Back to School 2016

The summer crept and flew and just like that, we are back to routines that require Latin instead of swimming. The husband, with the help of IKEA, got our school space fighting trim. Harper got a loft bed with a desk under it, where, as was my Great Hope, she is managing to get most of her schoolwork done independently. She is back in ancient Greece, Helena is with the Angles and Saxons and Beowulf, and Hudson is revolting with the Dutch, so my brain is struggling to keep all of that straight. I just got a book yesterday that is going to help me homeschool from rest, so I am all set. Let's take a quick trip down memory lane. Here is our first year, two years ago:




Then last year:

This year, we took pictures the day before, and I did not require socks or shoes or hair tidying. It's the teeth and the legs that show the change:

 

Colorado 2016: the rock climbing

Before we got married, the husband was an avid rock climber. Then law school and three babies in 4 years and the rest of life happened. When we were planning this trip, he decided the time was nigh to get the kids shackled into harnesses and dangling from a single carbiner from the side of a mountain. So the gear (so, so much gear) was gathered and the rocks were climbed. I was having a little bit of altitude sickness this day, so, much to his disappointment, I did not participate. Instead, I reclined in the hammock, read, watched the girls fish (Harper's longing for a fish on her hook is yet unfulfilled) and took pictures.

Note: while I was deciding which pictures to post, I forgot I was also making rice for dinner. I kept smelling something, and kept blaming it on the dog, who was sitting behind me in my chair. While it is true that she sometimes emits Odours Unsavoury, she hasn't really ever smelled like burned-to-a-black-crisp rice. My brain finally made the actual connection, I ran to the kitchen, grabbed the pot from the stove, and put it out on the patio, where it likely continued to burn because it was 104 degrees outside. Then I came back in and noticed all three kids were sitting on the couch. "Did no one SMELL that?" I asked. "Well," said Harper, "I DID smell something, but I knew you were making dinner and just thought that was how it was supposed to smell." My cooking skills continue to be the stuff of culinary legend, obviously.

Colorado 2016: The Beginning

A few months back, I decided we needed to do something about the fact that my kids had never been to the mountains.  There are slightly closer places to make this happen, but we decided to drive the TWO THOUSAND miles round-trip to Estes Park. We left at 4:30 am and got to Colorado Springs about 16 hours later. Then our hotel had overbooked, as we and around a dozen other people discovered together there in the lobby of the Comfort Inn. This was a low point. The husband did some maneuvering, and he managed to get our money back, but we still had no place to sleep. We started frantically calling other hotels in Colorado Springs, but they were all full. Until finally, while we are sitting in the parking lot of this sketchy Ramada Inn (despair was setting in), this magnificent kid named Aaron at the Garden of the Gods Resort calls back to tell us he's had a last minute no-show. We drove up at around 10pm, looking like a bunch of hillbillies, then God in His mercy let us wake up and walk out onto our patio to this this incredible view of Garden of the Gods:

Within about 10 minutes we had spotted several new birds for the Life List (magpies! spotted towhees! a western scrub-jay!) plus baby bunnies were running around everywhere being extremely adorable (especially appropriate because we had listened to Watership Down in the car on the way!) Then it turned out that Aaron had also thrown in free breakfast, and I believe it was the best one I have ever eaten. It was all mighty FINE. This was the first time the kids had ever stayed in an actual hotel, and we had to adjust their expectations that it was not always going to be this glorious.

We met up with my parents (who hadn't made it quite as far the previous day) at Garden of the Gods for a leisurely hike, then got back in the car (this was difficult) to continue on to Estes Park.

Coming up: hiking! fishing! rock climbing! bird-watching! so much gear!