Life Goes On

In spite of challenges we've been facing, there have been many good things happening in our household and lives these last few weeks.

Liesl's 10th Violin Recital: Although our family is dealing with the pressure and uncertainty of Tom's unexpected layoff--not to mention a broken bone--Liesl actually did quite well at her violin recital last Sunday. She played the next Suzuki piece, "Lightly Row," and at this point, only played half of it, without piano accompaniment. Not bad, considering the stress that has gone on in our household. I considered not having her in this recital due to lots of stress and uncertainty in our lives, but we quickly dismissed that idea for two reasons--Life has to continue with some semblance of normalcy for the sake of everyone's sanity, and Liesl performs so well at recitals--I think the pressure of an audience brings out the best in her playing. (She gets that from me--my performances in theatre are always kicked up a few major notches when opening day arrives and there is a real, honest-to-goodness audience in those seats.)

Oktoberfest at our church: Once a year, we Germans gather to celebrate our nuttiness heritage with food, music, games, and dancing. (And beer.) This year's event was the 2nd annual Oktoberfest. The food was amazing, the company terrific. Nothin' like hanging out with your pastor and his family while forcing our poor, unsuspecting children to partake in the ultimate humiliation that IS the Chicken Dance.

Games and activities

Ava was the duck pond's best customer. You could get prizes for selecting a duck with a black spot on the bottom...but she didn't know, or care. Seriously, a puddle of water indoors with brightly-colored plastic water fowl floating in it? That's a prize in itself for a toddler.

The game attendant knew her by name. Told us that MSU has a pretty good ornithology department. We told him thanks, but we're opting for marine biology.

Sausage, authentic German dumplings, and apple strudel = baby bait.

(See how she's trying to sucker Daddy out of his dumplings with that cute little face? She was wildly successful.)

Liesl and Sarah, who is also my Mother's Helper on occasion. Sarah's family and our family are good church/homeschooling buddies.

Coloring: If Sissy does it, Ava has to do it.

The Chicken Dance: Humiliating ourselves is half the fun.

One of our pastors (right) and his 2 year-old son agree

There's other dances to humiliate yourselves with

See? (We love this German Oompah band. They did our gig last year as well.)

Too much beer German food.

Schooling Continues: Our homeschooling adventures were momentarily halted, but have restarted with gusto, this time with Daddy playing a much more major role. Last week we hosted a verimcomposting workshop at our homeschool co-op, with help from my friend Kelly—who is not a homeschooler, but is a master composter and vermicomposter. She is the one who got me started with worm bins (all of my worms are decadents of hers, so I guess you can say we’re in-laws in some weird sick circles.) She is always willing to share her expertise and experience.

Our homeschool co-op learning about worms...

...and then making their own small worm bins.

(Isn't it too bad that homeschooled kids don't socialize?)

FAMC Halloween Party: Again, I have to fawn over the amazingness (is that a word?) of the Farmington Area Mom's Club. We are a really diverse, fun, resourceful group of ladies. We had our Halloween party yesterday--in the freezing cold, no less--and had such an amazing time.

The girls do have costumes planned, but it was too cold yesterday to wear them to the outdoor party. So we improvised. Here, we see Ava portraying a very convincing grape.

The Blessing of Friends. :-)

My friend Stacie's 6 month-old daughter, R. I could eat her up with a spoon. Stacie might frown on that.

Kim and little Charlie. Charlie was going to dress as a vampire, but again, too cold for his costume. I called him Edward anyway.

One Down, One Still Going: Liesl is 100% potty-trained. She hasn’t worn a diaper in over a week. We just decided to cut them out cold-turkey. After just ONE nap accident, she has woken up dry from every single nap. Nighttimes are a different story…we’ve had about a 66% success rate, but the wettings are becoming less frequent as time passes. It’s exhausting—and a lotta laundry—but it is worth it. Only one kid in diapers! Haven’t had that for two years. Easy peasy.

Work, work, work, work: I have been so blessed to have been given so many job assignments in the last 3 weeks. I've had to turn many down due to Tom's outplacement seminars, job interviews, and other things, but my first paycheck from my referral agency arrived yesterday, and it was a whopper. I keep pretty meticulous records, so the number on the check wasn't a surprise to me...but still, to feel like I can help out the family in our time of

Interviews, already? Tom had a job interview yesterday. It was a good experience for him. It will not result in full-time employment, but he definitely learned a lot about what is out there for him, and he also has the possibility of part-time contract work with this company. Hey...extra cash and experience are nothing to be sneezed at. He has a phone interview scheduled for tomorrow.

