Wordless Wendesday

One Day

What a difference one day can make. Twenty four hours and a couple doses of an antibiotic. Thing Two is feeling SO MUCH BETTER he's back to annoying his brother. Thanks folks, for praying for my "baby".

We began the school week with a child that is still sick. Thing Two has had a bad ear ache since Friday night to Saturday. Right now, he's at the doctors with Kevin, who volunteered to work from home today and help out some.

I am enjoying this, in that I can work with each of our boys, one on one today.

An update, even before I post - WOW!! Thing Two has an ear infection and a possible ruptured ear drum. No wonder he's been in a lot of pain this weekend. Hoping the antibiotics help quickly!!

Have a great week everyone!!



P.S. Will update the books we are rowing, on the side bar, a little later today.

Button kind of day!!

Buttons, Buttons, Buttons!! There are tons of them in this house and not all of them are on our clothing either. I've bought canisters of spare buttons and I've acquired buttons.

Today, I had a short burst of crafting, with, you guessed it buttons. First was in the basement, hanging three mirrors in our new bathroom. They were hung on nails with big heads (think that is the right term) so that buttons could be hot glued on. Here are some photo's of the finished product ~



The color of the ribbons are pretty, but should I change my mind, I've got ribbon to match the larger mirror.

This is a bookmark made out of ribbon. The ribbon was thread through the holes, looped over, then through the second set of button holes on each button (yes these are two buttons - a purple round one and a wavy edged, white heart). There is another set of buttons at the other end of the ribbon. My little bible cover is brown and a light purple color, so this matches nicely.

That's it for crafting today. Have a great weekend!

Good School Day

It was definitely one of the better school days we've had in awhile. We got along, things were accomplished, no tears shed, generally speaking a good day. I'm particularly proud of Thing One. He has often struggled with writing; coming up with ideas, formating sentences, putting them in a good order. Today, we played catch up on a bit of school and one assignment was to write a Tall Tale about "The biggest fish I ever caught", based loosely off of Higgin's Bend Song & Dance. He stuck with it and finished it quickly, for him.

Thing Two had fun today with his art ~ we focused on Origami. He had fun making airplanes and learning how to make a sail boat/hat.
Well, now it's time for me to put my "house cleaning" hat on for awhile and get some chores done. Hope you have a great day!

Busy School Day

We have gotten a lot of school type things accomplished today. Some of it book related, some of it nature related, and now Thing Two is picking up a little Spanish as he plays his Diego game.

There was a lot of time spent outdoors this afternoon, too. Here are some photo highlights ~

Decided over the weekend, that we'd work a little harder
on memorizing the times tables. It's such a nice day, would be a shame
not to do some of the work outside. Had them skip count, the 3's, as I
wrote them on our drive way. Then I asked what 3 x _____ equealed.
Thing One would have to tell me and jump onto the number. We
did enough of that to hit all the numbers 1 - 10 a couple times.

While we were out doing math, I was able to
finally photograph a salamander.

Need to double check, but I think this might be a
bee hive in a tree.
Turns out this is a Burr tree, with an irregular growth,
sort of like a wart. Makes for interesting carvings.

Another item to check on ~ think this is a heron.
I was right on the heron, but to be more specific,
it's a female Great Blue Heron.

Playing in the water. Thing Two was actually running through
the water, tripped, and fell into the water (not during this photo
though, a bit later). He was soaked by the time we got home.

Thing One was having fun walking across, bare foot. Both boys
really enjoyed playing in the water. While we were in this area, I also
pointed out a bend in the river and tied it back to Higgins Bend Song & Dance.
This is such a wonderful area, I'm hoping to make it out more often,
even when we row Owl Moon. I'd love for the four of us to get out one night.

This was the first time walking through the woods that we came across
deer AND I had a camera. Very cool!

Beginning of the week

It's the beginning of the week, it's the beginning of a new day. A day that the Lord has made, let us rejoice and be glad in it.

