August 2016

We had to take the van to the shop, so kids all had to ride in the back of the car.  Now that we don't have to use big carseats, they fit... but Micah made it VERY clear that he is thankful for the van. :)

Babysitting our buddy Jenai (Josh's sister):

Playing airplane.  No idea why they have on their robes.  It's roasting!!!  Our air conditioner died 3 times in the month of August.  (The third time they figured out the real problem, finally.)

More visitors!  Val and Eric and boys came to visit the first weekend of August.  (Right after the A/C was fixed the first time, and they left a couple hours after it broke in the middle of the night again...)  Caleb LOVED playing with Samuel.  Between him and Elijah Anantharaman visiting, he realized this summer how nice it would be to have a friend his own age.  (I'm praying for a best friend for Caleb... most of the other boys are older or younger than him.)  He cried a little the night before Val and Eric left because he didn't want Samuel to go.   Most of our visitors came this summer because their kids were out of school and they were on their way to the beach,   But summer is the worst time to visit SC for sure because the only thing you can do outside is go swimming.  We took Val and Eric to the pool one afternoon, but we had only been in the water for about 5 minutes when it thundered and everyone had to get out.  Mostly we sat around and watched the Olympics which started that weekend.

Babysitting Caedmon (again)!  

Grandma came for a short visit while Grandpa was gone on a business trip.  Here she is playing Stratego with Caleb at Amelie's...

Abby has started watching for the mail truck and then walking down with a stool so she can reach into the mailbox. 

She just realized I was watching her, and she didn't like that.  She wanted to do it BY HERSELF WITH NO ONE LOOKING!...

Ben and his not-so-mini-me.

Somehow Ben got all the kids (including neighbors) to wash the vehicles one day...

Abby said, "Look, Mama, I drew a Walwus!"

Since we're studying the Middle Ages in school this year, we got a book from the library on some Medieval projects.  The kids made homemade trebuchets out of cereal boxes.  (Kind of like catapults.)  This kept them occupied for DAYS... 

 1st day of CC on August 24th...  (This was actually their 30th day of school for the year so far since I started counting school days at the end of May as soon as we were finished with the previous year's school.)  

Abby likes to think outside the box...

The whole group at CC:

My class... 6 very energetic, talkative boys and one girl who is a tomboy through and through!  All 4th and 5th grade.

Now that Micah is in 4th grade, he's started the afternoon part of CC called "Essentials of the English Language".  It's 45 minutes studying the parts of speech, grammar, and diagramming sentences.  Half an hour speed skills in math.  Then another 45 minutes focused on writing using the Institute for Excellence in Writing (IEW).  He'll cycle through this information for 3 years (4th-6th grade.)  I was afraid he would hate it because he's so math-oriented... and because it's a lot of work during the week (vocabulary, spelling, memorizing charts, editing exercises, and writing short papers.)  But so far he actually loves it!  I think it really motivates him to work hard since he knows Mrs. Tina will be reading his papers, and he wants to know he can keep up with even the older kids in class. 

 Working on his "Key Word Outline" for the writing assignment... 

Taking baby for a walk in the shade during the heat of the day...  Don't you love our brown grass/dry dirt yard?  We had SO LITTLE rain this summer.  I only remember 2 days when it rained at all.

This is Abby's first year of participating in class at CC too.  (She's in Caleb's class.)  I don't push much with her at home during the week, but she still likes to do the memory work.  One of the first weeks at CC, the "hands-on-science experiment" involved putting a thermometer in the shade and another one in the sun. A couple days later, I noticed Abby outside like this.   She had put the thermometer in the sun and was watching it. :)  

Other fun things we did this month: 

August 5th - attended an opening ceremonies party at our friend Kyle and Audrey's house.  (I went with Caleb and Abby.  Ben and Micah went to Batesburg for a "revival meeting" with our friends the Futrells."  

August 27th - 2nd annual Vineyard party at Camp Canaan (The Jettes rent out the pool area, we all come with food and invite friends.)  This year when we got there, the camp had us scheduled for the following weekend somehow... but they scrambled and got us a lifeguard and we had the party anyway.  Even though it actually POURED rain at one point (go figure! it actually rained!), we could still swim most of the time because there wasn't thunder.)  The church gave the lifeguard a $100 tip for being willing to get called into work at the last minute and for sitting in the rain with a good attitude. :)

August 28th - a fun baby shower for our friends the Thompsons who were (unexpectedly) about to have their EIGHTH child  

And of course, there were lots of trips to the library, the pool, and a couple play dates with friends.

July 2016

Micah wanted to try a bike at the Y:

Party at our house one night.  Lindsey went to Kansas with the kids the day before.  Karl asked if he could take home a roll of toilet paper because he was out...  

July began the "streak of visitors."  First, Tyler and Tailor Brumfield came the same night that Shawn Congleton came.  (Shawn stayed several days; Tailor and Tyler stayed just one.)  Then we drove to Maryland and Virginia Beach the next weekend.  The weekend after we got back, Mani and Denise Anantharaman came with their 3 kids.  Abby still says, "What was that girl's name again?" :)  (Her name is Selah.)  Abby loved having her around to play with.  She did NOT love having Mani around. :)  

Playdate at a friend's house.  (Christopher on the left was in Caleb's CC class last year.)

