Aquinas Academy Adventures

2008-09-06T00:22:00.001-04:00

Busy, Busy - and WOW!

2008-05-30T14:21:00.002-04:00

First of all, I haven't posted because I've been super busy trying to get back on track with our school work. Teaching 3 (actually 4 as the youngest *has* to be involved, too) is just mind-numbingly busy - love it, but it leaves me very little time for anything else!

I have been blogging here with just a log of what our days/weeks are like, if you are interested in that sort of thing.

Today, though, we have set aside our formal school work to watch a very special program. The Ordinations of the FSSP priests, live on EWTN. We saw one of my parish priests there, the boys thought it was pretty neat to see him on TV! You can check out this link for pictures and commentary. It is truly amazing. My prayers are definitely with those amazing young men!

First Confession and brothers...

2008-04-20T17:03:00.008-04:00

It's been a crazy busy week. Not much to say today, but thought I'd share some pictures.

A2 had his First Confession on Saturday. He wore a tie for the first time, and he looked sooooo handsome!

He was a little nervous, but he did great! The Church is so wise to have this sacrament offered to 7 and 8 year olds. A2 was a bit teary the night before when it finally really sunk in that he had to talk about the things he'd done wrong. I think that's indicative of the development of conscience, and that niggling conscience is so prevalent at this age. How wonderful that our faith gives us a means to obtain the forgiveness of God!

Afterwards, we went out to lunch to celebrate. Look how angelic he looks after receiving the sacrament!

Now for some "brothers" pictures! Here's all of them on the way to church:

Here's N4, being silly at the restaurant:

Here's J1, looking so grown-up!

LOVE this picture of S3 and A2!

Can't believe my guys are getting so big!

Fun with the 5 year old

2008-04-08T11:39:00.002-04:00

Yesterday I took N4 out to the Dollar Store. He was feeling a little sad because on our date this weekend (Yes! We actually had a babysitter and went on a real date, when it *wasn't* a special occasion - first time in, oh - at least 7 years we've done that - it was SO COOL! :-) we stopped at a bookstore and got a couple of books for dh, but they are ones that J1 enjoys, too. So N4 felt left out. "But *I* wanted something! Why didn't you get ME anything?" So, feeling somewhat bad, I decided that he probably just needed some one on one attention, and told him I would take him to the dollar store and give him $2 to spend, and then he could go with me on the rest of my errands. He was thrilled.

Yesterday he was very talkative while we were out. One of the first things he said to me was, "Mom? Did you know that I don't know everything yet?" Giggle. I put a positive spin on it, talking about how much there was to know, and it was *fun* to learn new things. He agreed, thankfully! Later he asked me, out of the blue, "So. How DO you get pregnant anyway?" I about choked - convinced I'd misheard him. I ask him what he meant. "You know - how do you get another child?" Um. Hmm. Thankfully he was satisfied with a rather simple answer. I told him just that mommy parts and daddy parts come together and make a baby, which grows in a special place inside mommies. "Yeah," he said, "that's what my new body book says, you know, the one I got on Easter? I really like that book, mom!" Much (MUCH!) like his oldest brother, he has a complete fascination with the science-y stuff about the human body. J1 and N4 are so similar that it can be kind of eerie!

Later that evening, he had a little melt-down when we asked the brothers to clear the table after dinner and I found him hiding under the computer desk because he didn't want to do it. Of course, I demanded he go out there and pick up a dish, and he had one of the biggest tantrums he's had in quite some time. I explained that we all need to help make the household run smoothly because we're all a family, and he informed me, "I don't want to be in this family any more!" I told him he didn't have a choice about the matter, that we were family, we'd always be family, and no matter what we'd always love him. "You don't really love me!" he said pitifully. Because to a 5 year old, if we REALLY loved him, he'd get whatever he want and do whatever he wants, right? Thankfully he was actually grateful when I went to him and gave him a huge hug, and he later tearfully apologized for everything. "I'm SO sorry about everything, mom!" he says with tear-filled eyes. It's so interesting to see them develop their little consciences.

I find 5 year olds to be such challenging creatures! Funny ones, too, even though they often don't realize it! :-)

Last week's funny...

2008-04-01T13:04:00.003-04:00

Eavesdrop on our dinner table conversation a few nights ago...

J1, "Dad! I can't get that song out of my head. That one that you sang in the car today, about the little bunny in the forest? It just doesn't make sense!"

Dh, "You mean 'Little Bunny Foo-foo?'"

J1, "Aarrrgghhhh! I forgot about the 'foo-foo'"!

Opening Day

2008-03-30T19:53:00.002-04:00

I had hoped to get this post up actually on baseball's Opening Day. Alas, life intervened, but I still have to share my thoughts on this subject near and dear to my heart!

I love baseball. I really, really do. I grew up with baseball. I played T-ball and then softball for many years. My entire family loves baseball. My mom and dad laugh and say they almost didn't get married because my mom didn't want to miss a single minute of the 1968 Tigers' run through the playoffs. Some of my fondest childhood memories involve listening to Tigers baseball - to this day hearing Ernie Harwell's voice brings back long summer days and the freedom of being young. (There has never been, nor will there ever be, another voice of baseball like Ernie Harwell!) The best baseball period ever in my life was , The Roar of '84. The Detroit Tigers went "wire to wire", leading their division the entire season after a record 35-5 start, culminating in a World Series win. That's the only time "my team" has won a championship when I was following them. And it doesn't matter to me. I love baseball, win or lose.

My boys don't play much baseball. We play in the yard a bit, and they did a season with a homeschool baseball league last year. I have so much respect for my friend Megan's family. Her boys are so involved in baseball that she named her blog "Bases Loaded"! I just can't imagine being so busy with 4 different boys on 4 different fields on lots of different days. Being that busy just doesn't go well with my family of homebodies. It might have been different if we had started the boys in t-ball and Little League at the appropriate times - unfortunately, circumstances and finances prevented us from joining teams when they were the right age, and it's now hard for them to step in the middle with their lack of knowledge and skill.

