I am so thankful to live in an area with so many great places to hike and so many friends who are willing to hit the trails with us.
Today we met up with some of our friends who go to public school who have been on a mandatory virtual school week the last couple of weeks.
These kids are so familiar with our mountain trails that we let them all run ahead and met them at Mushroom Rock where the moms got in a good visit and the kids made up some kind of fortress game on the rocks.
This was our fourth hike of the week (normal for us is one weekly hike), but it has been such a blessing to get these extra hikes in.
We are at 10/52 hikes for the year, my phone says we did 3 miles (that’s 28 miles YTD).
Long ago, when the kids were still
little, before we even homeschooled, we had a group of friends that we
regularly met up with for something that we eventually called Friend Fridays. We did various field
trips and hikes and meet ups. It is a time period that is full of some of my best
memories.
Eventually
the kids went to school. Some of us started homeschooling. Some didn't.
Some left homeschooling. At the moment everyone is home, virtual
schooling or homeschooling.
It's
been a strange year for everyone. We are all finding our footings
again. Discovering new normals. For the most party, my boys and I have had the luxury of keeping our
lives fairly normal, meeting up with homeschool friends outside as often
as possible (see previous posts). But we have been missing most of our public school
friends.
I reached out to some of
the old Friend Friday crew to see if they would be up for a Friday hike.
They were. It was so good to see their faces again. The kids paired off
and we all hiked at varying paces. Isaac and one friend running at the
front, Jack and another friend in the back climbing everything they
could climb.
It was our second hike of
the day (third of the week). That is abnormal. But it was such a good
day. The sun came out. The water at Rainbow Lake was flowing. The kids
climbed the cliffs they love to climb. They explored the water. We
crossed the swinging bridge.
We decided to take a little longer route and did the loop to return by the golf course, making the trip 3 miles instead of 1.8.
I got to catch up with my friends. Today was a really good day. We hiked 3 miles (17 miles YTD). This was our 6/52 hike for the year.
We started our week with donuts due to a #momfail. I had thought I placed an order for groceries, but the order never went through. Since we went out of our way to get the groceries, we decided donuts were in order.
Besides donuts, this week looked a little different from our previous weeks. The main difference being that Valentine's Day fell in the middle of the week and we invited homeschool and preschool friends over to celebrate the holiday with us.
We were supposed to host a similar party at Christmas, but Daniel and I got really sick the night before and it kind of derailed our entire December month in terms of school.
Such is life, sometimes you have to roll with the unexpected.
Since we had spent Wednesday with our friends (20 kids plus six moms! in our house), we opted to meet Daniel to go to the Chattanooga RV show instead of trying to coordinate a Friend Friday. Again, we are flexible and Friend Friday can happen any day of the week, we just try to be purposeful in meeting with other families when we can.
So the kids and I met Daniel downtown and he led us through a series of passages over the street and through parking garages to get to the convention center. I think the kids thought that was a grand adventure in and of itself.
After taking the time to look inside almost every RV at the show, we were all exhausted but also excited and anxious to get our own camper out of storage and start our camping season!
We read through several great books this week, including the Jack Tales (our Jack is fascinated that there are so many stories about "Jack" and Isaac is probably annoyed for the same reason!).
We are learning a lot from reading 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, including a brief overview about submarines, Papua New Guinea, and the Great Barrier Reef. Jack asked if he and Isaac could go scuba diving at the Great Barrier Reef when they were bigger. I love how the world of books is opening up the world to him!
In Math, he has been learning how to multiply and divide with 2s and 3s this week, and has got perfect scores on all his work. Math continues to be his favorite subject. Along with math, we are all loving the game of Battleship. We play as much as possible.
He finished reading aloud The Secret Chicken Society to me, and we learned some facts about raising chickens.
Extracurricular continue to be robotics class, basketball and swimming. He is loving all three and gets better at all every week.
A Look Back at February: Week 21 (Jan. 28-Feb. 3) Week 22 (Feb. 4-10)