Summer basketball league at the Y.  Micah had definitely improved just since the winter.

Sometimes we have superheroes at our dinner table:

Sunday afternoon lunch at a friend's house (Jonathan and Esther Futrell's)  It's SO HOT ALL THE TIME.

4th of July at the Thompson's house.  Grilling out, fireworks, and friends...

Throwing down little poppers:

Sparklers... that's not actually a fire in the background.  I took the picture just as a firework was going off. :)  

The Thompsons are so good they even provided ear protectors for the kids. :)

Abby and Alice:

The obligatory picture of kids on a 4 wheeler in Maryland:  :)  It was SO NICE to go to Maryland for a few days and get away from the crazy heat in South Carolina.  

Carom with Grandpa:

Cows and kitties!!  Although on this trip, a kitty pooped on Abby because she hadn't put it down for something like 8 hours.  This certainly dampened her attitude toward having kitties in the house!  (Especially since she didn't know what to do and I was sitting near the UNCLES so she couldn't get to me.)  

So pretty :)

My view while reading under the apple tree.  Kids were playing with cousins or riding in tractors with Grandpa.

Baseball game with cousins:

This trip was the first time we got to meet Alex.  He liked baseball:

Dad took the boys and I around to see some of our family history.  This is the farm owned by my great-grandpa (Enoch Bender); where my Grandpa (Norman Bender) was born in 1898:

My Dad's great-grandfather, Wilhelm Bender, was sent to America (from Germany) at the age of 15 in 1830 as a young Amish boy because his parents were afraid he would be drafted into the army. He worked until he had enough money to bring his brother to America too, and then they worked together to bring over the whole family. This is the farm where Wilhelm settled.

This is the hill my great-great Grandfather Wilhelm's family walked over when they came across from Germany (I think they walked to Springs, PA, from Cumberland, MD.) As the story goes, Wilhelm and his brother had been saving a calf to butcher when the family arrived, but as it was getting later and later in the year, they finally decided that the family must have decided to wait until spring, so they butchered the calf. As they were butchering it, they looked up and saw their family coming over this hill. They counted and realized someone was missing, and that's when they found out their father had died in Germany before he could make the trip.:

Visiting Dad's home farm:

Dad practicing his Pennsylvania Dutch:

The house where my Dad grew up. My grandfather built this after the original house burned down during in the Depression (a few years before my Dad was born, but my grandparents already had five or six children at the time I think?):

Caleb was playing in the dirt and a little Amish girl came over to join him:

 Caleb had just looked up and realized they were watching him:

The family living in my Dad's old house tore off some plaster and found a wall underneath where my Dad and his siblings had all written things like "Doris likes so and so" with hearts around it.  It's hard to see, but this is a drawing someone did (one of my Dad's sisters I presume) of a person with very large ears and a hat labeled "Carl L. Bender"

Making friends... things I heard Caleb say to this little Amish boy: "Have you played Minecraft? Let me tell you what I like to make.", "Have you seen the Lego Star Wars movie the Empire Strikes Back?", and "In this one book, the man's name was Mr. Tushman and his kids were the little Tushies." His cultural sensitivity is a little lacking. I asked Caleb if the little boy said anythign back (I wasn't even clear how much English he knows), and Caleb said, "No, he didn't know anything funny like me."

Peacock!

Inside the barn my Grandpa built. NEB, BHB (my grandparents initials - Norman Enoch Bender, Beulah Harvey Bender; they didn't have middle names so they used the names of their fathers as middle names.)

The barn my Grandpa Bender built:

The Amish man jumped out so he wouldn't be in the picture, but he put his hat on Dad. When he took it back, he said, "We better not let the Amish lice mingle with the Mennonite lice." 

Neighbors hand-milking their cows:

My Dad on top of the hill called "Radle Cup" (not sure how to spell it, but it's Pennsylvania Dutch for "bald head") telling the story about he and Allen Miller rolled a tire down the hill toward a cow when they were little and the cow broke threw the fence in a panic.

After we were in Maryland for 4 days, we left the kids with my parents and Ben and I went to the Regional Vineyard Conference in Virginia Beach.  Mom and Dad drove the kids down to us on Thursday, spent the night at a hotel, and drove back Friday.  (The trip is supposedly supposed to take 6 hours from Maryland... they managed to turn it into 9 or 10!)  The kids loved staying the hotel 2 nights with us and spending the whole day at the beach on Friday.  When we got back to the hotel Friday late afternoon, we made them go jump in the pool to try to get all the sand off.

The boys played and played and played in the waves the whole time:

Another fun event from July was that we took the kids to see the performance "Samson" at Narroway Theater in Fort Mill.  It was MUCH longer than we thought (it went til after 10 pm), but they all loved it.  Even Abby stayed engaged during the whole thing.  She did ask at one point toward the end, "Are we almost done?" but with a few snacks, she stayed totally happy.