Wednesday, June 29, 2011

Everything's Coming Up Roses

Mrs. Beaver:

Yesterday we celebrated the end of another school year with a picnic at a local park.



The rose garden doesn't have picnic tables nearby so we just placed our meal on a set of stairs.

We kept this end-of-the-school year celebration simple--Little Caesar's--$5 per large--best deal in town for a large family!

Everybody was happy...



...including our two dogs. We didn't share our pizza, but we allowed them to sample the left-over soda that I'd bought the kids as a treat.

Poochita didn't think much of the Mountain Dew. she just looked up at us with an expression that said, "WHAT is this stuff?!?!?"

Sunshine, on the other hand, lapped up every drop.

A normally hyper puppy on "Dew"...hmmmmm....
...perhaps we should have given this decision a bit more thought!


I'm as happy as these yellow roses are cheery that another year of home schooling is finished. Completion is always rewarding, but this year even more so.

In November, through adoption, we added three new students to our "one-room school house." We all had plenty of adjusting to do. Our new ninth, sixth and first graders had, of course, never been home schooled.  More significantly, they didn't speak English. This year the three of them worked in Russian textbooks we'd purchased in Moscow. Mr. Beaver knows just enough Russian that he could make sure they were staying on track. Daria and Alexander also made use of Rosetta Stone to study A LOT of English. Oksana is learning the language through immersion.

The challenges were plentiful, but God's grace was even more plentiful. With His never-failing goodness, we made it through this tough "first." This is one adoption first we're happy to celebrate, certainly don't mind putting behind us.

1 comment:

MacMeister said...

It's such a feeling of accomplishment to be done with yet another year of school - especially one as unusual as this one! Be sure and enjoy it :-)