Senior Pictures Arrive

Nature Angel graduates in about 8 weeks.  She took a series of gorgeous photos with Pixie, but the emotions of the day were so hard that when she looks at those pictures, the hard comes back to her.  She's not able to separate the emotions from the quality of the pictures.

So she hired a friend who is just getting her photography business started and had a totally different photo shoot.

Here are some of my favorite results.

My main reaction is "How gorgeous is she!?!?!"

(I admit, I do react that way to all of my daughters.)

And then I wonder how it is that she's a young adult . . . I remember her like this most of the time:

Nature Angel:  1 year

As more of my children reach adulthood, the sense of change--of time gone by--gets stronger.

But this week, Nature Angel didn't feel well, so we only had high school on Monday.  

On Tuesday, Little Princess had the opportunity to go to the state capital as part of a CAP event.  She got to tour a few buildings, meet some of our state officials, learn a little bit of state history, and put on her uniform as a 2nd lieutenant for the first time.

Official pictures were taken, but there are new rules about sharing them, so we haven't had access to any of them. :(

The younger kids and I finished both Prairie Lotus and Counting Thyme this week.  We started Our Only May Amelia and The Black Arrow in their places.  We also continued our regular science/history reading.

Everyone did math and handwriting.

No art or written narrations . . . I was sick, too.

We did Couch to 5K running twice in the week, but I was feeling too yucky to handle the third session.

The park has skate ramps!  Once we realized this, we packed up gear and stayed to skate once our run was done.

The Munchkin was on spring break from school, so he and Sugar Bear came and spent a day with us.

That evening we had a family cook out planned.  They were delighted that their daddy didn't pick them up until after they had a chance to eat with us.

I should have taken more pictures of my own kids, but I was frustrated with screens following us outside.  (See the 3rd photo above.)  They were watching old dance shows, so it was really a family history kind of thing.  Even so, because I had planned the evening as a screen-free time, I was feeling less than pleased.

It was spring break for dance.  We went to a friend's house to play instead.  They had a creek and lots of trees.  Ladybug reports that she helped a couple of the littlest kids build a boat, and the Brother says he taught some of them how to make mud pies.  They were thrilled. :)

Mister Man made friends with the youngest in the family (22 mos).  He gently followed her around doing her bidding for well over an hour.  This meant she had a personal helper for changing shoes, climbing stairs she's usually not supposed to climb, going down to the creek, playing on the slide, and being carried wherever she wanted to go.  Great, tall Mister Man and teeny little L-- walking hand-in-hand made one of the cutest sights I've seen in a while.

Lola helped me in the garden.  We planted out some more strawberries because I can never get enough strawberries!!

She found a sprouting walnut and asked if she could plant it.  I told her it would have to be out in the woods, so she left the strawberries and happily found a new home for another walnut tree on our property.  We had quite a good talk about weeds vs plants.  She was quite pleased to turn the walnut-tree-to-be from a weed into a plant.

Six years ago, Pixie graduated from our homeschool.  Since then, she's worked several jobs, volunteered in Uganda, and graduated from college.  She's not my student anymore, but I'm delighted when she updates me with her continued efforts at self-education.  This week, she sent me the following photos:

The first two are "after" photos of furniture she purchased second-hand and refinished.  The third is a current knitting project.

I love that our homeschool successfully taught her to be a lifelong learner.

Truthfully, I can say the same about all of my adult children.  Rose Red has purposefully sought several jobs where she would be the least experienced employee so that she could learn from more experienced staff and increase her knowledge base.  Super Star has refinished furniture and painted cabinetry in her own home.  Belle served a mission where she learned two additional languages, and she is applying for college now.

My children continue to be a joy in my life . . . even after our homeschool is over.