Preschool, First, Third, and Fifth

Since its almost Christmas I figured I should write about the first day of school for the kids.  They were all excited to go back to school and I was excited for them too!  This year with Bree starting preschool it meant I got 3 mornings a week to myself.  I wasn't quite sure how I was going to feel being home alone so much but I'm used to it now.  Actually, I rarely am home alone all that time.  I keep Monday open for me, doctor appointments, grocery shopping, etc.  Tuesday I volunteer at the grade school as soon as I drop Bree off for school, until I have to pick her up.  Wednesdays I use for Bree's parties at her school and the meetings involved.  Otherwise that is a me day too.  I love having time to myself but I'm thinking next year when Bree is in kindergarten full-time I will be looking for employment.

Anyway, Darcy started first grade this year.  She is doing very well with her reading and math and she received an award for Outstanding Work at the end of the quarter assembly a few weeks ago.  She is an advanced reader, which means bringing home AR books and then taking tests on them at school the next day.  For some reason this has really tripped her up.  She cries and cries about how she doesn't like the books but I keep thinking there is something else going on with her because who cries about books?  So far we haven't figured out what the real cause is, unless it really is the books, but I'm getting tired of the tears and the failed tests she deliberately sabotages.  Other than that, she enjoys school and has fun carrying her Little Pony lunch box to school in her Little Pony backpack every day.  The one thing I will say I don't enjoy is that Darcy brings home assigned math homework EVERY DAY.  Its that darn common core junk and it takes forever now to add two plus two.  Now we have to talk about it, and draw pictures about it, and explain it, and blah, blah, blah. I wouldn't even know how to do the work if it wasn't for the example sheet the teacher sends home with it. I tell you, common core math will be the death of me!

Mason started third grade and as far as I can tell he likes it.  He isn't one to get worked up about things, unless someone steals his stuff on Minecraft and then watch out, so he does what is required of him.  He is a good student and I am happy to say he causes me very little trouble.  Hopefully his teacher says the same.

Drew is in 5th grade and boy is it a change from 4th!  She has homework galore!  Its good for her though.  She is learning time management  and also patience with her mom as I try to remember the pre-algebra stuff she is learning.  She is also in an advanced reading group and math group where essentially 6 kids are teaching themselves algebra in a group.  Whatever works I guess.  I am just glad she is being challenged this year and I'm thrilled to see she is up to the task.  She received one of the coveted "Pride" cards (whatever that means) that 5th and 6th graders can earn, and she also received an award for Outstanding work at the assembly.  I am proud of my smarty pants kids!

Bree started preschool this fall, three days a week for three hours a day.  I will admit there were some free flowing tears the day I dropped her off for the first time.  I had no idea what to do with myself that first three hours.  I have since learned to take advantage of it but it was kind of tough to adjust in the beginning.  Bree LOVES school.  All she wants is to be like the big kids and going to school means she is a big kid!  She always has stories of the kids in her class and a running total everyday of how many friends she has now.  She loves to learn and thankfully will be reading soon.  I think the learning to read stage ranks right up there with potty training on the most annoying parts of parenting scale.  I can't wait till she and Darcy have it down pat so we can move on!  I really am proud of them though, and it looks like Bree is just as smart as her big siblings.  I think we are in for a good year!

Summer Synopsis

Since its the first full day of fall I figured I better wrap up our summer happenings.  We were pretty busy this summer which didn't leave me too much time to feel bad about staying home instead of taking some crazy road trip somewhere.  After Mt Rainier I ran a week-long tennis camp for the kids.  I made them sign a contract because I know just how competitive and perfectionists my kids can be.  Also, Mason doesn't like me as a coach in anything so I wasn't sure how it would go.  They actually did really well.  Bree was into it for about 5 minutes, just long enough to learn how to hold the racket.  The rest of the week she either cried about it being hot (contract breaker!) or ran around picking up balls for us.  Darcy hung in there and worked on her serve and hitting balls against the fence but she got frustrated too.  Drew and Mason improved tremendously and I think they had some fun in there.  Mason will have a killer serve if he keeps playing.  In the end serving was what they were most into.  As long as they had fun that was fine with me.  I had a great time being Coach (which they all called me) and after a week of tennis I was warmed up enough to beat Paul on Saturday when we were showing dad our new skills.  I rarely, if ever, beat him.

