The Davis Family

For those who are curious – here are pictures of my homeschool room, desks, shelves, etc.

School in progress.

The school shelf. The shelf to the right is my incoming household paperwork shelf… not school. Right now it’s clean! Yay!

Desk. (Carolyn is posing. She requested I take this picture.)

Desk.

Desk that is usually too messy to use.

Supervisor.

Maggie working on her Beekeeping journal.

A school morning:

The first week of school was Wednesday-Friday this week. Jordan was picked up for first grade at 8:10am and dropped off just before 4pm each day. The girls got up when they wanted (between 7 and 8), did their single chore, had breakfast and then did their new school. There were a few tears, but it was primarily a positive beginning. We did school on two days and then took Friday to go on a first field trip, something we were not able to do before now, because Jordan does not do well on field trips and also his Kindergarten class was too short to go somewhere. A good friend invited me to show up at Art Break in downtown Vancouver, so we packed some snacks and spent several hours doing art with pencils, crayons, markers and paints.

And now it’s Labor Day weekend! School next week is four days instead of three. Easing our way in. 🙂

Carolyn doesn’t wake up in the night often any more (YAY!) But when she sleeps with me afterwards… she sleeps as close as she can possibly get. Often on top of me. 🙂 It’s pretty special.

Jordan’s most advanced soup yet. It’s blended minestrone soup (it’s soooo good) with the noodles unblended. He still does not chew them, but he is not refusing it and swallows it all!

First day of school!!! Waiting for the bus.

His face changes from this to a huge excited smile when the bus pulls in.

Cute girl.

Carolyn is such a big kid now! Turns 3 this month. She looks like her sisters to me in this one!

The pool is now drained. brrr

This is what I got for a “first day of school” picture. Anna (3rd grade), Maggie (K/1st grade) Jordan (1st grade), Carolyn (3’s preK)

Thanks for this special picture, Maggie!

I have a pretty bird bath!

And thank you Carolyn for this adorable shot.

The bus was late on the first day.

Anna now has her own pet again!!! It’s a Muscovy duckling. She chose the one with the dark bill and I got two more. Hopefully they will all be the same sex. We’ll see.

We also bought 10 meat chicks and a water trough. It’s wonderfully multipurpose.

Our neighbor friends were over today and they played with the ducklings. I told them to keep the ducklings warm…. so Elli sewed two little sweaters for them.

Deer got through our last attempt at a deer fence. We are trying again. We bought Conduit, because it’s inexpensive ($2.30 per 10 foot piece) and cheap plastic fencing.)

A few zip ties and some threading has it looking pretty good.

Hopefully it will protect our fruit trees now!

Rose took some serious medications and is a healthy and bouncy pup now. Unfortunately, her skin condition is chronic, but it’s good to see her looking so good.

Brian on his way out to work on something.

A little snuggle in the sunset.

My late summer bounty.

Ears!

A picture of some of the Art Break work by Carolyn and me.

2015 garden harvest survey… for you, Mom!

We had Nightshade growing in our garden!

The pumpkin plant turned out to be a lemon cucumber plant. Err.. the egg came from a chicken.

I love these. They start yellow and turn pink as they bloom.

So lovely. They have been blooming all summer and scenting my front door.

The little chick is a cross between this Black Copper Maran and the California White Leghorns.

The little cochin and her little pretty chick

Flock of chickens

Deer damage.

The only blackberries I could find. The rest were finished.

Sweet potato vine!

Potatoes ready to harvest

Purple cabbage

Harvested cabbage

The bees love the flowering oregano. I like mowing it (it grows like a weed) because it smells yummy.

Beeeeeeans

So pretty!

Tomatoes!

Garden!

All that green…. was the compost pile. Now it’s growing melons, tomatoes and ground cherries. (pineapple tomatillos)

The zucchini patch that ended up being a second melon patch

Picking the little corn that grew

Cabbage and melons

Potatoes!

On my counter… a bounty!

We got to go to the beach! We went to the same hotel that we stayed at on our honeymoon 10 years ago. We got a larger room, of course. Brian’s mom was able to come for part of the time too and it made the trip extra special! At night, all six of us slept in the same room successfully. I was impressed. During the day we ate simple food, ate restaurant food, played on the beach and swam in the hotel pool. The hotel pool was a highlight – Anna can really swim now! It’s not specific strokes or anything, but she can jump confidently into the deep end and swim back to the side or over to the shallow end. Carolyn wants to jump in the pool and be caught… over and over for hours. We mostly obliged. She flings herself off the side of the pool with abandon. Maggie could stand on the very shallow end but spent a lot of time crawling around the edge of the pool or swimming with a grown-up. Jordan was amazing! We forgot his life vest, but he let us hold him… he sometimes glued himself to us with arms and legs wrapped around us… and he played freely, splashing, kicking, turning, climbing into our arms or further out. On the second pool trip, I was able to convince him that the hot tub was NOT goign to boil him alive and he spent the second half of our water play splashing his feet in the water (just his feet) and warming up.