But that's ok - we all still love baseball, and that's what matters. We listen to almost every single Braves game, and we try to go to at least one game a year. We also follow the Tigers and the Minnesota Twins. This year I'm interested in the Diamondbacks, too, since we came close to moving out to Arizona.

Yes, I know that baseball is tainted by drugs and money. I hate "money ball", I far prefer teams that work within their own farm systems and nurture home-grown talent. I despise performance enhancing drugs and the culture that promotes and accepts it. But I think that baseball has always had ups and downs, because it is made up of human beings, with all our failings and strengths. It's one of the best thing about the game - because despite incredible talent, it's still a very human game. Not everyone can imagine growing up to become a hockey player, or a football player. But just about anyone can dream of playing baseball. I love that!

And Opening Day is what it's all about. It's my favorite time of the year. I love spring training, but it's bittersweet, because you always know that some of these guys won't make the team. As the season wears on, some teams are clearly out of contention, which is always a bummer, and sometimes the stress of having a team trying to make the playoffs is a wonderful yet terrible feeling! But Opening Day is grand. Everyone has a chance. Every player could become MVP, every team has a chance at the playoffs.

I just love baseball, and I'm so excited about being able to listen and see it for the next 7 months!

What a sweetie!

2008-03-26T16:54:00.002-04:00

My 11 year old paid me quite the compliment today.

"Mom," he said, "Thanks for answering most of my completely meaningless questions!"

At least he notices that I try to meet his need for a walking, talking encyclopedia - most of the time!

Easter

2008-03-25T13:39:00.002-04:00

This was taken right before we left for the Easter Vigil. I'm so glad we went to the Vigil service (especially since we missed the Christmas Midnight Mass this year due to transportation issues). The Easter vigil was very, very long (almost 3 1/2 hours), and very, very late (it started at 10:30pm, and combined with travel time we didn't get back home until 3am). But every single one of us just loves going to Christmas Midnight Mass and the Easter Vigil. I want to encourage those of you with kids to consider trying a vigil mass next year! We have gone to vigil services as often as we were able to for years. I think we first took J1 and A2 to midnight mass when J1 was almost 3 and A2 was still a baby. When my kids were really little, we would let them go to sleep if they wanted to before mass, then wake them up and carry them to mass in their PJs. Now that they're all a bit older, we just make sure we let them sleep in as long as possible the morning of the vigil service and they stay awake until we leave. Now, we are night owls, which helps - none of my kids are in bed much before 11pm most nights, so it's not much of a stretch for them to stay up until midnight or even 1am. But even years ago, when my kids actually went to sleep at a decent time of night, we could still make it work. We let the youngest ones (those who are younger than First Communion age) fall asleep in the pews during vigil masses. This year S3 and N4 were asleep about an hour into the service. J1 and A2 were awake and paying attention through the whole thing. (A2 is definitely ready for his First Communion next month!)

The Easter Vigil mass at our Latin Mass parish is just absolutely beautiful and amazing. We light the Easter Fire outside, then we all process into the church, where it is dark except for candlelight. The first third of the the mass is in darkness, with bible readings and the renewal of our Baptismal promises. Finally, my favorite part of the whole liturgical year occurs. The lights in the church are flipped on, the altar servers ring the bells, and the choir sings the "Gloria" for the first time since Lent began. Just so beautiful, so moving, to hear, see, and feel Jesus' resurrection!

If you get a chance, check out Pope Benedict's sermon from the Easter Vigil (you can find a transcript here: What Does the Prayer Really Say?) Lots to chew on here, definitely. I liked this part especially:

"(In Baptism) God’s light enters into us; thus we ourselves become children of light. We must not allow this light of truth, that shows us the path, to be extinguished. We must protect it from all the forces that seek to eliminate it so as to cast us back into darkness regarding God and ourselves. Darkness, at times, can seem comfortable. I can hide, and spend my life asleep. Yet we are not called to darkness, but to light."

Hope you all are having a very happy, peaceful Easter season! Blessings to you and yours from me and mine!

Seven Years Ago

2008-03-25T09:55:00.003-04:00

My husband had a stroke. A massive cerebral hemorrhage, to be exact. It's not an anniversary you want to remember, but it's tough to forget.

It haunts me sometimes, to remember waking up that Sunday morning, having no idea how dramatically different things were going to be. Life can change in a heartbeat. I don't know how I could cope with that knowledge without my faith.

It's been seven long years. Years of recovery and job loss and losing just about everything we had except each other. Years of slowly trying to rebuild our life. When it happened, I remember sitting in the ICU waiting room, thinking to myself that this was bad, but it would be ok, and if we could just make it to the 4th of July we'd be fine. It is such a blessing that I had no real insight into what the future would hold, because it would have been an unbearably crushing weight. God is so good to protect us from knowing the future!

Seven Years. Life is good. I have my husband with me today, and he is amazingly healthy and strong. I have my little miracle baby, N4, who was conceived less than a year after my husband should have died, and all my children are wonderfully well. I never take our health for granted anymore. We have a home again, dh finally has a really good job again. Life seems stable, for the first time in seven years. I know that perhaps tomorrow everything will change, that's just how life is. I also know, with absolute certainty, that God will see us through.

Random Loose Ends...

2008-03-19T14:29:00.008-04:00

It's been a tumultuous couple of weeks here at the AAA house. Thought I'd catch up on a few things and post some pictures before I shut down my computer for the Easter Tridium.

