2018 fair

On Wednesday August 22, we finished up our third day of school as well as we could and headed out to the Central States Fair. As I mentioned in my first day of school post, we had a rough first week back to school. We were too busy with afternoon appointments and Cross Country to really get into the swing of things. But of course we have to go the fair. We've gone just about every single year since moving back in 2012, plus it holds a special place in my heart since I enjoyed it every summer in my youth. 

Waiting for Daddy and Grampa to return from turning in our coupons before we could buy wristbands. Those kids are getting big!

Wristband line.

Entering the midway carnival.

Noah and I jumped on the big viking ship to start and the rest went to the carousel. Cute Rebekah with Gramma. Shari had to work again this year so Jerry and Alice brought Shari's girls. 

Ezra and Sarah.

Looking down on Evie, Grace, Gramma, and Rebekah from the top of the Ferris wheel. I think Noah and I were on the scariest ride at the time Terry took this.

I wasn't sure I was up for a ton of spinning, but the Tornado ended up being pretty tame. 

I definitely didn't want to ride this spinning ride. No problem for Gramma though! She also rode the falling ride, Super Shot, with Terry and I twice. That was fun. 

When I was young I loved the rides that plastered you to walls with their G forces, but I cannot handle it anymore. I tried the Gravitron with Noah a couple years ago and felt like I was being choked. So he's totally on his own for these rides since Terry doesn't like spinning at all. He throws up.

No spinning bears for us either.

We could all handle the slide!



I did do the Tornado with Ezra and Samuel again later.

Samuel. 

I went on the Ferris wheel later with the girls.

We talked Evie (and Grace) into this Cliff Hanger ride by reminding her that she had done a very similar one at Valley Fair the previous month. Grace was brave though!

The kids love the mirror house for some reason and Terry and I like watching them hit their faces on the glass. 😂😆 So funny. I ended up going through with one of the cousins and it was harder than I expected. Here's Terry, Grace, and Evie.

Sarah hit the glass twice when she and Gramma were trying to find their way out. They took so long that the guy had to give them directions. Ha!




We were just about to leave when Shari arrived from work. She took our picture on the carousel one last time. 

That crazy Evie. 

Leaving the midway I noticed this horse trailer at just about the same place one had been me, Nathan, and Stephanie were little. We were in line with mom for tickets when Nathan turned around and smoked his cheek/eye socket with a hitch just like that. Our fun sure was cut short that day due to stitches on the cut Nathan had made in his face. We were very little when that happened but it all came rushing back to me. 

Just like last year, we went to the petting zoo on our way out. This goat was only friendly to Evie because it was hoping for food. Still quite cute though.

Ba ba black sheep has lots of wool...just like Luna. Seriously, it reminded me of Luna.

Which reminds me...just the previous night I had shorn our sheep/dog Luna.

Evie "crying" in the background 😂

Sheep/dog!




Her fur comes off just like a sheep.

Look at all of it! She doesn't cooperate at all for haircuts and I was so frustrated. I flipped her onto her back and had Noah and Evie hold two legs so I could get every part of her. She finally submitted and got her best haircut ever. I am the alpha!!

Back to the fair...and this porcupine.

The littles kept bringing dried grass to this poor old turtle. He made me glad to have hands.

We stopped in the Fine Arts building to visit my mom who makes baskets there during the fair, and then Jerry got us all creampuffs. YUM. Everyone got some (I even let the littles cheat and eat some of that gluten!), except Noah who I had taken to Cross Country halfway through our afternoon at the fair. It was a good day.

First day of school 2018/2019

Ready or not, the school year began on August 20, 2018. 

The kids had grown so much in the last year. Noah is very nearly as tall as me and I'm five foot eight inches.

Some silly photos are fun. 

Sillies.

Very silly.

Noah is 13 years old and in the eighth grade.

This was the best silly photo he could manage. I guess he's growing up!

Evie is ten years old and in the fifth grade.

Shucks!

Samuel is seven years old and in the second grade.

Check out that tongue. 

Ezra is five years old and beginning Kindergarten finally. 

He's so cute.

Mom is 36 and beginning her tenth year of homeschooling! I checked back in the blog and discovered that yes, I had made one particular post when I first started doing some relaxed preschool with Noah when he was three in 2008. It is staggering to realize that it's been that long. The following year we decided that we were definitely going to homeschool and I ordered my first curriculum from Sonlight. There was an overabundance of material so I ended up using for two years since I decided to hold Noah back. When we moved back to Rapid I decided to move him ahead again. The rest is history I guess. 

Aren't my zinnias amazing this summer?!

Luna will be two years old in October. This first day of school reminds me of when we first got her in January of 2017 and had to figure out how to keep doing school with an un-housetrained puppy locked up. 

Trouncer turned one in May and will have been with us a year coming up on September 17th on my birthday. 

Yes I love my flowers. I wish they were around for longer than three months...or less. 😫😭

One more on the deck in front of the morning glories. 

 

We went inside and got straight to work. Math first for Noah (from a Math-U-See DVD). 

Evie and Noah are doing a writing Composition program together. Here Evie was retelling the fable they were going to re-write. She's very dramatic. 😂

Samuel has been a struggling reader for the last two years so I was curious how he'd do after a whole summer off. For the last three months he did spend a lot of time hanging out in the living room just "reading" books. I sort of thought he was just looking at pictures, but he was puzzling over the words and really trying to read them. Imagine my surprise when I opened our Reading book to begin our first lesson and he had progressed far and away beyond my wildest hopes! Apparently he figured it out. He really is doing fantastic. He can do better than even in this video where he was reading a word problem. 

Here's Noah huge stack of books and Evie's smaller one.

The littles' stuff.

Here's everyone's school book list I had made a few weeks prior and the calendars I use to keep track of everything they do. Here we go!

That evening, which was a Monday, was Ninja Warrior night. Terry had bought the kids two little balls to hang from on their own little ninja course so we had to spend some time outside before the show. The boys also played out there during commercials. 

This was Ezra's first attempt on the balls and he fell pretty hard. Poor little guy. But it didn't keep him down.

Samuel's turn.

Mao Mao came over for a visit. 

Noah likes to hold Trouncer like this. 

Ninja time.

This was school the following morning, which we had to cut short due to a dentist appointment. 

Noah doing school in the dentist office. 

Samuel waiting for his turn. We actually didn't get a whole lot done that first week. We had dentist and orthodontist appointments, a trip to the fair, figuring out Cross Country practices for Noah, work for me, and more besides that I can't remember. I was quite stressed out that first week. The second week went much better and we finally got to every subject. 

Samuel getting his teeth clean.