We said goodbye to Vanuatu. Matilda and I cried a for a few days whenever we talked about it. We will miss the people the most, and the tropical beach paradise second.
When we got home, it was so windy, I thought we might not land, and then I wasn't sure if our van would make it! Welcome home! The next few days were like that. Wind enough for a cyclone.
But you know what? I love it here! Everyone keeps asking me WHY I would come back right before winter, but I don't care. I love being here when Westwind is in full force, even if that means the WIND is too.
On Monday they went to Robotics with the Blackmores. The boys were in HEAVEN. That is their favourite class EVER. On Tuesday they went to Westwind and did "Canada 150" and gymnastics and umm some other class. On Wednesday they went to art. On Friday we had the Westwind Halloween party, which was really a "dress up as a storybook character" party.
I made Hyrum's Creeper costume, and See that Stormtrooper Walker? That's Maxwell inside, and he made that costume 100% by himself, and I think he's just about the coolest, most amazing kid EVER! Don't you think?
I think I'll leave the other kids costumes until next week.
Also, I've arranged science to be twice a week (to make up for lost time) and we are going to have swimming lessons at the hotel.
As my kids were at gymnastics, I went and did errands in town. EVERYWHERE I went I saw acquaintances, friends, and good friends whom I hugged and talked with and laughed with. I thought to myself "Cardston does not disappoint. THIS is why this is home."
However I'm not IN town yet. I'm at Naomi's house which is in the muddy windy county and a vacation rental while she is in Edmonton. We helped pay for her to visit me in Vanuatu, and now she's letting us stay here. I say it's a win win for ME!
It was incredibly nice to come in at 2 am to a clean comfy home that we KNEW and that we felt comfortable in! THANK YOU NAOMI! (but she never reads my blog lol!)
BUT we WILL be living in town soon! We have an accepted offer on a house!!! It's way more than I wanted to pay, but I'm excited. My mother-in-law is thinking she might even be well enough to help me decorate!!! If you don't know, to have my mother-in-law decorate is akin to having HGTV's very best come in and decorate. She's a miracle.
We did do some basic school. I was a bit lazy and scattered. I only did William once this week. He FINALLY has REAL handwriting without tears supplies!!! I was super excited.
But alas, the internet has been HORRIBLE! Perhaps even worse than Vanuatu! Maybe it was the wind. Maybe it's because they moved that router. I don't know, but I'm going CRAZY! I was so looking forward to having real internet which would equal real school. Maxwell is dependent on it for his school, so he's just at a stand still.
I did do math with Daniel and Hyrum, and this is the cutest thing EVER! I asked Hyrum to SHADE a third of this rectangle. He SHAVED a third of this rectangle by turning it into a sheep! Oh I love it!
There are two families here. SIXTEEN PEOPLE. Not to mention that there are closer to 25 TWENTY FIVE people here during the day and the odd friend here and there that spends the night. But now there are TWO housekeepers. This is a construction zone, AND to go into town seems to take ALL DAY LONG.
Somehow, it's not the relaxing tropical vacation it was when we were renting next door, and I'm not too sad to be going back to the cold windy prairie of Alberta soon. But of course I will miss Vanuatu, but we will come back.
We will be able to finish the construction with fresh eyes and in the meantime, it will be JUST my little family, and hopefully we will quickly move into a house in the town of Cardston, and be two seconds from the grocery store and a dollar store.
But we will be leaving many great things. Like climbing pohpoh trees
And making tropical gardens:
And ziplining:
And going to places like Chocolate factories:
And SWIMMING WITH HUGE SEA TURTLES!
And going to colour festivals held by white sandy beaches:
I'm not sharing this on Facebook, but just so you know, the day of the color festival, was the day Dustin sold his business. It was quite the momentous occasion of his life: Like-next to marriage, kids, and baptism, this was the next big thing-type of big.
I'm very proud of him, and I had to shout it out SOMEWHERE that we've reached the goals we've been shooting for!
But reaching humongous goals is kind of crazy, isn't it? There's all this stress and hype leading up to it, and then when you're there, it's like "Okay, well, have we arrived? What's changed?"
It will be good to go back to Cardston and be in the same city as his business partner (sold the child but kept the marriage I guess you can say.)
As for school, I feel so accomplished if I actually get to everything on my kids' progress charts, and that only covers reading writing and arithmetic. I SWEAR I'M NOT LAZING AROUND! It's just really is a mad house here.
Hyrum LOVES his chart and is constantly looking at it and has BREEZED his way to his first prize while his brothers aren't even close. He is reading a ton and writing a ton. I'm not sure if people out there will apreciate this video, but my ten year old with severe dyslexia, ADHD, language processing disorder, and a few other conditions, has gotten over the hump in reading. He can read smoothly.
It's a true breakthrough. (although, noticed how he keeps saying "the" for "he?" a new glitch. I know he'll be okay now. It's been YEARS of consistent tutoring, baby steps that take hundreds of hours, and his mother's (my) tears to get to this point.
Thankfully, because of homeschool, he has no idea that he's behind and is confident and has a high self-esteem.
Maxwell's basics have been going a bit slow because of slow internet. That is one thing I won't miss about this place.
But on the days it works, this math program has proven to be dry but good. They have focused on the "Mathematical Language" which, in my mind, is one of the most important things that can be learned in math.
William is making progress. Have I mentioned yet that although he doesn't have all of issues Hyrum has, William certainly has ADHD and is probably my most severe Dyslexic boy yet? Yep. Those DNA codes are strong with us. I have to admit that I haven't told Dustin that I want to put him in public kindergarten yet. (Dustin never reads my blog LOL!)
Maybe they have some secret sauce to help William. But he's learning with me anyway:
william
That was William typing his name. He's sitting at my side right now because he got a bonk on his head and refuses to go to bed.
I've also been teaching other people besides my kids. I've been going to the tutoring sessions our church holds after school here. In the past, the LDS church has held english lessons for locals, but now they are trying out tutoring in a hope to get kids ready for a GED equivalency.
It's a pilot program, and I've discovered that I'm a true homeschooler. I was way annoyed at a few things that happened while volunteering, but everyone was super nice, and we all made peace quickly, but hey, if I can't even deal with this, I would have never made it as a public school mom. Or at least I wouldn't make it NOW.
Eventually, I found my nitch of playing math games from Rightstart with the kids.
We also have been volunteering in the relief efforts for the Ambae Vanuatu Volcano refugees. It's almost calmed down now, but their volcano dropped acid ash on all their crops and ruined all their water as well. They all had to leave. So we helped them with some supplies:
Volcanic activity really went well with our Geography year. (ummm....not that I'm cashing in at other's expense.) Along with the earthquakes that we've been feeling from the volcanic activity! And the other things we've done to study Geography so far is to study map terms like longitude, latitude, legends etc. We talked about how no map is perfect, especially a flat map of the world.
I had them make their own worlds on mandarins and had them try to make a flat map of the world with it to illustrate this point.
I also taught land formations such as archipelago, delta, and isthmus.
We've done this studying our island of Efate:
Then I had them make their own worlds where they had bays and channels etc.
We also are made 3-d relief maps that have these landforms, and we're going to paint them----sometime between now and wednesday when we fly away?
We've also memorized a few of my geography songs:
And science you ask? No science. I've been meaning to do some Southern Hemisphere Constellation stargazing, but I can hardly find the North star, and I've seen it my whole life, so how can I find NEW ones? I haven't been on the ball. We'll wait for Canada. But we haven't forgotten Canada, and to prove it, we had Canadian thanksgiving:
