H.I.S. Baseball – 2015

June 26, 2015 | Stacy

H.I.S. = Home Instructed Students. And, you know, His.
It’s not for everyone, but it is perfect for these Disciples.
Johanna got to play this year. We missed a few games for rain. And a few on our trip. But we didn’t miss the last night with the pizza party. And even Mommy got to go. Nan and Nene came by, too.

I love that the emphasis is on godly character and that doing your best is what counts.
John remembered the zoon lens. But trying to get to five different fields isn’t easy.

The Graduate

June 26, 2015 | Stacy

The Speech Graduate…

Johanna is our third daughter to graduate speech, and the second to basically age out. She’s far from hitting 100%, but she’s come so far from the “severe unintelligibility” of 2012. Miss Caitlin has been a special blessing to our family every Tuesday and Thursday these past two years. We will miss her smiles, fun games, and seemingly endless patience.

We continue to remind Johanna to use state of being verbs (and a few other verbs) and her prepositions are a little sloppy. But she’ll be happy to retell the plot of any movie you need refreshing on.

“Come Get Your Summer”

June 25, 2015 | Stacy

Okay – so I don’t know if that is still the jingle they use to promote Darien Lake. But that was the phrase when I was in college 100 years ago.
We had AMAZING passes to available to us through a homeschool group locally. I won’t publish the price, but it was insanely low. It also included coupons for popcorn and food.

And.

We. Had. A. Blast.

I liked Darien as kid, but then as a young adult I thought the place was a concrete pit. I’ve only gone a few times in the last dozen years. But the GREAT news is, each visit has been significantly better than the one before. I down right loved our day there today.

We were there for rope drop and moved our way back to MotoSomething – a roller coaster thing we were introduced two on our visit in 2012. We’d remembered that as the one ride we really had to wait for on our previous visit so it seemed as good a place to start as any. Kids rerode and then I *insanely* suggested we hit the ride right next to it… NEVER REALIZING it would treat me and four of my babies like human foosball players.

Mommy fail.

FAIL!

Yowsers.

From there we could only go up. And we did. We had a blast. We rode anything we wanted as often as we liked. We spent hours in the water park after a late lunch and we stayed til just before closing.

We love amusement parks.

Nan had fun on the moose…

Post summer vacation vacation

June 23, 2015 | Stacy

Okay –
we’ve been done school for about 6 (?) weeks. I’ve painted a bedroom, and we’ve driven over 6,000 miles. We’ve played in the Pacific Ocean, and traversed prairies and mountains.
Now we are back home and it is time to do HOME summer vacation fun.

We hurried to RMSC before any more of the public school kids were dismissed for the year. The good news was the place was empty. The bad news was I was three weeks to late for the DaVinci exhibit. Ouch.
We had a great time.

Quack, quack

June 22, 2015 | Stacy

This is what we do AFTER we have a big ice cream feast!!!

Father's Day Feast!

June 22, 2015 | Stacy

So CowLicks (local ice cream place) had always been sensitive & accommodating with food allergies. Tonight they acted put out and uninterested. SO we took our $35+ over to Walmart and bought a feast that we can enjoy yet another day or two.

#lostcustomers

Father’s Day Feast!

June 22, 2015 | Stacy

#lostcustomers

Dayton’s Corners School House

June 18, 2015 | Stacy

In Nov. 2012, Marie, Stewart, and Nigel got to do a field trip at Dayton’s Corners School House. They went with some friends, and Johanna and Tabitha and I went to the museum. When another opportunity arose for Tabitha to get a turn we jumped on it. Marie was more than happy to go again.

We made authentic lunches again. Muffins, boiled eggs, cheese. We gave them mason jars (albeit with metal, screw on lids) with lemondae, too.

They had a great time. ♥

Road trip redemption at MOA

June 13, 2015 | Stacy

After the Yellowstone ordeal and the Mt. Rushmore disappointment you would think we’d sleep like logs. In fact, we all slept terribly, so it was reported. So imagine our surprise when we overslept THREE HOURS! I’m always up early; usually, by 5 A.M.

This was not how we wanted to start our day. Many of us were bordering on discouragement.

We grabbed the worst breakfast of our trip, and eventually started driving east.

Ah. East. I miss the East.

More prairie. A little more variety to it in western South Dakota, and it started to even look like home when we entered Minnesota.

We made car sandwiches again.
I foresee a sandwich rebellion when we get home.

Originally, the Mall of America in Minneapolis, MN was not on our touring plan. But when we added a night to our drive home, I wanted to reroute us just a tad to see something in Wisconsin. Lo, and behold, it brought us right up near Minneapolis. A search for “Big-family hotels,” courtesy of www.sixsuitcasetravel.com revealed an Embassy Suites large enough and in our price range. Before you knew it we were in MOA neighborhood, and we penciled it in.

I knew there were rides within, but anticipated it would be costly. I vaguely remembered a Peanuts tie-in, and knew there was a roller coaster.

I spent most of the day without internet/cell access, but finally got connected in western MN. This gave me time to look up more about Mall of America. I was happy to read they had a Twilight Pass good for unlimited rides for $22.99. I also learned that Peanuts had not been associated with the park since the early 2000’s and that Nickelodeon provided the backbone. We are not Nickelodeon people, whatsoever. But we are ride people, and it sounded as though they had plenty to do.

We arrived at 5:30 P.M. and as most rides were $6.90 individually, we grabbed 7 Twilight Passes for John and all the kids. I was able to ride all the rides that Katriel needed a chaperone for without a ticket, so that worked out well.

They had a riot. The place was not very busy. Ride loading and unloading was exquisitely slow, but they did many rides multiple times, including their favorites.

My photos are not great. Many were taken with the phone. With the ceiling of the mall made completely out of windows, lighting was an issue again and again.
But – If you look carefully, I think you will see dozens of smiles.

The food court was amazing. Huge. EVERYTHING you can think of. And we found out that Johnny Rockets was safe!

They rode everything they wanted to and then some.

We like amusement parks and frequent them when we can. John and I were both impressed with how many very unique rides they had; things we’d never seen before.
And – here’s the truth.

We. Like. Rides.
Like ‘em a lot.

THIS was a great way to spend an evening. We just about closed the place.
Money and time well spent.