Monday, June 29, 2009

A year of Homeschooling!

Here's to a year of homeschooling! :)

Ruth officially finished her last day of Kindergarten on Saturday! Whoo! She is now on her way to 1st grade! Wow. She's learned to read and write (in cursive!) and add and subtract! We're still working on tying shoes... but overall she's all set! It's been hardest for her to be homeschooled, I think... she's so active and tactile and relational... Hannah would like friends to do school games with and Benjamin would love to play some sports with his buddies. But we can tell that Ruth enjoys learning more with people and while doing things! She has done well, though, even as the only kindergartner here! She also went to an Armenian preschool (Inchuig) two days a week with our tutor's daughter. She got to graduate from Inchuig last week with some of her Armenian friends. She did great there but it was overwhelming, too! She made some friends but with the language barrier, she was pretty shy! We're proud of her for being out there doing her best!
--This is our 100 Days of Homeschooling Party that we had back in March! Whoo! 100! Cake and candies and paints and balloons! Par-tee!


Hannah has gotten so responsible! She is enjoying writing; she is creative and artistic. This year she told me she loves Math, too! Go, girl! (That isn't my strongest subject...) She has always loved the singing and Bible part of school and will watch those parts over again while she does her seatwork. After school she loves to play school with Ruth and Elijah (and Benjamin when he'll do it!). She says she wants to be a teacher! Hopefully next year we'll be able to hook up with another missionary family that has a boy and girl in between Benjamin and Hannie. Then they'll have some friend time and Hannah will like that! Daddy has also begun to teach Hannah some piano lessons! She's excited about that.

Benjamin loves to learn. Even when he's not doing school, he's reading a book or watching a documentary about the states or the presidents. He loves knowledge! I wouldn't have to do anything to help him in school but say - Go! Learn! and he would! Math is the one subject that has been harder for him. We're doing the whole Abeka curriculum and at the school they were at before they used some Abeka, but not their math. So he switched curriculums for that subject and this has been a little harder for him.... Again, not my strong suit so Daddy and Benjamin have spent some time together with Math. For science and history he got to study some of his favorite things this year: the ocean, space, the Civil War... I think that before he did the class he knew more then what they taught him! He's read and studied all those things a lot already! Heh. Right now we're doing the Iowa Basic Tests! Go Benjamin!

Next year Elijah will be old enough for Preschool - four years old! We're still trying to figure out just what we'll do for him. I have done some numbers and letters with him but nothing serious. He's learned a lot just living with four older siblings! And now he's learning some Armenian, as well! Pretty cool for a little guy.

We've enjoyed homeschooling and are preparing to order next years curriculum any day now! What an accomplishment for the Crawford family! A year of Homeschooling under our belt! :)

allergic to cleaning

I have had a few allergies or skin problems in the past few months!

First, I had some foot infection between my pinky toe (and the one next to it... does that toe have a name??). I went to the doctor a couple times during the month of May and had different medicines to apply and creams and then some oral pills... It seems to be better now. So I'm hoping that it stays away. In the end the skin doctor said something about athletes foot but I'm still not totally convinced! Maybe that and something else... I had some trouble with my foot back when I was pregnant with Elijah, so 5 years ago, and it's always been a little bit funky since then! But they say skin things are hard to figure out so since it hasn't bothered me, until May when it got infected and swollen, I've just let it be. But now I've had the chance to visit the hospital here and check all that out in case we ever need to go there again in the future! Heh. My sweet jan (my friend), Marine, came along with me to all the dr. visits and to get the medicines and stuff... Only a good friend can go with you and see your infected foot, right!? :)

--The pic is just to show you my foot's okay now! :)

I've also had the typical sneezey allergies. One day I rode the taxi into town with Marine and Nadela after they were here to tutor/babysit and as we rode I think I sneezed like 40 times! I don't know if it was just spring pollen or dust in the taxi or maybe cigarette smoke (LOTS of smokers here!)... I dunno but I about blew my head off during that 20 minute ride into town! Heh.

Then just before we left for Turkey, I got some big rash type thing all over! Can you believe it? We had friends over the day before and I swept all over the house and moped and cleaned... and it was hot so I was sweaty... I did change my clothes but didn't take a whole shower. Then that night after our friends left, I noticed some white, itchy bumps on my neck. I've gotten one or two small mosquito type white bumps ever since I was little and we've thought it was an allergy to cats... But these small bumps got bigger and bigger. Of course, our electricity went out that night so there was no hot water for me to take a good shower! I rinsed off the best I could and did shower when the hot water came back! But the next day... I was all itchy and the white bumps were getting bigger and all over me! I put our aloe vera on and laid in bed (the day before we left for Turkey when we had tons of packing to do...)! That night I got some Allegra from Nick's and Olivia's place and that seemed to help. But when we left the next morning for Turkey, I still had a few fading bumps... By the time we got to Turkey it all seemed to be gone and they haven't come back since then.

