Today’s homeschooling activity du jour? Apple picking!
We met up with some homeschooling friends at an apple orchard today to enjoy the blast of warm air we’ve had and to do a classic upstate NY fall activity – slip on rotting apples and sit on pumpkins.
Kids! Running!
All the varieties available for picking – some of which I’d never even heard of. Topaz, Fortune, Northern Spy? Come on, you’re just making these up.
On our way to pick some Crispins, Mama Appleseed’s fav!
It was my turn to be one of the parent assistants in Ava’s homeschooling class this week. Each week there are two parent assistants who work in the classroom on a rotating basis along side the teacher and teacher assistant. That’s four adults for 16 children. Overkill? That’s what I thought until I was actually working in the classroom!
I like to consider myself a reasonable parent. We practice gentle disciple and offer loving guidance. We encourage respect and the proper use of manners. I’ll eagerly honor requests when they are asked politely, in a sweet tone and especially when there’s something in it for me.
Maxine woke up in the middle of the night last night politely asking for water. Ava’s unconscious heard this request and she immediately woke up asking for water too. I was groggy but knew that there would be no going back to sleep until pint sized thirsts were quenched. I pulled myself out of bed and pressed my near sighted eyes to the bed side clock to see what time it was before stumbling downstairs to fetch two glasses of water.
Today is Ms. Maxine’s birthday – my “baby” is THREE!
I woke up just before 5:00 today and swapped out today’s a work out for gift wrapping and decorating. I love the kids birthday’s so much – I find so much joy celebrating the day of their births. They are without a doubt my two favorite days of the year.
Dining room decorated and her new pink tutu and dancing shoes wrapped, I figured it was appropriate to make the same green smoothie I made the morning of the half marathon to help power me through this marathon day!
Today would have been Ava’s first day at school. Kindergarten, to be more precise. But as the saying goes, she missed the bus.
I’m very grateful that the homeschooling seed was planted in our minds early on because it took me a while to get comfortable with the idea. I use to resist the instinct to hyperventilate at the idea of NOT schooling our kids in the traditional sense. But fortunately we have a large homeschooling community in our area and we’ve gotten to know a lot of homeschooling families and kids, including a couple of incredibly amazing grown up homeschoolers. I know that homeschooling DOES indeed work and the pros easily out weight any cons. This confidence enables me to take a picture of a school bus driving by the house this morning and I can continue breathing in a normal fashion.
Blog: And just where have you been, young lady?
Me: Um, err… I was out.
Blog: out? OUT!? Where exactly is OUT?
Me: Well, let me start at the beginning.
A long, long time ago, on a Sassy Saturday afternoon…
I ate a salad.
A salad filled with red leaf lettuce, spinach, carrots, tomatoes, sprouts, cucumbers and green peppers. It was a lovely salad indeed.
After lunch I packed my bags for an old fashioned, get out your dancing shoes, life before kids, girls night out and sleepover to boot.
This morning I had a meeting at Ava’s homeschooled school. That’s right, my homeschooled kid will be going to school. Just once a week for 3 hours with a bunch of other homeschoolers, but still – we call it school.
Aunt Ellen stayed with the girls while I went to the meeting. I snacked on an apple on the drive there.
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And ate a Larabar mid meeting.
Home and more than ready to eat, I went with fast. Just your run of the mill everything-but-the-kitchen-sink gigantic tossed salad.
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Lots of awards to hand out today, let’s get right to it.
The award for today’s Best Accidental Lunch goes to:
Dates with Almond Butter! We’re going to need four awards, one for each of them.
The award for the Most Unoriginal Snack goes to:
Watermelon. Boring.
The award for the Messiest Watermelon Eater:
Oh! That’d be me! I’m honored. I don’t even have a speech prepared.
We’re presenting the Barbie with the Craziest Hair and Worst Tan to:
Per our usual Friday routine, the girls went with Aunt Ellen today. I ran errands after dropping them off and was positively starving by the time I got home.
My latest trick – A LA Natalia Rose – is to snack on carrots while I prepare lunch/dinner if I’m really hungry. This keeps me from overeating when I finally do sit down to eat and it keeps me chewing my arm off or chewing anyone’s head off because I’m hungry and grumpy. Lucky for everyone, I was home alone and the only one who got his head chewed off was the carrot.
Today the girls went with Ellen, giving Zak and I chance to remember what the other one’s voice sounded like without the typical screeching and classic interrupting. We talked about going out to eat, a movie, shopping… the afternoon was our child free oyster.
My bucket of watermelon held me over for a while, but without warning I realized how empty my stomach felt and I was going to go from hungry to starving in about .256 seconds if we didn’t get to a restaurant STAT.
To buy myself some time, I made a little banana mullet snack.
More Mama’s Weeds
