Journey Journal ~ A FAIRly good week!

For the past two weekends we have enjoyed some local fall festivals. Our town's Septemberfest was last weekend and the Fall Festival in the town where Kyndal and Collin graduated from high school was this weekend. We attended baby contests, wee queen contests, carnivals, 5Ks, wine strolls, and more. We have had a lot of fun, but we are certainly worn out!

In between the fairs we had schoolwork to do.

Map tracing ... awesome!

We still love our read alouds. Right now it's The Selected Works
of T.S. Spivet.

Also reading aloud out of Brighty of the Grand Canyon.

Eli learned to use a protractor and compass this week.
He did great and especially loved making perfect circles.
Measuring angles was a brand new skill.

Igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks using Starbursts.
#photobomb

Our egg shell geodes turned out pretty nice. The table salt
produced the best crystals.

I am very proud of Eli with his schoolwork so far this year. I am gone in the mornings until 1:00 p.m., so he is on his own to do independent work. When I get home he has it all completed and is, usually, reading. Then we do some group work and projects in the afternoons. The independence has been awesome for him.

The Influenza made an early appearance at our house and took Brynne out for a week. Because of the holiday she only actually missed two days of school. She was a little stressed about the amount of homework she might have to make up for those days, but she was able to get it all done at school the first day back. She brought home a grade update on Friday and has all A's. I knew she would do well in school.

Thankfully, Brynne was over the flu in time to go to the fair this past Friday night and then to the junior high volleyball tournament on Saturday (she missed her first volleyball game last week). She finally got the courage to ride a couple of rides at the fair that she has always been too chicken to ride. Eli opted out of the fair, so Brynne took her pal, Rilee.

At the volleyball tournament she only got to play a little bit because she is not technically on the A Team because she is in 7th grade (I think it is such a stupid decision to automatically make all 8th graders A Team and all 7th graders B Team instead of placing them on the teams based on skill level. God forbid we reward girls who are skilled at a sport and play hard with good attitudes. Let's reward the girls who aren't because we don't want to ruin their self esteem. Don't get me started on that rant. I better stop now). Brynne did get to play some and I can very proudly say that she showed her skills when she hit the court. She is a really good player, and has a much better attitude than her mama. Her team won 3rd place out of 8 teams, and could have won 1st had the better skilled players actually played. But I guess if they are happy placing 3rd then all power to them. For me, I am just proud of my girl for how she always gives her sports her 100%, playing hard, playing consistently skilled, and having a winning attitude. That's what really matters to me. Plus she is absolutely as cute as can be!

She's on the back left.

The benchwarmers.