Jin Family

We took a week off from home school and did nothing! Playing outside with the cousin.I had decided last year that we needed more time off during the winter break from our school overseas. We had always planned to do more English home school during the school break, but

M got a Redwall Cookbook for Christmas and we have been making a lot of stuff from there! Loamhedge Legacy Nutbread. It's a biscuit with nuts in it. Really good.Well, M is long gone in the Redwall universe. It's all she talks about. She quotes it randomly throughout the

When K was a few weeks old, his one cousin came down to meet him! This is definitely the best way to meet your cousin.My sister and brother-in-law made the drive down a few weeks after K was born to meet him. I was just coming out of my

H had a birthday less than a month after we had a baby and we managed to celebrate! Look at me cooking!It's been a rough few years of birthdays for H. I usually do a "birthday week" of cooking for him where he chooses an entire week

We have always run our home school years from January to December, so we've just started a new one! Big change for this year is that G is in his first year of "light" home school: reading one book and spending about ten minutes on handwriting every day. We also

Last post about 2020! K had his first Christmas when he was only ten days old. He had a frown most of the time. There's the frown.On Christmas morning, both grandparents were here since K had just been born, but we had a little celebration just by ourselves before

Catching up on the rest of last year pre-baby, I had a birthday and G finished learning how to read! He totally rocked learning to read.I don't know what on earth caused it, but seriously, G was the easiest to teach how to read out of the three kids

Part 7 Summary: Last one in the series! Poverty Point: a little... underwhelming. But I'm really into history. Here's the wikipedia page if you want to see that. The main mound complex.We finally visited Poverty Point! It's a prehistoric monument made of earth (which means it's hills made of

Part 6 Summary: Civil Rights Museum was about 100 times better than we expected, Memphis barbecue is not as good as Texas barbecue. Trying Memphis barbecue. We were so happy to be able to eat at the restaurant! We were the only ones on the patio!After Mammoth Cave (and

After leaving the Smoky Mountains, we headed to Mammoth Cave National Park, which I had never heard of before. Part 5 Summary: Only some of us think caves are cool, stargazing is awesome. At the entrance to the cave. Since it's an enclosed space we had to wear masks.We

Last post about the Smoky Mountains part of our trip! Part 4 Summary: Slow vacations are the best. Overall, we LOVED this part of the trip. It was so restful to stay somewhere for so many days and being able to cook and eat dinner in our place was actually

Part 3 Summary: The fall is definitely a better time to see the crowded parts of the Smokies; seeing early pioneer buildings makes history much more interesting. Kids (and adults) apparently love watching water mills.Well, one of the most popular things to do in the Smokies is this 12

Summary of Part 2: We love waterfalls! M is a serious hiker. At Laurel Falls (my favorite hike)We spent our second day in the Smokies doing waterfall hikes, which we all thoroughly enjoyed. The first hike was to Laurel Falls and it was our "big" hike for

Summary of Part 1: Clingman's Dome is not worth doing; I've never really seen a forest in the fall. At the top of Clingman's DomeWell, after an adjustment to G's meds in October brought him a lot closer to being potty trained (but not all the way, which is why

Well, I have done a terrible job of keeping up with blog posts in 2020, and it seems like the further we got in the year, the worse I got. Art night to teach the concept of overlapping. It was really easy!So, before I tell you about the last

The kids had their first Halloween in the States that they can remember, and let's just say that they're fans. The kids in their costumes. Can you tell who they are before you read it in the next paragraph?We dress up and go to a harvest festival thing at

I mean, I've lived almost my whole life on the Gulf Coast, so I know what "fall" is like here. But after having lived in a place with four seasons for a few years, it really feels like I'm getting ripped off here. Coloring while listening to Redwall

You know, back in the day I decided I didn't want to be a full-time home school mom. And now that I am one involuntarily, it turns out that I definitely don't want to be one! Watercolors!I mean, okay I'm not miserable or anything. And I don't think the

Turns out I still don't like the beach very much. But the kids have had a change of heart. We didn't bring G's life jacket down from H's parents, so we had to make do with arm floaties. I didn't even know they still made those things.It's the sand

After staying apart for so long because of the virus, we felt like it was probably safe enough to drive up and spend some time with H's parents. I think everyone enjoyed the trip! Turns out E didn't really need the life jacket. But we didn't realize that until the

With all this time in the States, one of the biggest changes to our day to day schedules is all the extra reading! E reads to EVERYONEOf course, there are lots of other changes too, but this one is more interesting for being less expected. Especially since the (virtual) summer

The kids got invited by my sister's in-laws to come see the baby cow on their small farm. It had only been born about 24 hours before! G was shocked that the milk in his cup is the same as the milk the calf was drinking.I guess this is

We usually skip our regular monthly family art night when we're in the States because it's too hard to find time and supplies to do it, and also random kid crafts happen here. Which actually I can't really figure out why that is. That NEVER happens where we live overseas.

I can hardly believe the little boy is getting so big... E and I had a coffee date in the park (it's decaf)If we had gone back home when we thought we would, I had already decided to start teaching G to read once the girls were back in

One question we get A LOT is: What's going on with the girls' schools? The girls have discovered Grandma's jewelry boxWell, the short answer is that M's school started several months ago and she's the only one not there. They've made some changes to compensate for the virus (for example,