Just a quickie to say we are back from the IOP--Isle of Palms, and what a gorgeous, perfect place that is. It looked like our beach week weather was going to be iffy and wet, but it turned out to be gorgeous and sunny, and nothing evidences this more than the orange, pus-blister filled face of my poor little Rutty-Buddy, whose lips and nose were burnt to a crisp.

This is our third year going to the Renwick family reunion that has been at this same beach house since it was built in 1994. Prior to having our current house--an incredible 11 bedroom, 12 bath extravaganza that easily holds our 35+ people--the original 8 brothers and sisters from whom the current family is descended would stay in a house on the beach while the younger generations would stay in another house a block or two back. I think we all think of this particular house now as "ours," since we have so many fond memories there.

What makes the Isle of Palms so perfect is that it is only 20 minutes from Charleston, one of my favorite cities. Though most of our time is spent relaxing on the beach, picking creatures from the tide pool (we had an enormous live sea star on Sunday), getting knocked by the waves, and getting our dyed-pink hair undyed in the swimming pool, we always make some reason to go into Charleston for a day. This year our plan was to go on a ghost tour, but there was a snafu and the tour guide didn't show, had us down for the 9:30 p.m. tour, and we didn't get to do it. But I went on an earlier excursion to the city to buy some pralines at River Street Sweets, where they make them fresh and you take them home still warm and delicious, and I made a little journey through the market with a distant cousin, so I got my fix. We also had a very memorable dinner at Hyman's Seafood, which is consistently one of the top 10 seafood restaurants in the country, and definitely one of the best on the East Coast. We sat at a table that had once seated Tom Berenger, the original Batman, and ACDC. They also have yummy hand churned ice cream for after dinner.

But the best times were those spent with the people we've come to know that I never knew I was related to. I've learned so much about my family, and best of all, my cousin-less children now have people they can think of as cousins (even though they are children of cousins of mine, so I'm not sure what that makes them to my children). Ashley and Jack live in Florida and are 9 and 11, and Colin is 14 and lives about 45 minutes from Greenville, SC and Asheville, NC. We are planning to go visit them on a camping trip in the spring. Quinn is only 3 weeks older than Rutledge, and they had an super time together in the pool, playing Playmobil, and playing on the beach. We also met Hunter, 1, and Amber, 3, for the first time--Amber totally enjoyed playing with Frances, and Frances got to play big sister to a girl, something she never ceases to remind me is her calling in life.

Alas, the trip was all too short, and we are now back, and it feels like we're finally beginning the true fall and the true school year. The trip always comes right as we're trying to get into the swing of our new routine, but now we're home for a while (well, okay, until the next camping trip in less than two weeks...).

Tomorrow is the last tennis clinic before starting play on our club's bantam team. Monday is likely to be an emotional day for Walter and Ollie, since it will be their first time playing competitively, and they can be hard on themselves. But if the weather cooperates, we'll get some court time this weekend. That is, between my singles tournament matches and the playoff match for my 6.5 combo team. I have a feel my time will be heavily spoken for.




What a wild week. And today was evidence that yeah, every day is going to be packed. It was nonstop. Deal with the returning Southwestern at home sales boys bright and early, drop off Rutledge at preschool with his newly completed health form, the final training session and debriefing about test results from Learning RX (have I mentioned again and again how far away this is and how hard the hour of driving was each day we went!), then a quick lunch out for a variety of people with a variety of dietary needs, which of course meant a variety of stops. Then pick up Rutledge, drop everyone at home, run off to my dr appointment, run home and scoop out the final dead fish (yes, we have exactly zero fish right now--a bacterial infection seems to have picked every single one of them off in the past week) and a water sample, urge a bit of math, stop at the fish store to test the water, buy a water test kit for at home, and bring the dead fish in, then rush over to Lego League, which required some whip cracking to keep everyone on task to get the ramps and obstacles built. Get barely through the door at home and my sister in law was here to pick up Frances for the weekend. Whew!

