A Little Hike in the Woodlot

 The boys were all for camping or hiking again this weekend, but Austin and I weren't up for it since we are both trying to get over a chest cold. There is a woodlot (a forested area with trails) in our neighborhood that we have been meaning to explore, but haven't because of mosquitoes (they have been really bad this year). Since it is cooling down quite a bit, we decided it would be safe to go there for a little picnic this weekend and it turned out really nice. It wasn't the same as going on a real hike, but it was so close and convenient. I've built a whole morning of outdoor time into our homeschool schedule each week (we also go play at parks with friends in the afternoons sometimes) so I will probably take the kids here quite often just to get outside and enjoy nature-something that they wouldn't get in regular school.
Here Austin is showing the kids acorns.

 We found the nest of a large bird and Austin was trying to get Heidi to see it.

 We stopped and had sandwiches and carrots on a fallen log.

Apparently tobagganing is unsafe in the area :)

 Austin has always teased the kids that the rule in our house is "no fun!", so when we found this sticker we had to get a picture.

Our First Week of School

Our first week of school went pretty well! My biggest fears of homeschooling were 1) that the babies would get in the way and make it hard for the big boys to concentrate and 2) that I would have to fight with the boys to get them to do it. Happily, only one of those fears really happened. Of course the babies were distracting despite my best efforts to make it not so. I planned out all kinds of activities that Heidi could do and built our schedule with tons of breaks so that I could attend to their needs. But they are still just little people who didn't necessarily always want to follows mom's schedule. Heidi seemed to want to do only what Asher and Leif were doing, so by the end of the week I had her better taken care of by letting her feel like she was "doing school". We had a few tear-filled breakdowns when she wanted a turn for me to sit with her one-on-one and teacher her something, which I really should have anticipated. So, now I'm trying to make time to do that for a few minutes every now and then. She also had a strong desire to use the dry-erase markers and boards. I did let her do it, but I know its only a matter of time before she draws on something she's not supposed to. Trevor has been very good in general, we just need to work on getting him a better nap schedule. I've tried to make the bulk of Asher and Leif's learning happen during Heidi's long afternoon nap. If Trevor happens to take a nap at the same time, things are really simple and go so smoothly. My other fear that the boys would not want to do school really hasn't been much of a problem. There have been times when one was really distracted by what I was doing with the other or by a younger sibling and I've had to remind them to get back on track multiple times, but they really seem to like school. The tasks that they have to do on their own (math workbooks, writing, coloring sheets) they get really engrossed in and the parts that we do together (me reading literature, history, or science books to them and talking about it) they adore. As you can see we have a couch in our school room and its really fun to snuggle up and read together. Here are some photos of our school room the morning before school started (it doesn't always stay so clean!)

Here is Trevor playing while we work. He usually just drags himself around, but here he did a real crawl for just a few "steps".

Here are my little scholars hard at work!

And here is Heidi entertaining herself while the boys work.

S'mores

Our family hasn't been camping at all this summer. We've had so much going on with moving then with all of Austin's traveling that we just haven't found time. Austin and I really wanted to take the kids camping this weekend, but Austin couldn't get off work early enough and he had Saturday afternoon meetings for church this weekend. So we decided to have a little barbecue in the backyard instead. Austin make hamburgers then we let the kids make s'mores, which was the highlight of the evening. We were planning on going hiking this morning, but everyone is a little sick, so that just didn't happen. Maybe next week . . .

Fire Station

 We took a trip to the fire station with a local home schooling group that we are a part of. The boys loved seeing the trucks and fire gear- Heidi was just happy to be out and about.  Here are some photos of them.

27 Months

Little Heidi Rose is turning into a little girl! She is such a sweetheart most of the time, but can be pretty demanding sometimes. She talks even more now than she used to and loves to make sure that I am listening to her. She also repeats herself a lot, saying something, then saying "Mom, I said ______" and laughing about it even if it isn't very funny. She repeats other people that way too saying "He/She said _______________", but not quite as often. Sometimes Heidi gets talking so much that it turns into gibberish and she is well aware that she isn't using really words, but she thinks that its so funny that she'll just go on and on with it. Sometimes she starts telling us things (in English) that don't make very much sense and when I try to clarify, she says "I'm not talking to you, I'm talking to my brother" (she's usually referring to Trevor).
Heidi still loves to sing too and is learning more and more songs. She has gotten into a habit of wanting me to sing about 10 songs to her at bedtime. I usually oblige as long as no one else is in desperate need of my attention because its a special time for us to get to spend some one-on-one time together. She knows the names of a lot of the songs I sing to her and requests them by name, but once she's run out of song titles, she just says "I want another one" until I tell her that's enough for tonight. She is able to sing along with about half of the songs I sing her and just mumbles if she doesn't know the words yet.
Heidi is getting into more imaginative play and loves to tell us line by line what she is acting out. Yesterday she was enjoying diving into the water and swimming around our living room on her back :) We love our little chatter box! Here are a couple photos of her at this age:

