A Visit from the Rusaks

Andy's youngest sister Julie came to visit this weekend with her family. We had a great time! Julie was 14 years old when I first met her. Now, she's all grown up and an amazing mom to three sweet boys as well as a cherished friend of mine. We hadn't seen the Rusaks in three years, which means we had never met this cutie pie...


Upon arrival, Jake immediately entered a nerf dart gun war zone. He was quickly trained by his cousins and placed on the front line.


After nerf guns, playing soccer, climbing in the tree house, and much chatting around the kitchen table, we headed down to San Marco on foot for dinner.


Chelsea wouldn't let anyone else near the stroller - she wanted sole responsibility for Cooper. She did a great job of putting him to sleep so that Julie could enjoy a dinner using both hands! Matthew, Henry, and Jake enjoyed having their own table at Pizza Palace.



After dinner the kids climbed around on the statues of the lions while the boring grown-ups continued our chatting. Actually, Julie and my mom were in deep conversation, Andy and Dave were talking sports, and I was eavesdropping on both conversations while taking pictures of the kids.


The more than mile walk home didn't dampen anyone's spirits!


When we got home Matthew gave a little violin concert for the crowd and Chelsea performed some gymnastics tricks. Patrick, of course, wowed us the entire evening with his texting skills.

After a liesurely breakfast and a little time on the wii on Saturday morning, we headed out to Matthew's baseball game. Matthew showed off for his extended family by pitching two scoreless innings that included his throwing a runner out at home, throwing another runner out stealing second while catching, and hitting an impressive 3 run homer. Quite a game for Matthew! Unfortunately, his team (the Knights), went down 9-8 in a hard-fought game.

A heart-felt thanks to the Rusaks for taking the time and making the effort to drive up to Jax to see us during their busy week's vacation visit to the family homestead in Central Florida. We had a blast!! Here's hoping it won't be three more years until we see them again!

Fantabulous Friday

Have I mentioned how much I love Fridays?? That's my day to play home school mom...my fantasy job :-) It means I have work hours to make up on the weekend, but it is well worth it!
Today started with building a fire - I was nice enough to do the outside work of gathering sticks/wood before waking Matthew (usually his job). We had breakfast by the fire and read Story of the World. We're on the second volume, and Robin Hood is in the picture on the cover, so we've been wondering when he'd appear in our story. Today was the day!

Next it was time to get dressed and head outside for some fresh air. Matthew said he'd like to go golfing, but knew I couldn't be away from my computer (work) for that long, so he settled for hitting balls into the net in the backyard.

We were taking turns hitting balls, and when I finished one of my turns, I couldn't find Matthew. Here's where he was....

(the roof of the garage)

Inspired by Robin Hood and his recent Medieval Faire experience, Matthew decided a little archery was in order.

He made this quiver last year after he got an archery set for Christmas. You see why we thought duct tape was appropriate for his stocking this year!

I guess the memory of making the quiver got Matthew thinking about pvc pipe and what else he might like to do with it, because he suddenly decided he wanted to make a geyser tube. This sounded like a good idea since one of his friends from the River City Unschoolers group expressed interest in doing the Coke and Mentos experiment, but when I heard there was drilling involved, I started looking to postpone this project to an Andy day. Matthew said he'd be happy to just get the pvc pipe cut for today, so he did that.

We headed back inside for some violin practice. Matthew's annual recital is coming up on March 20, so we are trying to get the current song he is learning down in the hopes of learning one more new one before recital time.

We fit in another chapter of Life of Fred Fractions before it was time to head out to pick up Patrick at school. This quirky quasi-curriculum is working out really well for us! Another week I'll have to elaborate on this resource that I stumbled on while reading this (AMAZING) unschooling mom's blog.

Lately, I purposely arrive a little early for pick up at Patrick's school to leave Matthew and I enough time to fit in a story from Roald Dahl's Boy: Tales of Childhood Days while we wait. This was a gift that my sister (the famous Aunt Zanny) gave Matthew during her last visit, and it's been a really fun read!

Truly enjoying the journey.