Year 4, January 16th-18th, 2019: That's A Whole Lot Better!

Phew, busy Wednesday!  But we managed to squeeze in a little bit of school before going to pick up Benaiah from school and take him to church and then go sledding.  And what a time we had sledding!  There really wasn't enough snow, but the hill was big enough and the snow/mud was slippery enough that they had a grand time.  And I got to just stand there and watch because Abishai was big enough to not only climb the hill by himself, but carry about his sled, AND slide down without an ounce of fear.  I will make a playlist of all the videos, so be sure to check that out.  He's just hilarious, and a daredevil, and crazy, and keep us on our toes, and it takes a village and then some to take care of him and his antics.  They got all muddy and we carefully peeled off the outer layer before getting back into the van.  Even Abishai didn't complain about the mud because he couldn't feel it up against his skin because of the snow gear.  After sledding, we had to rush home to eat dinner and head back out for Bible Bowl and basketball.  Jared took Keturah to basketball, and I sat in the office with Abishai watching one of his favorite shows on Daddy's computer, Dirt Every Day, where guys (usually) tinker with off road or unique vehicles of all sorts, change out all kinds of things just because they can, and see if it can run.  Most of it is simply the off roading stuff.  Benaiah didn't go to D group but stayed behind to do homework and practice drums.  Then we all got home a little after 8.  We are supposed to go downtown early tomorrow to a homeschooling rally but the weather is calling for a little bit of snow mixed with rain, so there's going to be ice.  We won't make a decision until we see what we wake up to and Grandma takes Benaiah to school, if they have it.  We will probably just skip a couple of morning activities, go for the rally at noon, stay a little bit afterwards and come home.  It's an annual event, so there's always next year with similar activities.  We went last year, too.  So we'll see!

Brothers playing Legos on the counter? Alrighty then!

Sledding Playlist January 16th, 2019

One word: MUD!!!!!!!!

This was after her very first run down the front part of the hill.  After that, we used the sides and back where there was more snow.

Justin's knees!

At first, Abishai would walk up the hill and then purposefully run down the hill and onto his bum and continue running on down the hill without the sleds.  No fear, no tears, he did it all on purpose!

Catching some air on a ramp someone had built over the weekend.

I do it myself, Mom!

On the back hill, which is smaller and leads into woods, Justin helped Abishai up the slippery slope.  They also used trees and bushes to help pull them up.  I didn't have to go up and down the hill at all!

Ready, set, slide!  The polar bear wasn't fully aired up but between the snow and mud, there was just enjoy slippage to have some fun.

Panarama down the big hill in the front facing the road, which is way far away at Southeastway park.

Going down the left side of the hill.  No fear.  He loved the jumps, too!

Justin was more afraid of letting Abishai go down the hill than I was.  He thought it was too fast, but I don't think it was fast enough for Abishai.

Phew! I was wondering where my other pictures went and then remembered I had used the DSLR as well that day.  Here's Keturah ready to go down the back hill.

Look at her go!

Up and over the bump!  Justin did that once and landed right on his butt! Ouch!

Big brothers are good for helping little brothers.

It was pretty warm, so no one really wore mittens or hats.  They did have snow pants and boots on.  I had to wash all their gear of course, but haven't managed to take the time to clean up the boots yet.

She kept slowing herself down too much, so she didn't quite get over the hump.

The right side of the hill, where the middles were able to go own straight and far, but Abishai....

....kept veering off to the right into the mud.  We had to kind of follow him and catch him so he didn't end up head over heels.

Rosy cheeks smile.

Little guy behind big guy.

It's a preshooler tunnel!

Oh...my....gosh.....here's the story! I haven't seen my hair dryer since right after we moved into this house over 1 1/2 yrs ago.  And this is why!  Jared must have borrowed it for something at work and stuck in the drawer there.  I've literally been drying my hair in front of a space heater the 2 or 3 times I've needed to because I didn't want to buy a new one.  I though that maybe I hadn't searched the closest in the bathroom or under the sink well enough yet.  I've told Jared about this, but it never occurred to him that the one I was looking for was the same one in the drawer at work that he would probably look at least a week a when he opened that drawer.  He's so smart, but sometimes, he still makes me shake my head!  I was just about going to research and purchase one off at Amazon.  Crazy boy!

So random and so true!  It's a revelation that he has two older brothers, not just one!

When you play the same video game on your phone as your 13 yr old son, you can go on the same expeditions together!  And give each other tips.  However, he plays it twice a day and I play it all day.  He's had it for a month, and I've had it for a couple of days, and my goal is to catch up to him.  It's fun and busy with many different parts going on at the same time.  It's all about operations management, investing resources, and such.  My kind of game!  It's called Idle Mines because you can set up managers to keep the employees working while you do other things. Yes!  Not like Farmville where you have to pick crops before they expire.

