StearnsFamily » About Liam

I’m Officially a Soccer Mom!

carolee — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 03:14:42 +0000

The boys both played their first soccer games this weekend! They are playing in the co-ed neighborhood league, with an emphasis on fun, so I don’t even know if their teams “won” the games. All of their practices and games are at the park down the street from us, and the weather was gorgeous this weekend, so we spent a lot of time down there. The boys are enjoying themselves immensely, and learning some skills, too. There’s even a mini-me league, so Cara will be able to play in the Spring. Hopefully this is just the beginning of many fun seasons of soccer!

Service Projects

carolee — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 18:30:02 +0000

The “CBF Grasses” album contains pictures from one of the boys’ Spring service projects: the Chesapeake Bay Foundation’s “Grasses for the Masses.” The project involves growing underwater grasses in your home for two months and then planting them in a tributary to the bay. The grasses help fight erosion, filter the water, and provide food and shelter for wildlife. Liam kept a Grass Journal in which he recorded the water level, temperature, and activity every day. Check out the pix for details.

Brian and the boys rescued a box turtle from a lawn mower while helping the Neighborhood Watch crew clean up an unoccupied community pool. We’re currently keeping Mr. Turtle in our backyard, but plan to return him to the “wild” soon (pictures to come). Liam and Evan also helped a local homeschooling group label storm drains around our neighborhood with “NO DUMPING” signs. The boys have learned a lot, helped the environment, met great people, and had fun to boot!
We’re in the process of researching and thinking up more projects to get involved in – I’ll let you know what we come up with!

Accuracy

carolee — Thu, 31 Jan 2008 14:47:55 +0000

We’re riding along in the car on the way home from the nature center yesterday, and Liam asks me one of his questions that means he’s been mulling something over:

“Mom, what comes after ‘quintillion’?”

In the second that I paused to consider whether ’sextillion’ is a word (it is), Evan piped up with a much more accurate answer:

“Quintillion-one.”

Happy New Year!

carolee — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 22:44:11 +0000

Quote of the year (so far):

Evan: “I want to be a policeman when I grow up. But I’m going to drive a red mustang to trick people.”

Liam: “I don’t know what I want to be when I grow up… But I think I’m going to invent a solar-electric powered car and sell it for under $300.”

Happy Birthday, Liam!

carolee — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 16:16:50 +0000

Liam’s birthday was last Wednesday, and he finally turned SEVEN! He’s been telling everyone he was “six and eleven twelfths” for the last month, while I’ve been saying “almost seven.” He’s now over four feet tall (he’s grown almost two inches since Lori was born)! It’s hard to believe, but I guess that’s what happens when you keep feeding them.

We’ve been celebrating all week with friends and family, including a TaeKwonDo party at TopKick. Liam asked his friends to bring donations for Toys For Tots instead of gifts for himself (it wasn’t his idea, but he embraced it enthusiastically), and everyone was SOOoooo generous! Yesterday we dropped off a grocery cart FULL of toys and books so that other kids might be as happy as Liam is this time of year! He continues to grow into the intelligent, responsible, loving person we’ve always known he would. Keep it up, Liam, and Happy Birthday!

Boys helping out

brian — Sun, 21 Oct 2007 13:24:52 +0000

Liam, Evan, and I had an absolutely fantastic (if exhausting) day yesterday. In the morning we went and helped the Chesapeake Bay Foundation plant bushes and water grasses along a streambed through a local golf course. There were at least 100 people there by midday, along at least a 1/2 mile stretch of the stream. The boys learned all about erosion, watersheds, healthy streams, rivers, bays, and oceans, and most importantly community service. New: here’s a picture the CBF organizer took of us:

After the CBF event we went over to Ted and Esther’s to build an absolutely enormous piece of play equipment for Lucas. Ted had acquired this thing off of Craig’s List, and had subsequently reconstructed fully a quarter of the structural pieces (due to plenty of rot and a little insect damage). Ted had every piece labeled and prepped, with the necessary tools all laid out and ready to go. It’s always nice to do things for friends, but it’s even nicer to do things for friends who are so organized.

I’m looking forward to a slower day today, but only because it feels so rewarding to slow down after having been so helpful!

Great minds think… differently.

carolee — Tue, 09 Oct 2007 16:49:58 +0000

Liam: “Mom, may I please have a clementine?”

Evan: “I like to call them pumpkins. Because they look like pumpkins.”

Liam (with a look of disdain) “But they are clementines.”

Evan (with his mischievous grin): “Mom, may I please have a pumpkin?”

Cara (with an equally mischievous grin): “Mommy, may I please have a pumpkintine?”

“So, how’s the homeschooling going?”

carolee — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 13:36:56 +0000

Yesterday was one of those early autumn days when you hate to be stuck inside. Good thing we weren’t! After I got Cara and Evan out the door with their school carpool, I got a shower while Liam practiced the piano. Then we got out of the house! Liam is doing a nature study at the park near our house, so we headed that way. I drove because of Lori and our stuff (and because we needed to leave straight from there), but Liam ran the whole way (his choice).

Liam has picked a spot in the woods at the side of the creek to conduct a nature study. He takes his digital camera and field journal and records his observations. We have been visiting about once a week and will continue throughout the year to see how things change through the seasons and weather. (He was shocked to see that with so little rain, the creek has actually stopped running.) We did some exploring and investigating before heading back.

After a quick stop at the grocery store to get lunch for a picnic (where Liam conducted the self-checkout), we picked Cara and Evan up from school (where they had spent most of their time outdoors, too). We headed over to Green Spring Gardens Park. We had a lovely picnic amidst the beautiful flowers, visited the greenhouse, and walked through the woods to the pond (where we saw frogs among the lily pads and experienced a flock of Canada geese take flight towards us). All the while, Liam was identifying the (conveniently labeled) plants for us and comparing leaf shapes. We ended up in the horticultural center where we found a display on monarch butterflies, including a live caterpillar munching on a plant. We read the books and did the puzzles that were out.

On the way to the car, Cara stopped to pick up a fallen leaf, and Liam and Evan grabbed some, too. Liam announced, “Look, Mom, it’s an Eastern Red Oak leaf!” “How can you tell?” I asked. He cocked an eyebrow at me and pointed to the sign at the base of the tree. I smiled. “How could you tell if it wasn’t labeled?” “From the shape of the leaf… if I could remember it.” So they each brought their leaves home with them. As soon as we got home, the boys raced to the crayons. They did leaf rubbings (their idea, not mine), and then traced the leaves and cut them out. Evan also drew a tree with relatively-accurately-shaped leaves (it’s now on the fridge).

Liam then decided to help himself to the pile of left-over fifth-grade math worksheets (that I recently discovered while unpacking a box from my teaching days). He can usually do these by himself, and does so of his own free choosing, for fun.

When I tucked everyone in last night, Liam said he wasn’t quite tired enough to go to sleep, so he was going to stay up and read some of the books he checked out from the library about Apollo 13 and space station Mir. I’m not sure how late he stayed up, but he’s still asleep at 9:30 this morning.

So, yes, I do have a curriculum and a plan and materials, etc. But only as a back-up for when we don’t have something better to do. Sometimes I wonder when that will be…