Dance Recital

This year, Fiona and Genevieve were in the same class to help cut down on driving back and forth into town.

Ballet:

Tap:

They are beautiful girls and talented dancers!  It must be really frustrating to be a dance teacher.  You spend all year teaching a dance and the girls still don't have it memorized by recital night.  Except one girl does have most of it memorized with perfect timing, so she looks like she is the only one doing something wrong-which gets her perfectionist gene fuming.

Tag-a-long

This was the last time I'll take Jason anywhere for awhile.  Just when Heidi leaves this crazy stage of having the ability to move and vocalize, but no discipline, Jason enters.  That's the bad part about having three kids back to back.  This is what Jason did all weekend in Lynden:

He dumped food on the floor in the hotel. But that's a given. I can deal with that. I'm just glad I got to stay in a hotel where there wasn't things to be pulled off shelves.

Saturday was the long day.  We had to be at the arena at 7:30 AM and we didn't leave until after 6:00 PM.  It was raining, so I couldn't just let him walk around outside like I did last time.  I did pop over to visit an old friend of mine that I haven't seen in seven years in between events. That was a nice break from the dirt and mud of the stables.  But I finally broke and had to get him outside.  He got so wet and muddy.

I got him changed into dry clothes and went back inside.  All weekend long, we pointed to horses and said, "horse."  By Sunday he would look at a horse if I said horse.  So now he knows a word besides "Jason."

Ruger was missing the other horses and complained loudly.  Which made Jason cry.

He will find dirt, no matter where it is.

Vaulting competitions are like golf.  You have to be quiet so you don't spook the horses.  Some horses are very sensitive, just like dobermans.  Ruger didn't like the garage door being opened a foot, so he kept shying away from it and losing points.  Another horse thought he was too big to fit through the tractor door to the area and kept rearing and causing a fuss (I got out of there right away).  That was the biggest most beautiful horse I've ever seen in my life.  He was BIG!!! Two things that are not welcome during events are noisy kids and strollers.  Some horses don't like people wearing backpacks either because it isn't normal.  Other horses are very laid back and you can climb all over them and push strollers right around them and not even worry.

Jason drove me CRAZY! At one point, when I was trying to get Jason to fall asleep by pacing with the stroller, I was asked to leave by another parent because the stroller might make the horse skittish.  I walked out the door and then Jason was super noisy because I stopped walking.  I walked a LOT on Saturday.  I was exhausted.

"The audience loves me!"

Jason walked a lot too.  While the cousins were here, we started playing a game that when Jason starts to clap, everyone claps for him.  He loves it.  When all the people clapped for the vaulters earning ribbons, Jason thought the whole arena was clapping for him and him alone.

After the ribbons, the team headed to a restaurant for a team dinner.  A real restaurant. With menus.  I haven't been in one for over four years.  And I didn't stay.  As soon as Jason started climbing out of his high chair, I left.  I was too tired to deal with him another second.  I left Genevieve with another vaulting mom that was staying in our hotel, cancelled my order (and paid for Evie's), and went back to our room.  Jason immediately fell asleep in his car seat and slept all night.  I dozed until Genevieve came back from swimming with her friends and then I was out for the rest of the night too.  I can't remember the last time I was that tired.

Sunday was dry, so we found a far away corner to hang out in until it was time to go.  Jason slept all the way home.  And I still feel tired.

Regionals

Two days after our cousins headed back to PA, Genevieve, Jason, and I headed north to Lynden for Regionals in vaulting.  She moved up from walk to preliminary trot for this competition.  At Genevieve's request, I took video instead of pictures.  I apologize in advance for baby interference:

This first video is a Green Horse test where the horse is being tested and Genevieve is just the rider.  The judges are scoring Ruger on his ability to listen and follow the directions of the lunger.

Genevieve works hard on her routines and has them down pat. She isn't the type of person who likes to make things up as she goes along. She likes structure, routine, and rules.  So when the parent volunteer in charge of music started playing her HORSE freestyle music instead of her barrel freestyle music, she froze.  Here are the videos:

I thought they were going to stop the music and let her restart, but the rules are once you start, you are going.  So I turned the camera back on...

...and she did a great job of combining the moves that match the music with the moves that go with the barrel.  I was so proud of her for going forward.  And now she knows the proper way to signal that the music is wrong before she gets on the barrel.  She won 4th place (of 11 girls) in barrel even with hiccup.

The next video is compulsories, which is the required series of movements held for a required time (one of these days I will know what everything is and then I will tell you):

She came in 4th place for compulsories as well.  I have copies of the scores, but I haven't digested the awesomeness of the data yet.  Genevieve and I will analyze them as a math lesson...