Thursday was our annual Homeschool Rally at the Statehouse.  The weather was icky, and some stayed home.  We made the effort because we don't live as far.  I didn't make the kids dress up because we weren't planning on doing too much.  We didn't have senator and representative packets to hand out and we went on a tour of the State Library, not the statehouse itself since we did that last year.  We also went around and did the scavenger hunts where we went to different statues and plaques and learned all kinds of things about Hoosier politicians.  I think we answered 3/4 of the questions before I told the kids that the answer key was in the back.  We made it to every floor and did our best.  Some of the statues had kids giving live presentations on their person.  We even saw a news person interviewing a government official.  We saw some friends, but overall, there weren't as many there as last year.

We then sat down and ate our lunch while we listened to someone talk about what bills where on the table that may have an effect on home education.  There's some concerns, but the action part of our organization has a good handle on it.  After that, the rally was noon.  It was ok.  The teen choir sang like last year.  A 25 yr old homeschool graduate who didn't go to college shared his experience on growing up and becoming a state representative without having a degree is law or political science.  That was ok.  Then a long time state senator, who homeschooled his kids in the "dark ages" 30 years ago got up and spoke.  He was bland and not inspirational at all.  In fact, he focused too heavily on what we should be doing like keeping meticulous records and yearly testing, and neither one of those are required by the state at all.  I was not impressed at all, especially since I somewhat believe in the exact opposite of that.  I keep records yes, for my own sake and in case we move out of state.  But I also tell other families that it's not required so if you're a bit disorganized, don't worry.  And testing is definitely not as useful as what one would think.  Not until the SAT/ACT and even then, we only do it for the colleges.  Those are only two examples of what he talked about.  Pretty bland.

We did get to visit the state library though!  We had a good presentation about what the library offers, and another scavenger hunt.  And that's about it.  We didn't get much of a chance to ask questions or visit different parts of the building.  The kids and I were tired by then, so I didn't force the idea of exploring more.  Plus we had to get home in time for Bible class.  At least today the kids didn't complain terribly much about doing the activities.  And hopefully, once again, they learned something and were reminded that freedom isn't free.  I'm glad the event felt familiar enough to me that I didn't feel the need to fuss about getting there or being dressed a certain way.  We were just warm bodies in the chair representing our lifestyle.  End of story.

A neat little display about German town names in Indiana.  I was reminded of the stories I used to read from the 1800's where some northern Eurpeans (not quite Scandinavians) settled in the Dakota territory.  I find interesting that different people groups settled in their own little settlements in different states.  My mom's side settled with the other Finnish people in Maine and Massachusetts.  Jared's grandparents were born, lived and died in the same town as their parents in Michigan.  There's all these subgroups of people who want to stay near other people with the same cultural background.  So, no matter our cry for diversity, I have come to the conclusion that we like people that are similar to us.  That's why 50 years after desegregation, you still have mainly all white or all African American churches and neighborhoods.  You can also find churches and groups of Latinos, Middle Eastern people, and the like living near each other.  It's a fact of life.  And it can be fun!

I didn't get to read the whole poem, but it's an interesting title of a poem in the main rotonda of the state house.

We noticed a couple of phone charging stations around the state house!  What a neat idea! You push a couple of buttons, the door opens, you connect your phone, close the door, and punch in a code to keep it locked.  Then you can come back later to pick it up.  Cool!

This year's configuration was different than last year's.  I wonder if they ever have both sides of the rotunda free of chairs or they just leave them up for the different rallies that happen throughout the year?

Beautiful 3 threes (plus a basement) of our Indiana State house!  And then I was reminded this week that it's been exactly 200 years since the New Hampshire state house was built and began to be in operation.  It's still the longest in continuous use state capital building in the nation.  Indiana's state house was built in 1878-1888 and it was the second building for their legislature.

Listening to one of the young people's speech about their person.

Architecture.

News crew.  We did get in the shot in the background when I checked up on the story.  They were covering a bill talking about testing high school athletes for performance enhancing drugs.  We didn't see the Senate in action today and the only thing we saw the legislature do was commemorate Martin Luther King Jr. day with a speech.  However, there was a guy lobbying outside of the chamber with pro-life signs, the graphic ones.  Ugh. I'm not terribly fond of those.  We saw a group use them on the main road in Charlottetown one time.  My kids don't really need to see that to get the point that abortion is wrong.  But I couldn't find out why he was there without asking and it was busy in that hallway.  Oh well.

