Extracurriculars and field trips

After weighing many options as far as art classes and gym classes, I finally have made the decisions for the 2019-20 school year. Over the past seven years the kids have done the most with physical education, and art has received the least amount of time. I say this because there were years when they played two seasons of soccer (16 games total), one season of basketball (8 games), swimming lessons, tennis lessons, ten ice skating lessons, horseback riding lessons, and 26 weeks of homeschool gym glass - ALL in one year. They all played one season of flag football, and Nadia played one season of softball. Music/drama would be in the middle as the kids used to participate in a summer musical at the church where they go to AWANA plus they have been in a choir at our church during the school year. Last year I decided that this year I'd give more attention to art and music. We have participated in every single session of gym class that our church has offered since they first started the homeschool gym classes. They have three sessions a year - a ten week session in the fall, ten week session in the winter, and a six week session in the spring. There are three different organizations within 20 minutes of our home who currently offer a homeschool gym class, and this school year we're only planning to do six weeks of homeschool gym class (the session at our church that is in April/May). I have made this decision because #1 I don't like having too many weekly commitments at one time and #2 I have never liked the fact that the class is from 10:00-11:30. I'd much prefer an afternoon class. In May it's not a problem to have class in the morning, and most of our other commitments end by the end of April, and the kids do enjoy things like glow-in-the-dark dodgeball.

Physical Education this year - Oliver will have 12 weeks of a 60 minute gymnastics class in the fall. All three will have 10 weeks of 60 minute basketball practices plus 8 games, six weeks of 90 minute homeschool gym classes, and hopefully ten weeks of ice skating lessons. We also hope to go snow skiing twice. I'm not planning on doing horseback riding, swimming, diving, or tennis lessons next spring or summer.

Art - Nadia and Ian will have 33 forty-five minute art classes from September through May on Thursday afternoons at Meadowbrook Christian School. Oliver will play in the indoor playland during their art class. They will miss the first two art classes because of trips we are taking to New York.

Music - Nadia and Ian will be in the Susquehanna Valley Youth Chorale on Monday nights for thirteen weeks (August through November). Ian and Oliver will sing in the kids' choir at church on Sunday mornings from September through May. Nadia will be in the middle school chorus at Meadowbrook Christian school. The chorus rehearses twice a week, but she'll only be participating in one rehearsal each week - on Thursdays right before art. All three will take piano lessons with me.

I think most weeks we'll do photography (Nadia only) on Fridays, Nadia will cook dinner on Tuesday nights, we'll do sign language on Mondays and Wednesdays, and art/chorus at MCS on Thursdays.

I've also put time into planning some of the field trips we might go on over the next eleven months. I'm sure some will be added along the way and some will be deleted. The underlined ones we can get into free with our ASTC membership. We are planning to go to Chicago in April, but I haven't put any thought yet into what we might do while we're there (aside from enjoy spending time with my sister and her family). It will be the kids second trip to Chicago as we went in 2017.

Places the kids haven't ever visited before (or shows they haven't seen before):

1. Eckley Miner's Village, Old Jail Museum, T and D Cats, Pennsylvania Military Museum, Elk Mountain Ski Resort, Packwood House Museum, National Civil War Museum, WWII weekend at Reading Airport, Milton Rock Gym, Billtown Brass concert, Sweet Chariot and Turning 15 on the Road to Freedom at FM Kirby Center, Wheatland, Esther at Sight and Sound, Matilda and You're a Good Man Charlie Brown at Community Theatre League, Kipona Festival and Powwow on City Island in Harrisburg

2. NYC - Intrepid Sea, Air, and Space Museum, Central Park, Brooklyn Children's Museum, American Museum of Natural History, Transit Museum, Tenement Museum, 9/11 Memorial, 9/11 Museum, and National Museum of Mathematics

3. New York - Saratoga National Historic Park, USS Slater, Children's Museum of Science and Technology, Fort Ticonderoga, Museum of Innovation and Science 

4. Maryland - Antietam Battlefield, Blue Angels show at the Naval Academy, see Wicked in Baltimore, Historic Ships (Baltimore), Baltimore Museum of Industry

5. Virginia - Manassas National Battlefield Park, White House of the Confederacy, Science Museum of Virginia, Richmond National Battlefield Park, Petersburg National Battlefield, Appomattox Courthouse, American Civil War Museum, Arlington Cemetery, and Natural Bridge State Park 

