Reeve...He's 10 and Independent!

Reeve has undergone some huge life changes this past year. I remember last year when he was so different from the boy we have today. He was shy and didn't want to do anything new. We went to a homeschooling potluck and he refused to get out of the car because he wore his swimsuit and it was too cold for swimming. The other kids he saw he did not know and no one else was wearing a swimsuit...that he saw. We finally coaxed him out of the car and he ended up having a blast.
Now? Well now he has decided, all on his own, that he wants to go to public school. Whoa! He's really excited about it too! This is huge for him and for our family, but overall I'm hopeful that it will be a good change and he will not be too disappointed. He says he wants to learn more, so hopefully he will!
At the beginning of the summer I gave him a watch that had a 'stop watch' capability. This coincided perfectly with the library's summer reading program. Each week the kids log their reading time and then record that at the library. It takes FOREVER, but Reeve was very into it. They get so many bingo numbers called for x minutes of reading. Each week Reeve would have 50+ bingo numbers...that takes a lot of time, and with little Stella in a library full of books to topple off the shelves it's kind of no fun for me...but I'm a patient girl and I patiently waited for Reeve and Kyle to log their hours. BTW Kyle got a stop watch too and he did an amazing job logging 29 hours of reading this summer.

Above is Reeve with the Librarian. Reeve logged 109.75 hours in the month of July. The librarian said he blew everyone else out of the water. We are very proud of both our boys! Any good book suggestions for a 5th Grader? Reeve has decided to read the Harry Potter series again for the 4th time...um let's see he started book 1 on Tuesday...finished it Wednesday...now it's Saturday and he's on book 3. He's read the Artemis Fowl series 3 times. He likes mystery (but not too scary), he likes action (but not violence), he likes historical fiction (but it better not be boring), and of course he loves pirates. He's read Treasure Island 3 times too, and I've read Peter Pan too many times to count. He like's series books...he didn't really like the Redwall series...they kind of bored him. Any other ideas? Kyle is easy to please...give him an Almanac or even a dictionary...that kid is happy reading anything!
Reeve's other new passion as of late is making breakfast muffins. I'm not a big breakfast eater...give me a hot cup of tea (or coffee with plenty of soymilk, a touch of maple syrup, and a dollop of cocoa mix) and I'm good to go until 10am or so...this isn't so good for a hungry, growing boy who doesn't like cereal. I've been making granola which is good, but nothing beats hot muffins in the morning. We had some ripe bananas and Reeve got out my FAVORITE cookbook by Crescent Dragonwagon (yes that's her real name!), The Passionate Vegetarian (thank you Elena!!!), and looked up a recipe for banana spice cake.

First thing he did was to organize my kitchen as best as he could. So cute the way he was prepared by getting all the measuring devices he could find.

So serious! Then he set to work reading the recipe. I try to stay back and let him do it all! He doesn't want my help anyway...he prefers to do it all on his own.

He's a very precise at measuring! I'm bummed because I didn't get a picture of the 2 beautiful loaves of banana bread that he made. They did not stick around long!