First of all, for those who are wondering - we are NOT moving to Arizona. The position they were trying to create for dh got shot down by the board of directors - basically, they didn't feel they should be adding an executive position in this economy. We are essentially happy and relieved. We like our life here, and we've already had 4 different homes in 5 years, so we weren't anxious to move cross-country. Plus, we really like dh's current job, which is stable and flexible - two things that mean a LOT to us. It's also good to know that dh can honestly compete for a job of that nature should we ever decide to pursue something like that. We sure do like his current job, and there's already talk of a couple of potential promotions, so we will probably be happy and satisfied to stay put for quite some time.

Dh and I celebrated our 16th anniversary this past weekend. How can it possibly have been 16 years ago that we got married? Actually, it's been 16 years since our legal marriage - our marriage wasn't blessed by the Church until a bit over 7 years later. But, we count 16 years as our anniversary as that's how long we've been together, and we have a second celebration on our blessing day.

We had planned to go to downtown Atlanta to a nice restaurant to celebrate. Then the tornado moved through right where we had planned on going, so we decided to stick closer to home. We had a young man we know from church and our homeschool group come over to watch the boys, and they had a great time. After we dropped him back home, S3 asked, "Mom? On your next anniversary, can we order him again?" I got the biggest giggle out of that! The great thing is, this young man was awesome with our kids (and even cleaned up my house a bit!), so we are hoping that we will actually be able to use him as a regular babysitter. After 16 years and lots of crisis, we really need to pay some attention to our marriage.

The boys are doing well. I wanted to share this picture with you. Whenever we have a task or project for them, we call out, "Four Boy Attack Squad!" and they come running. Lately they have not only come running, but stood in line in age-order, saluting.

They really do this, without prompting! And then they will go and do whatever task I set before them. One thing I've noticed with my boys, they just need to know exactly where to put their efforts, and if they work together they can be truly a force of nature.

I really like this picture of J1 - "a boy and his dog":

Now that I know we're not moving, I really feel energized. I can barely stop my mind from going a mile a minute, thinking of all the projects I want to tackle, and how much school work we're going to have to get accomplished in the next few months. I'm also really pondering the direction of this blog. I'm not sure what my purpose is - am I here to just update friends and family? That's a good thing. I have so much I want to say that I don't really feel belongs in a family blog. But I often can't keep up with this blog, so I don't really want to create a second one. Actually, I don't have much to say about much of anything lately, but I still have a surprising number of visitors, so some people apparently find me interesting from time to time! I think that perhaps my little niche in this massive blog world is to be a sort of poster child for not being perfect, for being humbly real, as a homemaker, homeschooler, and mom. I sometimes read other's blogs and while I often gain incredible inspiration, at the same time it can be discouraging. It can be tough to read about the fabulous things other people are doing when most days I struggle to get my "minimums" done - especially when it took me months to get up to speed with just my "minimums". So maybe that can be my place, to show the non-idyllic side of homeschooling a bunch of boys. Especially since, despite my lack of perfection and effort (or perhaps because of it?) they are amazingly wonderful young people!

Giggle

2008-03-10T12:10:00.003-04:00

We had guests after church this weekend (had a lovely time, too!) During Saturday's dinner, we talked with the boys about it. What would happen, what kind of behavior would be appropriate (play nicely and gently with the younger children, don't act like obnoxious cartoon characters, etc.), that sort of thing. I've always found that if I give my kids information, and let them know what we expect of them, things tend to work much, much better all around. So, I tell them about our guests, and they discuss things a bit. "How old are their kids again?" and "What will we have for dinner" - typical questions, I suppose. Then S3 pipes in:

"So, we'll have to use our manners, right? Like use utensils for the salad?"

I looked at my husband in horror - oh my goodness, I'm such a terrible mother that my kids usually use their fingers for their salad! Then I just busted out laughing. Because guests definitely deserve the use of forks, and at least my boys know *that* much!

Thunderstorms

2008-02-18T09:32:00.003-05:00

Wow! We sure did have an awesome thunderstorm yesterday afternoon! And there was no damage (at least in my neighborhood) so that's a good thing. We did end up in our basement for awhile, though.

When I was little (really little) I was terrified of thunder. I could hear thunder far, far off, about 20 minutes before my parents could, lol. Used to drive my mom nuts! Then I had some close encounters with severe weather that made me realize that the thunder was not what was to be feared! For about 5 years, every time I went to summer camp, there was some hideous, horrible storm. The first time was at girl scout camp, it was a severe storm with high winds - it occurred during a meal in the "mess hall", which turned out to be a really good thing, because one of the tent areas (not mine, thank goodness) was completely destroyed. Then there was swim camp, and me and about 50 other girls were crammed into 3 bathroom stalls (safest internal room in the dorm) while a funnel cloud was sighted about a mile away. Last time was at music camp, and it was truly terrifying. It was a woods-y kind of camp, with cabins and no good safe areas. So, when the tornado warning sounded, the director drove through the camp on a golf cart with a bull horn and screamed at us to grab a blanket and run down to the beach. We spent about 40 minutes, huddled together on the shores of the big lake (lowest point of the whole camp area, apparently), blankets over our head that didn't protect us at all. It rained, and hailed, there was wind, thunder and lightening like I've never seen before. At each flash of lightening, I watched the roiling, pea-soup clouds and prayed (even though I didn't consider myself religious at the time!) We all were ok, but there was a tornado about a quarter mile outside the entrance to camp.

Amazingly enough, after that experience, I grew to love storms. After being outside in a storm like that, I came to appreciate watching from a distance and having shelter at my back if I needed it. Plus, the experiences probably reinforced that "invincibility" you feel when you're young. No storm could harm me, obviously (haha) so aren't they cool to watch?

And then I became a mother.