6. Detroit - Henry Ford Museum, Ford Rouge Factory Tour, and Greenfield Village

7. Erie Maritime Museum and flagship Niagara

8. DC - Washington Monument, Lincoln Memorial, Jefferson Memorial, Ford's Theatre, Peterson House, Spy Museum, National Museum of the US Navy, Museum of American History

9. Philadelphia -Longwood Gardens, USS New Jersey, Flower Show

Places we will probably be visiting again (in many cases because at least some of my kids don't recall the first trip because they were too young):

1. Papa John's tour, Little League Museum, Repasz Band Concert, Hershey Gardens, Reptiland, Hershey Story Museum, Lackawanna coal mine tour, Refreshing Mountain, Ski Sawmill, PA Wild Child program at Black Moshannon State Park, Lewisburg Children's Museum

2. New York - Corning Museum of Glass and Rockwell Museum

3. Pittsburgh - Carnegie Science Center and Children's Museum of Pittsburgh

4. Philadelphia - Franklin Institute, Independence Seaport Museum

Thankful Tuesday

1. The highlight of the baseball/softball clinic the kids attended three nights last week was the game they played on Thursday! There were two retired major league baseball players helping with the camp - Bill Wegman, who was a pitcher for the Brewers for 11 years and Don Gordon who was a pitcher for the Blue Jays and Cleveland Indians for 3 years. Paul took them on Thursday night, which I greatly appreciated because taking them both to history camp on Wednesday morning and then baseball that night really wore me out considering I've been under the weather. He enjoyed watching their games (took videos when they were up to bat), and he had only seen the kids about 5 minutes per day the previous two days since we didn't get home until after 9pm so it was good he had more time with them that night.

2. The kids enjoyed spending 9 hours total at the Joseph Priestly House last week for a history camp about the colonial time period. Their punched tin crafts are on display in our kitchen!

3. We had lunch at the Kid's Café four times last week, and the highlight was on Thursday when they served a turkey dinner and the kids were each allowed to pick two toys to take home. Nadia picked a game and a puzzle, Ian picked some farm animal figurines and a kite, and Oliver picked a container of 40 glow sticks plus an Alvin and the Chipmunks toy.

4. While the kids were in history camp yesterday I did some work on my laptop at the public library and also did a little shopping at the clearance racks at Kohl's. In general I find their prices high (even on clearance), but I did find a few bargains - polo shirts and pajamas for Ian (that will eventually be Oliver's) and some Star Wars toys and stuffed animals (birthday and Christmas presents for the kids). I've been wrapping presents over the past week, which is a good feeling because I prefer to do it in small doses so to speak.

5. Saturday the kids and I stayed home all day, which was nice. On Sunday I taught a lesson on David and Goliath at church. I had Oliver stand on my shoulders during the lesson for K-2nd grade, and Ian stood on my shoulders during the lesson for 3rd-5th grade. They were supposed to be playing the part of Goliath. Ian did a good job of shouting, "Who will fight me!". Since Goliath was over 9 feet tall, I figured that a boy standing on my shoulders would be about the right height. I enjoy teaching the Bible lesson during the second service in the summer.

6. Sunday afternoon I took Nadia and Ian to see Newsies at the Community Arts Center in Williamsport. Of course they prefer shows like Aladdin and Lion King, but this one tied in better with the time period we'll be studying soon in social studies. Governor Teddy Roosevelt has a small part in the musical that is based on real events from the late 1800's.

7. It's such a delight to see Oliver picking up picture books and reading them. I have three readers!!!

8. This week the kids are enjoying a history camp at the Taber Museum in Williamsport from 9- noon. They are studying WWI, Amelia Earhart, and WWII, which is perfect because those are topics we'll be studying this coming school year. This is the final camp for the summer for the boys. In two weeks Nadia has theatre camp and then we are done with camps for 2019.

9. I sold an easel yesterday. Last Monday we had some water in the basement, and I was very grateful as the kids and I were cleaning up the mess that we have a lot less stuff in the basement these days than we used to. The kids have appreciated having some spending money as I've given them the money if I have sold something that was theirs. Nadia told me after the baseball/softball clinic that she doesn't want to play on another softball team. She has asked me to sell her bag, helmet, bat, and mitt. I will try to do that, and then I'm taking a break from selling things. I still prefer to go the donation route.