So I guess I'm officially allergic to cleaning! Poor me, huh?! ;)

Turkey

To retreat or not to retreat...


We were able to take our first Missionary Retreat in Turkey this year! We didn't know if we'd make it because of finances, which is what most missionaries say. But all of the leaders in missions encourage it because looking back they can see that those who do not retreat are typically the ones who leave the field or burn out or have to take some other time or medical time later down the road. So the leaders who look out for us say: Go to your retreat!

For us, it was a good chance to meet a few other "M's" working in our area. It's good to see what's going on around you and to know who is there. We were glad to make connections and especially glad for our kiddos to make some connections and to see that they're not alone in this overseas - MK life! Benjamin was one of the few (only) boys! But he did well, besides a few days of stomach trouble! Hannie made a good new friend from Moldova. Ruth made friends with everybody she laid eyes on! Ha. It's good for her to have some extended family to love on and be loved by. Although we had to watch her because others around the hotel thought she was pretty sweet, too, and we didn't know everyone! She had to be taught a little bit about strangers and who it was okay to be with... Elijah got to be included in the big kids class! He's Mr Four now and not a baby. He only had one accident in his pants... (arg... but he's soo much better now then before... lots of changes lately for a little man!) They had great teachers and are still talking about them like they're our new family!


We had mornings and evenings of meetings and open afternoons to go to the pool or beach or just to lay in our room! Ha. (We did some of that for Benjamin's sake... poor guy!) We meet together for meetings in the mornings and had a guest speaker encourage us in the evenings. It was nice to worship in English with Americans and hear sermons in English, too! We went into town one day with some friends and had Burger King ice creams! Lots of people went to Starbucks but since we're not huge coffee drinkers, we just got brownies to share! Yum. Fun to get to do those things that we haven't done for a few months!

I could share notes and things with you from our meetings... but I'm not sure that's what you're looking for on a blog?? :)

Ephesus
One extra treat for us is that we got to tour the ruins of Ephesus. Paul spent like 3 years there and you can read about it in Acts. Then he also wrote his letter to the Ephesians which you can read, too! :) It was totally cool to walk the streets that Paul had walked. To try to go back in time and imagine who walked there and what life was like back then. We had a friend stop along the tour and read from Ephesians about the different people finding unity there. It was an interesting experience for us. I took tons of pics if you wanna see them at our flickr site! While we walked through ruins on a 1oo degree afternoon, another friend of ours watched the kids and took them swimming at the pool!! Thanks, Mary!!! :) We all liked that arrangement. Although Benjamin was torn about whether to come with us or stay and swim... he's our history lover. In the end a cool pool with friends won out! Hannah told us to take pictures and they'd look at them! Heh.


Traveling to Turkey:
Since the boarder between Turkey and Armenia are closed... we had to fly up to Riga, Latvia and then back down to Istanbul, to Izmir, and then drive the hour to the hotel. Latvia is way up by Finland so that's a long way to go when we're down by Iran! Loooong flights to go and come back.


When we got off the plane in Izmir to find the guy who would take us to the hotel, the sign he held said Benjamin Crawford! Awesome. So Benjamin was the man of the family for a while! :)

Every night we had our doors open to catch the breeze (the hotel only ran the AC for like 3 hours at night...) and they did a concert down in the little amphitheater outside our window... so we learned their routine pretty well! Bedtime music... it started at like 10. (Supper started at 7:30!!)

On the way back it was over 24 hours to get home! When we got on the planes, Lijah would be asleep even before we got in the air! We got home and crashed... talk about jet lag just from visiting the country right next door to you!

Our flight from Riga to Yerevan left at 12:30 AM... and the sun was still setting when we boarded the plane! Kinda cool... it's up close to St Petersburg where they have the "White Nights".

Home
We were glad to get home and contemplated what makes home - home. ND will always be "home" but we were glad to feel like this was "home", too. I don't know if it's where your things are, where your routine is, where your friends are, where things are familiar... probably all of those things together?! We're here and together and home! One of our speakers said her and her husband decided where ever they were, they would make "home". Since they travel so much. Ruth does a good job of that! To her, we lived in Turkey for a week! :) The speaker also talked about making your home be home, letting God dwell in you and being at home with Him, and then our Home in heaven which we should always remember... Someday we'll really be home.