Goodbye Summer; Hello Fall

Here in the Pacific Northwest we usually have beautiful weather during the months of September and October. This year, however, fall has come with a lot of rain. Summer sunsets, sunflowers and long evenings outside seem so far away. Our fall days have been filled with rain, mud and trying to pick up leaves in between storms. Oh, the contrast of seasons.

My favorite thing in my yard this year was my corn and sunflower patch.

 My sunflowers were giant!

 Daddy indulged me and grabbed the boys for a picture.

My handsome boys

 Sunflowers and a sunset...so lovely 

 Sunset watching from the fort 

 Josh is still small enough to be thrown around

 Another great sunset 

 And one more 

 Now switch to fall: leaf pile jumping

Sam

 Josh 

 Seth 

 Little cousin Jaiven loved the leaf pile. Alicia came and spent the day with us last week. The boys had a blast playing together and the moms canned 23 pints of applesauce together!

Sam, Seth and Judah

 The cousins...love these boys!! (Judah, Titus, Jaiven, Sam, Seth, and Josh)

School and Kid Update

Sam, Seth for first day of Classical Conversations pictures

The middle of September, the twins and I started year 3 of homeschooling. We are still participating in Classical Conversations and attend "school" there once a week. My teaching at home throughout the week is based on some of the topics introduced during class. It's going to be a fun year learning about Medieval history, natural science, the parts of speech in English, European geography and the solar system. I got this really cool book, "Draw Europe," by Kristin J. Draeger that the kids have been drawing through twice a week. While one boy does their map work, the other is working on a beginning typing program. This has been a wonderful set-up, with some great independent work for Seth and Sam; and as a bonus, they love doing both tasks. 

Sammy held the flag for the first day of CC. That's a big change from my shy little boy two years ago! (Below) Seth working on his typing.

The biggest change of school this year for us: we're actually being consistent about doing it! Before the year started, I reread my favorite book on homeschooling, "Teaching From Rest," by Sarah Mackenzie, and decided to diligently put some of her ideas into practice. Each day I write the boys' tasks in their notebook with little boxes for them to check off when a task is completed. They are like their mama and love lists and checking things off! I also have a loose schedule for each week day, so that the boys will know what to expect. This has greatly helped minimize the times where I say, "It's time for math," and they reply, "But we're having so much fun playing Legos," and I let them keep playing because they are having fun, playing well and I'm busy and have a ton of household duties to get done. So far, it's been a great system and while we're not completely strict about it, it's helped me to be more consistent in schooling the boys every day. 

I've been better about consistently doing art with the kids. It's been very enjoyable, especially when we can do it outside! Josh is always right in the thick of things.

Now before you assume me to be a task master at schooling, I must say that our days are very loosely structured. We try to get started with some family reading time by 9, and pathetically, we're running late on that start time most of our days. These "morning times" have been really fun this year, as I've incorporated not only reading the Bible or a book of virtues together (Josh too), but the big boys are helping me teaching Josh many classic songs and motions (ring-around-the-rosies for example). It's nice for Josh to feel like he's doing school too, although often times he's too stubborn to sing along with us. I also have built in a day with no schedule, so that we can use it to catch up on things we didn't get to, or to see friends, or go on a field trip. So, combined with one day a week of CC, we do a whopping three days of school a week. Oh if my boys only realized how easy they have it at home!

We've had several fun opportunities of extra curricular activities in the past week. I coordinated a field trip for our homeschool group to a Northwest Children's Theater play, "Cat in the Hat." There were some extra tickets, so my sister Katie's family came along too. It was such a great play and everyone loved it. Josh laughed so much! What a great field trip!

 Me and my boys!

 It was in a gorgeous historic building in downtown Portland

 Our local library had an after school activity where kids could learn some basics of coding by playing with an actual robot. It was super fun! Who doesn't want to program a robot?

Seth and Will Kessi, Sam and Grace Kessi

 Josh and Annie Kessi staying entertained by sitting on their own special bench

 We always take time off if we have special visitors, like Deedo. He came over one day when Ben was traveling for work to give me a break. I came home from some errands to find them sitting around a fire while Deedo told them stories. 

This picture sums up what I love about homeschooling!

So that's school. Here's what each kid is up to individually these days:

Sam: It's easy to start with Sam, because that's just what he's been these days: easy. I'm so thankful for him! He has been our calm and steady child, balancing out the other two who are currently quite a roller coaster of emotions. I can count on Sam to be ready to leave on time, and to help put Rosey away and get the other boys' water bottles. He is patient and reasonable with Josh. He is brave in social settings and looks forward to playing with other kids. Sam continues to be a fast and diligent reader; I often find him curled up on the couch with his head hunched over a book. He also really loves watching sports with his dad, and asked me the other day if I "thought the Seahawks would make the playoffs," sweetly assuming I cared as much as he does. He loves to know what is going to happen, when and where. He is a great speller and his reading comprehension is through the roof. While he likes to do good work, he is not a perfectionist. Sam has been and always will be persistent and does not easily let an issue die. He doesn't like change and enjoys routine. He was the first boy to catch a crawdad by himself within his group of friends.

