School, Cars, New Job, and "The Fort"

School, Cars, New Job, and “The Fort”

So, just so you know, we haven’t given up on the blog since we moved, life just gets busy sometimes.  And this seems to be one of those times.  I’m still adjusting to the difference between having two kids attend school in New York where the (free) bus comes and picks each child up at their house, and here where we’ve chosen to put Camden in a school with a dual language immersion program that happens to be about a 20 to 25 minute drive from the school where his brothers go, and where I drive them all the time (I did think about paying for bus passes after a few weeks of spending my days in the car going back and forth between schools, but since we don’t live within the school boundaries for Camden’s school it’s not really an option for him to ride the bus, and the other boys’ school is really quite close to our home so it’d be kind of silly to pay for a bunch of bus passes for them).  So, the driving has kind of been driving me crazy.  Our minivan died last month, and we ended up leasing a new minivan to replace the old one, and so we calculated the amount of driving we would be doing (since leases have a mileage limit unless you end up buying the car at the end of the lease), and figured that on a day when I just drive the boys back and forth to school and come home without going anywhere else, that ends up being about 50 miles (or around 2 ½ hours a day in the car).  And most days I don’t just go to school and come straight home.  But luckily my mom is here, and she’s been really helpful.  She picks up Isaac every Wednesday when he gets off school the same time as Camden does (Wednesday is Camden’s early release day each week).  And she’s always willing to help watch kids or pick kids up when I get in a bind, so that’s been so nice.  And I try to remind myself that next year Isaac will not be getting out at noon each day – he’ll be in full day kindergarten, so that means that I will only have kids to drop off in the morning and pick up in the afternoon at two different schools, and not have to be at the school in the middle of the day to pick someone up too.  (Although we haven’t yet decided what to do with Courtland for preschool next year, so we’ll have to see how that works out with the schedule too.  I’ve been thinking about a few different options – maybe even some kind of joy school or something if I could find others who were interested, just because it would be the only time when I don’t have a baby or younger child at home too, so it would actually be possible.  But who knows, we’ll have to see what we end up doing about that). 

The thing that I have to remind myself, though, is that I think it is definitely all worth it.  All 4 of our boys absolutely love school, and Courtland keeps talking about when he gets to go to school too.  Kolby and Lijah love 3^rd and 2^nd grade, and are doing very well.  Kolby’s teacher has a reward system where each child has a chart called a “clean slate” and the kids get a mark on their slate if they do something like talk out of turn or forget their homework.  She told the kids at the beginning of the year that they get rewards each trimester for having a clean slate with no marks, and if they have a clean slate for the whole school year they will get some really great reward (like a special dinner with the teacher or something).  She said only one kid got a clean slate for the whole year last year, so it’s not an easy thing to do.  I could tell with how excited Kolby was when he explained all this to me that he was determined, and he hasn’t gotten a mark yet.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he went the whole year with a clean slate. 

The schools here do something called MAPS testing to test the kids on different subjects, and Lijah was one of 6 students in his class who tested so well on their math test that they get to go to a special advanced math class each day with another teacher.  He is really excited about that, and continues to enjoy math.  His teacher also seems really great – I mentioned to her that Lijah needs a little extra help with his spelling, and she has sent home extra materials to help him and I have already seen some improvement on his most recent spelling test, so that’s really nice too. 

Isaac is in PEPP, a transitional ½ day kindergarten class that they offer at the public school for kids with birthdays between certain months (which we are kind of using instead of his year of preschool before starting kindergarten).  Isaac loves school – one day a few weeks ago I had to pick him up a little early in order to get to Camden’s school to pick him up on time, and Isaac just started balling when he realized he had to leave before his class was over.  His teacher is really into reading, and he is enjoying that.  And she told me that he is just a joy to have in class, which is really nice to hear. 