The great news from today is that Walter has really, really improved with all his work over the summer. He showed an average of about 3.5 years of improvement in the 13 individual areas that were tested. Only one subtest went down instead of up from the time he was tested back in May, and that was one where he simply missed one more question from last time and it was the one that was most heavily based on prior knowledge (it involved identifying things in pictures). Realistically, even if he has had a huge amount of improvement in basic cognitive skills, he's not going to necessarily have added vastly to his knowledge base using these new skills in just a couple of months, so I'm not concerned. But some areas showed massive improvement, and perhaps none more so than processing speed, where he went from rock bottom to well above average and even into the 90th percentiles. Processing speed is the one area that is reputed to be hardest to improve, so it really shows how much work he put in. He also went way, way up in all of the visual processing areas, some of which were his weakest areas before. I'm just so, so pleased. This whole process has felt very worthwhile. He looks better on paper now, he has so many more skills under his belt and is dragged down less by his less strong areas, and we've already noticed a tremendous change in his spelling. Also he is cranking out his math now and has gone from an average of 5-7 wrong per problem set to almost none. Math has always been a huge gift area for him anyway, but now he's enjoying it so much more and is quicker. I'd still love to see him read a novel-type book for pleasure without force, but perhaps that will come. Admittedly, I'm married to someone who doesn't read fiction for pleasure, either, so I know that there are people of above average intelligence who just don't choose to spend their free time this way, even though it seems really freakish to me. What's cool, though, is that Walter now loves to be read to, something he had a hard, hard time with before. He went beyond just fidgeting or jumping on the bed--he genuinely was not comprehending or listening at all when I would read...if he remained in the room at all. Now, though he still claims to hate history, he's participating with some connection in our history reading, and he has been begging for more and more and later and later with out nighttime read alouds (currently _Skellig_, a book he is loving).



The sad part of the day was watching my cardinal fish die. This is the third time I've had to watch the dying quivers and labored breathing of a fish in its final 30 minutes. It was excruciating. This was Frances' favorite fish, and it just confirmed that something awful was going on in the tank. They all had definite signs of fin rot, had loss of color, rapid, labored breathing, listlessness, a darkening of the scales around the dorsal fin, loss of appetite, and this one had a long white poop coming out of it, suggestive of intestinal parasites or infection. With no fish hosts left, hopefully the tank will clear up. Our nitrates were up a bit today, but they weren't earlier in the week, and it could be a result of all the death that has gone on in there. What's amazing is how fast the hermit crabs know there is something to eat--they were on the fish body like flies within minutes of death and had already taken apart the back of the fish by the time I got him out. We are doing a 30% water change today, adding in garlic and Vitamin C, and letting it sit without fish for two weeks before introducing anyone new. I'm going to have to consider what would be a good combination, since we're starting fresh. In the meantime, I did bring home a sea urchin who looks so very cool (he looks like a Halloween decoration because he is black, spiny, and has a big orange hole in the middle), 3 new snails, and a peppermint shrimp who I'm convinced is going to die, if he hasn't already. They are all supposed to help clean the tank, which is definitely something we need right now. The mild rise in nitrates has also initiated a little algae bloom, though the water change should help with that. I suppose you are not really a real reefkeeper until you've had some devastating episode where your whole tank dies on you and you're out hundreds of dollars in fish. Now I'm legit.

I probably must include an obligatory "first day of school" post. So here it is:

Rutledge's first day was a big success. It was a birthday already, so they had a little party, and the theme of the week is gingerbread men. Tomorrow they will make and eat gingerbread men as part of their "extended day."

Tomorrow is my first day teaching Junior Great Books for this session, and I am more or less ready. Our first story is "The Happy Lion," which is one of my favorites, and I have such sweet memories of doing this in past co-ops. Pre-Algebra starts for the older boys. I hope it will be a productive, if not rude awakening that they need to pay attention to detail.

This afternoon was our first art class at Art Adventures. Though I didn't see any of what they did and primarily dropped off and picked up, the reviews from the kids were overwhelmingly positive. This series of classes was a super deal at a studio with a strong reputation.

Today was also a day of endings. Walter finished Brainware Safari, a program we had purchased through Homeschool Buyers Coop. There is a lot of overlap between this program and Learning RX, so they complemented each other nicely. Brainware Safari is not nearly as intense and has far fewer levels, but it was still a fun and productive experience, and Walter was done in less than half the time that the company suggests you use the program (and not everyone finishes all the levels). Ollie has about 25 levels left, and Frances will start the program this week. Check it out at www.getbrainwaresafari.com!

