This is by far the quickest I've put out a round up in a good long while. I've even been adding to it and working on it through the month so it isn't one huge marathon of work to get it posted. Why so prompt? I'm trying to get this year up to date before we leave for Vermont on the 2nd of September. It definitely helps to have a deadline!
As far as August is concerned, we lived it up with multiple camping trips, a day at Boondocks, lots of time with grandparents, and this random mishmash of extra happenings!
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| 8.2.23 (a lovely poem (I believe by Mary Oliver) that showed up in a newsletter and I liked it so I screenshotted it (story of my life - if you only knew how many of these little tidbits I don't share on the blog!)) |
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| 8.3.23 (Cal spotted this in a kids cookbook from the library and we made them for dinner and they were great!) |
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| 8.4.23 (the kids helped Grandma buy food and snacks for a service project they are doing in their stake) |
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| 8.4.23 (they're great shoppers!) |
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| 8.4.23 (block stacker extraordinaire) |
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| 8.4.23 (and after the shopping we got to have dinner with Ryan, who was on his way home from a couple weeks at a nuclear research lab conference; Heather's fam was there, too, so it was great to be together, especially since we didn't see Ryan at the reunion) |
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| 8.5.23 (I do not know what this is all about. Guess that's what happens when Cal has the phone in the backseat and finishes playing wordle, but doesn't want to pass it back to the front) |
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| 8.5.23 (ditto above) |
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| 8.6.23 (we got to go to baby Natalia's blessing and next-oldest cousin Coop got to meet her for the first time!) |
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| 8.8.23 (a LEGO creation a la Sam) |
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| 8.8.23 (all the angles) |
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| 8.9.23 (we went to the fair and the kids won gobs of prizes from the library booths and they loved the LEGO entries and are planning what they can enter next year (if we get on the ball!)) |
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| 8.9.23 (we laughed that there was a booth about noxious weeds at the fair) |
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| 8.9.23 (the table decorating contest always amuses me) |
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| 8.9.23 (watched a bit of a sheep show) |
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| 8.9.23 (the biggest bounce house ever!) |
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| 8.12.23 (after our Tony Grove campout, we stopped in Providence to celebrate cousin Grace's 7th birthday with all the cousins at Grandma's house) |
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| 8.12.23 (she picked a Minecraft theme so they all got to paint swords or pickaxes) |
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| 8.12.23 (all dry!) |
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| 8.12.23 (and there was a TNT piñata that was fun to hit) |
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| 8.12.23 (almost all of the cousins squished onto the playground) |
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| 8.12.23 (and her cake and cupcakes were so cute! I especially loved the sparklers for candles on the TNT cake - very clever!) |
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| 8.14.23 (another really cute little LEGO build by Sam) |
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| 8.16.23 (Grandma Blanchard day with Cal - they made a long sleeve shirt!) |
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| 8.16.23 (pinning . . . ) |
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| 8.16.23 (sewing . . . ) |
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| 8.16.23 (modeling . . . ) |
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| 8.16.23 (meanwhile, Sam was having a Grandpa day. they went golfing on a little mini course nearby and Sam had an absolute blast!) |
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| 8.17.23 (I checked out a whole bunch of books to get us in the mood for our new england trip in a few weeks and one of them was Time of Wonder by Robert McCloskey which takes place on an island in Maine in the summer. It's marvelous. But this last page always gets me. So good!) |
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| 8.17.23 (Did you know there are thousands of book giveaways on goodreads? I only made an account to try it out, and one of the first contests I entered, I won! I have never heard of this book, and apparently it doesn’t even come out till December, but it’s always fun to get book mail! 😍) |
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| 8.19.23 (Bedtime stories with Dad. 😍🤓 Cal is SO into this book!) |
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| 8.21.23 (TOMATO TOAST!!! I just can't even stand it! I love this time of year! (this particular tomato toast was inspired by a recipe I saw on the new york times food newsletter (mayo mixed with shredded cheddar spread on the toast then topped with a tomato) and it was good enough, but my fave is still a BLT or marv 'n' joe or just miracle whip on toast with tomato (and, yes, I did all of the above many times over with that haul you see behind on the counter!)) Thanks for growing and sharing tomatoes, Mom! YUM!) |
