The past few days have been lovely. The weather has been warm, but not hot and we haven’t had rain for a little while at least.

Kesa turned 8 on the 5th of June. We celebrated by having her cousin come to stay with us for the weekend. For her gifts I had ordered things online and so gifts were coming over the course of a few days, which I think is nice because it’s not so much at once. Around here it seems like birthday celebrations take place over a few days, because often plans don’t work out for the actual birthday date.

She got modelling beeswax, beeswax block crayons, the Wildcraft board game, a set of plush toads (from Mario), a game for the wii and a new remote for the wii too. I don’t mind my girls playing games once in a while, as I believe life is about balance, and I see how fun it is for them to sometimes escape into other worlds and be other characters. Obviously, we don’t let them play violent games, but who doesn’t enjoy Super Mario and Yoshi?

On Sunday I baked her favorite cake, Super Moist Chocolate Cake and we really enjoyed it with fruit and ice cream. We were going to take the kids to the pool, but right as we were enjoying the cake, it began to rain and thunder shower. There was even a bit of hail, so instead they went to play some of the new game they got.

For homeschooling, we’ve been doing nature study/Botany. We like to identify the different plants, flowers, and trees that we see and come home to write and draw about them.  Now that we have the modelling beeswax, we’ve been modelling the different flowers and trees as well.

Autumn suddenly took a real interest in learning to play the clarinet a few weeks ago. I’ve showed the girls a bit here and there over the years (as I played clarinet for 6 years through middle school and high school) but she never had that inspiration to really want to learn and practice every day. Now that she has, she is doing really well. It makes me proud to hear how fast she has picked it up too. I can’t tell whether it’s her or her teaching CD playing at times.

We registered Autumn for school this fall too. Not full time, but just for band, art, dance, sewing, cooking, French, and gym. Extracurricular/artsy things like that. I always wanted her to go for band and since she took an interest in the clarinet, I told her she could go for band classes if she wanted to. I inquired about it and found out that they alternate band with those other subjects (dance, art, sewing, and cooking) and we though that it was perfect for her. I also think it would be good if she could learn French. She is pretty excited about it and will continue practising over the summer.

We’ve still been reading The Swiss Family Robinson every evening. Autumn and I alternate who reads and it is so relaxing to just sit and listen to her reading, watching Kesa crafting, and feeling baby kicks, while Craig does something with Serafina (my little break).

Life is beautiful. I am grateful!