Right after we moved into our very first home up in Minnesota, we got a series of terrible storms. One night, J1 had fallen asleep in the bedroom upstairs. Dh and I were still awake downstairs, watching TV, and a severe t-storm warning came on. We listened to the storm rage outside, and I kept asking, "Should I go get J?" and dh would say, "Nah, he's ok, let him sleep." (because at that time, getting him to sleep was such a rare victory, ya know?) Finally, the winds picked up hard, and I ran up the stairs to grab my baby. And as I'm on the stairway, we hear a sickening crack and a loud "BOOM" - let me tell you, I think I teleported the rest of the way upstairs to grab J and get into the basement - I truly have no memory of scooping J up and going down 2 flights of stairs, I only remember that crack/boom and then suddenly I'm in the basement with my baby! Turns out a very large tree in the neighbor's yard had fallen across the road (the end of it landed just 10 feet or so from our living room) and that's what we heard. Dh and I were both just sick - we had a very large, very old oak tree in our front yard that was about the same size as the tree across the street that fell. If our tree had fallen, rather than the neighbor's, it would have landed right across our stairway (while I was going up to get J). I would have been injured, at best, and J would have been trapped upstairs. And that whole storm was not a tornado, just wicked "straight-line winds" - caused tremendous damage across the entire city.

Needless to say, ever since then - I still love storms, I really, really do. But I have a very healthy respect for severe weather. So yesterday, when the severe t-storm warning popped up on my computer and the warning said there was "no tornado sighted, but some radar indicated rotation" within the storm, my caution senses went on high alert. Then, the kids mentioned that it suddenly got foggy, and we realized no, it was just raining so hard it looked like fog. Dh mentioned that the rain was actually moving sideways, almost parallel to the ground, and I got a bit anxious. Then, J1 and I looked out our back door, at the many large trees in our back yard as they swayed violently in the wind. J1 made the comment, "Look at those trees, mom - could they fall on us?" and I flashed back to about 10 years ago when I almost didn't grab my baby in time, so I made the kids go down the basement - just in case.

The kids freaked out a bit. A2 made the comment, "Will we die? Oh well, if we die we'll all go to heaven, so it's OK." I was so happy to see his faith in action, especially as he approaches his First Confession and First Communion. Ah, the faith of little children!

All turned out just fine for us yesterday, thank goodness, and we got a bunch of much-needed rain. I was glad to have a basement, and very glad we didn't really need it after all!

Bluebirds, recovery, and other odds and ends...

2008-02-13T10:13:00.005-05:00

Wow! Can't believe I didn't write at all last week! The cold I had just really knocked me down, hard, for almost a full month! I am finally feeling better, though I'm still not 100%. I did manage to keep up my "minimums" in school and housework, but that was about all I could do last week.

This weekend I cut all the boys' hair. We went out to lunch after church, and as we're walking in, a lady who held the door for us glanced at the boys and started to say to her friend, "Wow, do you think they're all hers?" then looked at them again, startled, and said to me, "My word, you can definitely tell they're brothers!" Yeah, you really can! Here's a picture - try to look at those cute smiles and not my falling-apart couch, lol!

School type stuff is going pretty well. A2 is still really struggling with the reading thing, though. I'm frustrated - we were going along quite well in 100EZ Lessons, and then along about L 54, he just ran into a wall. He says there's "too many words", and we both are frustrated. I've tried to use different books with him, step back a little bit. The tough thing is - he's basically functionally literate - he can read enough to get by quite well, it's not that he *can't* read. He's just not fluent enough to read books, and that's obviously where we want to go. He's getting on towards his 9th birthday now, and I'll admit it's starting to be tougher to say "he just needs more time". S3 actually reads a bit better than A2, though he is also not fluent. The frustrating thing about him is I think he *could* read books if he wanted to - but if I have him read out loud to me, after about 2.5 minutes he'll tell me his "mouth is tired." Considering how much he talks throughout the day, I'm definitely not buying *that* excuse! So, reading is a bit of a struggle for my middle two. I'm still really happy with the Math U See math program for them, they're both coming along quite well with their math. Catechism - A2 will have his First Confession in less than a month now, and I'm really not feeling like he's as ready as he could be. His CCD class really focuses on rote memorization, and that's definitely not my teaching style. We're spending so much energy helping him memorize that I feel like his heart is left neglected. Dh thinks I worry too much, though, and says he's doing just fine. Since he has the theology degree and teaches in the CCD program, I suppose I should listen to him, lol! Handwriting is coming along for both of them. I will say that IS a subject where physical maturity has made a big difference for my boys. Believe it or not, though, J1 is still struggling. I'm not entirely sure how to help him - his handwriting is barely legible. Any ideas? J1's doing great, other than handwriting which has pretty much always been the bane of his existence. Oh, and we're still looking for a good grammar program for him. If anyone has any great suggestions, let me know! And I lost my Latin teacher's manual for J1's latin program, which is really irritating me. I have suffered from a decided lack of large-scale organization this year (ie, my lesson planning and binders are great, but the books, bookshelves and desk type stuff is not), and let me tell you - it won't continue into next year!

Speaking of which - I am definitely feeling a wee bit overwhelmed. There is a small, but definite chance we will be moving to Arizona, as soon as 8 weeks from now. The thought of moving cross country in 2 months is daunting. Especially because we won't know for sure for about 5 more weeks (we might know in mid-March, we might not now till the end of June, we'll just have to wait and see...) Thankfully, the relocation package dh would get includes the purchase of our current house and reimbursement for all moving expenses, so we don't have to worry about getting the house ready to sell or anything like that. But, I mentioned my lack of large-scale organization for school? True throughout my entire life! So, I pretty much have (potentially) 8 weeks to figure out what is worth keeping, what would go into long-term storage (we would live in a fully furnished and equipped corporate house while we look for a home to purchase out there) and what we would need right away. I figure it's a good project regardless. If it's not worth keeping if we move, why in the world is it taking up space in my house right now? Especially with our space needs, given our small-ish house and 24/7 presence here. At any rate, we definitely have our work cut out for us. I can't decide if it's good to have a deadline or not - on the one hand, it's a good motivator, but quite honestly, when I think about it, I feel sort of like a deer in headlights!

