The standards at James Way Academy have really gone downhill recently. Though we began our fifteenth year last Monday, there were no signs (or banners or balloons) to show for it. As I have stated in previous posts, I am no boy scout and therefore never prepared. One look in the school room proves this to be true. Scattered throughout is all the detritus of a room posing as an educational domicile. Like a cubism painting where you have to shift all the disjointed parts ever so slightly in your mind’s eye to see the scene as a natural whole, you have to tidy the caddies, sharpen the pencils, put away the toys, and ready the school books to see the room as an academic space. What I’m trying to say is that the room is a mess and I didn’t do much to prepare it for our first day!

While we didn’t celebrate with a special breakfast or have clean desk space, we also didn’t take first day of school photos. But we did come in our school uniforms (read: pajamas) and we seamlessly went from one math problem to the closet for a snack to five more math problems to second breakfast to a paragraph in a read-aloud to a piece of candy to lunch, so we haven’t lost our touch there.

Our extremely abbreviated first day of school was followed immediately on the second day by a field trip to the beach. Before you complain that going to the beach couldn’t possibly be counted as a field trip, we went with friends, meaning there was a group of us, so it counts. 🙂 Experiments were performed with buckets and the tide, a waist-deep touch tank with sand dollars and hermit crabs was enjoyed by almost everyone, and a really fun game was played called “How Much SunScreen is Not Enough?” The only reason this sounds remotely like a regular outing to the beach is because we also got sunburns, stuffed empty shells in our bags, and will never recover a particular green bucket and yellow shovel this side of the Atlantic.  

The last three days were fairly routine. By routine, I mean that the teens tried to sleep in as long as they could, many moans of “do we have to do school?” were uttered, music practice was avoided in the same way an introvert evades making phone calls, kids couldn’t walk into the school room for lessons because the “floor is lava”, and we ran out of snacks by Thursday.

Jake’s first week had its fair share of ups and downs as well. His very first class let out after ten minutes because the professor was stuck in Paris. If I had a dollar for every time I’ve heard that excuse, I’d be poor, but Jake was happy for the unexpected break. He, too, went on a field trip to the beach on his second day of classes, but he didn’t learn the same lessons we did. His area of study was gravity and how waves interfere with that. Some things just can’t be learned in a classroom.

To further the idea that some education happens outdoors, he learned an expensive, yet invaluable lesson about space and how not to park in the blue one. Charm and logic were on his side and the tickets were later reduced to warnings. Thankfully, he is not color blind and shouldn’t repeat the same mistake again. 

Our newest college attendee also had highs and lows in his first week of school. The ‘highs’ being the moments he could leave school and the ‘lows’ were when he attended his courses. Though I am only slightly kidding about Isaac’s outlook of school, he sure was exuberant when detailing what went on in each class. Monday’s Mobile Computing coding challenge gave Isaac the opportunity to explain a work-around in the system to the whole group, professor included. I knew the day was coming when he would school the class, I just didn’t expect it to happen on the first day! 

Based on Isaac’s first-hand account and reviews on a rating site with tales of bizarre professorial behavior, it became clear that he will need our prayers every Tuesday evening. Isaac’s educational challenge there won’t be knowing when to help the class as a whole but how to deal with a difficult teacher. Maybe his academic lessons are free, but the life lessons will be priceless.  

An empty gas tank, sparse cupboards, vibrant red skin, and sand everywhere is all I have to show for our first week of school. Even though I haven’t gotten around to taking back-to-school photos of the kids at home, I did ask Jake to take one. It’s not from an angle I was expecting, but surprisingly, he obliged.  

And now James Way Academy is moving south. 🙂 

Just kidding. Although things tend to “go south” quite often, we aren’t going anywhere — because we have school tomorrow.

Do you know how hard it is to choose photos for a vacation album? In fact, selecting the best photos isn’t really the issue. Knowing which of the others to delete is the problem because you never know when you might want the blurry one for an edgy feel or the one with a kid’s nose photobombing in the corner of it for blackmail later or all ten goofy face photos because they are just different enough that they all seem deserving of a spot in the album.

That being said, the pictures from our Nova Scotia vacation indicate an amazing time was had by all. Normally vacations are for relaxing, but when Grandma’s love overflows for you from her kitchen, you must move a few buckets of sand from here to there, wheel a barrow full of rocks from there to here, and spread some sod everywhere to maintain the status quo. After the h yard work was done, Danny showed up. 

For fun, we enjoyed a two and a half hour family hike around Crystal Crescent Point, where some members of the crew learned how to make screen art on their phones by dropping them on the boulders. Then on another morning, for more fun, the kids and Danny woke up nice and early to go on a deep sea fishing adventure where one could simultaneously lose their breakfast while catching their supper. Continuing the fun, we brought pink eye with us, so each morning we could play Conjunctivitis Roulette, never knowing which child was going to wake up crusty and contagious.

In between all of the work and play, there was relaxing in the living room, relaxing at the dining room table over a slow breakfast or a late supper, relaxing on the deck when the sun was out, and relaxing at the beach where you could comb for sea glass, swim in the Atlantic, dig in the sand, or try to read your book. With all the work and the fun and the relaxing, there was very little time left for practicing music so the kids had a great time. 