 
 
Just prior to, and during our tennis camp week we had two new babies join the family.  Paul's brother's wife, Star, had their 4th.  A sweet little girl named Aspen.  My brother's wife, Tamara, had their first.  A sweet little girl named Ashley.  Both sides of the family have over 20 grandkids now.  Big families are so much fun!  (Obviously Mason loves babies)

 
August was a busy month for us too.  We went to the Benton County Fair in Corvallis where the kids got to go on unlimited rides in the million degree heat.  We didn't last long, outside with no shade walking around for hours makes for some cranky family members, but I won't name names.  We did have fun seeing all the animals and the kids made friends with a llama.

 We also went to a barn dance at Paul's friend from high school's home and I impressed Mason with my do-si-do skills.  The next day we attended Paul's sister Carmen's fancy 40th birthday party.  I was a little out of my element but I survived :)  It was actually a nice evening.




Let's see, next I made 17 quarts of applesauce, 12 of which rotted on me.  I still need to get over to the OSU extension office to see if they can help me figure out what I am doing wrong.  I sure don't want to give up on homemade applesauce but the thought of the cost and effort make me cry as I dump the moldy sauce down my drain.
Next up we went to Seattle to watch the Braves play the Mariners!  I know I told Paul we wouldn't plan any more vacations around the Braves but since this was just a day trip that didn't count.  It was a beautiful day for a ball game and it was a pretty exciting game too, but of course the Braves lost.  I've seen them 4 times now and they have only won once.  I think I'm a bad luck charm.

 
 Our big summer project was painting Drew's bedroom.  It hadn't been painted since we moved in and Drew wanted a change.  She has mega high ceilings so Paul wasn't thrilled with the idea but in the end it worked out nicely.  Paul put up a white chair rail at about eye level and Drew chose purple for the bottom and gray for the top.  Not my choice of color schemes but she loves it so that's what counts.

Our next activity was Paul's work picnic with an alien theme.  We had a good time playing games, eating good food, visiting with Paul's co-workers, and the kids loved the huge slip and slide.  Darcy had the best facial expressions in the pictures we took.  I made Bree go down once with Drew and once with Mason and then she wanted to go on her own.  I was leery but she was fearless.  She had her arms up in the air the whole time, silly kid.  I can't wait till she's a teenager.

 

We decided we liked tent camping so much (?) that we needed to do it once more before the summer ended so we set up the tent in the backyard and had a fire to roast marshmallows on too.  It was a fun evening that ended with only the 3 youngest actually sleeping in the tent.  I don't enjoy it enough to sleep on a cot when my cozy bed is just 20 feet away.

And speaking of backyard activities, Paul set up the big screen and projector so the kids could invite a few neighborhood friends over to watch the Lego Movie and have popcorn and treats.  I think the idea is always better than the practical implementation of such plans, but everyone had fun on the last night to stay up late before heading to bed early to get used to school hours.

We made it back to the Kite Festival in Long Beach after a 2 year hiatus.  Its one of our favorite places to camp and see the kites and eat elephant ears!

Also for two weeks in August we were able to take care of the garden and chickens for some friends while they were on vacation.  We got tons of fresh vegetables and eggs and had a great time tending things.  The kids LOVED the chickens.  Drew and Mason took over their care, feeding them and hunting for the eggs.  I loved doing that when I was a kid too.  I'm glad they got to experience a bit of "farm" life.  They miss the chickens now!

