Disney Photos - Wilderness Lodge

Our first full day at Disney (sorry, I'm not writing these in chronological order),
we went to the Magic Kingdom and had lunch reservations at the Whispering Canyon Cafe
at the Wilderness Lodge.


We took a boat from MK to WL, which was half the fun.



Here's the lobby of the Wilderness Lodge. We liked it a lot.
We said that maybe our next trip we would consider staying there,
but Rachael insisted that the Grand Floridian was much nicer.



Here's Becca and Benjamin in another part of the lobby.

The lunch was really good -- ribs, chicken, that kind of thing.
The kids loved the cornbread, funny as that sounds.

At one point they gave all the kids a stick horse and had them take a ride
around the inside of the restaurant. Rachael liked that a lot.



Here's Robert with the kids, looking at the geysers while we waited
for the boat to come and take us back.

Disney photos - Princess Lunch at Epcot

Wednesday morning we were all scheduled for a Princess Storybook Lunch in the Norway section of Epcot.

Less than an hour before we were going to leave, Rebecca threw up.

When she was done, she said she was fine and still wanted to go, so we cautiously headed out, thinking that maybe she got it out of her system and would be okay..



This is me and the girls in front of the huge Christmas tree in the Grand Floridian lobby,
about five minutes before Rebecca said she still felt sick and wanted to stay home.
Robert (who wasn't feeling that great either) took her back to the hotel room for the day,
and figured he might as well have two year old Benjamin stay behind too.

So it was just me and Rach at the lunch


Here's Rachael with Cinderella. She was a good Princess.
She asked where Rachael was from, and when Rachael answered, "Georgia,"
Cinderella said, "Oh my, that must have been a long carriage ride!"
She also commented that she and Rachael had matching headbands, which Rachael liked a lot.

It was an interesting contrast to Jasmine, who said to Rachael, "Can I borrow your pen?"
and then left and never came back with it, causing Rachael to burst into tears.
(Fortunately, Ariel got her a new pen.)


After the lunch, Rachael said she was disappointed that Mary Poppins wasn't there ...
well, look, who do we see here, down the street from Norway? Look how happy Rachael is!



Then someone told us that Pooh and his friends were at the toy store around the corner.
There was no line or anything; we just walked right in and saw them!

When we first showed up for the Princess Lunch, the restaurant workers asked if Rachael
had an autograph book. When she said no, they gave her one!
So maybe one of these days I'll actually learn how to make a hard copy of digital pictures
so we can put them in the album with the autographs.

Disney Trip - Chef Micky's

On the third day before our trip, before people started getting sick, we had breakfast at Chef Micky's.

If you're not familiar, it's a buffet in the Disney Contemporary Resort with Micky and his friends coming to each table. Like Rob said, the atmostphere and food is similar to Shoney's breakfast bar (which is not a bad thing), at about three times the price.


Here's me with Micky and all three kids.



Here's Minnie Mouse (Rebecca's favorite) looking at Benjamin's car.
When we checked into our hotel, one of the workers gave him this car, from the Cars movie, which was pretty neat.



Here's Donald Duck with Rachael and Rebecca.
Rachael said that DD is her favorite.



Here's Rachael with her Daddy!

Disney Pictures: Part One

Two weeks before Christmas, we went to Disney World.

It was fun to go at Christmas time, but it was also a bit of a whirlwind. I don't think I will plan a vacation in December again for a while. I had a bunch of doctor appointments for me and Rachael to squeeze in before we left, one Christmas concert the week before, and of course had to do all the baking and shopping before we left.

Then, at Disney World, we all got a stomach virus, starting with Rebecca. Actually, Rachael was lucky; she was the only one to get it after we came home.

One or more people in our family stayed sick through Christmas, and until December 30, which happened to be the day that Rachael had to be put fully under for an MRI.

So ...

It might be understandable that I hadn't even looked at any of these pictures til about a week ago, let alone post them.

For some reason, I can never post more than pictures at a time. So here's the first installment: These are pictures of Rachael and Rebecca in a little store in ToonTown, right after the waited in line to see the Princesses:



This is so Rebecca.



Fun with hats!




A car on Rachael's head -- Benjamin would have liked that!
He and his Daddy were riding the race cars in Tomorrowland at the time.

More to come ...

Courtship, 18 kids, and other thoughts

I just read this post at Donna's blog about the Duggar family, and instead of leaving a huge comment, I thought I'd write my own post in response.

First of all, I've never actually seen the show about the Duggars (the homeschooling family with 18 kids) because we don't have cable, so I can't comment on that specifically.

When Rachael was a baby, I met a local women named Lisa who spoke a lot at homeschooling conferencing and ran a local homeschooling group. Believe it or not, I hosted a couple of her talks in my home, and enjoyed doing so. They were not about homeschooling. One was about hospitality, and one was about parenting in general.

Lisa was very strident and bold, even in one-on-one conversations, and made it clear that any form of family planning, natural or otherwise was a sin. She also said that if you were not homeschooling, you were not in God's will. I never agreed with either point.

Why, then, did I host this woman's talks? There was something charismatic and inspiring about her. And they made me think.

At the time, her oldest daughter, Doris (who I had also met a few times) was about twenty-two and pregnant with her third child.