10. We've been enjoying listening to two book series. Thanks to Overdrive (via the public library in Philadelphia) we've been enjoying the Penderwick family (currently on book #4 of 5) and the Melendy family (currently on book # 3 of 4). We were able to access eight of the nine books for free, and I purchased the one the library didn't have through Audible. 

11. Yesterday I paid $125 for a guy to come and tell us that in light of how much it would cost us to repair our 20 year old air conditioning system, we should just replace it. That's not great news. However, we are learning ways to keep our house a bit cooler - curtains and blinds are closed in all windows (and sliding glass door) 24 hours a day. We are opening the windows at night once the temperature drops outside at night and closing the windows once the temperature gets about 74 outside in the morning (8:15am yesterday). In hind sight, I wish we had brought Maurice's window AC unit back from Philadelphia in March. We just left it for the next tenant. Since we have had central air conditioning for almost eleven years, I didn't think we'd need it. Considering it's the end of July, we shouldn't have too many more weeks of temps in the 90's. I had toyed with whether to put some money I saved this spring into either a CD or a savings account. I'm glad I chose the savings account. The CD had a slightly better interest rate, but a savings account is more liquid. I wasn't planning on dipping into it so soon, but I'm thankful we should be able to afford to replace the system. This is definitely a first world problem. Who am I to complain that my house feels like a sauna when there are people in the world who don't have a home, don't have access to clean water, etc. It helps that I am feeling better. The heat zaps my energy, and the respiratory bug zapped my energy so the combination was hard. I am grateful to have my energy back!!!

2019-20 School Year

The first few years that I homeschooled I didn't need to keep records because it wasn't required until Nadia was eight years old, and I didn't write out any plans because I wanted to be very flexible about the pace of instruction - if something was easily grasped we could fly faster than I had anticipated and if something was more difficult to master, we could slow down as much as necessary. The first subject I put time into planning in advance was Social Studies for the 2015-16 school year in part because Yvonne and I were trying to coordinate that our kids were studying the same countries. When I went back to work in 2017, I had to become more detailed in writing out plans for the two days each week that the kids were at Tab's house. Last school year I wrote more detailed plans for all days in part because Paul was helping me at least two days a week when I was teaching at the university. This summer I have definitely done the most thorough planning for the next school year by a long shot even though I believe I'll be the one teaching my kids every day; my lesson plan document is currently 47 pages typed (single space). I'm hopeful that one advantage to planning out more thoroughly is that things I have *intended* to do in the past but never actually got around to doing will actually happen this year. I have only planned reading for Oliver through the end of December. I want to see how things go before I make any plans for reading for him for January through early May. Nadia will be cooking once a week, and I haven't added that to the schedule yet because I'm waiting to find out if/when they will be having art and gym.

I also added board games to the plans. I don't view that as "school work," but we have been unsuccessful in getting into a routine of playing board games. We have played them more often this year, but it typically happens after Oliver goes to bed. I scheduled it about three times a week on average and rotated through our four names (including myself) as to who gets to pick the game we play on that particular day. Hopefully this will help get us in the habit of playing board games more regularly while Oliver is awake. Similarly, I have done really well with reading chapter books the last few years, but I have been sporadic in terms of reading picture books we own (that aren't related to what we're studying in science or history). I put those in the schedule four days per week and poetry on the fifth. Here's to hoping this means we'll do better with reading poetry and picture books (that are purely read for enjoyment). Nadia and Ian certainly have heard me read far more picture books than Oliver, which I feel badly about. Better late than never!

Keyboarding - Nadia and Ian worked on typing on an almost daily basis during the second half of the last school year. They made a lot of progress so I'm not planning to require them to do it as often this year. I think I've scheduled them to work on typing.com or actually type something they've written during Language Arts about 40 times over the course of the school year. Oliver isn't doing keyboarding yet.

Photography - Nadia has selected this as one of her "electives" this year as a middle schooler. I am planning to work with her on this once a week so that she can learn to use a DSLR camera in manual mode. I will let her watch some videos and such on the online photography class I purchased several years ago.