Oh - and one of the many reasons why I hope we *don't* move? My bluebirds came back! Remember, I saw them about a month ago? Yesterday they hung around our house most of the afternoon, eating the dried mealworms I'd set out, and even visiting the suet. I did get a couple of pictures, but they were through my windows so they didn't turn out well enough to put up here. Dh even said he saw one of them coming out from my bluebird house. Oh, I'm SO hoping they'll decide to nest at my house! At any rate, I'm just happy they're still coming around.

One of our best weeks ever!

2008-02-03T17:34:00.000-05:00

SO, as you all know, this year has been a real struggle for me, school-wise. When dh was unemployed this fall, the stress and lack of routine really negatively impacted our life. My continuing health issues and medications sap my energy and motivation. It's been very difficult, by far the most difficult year yet of homeschooling. For the first time ever, I began to question my abilities to do this at all.

I threw myself upon God's mercy. I prayed with my whole heart and asked for help, admitting that I couldn't do it on my own. I asked my husband and children and good friends to pray for me. Nothing spectacular happened immediately. But over the course of about 3 weeks, I began to feel better. I got new ideas for how to manage everything, and somewhere got the energy to implement some ideas I'd had for years.

God is so good! Last week was probably the best week of school we've ever had.

Sure, I didn't do any wonderful, creative art projects with my kids. No lap books or posters or scrapbooking. Sadly, I didn't read out loud a single book (though that is definitely on my short list of things to add in to my week). We didn't take any productive, exciting field trips or do any of the other fabulous things you read about homeschoolers doing.

But, every single day, we completed my "minimum" list. It's sort of embarassing to put that out there, that I find it such a victory to complete my "minimums". But I think it's important for homeschoolers to see that sometimes, just completing the basics is really great, and is Enough.

J1 did math, handwriting, and catechism every day. He did rather poorly on his first science test, but understands better what is expected of him, which is a good thing. He'll be ready for his second test by Wednesday of next week, and we're on schedule to finish both Saxon pre-algebra and Apologia's Intro to Physical Science by the end of our school year (7/31) - which puts him several grade levels "ahead" in those subjects. He successfully reviewed and got back up to speed in his Latin book, and next week will be ready to move to a new lesson. We discussed grammar and have decided to get a new program as we're both unhappy with what we've got right now. I'd like to do more writing instruction with him, and I need to get him some history books so he can do some independent study in that subject. But, all in all, I feel like he's doing well.

A2 and S3 did math every single day, and got through 5 lessons in Math-U-See "Alpha". The have complete mastery over 2/3rds of their addition facts, and have learned about solving for unknowns and skip-counting. I find Math-U-See to be a difficult program for *me* to use (it's so much easier for me to just pull out a workbook, rather than watch a video and build with blocks, etc.) but I am *very* pleased with how it is increasing my kids' math understanding. Especially with A2, who had already worked through his addition and subtraction facts in another program but didn't seem to have that intuitive understanding of numbers until Math-U-See. So, I feel like even though A2 is working below "grade level", math-wise, he is really getting a good solid foundation in math understanding, and teaching the two of them together (they're only 15 months apart, age-wise) is definitely much easier for me! In addition, all 3 younger kids worked in "100 EZ Lessons" each day this week. A2 is on lesson 53 now, and is definitely reading - but it just hasn't "clicked" with him yet, he hasn't reached fluency. He's working hard, though, and improving, and I'm pretty sure that if I can just work with him consistently, every day, for about 2 more months, he will make great strides. S3 is so funny - he reads so well - but it's only sight-reading words he knows, he can't sound out new words, so I'm starting him at the beginning in "100 EZ Lessons". I will often catch him reading the parent instructions, rather than the sounds and simple words that the student is supposed to read. He definitely isn't going to take long to reach that fluency, he just needs to focus a bit on what things *are*, rather than what he expects or wants them to be. I've started N4, too, though I'm not certain he's ready. He doesn't complain, so I'll just keep going along with him, and who knows what will happen? His biggest problem is going to be he wants to read books like his big brother J1, not "books with pictures", as he calls them. He'll cart around "Mara, Daughter of the Nile" for two days, pretending to read it. Not sure how I'll convince him to read Dr. Suess first, ya know? The younger boys also worked on handwriting 4 days last week, and I'm actually surprised by how well they're doing, considering how little instruction I've given them so far. In another couple of weeks I"ll start some simple copy-work with them, start having them copy words and simple sentences. I find copy-work and dictation to be one of the easiest, most efficient ways of learning handwriting and grammar at a young age! And, of course, we also worked on Catechism, especially with A2, who will be receiving his First Confession in just 6 weeks.

The other really wonderful thing about this week? Not only did we consistently do our minimum schoolwork, but we kept up with the housework! I will describe our chore system in another post, but I am absolutely amazed at how easy it is to keep the house fairly picked up and clean with all of us working together.

We even did all of this with my cold lingering on, so I actually feel worse than I usually do. Once I finally get over this cough, I will add things in, like art and read-a-louds, things I do think are important in our homeschool. But I'm just so pleased, after barely being able to get started for most of this year, that we finally had a really good week where I feel like we really accomplished something. And it didn't overwhelm me, I don't feel like I put all my energy into a few days and now I'm exhausted and unable to continue (yes, that's how most of the year has gone until now!) This slow, steady pace is something I think I can sustain, and that, I believe, will be the key to our success.