Lessons

We've recently started both swimming lessons and piano lessons for Asher and Leif. Well, Leif isn't actually taking piano lessons (at least I'm not taking it seriously) but he likes to try out all the things that Asher does and they both like "exploratory time" at the piano, just pushing the notes and pretending they are playing a song (I told them they are free to do this as long as they don't bang on the keys). We just bought a digital piano (which has the excellent feature of being able to turn down the volume so they won't wake up any sleeping babies) that they are both fascinated with and we are doing free online lessons, which seem to be really engaging for them both and I've heard great things about.
Here is Asher practicing his piano posture while playing the first little song that he learned. 

The delivery of our piano coincided with the same week that we had scheduled for backyard swimming lessons (they last two weeks total). This first week was a short week since Monday was a Canadian holiday, but I have been super impressed by the progress they have made so far. They started out pretty tense in the water when they were asked to do anything beside splash around and play, but they were able to duck their heads under the water several times on the first day (I'm pretty sure it took a whole week before Asher did that when he took group swim lessons a few years ago) and were jumping off the diving board and going to get rings from off the bottom of the pool (in the shallow end and at a separate time from the jump of the diving board) by the end of the week. They've also gotten pretty good at floating on their backs or tummies.. Their instructor is light years better than the one Asher had a couple years ago and it really helps that he is able to give all his attention to just Asher and Leif since they are the only ones he's teaching. Heidi loves watching the boys and playing while they swim, but she was heartbroken (and let me know with a huge tantrum) when they got out of the pool on the first day and she didn't get to go in. She was convinced that her turn was next and couldn't believe I was making her leave. I've since talked to her about taking lessons when she is 3 rather than saying "next year" because apparently all she was hearing was "next" and thought she was after the boys. We also have a little routine of letting her dip her feet on the first step of the pool as we are leaving so that she feels like she got to get it (even though it is literally under 5 seconds). After seeing how much progress the boys have made, I'll definitely sign her up next year.

8 Months

Our sweet little Trevor is eight months old and he sure is growing fast! Trevor has hit a few milestones this month and that makes time seem to be going by too fast. It seems that out of nowhere, we have a mobile baby. He still isn't actually crawling- I wouldn't even call it an army crawl (though he still loves to practice being on his hands and knees and rocking back and forth)- but he can get anywhere he wants to by dragging himself along on his belly. Its been quite a while now that he plays on his tummy and rolls around and turns himself to get access to things he wants, but he surprised me recently by dragging himself clear across a room. A few times he's made it quite the distance to get from where I left him to a different room where I was working or taking care of someone else. He really seems to like being let loose to just roam around and play with whatever he chooses and will be content like that for quite awhile while I'm busy with something else. I've just had to be really careful that tiny toys are picked up and he's in a safe place. The boys are pretty good about keeping him safe, although they sometimes get distracted with their own games. He's also gotten very steady at sitting on his own and is often happy to just sit and play as long as he is supplied with interesting toys or something interesting to watch (especially his siblings).
Trevor has gotten to be a pretty good little eater too. He seems to be a lot better at eating off of a spoon and gets really excited when he sees me getting something ready for him. I was surprised today to see how aware he was. I make all of his baby food by pureeing fruits and veggies and I usually make a big batch then freeze most of it in little portions to thaw out later. He knows that when I go to the freezer and get out a little frozen block it's for him.
Trevor's sleep is getting better for the most part. He typically wakes up once in the middle of the night and once in the early morning. His naps are getting longer, but are a little erratic, although that's mostly due to a busy schedule from the rest of the family. Once we start school and get into a more regular schedule, I'm sure his naps will become much more regular too.
We love this little love bug!