Music - Nadia would like to join the chorus at the Christian school, but I'm not inclined to do that this year. I will continue teaching Nadia and Ian how to play the piano, and I also plan to start Oliver sometime this school year on the piano. I have scheduled them to practice the piano 4-5 times a week. Nadia and Ian are also joining the Susquehanna Valley Youth Chorale the end of August. Their rehearsals are in a different town (farther away) in the winter. I'm only planning on having them do the fall semester (end of August through the middle of November). Ian and Oliver will continue to sing in the children's choir at church on Sundays. We are about half way through the Hymn devotional book. I'm planning to finish that with them this year, which introduces them to some hymns they might not have heard before. Each year we listen to stories and music about different composers in social studies. The five I have selected thus far for this year include Wagner, Verdi, Foster, Sousa, and Gershwin.

Spelling - Oliver will finish Level 2 of All About Spelling and do part of level 3. Ian will do level five, and Nadia will complete Level seven. This will be her final year of spelling. Today I worked on assembling the writing station that she will utilize the last day of each lesson. I think it's very creative; kudos to the authors of this curriculum! I also will have Nadia and Ian complete the sixth grade portion of the homophone book.

Handwriting - Ian will complete the fourth grade cursive textbook (HWT), and Oliver will complete the second grade manuscript textbook. At least once a week I will have Nadia copy something in cursive to retain what she has learned (such as the Bible verses in science). Handwriting lasts about half of the year.

Art - TBD All I have so far are a few drawing activities related to what we are studying in history.

Cooking - Nadia will cook one dinner per week.

PE - I haven't decided yet if/when we will take a homeschool gym class this school year. All three kids will play on a basketball team in the winter, and hopefully they can also take ice skating lessons in the winter. Oliver will be taking gymnastics in the fall when his siblings are in choir.

Bible - Three years ago we read the entire Old Testament, two years ago we read the New Testament, last year Bible was one of the things that got short changed since I had a FT job. We did BSF lessons for the first couple of months and sporadically did some sword drills throughout the year, but for Bible we just worked on memorizing verses for AWANA. We have family devotions before putting Oliver to bed, but I want to do more than that. I haven't finished planning out the whole year yet, but for the first two months we are going to work through the Young Peacemaker by Corlette Sande. This is one of those resources I've intended to use for years and am finally getting around to doing so. Yay! If Nadia chooses to join the youth group on Wednesday nights instead of AWANA, then I will need to decide what chapters (or book) of the Bible she will memorize this year.

Math - Oliver will complete a second grade textbook, Nadia will work through Teaching Textbook's 6th grade curriculum online, we will work through Life of Fred (Edgewood through Liver) together, and Ian will work through Beast Academy 4A through 4D. Once Oliver has completed his handwriting textbook, I am going to have him do an educational game or puzzle every day (games related to fractions, telling time, money, fractions, addition/subtraction, etc.). We've owned these games for year but rarely used them. If all goes as planned, Oliver will use those games more than his siblings did.

Science - All three kids will do science together this year. We'll be studying chemistry and physics in the fall semester and botany in the spring semester. Nadia and Ian will compete in the science fair at the Bloomsburg Children's Museum. I purchased a periodic table coloring book that has information about each of the elements. We will be completing one page of that almost every day of the first semester. I haven't planned out what experiments we will do this year. Hopefully we will be more successful in completing them than we have in the past. I did recently purchase slides for our microscope so hopefully we will utilize that this year. Possible botany field trips might include the Philadelphia Flower show, Hershey Gardens, and/or Longwood Gardens.

Language Arts - For grammar Nadia and Ian will complete the Robin Hood book. That will only take a few minutes each day. Their writing activities will correlate to American history. Vocabulary words will be introduced each week through the grammar and writing lessons. I *should* add writing activities for Oliver such as writing in his journal. I haven't done that yet. Last year the main thing I worked on with Oliver was reading, and spelling came easily for him. This year my initial focus with him will be math as he really struggled with that last year.

Sign Language - Nadia has asked to work on sign language this year instead of Spanish. I'm thinking we will do it twice a week. Oliver doesn't do a second language yet. I am giving Ian the choice of working on Rosetta Stone (Spanish) or sign language with Nadia.