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| 8.21.23 (A few extra great picture books of late.) |
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| 8.22.23 (my mom is letting me use my grandpa's microscope for a science class I'm teaching to a bunch of homeschoolers starting in October, so I was testing it out and playing around with it so I could be sure it worked and I could be sure I knew how to work it. inside the box was this slide with Mug's name on it and I just had to know what it was all about. she told me it's mouse brain sections from her neuroscience class at USU! ha!) |
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| 8.23.23 (we read this on the first day of school, and it's not really about going to school, but it's really great (by my fave podcaster Kelly Corrigan, so you know it's gonna be great!)) |
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| 8.23.23 (here are the endpapers for Hello World, full of good questions to ask people to make strangers into friends) |
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| 8.23.23 (back endpapers, more questions - I hate when the library card pocket thing covers up good stuff!) |
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| 8.23.23 (and some from the middle. I just want to keep these handy in my mind for meaningful conversations) |
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| 8.24.23 (Cal requested the Brave Writer 7-Day Writing Blitz again to start off our school year of writing. it's a great, fun, chill way to ease into writing and day 1 was to write with an unusual implement on an unusual surface) |
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| 8.24.23 (Sam wrote on the window with dry erase markers. they were writing favorite words from any book they picked up - of course they both chose a Minecraft book!) |
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| 8.25.23 (I went on my morning walk down to the North Arm Trailhead, excited to use it again after being washed out this spring. womp womp. new sign up, saying it's closed until September 30, 2028 or unless rescinded! Waaah!) |
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| 8.25.23 (We saved The Bee Tree family book club (from RAR) for the first week of school and it’s been delightful to read and discuss it, plus all these other “in stream” bee-related books. (And to enjoy some baking powder biscuits with honey, too!) 🍯 🐝 ) |
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| 8.25.23 (These are the books that made us laugh out loud reading them this morning. 😆) |
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| 8.25.23 (We read a math picture book every Friday, and this was today’s. I didn’t know what concept it was covering when I put it on hold, but it turned out to be binary numbers, which I have never really understood. Till now! Super accessible and now I get it!) |
bonus video!!
8.25.23
(she's been working hard on this one!)
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| 8.26.23 (another screenshot of a newsletter - that highlighted quote just stood out to me because I am always thinking about and listening to conversations about wonder.) |
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| 8.26.23 (Grandpa and Grandma Elwood stopped by on Saturday afternoon to bring us some garden produce (plenty of tomatoes to can before we leave) and some early birthday presents for Sam. One was this Minecraft board game, which was an instant hit - here we are playing it for the third time since he opened it!) |
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| 8.27.23 (we had a little early birthday dinner for Grandma Blanchard on Sunday and Sam created this on the living room floor) |
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| 8.27.23 (love this close up shot :) |
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| 8.27.23 (Cal snagged my phone and got a little silly) |
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| 8.27.23 (she would wear this shirt every day if she could. oh wait, she does!) |
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| 8.27.23 (the kids and grandma love reading through the National Geographic Kids magazine together whenever we visit) |
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| 8.28.23 (Since The Bee Tree is by Patricia Polacco, and since there is an old author access video interview with her on RAR, I found a few other books by her (of her 160 written and illustrated books!) to read this week. Most of these are brand new (to me and to the world!) and they’re all great. She’s awesome.) |
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| 8.28.23 (this was totally unprompted - Cal just wanted to paint this morning, and then she wrote up little title cards with blurbs about the art and hung them up on the wall. the mountains and moon on the left is my fave - it was a scene we saw on our drive through the canyon the night before. I love that she wanted to capture it with art!) |
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| 8.28.23 (whew! a busy afternoon, but oh it feels good! everything sealed but that quart on the right, plus about a quart of juice that didn't fit in the cooker - looks like spaghetti is in our future this week!) |
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| 8.29.23 (new glasses!! she wanted to get new frames this year and I think they're so cute! and we're so glad that they came in this week before we left! woo!) |