Our time in Pennant came to a close on a sunny morning, but our fun wasn’t over yet. We made our way to another town dear to our hearts to visit Dad and Mum Allan. Because our children are fish, we continued to spend time at favorite beaches nearly every day. In fact, James said that one of the nice things about visiting his grandparents is that he gets to go out and do something each day. By night our fish turned into musicians. Grandpa and Grandma Allan have the patience of Job (and hopefully really bad hearing) because they allowed several of the kids to try their hand at the accordion and autoharp. 

Though Grandpa and Grandma do not live within walking distance from a Tim Horton’s anymore, Jake was undaunted by the drive and managed to get himself caffeinated on large amounts of sugar every morning and acquired a taste for A&W each evening. A teen’s idea of a good time may be wrapped up in what they eat (Anna was particularly fond of the homemade rhubarb pie and ice cream), but the younger children were excited about where they got to eat: on the roof of the shed, next to the deck! 

There were no qualms about the new house. With rooftop dining, nearly tame deer and their loved ones wandering the lawn, mid-day ice cream treats, late night music classes, delicious meals at a table we all fit around, and memorable outings to local parks and beaches, we almost ended our vacation with no calamitous stain. 

Alas, on our last evening, Ellie just had to put her shoulder out there, where it didn’t belong, earning another ER trip and hours of pain. Not only was she sore, but she sorely regretted throwing that football with all her might. Last time this happened, I wrote her a little poem, a la William Carlos Williams-style, and it seems apropos still. 

So much depends
Upon

An intact
Shoulder

For bouncing
The ball

To hold the
Trophy

All in all, we did have a truly wonderful vacation. It had more “fun relaxing vibes in a new location” than “just discipling your kids in a different location” and now that we are back home, immersed in our typical daily routines, we are already wistful for that New Scotland air.

* Click here to browse the chosen photos from the trip.

Remember that time James, Caleb, and I were supposed to turn into sailors but fevers and nausea overtook the boys and we missed out on a private passage to Camden, Maine? Me too (If you haven’t read that tale yet, here it is). Well, we finally experienced our maiden voyage last week, and I am here to tell you that I took my job as the one who should get knocked out by Dramamine very seriously. As a precautionary measure, the preventative pill competed very well against the three to five foot seas we traveled in, and although the container’s label claimed the medicine was “non-drowsy”, I think my conked out, sprawled out form on the salon bench told a different story. Meanwhile, Danny did an amazing job at the helm, guiding the boat around buoys, away from the path of other vessels, and into the marina at Martha’s Vineyard. 

Normally, one wouldn’t share their diary with the world, but I thought it might be fun to share a few of my entries from the trip, giving you more insight, as if you need it, to what goes on in my brain. My journaling leaves a lot to be desired since I usually just write a sentence or two, so that weeks later when I read it back, the memory that should have been jarred by it is lost forever and it’s super fun to see if I can recall the event. 

Without further ado:

July 1: 

*What is the one thing you cannot bring on a boat? (if you guess in the comment section, I’ll let you know if you are correct)

*Freckled cutie and golden-haired beauty

*It’s a beautiful day to be seasick.

July 3:

*Buoyant, wild, semi-aquatic mammals, but no ocean life spotted. Are there even animals in this ocean or is it just a conspiracy?

July 4:

*The amount of crewing I’m doing for this man is rapidly amassing. First, I pushed two buttons. Then, I pushed two more. After that, I pulled back on the throttle so we wouldn’t collide with another boat. Post that wild ride, I used the boat hook to grab our mooring line up out of the ocean and then tied it to the bow cleat. 

*Okay, this is getting out of hand. I just tied off the dinghy. Not once, but twice! If Danny’s not careful, I’ll be taking that title, “Captain”, from him before long.

July 5:

*Today, I convinced my seventy-year old knees they could jump from the boat to the dock by yelling out encouraging phrases like “anchor’s away!” and “all hands on deck!” and “Who’s the landlubber now, huh?” so I could tie the stern line to a side cleat. Then I ran up to the end of the dock to catch the bow line James threw to me so I could tie off up there.

I know I’m using some nautical lingo, so I’ll help you out. The takeaway here is that I essentially docked the boat. I definitely didn’t almost electrocute myself by dropping our electrical cord into the water while hooking it up to the docking station.   

*Oh yeah, turns out there are other fish in the sea. Saw whales, dolphins, and even a shark, despite cruising through so. much. fog. 

All in all, it was a great and successful first voyage for me and the little boys. I won’t say Danny didn’t have an amazing time with us as his crew, but I will say that we came home a day earlier than planned. I’m fairly positive it had nothing to do with that one time he purposely fashioned a knot in a line for fitting around the wooden piling to keep the boat from bashing into the platform as we were docking in high wind and strong current, but I thought the line was, well, knotted and untied it (don’t worry, he came rushing back to to fix it and grab the piling before we hit anything). Or the time one of the boys broke the handle off a window (don’t worry, ‘we’ reattached it right away). Or when grape jelly was spilled onto the cockpit (don’t worry, it was cleaned up as best a young boy could). Unfortunately for Danny, he’s stuck with these barnacles for awhile because we love him and wouldn’t want him to boat alone. 😀

p.s. I’m sorry for these larger-than-life photos. Working with WordPress’s capabilities is rough, to say the least, not to mention how poor my own inabilities are when it comes to tech stuff . You can either have the pictures literally in your face, or as small as a thumbnail. Anything in-between is beyond my scope and Isaac immediately found something else to do when I started asking him for assistance…Enjoy the giant window into our lives!