Social Studies - I have definitely put the most time into the lesson plans for this subject. Reading and writing are correlated with what we are studying in history. As for geography, Nadia and Ian will be reviewing the location of each of the 50 states on a map as well as being able to name the capitol of each state. We will be studying economics some this year for the first time as we'll be reading ten Tuttle Twins books, which are from a libertarian viewpoint. As for history, we will be studying from the 1860's to the present using volume four of The Story of the World plus a plethora (more than 400) of other nonfiction books, picture books, and chapter books. I have selected 51 chapter books for Ian to pick from for reading (at least 50% of what he reads must be from the list), and I have a list of more than 50 books for Nadia to choose between (a few books are on both of their lists but for the most part the lists are not duplicates). I have included a few videos as well, and I'm planning on having the kids earn more Junior Ranger Badges - some we can do from home! The chapter books we listen to (or I read aloud) are also related to the time period we are studying this year. Here are some highlights of some of the topics/people we will be studying this year (we will study them in chronological order but this list below is not in order):

• Queen Victoria and Florence Nightingale
•  Clara Barton and Sojourner Truth
• All of the presidents from Abraham Lincoln through Donald Trump
• Twenty five of the states plus DC (we read books about the other twenty five last year)
• Civil War, World War I, World War II, Korean Conflict, and Vietnam War (far more attention will be given to the Civil War and WWII than the others) Also, the history camp the kids are attending next week will be about WWI and WWII.
• Underground railroad, Harriet Tubman, reconstruction 
• George Washington Carver, Vincent van Gogh, Alexander Graham Bell, Wright Brothers, and Wilson Bentley
• Suffrage movement 
• Amelia Earhart, Ruby Bridges, Martin Luther King, Jr., Rosa Parks
• Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Levi Strauss, Milton Hershey
• Babe Ruth, Hoover Dam, Panama Canal
• Titanic, Albert Einstein, Henry Ford, Thomas Edison

Hopefully all three will have an excellent year in grades 2, 4, and 6! I'm very thankful that I am able to be their teacher. 

Cooking Lessons

When my children turn a year older, they are given a new responsibility and a new privilege. When Nadia turned eleven last month, I moved her bedtime to 9:30 and said that her new chore would be to cook one dinner per week. Due to Camp Good News, Creation music festival, our visit to Long Island, and her week at Camp Susque, this was the first week she could take on her new responsibility. She likes her new chore, primarily because she can choose to make something she likes eating. I taught her how to make what my mom called goulash (pasta, meat, sauce, and cheese); she said she wants to make meatloaf next week. Oliver wanted to help. I told him that I am planning to make potatoes au gratin with ham on Thursday, and he can help me make that. Eventually Nadia will be able to cook dinner independently, but for now she needs some instruction.

On Monday the only time we left the house was to take Nadia to the pediatrician. Because it was raining, we ate lunch at home on Monday instead of going to Kid's Café. It rained so

much that water came in through one of our windows in the basement. I used eleven towels (beach/bath) repeatedly until I got most of the water off the basement floor. The baseball/softball clinic is held rain or shine, but due to the water in the basement, I opted to have the kids skip the first night of the clinic. Yesterday we left the house twice - we attempted to have lunch at the Kid's Café, and the kids participated in the 2.5 hours clinic last night. I said "attempted" to have lunch because the main ingredient in the main dish was rice, and none of my kids like rice. I am going to start serving rice more often until they get to the point where they will eat it. Oliver usually eats everything except for a few fruits so I was surprised when even Oliver wouldn't eat it. The clinic was held indoors on Monday, but last night it was beautiful outside. The kids rotated between five different stations - catching pop flyballs, catching infield grounders, throwing the ball, running bases, and hitting. They have the kids divided into five different groups. There is one softball group and four baseball groups

separated by age (5/6, 7/8, 9/10, and 11/12). Ian was thrilled that a friend of his (Micah) was in his group. He and Micah were in the same cabin at Camp Susque in 2018. Nadia knew a girl in the softball group from the homeschool gym class.

This morning the kids attended the first morning of a history camp at the Joseph Priestley House in Northumberland. When I arrived they were playing games with marbles. We made it back five minutes before the end of the Kids Café lunch program ended. While the kids were in the history camp I worked on the social studies lesson plans for the next school year on my laptop in the public library in that town. Thus far I have 312 picture books plus nonfiction books selected and put into lists in my library account. I also have a list of 52 chapter books and biographies - some we own, some we could get on CD from the library, and some we can listen to on Overdrive or Hoopla. Then I have a list of another 86 chapter books that Nadia and Ian will be asked to pick from. My plan this year is to ask that every other

book they read be from this list (during the school year) and the other half of the chapter books they read can be completely their own choice. For example, Nadia has been reading the Mother Daughter Book Club book series and Ian has been reading books from the Littles series. If we finish the list of 52 books, I might read them some of the books on "their" list. I purposefully picked some that were more geared toward Nadia and others that are more geared toward Ian. So altogether there are 450 books on the list, and believe it or not, the list shrank this week as I deleted all the ones I had planned to get through Bloomsburg University. I haven't mapped out exactly when we will read all the chapter books, but I have organized which day we will read the 312 picture/non-fiction books from August through March. That has taken time!

