Snoreling, Sports and School

Seems like I haven't written about what has been going on with us in a while. My blogs have been more specific. So here is a catch up.

Things haven't been as adventurous lately, but I have to tell you about Blake. He LOVES snorkeling! He tried it the first time when Linda and Kenzie were here last month. Ever since he will spend a lot of time out in the bays/lagoons snorkeling. If we are at a beach with minimal waves that is what he is doing. We went to Turtle Bay last weekend. Blake went out with Ben for a while first and then came back in to play with his brothers. I went out for a bit and as i was coming back in, he came out wanting to go again. We swam all over the bay together. It was amazing. I can't even begin to explain the feeling I had. It was incredible to watch him explore and point out things he saw. He would follow some of the fish around. I loved watching him. He told me before we went in that he didn't like swimming over the rocks because there are a lot of the spiked ball looking things on them. The longer we were out there, the more brave he became. Such a wonderful experience for him and for me as a mom. :)

The boys have started flag football. This is the first time Hunter has been old enough to play football so he was really excited. He hasn't taken to karate as well as we had hoped. :/ He LOVES football though! And is doing really well. His first game he scored 3 touchdowns!!! Let's go Little Rascals! (I hate the team name...fyi) Blake is on the Tiger Sharks team. He too is doing well. He has been a little caught off guard this year though. He is one of the younger boys on his team. There are several that have played competitive ball before so they are more aggressive. In his first game the other team killed them. Intercepted the ball 3 times! yikes! So needless to say, our team has some word to do. They added an extra practice each week to try to help. Our games were canceled this weekend due to rain. Hopefully this will help them because they will have more practice time before the next game. I'll keep you posted.

We have made a huge decision. The boys are going to public school next year. I have very mixed feelings about this. I am concerned about the schools here. I have heard so many mixed things about them. I feel like we can accomplish more academically if I teach them at home. But there are so many things that I can't do. Children learn so much from each other, both in the classroom and on the playground. While not all of it is good, so much of it teaching them how to deal with life situations. I feel that the social part of kids is just as important as academics. The boys keep asking to go. Blake missing having his own group of friends and being able to interact with them daily. Hunter wants to experience what his big brother has. I think he wants to branch out and have his own friends too. Something that is his, not his brother's. Hunter needs to learn how to be without Blake. We also have a selfish reason too. Ben and I would like to have a little bit of time together. I will still have Parker but 1 is so much different than 3! We can throw Parker in the Kelty back pack and go on hikes that we can't with the boys. And if I feel that the boys are not getting what they should out of school, I will pull them back out. We feel that this is the best choice for Blake and Hunter right now.

The next part is which school? Their home school is not a good one. So I started researching the area school to try for a geographic exception. I looked at student scores, school size, teacher/student ratios and population. The closest school has better scores but is huge and white kids are the minority. Don't get me wrong, I love my kids being in a diverse school. I just don't want them to be part of the 12%. This school is also year round with tracks. I like year round if the whole school operates on one schedule. I am not a fan of tracks. Another school about 5 miles away has similar test scores, half the size, better teacher/student ratio, 50% white and a large number of military. That is the one we are trying for. We should find out if we get in within a week. So please keep your fingers crossed for us!