1st Grade

After a long short summer it was time for Rebekah to start 1st grade which is crazy because I'm pretty sure she just turned 3. I have no idea how she got so big so fast. 

The class list was out a few hours before the open house. Rebekah didn't know any of the teachers but it turned out she recognized some of the students in her class.

The open house was mass chaos (I am finding is synonymous with public education; which is funny because it seemed so much better from the teacher side of things). We quizzed the teacher and she seemed to have all the right answers: less on technology, big on social interactive things. Here's hoping she can deliver. No pressure of course.

Rebekah found this nice hand chair in her new classroom. It provided a great distraction from the whole I have to go to school tomorrow thing.

It also helped that before she was even in the classroom a fellow student yelled "Rebekah!" and jumped up to embrace Rebekah in a big hug. Of course it would have been better for dad if it was a girl student and not a boy student. Dad's eyes got SO big....

After the open house we stopped for ice cream and then went home and had our annual before school father's blessing. The girl loves her dad.

Our annual before school video. 

Video part 2.

The next morning came early but Rebekah was ready to meet it head on!

...mostly...

But when we got back to school it she was feeling a little better.

All day I wondered how my little girl was fairing at school. It's hard to turn over your child to complete strangers for 8 hours out of the day. But it was finally over and time to pick her up. Apparently mass chaos is the elementary school's middle name. The pick up line came with tons of cars, students going every direction and a gym teacher who waves his arms, blows his whistle, and yells a lot to make all the chaos more interesting. Seriously people. No one needs to be yelled at.

It was crazy! Especially considering our first elementary had this process down, complete with color coded lines, name tags, a man on a walkie and another man on the receiving end of the walkie talkie getting students in order.

Once I got to Rebekah she told me all about her wonderful day. 

Post 1st day video:

Day one, down. Onward and upward!

Tie Dye with Grammy

The last big thing we did before school started was a tie dye project staring grammy! I was going to spend some money and have Rebekah take a tie dye class but the drawing class I signed Rebekah up for was out of the same place and that was such a fiasco I couldn't do it. But grammy volunteered to do it with her.

She found a shirt for Rebekah and I thought I found a shirt for Don (he texted after I left the store to tell me his size and it was not the one I bought. 8 years of marriage people. You think I'd know what size shirt he wears...).  But it didn't cost so much so I decided to use it for a PJ shirt and we dove in. Rebekah is the one rolled in the tube and mine is the circular one. 

Shaking up the dye.

Got to love the gloves.

Such a cutie.

Attempting the dye.

And now... we wait.

White we wait Rebekah played with her frame. We don't have a picture for it yet, so she decided to fix that.

Apparently you have to wait 8 hours for the dye to set so we headed home and I finished it the next day.

Rebekah didn't like that her's had so much white left on it so we are going to try again with the left over dye. However, I'm thinking we will wait a while before jumping back into that project. The mess alone! 

More Sarah & Ships

Way back in the early days June I found an article about the journey of the replicas of the Nina and Pinta. They were going to be in Kentucky the end of July. I quickly passed along the info to my friend Sarah and Don with the hopes that we could make this happen. Sarah did further research and discovered they would be in Owensboro - only 40 minutes away from her home - beginning the first weekend in August. We had a plan. 

When it got closer to the actual time we learned Don had some cousins coming in town and he needed to be there on the day we planned to go. But the ships...!? I must see the ships! To that end, Rebekah and I decided to make the trip a little earlier while Don was at work. 

I was a little concerned about said trip alone: Rebekah is a lot to entertain while driving a car, and three hours of that could possibly be a bit much for me. But I was determined. In preparation we checked out 8 videos from the library, packed a bunch of snacks, and brought a plethora of art supplies. 

The day came and we were ready to get on the road, but not before we took documentation:

About an hour into the trip Rebekah decided she was done with shows and art and this is where "are we there yet...?" "how much longer...?" "how many more miles...?" (two miles later) "how many more miles now...?" started. I finally firmly suggested we were in the car for at least another hour and a half and she needed to find something to do. 

After a really long hour and a half, we made it. I only made one wrong turn which was good considering Rebekah doesn't handle wrong turns very well. 

Despite the stress of my cargo, the drive was beautiful. I love southern Indiana; it's so beautiful with rolling hills and the Ohio river and everything. Evansville is a beautiful area. Miss Sarah lives in a beautiful colonial style house. 

The kids picked right up where they left off and played the night away, only stopping for a quick dinner.

I had a bad headache from the drive and so even though Evansville is an hour earlier, I was ready to go down for the night and we decided to hit the hay. Rebekah had a rough start with a little homesick but we eventually fell asleep. Rebekah was out for the night. I wish I could say the same, but sleep is not my friend.

The next morning my headache was gone. We let the kids play and had a nice quiet chat. It was so perfect! Eventually we headed out to see the ships.

I got very excited, to which Rebekah replied, "oh mom, you're so historical..." complete with eye roll and everything. She's going to make such a great teenager. 