Thankful Tuesday

1. I haven't been doing as much couponing over the past two years, but now that I am returning to being a stay-at-home mom, I need to put more time into that again. Last week I got some good deals through Amazon. For example, one order contained 12 boxes of cereal (two of which were family size), 2 bags of chips, and a 23oz can of unsweetened cacao, for a grand total of $18.89. The most expensive item (by far) was the can of Hershey's Cocoa. The last time I bought some I got the generic brand at our local grocery store. Many times I'm fine with the generic brand. I quickly discovered that from now on I'll be sticking with Hershey's when it comes to unsweetened cacao! Nadia was thrilled because ten of the boxes were of her current favorite cereal - Peanut Butter Cap'n Crunch.

2. For several years I've owned three wreaths for the front door - spring, fall, and Christmas. I use the spring one in spring and summer, but I usually don't have anything up in January through March. Last Tuesday I shopped with my friend during chemistry camp, and I purchased a beautiful winter wreath that I plan to use during those months in the future, and it only cost $25, for which I was grateful as wreaths can easily cost $40 or more.

3. I had a lengthy conversation with my sister on her birthday on Wednesday. Considering I have no idea how many years I will have to wait until I talk to my brother again, I am not taking something like this for granted!

4. The boys enjoyed chemistry camp. Monday they focused on forensic chemistry - fingerprints, shoeprints, chromatography with a pen smear, testing "blood" samples, etc. Gill T. Ascharged was the culprit! Tuesday they learned about material chemistry, and the boys came home that day with a vial of nylon that they created through a polymer reaction. Wednesday was one of their favorite days as their study of physical chemistry included a lot of explosions - including 1,000 ping pong balls (thanks to liquid nitrogen). On Thursday they came home with containers of water from a creek that they had tested as they studied environmental chemistry. The highlight on Friday when they studied food chemistry was the ice cream they created (and ate) using liquid nitrogen. Ian enjoyed seeing the DNA of a strawberry that day. On Tuesday Ian told me he learned about hydrophilic and hydrophobic substances. Here's a video that show some highlights of chemistry camp!

5. Despite the heat, we had fun at Knoebels on Friday night! I was able to meet a woman near the park to sell my bread maker for $50. I have plans to sell an easel for $10, and the rest of the toys I had unsuccessfully attempted to sell I donated to Goodwill on Thursday. Yay for less clutter!

6. Paul and the kids enjoyed a production of Snoopy, the Musical on Saturday night in Lewisburg. Ian said two of the girls in that production were in their chemistry camp.

7. Nadia had a great week at Camp Susque! The girl she spent the most time with lives in Lewisburg so hopefully we can find a way for the girls to spend some time together over the coming months.

8. Last Tuesday we rode the Hiawatha riverboat and then went bowling. Ian got a strike for the first time this year, and Oliver got a spare for the first time. He got 3 spares in his first game and 1 in his second game! Oliver actually beat Ian in the first game. In the second game there were five bowlers on their lane. Tab (former babysitter) got first place with 135, Ian had second place, and Oliver took third place in the second game. Their bowling skills have improved over the summer. Oliver wore Ian's bowling shoes, and Ian wore Nadia's bowling shoes. Since I didn't bowl the bowling was free, and it only cost $15 for the three of us to ride the riverboat, and that included eight different hands-on activities about coal mining. The kids' favorite activity was were they "mined" the chocolate out of chocolate chip cookies.

9. The boys enjoyed VBS last Thursday night, and Paul and all three kids attended the lunch and closing activities on Sunday afternoon. Oliver and Ian enjoyed the inflatable and slip and slide. Nadia just stayed in the gym where it was air conditioned.