 

I think that covers our summer pretty thoroughly.  We had a good one even though we were stuck at home.  Its pretty hard to get bored when you live in as beautiful a place as the Pacific Northwest.

Mt Rainier

Mt Rainier National Park!  My favorite place to camp in the whole world!  Well, maybe its kind of like labor where you think it wasn't so bad once you are a few years removed from it.  Every summer as a kid my family would camp at Cougar Rock campground and hike the mountain.  We would be on the trails all day without a water bottle or fruit snacks to keep us going.  No real destination, just up the mountain!  And it didn't matter how young the legs were, we did it without any complaints!  At least that's how I remembered it 30 years later :)  So that was my plan for our trip this time.  We met up with my sister Samantha and her family on Friday afternoon.  We set up our tents and got our spaces ready and then we just messed around that afternoon.  That evening we were so excited to see the Ranger program at the amphitheater, just like we did when we were kids, but it was awful!  This poor ranger was sooo boring, and her subject (stewards of Mt Rainier) was sooo boring that Darcy and Bree fell asleep and it was all Paul and Mason could do to stay awake too.  It was the worst one I had seen there and of course it happened to be the one I took my family to after hyping it up to them.  The next evening just Samantha and I went and it was great!  All about amphibians in the park.  The ranger was funny and the tipsy group in the back added to the fun :)  Too bad the kids missed that one.

 This is Cougar Rock.  Its in the middle of the camp ground and we took pictures on it every year with my family.  Just keeping the tradition going with my own kids.  It seems to have shrunk since I was a little kid :)

Saturday we hiked the mountain!  Or at least, that was the idea.  As I said before when we were kids we hiked the mountain for 6 hours without any nourishment no matter how young up hill, both ways!  Well, Paul was wondering just what the point of our hike was when we found ourselves trying to cross snow fields with little bodies slipping and sliding all over the mountain.  I think it is a late melt this year, there was much more snow than usual.

So we reconnoitered after some "discussion" and decided to go back down the mountain a bit and hit the trail that actually had a waterfall as a destination.  It was a good choice.  The waterfall was pretty and it was a much easier hike for the little ones.  I sure wanted to head up the mountain though.  Oh!  We finally found a bear!  We have been to almost 30 National Parks and never saw a bear till we got to Rainier.  It was a big black momma bear and two cubs.  You can see her in the picture and her cubs are hiding in the shade of the trees on the right.  We were so excited to see bears in the wild!

That afternoon my sister Candace and her family caught up to us, about the time the weather turned and it started to rain.  That evening was pretty miserable when all you have is a tent for cover.  We were trying to sit under the trees but still within sight distance of the fire.  I think everyone went to bed in damp sleeping bags and many woke up in the night soaked.  I stayed dry miraculously but I think I might have been the only one.  Camping in the rain is no fun.  Oh, and this is an old campground without electric or water hook-ups, which is fine, but there were no showers and the nearest water spigot was at the bathrooms which were on a trail through other people's camp sites.  At least they had flush toilets!  As a kid, all this matters not at all so of course I didn't remember any of it.  As an adult in charge of a crew of people it matters quite a bit!  We still had a great time but it was definitely throw-back camping.  I guess I'll still call it my favorite place to camp due to the MANY memories there, but it wasn't the easiest place to camp.   We did have a campfire and roasted marshmallows so what am I complaining about, right?

On Sunday we packed up our wet things and headed to the other side of the park, a place we never visited when I was young, to check out the Grove of the Patriarchs, an old growth forest.  Candace's family got totally soaked in their tent and when they got to the visitor's center on the mountain where the trails start the mountain was all clouded over so they couldn't see anything.  We were supposed to meet them at the grove but they just headed back home to Dallas instead.  I think its safe to say this wasn't their favorite place to camp.  We enjoyed the big trees though!    There was a cool suspension bridge only one at a time could cross and we all had fun crossing that.  The trees were huge!  Thousand year old cedars and fir trees.  Very beautiful.  A bunch of us were able to fit in the roots of a fallen tree.  All in all it was a good trip and Bree, who had been looking forward all summer to camping at "Mountain Reindeer" called it a success.  Still have to decide if we'll try it again in the near future though.