I do have reason to rejoice today as well. When I sat down to lesson plan (think it was Friday), I realized I should have looked for school books at our local library sooner. If they don't have them on the shelve, it can take any number of days for an inter-library loan to come in. I put a few on hold; not much I could do but wait.

Chuckled this morning as I thought of my blog and the sidebar. I can easily add the picture of Thing One's book, but for Thing Two it would be a bit more difficult as I didn't know what book would come in or if I'd have to look at a different FIAR volume and see if I had any of those books. I figured I'd just put in question marks for his picture.

I checked e-mails just a bit ago. "Grandfather's Journey" came in and is available for pick-up. YEAH!! I'll swing by this afternoon with a few books that are due today or later this week and pick-up the books on hold. I'll be able to change the pictures on my sidebar later today.

Thanking God for the little things in life that can make me happy.

Test post

This is a test of sorts, to see if I can easily get my new signature to work on the blog without having adverse side effects. Depending upon where I begin typing, the text comes out bold, blue, and underlined. Not quite the look I am going for. My dear husband might be able to fix that for me later.

All because of Sheri . . . . .

I am finally feeling motivated to finish some of my projects around the house. My friend Sheri has been going crazy with fun projects around her house. One was painting one of the doors in her kitchen with chalk board paint for her kids to use. When she blogged about it (see here), probably about a month ago at least, I became a bit frustrated with myself, in that I had everything I needed to do the same and hadn't gotten to it yet.

Today is the day. The boys are off cleaning their rooms upstairs, which means, that if I don't get after them, I have a couple hours to get my own stuff accomplished. I gathered supplies up from the basement, took things off of the door, and got to business. First coat went up well, with minimal clean up. Yeah!! Will see if I need to add a second coat. I'll add a piece of tin for notes and I'll be in business. It's even got me thinking of how I want to redo the wall to the right of the door. HHHHHhhhmmmmmm!!!! Lots of fun things to think of!

Here are some before and after photo's:

The door to the basement prior to paint. Kind of boring and white.

Here's the same door, with the first coat of chalk board paint.
It went up fairly easy. I also decided to paint the trim to the
cat door. Don't think white would have looked to nice on it.

Making changes . . .

. . . . to my blog; slowly, but surely. Spent some time trying to figure out how to change the line between posts to something more me. Kevin helped a lot. I found the code and made the "picture", but just couldn't get it incorporated into existing code and have it work. Thanks Kev!! Now, to figure out how to get the signature to work without changing the color of my text and having it all underlined.

Wifely Wednesday

A friend from Five in a Row has been posting "Wifely Wednesdays" on her blog. After a little consideration about the blog post I wanted to write today, it seemed to fit under this heading; at least I think it does.

It began last night, while at Costco, as we discussed buying Oreo's or making more home made goodies. The Oreos were put back because Kevin mentioned that he'd just open the last roll (which usually has about 14 cookies) and I figured I could make cookies in a few days. Given that, I really didn't think to much more of baking, knowing that between what was in our cart and what was at home, we had everything we needed.

This morning, as groggily made my way to the kitchen for a cup of tea, I found this ~


When I checked in with Kevin a bit later, he said something along the lines of "Well last night you mentioned you'd make cookies and it's kind of hard to do that when the butter is frozen!" That is true, however, we just didn't have the same time line of when the said cookies would be made.

Instead of getting flustered by it, choose to be thankful that he was thinking ahead and after school and lunch today, I made triple chocolate cookies. I put some Hershey's Special Dark Coco Powder in with the flour and used brown and white chocolate chips. Here's how they look ~

All is well, that ends well ~ and smells well.

Double Posting

We got home from Breakaway today and the boys noticed a Praying Mantis on our stoop. Had meant to get a picture, but, of course, I totally forgot.

