Sonya's Blog - Day 115 - Kick Ball and Kennebunkport

Sonya’s Blog - Day 115 - October 15th - Kick Ball and Kennebunkport

Well, Blake woke up with a swollen face this morning - not very cool. He had an allergic reaction two nights ago (we think to the scallops, but not positive). At first his one eye swelled up, then the next day both eyes were swollen. He was taking antihistamines, but they did not seem to be working. Today, whole face swollen and he looks a little freaky. I dug out Natasha’s prescription strength allergy pills and gave him one of those. Within an hour his face was noticeably less swollen, so at least we found something that worked. Crazy! No more shellfish for him!

Most of the day was taken up working on the kids learning plans for this year. Blake sat down with Natasha first and went through a detailed breakdown of her learning plan and what she needs to accomplish. They then made up a spreadsheet that details what she has worked on, is working on and needs to work on. It is, essentially, a checklist to make sure she is on track for her schooling. Natasha has worked a lot on her own since starting school and comes to us when she doesn’t understand something or for more clarification. The spreadsheet allowed us to have a concrete look at what she has done so far. Well she has done a lot! We will continue to let her set her own pace, as it is well ahead of what she needs to be doing.

Isaac is a whole different story. We have worked very closely with Isaac and kept him on track, but we still needed a concrete document to show us what has been accomplished thus far. This allowed us to determine what needs to be accomplished in the coming months and then to break that down into monthly goals. We are also hoping that this will allow Isaac to be a little more self directed in his learning. He can look at his spreadsheet and determine what he needs to do, and then go forward from there. At the very least, it gives us something to look at and determine the course of his lessons for the day/week.

The kids then got to work on school for a couple of hours after that. Isaac did a lot of work on his tree project to get that up to date. Now he will just need to put his tree in per State as we go along, now that it is all set up. Natasha worked on Math, Social Studies and playing her violin.

Blake’s face is pretty much back to normal now, so that is a relief. I am a little sad I didn’t think to get before and after pictures, but I was super concerned about the swelling.

Isaac was desperate to play Kickball because they had a field in our campground (near where we played basketball). He went and checked out a ball and headed down to the field. Since there were just four of us, we rotated positions: kicker moved to pitching, then right field, left field and then back to kicking. Well, I just want to say that I am a pretty good Kickball player, unlike my basketball skills. I got the first home run and I kept catching Blake’s kicks and getting him out - oooohhh, that was sweet. After catching his first 3 kicks, he finally kicked it away from me and towards Isaac, then he scored a home run. It was a close game in the end, but I ended up winning by one point. That’s just how good I am:)

After Kickball we hopped in the truck and drove to Kennebunkport to see how the wealthy vacation. The Bush Family has a compound at Walker’s Point in Kennebunkport, so we checked that out. Here is a picture with the compound in the background:

We drove around the area, then we parked in the town and walked around. It is super quaint, with nice little streets and shops along the water. We visited a few shops and had a nice walk around and took some pictures. It was unfortunate that we arrived so late, because we only had about an hour and a bit to explore before the shops closed.

​It was time for supper so we chose to go to Bandaloop. The name comes from a Tom Robbins’ novel - Jitterbug Perfume, which I have never read. The restaurant was very nice and had a unique menu. I had the Mahi Mahi with aioli sauce, Jasmine rice and Asparagus, it was super tasty. Natasha had the Scallops, Isaac had the chicken and Blake had a salad and spring rolls. We had a Spanish sheep cheese dish as a starter. Everything was really tasty and we all enjoyed our meals.

We headed back to the RV to call it a night. Blake and I cleaned up a bit as we drive to the Cape Cod/Boston area tomorrow. After we were all cleaned up, we watched a bit of the movie Tinker Tailer Soldier Spy. So far we are very confused and the movie is super slow. There are a lot of random scenes and not a lot of dialogue. So far, not so impressed. It has great actors in it, so we were hoping for better, doubting it will get better at this point. They kind of have it all set up and it is not getting any more exciting. We’ll see if we finish it.

Talk to you tomorrow,

Sonya