Lest I Forget

It all came together quite nicely. Our camping trip that is. No one had rehearsals. Tony had Friday afternoon off. The heat that has been relentless finally abated for a few days. The nights would actually be cool! We chose Santee State Park because it was within an hour of us, and it looked like a lovely place to camp. We hope to visit all 47 state parks here in South Carolina to become "Ultimate Outsiders". We are just beginning, as Santee brought our total to 7. I thought we would be taking the interstate, but the GPS led us on the back country roads. The drive itself was beautiful. The cotton fields were dotted with white. Old farmhouses and barns were scattered between the fields. Dilapidated and abandoned buildings wooed me with their untold stories. I felt like the everyday worries were blown off us as we drove through the countryside toward the campground. We stayed two nights. For Friday, we had veggie stir fry with cashews.  I chopped up veggies beforehand and

We use a little of this and that for our curriculum. The one we mostly use is Catholic Heritage Curricula. We supplement with Mater Amabilis and we use a different grammar book that works well for us, Voyages in English. CHC has a new reading/literature program for 4th grade that I am loving. The first book Therese is reading is Little House in the Big Woods. We have read this story many times, but now we are diving deeper, thinking about the characters and their actions, and putting it all together at the end into a report. But the part I like best is the midweek activities page. We can choose from several ideas. This week, we made breakfast for dinner and made pancake men like Ma. Of course bacon and sausage were added to the menu, along with some fruit. This is where Peter's science activity came in handy. He had to use a can of fruit to act as a fulcrum in trying to lift the couch with a broom. It was a success and we had one very dented can of pineapple to add to our dinner

We have just finished our second week of school. We are slowly getting into the new routine. Anna and Jack are spending most of their non-school time at the children's theatre. They are in a production of Les Miserables, taking a theatrical tap class, and a Shakespeare class taught by a professor at USC. Thursday was the first Shakespeare class. To make things work out, we have go early and set up the computer for Anna to attend her online classes and then immediately head into the theatre. This was our trial run and I would say it was successful. The younger kids and I hung out in Barnes and Noble and did schoolwork, then played. Anna is also in a homeschool band once again and I am so glad we could make that happen. Some people are on a youth bowling league. And auditions for a play for Therese and Peter will be next week. I think we have enough extra curricular activities for now. The other day, I was scrolling through my photos, looking for a particular picture, when I noti