Camden is enjoying his class too, and he’s been making a lot of friends.  He has also been learning a lot, and we are pleasantly surprised every time he uses a new Spanish phrase without us even prompting him to do so.  I also think it’s adorable that he can roll his ‘R’s when he speaks Spanish.  Camden’s class has been learning all about colors the last couple weeks, and on Friday he got to go to Legoland for a field trip, which he was so excited about (that’s fun that they have field trips here, since at the school district where we lived in New York they had stopped doing field trips that required bus rides because of budget cuts).  I also went to a parent meeting at Camden’s elementary school last week where they discussed the possibility of maybe adding a 6^th grade to the dual language program (it’s currently k through 5), and possibly even transitioning to a K-8 school eventually.  I know this idea is just in the beginning stages yet, and it may not even happen, but I do think it’s a very interesting idea to consider (since if it is going to happen, it’s likely that it would happen by the time Camden, Isaac, and Courtland reach 6^th grade).  I do wonder how it would work with the school budget, and if it did switch to a K-8 school if the kids would have the same opportunities for other classes as they might at a different school that isn’t a brand new school (since I know sometimes it takes several years before a new school is able to offer as many diverse classes and higher level classes as other older schools).  So, anyway, it’ll be interesting to see how that all unfolds. 

We also unexpectedly got two new cars – yes, both our minivan and Michael’s car totally died and we had to replace both of them within a month.  When the minivan started to act haunted – we would go out in the night to find that the alarm was going off, or the radio and air condition would be on when there was no key in the ignition – we paid a few hundred dollars to have an electrician tell us that over years the battery acid had been dripping onto the main bundle of wires for the entire car, and it wasn’t worth paying hundreds of more dollars to try to fix the problem, with no guarantee that it would actually fix the problem.  We went to a dealership and asked them to see their used minivans, and found out that the rates are much lower on new cars than on used cars, making the payments lower on a new car.  I thought we would never have a new car, but we ended up deciding to do that.  It does feel nice to have a warranty for the first time in our lives, and not to have to worry about an unreliable car, or put hundreds of dollars (or more) into fixing up old cars all the time.  We ended up leasing the minivan, with the plan to purchase it at the end of the lease (because we will put a lot more miles on the van than are allowed in a normal 3 year lease agreement) – and we decided to go with the lease just because it will make the monthly payments a little lower for now, while we’re still trying to put money aside to save for a house.  We went with a dark red Honda Oddysey, and we’ve been very pleased with it.  I think we’ll probably stick with Hondas from now on – since they are such good cars and last for so long. 

A few weeks after we got the new van, Michael’s car died.  We knew it was only a matter of time until his little car went, but we had hoped it’d be another year or two before it would have to be replaced.  We searched around a little bit, and then decided we might as well have two reliable cars, and we bought Michael a dark grey Honda Civic from the same place that we got the van.  Michael has been pleased with his car too, and we got them to throw in a free blue tooth system and the sealant system that protects all the surfaces on the interior and exterior of the car (and guarantees them), so we felt like we got a good deal on a car that we know will last for years – the civic that my parents bought when I was in high school has lasted for years and is still running strong.  So, we weren’t planning on two car payments now, especially while we are saving for a house, but at the same time it’s really a relief to have reliable cars, and if we had kept going at the same rate we were before with paying regularly for pretty significant car repairs we probably wouldn’t have been any better off financially.

Other than school and the process of getting two new cars, we’ve kept busy with Michael’s new job, piano lessons for the three oldest boys, weekly trips to the library, a KinderMusic class that Courtland enjoys while big brothers are at school, and Kolby started cub scouts again last week.  And I’ve really, really enjoyed a weekly volleyball game from 9 to 11pm at the church building with people from all over the area – they are all better players than me, but I really love volleyball and I do feel like I’ve started to improve a little since starting to play with them.  I look forward to volleyball every week, and would love it if it was twice or three times a week instead of just once.  Oh, and we did find out that Michael passed his Board Exam – I totally knew he would, but he was nervous about it until he got the results of the test (that was a little while ago, but I don’t think we mentioned in on the blog before).  Michael is really liking his new job.  His group is called Dermatology Specialists Inc. and he works at their Murietta office on Mondays and Fridays, the Oceanside office on Tuesdays, and the Escondido office on Wednesdays and Thursdays from 7am to 4pm.  Although the drive to Murietta isn’t great, the drive to Escondido is really quick.  And his collection of audio books from the library has been getting him through the commutes.  The other nice thing is that he rarely deals with traffic, since he drives north against traffic in the mornings and south against traffic in the evenings.  And it’s been so nice that he gets home a little earlier in the evenings.  He is getting used to how things are done differently at this new job, and he enjoys the other doctors and staff that he works with.  It has seemed to be a really good situation so far. 