It’s time for me to get off the computer and help the kids along with breakfast and get Jordan up. This week is a transition from summer to school week. I’ll start waking the kids up a little earlier and make some decisions about what morning chores are going away so that school comes first. We’ve been having a really wonderful summer. As soon as it’s uploaded, I am excited to show you videos of Jordan plying in the sand. He played!

Hanging out in our hotel room.

Watching a cartoon.

Husband and wife.

Mother and son.

These two can get pretty silly together.

Maggie found this bug and wasn’t afraid to hold it.

I love pink!

My silly and studly, earnest and genuine, hard-working and funloving husband.

My spunky and sparkly, creative, thoughtful, sweet and passionate Maggie.

My beautiful, smart, helpful, creative, industrious and kind 8-year-old daughter Anna.

Brother and sister.

Jordan chewed a little on the sand (as usual – yuck!) but actually spent most of the time playing PLAYING in the sand!!!!!!!

haha – she was having so much fun putting sand on my foot.

The sand at the beach here is very coarse.

Mom D getting a picture of Jordan for my Mommy.

It was an industrious crew!

Helping

We prayed for peace for Jordan on the beach… and God gave him peace!

Sitting in the sun and enjoying each others company.

Building a dam on the creek.

The ocean view was out of the corner window… but it was lovely!

Some of our snacks. Ground cherries and cherry tomatoes.

Thanks to a kind friend being available to watch Jordan for us, we got to go to the county fair twice this year! The first visit was a shorter visit and we spent the time visiting different animals mostly. We toured the sheep barn some and then visited the “hair sheep” barn. We talked a long time with a few of the local sheep experts about raising meat sheep and talked with some 4-Hers and families who also raise and sell lambs at auction. We bumped into a ballet friend whose son does sheep 4-H. We wandered the cow aisles and talked with a man about raising beef cows for awhile. We had lots of questions about what a cow needs shelter wise, how long it takes a cow to reach maturity, how many cows would our pasture support, etc. We asked him where the sheep barn was (we went to cows first) and it turns out he used to do sheep with his daughter also, so he gave us some good information and contact info also. As we were getting ready to move on, he gave us his number and said he had some sheep supplies that we could have if we got into sheep!

We hung around the honeybee display for awhile, looking at the observation hive and watching a short demonstration where a gal wearing her everyday clothes went in and opened up a hive for us and pulled out a frame for us to see. She didn’t stay in the big room-cage where the hive was very long, because the bees were “not happy” as she put it and answered our questions from outside the cage. I am still very excited about keeping bees starting next spring, but I am worried our bees will die! We will see. We also watched a cute show of a silly clown lady. She was in the “children” area of the fair and she was just so silly.

The second visit was a long visit. I think seven hours we were at the fair! We looked at displays, we looked at a few animals, we went on rides, we watched shows, we ate lunch and…. I don’t know what all! Maybe some of the chit-chat with animal owners was on this day instead. Does it matter?

It was so adorable, as usual, to watch the kids on rides. They only get to go on a couple rides once a year at the county fair. Anna continues her cautious progression and was willing to try a few new rides this year, with great success and many smiles! Every year she wants to start on the merry-go-round with smiles and magical pleasure each time. Maggie was tall enough for the ferris wheel this time, so I took her on it with me. I have fond memories of my mom loving ferris wheels and taking me on one with her for a special time. Well, taking Maggie on a ferris wheel for the first time was nothing like taking Anna on a ferris wheel for the first time. Maggie wasn’t scared or hardly impressed as far as I could tell, while the height was definitely a stretch for Anna. And me. It was pretty funny and I loved my ride with her. Carolyn was out of ride tickets by this time and was being rather exhausting with demands for more rides. But until her rides ran out, she was thrilled and confident and breathless with wonder. It sure is a pleasure to watch our children experience special times.

We watched the end of a show on this trip too. It was also in the children’s area and was a couple’s act with balancing and tricks. The lady “clown” used a very high pitch voice and was always giggling. She had me giggling just with that. At the very end, they got into a fight with each other and pulled out toilet paper guns. Hahaha – they were snow blowers with toilet paper roll holders on the front. They pretended to blow each other away and then they blew it all over the crowd of delighted children. The show was over and they asked the kids to put the toilet paper on the stage to help clean up. Then they blew it back at the kids to more delighted squealing. It was a huge mess and so funny.

Ok – now to do the beach trip post!

Tractors, of course!

Maggie chose the horse dragon to ride. :-):-)

Anna chose a horse with an eagle on the side.

Carolyn’s childish glee on a ride is a real pleasure to watch.

These two were a perfect match this year. Maggie especially got into the motorcycles “jumps”.

See Maggie holding on tight!

Here are Anna and Maggie getting onto a swing ride that swings them in a slow circle.

Cheese!

Anna’s knuckles got a little white when she realized the swing lifts off the ground too!

Carolyn got on this ride all by herself!

Maggie and I on the ferris wheel!

Brian and Anna’s turn!

The clown lady

So funny!

Watching motox

I wish I took a picture of the riders flying high in the air.

This is us taking notes.