10. Yesterday Nadia had her 11 year old well visit. I had scheduled it for the week of her birthday (last month) but had to reschedule it once she made plans to join the youth group at the Creation music festival. She actually hadn't been seen by a doctor for 19 months. My bed rest during Oliver's pregnancy plus his NICU stay had postponed her four year old well visit by several months and over time it ended up taking place six months after her birthday. Because shots are involved with the 11 year old visit and the school district requires those to be up to date, I had planned to allow 18 months to pass in between her well visits this time so that the insurance will still cover the visit and also she'd be old enough to receive the immunizations. She hadn't had any shots in six years so she was really dreading these. She had two shots in her right arm (Tdap and Meningitis), and I think it wasn't as bad as she anticipated it would be. I declined the HPV immunization which isn't mandatory. From age three to age eleven her weight has gone from 34 to 91 pounds. Her percentile has varied over those years from a low of 55 percentile to a high of 80th percentile. Her weight is currently in the 65th percentile. Her height has gone from 36 inches tall (three years old) to 56.5 inches tall (now). Her height percentile has varied over those years from a low of 25th percentile to a high of 45th percentile which is where she is now. Her BMI has often been around 80 percentile; the doctors want it to be less than 85. Her BMI was much lower in 2014 as her weight and height percentiles were very close at that time. Her BMI today was at the 78th percentile so the doctor didn't say anything about it, which was good news. I told him about my brother's passing and asked if my kids needed to be tested. He said it was highly unlikely that they would have the genetic mutation if I don't have it, and I do not. It still wouldn't hurt to have them checked at some point, but considering she was having two shots today I wasn't going to also request blood to be drawn. I am very thankful that Nadia is such a healthy girl and continues to be the only one in our family who doesn't need to wear eyeglasses.

11. Yesterday I wasn't dizzy, and I had enough energy to stay awake and vertical during the hours I am usually awake. I still have a cough, but I think I'm over the worst of the bug, and thus far no one in the family seems to have caught it from me.

12. It cooled down yesterday. The house got down to 79 yesterday, and this morning it got down to 74 degrees in the house! It was SO nice to be able to sleep with something on top of me last night for the first time in several nights. I don't like sleeping on top of my sheet, but it was even hotter upstairs. Hopefully it won't get THAT hot again this summer and we can get our air conditioner fixed or replaced before next summer.

Fun at Knoebels!

My dad's family owned an amusement park in Pittsburgh so it seems that enjoying amusement parks is in my DNA. Since Nadia was old enough to ride kiddie rides we have been going to Knoebels and other amusement parks every summer. I think this is the latest into the summer we ever waited until our first trip. We had plans to go to Knoebels twice in May and to Montage Mountain (water park) in June, but the weather interfered with all of those plans. At this point last year we had already been to eight different amusement parks - Knoebels, Sesame Place, Six Flags, Disneyland, Legoland, Montage Mountain, Sea World, and Aquatica. On Friday I drove the boys directly from chemistry camp to Elysburg (the town where Knoebels is located). We met a woman at a gas station, and she gave me $50 for my bread maker. Then we joined some people from our church in pavilion. Those who helped in their VBS in June received a free meal and either a bargain night handstamp or some tickets (for the volunteer plus his/her immediate family). The meals included a hotdog, hamburger,

ice cream, sweet tea, coleslaw, and macaroni and cheese. None of us ate our entire meal, which worked out well as we were able to save two hamburgers, two ice creams, one macaroni and cheese, and sweet tea for Paul when he arrived later. None of us took any coleslaw.

I chose the tickets over the handstamp because the handstamp didn't include the roller coasters. If they do this again next summer, hopefully I'll remember to get handstamps for the kids and tickets for Paul and I and then we can give the kids our tickets to use on the roller coasters. The upside of having done it the way we did is we still have tickets left over that we can use when we go back (weather permitting) in 12 days for WGRC Day (our local Christian radio station). Oliver didn't try the Impulse. It was the first year he was tall enough to ride it. He says he'll try it with Nadia the next time we're there. It's a steel rollercoaster that goes upside down multiple times. Oliver rode the Phoenix twice with Ian, the Twister once with Paul, the flume twice with Ian, and the Skloosh once with me