July Birthdays

 July, on both sides of our family, is full of birthdays.  Darcy and I are lucky enough to be two days apart, with my birthday two days after the 4th of July, so we party for about a week straight!  We went to Corvallis for a picnic and fireworks with family and I had my birthday cake then.  My real birthday fell on Fast Sunday so I pretty much didn't bother trying to make it worth anything.  Poor me.  When I turned 13 my birthday also fell on a Fast Sunday.  I sooooo didn't want to be a teenager so I thought that birthday on a Fast Sunday was about as bad as you could get.  Just call me Eeyore.  Darcy, on the other hand, had a great birthday!  She was excited to turn 6 and be a big kid.  Our house is big on My Little Ponies all of a sudden (Mason included) so Darcy requested a pony cake.  At first I was going to have to recreate Rainbow Dash on a cake top but she let me off the hook and I ended up frosting grass with a river and she put her ponies around it.  Whew!  She received a Rainbow Dash stuffed animal, a Lego horse barn set that both she and Drew wanted and she got it!  Yeah Darce!  You beat Drew!  Drew was not happy but she ended up building most of it for Darcy anyway.  She also got Juggle Bubbles (as seen on TV).  All in all it was a great birthday I think.  Darcy is excited to go to school full time this fall, hoping to have her best friends in her class again, and looking for just the right Little Pony lunch box to carry with her.  She is such a big girl, I would guess she is 7 by looking at her but nope, just 6.  She is just shy of Mason's growth chart at this age and well beyond where Drew was.  She will probably be my tallest girl.  Darcy is still my sunshine baby.  She has a smile that lights up the room and she can be, at times, my easiest to deal with.  Not to say that she doesn't have her struggles but she is a very obedient little person and never throws me attitude.  I love my precious little red-head!  Happy Birthday Darcy!

As you can see, Bree got a Little Pony too.  She threw a fit when she saw Darcy's so we gave her her Fluttershy stuffed animal we bought at the same time.  We justified it by saying it was the gift she never chose when she was potty trained.  All the others were bribed with a gift but she never needed the bribe, she just did it.  Must be nice to be the youngest and get everything you want!

Busy, Busy, Busy!

School's out!  Its time to relax!  Except relaxing isn't what the Ericksons do best I guess.  Not that I would mind chilling out for a day or two but when there are four active kids and a mom and dad who want them to experience life, there are few dull moments anymore.  School got out on the 13th and I'm happy to say we got through the year with little drama or turmoil and all 3 kids passed!  Whew!  We'll have 3 full-timers and Bree starts preschool in the fall.  What will mom do to fill her time?  The afternoon/evening of the 13th I had to attend Young Women Standards Night which was really horrible timing for my family.  I knew the last day would be an emotional day for the kids and sure enough, I left the house at 4 to 3 kids crying and also myself teary-eyed at the thought of having to leave them like that.  Secretly (now publicly) I was thankful for the threat of rain that turned an over-nighter into an afternoon/eveninger activity.  It was a good time but I felt bad abandoning my kids.  The next morning Paul got up early to drop Mason off for his ride to the cubmobile races in Scappoose and then on to help some people move, while the girls and I got ready for Drew's piano recital at 10.  Paul got home in time to shower and get us to the recital where Drew did a smashing job on her piece.  She likes the piano enough to sign up for her third year, but I think she is also ready for a break.  After the recital we raced to Scappoose in the hopes of watching a bit of Mason's race but it was over when we got there.  He said he had fun, we'll take his word for it.  Adding scouts to our schedule is busy but so far so good.  That afternoon we attended two graduation parties for wonderful young women who are going to go far in this world!  I think we all came home after that and crashed.  Sunday I taught at church and it was also Father's Day so we made Paul BBQ his steak dinner :)  We love Dad!