Separation of church and state...except when there's still a chapel in the state house.  I'm grateful that it's still there and no one has been able to legislate it out of there.  That's a benefit of being in the Bible belt, I'm sure.

Walking over from the state house to the state library across the courtyard.  We didn't take any other outside pictures because it was so miserably cold and wet.  We didn't even go down to the circle monument a block away.  We parked in the normal "Johnson" parking garage off of Washington St. in the Sun Garage under the mall.  Cost us $14 for 6 hr, but hey, that's life downtown.

The library's contribution to the 200th state annviversary a few years ago.  We did see a lot of these neat painted bulls/buffalos at the state fair a couple of years ago.  I liked seeing the Clifford and Garfield books on there.  Later, we found out why!

It's name was Cookie!

Lots of interactive displays in this area with how voting works and what department takes care of what kinds of regulations.  We had to use all the touchpads and informational boards to do the scavenger hunt.  The kids petered out but I finished it for them.

There was a reading room that they revamped from the arhcive room to display Indiana children's authors. You can check out books from this library, but only ones that are less than 50 years old.  And, I didn't know this, but the creators of Clifford came from Kokomo, Indiana! Abishai would have played a lot in Clifford's dog house if he had been with us!

Then for the last couple of months, this beauty has been on display in the reading room.  It's the circle monument in Lego form!  I've seen a replica of the new Colts stadium and I think Victory baseball field, too, at the large Lego display at the state fairgrounds in years' past.  But this one is new!

It took 3 months to plan and 15 months to build.  Wow!  Lots of details, but 99% of it are regular Legos, not custom made.  Although, the creator did order pieces like white croissants (they usually come in brown) to use as scroll work.  And he had a Mickey and Minnie from the Disney Cinderella castle.  You can order in bulk from Lego (pay by the piece, really), most colors of all the 1,000's of types of pieces they have.  Have you ever seen a master builder's workshop?  You've seen it here on the blog in our pictures from the Lego discovery center.  They use a nuts and bolts holder that you find in a machine shop and separate their bulk Legos by shape and color.  I keep trying to get Justin to do that with his but I need to get him the proper containers for them to stay that way.

They redesigned the book shelves into these awesome displays featuring what genealogies are, the Indiana authors that created Clifford, and Jim Davis who created the Garfield cartoon.  They said that they reused every single piece of hardware that they tore out to keep the historic value of the building.  I'm amusing that these built in nooks held books or even maps and scrolls.  Who knows!

Creators of Clifford.

Old government buildings are incredible!  I don't feel like modern day builds are as fancy.  Wow!

In the room where we listened to a presentation on what this library does, I glanced behind me and saw an old book wrapped in paper!  How old and interesting is that?!  This room also contains only Indiana authors, but it's mostly for adults and both fiction and non fiction.  Pretty cool!  I kept thinking about our friend Brenton doing research on C.S. Lewis in the Oxford library and being able to touch C.S. Lewis's original documents but not being able to check them out.  So cool!

The state library has all kinds of information like old maps, old books, letters, pieces of human hair artwork and the like from the last 200 years of Indiana history.  Birth and death records, marriages, etc.  Some of it is free online through their website as well, including reading guides, talking books (my dad used those), braille books, and the first level of 21 different languages through the Rosetta Stone program.  Very, very cool!  I'll be looking more into the reading guides and Rosetta Stone for Justin, especially.

Listening to the presenter explain details about the two murals commissioned for this library detailing the founding of the state.  The high schoolers were able to go see the lab where they take care of all the old books and documents while we did the scavenger hunt.

The tree picture up there is the tulip tree, the state tree.  See the little nooks down there?  Pretty neat redesign!

"Hey Justin, the first dog!"  I couldn't get my words out correctly and he wasn't comprehending that I was talking about the dog that our current governor owns and sometimes brings to work with him.  He even has his own ID badge!

Old medicinal remedies!  Imagine: they used the plants around them to cure most ailments! Just like the essential oil enthusiasts of today!

At home book on medical things.

The kids were actually quite interested in these little cards!  They are no longer used but have stayed here to show how adults my age and older used to look up where a book was located!  Do you remember what it's called?  A card catalogue!  The numbers are still the same, the Dewey Decimal system! I did use one for a little bit growing up, and MCC had one in their basement as an old display piece as well.

Imagine having to comb through these to find a book you want!  And yes, we were allowed to do this and encouraged to do so.  All the drawers still opened and I can only imagine those 50 years ago going through them!

Other fun facts about this gorgeous old building from the medallions laid in the floor that represent countries to the glass windows above.

This was only half of the card catalogue!

The only custom molded piece were these mini figures of the different soldiers.  See the white croissants used as scroll work?