Later this afternoon a friend had come over to help me for a moment and on the way out noticed it had moved to a potted mum. No sooner than seeing this guy, a hummingbird came to one of the feeders and a salamander went climbing up the wall. After we finished talking, I grabbed the camera and here are the resulting photo's.

Can you see the Praying Mantis in the above picture?
He blends in fairly well.

Here's a close up. He really was quite large.

Really beginning to love this house and the opportunity to find nature things.

Advantage #3 of Homeschooling

This may end up being a series of blogs, but just not set to a particular day of the week or on any particular schedule. I had a great thought to add to the series, but alas, my brain has failed me.

One that comes to mind though, when reviewing the day so far, is how I was woken up. About 7 AM this morning, Thing One comes into my bedroom and announces "Mom, I've finished my math, can we move on to something else now?". Um!! Can I wake up first???? Can I have a cup of tea first? Really need to come up with more independent work for the boys for moments like that.

Monday Musing

How many individuals, who blog, actually write a blog everyday? I really don't know that I could come up with enough original or interesting idea to write about each day. Maybe I'm missing something unique, different. I'm sure if I watched my kids more closely or listened more closely, I'd see or hear something worth repeating, maybe not.

Just a thought; something to think about and ponder.

P.S. just an a side. Just happened to look at the number of posts for September (8) and number for the year (86). So as of today, I've matched the quantity of posts as last September and for the the year 2008. I could stop blogging now and be equal to last year. Probably won't happen though, there's bound to be something funny, amusing, or interesting to write about in the coming days, weeks, or months.

Betty Crocker . . .

I am not. Made a second guitar cake today. This time chocolate. When it came out of the oven, the top was all bumpy, not the smooth (and possibly cracked) like most cakes are when they come out. Just flipped it out of the pan and the head stock (where the knobs are to tune the strings) stayed in the pan.

The cake tastes great, but looks horrible. Will have to bake, yet another cake, tonight after home group. Good thing I had a nap earlier today.


My headless cake. Kevin said I could pass it off as a Steinburger. These guitars and basses have no heads. I looked at it as another opportunity to make a cake and have one at home.








So, we sampled the little bit that didn't come out correctly. The cake may have looked ugly, but it sure tasted good.

Advantage #2 of Homeschooling

This is the week of "Advantages of Homeschooling". I might as well wrap up the week with a post on the same topic.

Woke up this morning tired, exhausted, and generally wiped out. A feeling that even the strongest caffeine in the world couldn't shake. Chalk it up to doing a lot yesterday and not having fully recovered from surgery last week. By mid day I was really missing my nap. This morning decided to go back to bed by around 9 or so and didn't get back up until 11:00 or so.

We haven't gotten dressed or started school. Hoping to get at least some accomplished today, but might just spread it over the weekend as I'm still dragging.

Off to finally get ready for the day, open up the house, and possibly feel better.

Have a great day folks.

Cub Scouting

It's official - we have two Cub Scouts this year. Thing One is a Webelo 1 and Thing Two is a Tiger. We finally got to the point with Thing Two that "he will try scouting for one year" because he wanted to try it one day and not the next. This cycle went on to long that we decided to use parental prerogative. He seemed to enjoy himself last night, although it was a little overwhelming and he thought it would be to hard.

Here are our boys before the meeting:

Advantage of Homeschooling

The Thing's and I went to Wal-mart today. Really thought that it would have been less crowded with public school back in session. WRONG!!! It wasn't even busy with Moms without kids. It was just busy. We got things exchanged, purchased, and headed over to Great Harvest Bread. They make some really good bread and I wanted French Toast for dinner one night soon. At about $5.50 a loaf, it doesn't seem so bad for a meal.

Anyway, back to why I'm blogging today. Thing one asked for Kids Cuisine for lunch; when he asks, it usually means a home made variety. It's actually easy enough to do if you have compartmented plastic plates, just fill each section with something different. I decided to take pictures today, because I thought it was a neat idea. So, without further delay, here are some pictures:



Thing One's choice usually has easy mac, chicken nuggets, and something else. Today I added pretzels and sliced apples.