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| 8.29.23 (in between golfing and lunch with Sam for his birthday date, Cal and Grandma whipped out these cute pants! Sewing up a storm this summer!) |
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| 8.29.23 (Another Gary Schmidt delight! He’s so good! One thing I love about his books is the themes that are woven into the story. Like Wednesday Wars is Shakespeare and Okay For Now is Audubon. Well Carter Jones is all about cricket! (I knew practically nothing about cricket so I appreciated the little definitions in the headings of the chapters.) Of course, it’s also about more than cricket... a new school year in middle school (I love that it is told from the point of view of 6th grade Carter ... it sounds like a 6th grader voice), grief, worry, becoming a gentleman. It’s really beautiful, as all Schmidt’s books are. I’m glad I finally picked it up (while I was waiting for his newest book to come into the library... I’ll just have to keep waiting for that one till we’re back in action there).) |
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| 8.30.23 (have you ever heard this word?! I have not. Ya learn something new every day! Also, I love that I still get these word-a-day emails, which I signed up for way back when I was studying for the GRE!!) |
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| 8.30.23 (This was thoughtful and so adorable. We were delighted by the paper fold out pages (there are only a few but they are 👌🏼).) |
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| 8.30.23 (continuing our bee studies this week - today we learned how to draw a realistic bee from art for kids hub and then we all wrote facts about bees that we had learned from all our bee books and pods. This is Sam's and I'm just so impressed at how far he's come in his drawing skills from when we first started doing these a couple years ago!) |
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| 8.30.23 (and isn't Cal's shading amazing on this bee?! Wowza!) |
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| 8.30.23 (whenever I read about bees, I think of my friend Erin, who introduced me to my first graphic novel, Clan Apis, which is all about the life of a bee. Plus she just loves insects in general. So I told her that and sent her Sam and Cal's nature journal pages above and she sent this back. Classic Erin humor!) |
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| 8.30.23 (today's writing blitz activity was to cut apart the lines from a handful of poems and then mash them up into something new. Here's my first attempt! ha!) |
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| 8.30.23 (Cal's first) |
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| 8.30.23 (Sam's first) |
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| 8.30.23 (not sure if I'm getting better or not - but at least it's fun! I just copied out a few of the poems we have memorized in our morning times over the last year or so, so it was fun to know the lines so well and then mix them up funny ways) |
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| 8.30.23 (eh - needs some work ;) |
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| 8.30.23 (another from Cal) |
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| 8.30.23 (Sam thinks he's so funny) |
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| 8.30.23 (another from me) |
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| 8.30.23 (Cal) |
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| 8.30.23 (me - a little longwinded, eh?) |
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| 8.30.23 (me - I tell you, I might have had the most fun of anyone - ha) |
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| 8.30.23 (love this gem from Charlotte Mason, many a homeschool mom's idol and inspiration. in fact, there are whole curriculums based on her education ideas and books) |
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| 8.30.23 (Cal made these sandals from cardboard and tape and markers) |
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| 8.30.23 (I barely glanced at this book, but the kids pored over it for a couple weeks while we had it from the library. I'll think we'll be checking it out again and again) |
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| 8.31.23 (another funny text from my friend Erin - ha!) |
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| 8.31.23 (he took one bite of his gromlet for dinner and out popped this rascally tooth! All he wants for Christmas is his two front teeth. ;) |
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| 8.31.23 (just catching up on the newest issue of the Ogden Valley News - I love these history stories they share in this section, and lo and behold our ancestor Richard Ballantyne is mentioned quite a bit in this one!) |
Every other round up here (whew!):
2022: Dec | Nov | June | May | Apr | Mar | Feb | Jan (I got really behind last year, but I'm working on catching up!)
2020: Dec | Nov | Sep | Aug | July | June | May | Apr | Mar Quar + Mar | Feb | Jan
2019: Dec | Nov | Oct | Sep | Aug | July | June | May | Apr | Mar | Feb | Jan
2018: Dec | Nov | Oct | Sept | Aug | July | June | May | Apr | Mar | Feb | Jan
2017: Dec | Nov | Oct | Sept | Aug | July | June | May | Apr | Mar | Feb | Jan
2019: Dec | Nov | Oct | Sep | Aug | July | June | May | Apr | Mar | Feb | Jan
2018: Dec | Nov | Oct | Sept | Aug | July | June | May | Apr | Mar | Feb | Jan
2017: Dec | Nov | Oct | Sept | Aug | July | June | May | Apr | Mar | Feb | Jan
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