Our Trip to Colonial Williamsburg

I wanted to share with you some pictures from our trip to Colonial Williamsburg! We loved Colonial Williamsburg. We went during September during their "Homeschool Days, which I totally recommend by the way."The prices are SOOO much better, and there are lots of events,activities, and "classes" to participate in. I would say the weather is better in September  - except we arrived during a heat wave - it was 90+ degrees the week we were there. So much for that.



 




 

Forget the doghouse, we'll just put hubby here!

the auctioneer

I apparently was the only one enjoying the auction.

We loved this because we had just finished reading "Farmer Boy", about Almanzo Wilder and his oxen.

We ended up having to buy little hats as souvenirs to help protect our fair skin from the sun. 

The Wigmaker

One of the "extra" activities we did (for just $5 more) was a "Be a Soldier" session. They learned to march, throw a hatchet, and pitch a tent. Joel had even more fun than our girls did. (Lily was being stubborn and refused to participate. They were going to make her take off her pretty hat.)

Abby as a "Soldier"

March, 2, 3, 4

To keep it very affordable, we packed lunches, snacks, and water bottles every day in a backpack. We joked how how you could pick out all the homeschoolers, because they brought their own food. The trick that week was to find a shady place to eat it. This was in the gardens of the Governor's home and it was one of my favorite spots.

The Williamsburg Bathroom. Chamber pot anyone?

What ended up being some of our favorite activities were the free classes at the Museum! First of all, it was AIR CONDITIONED. I loved it for that alone. But they also offered two free classes each day, and we did quite a few of them. And the ladies who led the classes were so sweet and patient with all the kids.I would HIGHLY recommend taking anything offered at the Museum.

 

Creating Our Own Self- Portraits

I found a fabulous deal at a resort we had stayed at once before. It was a condo-type with a kitchen, which meant we could prep our dinners there. This was important to me since I'm gluten-free - which is sometimes to hard to deal with when traveling. So, we brought several prepped and frozen meals with us, along with breakfast food. When we arrived, we stopped at a grocery store and picked up eggs, milk, and bread. Every morning we stopped for coffee on our way.

We didn't do much "official" homeschool work that week. I brought some activity pages and colors to occupy the girls at the hotel/condo, but it wasn't really needed. Beforehand, we had read some of the American Girl Felicity books, which I highly recommend.

So, there ya go. Our trip to Colonial Williamsburg! We spent a week in the area and had a BLAST.

Colonial Williamsburg Educational Site
Colonial Williamsburg Homeschool Days
Colonial Williamsburg Teacher Community

Easter and Passover

My hand-painted eggs from Austria. Older than Abby and still survived all our moves!

The girls' eggs

In their Easter dresses, that they picked out themselves

And Easter morning:

The girls got a movie, book, fancy toothbrush, new pencils and pens, a chocolate bunny and peeps.

Joel teasing the girls that he was going to eat all their eggs

And then that night, we celebrated the last night of Passover with the local Messianic congregation.

Love,

Julie, Joel, Abby and Lily

Snow Pictures

Here are a few of our snow pictures this winter!

The time Joel actually got a "Snow Day" from work, and then it only snowed about two inches. (We also bought little sleds for the girls, but no one would cooperate and let me take a picture of them doing it.)

And our very last snow day! (Or at least, it better be.)

I have convinced the girls how cool it is to shovel snow.

 

And, since we had been studying 3-D shapes in Lily's math lessons, we made snow "spheres" instead of snow balls!

Goodbye winter! Don't let the door hit you on the way out!

What We've Been Up To

So, I thought I've give you guys a bit of an update on what has been going around here in the Mendez clan.

The first, biggest piece of new news: I'm working.

Okay, yeah, I was working before, but now I'm working more. And not just for myself. I've started working part-time as a career coach for a national outplacement company (that's the organization that your company brings in after a lay-off and tries to help you find a job).  The job is a virtual, work-from-home position, and I can still have complete flexibility with my schedule. And I'm getting paid pretty well, so that's great.

Going back to work "for the man" has been quite an adjustment for me. Heck, I haven't worked in corporate America for almost nine years! And it's been since Lily was born that I worked for anyone else at all! I'm getting used to it, but at least this is with a good group of people and a well-run organization. I don't think I could last otherwise.

