September Happenings

After vacation we started our new "Drama Club", which consists of my family, the N Family and the M Family (totalling15 kids between the three families).  Our project for the fall is "Mid-Summer Night Dream", I wanted to give everyone some exposure to Shakespeare.  Since all my children have time on their hands this fall, all my children will be participating.  Surprisingly, they are all doing well and having fun.

This month we also started attending "Homeschool Chapel", this month.  Families get together on Friday for a small liturgical service (singing, reading of the word and Heidelberg Catechism) and the Pastor teaches for about an hour.  This years topic is "Church History", this is a topic I am not well versed on.  The kids and I are thoroughly enjoying the interactive learning.  They also enjoy the time afterward playing and getting to know people, as do I.

On September 13th, we re-homed a bunch of our older chickens to make room in the main coop for the new chicks.  We could have tried to sell them but putting out an ad in the homeschool community and giving them away was much quicker.  They went to four different homes but they were all gone in one day, before Chris and Lance even got back from Virginia.  I think from now on I'll re-home the chickens as soon as their production slows down (about two years), if we alternate breeds it will be easy to know which ones to get rid of which years.

On September 24th, we finished our 14 week Chemistry Intensive with the S Family.  Two of their children needed a high school chemistry credit and since Jared did too, I agreed to teach the class over the summer.  It is so nice to enter the fall semester knowing that Lance and Jared are done with Science for the year.  I used to knock out a subject over the summer each year in Florida.  I hadn't done it in years but I will definitely start again.  It just makes the school days so much smoother with one less subject, plus doing an intensive over the summer gives a break from the other subjects too, which is nice.

On September 27th, from Chris.....Jared read “Pets to the rescue brave Norman” to Amber before bed tonight. After finishing the book he declared out load “Where are all the pronouns in this book”??? Lol. That’s my homeschooled boy!!! 

I’ve seen the cats sleep in some strange places and what appears to be uncomfortable spots but this is the new number one.

 

Hilton Head in a Different Season

No matter what time of year it is, Hilton Head is beautiful.  That said, we were a little worried this season might have some hang-ups.  Thankfully, for the most part there were none.  We were still able to eat at our favorite Greek restaurant (we just had to eat outside, which was fine).  Our friend Beth was on board with our thinking, so our trips to her store to buy fishing supplies and visit Maverick, were great as well.  

Only thing that was unpleasant, was that it was Stinging-Nettle-Jelly-Fish Season.  We normally come in May, which is non-stinging-Cannonball-Jellyfish-Season.  All the kids got stung at least twice but it didn't keep them out of the water for long.  Thankfully, having spent a lot of my time as a kid on the beach, I knew some tricks to minimize the stings.

They enjoyed their normal routine of boogey boarding and sand castle building depending on the tide.

Lance still fished....in the ocean that is.  Apparently, since our last trip an alligator moved into the fresh water area near our residence, no more fishing there.  It was really cool though when he showed up right outside our door, where we could see him from the window.   While night fishing one night, he caught another baby Atlantic Sharp nose shark.  

Titus did some net fishing and caught a blue crab and some small silver fish.

For something new to do this trip, we went for an inland hike at Sea Pines Forest Preserve.  Here we spotted a snake and checked out the old Indian Oyster mounds.  Amber liked seeing the horses on the trail ride best.  

We also had our first beach thunder storm, what a awesome light show!

One other thing we did different this trip was to bring our Apple TV, so that we could watch the primier of "Esther" on Sight and Sound TV.  What an incredible performance!

Back home, Mac celebrated his 18th birthday house sitting for us.  We had a cake delivered from Whole Foods, along with his favorite foods.  He and Ollie got rather comfortable sleeping together on the couch.