So, if you're feeling overwhelmed, go to God. Pour out your heart to Our Lord, who loves us, and ask for help and guidance. Ask your husband, children and friends to pray for you. Figure out what your "minimums" are, and ask older kids what they want to do above your minimums so that they are self-motivated. I really believe that just completing the minimums will be enough for most kids, especially when they are young. Get together a simple chore plan so that everyone works together to maintain the household matters. And pace yourself, so that you don't find yourself exhausted after just one day.

You can come back from "burn-out", overcome obstacles, and get back on track! And it is oh-so worth it! Being with these wonderful kids every day, teaching them - it is such a joy!

I think we need to work on "telling time"!

2008-02-03T17:31:00.000-05:00

A2, noticing one afternoon that the clock on the stove said "12:00".

"Look mom! It's midnight in the morning!"

Hmm....

My Birthday Boy

2008-01-24T13:57:00.001-05:00

With each passing year I realize more and more just how quickly these kids grow up. My oldest, J1, turned 11 years old this week. It sure seems like just a couple of months ago that he was born in the middle of a raging Minnesota snowstorm. Now he is teetering on the bring of becoming a full-fledged "young man."

I see so many different stages of childhood - newborn (first 6-8 weeks), baby(until they walk), toddler(walking to about age 3), young child(3-6), boy/girl(6-11/12?), young man/woman (12-16/17?), man/woman (17+?). Obviously I'm not so certain on when the older stages begin and end, given my oldest just turned 11! But, I'm sure that you all know what I mean - sometimes you just look at your child and sense - "wow, he's not so much a baby anymore," or "wow, he's almost a real boy now!" Does anyone else do that? My youngest, who is 5, he's getting on towards just being a boy, rather than a young boy. My J1 - he is definitely growing from a boy into a young man. It is truly awesome to see. And bittersweet, like so many things in parenthood. The years we have left to have him in our proverbial little nest don't seem so very many right now! And the milestones loom - in 2 years he'll be a "teenager"! In 5 years he could be driving! In 7 years - 7 years! - he can vote and move out if he chooses to do so! He's only 10 years - 10 years! - younger than I was when I got married! The mind just boggles...

And I am just so proud of him. He is just such a good kid. I felt so bad for him on his birthday day. We were all sick, which I knew was going to happen (thankfully he felt a little better, though), and we planned to have a "light" birthday, with a second day for cake and activities when everyone felt better. But, on his "real" birthday, he opened one present in the morning, and then he waited patiently all day for dad to be done with work so we could have cupcakes and he could open the rest of his presents. Finally, it was time. I drove him nuts, snapping a few pictures.

Well, about 3 seconds after I snapped this picture, both N4 and A2 started throwing up! S3 ran and hid from the sights and sounds of it all - we couldn't even find him for 10 minutes! Dh and I were frantically trying to clean everyone and everything up, and J1 just sat patiently at the table, a bemused smile on his face, laughing with us at the absurdity of it all. He could have easily freaked out about it, threw a fit, cried and been disappointed (I sorta wanted to, myself, lol!) - but he didn't, not in the slightest. He was worried about his brother A2, who got the most sick and felt really REALLY bad about the timing of it all, and was desperately afraid he would miss the unwrapping. I was just so very proud of J1 for handling it all with such aplomb.

And that is really just indicative of him and how he is. He has his moments, don't get me wrong, we all do! He whines a bit still sometimes, he is prone to becoming very stressed out (I blame myself for that one!). But he helps me so much, mostly without complaint. He is kind to his brothers, and respectful of his parents. He loves the Lord and his faith astonishes me at times. He truly enjoys life, and he seems to get along with just about everyone he meets. He is smart, and funny, and we all just love him so much!

Happy Birthday, J1. I know that your 11th will be one you won't ever forget!

One more funny!

2008-01-22T15:38:00.000-05:00

Ok, this one's funny, too - everything a mom says in a day, put to the tune of "William Tell Overture" in 2 1/2 minutes. LOL!

Crazy funny!

2008-01-22T10:53:00.000-05:00

Check this out! But don't drink coffee or tea while you do! :-)

h/t: Wittingshire

Quote of the day

2008-01-21T11:52:00.000-05:00

N4, "Mom? Why do we wear skin?"

Winter colds and other obstacles...

2008-01-21T10:50:00.000-05:00

My poor, pitiful children! They've all got a nasty winter cold. It sounds like a sick ward over here - sniffles and hoarse voices, and awful coughing. My throat's sore today, so I'm going to be the next one down. And poor J1! His birthday's this week, and it looks like we're all going to be under the weather. We've agreed he'll have cake and presents, and then when we all feel better he'll have a second birthday day, where we go to the movies and do a couple other fun things we had planned. Plus, I don't think we'll get much schoolwork done this week.

I'm awfully frustrated with how our school year is going. It just seems like one obstacle after another. Two weeks ago I had yet another early miscarriage. Even though it was super early, I was barely even pregnant at all, in fact - it still makes me feel all hormonal and yucky. Then I saw my doctor, and she wants to increase the dosage on one of my medications, and it's the one that makes me feel just horrible. Tired, depressive, like I'm walking through water all day long. Unfortunately, there are no better alternatives to that medication, given that I still hope to get pregnant, so I realize that I just need to learn to cope with it. The doctor also suggested I have a thyroid ultrasound, which determined that I have "multiple small cysts". We're not sure what that means - could it be the reason why I feel so awful all the time? Is it something serious? From what I can determine, it's most likely that it's probably nothing, but we're waiting for the endocrinologist to call so I can get an appointment to check things out.

Basically - I have not felt well, both physically and emotionally, all year long. Every time I think things are going to start going better, something happens. A miscarriage, a cold, or something.

And you know what? I've decided - it's OK. This is life, we'll push through, we'll do as much as we can do. I get frustrated sometimes, because my best is so much better than this. But, I'm just not able to give 100% right now, so I'll simply do the best I can. I was feeling really down about it all, but my dear husband pointed out that discouragement and despair are not what God wants of me. I think it's more important for the kids to see me happy, with a good attitude despite the difficulties. And it's better for me, too, of course! Being cheerful is sometimes a challenge for me, though, I'll admit. (Prayer helps!!)

