I was editing pictures tonight and I really liked this one.

I tried it in black and white, and it looked sad which was not my intention.

Josie has been enjoying some videos on artforkidshub.com and this one was of a pug. This picture also shows why we have the cut the corn off of Josie’s cob this summer with her lovely laugh!

Josie gave this picture to the lady next door who owns a pug/Chihuahua mix dog who was most appreciative.

For Josie’s 7th year around the sun, we continued to homeschool while she continued to develop her own interests throughout the year. Her favorite activities this year have been choir and gymnastics. She made it through the entire year of ballet, but was decidedly less enthusiastic about it once they started preparing for the recital and it became more repetitive. Choir has been a joy-bringing hour every week with singing and dancing and making new friends. We also did swimming and gymnastics, and as she’s gotten better at gymnastics she’s more excited about doing it. Swimming is merely a required event in our family.

This year it feels like Josie has really transitioned from being a younger child to being a full fledged kid. While she still plays with her younger siblings a lot of the time, she’s getting more frustrated with their lack of patience and communication skills. She also wants to try a lot of new things that she see’s as being for older kids such as having a bank account, gum, an allowance, and a longer leash in general with doing things. Mostly I think it’s working out well as she is a responsible kid, generally thinks things through and listens to our requests. She’s also more aware of comparing herself and those around her as to how everyone is doing. She can be pretty hard on herself at times so we’re trying to help her see that everyone has different strengths and weaknesses.

At home you can often find Josie reading. She reads voraciously, often in the morning just upon waking up, and again later in the day sometimes after lunch when we all need a bit of a break from one another. Some of her favorites generally focus on fairies, animals or magic of some sort. We’ve been reading a fun series of fractured fairy tales called “Whatever After”. I have to keep a steady supply of books for her each week from the library she’s easily going through 5 to 10 chapter books a week depending on their thickness. I think she can read more challenging material than she’s currently choosing, but the challenge is in finding more rich reading that doesn’t focus on dating or scary topics or isn’t just all about school.

Josie otherwise plays a lot of pretend with dress up, the dolls and anything else she sees around for props. She’s also still very much into art projects, lately it’s been a lot of rainbows but she also loves to follow some online drawing lessons that we’ve found for drawing things like Anna, Elsa, rainbows, kittens and aliens. She’s also developed some great skills following building instructions for lego’s and other such toys. Giving her the space and time away from her siblings is the challenge. We’re really all going to enjoy having some more space soon. Josie reminds us every chance she gets that she wants her own room. We remind her that it won’t be happening any time soon.

Josie also enjoys cooking in the kitchen. She’s learned how to use a small pairing knife this year and will cut up broccoli and carrots for me and other softer vegetables and fruits sometimes. She can make her own cookies except for putting them in and out of the oven, and made some for her cousin Abby just last week.

She’s frustrated that a few of her friends have moved away lately and while they’re not totally out of our lives, they’re not nearly as convenient and frequent a fixture in them as they once were. She’s also been loosing teeth! Her first one went down the drain as she was eating and didn’t realize that it wasn’t a piece of food that was in her mouth.

Josie continues to be a big talker and will narrate and share everything going on in her head, in the car and around the dinner table. We’re working on reminding her to give other people a chance to speak as well.

She’s looking forward to starting soccer this fall, returning to choir and continuing with gymnastics. In general Josie will help out around the house when asked and will even pitch in when she sees something that needs to be done. But the cries of ‘that’s not fair’ have been rather frequent lately as she spies the world for more injustice. We’ll try to keep that spirit alive to fight for others in the world suffering true injustice. And I’ll try to cut the servings up equally and continue to give up my share to make things even out.

• Size/weight: 8, ~51″ tall
• Favorite foods: cheese, pasta, dessert
• Favorite toy: art supplies
• Favorite book: Whatever After series
• Favorite activity: playing with her friends
• Sleeping: bedtime ~8:15; gets up about 6:30
• New skill: good handstands and cartwheels
• Teeth: Lost 5 so far
• Literacy: devouring books

Last weekend the girls were inspired to set up a lemonade and cookie stand. The one from last year stands out positively in their memory (at least Josie’s). This year Celia needed to earn some money to buy herself a princess dress (because Mommy doesn’t buy those). I’m sure you’ll be seeing some more photos of that coming. She had most of the money but needed another $10. Josie is always interested in making more money, although isn’t one to spend it. She bought herself a dress too, but she had enough money already, this was just icing on the cake.

This year unlike last year, we bought the lemonade (Costco organic, well reviewed for those curious) instead of making it ourselves, but Celia and I got cracking early in the morning to make the cookies from scratch. We calculated we’d need to sell more than one batch of cookies if we sold them two for 50 cents, or we could try to charge more and might not sell enough. Celia opted for selling larger quantities at a lower price point. The weather was good, so after spending several hours baking, we headed down to our primo sales spot right on the bike path, near the dog park, and the soccer players. The girls agreed in advance they’d split the profits (once they paid me back for the supplies).

Lemonade was also 50 cents a (10oz) cup. Apparently the market supports a price point of $1 per cup because probably 75% of people buying paid us that much. The lemonade sold well, although not quite as fast as last year because it wasn’t quite so hot outside. We spent about two hours and in the end they made $34. The cookies were a tougher sell as a lot of people on the bike path are rather health conscious (they are out exercising after all!). Celia did well though making sure people knew we had homemade cookies and we sold about two thirds of them.

