Week 17 ~snakes and homemade board games

We picked the last big batch of radish pods from our garden. I actually pickled them which the kids liked but I am not sure about.

They are odd.
My youngest son has been on a game making streak!

They are all historical battle games so he has been researching like crazy.Basically he made his own history unit.

HaThe boards and game pieces are so impressive.
They are kind of like Risk and therefore hard for me to play… By the end of the day my brain feels fried so I am not a great opponent. I am enjoying stepping outside and checking on my garden more than taking the actual pictures but I am still at it.

Even when it is something I am not excited about like these blister beetles eating up what was left of my potatoes.

The pests have been intense in the garden right now.I am coating everything in Diatamacous Earth and it seems to be helping.At the lake my oldest girl decided to see what was under the dock and found a surprise 😉We watched him for a long time.

I use oksnakes.org to i.d. all these guys.Then while swimming at a local lake we had another snake to study!Both were harmless water snakes as far as I could tell but it is always a bit unnerving to see a snake where you are swimming…

Would you keep swimming if you saw a snake?

My boys did but I was done…

Week 16 ~getting stir crazy

We are still trucking along, trying to finish up some school work before starting new grades. But as I see more and more people travel around and go on vacation I feel more and more stir crazy. Since we do not know what will be open and it has been really hot we are trying to wait to go rving anywhere right now.

Which sounds good until I am actually doing it.

ha
At least we have plenty of time to finish girls hair. All of the bikes got worked on before the 4th for Nick’s bday wish. He wanted to go on a long walk for his bday so he had the kids and I ride. The first part of the trail was my favorite.

It was so pretty, birds and flowers everywhere!

It was right by Gathering Place.

So of course the kids wanted to play when we finished 😉

Are you staying close to home this summer or are you travelling?

Week 15 ~Visiting Family

We actually have two sets of twins in our family.

My brother has twin girls as well and they are at such a cute and fun age!

The kids are pretty in love with their cousins.

My parents were down for a visit and met us at the lake one night.

I harvested some of our potatoes early because of wilt and the girls loved digging for them! Gardeners! Nightly pics. The kids enjoyed the Super Charged Science Rocketry class. I broke out the baking soda rocket after class one day. After watching my new favorite homeschool youtuber I bought a bunch of books through The Good and the Beautiful!

They have a good moral and I love how diverse the lead characters are.

So far we have read over half of these and really liked them so far.

Lots of walking every week.

We are in that odd limbo time in our homeschool when we are finishing up everything and not really wanting to start new things until we start our new year.

Without a big break sometimes the years blend together and I forget we are going to start a new year with new grades.

We have not even taken a week off for a long time.

I am hoping to do so before we start our new school year, probably in September.

Anyone else year round school?

How do you start a new year?

Does it all blend together?