 Monday morning I signed the kids up for free swimming lessons.  All four were happy to get back in the pool but I think Drew and Mason are good enough that I won't pay for lessons for them anymore.  That afternoon the kids and I drove to Corvallis to stay with my parents and get Drew started at OSU basketball camp!  I went for 3 summers growing up, it was a longer camp then, and I had a blast so I was hoping Drew and Darcy would feel the same.  Drew was on a team of 5th grade girls and her coach was one of the current Beaver women players, Ali Gibson, and she liked her a lot.  She played ball for 3 hours an afternoon, 4 days in a row.  It was a lot of basketball and there were sore muscles but I believe she had a great time.  She wants to go again next summer but she'll be with the big girls then so it will be a different experience.  She did well and got the player of the day award for her team on Tuesday.  Go Drew!

 On Tuesday Darcy started her camp with her PeeWee camp with her cousin Ruqayyah.  We thought if the girls were there together they might do better and have more fun.  And boy did they ever!  We left Drew and Darcy at Aunt Sammy's after camp on Tuesday and Mason, Bree and I drove home that night to use Wednesday to get ready for our camping trip.  We also threw in blueberry picking on Wednesday so that was another full, full day for us.  Oh, Mason and Bree also got in another free swimming lesson that morning.  Aunt Sammy got the girls to camp Wednesday evening (Darcy and Ruqayyah's camp was 2 hours long for 3 days) and they stayed another night without us.  That was the first time for the girls sleeping away from both parents and they did great.  They were actually having so much fun with cousins that I don't think they really even missed us :(  I missed them though and was happy to see them Thursday!  We got the girls to camp that evening for their last session.  Drew got the "Best Teammate" award for her team and Darcy got the "Shooting Star" award for hers.  She also got an award the first night for "Best Energy."  Go Darcy!  I'm not sure I had her pegged as such an athlete but after T-Ball and basketball I can definitely say this girl has some skills!  And she's stinking cute too.  She plans on returning next year too, as will Bree who was desperate to get out there and play with Darcy.  At the end of camp all the girls got to take a basketball home!  They even gave Bree a ball and she chose the mini pink and black one of course.  One more year of balls and I will have enough for when I coach my own team!  Thanks OSU, we had a great time!

 

 

 Friday morning we went grocery shopping and headed out to our camping adventure at River Bend county park just east of Sweet Home.  We camped there last year to try out our new trailer and really liked it so we set up an Erickson family camping trip this year.  The timing wasn't the best, it would have been nice to go home and relax for a while, but we still had fun hanging out with even more cousins!  Unfortunately we were tent camping, which I never do well.  I didn't get any sleep for the two nights we were there and I came home and crashed Sunday night.  The days are fine but the nights are murder.  Especially when the air mattress loses its air in the night so Bree rolls over on top of me to sleep.  But that was actually OK since it was about 40 below zero in the nights and we were all FROZEN!  I missed the trailer :(  But we had fun hiking to a waterfall, playing kickball and frisbee with the whole family, visiting the fish hatchery and feeding the fish, wading in the Santiam river, and filling up on 89 cent slushies at the Circle K not far from our camp ground!  We had a great time with everyone and are looking forward to camping in July with my family at Mt Rainier, my favorite camping place on earth!  This week we don't get to slow down as we recover and get things back in order, and Drew has Activity Day Girl's Camp Wednesday-Friday.  The fun never ends around here and I guess we wouldn't want it any other way.  Welcome to summer!

P.S.  I am really missing being out on the road for 55 days.  I keep changing the background on the computer with pictures of where we were a year ago today.  The kids are sick of me reminding them every morning where we were and what we were doing a year ago (stuck in Texas, visiting alligators today :))