Doris had apparently decided as a teenager, together with her parents, that she would not date, but would rather "be courted."

I'm not sure how this works or how Doris met her husband, but I do know that Doris and her parents actually interviewed her future husband together to decide if he could court Doris. I have no idea how well they knew him, or what they knew about him, when this interview took place.

Two of the interview questions were "Do you want your children to be homeschooled?" and "Do you want God to bless you with as many children as He's willing to?" (ie no birth control -- none, not calendar planning or semi-abstience, nothing).

Doris (who was about 17 at the time) said to her parents before he arrived at the interview, "If he says 'No' to either of those two questions, then we have nothing else to talk about."

I have no idea where any of these people are now. I will say that Doris struck me as very calm and mature, especially for someone who was pregnant and had two children under the age of four.

I have sometimes wondered if Doris (and others like her) would find themselves at 30 or 40 saying, "Gee, I went straight from being a teenager to having several children. I never had the chance to date, to go to college, to pick or pursue a vocation or profession or any kind, to decide anything about my future. I thought I wanted to get married at 18 to someone I never even dated, and have unlimited children with him, but I was pushed into that from every angle and was too young to really make that decision."

But maybe not.

One more story:

Around the same time I happened to read some article in some homeschool magazine by a girl who was about 18 or 19. She was saying that now that she "graduated homeschool," she was an apprentice to her mother, helping with the housework and with homeschooling her younger siblings, until she got married. No college, no job, no living somewhere else ... just hang around the house helping Mom indefinitely until someone comes along and marries her. She was under her father's authority, she said, until she got married.

Weird.

One quote stuck with me, and I hope I'm not mis-quoting her, as it was years ago:

"If I went to college, I might begin to think independently. That would be a bad thing, because I want to be a submissive wife someday."

Weird!

What homeschooling looks like these days

This is one of those posts that's just asking for trouble.

Unschoolers will say I shouldn't be doing structured lessons; other homeschoolers might say I'm not doing enough. And people who just think homeschooling is weird or bad will find fault with every detail.

Eh, I'll post it anyway.

Our "schoolwork" can be separated into two parts: Stuff that Rachael (7) does, and Stuff that Both Girls Do Together.

Rachael does about 2-3 daily in a phonics book called Explode the Code. I really like these workbooks because they're cheap, kinda silly, but straightforward. I very much dislike any other phonics book I've looked at, incuding the much-touted How to Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons, and all those books that have scripted lessons.

Right now Rachael is in book four of ETC, which is the compound words and two syllable words.

Rachael also does part of a lesson in Beyond the Code. Same makers of course, but ETC is phonics and BTC is reading and comprehension. I guess in school terms, it's like having a "reader." We usually spend about 3-4 days on a single lesson/story, then have a day or two that we skip it entirely.

We recently began using Math-U-See, and I love it. Earlier we had been doing a combination of various math games and other math activities like "color by number addition" and stuff like that. Rachael definitely prefers doing MUS, as do I. For those who are familiar with it, right now we're in the Alpha book, lesson nine (adding nine to a number). We watch the video together, then spend about 2-3 days on the lesson before we move on to the next one.

I'm kinda pissed that I never got to learn math this way.

About now you may be wondering what my younger two children are doing during all this. Rebecca almost always watches the MUS lesson with us (and seems to understand it, too.) Today Rebecca and I played Uno, Crazy Eights, and Go Fish while Rachael did her phonics and reading in the next room. Rebecca usually builds towers with the MUS blocks while Rachael does math.

Benjamin just hangs around, playing with his cars and things, maybe crawling in my lap or eating animal crackers or something. Months ago I used to set him up with a video for a while, but I don't do that anymore.

I do Five in a Row with both girls. The more I do this, the more I like it. Usually I do the same book M-F (as the title implies), but Rachael's surgery threw us off a little, so we finished last week's book today.

We read They Were Strong and Good. (If you're not familiar with FIAR, the idea is to read the same picture book every day for five days, then do an activity stemming from it.)

Today's topic was art. The title page has various items that represent different members of the family, so the girls drew their own pictures of our family: a piano and music notes to represent me, cars for Benjamin, a girl with a pink bow in her hair to represent Rebecca, etc.

Earlier activities with this same book last week included: coloring in a map and labeling the four states that the grandparents were from; discussing how towns have changed over the years; discussing what makes a good title and listing "strong" and "gentle" words; and drawing hexagons and octagons and making them on geoboards.

The other thing I do with both girls every day is reading aloud from a chapter book. We almost always do this when I put Benjamin down for his nap. I wouldn't even consider this "schoolwork" except that it seems like most homeschoolers consider it part of the "school day," so sure, why not. Right now we are reading Eddie and the Fire Engine by Carolyn Haywood, which was written in the 1940's.

And that's it. Today we also watched The Electric Company together -- mostly because I enjoy it, ha! Of course we do other things, but those are the only ones I would label as "schoolwork."

Rachael in her casts

Robert had a good idea of taking a picture of Rachael before the surgery.
See how she is up on both toes? That's why she needed the surgery and casting.

He'll take another picture of her in the same spot when her casts come off.


And here's Rach today in her casts!



What a little trooper!