Thing Two didn't know what he wanted for lunch, so I gave him Cinnamon Toast Crunch cereal, pretzels, and apples. Didn't hear any complaints so it must have been good.








So how is this an advantage of homeschooling? Being able to make your kids a hot lunch (or room temperature in Thing Twos case), at lunch time, and knowing what is going into it.

The Week Ahead

I'm going to start off with a side note in the form of a question: Am I getting in a rut or starting a series with the title "The Week Ahead"?

We're off to another school week, tomorrow. Today was our first holiday of the school year. It was my desire, for this school year, to incorporate some days off that my husband has from work. In all honesty, it's not to difficult when most of the office holidays are days like: Thanksgiving (and the day after), Christmas, New Years, Spring Holiday (which always falls on Good Friday), and Memorial Day (we're usually finished with school by then). This school year though, I wanted to add Labor Day and Presidents day. It's made for a few short weeks in school, but I've quickly learned how to plan around that.

It will be an interesting week, in that it's our first with me still recuperating from surgery. The boys have been good about helping out. So, in theory, school should go well. Hubby has been very helpful and even decided what we're having for dinner tomorrow, so that I don't need to worry about it. Thankfully, a friend wanted to bring us another meal and I may be ready for it as I'm worn out.

The week ahead will still be busy. We'll be starting our co-op later this week, a doctor's appointment for me, and Scouts begins as well. Yikes, haven't even begun working on Thing One's new Webe shirt or brag vest. Got a lot of sewing to do. Hopefully, I'll be able to get it done in time.

I'll update the side bar, in a bit, with the books for the coming weeks. I'm finding it helpful because Thing Two, especially, likes having a picture of the book, for the cover of his lap book. Off to round up books, take a few photo's, and upload them.

Have a great homeschooling week (or regular school as the case may be) friends.

Something to be thankful for!

Today is Kevin's birthday. It's been a fun day for us. We started with chocolate croissants from Trader Joe's. These are the ones that got us started making our own after we tried them last Thanksgiving. Here's a few shots of what Trader Joe's look like:

Here's what they look like out of the package. You really need to read the the directions before going to bed, because it says to let rise over night.

This was the next morning; they rise an incredible amount.












Once cooked to a nice brown, they're light, flaky and good.













My yard sale find today. A guitar cake pan. For a dollar, I couldn't pass it up, especially for hubby on his birthday.















A home made yellow cake. Boy oh boy, does it smell good. Can't wait to try it!!!

Kevin ended up frosting the cake. I was beat this afternoon and napped for a bit.







Another thing to be thankful for today, we got the van back from the auto body shop today. Yeah!! It's more comfortable to ride in my van with having a few stitches.

End of the week

It's been a long week here. We had our usual school to attend to, laundry, dishes, shopping, etc. In addition to the "normal" stuff we also had my van scheduled to be repainted. Cars and cart corals do get along to well when you make a short turn into an empty spot near the coral. That was scheduled for this week because I was scheduled to have my gall bladder removed on Wednesday (that did happen, I have for incisions on my belly to show it). Kevin and I figured having only one car available would be alright this week.

On a sadder side, a friend's, from the Five in a Row boards, 2 year old died this past evening as a result of a car accident. One of those situations where a toddler gets a way all to quickly and wasn't seen by the driver. It's a tragedy that just grips your heart, especially if you have had young children, you know how quickly they can wander away when you believe they are safe.

Today, we wrapped up Gullywashers with a science lesson on reflection and Who Owns the Sun with a science lesson on simple levers. The boys had a lot of fun, going around the house figuring out both, with their dad. Here a few pictures of the fun.

Thing Two demonstrating how golf can have simple levers in the game.

Thing One demonstrating reflection with a mirror
(second photo is of him being silly).