We went down and Rebekah posed for a picture. 

Our crew.

Rebekah was a little nervous but we eventually talked her into getting on the ship and exploring a little.

It's an entire different form of life.

Next time I have a spare moment I'm going to find out how to tie all these knots. 

They had some good tour guides and some who were a little crazy.... This guy was a little crazy but also great with the kids. He even offered to let the kids "steer" the unmoving ship.

Love these kids!

Then he showed them what was attached to that big stick they were moving back and forth. Rebekah got a little nervous about how high up we were.

Took one more of the ships.

Sarah took one of me and Rebekah. And yes, I do noticed that Rebekah seems to be animated in all her pictures except for the ones with me.

A couple more because overkill is underrated.

So grateful that we were able to come see this! I learned so much. It is hard to believe the quality of life back in 1492; their quality of life yet what they were able to accomplish. No steering wheel, just the rutter. Navigation was crude. The tour guides mentioned much of their food would be rotten or moldy by the time they got to it, but it was normal to simply scrape it off. All 26 of the sailors, including a cabin boy (usually 6 or 7 years old - seriously who lets their kid do that?!) lived on top - no shade except for the sail - day and night. They were on these ships for months. Incredible.

After seeing the ships we braved the heat a little longer to fully view the Ohio river. Turns out Owensboro has a beautiful park right on the river. I wished we could stay for a while, but it was so stinkin' hot!

The park had beautiful fountains and the kids all but jumped in the water. 

I had a great conversation with the kids where I pointed out a giant ceramic squirrel up in the tree and a little boy who couldn't have been more than 7 came by and proudly assured me the squirrel was in fact NOT real. To prove his point to me, he yelled at said squirrel to drop that acorn on him and when the squirrel didn't respond he turned to me and said, "see? not real..." and then strutted off like he won the day. Miss Sarah and I laughed so hard. 

Then we saw a blue pig, but I had learned my lesson and the pig did not do any imagining with the kids.

At this point we all made our way back to the car, some with a little more help than others.

These kids had so much fun on the way home. Rebekah loves the interaction.

Back at Miss Sarah's, we had lunch. Between the two of us we created beautiful butterflies.

After lunch the kids played the last hour away out in the heat. I packed the car and when came in to Miss Sarah trying to help Rebekah cool off before the long trip back.

One more picture for the road.

Then we headed back to Columbus. Rebekah didn't even get 30 minutes down the road before she was done with videos and wanted interaction. Other than that, it was an uneventful trip. We made it up to Seymour before we stopped for food. It is because of what happened in Seymour that I have since decided I will pay extra and stop at better places for food from now on. It was SO bad I can't even talk about it.

We got back on the road as soon as I could manage it and made it home by 8. First girl's trip was a complete success. Can't wait for another one!

July Books

A fantastic read about 7 women. The review get feisty about who the authors chose to write about (most have some sort of Christianity background), but to be fair the author clearly states in his preface that he just chose 7 women not that these women are the top women in the world. I love the short biographies this provided and learned a lot. 

It's clean, well written juvenile fiction, with a interesting plot; but nothing major going on here, although if you are familiar with A Wrinkle In Time by L'Engle it may be fun. 

I had high hopes for this one which was placed in Russia during WWII but it got so vulgar during chapter 1 and worse during chapter 2 and I had returned it. 

Apparently I need to buy all these books. This one was amazingly insightful as well. Highly recommend!

I was quite impressed with this book that not only held my attention but had me laughing out loud several times. And of course, there's the music aspect. There was even a quote by the main character's teacher: the music doesn't need to be louder, the world needs to be quieter. LOVE this! It wasn't as predictable as most novels, but maybe I just got sucked in and didn't notice. Either way, highly recommendable. 

Another Givens. This was wonderful too. I am reading all three of these again since they are still on my audio file. 

Not really sure what to say about this book. It was okay. There are many good / high reviews for this one but it did not reach the mark for me. I've read a lot of other books about slavery varying from titles such as Uncle Tom's Cabin to The Help, so I don't believe it was the subject matter, which can be extremely hard to read about. One of my main problems was the underground railroad in the book: the author turned this into a literal underground railroad. I pondered hard to figure out what was meant through this symbolism. I also feel the fantasy distracted somewhat from the truth of the book. So while it wasn't bad I just didn't think it was very good. 

This was light and fun, like a breath of clean, small town country air. 

Rebekah:

This series has been a winner so far. The library doesn't carry it (it's a scholastic book series) so I've had to buy what we've read, however they are very worth while and the content is perfect for my little 6 year old. 

I feel like we are struggling with material for Rebekah lately. The ones listed below are okay options but I'm not entirely thrilled with either one. 

We liked the Billie B Brown series, not as much as the others we found but it's still good material. Ironically the one above Rebekah did NOT want to read because Billie apparently gets scared at night.... 

Most of these are pretty good. Seriously struggling for great literature here. But Rebekah liked the quick and light stories and ended up checking out the rest of what the library had to offer.