Apples!

Of all the plants in our yard and garden, I think the apple trees we put in ten years ago are going to be missed the most. As far as I know, you really can't grow good apples as far south as Georgia, so I guess we're going to have to settle for pecan pies from now on.

My kids, in the few short years we've had them, have grown up having apple trees. September means "apples" and it's been a tradition for the kids to pick them and for me to clean them. Those trees are like family, and we're going to miss them.

We've had four varieties of apples: Empire, Fuji, Granny Smith, and Winesap

Teaching Merrilee to pick apples four years ago

We even have crab apples

This year's bumper crop

Picking apples this year

We love homegrown apples!

Scenes from the Family Reunion

Last week we headed up to Indianapolis for the family reunion. It was Aunt Irene's 80th birthday and she celebrated with all her children and their children, along with her neices and nephews and their families. It was the first time we've been back for a reunion in about three years, so many folks in the family had only seen Jacob once when he was a toddler, and only two family members who were there had met Katie Mei at Jay's Change of Command ceremony. It was fun to get all the kids together again, including another cousin who was also born in China. Lily and Merrilee are eight months apart in age.

Our kids with Aunt Irene

Stopping to pose for a picture with Lily

Merrilee and Lily playing volleyball

Kids' play

Petrie hanging out with cousins and catching up

Katie Mei hounded Jacob for his cake...

and he gladly obliged..


again...

and again.

The bean bag toss was fun for the kids.

Even Katie Mei enjoyed dropping in the bean bags and retreiving them.

After the reunion we stopped by the church we were married in so I could get a few photos from the outside. I never did take any pictures of the church because I was too busy getting married. It's Tallwood Chapel in Indy.

The day after the reunion we power shopped at the Prime Outlets in Edinburg. Then Jay took us to White Castle for lunch. It was a fun afternoon. Two members of our family were completely wiped out afterwards. Merrilee and Jacob and I went down to the hotel lobby to play a card game and left these two to sleep off the effects of a busy day.

Two Posts in One Day!

As promised, a picture of Merrilee with her finished solar system. We don't have a fancy way of mounting the planets yet. I think I'll wait until we move and then we'll get something a little more sturdy than egg cartons. She is enjoying her astronomy course, and absolutely loves keeping a notebook to write in and illustrate.

Katie Mei was the official snack-maker today at snack time. This was her first foray into the world of food services and she seemed to like it a lot. I thought she'd be putting food in her mouth, but she was self-controlled and very focused on making the snack to share with "Mao-Mee" and "Deeka". I did catch her stuffing one little peanut butter-covered raisin in her mouth when it got stuck to her fingers, but otherwise she was quite hygenic. A good quality in someone who might become the lunch lady one day!

Merrilee and Jacob enjoyed their snacks and were praiseful of Katie Mei for doing such a nice job.

On our trip to Indy this past weekend, Merrilee lost her third bottom tooth. Today the fourth one came out. She has yet to relinquish any of them to the tooth fairy. I keep trying to encourage her to do so, but she tends to have a fondness for her removed body parts and likes to know they're still around. We'll see if she will finally give in to the desires of the fairy tonight.

And lastly, a video to show you how wonderfully smart my amazing baby is! Actually, she's just doing what she's supposed to do as a toddler...learn. And I'm always happy to see progress. Here's a snippet!

Puddle Play

I've been wanting to upload these photos to the blog for a few weeks, but have just been too busy with schooling and preparing for the move. So, finally, long after the puddles have dried, I present to you Katie Mei's first evening of puddle jumping. We had a nice, cooling late-day rain back in August and we had nothing better to do, so I took her out into the driveway to splash. The other two kids have done this numerous times, and I always enjoyed their very first puddle experience the best. Katie Mei found splashing me to be hilarious, but she was also amazed at making her own footprints when she got her feet wet and then walked on the dry part of the driveway. She did the same with her hands over and over.

She's also getting the hang of hopping, and practiced that a bit. But almost every time I tried to get a photo of her jumping she was already back on the ground. Her air time is very, very short. I don't think basketball is going to be one of her strengths. Only in the very last photo did I get her off the ground.

Here is a sampling of the photos I took of her. Enjoy.

Very busy blog post about a very busy two weeks

We are now at the end of our second week of the new school year, and I still don't have my ducks in a row. Seems homeschooling two kids and a toddler presents a whole new set of circumstances which require new parenting skills, more patience, and sometimes Diet Coke before noon. I picked a lousy time to start cutting back on caffiene.

