Flex

Ah, the essence of homeschooling - flexibility. I hate being flexible - I'm a schedule, routine oriented person  - if I want spontaneity, I plan a block of time for it. Homeschooling and travelling is not conducive to such thinking, and it's slowly getting pounded out of me. Connecticut has presented us with changes to our routine and I think I've had the hardest time adapting. Don't get me wrong - we really like Norwalk a lot, and Connecticut in general, but this is the first time in many years that we've had to completely re-arrange our lives around a different work schedule. It's changed how and when we do our "schoolwork" a little bit, and forced us to scale down the scope of our out-of-town trips and explorations. It can be frustrating at times, but it's teaching us flexibility. We're a bit spoiled with big blocks of free time, but we've purposely set up our lives to make it that way. I get cranky when our routine is disrupted, but it's forcing us to find creative ways to have as much family time as possible in between Christie's bizarre work schedule. That can't be bad.

Christie typically has 1 - 1.5 days off at at time, so rather than say, a three day trip to New York, we have to only plan enough for a single day. This week it rained on the day we planned an excursion, so we went with something more simple. To be honest, it was a nice break from trains, taxis, rails, and crowds. We found a little sports complex over near New Haven, and because we went on a Tuesday, we were practically the only ones there. Bowling, mini-golf, arcade games, lunch at Red Robin, some shopping in the mall...it was a nice change of pace from museums and apartment hunting. We got a little wet during golf, but it made for a memorable day.

Sometimes you just need a big juicy hamburger.
Red Robin is the go to place. 

The boys are also playing soccer, so Saturday mornings are currently filled up with that.

We've got a quasi-tradition of eating pizza at a delicious "organic" pizza place called Savor nearby after soccer. We didn't know it was organic when we first ate there, but the pizza is so incredible we keep going back. 

The boys prefer meat-lovers

Mom tried a Mediterranean pizza with Avacado and Cucumber Sauce 

Yesterday, Christie took the boys to a park to give dad some down-time and let them run off a little more energy since they've been cooped up here most of the week with the rain. 

After which they came home and made toffee cookies. 

So life is going on, summer is coming. I know some of you follow the blog for actual homeschooling reasons (not that all this stuff isn't homeschooling), but I'll do a post soon on what's been happening with the boy's academic progress, plans for summer, etc.