Long post, lots of pics

School has started!  I'm excited about this school year.  We're using some new curriculum, ACE, so we have a bit of a learning curve as we start.  Eli's doing pretty well, I wasn't worried about Patience at all, but Maddie is struggling a bit.  Would you say a prayer for her if you think of it?  I'd really appreciate it. 

ACE is actually the curriculum that the church-school I attended and graduated from used, so I'm very familiar with it.  I'm not sure how long we'll use it (just this year?  through high school?), but I wanted to give it a try.

 

Anyway, with all of the hullaballoo, I can barely remember yesterday, nevermind last week.  So I have to go by the pictures I've taken.  

I went walking with my friend, Sue, last week, and the boys all came with us (on their bikes).  Look what they found!

Baby snapping turtles!

 

They were so tiny!  In these pictures, they are in a beach shovel.  They all fit in it!  Don't worry, the boys put them back where they were found!

 

The weekend before this (or was it two weekends? Sigh, I just can't remember!), we had a visitor--my mom's dog, Penny.  She stayed for the weekend, much to the chagrin of our cat, Selden.  He does NOT like dogs, even cute ones like this!

Last week, we had a fun playdate at a local playground.  It was a great way to kick off the school year, re-connecting with some homeschool families and making some new friends.

Here is Patience, playing with one of her new little friends (it's so nice that she's old enough and maturing enough to be a little helper!).



Eli's getting a little old for these types of playdates--there weren't any boys his age there, but he was a good sport about it.  Here he is standing on the monkey bars.

 

Sheesh, those feet are big!

We're starting every school day reading from A Treasury of Hymn Stories by Amos R. Wells.  It's so cool to learn the stories of hymns that I grew up singing.  Of course the stories make me cry, but the kids are tolerating it.

As I had mentioned the other day, Eli has poison ivy, and it is still raging.  He's so itchy, poor guy.  I took him to the doctor's yesterday, and he's on oral steroids for 10 days to clear it up.  I hope they kick in soon. 

We went down to the beach last Sunday night.  Folks from our church usually meet down there for dinner every week.  We haven't been able to get down there this summer at all, but this past Sunday I decided we should go so that Eli could get in the salt water.  I was hoping it would help the poison ivy, but no such luck (or maybe it did help, and the last few days would have been much worse if we hadn't gone?).  It was great to hang out with our friends.

Eli swore up and down that the water was too cold, but he did end up swimming quite a bit.

Here's a bit of Towne House history for you.  This next picture shows where Steve proposed to me!  Fifteen years ago....boy, has it gone by fast.

 

The lower right hand side of the picture shows the beginning of a stone wall--the Sea Wall in Narragansett.  Steve sat me down on that wall on April 24, 1993, completely disregarding the flow of people trying to walk by, got down on one knee and asked me to be his wife.  I didn't even realize what he was doing at first!  And then, all I could think was, "MAKE SURE YOU SAY YES!  MAKE SURE YOU SAY YES!".  I don't even remember what he said.  LOL  I still wish I knew what he said!  He won't tell me--maybe he's forgotten? LOL  Thank goodness there was a diamond ring involved--I certainly knew what that meant!

On Monday, Labor Day, the kids and I took a trip to the Museum of Work and Culture in Woonsocket, RI.  Both Steve and I are French Canadian, and it was really interesting to see the history of this mill town and learn how so many Canadian families (including my grandfather) had come to RI to live and work.  The kids got to practice sorting bobbins and punch a timecard.

Here is a photo I took of them outside of the museum.  They're in front of a small statue that is dedicated to the workers of Woonsocket and their families.

 

You can't see the statue very well, but I promise, it's there.   We also got to see a fantastic display of WWII memorabilia.  The WWII veteran who owned much of the collection was there to describe things--it turns out he had one of my mom's cousins as a student when he was a teacher!  Only in RI!

Day one of school started with the kids finishing a scroll craft that we started (embarrassingly ) a year ago.  We stained the paper with tea water, and let it dry--yeah, that's it, I was just letting the paper dry thoroughly....

Oh well, the kids had fun.

Wednesday was a great day.  The kids finished most of their work in the morning, and then we headed to my friend Amy's home for a "not back to school" playdate.  I'll bet we had almost 30 kids there.  They went swimming--Eli took a dump into the pond with all of his clothes on.  Eli was on the rope swing, and I guess his fingers slipped.  Here's Maddie, doing the same trick, but with a bathing suit on!

The kids had a great time, and I was able to catch up with more of my friends!  We're going to be taking part in a history co-op this year, so we did some planning for that.  The co-op starts next week.

This week, though, we have plenty of new things starting!  Maddie had her first art lesson today--I think she really enjoyed it.  It's at a library, so Eli & Patience & I hung out, reading and doing school work while she was there.

Then, this afternoon, Patience had her first gymnastics class at the YMCA (she keeps singing the Village People song).  Here she is in her new leotard & shorts.



She had a great time, and is all excited to practice what she learned to day.  Lots of stretching, jumping jacks, bridges and somersaults.  She made a friend, so she can't wait for next week to get here.

Tomorrow we'll get a little bit of school work done, but this is the Ocean State, the weather is still gorgeous, and beaches are free now, so we're heading to the ocean with some homeschool friends.  There will be plenty of days to stay in once the weather gets colder!