Seth: Poor Seth, he's going through a tough spell. As he's gotten older, it's became more obvious that while he's only five minutes older, he truly is our "first born perfectionist." He has been super emotional with random break downs over silly situations. We can't quite pin down the reason that he's so off: busyness? change? perfectionism? Ben traveling? gluten? sugar? diet? tired? Whether it's one or all of those reasons, Ben and I are really praying about the best way to help him steady his emotions. He has also been anxious a lot about various things, especially falling asleep at night (I passed down that gene...I was HORRIBLE at falling asleep at that age and was always anxious that I wasn't falling asleep fast enough...sorry for that Seth). Another recent anxiety of Seth's: he was worried that he was swallowing too much toothpaste. Finally we got to the root of that problem, realizing he read the warning label (who does that?) and saw that "too much toothpaste can poison you" and wasn't sure what that "too much" amount was. The sweet thing, though, is that Seth has such a great sense of humor and we've now been able to joke quite a bit about the "boy who died from eating toothpaste." Seth loves our dog, Rosey, and always has a spare moment to stop and cuddle with her. He is doing excellent at math this year and rarely misses a problem. As I said before, he has a great sense of humor and loves to laugh. He loves to tell people stories and to show us things he has created. He and Josh have a bit more of a tumultuous relationship due to some of Seth's desire to control situations, but I will also often hear him doing a wonderful job of including Josh or offering to read to him. Seth loves doing map work and does a great job! He is touchy and loves to still sit on Ben and I's laps. After Sammy caught his crawdad, Seth was quick to follow suit!

Josh: When I think of Josh I most often just shake my head and chuckle. He's such a comedian. He keeps us all on our toes around here and seriously is so funny. He has the best facial expressions and says the funniest things. Last night he told me when he grows up he wants to be a show pig. A what? A show pig, like Olivia (we've been reading the Olivia books and everyone thinks that they are hilarious). Josh loves being read to and our favorite books continue to be the "Duck Series" by Jez Alborough. We're just about at our whits end with him still being in diapers--I mean that kid has had ZERO successful attempts on the potty and he is so tall now that his legs hang over changing table. I've decided in the next week or so, it's "go time" for potty training, so hopefully you'll see a "success" post about that soon. He loves to tell us that he's a big boy, unless it comes to potty training, and then he is a baby. We got Josh a new blanket all of his own and he is loving cuddling in it. He loves playing marbles, pretend food, and remote control cars. He loves asking, "Why?" He's been very helpful with raking and picking up leaves with me because he loves jumping in leaf piles. Josh has been practicing a lot with puzzles and can finally conquer a 12 piece one all on his own. Here is a picture of him in our neighbor Chris' tree. He climbed up higher than my head, with Sam and Seth's permission of course. 

One of my current great challenges of mothering is trying to convince my children that not everywhere is a playroom; i.e. my furniture, staircases, etc. I must be completely failing at this, however, as my children discovered how to scale up the door frames of our house. This has got to be a boy thing, right? 

It's been a pretty rainy fall so far, so we rush through school on sunny days so that we can spend our time outside! We've already had some great leaf piles!

Disney hats for everyone!

We told the boys we were having a movie night and they rushed off to "get ready." These are the outfits they came up with. Josh, of course, has to be just like the big boys.

Morris Beach Trip

A couple weekends ago we were able to spend a couple nights at the beach with Ben's family. It was such a wonderful time and just what I personally needed: time away from the obligations of home, with those I love. The weather wasn't great, but we did get to the beach a couple times. The first day we went down, we spent the morning diligently checking our weather apps for a break in the rain, and rushed out at on opportune time...only to park and get POURED on! So after sitting in our cars for a bit, we waited until the rain turned to sprinkling and bravely headed out to conquer the dune.

(By the way, most of these pictures--the good ones especially--are taken by my brother-in-law Nathan. I brought my camera, but failed to put a memory card in it. Mom fail!)

Braving the Oregon Coast

Off to the Pacific City dune

Can they make it to the top?

Instead of going to the top, we decided to veer off left and check out the views

Joshy and Ellie were troopers for how cold, wet and rainy it was

These two cousins are so sweet together!

The Morris brothers (Nate is such a good photographer!)

 I love this picture so much. Such great support in our kids' lives! And it's such a sweet Josh smile.

 Two little buddies...Josh is learning this picture posing thing pretty well

 The good thing about forgetting your camera: other people are taking the pictures, so you actually get in some! Me and my Joshy boy

All the kids were so excited to have Uncle Caleb there with us!

  While the weather might not have been great, the house we rented was amazing! It was three levels with a beautiful view of the ocean. The kids had so much fun running up and down stairs while playing in the house. The first night Diane taught them how to play Sardeens (basically hide and seek, but when you find someone, you hide with them as well). We brought our Lego tub so the kids spent a lot of time building. There was great football games on, so the men were in heaven watching those together. We played games, ate great food, and everyone got in the hot tub a couple times a day. It was so fun and relaxing.

All the kids got read to a lot. We introduced Ellie to some good ol' boy books.

Aunt Holly's turn

We also all passed around baby Hailey. She is so sweet. 

 Saturday afternoon game playing

 Ellie is amazing at putting together puzzles. Josh, not so much, but they had fun together anyways.

The next day down at the beach wasn't nearly as wet and miserable. The kids actually got to play in the sand.

 Josh dug, while the twins and I went on a shell hunt. They are so fun to explore with!

  And then my crazy kids played in the water. It was 49 degree outside with freezing cold water, but here they are splashing around in it. Crazy!

And poor Ben was in charge of making sure Josh didn't drown, so of course he ended up with wet shoes and pants as well.

 On the way home we stopped at the Tillamook Cheese factory for a tour and some ice cream.

 Seth, Sam

 There was even dairy free ice cream for Josh. Yum! A great end to a great weekend!