list that day too. After everyone took a couple swings in water balloon baseball, we let the kids go at it in a water balloon fight. Then the kids went off playing games and skateboards and such, while we enjoyed catching up.  It was a wonderful way end to a great day in a beautiful city.

Thanksgiving Weekend

I hope everyone enjoyed their Thanksgiving and time spent with those dear to you. We spent ours with just about 50 family members and my cousin's friend from Honduras (it was his first Turkey day celebration), while another 40 of us of us were not there physically, they were in our thoughts. I love having a large family!! Aside from all the yum-o-licious food my favorite part if watching my boys spending time with our cousins. Life really does get in the way too much and we really don't see our family enough.

Black Friday-while I love all the great deals I did not go out shopping; we spent our day in a sunnier way (there will be more great deals throughout the seasons). We had plans with our friends over at Homeschool Camper to help them with part of their Fall Bucket List by helping paint Peanut's room (We did manage wiping down and priming the walls, painting will be done later by the Campers). One of the highlights of our visit was walking down a trail near their home. The boys and I love walking trails, but the ones we frequent are becoming "old" to us. I was a bit nervous when I heard there were hunters set up nearby, but Mamma Camper reassured us that we would be in no danger as long as we were near home by the time the sun was on the horizon. Also as a precaution for those of us who were not wearing a neon pink or neon orange coat, were accessorized with squares of orange paper on the backs of our coats. All the kids had such fun playing on the bits of ice that was on the path as well and stomping through the ice.

While on our walk (which didn't feel like it was an hour long, we were having so much fun) we marked another Bucket list activity. When I added Fall Family Photo to our list I had not thought about "who" was going to take the picture. Mamma Camper was kind enough to handle that for us and I was able to be part of our family picture. We were bundled in winter clothes so it didn't really look fall-ish (It's Michigan sometimes winter coats come out in October though). I thought we could do a play on words with it and pretend to actually be falling as a family; everyone else pretended but I was the one who had lost their balance and really was falling. We seem to be getting good at putting twists on some of bucket list activities so we can mark them off. I honestly don't know which picture I like best.

I have really enjoyed spending time with my kiddos these few past days. Actually spending time with all 3 of them at the same time for the whole day. While our schedule has kept us busy visiting with many who are near and  dear to us (and loving every minute of it); we have been able to finally slow down. While we weren't doing anything all that exciting, we were all doing "nothing" together and at our own leisurely pace. I feel that slowing down has given us a chance to enjoy being in the moment, as all too soon it will be back to our crazy rushing around everyday. Today we marked off another bucket list item (the post will go up tomorrow about it) and had the grandparents over here for a bit. We still have one more day to veg out and enjoy our "nothingness" and plan on doing just that.


Orange Rhino Update: I had been doing very well and had not yelled in the past 3 days at all. UNTIL... about 5 minutes ago when one of my lovable boys is still fighting sleep at almost 11 pm :( I'll take the 3 days and be proud of myself for that, but now my goal is to make through the 3rd day (and beyond). It's (and I) am a work in progress.


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Blessed To Be A Blessing

I have been trying to figure out a way for us to mark jump in a pile of leaves from our bucket list, where we live there are mostly pine trees. Unfortunately the maintenance crews have been doing a great job at the nearby parks, and there are almost no leaves on the ground. This morning a friend was a blessing by allowing us to be a blessing for someone else. Her father's health hasn't been well for a while and he had a lot of leaves that needed cleaned up, and invited us to help. After catechism and a quick lunch we set out to tackle the leaves.

The boys hopped out of the van and got right to work, there were more leaves than we thought. A short time later my friend and her children came out and helped us out. We started off my making a giant pile, but the wind was making that a bit of a challenge and made two piles, one for each family to play in. Having 16 hands helping to pile up the leaves it didn't take long before your piles were large enough to play in. both families chose a pile and jumped in, then just laid there. Waiting for the others to bury them. I was thinking, that's not how it done. I took it upon myself to call all of the kiddos over to the side of one pile and on the count of 3 we would all jump. I only made it to 2 before they took off and dove in, I jumped in anyways. I did the work of raking I should get to play too, right :) After throwing leaves at a couple of the kids they got the hang of it and was an all out leaf war. I was even tackled a couple of times. My poor friend has horrible allergies and wasn't able to join us in the leaves, she was kind enough to take pictures for us. After the leaf war we re-raked the leaves and Jordan helped me toss each kid into the pile. I left the leaves and the kids continued to play for a while, before it was time to bag up the leaves.