and once with Ian. We should have done the Skloosh earlier in the night as you get drenched on that one. It was a very hot day, but thankfully Knoebels has a lot of trees that provide shade. Also, I think the heat helped keep the crowd on the smaller side. The boys also did the Haunted House for the first time. No handstamp covers that ride so it was the perfect day to ride it since we were using tickets. Ian enjoyed it. Oliver at first said he'd NEVER do it again, and then later he said maybe he'd ride it again when he's ten years old. On our ride home he talked to Grandma on the phone (before he fell asleep), and he talked the most about the haunted house. We were on the rides for about two hours. Hopefully the weather will cooperate and we'll be able to return to Knoebels in 12 days as Nadia hasn't been on any rides yet this summer. We also plan to go to Del Grosso's in early August for Oliver's birthday. Since parking is free at Knoebels and we were given a meal and tickets, our only expenses for this fun evening included buying Paul a soda and a milkshake and buying a cup of

soft ice cream that the boys and I shared.

On Wednesday I came down with a respiratory bug of some sort. I had the hardest time just staying awake that day. I didn't take the boys to VBS on Tuesday or Wednesday. I slept 10 hours on Wednesday night and 11 hours on Thursday night. Thursday I had a bit more energy. I took the kids to VBS that evening and asked Paul to pick them up. Because of our trip to Knoebels I went to bed later on Friday night, and the boys got up earlier than usual which translated to me only getting 7 hours of sleep. That coupled with all the activity on Friday meant I took several steps backward in how I was feeling yesterday. We have been in a heat wave. The high temperature has been in the 90's and with the humidity the "real feel" has been around 107. I thought if I mowed the lawn at 8:00am it wouldn't be unbearably hot at that time of day, but I was wrong. I started to have some heat exhaustion so I quit even though I wasn't quite done mowing and took a very cold shower. I could tell if I

tried to finish mowing I was likely to faint. My worst incident of heat exhaustion was when I was at camp (as a high schooler) and I passed out right before I was about to climb on a horse. It would have been much worse to faint while on the horse, but I still was treated to an ice bath by the camp nurse. While the boys were in chemistry camp I wasn't sure I had it in me to drive to Knoebels, but I went to CVS and bought some lozenges plus a bottle of water that had vitamins and caffeine and such in it. That perked me up enough that I didn't cancel the trip to Knoebels. The past two days I have been paying the price for pushing myself on Friday.

Normally I can't take a sick day - moms don't usually get that luxury, but I actually have been able to this weekend. Paul usually works on Saturday. Yesterday he got up and got dressed for work but then changed his mind. I was surprised when I came down for breakfast to see him still here sitting in the family room in his work clothes. He decided to take the day off. All four of us went to get Nadia at camp that morning. I started a load of laundry and a load of dishes and then laid down. I literally can go years without taking a nap. I am NOT a napper. But I took a nap yesterday afternoon, which shows how utterly exhausted I was. I probably would have slept longer than I did, but it was a sauna in our bedroom. I was sweating like crazy. We need to replace the compressor for our air conditioning. We will wait a bit because I'm sure we'd pay top dollar right now in the middle of a heat wave, but with the A/C on our house is close to 90 degrees downstairs, which means it's well over 90 degrees upstairs. Usually the house comes down to 74 or 75 (where we typically have it set) by the morning, but this morning it had only cooled down to 81 in our house even during the night! Thankfully the temperature is supposed to drop 20 degrees tomorrow. I literally was using an ice pack on my temples yesterday in the house because I was so hot. We were all at home from 11:00-6:30, and then Paul and the kids left to see a musical about Snoopy. I had planned to take them, but he went in my place, and I went to bed at 7pm.

We had planned to go to the Civil War Days at Landis Valley Farm today. I had this on the calendar for a full year, which is why last fall I purchased a family membership to the farm when Paul took the kids there for a different event. Since I'm under the weather and it's so stinking hot out today those plans were scratched. It means the membership was not the way to go financially, but I'll just have to consider it a donation to a worthwhile organization. My plan is to not leave the house at all today. I am still rather dizzy. I'm hoping that two days of rest (not counting the trip to Camp Susque yesterday morning) will help me get over this bug more quickly. Paul and the kids are at church, and then they will stop at First Baptist (where the boys went to VBS last week) for inflatables, a slip and slide, etc. Nadia will be able to go to the Middle (youth group she attends at the Methodist church) this evening. She hasn't gone there in a few months. Thankfully the next two days are pretty calm. I have three chauffeuring duties over those two days - take Nadia to the doctor for her eleven year old physical on Monday morning and take all three kids to a baseball/softball clinic Monday and Tuesday night.