We're Here!

We made it safely to Ohio Friday night with no problems. Caravanning with the L's made it a lot of fun. Although I drove the whole way, Elizabeth rode with me several times, and Nathan, Luke, and Caleb were thrilled to be able to ride in the L's van and watch some videos. When they were in my van, we listened to Understood Betsy, by Dorothy Canfield Fisher. I was a little afraid that maybe they wouldn't like the book so much, since the main character is a girl, but it is such a good story that they were quite enthralled. The main character, Elizabeth Ann, lives with 3 aunts who completely dote on her with a smothering sort of love, coddling her and doing everything for her. As a result, she is incredibly timid and afraid, and she can do nothing. When her oldest aunt gets sick, Elizabeth Ann has to go to Vermont to live with "the horrid Putney cousins", who live on a farm. There is a great-aunt and uncle, and their daughter, and they expect Elizabeth Ann to fit into the family and pull her share of the load. It is neat to listen as she gradually becomes competent and self-sufficient. The boys really picked up on the bad parenting in the beginning, even though it was done out of love. It was interesting to hear their comments ("Aunt Frances is MAKING her scared!" and so on).

Also, when Elizabeth Ann starts going to school in Vermont, it is in a one-room school house. The book talks about how she always hated reading lessons in school (NOT reading itself, because she was an excellent reader)because people read one sentence at a time, with the teacher stopping and correcting all the time, so no sentences made sense, and sometimes it wouldn't even get to you . . . sound familiar? But this teacher just let the kids read on, whole pages at a time, and when she realized Betsy was not challenged by the third grade readers, she put her in with the seventh grade readers. Betsy was so alarmed at this because she knew she wasn't in the seventh grade as far as writing and arithmetic. The teacher said she hadn't mentioned anything about those subjects, but it was silly for Betsy to be bored stiff with thrid grade readers when she could do higher level work. And then Betsy didn't understand math concepts at all, so she was in second grade math, but she was in thrid grade spelling. She told the teacher how confused she was--"What grade AM I?" And the teacher said, "You're not any grade at all! You're just you!" It reminded me so much of homeschooling, and the flexibility that we have to just let each child be who they are, learning at their own pace. Anyhow, a good book. By the Shores of Silver Lake, another Laura Ingalls Wilder book, is slated for the trip home. I guess this is just a trip for female main characters!

Yesterday was Nathan's 9th birthday. We had his special dinner and opened presents (lots of books, so he was quite happy). We had ice cream after dinner, but we're going to have cake on Wednesday with some of our old friends. Nathan has requested for his cake "red and blue light sabers crossing". Hmmm. We'll see what we can do.

Today we went with Grandma and Grandpa to the base chapel for church. I told the boys that this was where Daddy and I got married, and when we got inside, Jonathan asked if I was going to get married today! LOL! We got there early, so the boys and I were paging through the hymnals before the service started. We were looking at the Catholic ones too, and we were pretty excited that we could tell what some of the Latin songs were saying. Always a good thing to reinforce Latin outside of schooltime!

Anna's napping, and I think I might too. It's so nice to be on vacation so you can feel like you can nap when others are sleeping, since there really isn't anything else you have to take care of! And for those who are curious, Bob is holding his own back at home, although he is quite lonely. : ( He says the house is really quiet. I guess I just can't imagine what that's like, LOL.