And yes, I am still doing my own coaching business. Working for this other company is mainly to fill in the holes in between my personal clients. The new gig has seriously attempted to take over my entire existence, but things are slowly settling down as I get more into a groove and get more organized. And though I really do like this company, I really look at it as a temporary measure while in the growing pains of my own business. I am looking forward to my own personal coaching business exploding and doing that exclusively again soon.

We are still homeschooling. I know, we ARE completely crazy, but, heck, we were crazy before homeschooling entered the picture! No, we're still committed to homeschooling at least through this year, and looking at whether or not to continue in the fall again. Frankly, I'm having too much fun to stop. And I am eager to all the fun that we can have doing cool stuff when we get past the learning-to-read-and-write phase. Abby is reading like a fiend. Today she told me that subtraction facts were just the coolest ever. (?? - Really, Abby? Whose kid are you?) Lily is still working through her letters - this week is letter I for insect. It's gonna be fun. Last week we studied water, and it was snowing so Joel turned that into part of the science lesson!

But trying to work, even part-time, while homeschooling, is not easy at all. I've just had to get crazy-super organized in order to stay afloat the past few months. And giving a huge shout-out to Joel and the girls who have truly STEPPED UP in helping out. Joel has taken over a lot of field trips and science-y stuff and doing them on the weekends. The girls have been amazing about helping me out with the house related stuff. Really. They're not quite at the point where I can say go _____ and not be very nearby supervising, but they jumped in and do their share with a great attitude. And everyone has been pretty forgiving when the housework just gets put so far down the to do list that dust bunnies grow up and produce their own little clan before I can get to them, or laundry might take a week to get folded (which I hate because as soon as you're done the process has already had to start over again), and dinners have become a lot less adventuresome and a lot more "thrown together."

And one big project we did over the holidays - we flipped rooms. We flipped their bedroom with the tiny room I was using for my office. Then, since their bedroom was bigger, we are now able to have their classroom and my office in the same room. Oh my goodness, the difference that has made ALONE was worth the insanity of switching the rooms. That of course also meant I needed to reorganize the basement room which is now all playroom space instead of half-school and half-playroom. It took an entire Saturday of purging, cleaning, moving stuff around and "decorating" but the results were totally worth it. It's an adorable play space now and feels so open and uncluttered. 

Our days typically go sometime like this - Joel wakes up at an ungodly hour (not that early to some of you, but before I personally think is a sane time to start the day), and heads out. The girls usually wake me up at 7:15am - though it's been dark enough lately that I've been getting to sleep in until 8! I love it even though that throws my day off. We dress, get all those morning things done like brush teeth and make beds and put up little girl hair in pony tails, and then head down to eat breakfast while I try to throw in some quick cleaning like running the dishwasher, starting the laundry, whatever.  We start school at 9am and we are done by noon. Yup, we can get an entire day's worth of curriculum of kindergarten AND first grade in three hours or less! Then it's lunch, and by 12:30pm I'm working. We've found a Spanish speaking babysitter to come in two days a week to play with the girls and work with them on their Spanish, and the other days they will go down for "quiet" time for a while and then just play on their own downstairs, with me spot-checking on them in between client calls. (I've been checking out educational-related videos from the library, too, which is helping keep them happy.) Then at 5pm, I'm back downstairs cooking dinner and attempting to squeeze in some other house cleaning chore before Joel gets home.

So, it's working out at the moment. And I'm a firm believer in the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" rule, so as long as this is working, we're gonna just coast as long as we can.

In other big "news," I've gone gluten-free this month. I tried it on a whim, and surprisingly, it has been really good for me health-wise. I'm not having reflux-related flareups hardly at all (except when I cheat), and I'm feeling a lot better. I've found some gluten-free substitutes (bread, crackers, pancake mix) and while they are edible and not the cardboard I expected, they really aren't that tasty. Maybe it's like using a nicotine patch; using gluten-free bread to break my cravings for wheat/carbs? Hope so, because my next goal is to go wheat free. I think that will "cure" some of my health issues. I am sick of being sick.

Joel has gotten settled in his position here in DC and seems to be enjoying it. He's staying busy, but is thankfully able to keep moderately normal business hours.

And to round out all that fun, Joel and I are both involved in different Bible studies at church. The men's groups are going through Experiencing God, and I am leading a women's Bible study group on
One Thousand Gifts by Ann Voskamp. Amazing book, by the way. Everyone should read this book.