Then in the afternoon we moved our sale to my parents driveway in Lexington for an hour. We were all set up and had more goods to sell, so they invited us there. They promised thirsty bikers stop in front of their house regularly as it is at the top of the hill. Sales were drastically slower here but we discovered a different demographic that was very susceptible to ours sales tactics: guys out biking with girls they were looking to impress. What better way to show you’re a kind and family guy by stopping at some kids lemonade stand to support them! We also had one car even pull a u-turn to support the girls. Celia lost interest really quickly into the efforts in Lexington and went to play in the pool and Josie joined her before too long but overall they made out really well, even if they did squeeze their grandparents for money for their goods. I insisted that as the prime worker I deserved some free refreshments.

In the end they spent $27 on ingredients and made a profit of $34.25. Celia learned a lot about sales tactics and both practiced their customer service (like not putting your finger on the inside of the cup or spilling the drink on your customer). I remember why I only agree to do this once a year. Maybe next year we should sell pretzels instead, salty not sweet.

This year, Josie has been taking ballet classes all year long and this past weekend had her first ballet recital. She was a sailor in as part of the story “The Happy Prince.” Yeah, we had to look that story up too. She had a good time and was very brave performing, even though it was past her bedtime! Celia and Ewan came to watch her and support her as well and they were great, Ewan loved to clap and even watched the first half quite attentively. Josie had worked hard and knew her steps, these pics are from the rehearsal as that’s when we were told to take photos. I hope she was smiling for the real thing, but we were a bit far back to be able to tell. It was so much fun to see her up on stage, she went for it with gusto!

Hey I got older this past year too! Here’s a few photos from my birthday at the end of last year. I got a new flash for my camera so I can take better photos inside in the evening and the dark. I still don’t get too much practice but it’s getting better!

This update is very special edition because Josie is writing it with me. She’s read the whole book of the first two years of her life (the blog made into a book) and enjoyed hearing the stories so I wanted to give her a chance to contribute too. We’ve also been very behind in our Josie reports, but she’s been more consistent all year so it will be easier to catch up.

This year Josie has been homeschooling. We’ve been making a weekly list of things that I try to finish each week. I study math, multiplication, addition, and subtraction, mad libs (part of speech), journaling, handwriting (with the handwriting without tears curriculum), spanish reading, spelling, reading out loud and reading independently. This week I did a worksheet on the words ‘there, they’re and their’. I think homeschooling is going really well and it’s fun. I want to homeschool next year.

Other than school, I have been doing gymnastics, ballet, swimming and choir. At home I have been working on my cartwheels and handstands, gymnastics is the funnest thing in the world. For my ballet recital this year we will be doing the happy prince, and I get to be in it! We started learning the dance and we’re trying to get to know the places we will be on stage. I just finished a session of swimming and now I started a new one with the same teacher, Miss Sarah. This last session I got rid of my bubble and now swim with no flotation help all class.

And now Josie has mostly lost interest in writing about herself so I’ll add some more. We’ve had a great year with her at home, I can tailor her lessons to her interests and to her strengths and weaknesses. We slow down and speed up as needed. Plus I can include Ewan and Celia in a lot of the lessons at different levels. Josie also teaches Celia a lot of her lessons (not by my request! this is them playing) to review math and reading. Plus we all get to cuddle and read. Josie is also a voracious reader herself. Most mornings she hangs out in bed for an hour reading. It improves her mood and gives us all some time to wake up and get moving.

As a six year old she can really communicate complicated thoughts and ideas to us and it’s a blast to hear what she’s thinking about and understanding about the world around her. It’s also interested to see what she’s picking up from books because she has more  free time to read than I do and so I can’t pre-read the stuff she’s reading. We generally read a book together at night, we’ve been reading the dolphin diaries series and also Charlotte’s web lately. I made sure to finish up Charlotte’s web during the day though, not right before bed since it is a rough ending.

Otherwise Josie plays with a number of friends from choir and around town. I also ran a math club for two months that Josie and Celia joined in and we got to meet a number of new friends and practice our math. One of her favorite activities of the week is Games Day which is a homeschool get together at the local library for a few hours of playing (mostly board) games with other kids, we all go and it’s been a great way to learn about other new games and try them out.  Let’s hope we can stay healthy as the weather warms up and we can all enjoy getting outside more and Josie’s dying to get back onto her bike (but she’ll need a new one as the current one is too small!)

• Size/weight: 8, ~50″ tall, 62 lbs
• Favorite foods: pasta, pizza, cheese
• Favorite toy: stuffed cat named ribbon
• Favorite book: Animal Ark series (Also re-reading Ramona series, the Dolphin Diaries series, and the Buddy Dog series)
• Favorite activity: play dolls with Celia and Ewan
• Sleeping: bedtime ~8; gets up about 6:30
• New skill: swim without a bubble, better handstands and cartwheels
• Teeth: Lost her first two! Gained 5 more, 23 teeth
• Literacy: reading chapter books

Well this week was tough finding them in good spirits playing together, more often carping on one another. So I got to dinner today and went ‘ack I don’t have a photo for my project!’ so they mostly decided they were going to pose for me. I threw Rody out in the rug and said ‘everybody sit on him!’ and got my picture. I’ll work on getting better next week, but we’re mostly getting rained on these days and I haven’t taken my camera anywhere fun. Also Jordi is now sick, hopefully he’ll feel better soon.

More from my bad mother photo series.

We are currently in the midst of another blizzard (yikes 2014-15 winter has been crazy!) and here’s some photos from earlier stuff. I’m not letting the kids play outside in the winds and cold  today.

This is last week’s snow with Josie on the snow pile and Ewan on the porch. Now the snow is level with the top edge of the porch near the porch, and halfway up the front windows for the top part of the pile. Time to hibernate.