Having three boys I have learned the best way to get them to help with cleaning up after having a great time is competition. The kids were paired off and handed a yard bag and they raced to fill their bags first. Jacob and our friend Branden thought they were the winners until I crunched down their leaves and they had plenty more room until their bag was full. We filled more than 6 yard bags. My friend's mother invited us in for some hot chocolate and a short visit before we headed home.

We had planned on collecting the filled bags we had left last week for Scouting for Food, but decided to let some of the scouts who weren't there last week have the neighborhood we had. They well still get to help donate to a food pantry both through our church and when we shop for donations as a family for our local pantry.

A Day with Good Company

Yesterday was Jordan's last day volunteering at the nature center at one of our metro parks. He loves helping out there and is going to reapply for next summer. He would have continued through the school year, but I want him to focus on his school work.

While we were out that way we had made plans to meet up with some friends that the boys won't be seeing at school anymore. We met at the nature center and they got to see Jordan doing his thing showing the critters to everyone. Our friends did a picture scavenger hunt while we were there, then we walked the half mile nature trail. While on the trail my boys tried their hand at photography by taking pictures of things in nature that were interesting to them. I limited them to 10 pictures so they had to be choosey about what you wanted to capture. We headed over near the newest playground to set up for our barbeque, due to it being such a lovely day it was too crowded. We found a small picnic grove a little ways down, where we had the whole area to ourselves. The boys played Frisbee, catch, and just ran around while they waited for our meats to cook. An extra bonus was that my boys friends' dad was there and the absolutely adore him. Jordan likes that he can joke around and rough house with him, he won't get into trouble for being too rough (or snotty). After dinner the kids made s'mores, then we headed back to the playground. It was starting to get later and we thought we head over by the boats to watch the sun set over the water. As we rounded up kids, we had just missed the sun on the horizon. Now with the sun down it was time to pack up and head home.

It was a wonderful day spent outdoors with great company. Although we won't get to see our friends as often now that my boys are going to a different school, we'll still make a point for more get-togethers like we had yesterday.

A Day at the Beach

   The weather has finally warmed up enough to really start feeling like summer, and we have been taking advantage of it. We were able to check off visiting 3 Metro parks when we visited the beach the other day. We had made a day of it and kept busy doing many activities that are on our summer list. One of our favorites is visiting the nature center so we went there first. It was neat to compare it to the one Jordan has been volunteering at. Jordan talked one of the employees into letting him help cleaning one of the turtle tanks and placing the turtles back in it after it was clean. They even allowed him to take out one of the snakes and handle it. There were some cool things there that we don't have at the other nature center. After the nature center we played some croquet , then unloaded the bikes and rode the 3 miles to Mickey D's for dinner. After riding the 3 miles back to the beach the boys switched into their swimsuit while I figured out how to get all four bikes back on the rack. They spent about 45 minutes running through the splash pad before the park shut the water off. Another quick change of clothes then a quiet walk down the boardwalk to check out the boat before we headed to the playground for bit, also tried to play shuffleboard. The only thing we didn't so at the beach was go to the beach.
   Early Saturday morning we were up and headed out the to see what their surprise craft was at Home Depot that had to do with Despicable Me 2. I was kind of disappointed when we got there that Matthew wasn't with us for this one. They made little cars that included sticker of the minions to stick to it. My boys had a good time assembling them, we even stayed to paint them this time. 
   The next day we had plans with friends to go to a small beach near our neighborhood where we checked off more of our summer activities. Although the boys had already been swimming we decided that we were going to mark of "go swimming" because mom finally got into the water. I dug a nice size hole that the boys happily hopped into so I could bury them. We attempted to make our sandcastle, but weren't able to stack them and made more of a sand city. We did a lot of swimming and got a lot of sun, we all have a sunburn to some degree. It was a nice day spend with friends and the kids had fun playing with their friends.
  The wrote our letters to family members and informed them of all the fun things we have done so far this summer. I had the boys address their own envelopes, which I was really taken aback that they couldn't remember how. All my kids even my youngest can tell me how to send an email, IM, or text, but none of them know where to write the address to the person they were sending the letter to. We will have to start sending more letters to people through snail mail. I believe this is a life skill they should know especially my oldest that is going into 7th grade.
    Last night we marked off one of my favorite list items, the boys prepared dinner (with supervision). We had a lovely meal of eggs made my Jordan, Joey microwaved some turkey bacon for us, and Jacob manned the toaster and buttering of the toast. They were all very proud of themselves for their contribution to dinner. A meal as fine as the one the boys created deserved to be eaten by candle light. So they rounded up what candles the could reach (some of them scented) and added them to the dinner table. I have three very talented chefs, and look forward to teaching them more meals the can help cook.
We have a few more bucket list activities planned for this week. We have completed 36 so far this summer. I think we are keeping a nice pace and should have enough to reach to the end of summer.