But honestly? We are very, very blessed, and I know it. Dh finally has a stable job after years of illness and career interruptions. My kids are happy, they are secure, they love me and their dad, they love each other, they love God. They have occasional attitude/character issues - but it's rarely more than very minor troubles. They are just great kids! Despite the occasional cold, they are healthy. They're smart, they're capable, and they will be fine.

I just refuse to get too discouraged when I have such great kids, a husband who loves me, and the strength of my faith.

And it just keeps snowing!

2008-01-16T20:20:00.000-05:00

We went back outside after dinner - it felt like the whole neighborhood was outside, enjoying this "once every few years" occurance.

Notice the socks on the hand? A friend of mine (thanks!) recommended that for those who don't have gloves, and since we could only find two of our four pair (because we almost never use them, ya know!) we tried it - it worked out pretty well. But what a horrible picture of N4 - here's a better one!

We got out an old rubbermaid container lid and used it as a sled - the boys had a *blast*!

They tried to make snow angels:

They turned out pretty well, considering we only have about 1/3rd of an inch of snow, lol!

Alas, it's starting to turn to sleet and rain - I don't know if any snow will be left by morning. Which is just how this former Northern girl prefers it, but the kids are a wee bit sad at the thought! We'll just have to wait a couple of years and have some more fun for a few hours!

Southern Snow!

2008-01-16T17:27:00.000-05:00

The boys are SO excited! We've only seen snow once in the almost 4 years we've lived here. It's awfully pretty - but I sure am glad it won't stick around for long!

Poor boys - we don't even own winter coats! They still had a lot of fun running around in the flakes. I do NOT miss boots and snowpants, though!

Such timely little creatures!

2008-01-11T11:58:00.000-05:00

Guess who I saw today? Oooh - I'm so excited! You have to guess! :-)

My bluebirds are back! Well, actually I only saw one. And alas, I was not quick enough with the camera to get a picture. But he seemed to be checking out the bluebird house I got last year. That thrilled me to no end - I would love, love, LOVE to get a nesting bluebird pair!

And the weird thing? Guess when I first saw them last year? On Friday, January 12. I find the fact that today is Friday January 11 to be absolutely amazing! They only stuck around for about 3 days last year, so I figure that perhaps I have a little window of opportunity to convince them to stay around here.

I am going out this afternoon to the bird feeding store and getting myself some live mealworms. Yes, it's true, I will keep little worms in my fridge for my precious bluebirds. Last year I shied away from getting the live ones, but the bird feeder store lady insisted that bluebirds love their food moving. If I have a house and wriggly wormies for them, maybe this year they'll stick around! I'll keep you posted!

Books! Books! Books!

2008-01-02T11:37:00.000-05:00

A dear friend of mine pointed me to this book challenge. Eight books in eight categories in 2008. Wow! Other bloggers I respect are also talking about their book reading plans this year, and quite a few reviewed their reading for 2007. Quite honestly? I love to read, but I have gotten into very bad habits of reading nothing but fluff (modern mysteries, romance, that sorta thing). The idea of having a plan for books I want to read is totally new to me. Silly, I know! I lost many brain cells having 4 children in 6 years (lol!), and then the years of stress since my dh's stroke left me with little motivation to stretch myself mentally. But, like I mentioned in my last post, I am determined this year to really start living and stop just surviving. So, dh and I spent a great deal of time over the last several days developing our 888 reading plan. It was SO much fun! We've already got a 9th category and lots more books we want to read in 2009! I'm embarassed to admit that I had no idea there were so many fascinating books out there to read - I mean, I did, but I didn't, kwim? Dh and I are doing 7 of our 8 categories together, which should make for some interesting discussions and help our motivation. It's quite an ambitious plan for me - just about the only thing I'm being ambitious about in thinking about 2008, to be honest! In choosing books, we put in plenty of classic books we've always wanted to read, plus lots of more current books, especially related to our faith, in areas that we're truly interested in and really looking forward to exploring. Some books were chosen because we already own them yet haven't read (or only one of us have read). I also put in more than a couple that are against what I believe, and a few in subjects where I'm not sure where I stand. I want to challenge myself to understand opposing viewpoints and differing ideas. Not everything is classic and difficult, but it's all about things that interest me and my dh. I am SO excited!

A star after an entry means it crosses categories (you're allowed 8 cross-overs, though we didn't take them all). I reserve the right to make changes to this plan! :-) If you have a plan for reading in 2008, please let me know in the comments - I am so fascinated seeing what other people are reading! In no particular order, here is my list!

Category 1: Classic Fiction

1. A Tale of Two Cities/Charles Dickens

2. Sense and Sensibility/Jane Austin

3. Gone With the Wind/Margaret Mitchell

4. Fahrenheit 451/Ray Bradbury

5. Lord of the Rings (at least #1)/J.R.R Tolkein

6. Screwtape Letters/C.S. Lewis

7. The Three Musketeers/Alexander Dumas

8. Far From the Madding Crowd/Thomas Harding

Category 2: Current Events/Non-fiction

1. The Cube and the Cathedral/George Weigel

2. Catholic Bioethics and the Gift of Human Life/William May

3. Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam/Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger, Marcello Pera, Michael F. Moore, and Benedict