Tomorrow is the beginning of Suburban tennis season. I honestly have no idea how to fit this in to my life right now, but I'm going to try to do home matches. We have a kickoff social and round robin in the morning, which I'm going to try to attend to the best of my ability. In the evening, the twins have their first clinic associated with their suburban team. I'm just glad that we're close to home with this one--there's nothing like riding your bike to an activity!

And so it all begins. The new school year, the new schedule, and a new set of activities.

Every Labor Day weekend we go to Camp Bethel, an incredible, rustic camp in the Blue Ridge Mountains. A friend of mine's husband is the Camp Director, and the family camp weekends for Memorial and Labor Day are the best value in camping in Virginia and are a huge amount of fun. Cabins rent for $16 a night and sleep as many as 16 people on bunk beds, and tent camping is only $5. You can make reservations for meals in the Ark Dining Hall, and there's a super new Swiss chef working at the camp now who makes extremely varied and tasty brunches (we haven't gone to other meals...). Things are definitely no frills here in general--bluegrass and gospel live music on stage at night, hayrides behind a tractor back into the fields and mountains behind the main camp, a barrel train (featured on the front of my blog), fishing in a stocked pond, a spring-fed, freezing cold swimming pool, and a very accessible camp area for biking, walking, and just hanging out. It's the kind of place where, for the most part, you can even feel pretty good about a 4 year old travelling around on wheels or foot with friends.

Family weekend is also an opportunity for everyone to pitch in to help close down parts of the camp for the winter. On Labor Day morning, there is always a polar bear swim as a final goodbye to the swimming pool for the season. If you ask me, though, it's always a polar bear swim at Camp Bethel, since the water coming from the spring is freeeeezing! It's definitely not for rarified specimens like myself who prefer 94 degree therapy pools! This was Frances after her swim this morning. She switched from polar bear to wannabee lifeguard after about 5 minutes.


One of the greatest pleasures of camp is catching salamanders in the main pond. Within 5 minutes, Frances had three of them in her net. I don't know what it is about this age, but suddenly my girl who used to love pink tutus is fascinated with trying to convince people that she is actually a boy. Now that I remember, "Tom-person" is the term that she used today to describe herself. Her proudest moment this weekend was when a boy at the lake asked her, "Are you a boy or a girl?" She was so thrilled that she immediately rushed back to our campsite to change into more obviously girl clothes so she could go say, "Ha ha." Hmmm.





Normally we camp in a field across from the camp's heifer barn. This year we might have experienced the same exciting birth of a calf as we did last year, but we decided to stay in a cabin with some friends. This is the Whispering Pines, and it is basically a room with nothing but 14 beds. We pulled mattresses down onto the floor for the adults, but we had a huge slumber party with 9 kids and 5 adults packed in. Here's our group's goofy photo. Rutledge had a total blast, since he had a whole group of boys to play with, and Frances had a girl posse of 8 and 9 year old girls. They spent the entire weekend riding bikes, fishing, and having adventures. Rachel, pregnant and in pink in the middle, was one of my LLL co-Leaders in Roanoke when we lived there. Wendy, on the left, attended meetings. And Amy is a homeschooling friend of Rachel's.


I set up the tent anyway because Rutledge couldn't decide if he wanted to sleep inside or outside, so we flitted back and forth between both for a while before I put my foot down and said we were definitely sleeping indoors and we couldn't waffle any more. It was rather pleasant to only set up a 3 person tent instead of our regular 9 person one!


This is my favorite camp building, the House of Pillars. In the front is a bunk room that can be rented in the off-season and serves as a camp cabin during the summer. But the main room is a huge, cooled room for conferences and events. Usually we have a movie night there during our camp time, and my first time at Camp Bethel was for a conference, so I have fond memories of time spent there. Plus it's just a cool looking place.

Tomorrow marks the official end of summer and start of the school year. Rutledge starts preschool in the morning. At the very last minute, I decided not to send him to the school we had originally planned and out of the woodwork came an opportunity to put him in a home preschool in a nearby neighborhood. What is great is that it's only 5 minutes away, the preschool has only 10 kids, and it's 3 days a week, which works out perfectly for me. We went to visit today, and he'll have his first day tomorrow. I have a good feeling that this is going to be a super experience for him. The rest of the gang, of course, will be buckling down just a bit and getting some work done in the morning before heading out to art class in the afternoon. Here's to another great year of learning and fun!

