Winter Time

We have had a very cold winter this year. Snow has actually stayed on the ground (in small patches) for multiple days, instead of melting right away. This has lead to a lot of indoor time. I’m attempting to track the kids “outside” hours. I did this “1000 hours outside” challenge last year and ended with about 400 hours. 1000 hours comes out to about 3 hours a day. I thought making it to 400 was pretty good for a first try. This year we will try to beat that time. It is easier since the kids are able to entertain them selves for a while.

This year we finally took our trip to Charleston. We’ve been talking about going for the duration of our time here, so it was good to finally get over there. It was a bit cold… but not cold enough to miss out on beach time. Most of our time was spent playing on the beach. We also took a tour of Fort Sumter. The fort is on an island, so we took a Ferry out to it. On the boat we saw dolphins. (The announcer mentioned there were many that lived there). We also got a good look at some of the container ships. They were lined up to be unloaded and were cool to watch. The Fort Sumter had a Jr Ranger activity, so the kids were able to complete that and get a badge.

This seems to be the time of year that many of the Homeschool Curriculums go on sale. I had to make some decisions about things for the next school year. David is going to be in Kindergarden! It is wild to think about that. He has really been plugging along with his PreSchool work. I think I am going to combine the kids for Social Studies and Science next year. They are already doing this, David just “tags a long” for them now, but next year I will have him answer questions orally or modify his work in some way.

Our fish tank has been going pretty good. We have a ton of algae growing along with the plants. It isn’t the prettiest tank at the moment. We did a big clean out and attempted to get some of the algae scrubbed off the hard surfaces, but the plants are absolutely covered. Because of our big algae bloom, it was time to get the shrimp. We all went to the fish store this week and picked them out. They are tiny guys, but they will hopefully multiply in there and be good at cleaning up the algae. We also got an algae eater fish called an “Albino Pleco”, his name is Pete. We have been having fun trying to find all the new tank mates throughout the day.

Yesterday we hosted a get-together at our house for the choir. I call it “Cocoa for Choir”. I did the same thing last year, so it was a bit easier to plan this year. Since it was so close to Valentine’s Day, we had it Valentine’s themed. The kids helped make cookies and put out the trays of food. We decorated with a banner and some hearts. It was a good party, however not well attended. Quite a few people were sick or had sudden obligations. In the end we had 5 choir members over. But that is how it goes sometimes. We still had fun.

We have had a few sicknesses going through our house in the last few weeks. Everyone got a nasty bug before our trip, and it took a while to get through everyone. We seemed to be mostly recovered when we took off for Charleston. Then the last night of the trip, Alex started feeling bad again. She had a thick cough that was keeping her up at night. Then David got it. He was ok, until he wasn’t. Tuesday night he woke up suddenly coughing the “croup” cough and could barely breathe. After trying to help him at home for a while, I took him to the ER. It was a long night there, but by the time the doctor saw him, he was breathing OK. They gave him some Steroids and a breathing treatment and sent us home. He improved after that. It seems like that was the worst night of it. We had plans to check out the new indoor playground in town, but I think we will hold off on going until the flu season is over here.