Happy Birthday!

Today is Kevin's Birthday! Happy Birthday Hubby! Thought I'd list some thing that I like about him, so here it goes:

• he loves God
• he has a passion for playing string instruments
• he loves serving at church
• he's faithful to his quiet times
• he loves hanging out with our boys
• he enjoys teaching our boys any number of things
• he'll get down on the floor and play the same games with the boys over and over again
• he enjoys reading
• he has a good job
• he likes, most days, that good job
• he likes to cook
• he likes cooking enough, I barely have to cook on weekends
• he's an encourager
• he takes lead on disciple with the boys
• he helps around the house, a lot!
• he's fairly even keeled
• I still enjoy being around him as much as I did when we first started dating, but it's better because we have a history now
• we have fun taking the boys places and telling them about things that happened there (King Street Blues was really good last night! One of our first dates was there 14 years ago.)
• he's the love of my life
  

Happy Birthday Honey,

Woo hoo

It's Saturday morning, the weather (at least from inside) looks beautiful. Yesterday, Hurricane Earl left us with gray skies all day! As it's Kevin's birthday tomorrow, we had chocolate croissants from Trader Joe's. Those things are so yummy!

Love waking up feeling refreshed, that hasn't happened in a few days. Hope that feeling lasts through out the day. It would be nice to have a full day of feeling good!

Pizza Party Review

Earlier this summer, I volunteered to help review some of Amanada Bennett's Download and Go Unit studies. The first for the boys and I has been Pizza Party, which we received for free for reviewing it. It's been a blast because I'd been wanting to use this one for awhile now. At our house, we've been making pizza on Friday nights for about 9 years. It really seemed like a great way to get some history, geography, and art into our lives based off of a food we already enjoy.

For me, I have enjoyed the amount of information that is put into this unit. There are many links to Italian cities, various individuals, video's on making pizza, fun science projects, and so much more. Another feature I really appreciate are the links take you to the pages for the lap book pages for the day and a link to take you back to the page you were on. It's so easy to move around the down load with these and to be able to print what you need when you need it ~ I generally don't have time to print out everything at one time, let alone figure out which pages I need more than one copy. Being able to jump around like this, is absolutely wonderful to me.

The boys most favorite parts have been a couple different things. For Thing Two, it's been the art work, he really enjoyed making his self portrait on Day 2. It was neat to hear the two of them working together (Thing One did some self portraits for Cub Scouts and was "coaching" Thing Two on how to make a good picture!). Thing One has been enjoying the history ~ learning about how pizza came to America, people like Marco Polo, Vivaldi, Galileo, and doing some map work.

I think when Friday rolls around this week, the boys are going to enjoy our dinner a bit more with more knowledge of their favorite food now. We so look forward to working through more of Amanda's unit studies.

Happy Eating,

Happy September 1

Yes, September first! Ninth month of the year! Four days till Kevin's birthday. Public schools start in 6 more mornings around here. Six more full days of the pool being open, including today. Wednesday, which means sheets and towels get laundered around here.

What does September 1 mean for you this year?

My lists of hopes is long for the day and first on the list is hoping that my body allows me to accomplish my wish list!

Have a great day,

Wrap up of Knights and Castles

The family and I went to the Maryland Renaissance Festival yesterday to wrap up our unit study on Knights and Castles. Fortunately, it was a fairly nice day for it! We watch guys swallow swords, joisting, how to be a Knight, tried to learn to juggle, watched jesters and story tellers.

The guy that swallowed swords, spoons, and balloons!

Stockades!
Sign says Glutton!
Thing One above, Thing Two below

Next three photos are
from the jousting arena.
It sure was warm in that area with
no shade. Can you imagine
wearing all that armor?

The jesters were funny!

Another blog hop

and this weeks theme - "A Day in the Life Week" from over at Heart of the Matter. What follows, is a tentative schedule of our days. There are so many variables, that can make it change. So here's what a day looks like around here:

• breakfast
• get ready for the day
• few chores
• school - in random order, we change it around to keep it fun
• possible free time if school is finished early
• lunch
• finish up school, if needed
• extra activities (field trip, nature walk, fun stuff, bikes, scooters, library, etc.)
• errands, if any are needed
• straighten up some before dinner
• dinner
• family devotions
• free time
• bed time routine (showers, reading, etc.)
• lights out

Do you like how I don't list times? I've found that if I try to keep strictly to a clock, some things get missed, for example, when they're really getting something and want to do more or almost finished and just need a few more minutes. That's an advantage of homeschooling, being able to give a bit more time when needed. We do have general guide lines, however, for when things should happen. For example, we try to get a bulk of our school finished during the morning hours. We also try to keep lights out around 8:30 to 9:00.

That's our life, in a nutshell!

Medieval Feast

On the menu tonight~

Appetizers:

• meatballs
• apples
• cheese

Beverages:

• lemonade
• apple cider

Meal:

• chicken
• potatoes
• bread

Dessert:

• cheese cake
• rice pudding

As there was no electricity during this time period, we dined by candle light.


To make our 20th century home a bit more castle like, decorations were provided by Thing One and Thing Two:

Toys!

Absolutely LOVE when the kids toys can be used for educational purposes. A number of years ago, Thing One and Thing Two asked my parents for a castle similar to this one. They both have one and enjoyed playing with them for awhile. It got to the point that they became occasional toys, but I wasn't ready to "retire" them. This week, I'm very thankful we didn't. It has been very useful to point out various words like:

• battlements - stone walls
• crenels - gaps in wall to shoot arrows out
• merlons - solid place to duck behind

After today's reading from "Castle Diary" by Richard Platt, I'm thankful this castle doesn't have a garderobe in it. You see, in medieval times, it was their version of a toilet and indoor plumbing. The major difference, is that the plumbing, instead of leading to a sewer system like we know, lead to a whole in the castle wall where things got dumped into the moat. How would you like to be the Gong-Farmer who's job it was to remove the piles of waste or unclog the pipes?

Anyhoot, Thing Two put on a short show with the castle and knights. Here's his "short":