All in all, we are doing ok. We will survive. Our budget has suddenly become a very focal point in our lives, but I am confident that we will make it work. We have each other, we have a decent backup career (mine) that is able to be--and was--picked up at a moment's notice, we have our health, we have the support and love of many friends and family, and we have our faith. We have a lot more than most people in our situation.

Changes and Challenges

For those that may not know already, my wonderful husband lost his job at General Motors a week ago Wednesday due to cuts and layoffs. We were totally blindsided by this turn of events...although we knew that cuts were coming, we thought that he would be the last one out the door because nobody else in the company knows how to use the software that he uses.

The first few days and mornings were terribly hard on him. Not that things are perfect now, but things are put into better perspective. Sometimes I have to remind him over and over that looking back on the past won't change anything, and sometimes I have to remind him that if we continue to place our lives into God's hands without fear, that we will be fine...the will of God will not lead us to where the Grace of God cannot protect us. He always brings himself back. We've had a few really, really rough days...but for the most part we have become closer and, I think, more focused.

Tom has a 6-month severance package, so we are safe as far as income and benefits for the next 6 months, but we have switched into major money-saving mode. We are making cuts and re-evaluating our priorities. Within an hour of getting this terrible news, I was on the phone with my agency, informing them that I would be available to work however many hours they would give me, and soon found myself thrown back into the world of full-time freelance interpreting. I've worked more hours in the last week than I have for the entire preceding year...for which I am very grateful. My skills are sharpened back up already, and I am grateful that I have them. I'm revving up to take the NIC screening in preparation for national certification...only 11 years after receiving my degree. (Way to put things off!)

To add a little bit more fun to our lives...Liesl was jumping on her bed on Sunday morning--forgetting, of course, the 9,274 times I have told her not to--and fell off, breaking her right collar bone. Two trips to two different doctors, 3 sets of x-rays, and a visit to the pediatric medical supply in Madison Heights later, and here we have Liesl and her new accessory. Our wonderful family physician muttered to me, "Isn't it great that you all have no stress in your lives right now?"

So there is. But I am so proud of Tom and how well he is handling this huge, sudden adjustment in our lives. He is rising to the challenge like a trooper. We keep reminding ourselves not to be negative, to place our lives into God's hands, and to work our butts off to rectify our situation in the interim. Homeschooling our children is still a huge priority. Many, many people have offered help in various ways--our psychian, my parents, our violin teacher, and many of my FAMC friends have already stepped up to the plate. It is in a time of difficulty when you see who your true friends are, and all we have to do is look around to see how very, very blessed we are.

How I Will Forever Remember This Morning

Work like it's up to you.

Pray like it's up to God.

I have every reason to believe in God, our Father, and Jesus, our Lord and Savior. I have every reason to believe that our family will be absolutely fine in this process, and we will emerge from this crisis even stronger. The trials we have faced in the past have proved this.

We trust in God. We place our lives in God's hands, gladly and with no fear and our whole hearts.

Unit Study: "The Story About Ping"

This week kicked off our first "true" homeschool adventure. While many people reminded me that I've already been homeschooling all of my children's lives, this is the first week we used a curriculum, lesson plan, and a flexible, kid-friendly schedule.

We chose a delightful, book-oriented curriculum called Five in a Row. It's funny...when I began researching homeschooling a year ago (has it really been that long?!?), I would never have considered this unit study method as a good way to learn. That's because I have been indoctrinated into thinking that learning happens ONE way: in a classroom, with a usually over-dry textbook that's organized into units and chapters, and occasional hands-on experiences that are...sort of relevant to what the textbook was talking about. In my opinion, this is not a natural way for very young children to learn, and it isn't prone to encourage a love of learning.

After speaking with several families who are using/have used Five in a Row (or FIAR)--and speaking to their very intelligent, thoughtful, and fun-loving children--my perception of unit studies completely changed. It just makes so much more sense to tie the subjects together to a common theme, because this is more of the way real life works. And the really cool part? These kids remember what the learned. They retained it, and they ENJOYED learning about it all. Well, that was the kicker for me.

So we began our first unit study this week, which was, happily, a book that I remember fondly from my childhood--the curriculum has quite a few books in it that I read and enjoyed as a child. The stories are all of good-quality children's literature, not fluff books like Sandra Boynton or picture books (not that those kinds of books aren't valuable--we have ALL of Sandra Boynton's books and love them. But the FIAR series uses books that have a lot more "meat" to them.)

