Happy 9th Birthday, Reggie!

This post is a little late because we have been traveling more than we've been home in August.  But it's been fun!  We are home for Labor Day weekend and making the emotional/mental/physical shift to school year mode.

We had two celebrations for Reggie's birthday.  While we were in Green Bay for training camp, we got the party package at a minor league baseball game.  He got to throw the first pitch and the crowd sang "Happy Birthday" to him. It was his lucky night because he also caught a brat, and a foul ball.  And he intercepted a shirt that should have been his grandpa's!  Bryan also won a lotto ticket for guessing the number of people in attendance, but he wasn't so lucky.

When we got home, we had some of his friends from his baseball team over for pizza, and, of course, baseball!

I interviewed Reggie on his 9th birthday:

What is your favorite color? gold

What is your favorite food? cheeseburgers, still

What is favorite thing to do? play sports and play outside

What is your best memory from being 8 years old? Going to see the Packers and running in the fun run at school

What is something you have learned to do in the last year? type a little bit faster

What is something you want to learn or do in the next year? Write cursive

What makes you laugh? My friends

If you could be any animal for one day, what animal would you choose? A dog so I can run on all fours all day

What do you think your life will be like in 10 years? I will play sports

Speaking of playing sports, Reggie had a fun baseball season.  Also this summer, he went to a wrestling camp and passed level 3 in swimming.  Now he is playing flag football!  He sure keeps us busy, but he is so fun to watch!

spotlight on Brett

Brett's 4th grade year was great!  There was certainly a learning curve to homeschooling, but we found our groove and we are all happier!  He spent about an hour and a half at the elementary school each day doing gym or STEM, reading group, speech or OT and even lunch/recess on Wednesdays.  At home, we did most of our work through unit studies.  We would pick a topic, like the Olympics, and do projects that incorporated math, reading, writing, science, history, and art.  We had a lot of fun!

In January, we decided to try basketball through Special Olympics.  It was so much fun that Brett did track next, and now he is doing golf and just started flag football!  He competed in track in the Special Olympics Minnesota (SOMN) Summer Games and won 2 gold metals.  I can't believe my baby is about to enter 5th grade!

Last day of 4th grade

spotlight on Lydia

First Day of 3rd Grade

Last Day of 3rd Grade

 Lydia had a great 3rd grade year.  She loves school and enjoyed her teacher and friends.  In the
SAIL program, there were four units.  In one unit she and a partner invented a toy that makes noise and in another unit, she completed a research project on something she was passionate about.  She chose the Nile River and researched how people have used the Nile as a resource over time.

For extracurricular activities, Lydia was on a volleyball team in the fall and did a volleyball clinic this spring.  Over the winter, she did two sessions of swimming lessons.  She passed Level 5 and moved on to Level 6.  She likes music and joined the elective choir at her school.  She was very excited to start piano lessons this summer!

Lydia loves to read and watch movies!  This year, she's read the first two Chronicles of Narnia and watched the movie.  She read A Wrinkle in Time and we watched the movie.  She read Anne of Green Gables and we watched the series, and we went to see Wonder and then she read the book!

Lydia enjoys arts and crafts - oil pastels, paints, and drawing. She also loves animals! She has two very good friends and she had her first sleepover.

Here is Lydia with a fish.  She did not bait the hook, remove the fish, or clean it.  But she got all the credit.  And she ate it.

We are so proud of all Lydia is learning to do and who she is becoming!

childhood adventures and free-range parenting

Bryan and I are both urban transplants. Also introverts.  There are things that we really like about city life: anonymity... diversity... seven Targets within ten minutes... But one thing we don't really care for is neighbors.  Not our neighbors in particular, just having them.  When we were growing up, we didn't have the run of a neighborhood where we would freely visit kids' homes without invitation, or ride our bikes to the park and hang out with whoever happened to be there.  We had our siblings and animals for friends and a stack of haybales for playground equipment.  And it was great.

I think the concept of "free-range" parenting is quite interesting, although I could never be a free-range parent.  I don't trust the world enough.  There are too many guns and racists and sex offenders. (Ironically, the one neighbor I did have when I was very young turned out to be a sex offender.) But still - the idea of trusting your kids to discover their own limits and giving them space to create their own unscripted, unparented adventures - I can appreciate that ideology. And I've found a place for it.

The pond.

When we were house hunting, we took a quick pass through this house, which checked off most of the boxes on our demand list, stepped out onto the back deck, and were sold.  Sure the pond was pretty, but what it meant to us was our yard wasn't cut short by someone else's yard.  At the time, our kids were so little, we immediately put up a fence to secure them from getting to the pond. But now that our kids are 8, 9, and 10, adventures abound at the pond.  In the winter, it's sledding and skating and running forever in a field of open snow.  The summer months bring on adventures of "setting up camp" in the woods and "fishing", frog hunts, and climbing trees.  And I try to stay out of the way as much as possible.  That is why this candid video is such poor quality.  That day, the siblings had been at the pond for hours without parents in the way, and I didn't want to ruin it by showing up uninvited.  The kids take their adventures to school, sharing their mishaps in their journals and with their teachers, and I know when they are grown, there will be lingering stories of uninhibited childhood.