Catching Up.

So, here we are in the very last week of our first quarter of our school year. I'm ready for a break! It has been a good first quarter, although there are always things I wish we did better. But since it has been brutally hot, we've at least been productive with our indoor time! We did have one week off, during which we attended VBS at another local OP church. The theme was "A Dangerous Journey." The oldest 3 attended and I took Simeon off to a friend's house each morning for him to have some solo time. The oldest 3 greatly enjoyed themselves, although I'm not sure on Philip's level of comprehension! But it was fun, and they looked forward to going each day. We concluded that week with an impromptu trip to the NC Art Museum. My parents were celebrating their wedding anniversary by going there and also staying for dinner. Since we were so close by at VBS we met them there on the Friday afternoon. Abigail and I spent a good deal of time looking at an oil painting by Jan Brueghel the Elder. She has studied the work of his father, Peter, this quarter and so to see a painting by his son was a real treat. Interestingly, Peter Brueghel had 2 sons--both of whom became artists (as did some of their sons), but Peter died when his own sons were 4 and 5.

Here are some random July photos: Tomatoes from the garden (which is almost completely dried to a crisp now)!
Simeon appeared one day saying, "Look at me, I'm PeeDee the Pirate!" A reference to ECU and also attributed to his lack of toys and dress-up clothes that he found a metal clothes hanger to play with. NOT!
The great Pollywog failure. We collected frogspawn from the creek behind the house and vigilantly watered and watched it grow into many, many pollywogs in our garage. Then, I had the bright idea of moving them to a larger space (a green turtle pool) in the backyard. Only a couple of hours of 100+ temps fried the poor things! Abigail, in a magnanimous way said, "Well, we all had a part in the death of those poor pollywogs."
Kids piling on each other. Lydia, 9, Abigail 7.5, Philip 4 and Simeon 2. Birthday season around here is August and September, so we'll soon have changing numbers!
We went to celebrate the 93rd birthday of a church friend at her nursing home. A couple of other church families joined us. In this photo our friends, the Conlons (2 boys, 2 girls) joined us to smile with Mrs. Annaveldt.