Unit Study Title: "The Story About Ping"
Author: Marjorie Flack
Illustrator: Kurt Wiese
Copyright: 1933
Category: Classic

Monday: Social Studies
Geography, Culture
- Located China on the world map, placed our "Ping" story disk on China
- Discussed cultural differences between Chinese and Americans: Food, family living, traditional dress, etc.
- Visited the library and checked out children's fact books and picture books of China, the Yangtze River, and ducks

Tuesday: Language Arts, Music
Literature, Fiction, Literary Devices: Repetition
- Discussed how the author uses repetition to make parts of the story stick out
- Discussed quotation marks and why they are used in books and stories
- Violin lesson

Wednesday: Applied Math
Counting, classification, introduction to multiples
- Using homemade cards, counted all of the ducks in Pings family (including Ping himself!) that live on the "wise-eyed boat on the Yangtze river." (There are 68 ducks.)
- Classified all the family members into groups
- Set up Ping's 42 cousins on a graph to show multiples of 10 (with a remainder of 2)

Thursday: Art, Music, Co-op Preschool
Medium, drawing water
- Discussed the medium that the illustrator chose
- Talked about how illustrator showed different expressions on the animals' and peoples' faces by changing the lines ever so slightly
- Drew our own renditions of Ping and his family
- Returned to our beloved Music Together class for the first week of the fall semester. Bonus: This semester's Music Together CD theme is Fiddles! :-) We like fiddles in our family.
- Attended our first class at our homeschool co-op, geared especially towards preschoolers! The class is called "All of God's Creatures." Today we discussed how to classify mammals. Then we talked about how bears are mammals. Made a craft--bear paper bag puppets--had a teddy bear parade (the girls were excited because their teddy bears were "starting school" as well), and did a finger play with Eric Carle's "Brown Bear, Brown Bear, What do You See."

Friday: Science, Social Studies
Animal Kingdom
- Visited the Franklin Cider Mill* to observe ducks. Discussed the 3 kind of ways ducks can get around: Walking, swimming, and flying. (Most animals cannot do all three!) Fed the ducks and observed how they "stretch" by standing upright and flapping their wings. Discussed how to tell the difference between a male and female Mallard duck.
- Serendipity lesson! Got to watch the cider press in use. Stayed there to watch for a solid 20 minutes at Liesl's request.
- Visited a Chinese restaurant to talk to the hostess for a few minutes--learned to say "thank you" in Chinese ("xie xie ni".) Ate cashew chicken and rice for lunch (at home: Mommy wasn't quite brave enough for the restaurant.) Everybody used chopsticks. I ate my entire meal with chopsticks, and, watching me, Ava made a very studious and whole-hearted attempt at them. She was successful in her own way.

* Ok, I'd be lying by omission if I didn't fess up to buying cider and donuts. But to my surprise, the girls weren't overly focused on that and stayed with the ducks for a solid 30 minutes before we went and bought our cider and donuts. Really. I was surprised. (Because *I* wanted the #$*&@ donuts.)

All in all, the first week showed me that my plans and my preconceived notions about how my kids learn will need tweaking. But snuggling up to read the story together each day, and then moving on to a loosely-structured lesson that connected to the story--I can see why this method and curriculum are so popular.

First day of school picture! 9-14-09

Math: Sorting Ping's family into classes before counting them

Done! This lesson actually lasted a solid 45 minutes...at Liesl's request. Ava had her own set of counting cards, slightly larger, with her name on them instead of family classifications.

First day of homeschool co-op preschool class

Ava really dug being a "real" student--she's registered--and sitting at the tables to work with the "big kids."
(Hi, Daniel.)

Teddy bear puppet craft

Lining up for the Teddy Bear Parade (which was performed to a nice, rousing march)

Feeding the ducks! Even Ava, my non animal-lover, really dug this activity

Ava had her eye on one particular duck, and when he disappeared under the bridge, she was quite upset

Snacktime
Half-eaten donut on the left is mine.

Those ducks are really stupid brave

Chopped apples being prepared for the press

Cider press in motion. It was NEAT! It was loud and fun to watch, and it smelled darn nice, too.

Giving me the "you gotta be kidding, Mommy" look...

...but she gave it a really good try, regardless

Humoring Mommy (and then Mommy caved and gave her a fork and spoon.)

Liesl's 9th Violin Recital

Liesl's "Twinkle" Graduation!
No more Twinkle for this Suzuki Mom!
(At least until Ava is ready to start lessons. Oh, dear.)

Art is a Process. So is Cleaning.

Every preschool art project comes with the reminder that art is a process. The act of doing a project and experimenting with the materials and imagination is far more important than the final outcome for most tiny artists. Mine are no exception.

Cleanup is always a bit of a process, too.

An interesting craft idea that I read about.

Pour salt into a small bowl, stir with colored chalk until salt reaches desired tint of color.

(We mixed blue and red to get purple salt,

a trick Liesl remembered from Ellen Stole Walsh's wonderful book, "Mouse Paint.")

Apply glue to paper, dribble colored salt onto glue.

Artists at work, learning/creating

She really dug this activity

They also played together very nicely.
Score! Double bonus.

