Catching up

October came and is now gone. How does it seem to fly by so quickly!

 We have been doing a lot of the usual and these pictures show the usual state of our house. Ian and Henry, when not on the computer playing Minecraft are noses deep in a book. Sophie flits about from classes and assignments or just listening to music and sketching in her room. Molly almost always has the blocks dumped out all over the floor and is building marble runs or castles for her ponies. There is always a stack of books or actually the books are more likely to just be strewn all around the room.  It is hard to keep up with the clutter and mess these kids create each day.

Having four kids doing 4 different things makes it hard to fit everything in. When they were all little and we did our school work mostly together it was easier to really explore topics and get really into subjects. I don't feel like we do that at all now. Poor Molly gets quite a different early elementary education than the older ones.  I just try to keep the kids on task mostly. They have assignments from their online classes and I just remind them to work on them. I am more of the homework helper now than the teacher. That makes me a little sad but the kids do enjoy attending classes and getting to interact with other kids and teachers. I guess I just miss the simple school days when Sophie and Ian were little and we did school all together mostly and we dragged Henry and baby Molly around the neighborhood looking at trees and birds and plants. But kids get older and they have different needs. Now the kids all have classes, clubs, and sports that pull them in different directions. Which is why I blog a lot less I think. I am more of a spectator and or facilitator and less involved. I don't even take many pictures anymore.

The soccer season ended finally. My afternoons are free again. coaching two teams was fun but really ate up my afternoons. Henry's team only lost two games all season. We just happened to loose the very last one which is the one that counted. His team ended up taking 2nd. It was a hard loss since we had beat that team 3 times already this season. But the day of the tournament that decided the ranks the team got tired and they lost their energy. Plus it was Halloween and everyone just wanted to get to parties and go trick or treating. Their hearts and energy wasn't in it.

Molly's team didn't keep score so they didn't have a rank. But there were 4 girls teams in her level and they easily beat one team each time they played and were well matched with another. There was one team that had a girl who looked quite a bit bigger than our girls and she dominated the field. Molly was scared each time we played them. But the girls all had fun. I am happy the season is over!