So, that's about the extent of our lives right now! Throw in an inch or two of snow so far this year, getting the yearly winter cold, Abby going to a cheer leading class (they made my baby a flier which apparently is the person on the top of the pyramid and the one they THROW IN THE AIR- thank God I was not there to witness that and only found out afterwards!), the girls involved in church choir, and going to one very WEIRD homeschooling group party that I will definitely think twice about going to again. (Let's just say I was overdressed. Clean clothes, brushing my hair into a barrette and no makeup, and normal decent hygiene, and I was overdressed. Yeah, not even kidding.)

Our lives are never dull, that's for sure.

The Blessings of Homeshooling

This started out as a response on Facebook to someone, and quickly turned into so long, that I hard to turn it into a blog post!

I admit I don't get a lot of negative comments about homeschooling our girls - at least to my face. I have gotten a lot of "Wow, she's one of those weirdos" polite looks, and some of "Well it's a phase, and she'll get over it" kind of quasi-support.

I know homeschooling isn't for everyone, and honestly, some days I wonder if I can keep it up any longer. Homeschooling is not easy. It is HARD. It requires time and effort and a bigger commitment than I realized when I started. What I will say, that homeschooling the girls - something that started as a temporary measure while dealing with our crazy constant moving last year - has been one of the most amazing blessings on our family.

I am the first to admit that there are amazing, qualified, super-smart, gifted teachers out there. I am, in fact, related to a few of them! But being able to give that one-on-one attention and time to a child, teaching to their strengths and needs, is something that just can't be discounted. I believe with my whole heart that there are teachers out there who's gift and passion and calling in life is to teach children. I also believe, however, that they are often held back and strapped down by a system that is not working for the benefit of the individual child, since it is focusing on the masses. But that is about to get into a political discussion which is another argument for another day.

My dream is to never give homeschooling up, even though we do admit we take this as a year-by-year decision. We know better than to try to plan ahead too much, because God has had quite a serious chuckle or two at our expense this year!

Beyond what the girls are learning, I myself have learned things and have developed interests that I would have never found if not for homeschooling. (Case in point, new to my bucket list - learning to play guitar and Hebrew. Yup. Not that I have time right now, which is why it's on my bucket list.) I have learned more patience than I thought even possible with my personality. I have gotten so in touch with my girls' personalities, and spend time with them at this young age that I will never get back again. Especially since they refuse to obey when I order them to stop growing up so quickly on me!

And while I still hate math with a passion (sorry, Mom), I am getting into kindergarten/first grade science with a lot of enthusiasm! We got to go to a nature center this week and the girls learned about turtles from experts, and do lots of great activities, including racing different kinds of turtles! We made the dreaded volcano project (does anyone else remember that from elementary school?) and Joel is going to do a math experiment with them this weekend - to learn about measuring cups and estimating and stuff like that. Like I said, I still hate math.

And I literally get to watch my baby (yes, LILY) learn to read. She read her first little words last week. She picked up on it like a fish to water. Abby is reading everything in sight and driving me bonkers - I seriously can't keep up with her!

And we get to spend so much time out in the "real world" and learn about "real world issues." We've been very active in our church's food pantry outreach - from working in the gardens this fall and harvesting fresh food for the pantry (and subsequently creating our own garden that was very much enjoyed by the bugs and squirrels, sadly), to donating cans of food, to helping out at the Thanksgiving food give-away at the pantry. Joel ran a 5K in support of the program, and we cheered Daddy on for that as well.

The girls have met a missionary to India, and saved all their change and worked hard around the house (with a good attitude, which is MY main requirement) to earn enough to donate a pair of chickens and now a pair of rabbits to destitute families there. I sponsor a local missionary monthly in India. And now, Abby has heard about the problems in Haiti and wants to help "rebuild after the earthquake." Tell me, what kind of six-year-old thinks about things like that on her own?

Abby has displayed this amazing artistic side, and Lily who is our "Little Miss Serious" is also the funniest ham in the family. Which is saying something in our family. Being super shy, it is very hard for her to warm up to a group, but I have had the blessing to just watch her blossom in the past year or so. Seriously, being with my girls like this is everything I expected being a mommy to feel like and more.

So, as much as homeschooling has done for our children, I am amazed by what homeschooling has done for me.

New House Tour #1

I have finally gotten around to uploading pictures of our new house! (Or more likely, having the house cleaned up enough to be willing to take pictures!)

Let's start with the playroom. This is the "basement" of our townhouse.

Our homeschool area is also in the playroom. If you would like to see the pictures of that, click here.

Our front door opens immediately on a stairwell. So, I created a little station down at the bottom of the stairs for coats and shoes. (I totally copied this idea from a friend!)

Coming up the stairs, you enter the main living areas. Here is our living room.

And here, in another shot, you can seek our dining room. (I'm not showing pictures of the kitchen yet! I never can seem to keep it clean long enough to take pictures!) And yes, ALL the furniture you see is straight from IKEA. I love IKEA. Have I mentioned how much I love IKEA?

And walking up our staircase to the 2nd floor is this random weird shelf. I've turned it into a display for the chotchkies we've picked up overseas.

Okay, that's all I've got so far. If I can get the upstairs cleaned up and organized, you might get another post showing you the bedrooms and my office.

Julie, Joel, Abby, Lily

Hurricane Fun - Mendez Style

Being in a new place does not equal hurricane preparedness.

That being said, both Joel and I have lived through plenty of hurricanes, and the girls and I even did one (though it really ended up being a tropical depression by the time it got to us) in our house in Fairhope last year. Heck, we've even done earthquakes. So we know how to get ready. We just weren't.

(I left all of our hurricane supplies at our place in Fairhope when we packed out, thinking our renters would need it much more than we did. HA!)

Which meant a lot of trips to the brand new Target in our neighborhood.

Here is a picture of the girls entertaining themselves while we waited for Joel to come pick us up. Forget toys, just give them a huge concrete ball cemented to the ground for hours of guaranteed amusement.

One day I'm gonna take them back all dressed up and re-pose this picture. I love this shot.

Now the fun part of parenting during a hurricane is how to keep the kiddos occupied if/when the power goes out and while they are stuck inside with all the rain, and while you're trying to get everything ready. Besides the obvious charging up all the gadgets and gizmos and making sure everything that needed batteries had them, I also don't want them to be afraid of the storm.

Last year in Alabama, we created the ultimate tea party experience. We bought all sorts of treats and goodies and the girls dressed themselves up in their favorite costumes, and we did hair and nails, and we did fancy tea party right in the middle of the living room. Of course, we were Daddy-free at the time, which meant no testosterone in the house to mess with.

The girls piling on Daddy in the bunk bed.

This time I knew we needed new activities. I found several new DVDs and games for their Leapsters at the thrift store, and got the girls new coloring books. I figured at the very least - we don't need electricity to do school, so we could keep right on with that, but I did find several craft projects (Halloween and regular school-related) that I had ignored and pulled those out.

We prepped lots of food to use up what was in our fridge, and I made pumpkin muffins for the girls' breakfast for the next week. (The girls love to cook, so that is always a safe activity.)

I also took a trip into Michaels. (I am not allowed to go to Michaels. It's like crack to a crack addict.) I got Abby this kit to make friendship bracelets and started to teach her how to make them. I totally got flashbacks to sitting in classes in highschool making those things!

And we picked up a bunch of decorative iron-on patches so we could decorate the jeans we got at the thrift store. (We haven't actually gotten to that project yet, though.)

And, as a homeschool- related project, we counted up all the change we have been saving in the banks the girls have. The girls had over $15 in change! There was quite a long discussion over which charity to support with that money, but in the end the girls decided to buy a pair of chickens through a organization in India. (Rabbits are next, but we have to save up for them.)

In the end, I am so very grateful that we didn't get the kind of weather in our area that had been predicted all week, and kind of guilty in that others DID get that weather. I watch those pictures of New York and recognize all the places we used to live and go to, and just hurt for the folks up their STILL in such a mess. I can only imagine what that sort of devastation would look like in the DC area.

Halloween in Virginia

Here is our Trick-or-Treating pictures in our new neighborhood!

Neighborhood newsletter picture

Costume Parade

A little chilly that night, but we had a Mulan and a Tinkerbell.
Costumes brand new, courtesy of the thrift store - $3 each.

It didn't take long for the girls to get bored with the walking around (and hungry), so we headed home to eat pizza. Abby and Lily had the job of handing out candy. We went through 2 1/2 huge bags of candy!

The only picture I have without their coats on!