Thanksgiving Break

Happy Thanksgiving!  I'm thankful for . . . a working internet connection!  I sat down to blog last night and discovered our internet had just gone out.  It was supposed to come back on by 4:00 this afternoon, but it didn't, and I had to call to get instructions for resetting our router.  But it was actually nice without the internet--people played board games last night and this morning, with no distraction from computers!  Then we went over to the L's house for our usual Thanksgiving dinner.  There were 41 of us this year!

Before we prayed, we all went around and said what we were thankful for.  I said I was thankful for Thanksgiving break.  I am *really* enjoying this week of break, which is pretty pathetic considering I taught for 4 weeks in September, had a baby and then 5 weeks of maternity leave, and then taught for all of 3 more weeks before this much-needed break.  Whew!  I just have to make it 2 more weeks, and we'll be on Christmas break!

So what have we been doing on this break?  Not really relaxing, that's for sure.  But it's not school!

*Jonathan, Grace, and I went to the commissary Thursday afternoon, our first time back since the beginning of September.  We couldn't park in the "stork parking" space, but on the other hand--hey, I'm not pregnant!  Ha!
*Caleb baked birthday cakes to celebrate his and Drew's November birthdays for Bible study last Friday.  Unfortunately we had found out last Tuesday that his first basketball practice was Friday, so he missed his own party!  He also frosted the cakes, although I helped with the shaping of them and some of the detail frosting.  They were delicious!  We saved him some "hockey rink".  As you can see, Drew helped with quality control, especially for the blue frosting.

*Friday I got to visit with my friend Lynnea.  It seems that with the busy-ness of teaching at Rivendell, plus just normal homeschooling, chatting with friends is the first thing to go, so it was so nice to just relax and catch up.
*I started doing some organizing.  I boxed up books in the study to make more room for high school science books on the shelves.  I still can't bring myself to actually get rid of the books though!  I also worked down in the basement storage room, going through little boys clothes.  I donated a bunch of 12-18 month clothes, but . . . I still couldn't get rid of the newborn boy clothes!  Maybe in a while . . .  I'm hoping to do more organizing/decluttering during Christmas break.  Goodness knows there's still tons more to be done!

*It ended up being good that I cleared some room in the storage room.  Monday night Bob and I bought a used bowflex from someone on our homeschool email loop!  It took the place of our weight bench, which took up a ton of room.  This thing is really neat--you can really do a lot of different things with it, and there aren't all those weight disc-things that go on the end of bar bells all over the floor.  Here Faith is demonstrating using it as a rowing machine.

*I got to visit with another friend, Kimberly, Monday afternoon.  We used to meet every week for a Bible study, but now we are trying to see each other at least once a month.  It was so nice to catch up with her too!  I have really enjoyed these times to just chat this break!

*Verity had her 2 month well-baby appointment Tuesday.  It was a horrendous drive to Bethesda, filled with construction and traffic, but Verity is all the way up to 10 pounds, 14 ounces, which is the 50th percentile!  So no more worries there, and everything else looked fine, praise the Lord.  Verity also got her first shots.  She was not a fan, but she's over it now.  There were 2 female techs giving her the shots, and they couldn't believe Verity was #10.  We had a nice conversation, and one of the techs said that Verity was so lucky that she had so many people to love her!  That is definitely true!  Verity has found her thumb now too, and she looks so cute sucking it.

*My parents drove in Monday night!  They wanted to avoid the bad weather forecast for yesterday.  My dad left today to fly to South Africa for a world conference for military Christian fellowships.  My mom will be here while he's gone.  At least he got to enjoy Thanksgiving dinner at the L's house before heading to the airport!  The past 2 days he started reading the third "Rush Revere" book to the kids:  Rush Revere and the American Revolution.  He read the first 2 books while they were here for Verity's birth, and the kids really enjoyed them.  This latest book is particularly good, since we just visited Boston this summer!  It's nice to be able to picture where the book is describing.

*Lots of board games have been played--starting even before the internet outage!  The boys played Settlers of Catan yesterday while I cooked up mashed potatoes, sweet potato casserole, cran-apple-pear sauce, chocolate pecan pie, and chocolate peppermint cookies for the meal today.  Then they played Puerto Rico this morning, which is complicated but fun.

Today felt like a Saturday, but hooray!  It's only Thursday!  There's still a few more days of break!  And only 2 more weeks until Christmas.  I can do this . . .  Happy Thanksgiving!!