Loads and loads of sensory experiences. :-)
(There may have been a "tasting" sensory experience when my back was turned for an instant. Fortunately, sidewalk chalk is non-toxic.)

Dump the excess salt into your lap back into the bowl

Ava is like her Daddy...when she concentrates, her tongue just sticks right out of her mouth--and stays out.

DON'T turn your back on toddlers with watercolors.
Actually, this face painting is mild compared to what I've found in the past.

I admit to cleaning off her face before I snapped this shot.
She had a full-on watercolor "beard." She was delighted with herself.


Reading stories for Sissy. Liesl is actually reading entire books to Ava these days.

I'm not trying to duplicate a classroom at home--that would be silly--but a teacher friend gave me this ABC wall boarder, so I couldn't resist putting it up in my kitchen. The vowels are in red, so Liesl now knows all of her vowels.

I also have a preschool/kindergarten-type calendar set up in our front hallway. It has a weekly calendar, a monthly calendar, and a weather/season chart that we change every day. Liesl enjoys "Doing Calendar" every day before morning violin practice.

T-minus 14 years...*

Another great FAMC outing. This time we went to the Selfridge Military Air Museum with 40 of our other FAMC moms, kids, and a few dads. Tom took the morning off of work to accompany us, which was wonderful, because Tom is an Air Force buff. It's also fun to share these kinds of outings with him, so he can see what really goes on during all of these great--but exhausting--outings that we do through FAMC.

The museum is only open on weekends and select holidays from 12:00 noon to 4:00 p.m., but can be opened at other times for groups by appointment. So our group had the entire museum and airfield to ourselves...which was amazing. No strangers to worry about, and friends to share with--simply amazing.

Liesl and Ava had a great time in the outdoor display. The indoor museum paled in comparison--for them, anyway, Tom and I loved it. (We would have loved more time to take everything in. In a few years, perhaps.) But there were still really neat things to see, do and watch in the museum. I can't wait to go back next year--it's highly worth the trip!

* Why the countdown? That's how long before Liesl can enlist with the Air Force. I've been hearing for a week now that she's going to become an astronaut. She seriously didn't know we were going on this field trip--I find it's best for my sanity to inform her of such outings right before they happen--otherwise, I hear about it night and day until it does happen. It was a BIG surprise for her to see space shuttle exhibits today. She plans to take me up in her space rocket someday. I'm sure NASA will allow her to take her mommy on a pleasure cruise in space. The taxpayers will LOVE that.

Inside the cabin of the C-130A Hercules, the only plane we were allowed to enter.

Family photo inside the C-130A Hercules.

I'm so glad Tom could join us for the morning.

C-130A Hercules. It's a big plane!

This is a replica of a SPAD XIII, a World War I fighter airplane, one of the first fighter planes ever built.
This is just a replica, but it's actually flyable (is that even word?)

Side view of the SPAD XIII

I really enjoyed seeing this plane. Tom and I have recently seen the movie "Flyboys," a movie inspired by a true story of WWI fighter pilots. The movie was great, and seeing this plane really drives home how much aviation has changed in the last 100 years.

Liesl next to an unmanned tank. The C-130A Hercules is in the background.

F-16A

Flown between 1990 and 1994, it was one of the newest planes on the airfield. Most of them were 30-50 years old.

Bell UH-1H

Flown from the 1970's to the 1990's

And Liesl signing "Helicopter"

F-4C Phantom II

Flown from 1978-1986

And Liesl signing "Airplane"

Ava freaking LOVES helicopters. She goes nuts when she hears them fly over the house, which is often because we are so close to several major traffic intersections.
Seeing the helicopters up close--she LOVED it. She had to be torn away. Loudly.

Screw the airplanes. Show me more helicopters!

(Beech C-45B flowninthe1900'sbutwhocaresgottagoseethehelicopters)

Liesl inside a cockpit of an F-16 trainer. She really liked that.

A small but meaningful airspace display.

Liesl spent a very, very long time here with the photos and models.

I see a family vacation/school field trip to NASA in our future.

Model of a NASA 747 Piggyback.

I had no idea that space shuttles were transported this way. Makes sense, though--rocket fuel is expensive.

I thought this was really neat, so I came home and looked it up on NASA's website:

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/behindscenes/126ferry_flight.html

I'll show this website to Liesl when she wakes up from her nap.

Tribute to the crew of the Challenger.
I still remember hearing about this in school, and everyone crying without really knowing what was going on.

Afterwards, we were allowed to eat our picnic lunch in the airfield, under the planes, since there was no other shade available.
Seriously...the coolest picnic we've ever done. When else can you eat in the shadow of a wing of a 40 year-old aircraft?