Well, I suppose in some ways this is officially the last day of summer. It's funny, but as fall came, suddenly it just felt like fall. It was as if September on the calendar sent a message to the weather saying, "Get a little cooler, and drop one leaf to let us know that this won't last forever." And so it did. And as always, as with so many things in life, it's hard to say when the 'last time' was for some things. The pool--I have a feeling we went for the last time...whenever it was we last went.... The outdoor pools close after Labor Day, and since we are going to be out of town over the weekend, it's doubtful we'll go back. And with a busy day and evenings getting toward the 60s, maybe people don't want to swim outside right now. Lucky for us, we have a beautiful indoor pool right down the street and an aquatic sport and lifestyle to keep us using it. But still, there's something about parting ways with those lazy days at the pool (or the not so lazy swim team days...) that just says a change is happening.

And would you believe it, but we've been doing "school" for 10 days now and are 5 days behind in grammar? But that's more of summer for you and a hazard of starting before public schoolers go back. I hate to make the kids miss out on playing baseball at the playing fields with their new friends, to say no when someone from swim team calls and wants to come over. Summer is short, and friendships are important, especially developing new ones while the new friends are still wild and free.

This also marks the final day of our Learning RX program. Well, not quite. Walter's new trainer had a family emergency, so he wasn't able to do his last training day yesterday, but today we set up his end of program testing anyway. He's in there right now, and I'm trying to stay calm and unworried. It is what it is, and I'm glad that we gave it all we had. I can't say for sure right now what effects it has had (hard to say anything when your life is made up mostly of swimming, throwing baseballs, playing video games, and camping), but I know that I'm happy that we aren't wondering What If this was something that would help his memory and concentration. So I guess the results are still unfolding.

In the meantime, Walter has finished all but 2 of the 168 levels of Brainware Safari, a program that is designed to take 12 weeks and where you aren't necessarily supposed to finish the levels, but to progress. Walter had gone thruogh 120 in the first week, and even though there are some others that have been challenging, he has come up with innovative and smart ways to work on the tough ones, things I might not have thought of. He's only been at it about 5 weeks, and one of those weeks we were out of town and he didn't have any time to work on it, and other weeks he has been below the recommended 5 hours a week because we've put his time and energy into LearningRX instead. So I'm really proud of him!

In midst of this good, we've also had some icky stuff going on. Our saltwater tank is on a dying spree. This week alone we have lost first our beautiful yellow tang, then our royal gramma, and now the new orange-eyed angel fish. I had been blaming the new fish for the other deaths, but when we found him on the bottom, being taken apart by hermit crabs, we figured he might not have been an aggressor but perhaps a disease vector. Or just the latest victim of whatever is wrong with the tank in general. I took the corpse in for a credit this morning and also took in some water to be tested, but everything is coming out fine for now. I don't know what to make of it. The fish aren't showing any obvious signs of illness--no spots or parts falling apart, so we can't make a diagnosis. For now, we're vaguely chalking it up to stress from the tank move and lowered immune systems and an illness. I just hope that Nemo and the cardinal, Edward, don't succumb. It's worrisome to say the least. A hobby is no fun when everything is dead.

Sometimes simpler is just better.

This seems to be the lesson that I've learned from reading Betsy-Tacy with Frances. The book is old, and it feels that way. It simply lacks the intrigue, intensity, and self-focused issues that are so common in children's books today. No trailer parks, 12-step meetings, mothers in rehab who didn't tell that's why they left. These are just simple stories about two little girls, 5 or 6 years old in the first book, who go for picnics up the hill near their house, who care for each other when there is sadness in the family, and who think of imaginative ways to spend their days.

I didn't realize Frances was so interested. It turns out to have been not only interesting, but inspiring. First, yesterday she woke up and announced that she wanted to go calling. "Do people still go calling? Will people know what I'm doing?" she asked. Would they invite her in to sit their living room and sip tea? I told her I doubted that, but that it might be nice to go calling, make some cards to leave to say she had been there, and perhaps bake some cookies to bring to the people she visited. It's unfortunate that most people aren't home on a Thursday morning to receive callers, so she mostly left cookies on doorsteps with a calling card. But she did talk to one person. Both she and Rutledge had worn their finest: she in a tiger striped leotard, fluffy jazz skirt, and knit boa, and he in a cape and sunglasses.