The other thing that the boys have been excited about lately is “the fort.”  Growing up, one of my fond memories is of “exploring” the open areas around our home (some of which include the area where our neighborhood now is).  I remember long Saturdays of bike rides with a friend out on the dirt trails back when this whole area was still an extensive cattle ranch.  And I loved our after school hikes through thick brush with my little cocker spaniel dog, Tessy, and a passel of neighborhood kids.  We had a “fort” on the hill near my neighborhood growing up – which was really a large bush/tree that seemed pretty hollow on the inside and made a great play place.  I was such a tom boy – often coming home with the lizards or snakes (or occasionally birds or rabbits) I had caught.  I prided myself in my jeans with holes in the knees and my attitude that camping in cabins wasn’t really camping.  And although some people today would be surprised to know how much of a tom boy I used to be, I still love hiking, and I think I’m more up for roughing it (and less bothered by reptiles) than the average mom. 

I really want the boys to have that same experience I grew up with, so when we moved here we joined a Family Nature Group that I found on meetup.com which is fun to get together with other families in the area to go hiking.  But I also wanted the boys to feel like I did growing up – like the open spaces and hills around the neighborhood are their backyard to explore.  So we found a place for a fort.  Since the wildfire here 4 years ago burnt the hills behind my parents’ house, they aren’t covered with overgrown bushes like the area where I had my fort as a kid, so there were less possibilities for prime fort locations not far from the house.  But we found one on a walk last weekend – it’s a small area with some trees and reeds where it appears there might be a small pond at certain times of the year (but it’s dry right now).  It’s perfect, because I could walk just a few minutes from the back yard and be there, but there’s a good chance that someone could walk past the fort on the nearby trail and not even know the kids were there (if the kids weren’t being too noisy).  (Because, of course, a secret fort is more exciting than one that everyone can see).  It’s not a big production like a treehouse or anything – more just a little hollowed out area amongst the trees and brush.  But the boys love it.  We have started to build a kind of lean-to that we call “the bear cave,” and the boys have even started collecting flat rocks and using a little shovel to bury them in the ground so they are all level to make a kind of floor in the “cave.”  And Kolby used some scrap wood to make a very basic chair – he has plans to make more chairs for everyone and even a table too. 

Brax loves to go with us to the fort, and since we rarely come across other people out there (it’s so close to the neighborhoods, but we’ve only ever seen one lady out there walking her dog one time, so it feels more remote) so Brax gets to run off leash and gets some good exercise.  He likes to chase rabbits, and last week we went to the fort and a couple of deer took off out of the reeds and Brax took off after them.  He was going so fast and went over the hill and didn’t come back when I called, so I was a little concerned that he might get really far away, but he came back a few minutes later before we had to start looking for him.  (One thing that makes me feel good about taking a large dog with us is that if we were to happen upon a rattle snake or another dangerous animal, Brax would probably make us aware of the danger).

The one thing is that it’s so dusty out there, and there are several burnt trees in and around the fort that will leave a black mark if you touch them, so we have to not only plan enough time to go out and play, but also the time to come home and shower each time we want to go to the fort, but I can handle a little dirt.  The other nice thing is that the fort is situated in a low area surrounded by two large hills, so the kids can go off and explore “on their own” and I can still keep track of them, even if they are pretty far up the hill.  It’s fun to see Camden, Isaac, and Courtland traipsing through the hills together, and it’s fun for them to feel independent too.  I asked my mom and dad when I started “exploring” without any adults and they said I was somewhere around 6 or 7.  I haven’t yet mentioned it to the boys, but I think that I’m going to let them start playing out in those hills without me, if they want – at least the older two or three boys, for now.  I got a little watch with a clip to clip on to a belt loop or something, so I can tell them what time to come home when they go out hiking.  And the boys were so excited the other day when I found them each a different colored water bottle.  Now the biggest thing is finding blocks of at least an hour or so of time when we aren’t busy with school, homework, chores, piano, or other meetings, when we have the time to go out hiking and come and get them all cleaned up again.  Anyway, this is really fun for me and for them – I hope this can be as big a part of their life as it was for me.