The pictures I have for freestyle are either blurry or boring.  Getting good pictures of a trotting horse is much harder than a walking horse! Especially with Jason yanking my hair from the backpack!

Her music was right this time and Genevieve got 1st place for freestyle!

By the time the ribbon ceremony came around, Jason was so done with strollers and backpacks and places that weren't designed with babies in mind.  I don't have any pictures of Genevieve earning

1st Place Overall!!!

How can that happen with two 4th places?  The math. And barrel didn't count in the overall score!!!  So the average between her two horse events gave her first place!

Sunday's event was just for fun.  The vaulters hear a clip of music on Saturday and then think about a routine overnight and perform it.  Coincidence that Genevieve's music was Cusco: Grandad and Mark's favorite to listen to together? On Father's Day??

The Cousins Came to Visit

We had the best ten days of summer earlier this month when Mark's sister and her family came for a visit.  The weather was hot and sunny and the tides were low for the first few days, so they all went to the beach! (I stayed home with Jason because heat and rock eating).

One of the best beach event was The Toddler Races where you race piggy-backing a kid on your back.  Ian came in first with Daniel and Melanie came in second with Fiona.  Not too shabby!

Every seat was filled in our BWV!

Mark didn't bring a camera with him on these trips, so I'm going to have to wait until someone sends me pictures from their phones of Lula and her Stinky Crab from the second beach trip (hint, hint)...

After a day of rest, Mark ran them up Mt. Ellinor. This time Ian had to stay home with the three littles and I because of football.

This was Daniel's first trip!  He is so excited that he is now old enough for Cub Scouts.

Lynne and Opie didn't make it to the top of the mountain, but the rest of the kids did.  Yes, that makes Mark a kid.

You can see the famous goats on the snow field in the picture above.

The group reunited.

Sledding down!

At home, we just had a great time hanging out together.  The little kids loved their cousins and aunt and uncle so much!  Everyone connected with everyone else in their own special way.  Uncle Opie would tie knots and lift weights with Ian, the older kids would stay up late and play card games...

...Aunt Lynne would push Lula on the swing, Kayla would get Fiona and Daniel set up on her tablets playing Minecraft.... Shane got to go camping with them at the Ape Caves and go to Mount St Helens.  the fun went on and on and on....

Aunt Lynne getting a Jason snuggle

The Main Event was a Family Reunion.

The Barbecue is on its last leaning rusty legs...

Ami brought Charlie and Erik down!  That right there is a miracle!  I love those boys so much.

Erik and Great Uncle Opie

Olives on the fingers are a thing of the past!

Jason and his nephew.  Erik and his uncle.

Charlie on the Tire Swing

No Downen Family Reunion is complete without volleyball!!!  We have some seriously competitive people in our family and some super athletes as well.  And some not so super athletes too...

But the main reason for the reunion was to surprise Melanie!

Melanie graduated from high school just before they came out.  She joined with Air Force and will be the third generation of women to be in the Armed Forces. All us grownups had been planning the surprise party since before they got out here and the day of the party we were busy with cake and balloon hiding...

....buuuuut she was sent into the shed to find the volleyball net and found her balloon, so we all decided to surprise Mark and not tell him she already knew instead.

We just had too much fun and made too many memories to fit everything into one post.  Everyone misses everyone else and we wished we lived closer together so we could see each other more often.  I'm glad I had to go straight into a vaulting competition weekend to help me deal with the post-vacation blues.  Because we love them that much.

When the Boot Fits

This has been A Year of Grace as far as homeschooling goes.  A few weeks (months?) back, I hit another wall and needed to just call it quits.  I couldn't continue with what I thought I should be doing verses what I was actually doing.

I started reading books on Unschooling.

Yep. I sunk that low.  I, the person who thought unschooling worked fine for some people, but not for me, started thinking that I should just call myself an unschooler.

I was just finding an excuse or any reason to justify my failures.  Because I don't actually like the idea of letting my kids be in charge of their days.  I know without a doubt that they would be the kids that choose video games over all academics.  And I can't go there. No.

And then I stumbled upon Thomas Jefferson Education.  This is how: a person I didn't know posted on the vaulting facebook page that they were collecting textiles for a homeschool group fundraiser.  Now, I know all the homeschool groups out here, so of course I asked which group it was for.  The group is new and an offshoot of an established group in Tacoma.  One requirement in joining is reading A Thomas Jefferson Education.  I read it.  And researched.  And read the next book in the series.  And joined the Facebook page run by the authors.  And I'm hooked.

It turns out I've been homeschooling the right way for our family all along.  With my change in thinking, I've seen an amazing change in my home.

Whew.