Ain't she pretty up there?

Some of the archives/library.  No one was around though.  I wonder how often this library actually gets used for research?  Some use it for genealogy, but we adults, and great grandparents, are all imports so there's no history of us here.  All our marriages were in other states.  Only my parents have passed away in Indiana, and the older three kids were born here.

View of the state house from the state library.

Keturah noticed that we couldn't see the top of the building because of the mid afternoon fog!

I let the kids quickly walk through the mall before we went to the underground garage.  We saw this huge life size pups!  And of course, we showed them to Abishai and he wants them, lol.  Especially Everest.  He likes the girl pups.

Itty bitty pups.

Pups that are between the size of his current pups and the gigantic ones.

All the Fortnite stuff you'd ever want.  From stuffed animal purple llamas to figurines.  Oi!

Thought about it, but we didn't buy this for Jared because he doesn't play board games.

He wants it! Birthday gift ideas!

Anybody remember this show from 30 years ago?  I do! They are making a comeback!  Ducktales and Darkwing Duck!

All the rubix cubes a boy needs!  One set includes magic tricks, too!

Snuggles after we got back.  Grandma never changed him out of his pj's, so it's like we never got up! 

And then I was playing on my phone, I look over, and he's fast asleep!  What?! I let him sleep about an hour until Jared got home.  It was very hard to wake him up.

The best helper after grocery shopping award goes to Abishai!  He dragged most of the bags from the front door to the back.  And then he likes to put away the groceries,too.

And usually he's pretty good about knowing where things go.  However, the fruit snacks ended up in the freezer!

Friday was a "mommy needs to hustle" day with phone calls, paperwork, some school, shower, laundry, picking up Benaiah from work (and he got out later than he should have), a poop accident by the almost 4 yr old, etc. all so I could go out with friends in the evening.  I could have stayed home and worked on this here blog, BUT, I knew that I wouldn't feel any relief from the pressure and I needed to slow down.  I told Jared I would work heavily on the blog on Saturday instead.  Keturah did some schoolwork and then was invited to her friend's house to play during the evening while I was at Mom's Night Out, so I let her without checking her work.  It's been an up and down week which happens when you spend the equivalent of 2 school days out and about.  Next week is very, very quiet, so hopefully it will go better.  But this week is almost complete.  Thank goodness.  Mom's night out was enjoyable, at McAlister's Deli, which was much 1/3 the price of last month's Mom's Night Out.  There were only 6 of us, but that just led to some deeper conversations, especially since it was some of the core moms that I've gotten to know pretty well.  One of the moms called me "wise," and I said, well, it's head knowledge but I struggle with the application of the knowledge.  This week is proof of that.  It's just been busy and overwhelming.  We will get rain mixed with snow tomorrow, so we'll see if we have basketball and if we have to shovel out before Sunday again.  I think it will be mostly rain though, which is a bummer.  TGIF!

Watch the video below, but if you can't understand it, I'll tell the story here.  I look over and listen to Abishai talking to his baby about whether or not baby could have screen time.  Then he "sets up a video" on his "phone" (an old mini camera) and shows the screen to her!  Then he takes it away and pretends to "play games" on it moving it around, like he's texting or something, pretending to be busy and ignoring the baby - just like we do! Gut punch making the parents feel guilty!  Yikes!

When brother is 25 minutes late getting out of work because his team leader isn't as good as Benaiah thinks he should be....You play around in the car.  Without socks and shoes and a proper coat.  Because it was supposed to be a quick trip (he did have socks and shoes on to start with, but no coat). And it's 32 degrees outside.  #Canadian  He also begged for fries and we called Daddy to ask, and texted with Justin who was home with Keturah, etc.  But Mommy finally said no, we need to save our money.

Baby guy had to fall asleep without his paci because Daddy didn't text Mommy to ask where it was.  Well, I do want him to fall asleep without it and have that transition done before Jared goes to India in two weeks.  So, maybe it's a good thing! Edit: Jared asked for it the next night in front of Abishai before Abishai had asked for it.  Grrrrr.  It was going to be a perfect time to transition!  Not nice!  But, it IS Jared's responsiblity to be the mean one and get this part done before he leaves.  Jared gets back from India the day before Abishai's birthday and I refuse to let Abishai have a paci after he's 4.  We had to do the same thing with Justin.  In fact, there's a few pictures of Keturah and Justin both with pacis in their mouths.  Keturah stopped using hers much sooner than that, but probably not until after 2 years old.

Dark rooms and iPhones don't mix and I'm not a big fan of the flash, but it's the only way you can see how big he's getting. No longer a baby or toddler, he's a preschooler!  Almost 4 years old!