Jacob is a budding Kindergartener, and pending our change in circumstances (the upcoming move to Georgia), we have decided to keep him home. He had previously been accepted into the local charter school, but we felt that with the move he'd only be in school about six weeks. That meant some kid on the waiting list would miss the first six weeks of school before Jacob's position was vacated. I felt that wouldn't be fair to the other child, so we disenrolled Jacob and ordered more books for him to use at home. The first photos are of Jacob and Katie Mei digging into Jacob's new box of books.

Then we got underway in planning some non-book activities, especially file folder games. They always come in handy and are easily found on the internet. Just print up the pages, cut them out and paste them into file folders. The kids love helping cut, and Katie Mei was the first to try the new ones out. She really enjoys matching colors.

Merrilee really loves to help keep Katie Mei occupied with games. And since Katie Mei is into colors now, we made a game with felt shapes and kitchen clips. She has to match the color of the clip to the color of the felt. Once she tires of colors, she can match the shapes. There are three shapes of each color, so it helps with her sorting skills, sorting by color or shape. Funny side note...after I downloaded this photo and got a closer look at it, I noticed Katie Mei's shorts have fallen all the way down past her butt. Her size 2T tops are always a bit snug, but her pants are always too large. Baby ain't got back!

Merrilee is in second grade now. The work load is a little harder than last year, and since my original schedule doesn't seem to be working out, we've got some revamping to do. Math tends to burn her out, so I've got to move that to later in the day and put the easier stuff up front. It's also hard for me to juggle getting one kid started on an assignment while the other kid is bored waiting for his/her turn. Jacob wasn't getting enough work with only his phonics and math, so we've had to order more books for him (The Rod and Staff curriculum, which was too much work for Merrilee in first grade, seems to be enough work for Jacob. A Beka is just too little work to keep him occupied.).

Katie Mei is also getting some fun in dexterity training. I saw an idea similar to this on another website and sure enough, Katie Mei loved it. I also let her use toy tweezers from one of Jacob's bug kits and she picks up the balls and puts them in a jar. We also let her use training chop sticks. The balls are just craft store puff balls.

And when Mommy is done washing morning dishes and have some suds left, I just plop them on Katie Mei's chair and give her a couple kitchen scoops to mess with them. Nice thing is, I don't have to clean her up afterwards, just wipe her down with the dish towel and toss it in the laundry.

And if I'm really willing to deal with a bigger mess and a little water on the counter top, I let her do this:

When Merrilee needed to work on her science planet project, Jacob wanted to paint, too. But he's just too much of a handful for me to want in the house with paint. So I got out the finger paints, sent Jacob and Katie Mei outside on a pretty cool morning, and gave them an ample supply of paper. It was Katie Mei's first finger paint experience and I thought she'd hate it. She really doesn't like getting nasty on her hands. But happily, she got right into it. They both made lots of pictures and left them in the grass to dry. But as is typical of my boy, he doesn't think ahead. He piled all of his pictures one on top of the other in the grass, and they dried all stuck together. They had to go into the trash. He was disappointed, but eh...live and learn, right?

Katie Mei is slowly learning her alphabet, too. I thought it would come faster, but unfortunately, I still tend to compare the other two to Merrilee. Merrilee knew all her letters, and their phonetic sounds, by the time she was 2.5 years old. My brain just keeps thinking this is normal, but I know it's not. So Katie Mei is at about eight letters now. She can identify A, B, C, D, M, O, S, and U. I am trying to spend one or two days a week just concentrating on one letter. This is the day she learned the letter D.

And finally, our project for the week. Merrilee is doing a year of astronomy and the first project was to make a model of the solar system. The book's instructions were to just use balloons and blow them up to proportional sizes and stick them on the wall with thumbtacks. Nuh-uh. No thumb tacks. And I thought the pear-shape of balloons was stupid. So like any other scientist mother, I highjacked the project and bought Merrilee some styrofoam balls and got out my tempera paints. The rest was up to her. Except for using the compass to make Saturn's ring. I did that but showed Merrilee how a compass worked. Then it was her job to cut it out. Once we get all the planets set up, we'll post the final project photo.

Until then, we're off to the family reunion in Indiana. Hope you all have a great weekend!

Love,

Petrie