Unfortunately, partway through her calling she decided that maybe it would be even more fun to make a little money with the cookies, and she came home with $2. I was not all happy that she had gone door to door as a saleswoman. So the money had to go back. Then she set up a stand with her cookies, but given the extreme heat and humidity and the early daytime hour when people were at work or shut up in their houses escaping the heat, there were no customers.

Then today she made paper dolls with people she cut from magazines. This was another chapter in the Betsy-Tacy book. The girls cut out families from magazines and then cut out clothes and household items. I remember how much I used to love to do this with the Sears catalog when I was growing up. I'd choose the cutest babies to paste into notebooks that were supposed scrapbooks of my imaginary family, a family filled with boys under 2. Funny how one day our imaginary musings can kind of come true.

Her paper dolls ranged from cute to monstrous--little heads on giant bodies, grown women in onesies and snap-up pajamas. Then she used the box that the Rock Band 2 guitar came in to make a house with many rooms and pictures on the walls. I love seeing so much non-battery, imaginative fun, as well as seeing how she makes books her own. Right now we're also living with a giant clubhouse refrigerator box--with a skylight--in the middle of our garage after we had many nights of reading one of my favorite childhood books, _Christina Katerina and the Box_. These are the kinds of days that I wish could go on forever for her, free from self-consciousness, free from outside ideas about what she maybe "should" be doing, and just reveling in being 7.

The boys and I just finished reading _When Zachary Beaver Came to Town_, which was an outstanding book, though I'll admit, just a little too early for Walter and Ollie to really be able to get the most out of it. We and they have been reading more young adult books lately, and there just is a bit of a jump in subject matter that they aren't quite ready for yet in most of them, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, it's just that I can see how much more meaningful and rich some of these books will be at the right time, which isn't quite now. This book deals some with a love interest, but more than that are the themes that layer through the story--loss, betrayal, grace, coming of age, redemption, coming to selflessness, and then there are the obvious Christ figures and the theme of the baptism (by the town drunk), which would be great material for discussing in a literature class.

I'm just really glad that we can still read together, something that I feel strongly about in our family life and as an educational tool. I hear so many places about how one of the best things you can do to help your children intellectually and emotionally is to continue to read long past the time when most parents stop reading to their children, and this has been so true for us. It is just a special time, and not only do we get to share great books together, but we can talk about more challenging topics and I can pick books that I think are going to push them in some way. It allows all of us to reach a little beyond where we might be on our own and it gives us something that we can talk about in common because we've all experienced it together.

In my own reading, I just finished Nic Sheff's _Tweak_. What an intense book. Autobiographical, it is a very unflinching account of his addiction to meth, heroin, cocaine, and a collage of other drugs, both legal and illegal and the incredible challenge of finding lasting recovery. I lost a great amount of sleep staying up because I couldn't put the book down. I cringe a little when I think that originally I picked it up because I thought it might be interesting to Ollie. This is definitely not a book for 11 year olds--male prostitution, sexual addiction, as well as the potentially confusing message about how incredible it feels to shoot up at the same time that the author is describing how his body deteriorates and he can't work or keep relationships with people and ruins his connections with all of the people he cares about. So I'm glad that I chose to read it to myself and then send it right on back to the library. Still, it's one of those books that I know is going to stay with me for a while.

Before this, I finished that darn 3rd Twilight book. Repetitive. So repetitive. I'm wondering how she manages to get 800 pages or whatever of a 4th one when it's a one theme pony, but still, I have to admire how the first book drew me in and had me paying nearly no attention to page numbers, percentage of book read, and all the other extra-literary physical aspects of a book that have always distracted me when I read. I think I'm seeing some changes in my own reading speed as a result of Walter's training--my pace has picked up in a significant way, and I guess I'm more focused or something, but I will notice that 30 pages have gone by without me once looking at a page number lately. I doubt it's just that the books I'm reading are more riveting than in the past. This could be kind of helpful!