4. Architects of the Culture of Death/Donald De Marco and Benjamin D. Wiker

5. Origin of the Species/Charles Darwin *

6. The God Delusion/Richard Dawkins

7. Oracle Bones: A Journey Through Time in China/Peter Hessler

8. Eugenics and Other Evils : An Argument Against the Scientifically Organized State/ G.K. Chesterton and Michael Perry

Category 3: Biographies

1. Mother Angelica: The Remarkable Story of a Nun, Her Nerve, and a Network of Miracles/Raymond Arroyo

2. Madame Curie: A Biography/Eve Curie

3. Witness to Hope: The Biography of John Paul II/George Weigel

4. God’s Choice: Benedict XVI and the Future of the Catholic Church/George Weigel

5. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin/Benjamin Franklin *

6. Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season/Jonathan Eig

7. The Joyful Beggar: St. Francis of Assisi/Louis de Wohl *

8. Ginger: My Story/Ginger Rogers

Category 4: Spirituality

1. The Joyful Beggar: St. Francis of Assisi/Louis de Wohl *

2. Mere Christianity/C.S. Lewis

3. Orthodoxy/G. K. Chesterton

4. City of God/Augustine

5. Introduction to the Devout Life/St. Francis de Sales

6. The Interior Castle/St. Teresa of Avila

7. Papal Encyclicals (all of Benedict’s, and at least 5 of past encyclicals – will list when chosen)

8. The Basic Book of Catholic Prayer: How to Pray and Why/Lawrence G. Lovasik

Category 5: Political

1. The Servile State/Hilaire Belloc

2. The Outline of Sanity/G.K. Chesterton

3. The Crisis of Civilization/Hilaire Belloc

4. Charlie Wilson’s War: The Extraordinary Story of How the Wildest Man in Congress and a Rogue CIA Agent Changed the History of Our Times/George Crile

5. The Republic/Plato

6. The Prince/Niccolo Machievelli

7. The Communist Manifest/Karl Marx

8. Capitalism and Freedom/Milton Freedman

Category 6: History/Historical Fiction

1. The Peloponnesian War/Donald Kagan

2. The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin/Benjamin Franklin *

3. How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization/Thomas E. Woods, Jr.

4. 1776/David McCullough

5. Janson’s History of Art: The Western Tradition/Penelope J.E. Davies, Walter B. Denny, Frima Fox Hofrichter, and Joseph F Jacobs

6. The Guns of August/Barbara W. Tuchman

7. Angels in Iron/Nicholas C. Prata

8. Triumph: The Power and Glory of the Catholic Church/H.W. Crocker III

Category 7: Food&Nutrition/Science

1. Good Calories, Bad Calories/Gary Taubes

2. The Dirt on Clean: An Unsantized History/Katherine Ashenburg

3. A Meaningful World: How the Arts and Sciences Reveal the Genius of Nature/ Benjamin Wiker, Jonathan Witt

4. Origin of the Species/Charles Darwin

5. Darwin’s Black Box/Michael Behe

6. Darwin Strikes Back: Defending the Science of Intelligent Design/Thomas Woodward

7. Real Food: What to Eat and Why/Nina Plank

8. Animal, Vegetable, Miracle/Barbara Kingsolver, Camille Kingsolver, and Steven L. Hopp

Category 8 (Jen’s) Hobbies/Crafts/Home/Parenting/Homeschooling

1. MaryJane’s Stitching Room/MaryJane Butters

2. Christian Courtship in an Over-Sexed World: A Guide for Catholics/Thomas G. Morrow

3. Martha Stewart’s Homekeeping Handbook/Martha Stewart

4. The Family Manager Takes Charge: Getting on the Fast Track to a Happy, Organized Home/Kathy Peel

5. Beyond Survival: Abundant Life Homeschooling/Diana Warring

6. The Underground History of American Education/John Taylor Gatto

7. Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-free Productivity/David Allen

8. Holiness for Housewives/Dom Hubert Van Zeller, Hubert Van Zeller

Happy New Year!

2008-01-02T09:59:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year's everyone! Hope you all are enjoying your Christmas season. We are doing fine here at Aquinas Academy. Looking forward to getting back into a more regular routine of school-ish things after the Epiphany, that's for sure, but thoroughly enjoying this beautiful season.

I do have to admit that this time of year makes me feel very awkward and out of step. Our liturgical season begins a new year at the beginning of Advent, and I sort of feel like, as a Catholic, I should make my "New Year's" resolutions then. But, the world pulls at me, and I put it off until Jan. 1. Then, Advent begins, a season of pentinence and preparation for us, and yet the world is joyously whirling about in a frenzy of Christmas - music, advertisements, parties, etc, while worshipping all things material in preparation for their feast of greed on Christmas morning. Then, Christmas comes, and to the world, the holiday ends at around 7pm on Dec. 25th (have you noticed some radio stations start playing Christmas music the week before Thanksigiving and stop around 7pm on Christmas Day??) Meanwhile, we put our tree up on Christmas Eve and leave it up, celebrating through the Epiphany on Jan. 5th. I always feel sort of drained and awkward in this brief period between Jan. 1 and the Epiphany - we should still be celebrating! But, the world marches on. Anyone else feel this way?

I actually haven't made any New Year's resolutions this year. I feel so depleted from all that's gone on in 2007 (really, since 2001, the year of my husband's stroke) that I don't have the mental or physical energy for grandiose promises.

Instead, I am doing two things. One, when I plan - I am planning baby steps only. I am good at creating elaborate plans that promptly fail when I become overwhelmed. And thus, I feel like I have done nothing but survive for almost 7 years now. It's time for me to start living, not surviving!

So, for example - when I plan for school, I am continuing to plan only what is essential. I've come to realize that I'm just very busy because I am teaching three young children to read - that is a LOT of work. I think part of the reason I have not done much school-work this year is because I'm just overwhelmed with the needs of all my kids at this point. Well, that and all that added stress of dh's unemployment, of course. So, I'm re-arranging my priorities a bit. I am now going on the belief that my oldest, who has gotten almost all my attention so far, can fend for himself for awhile - he is so far ahead it will not negatively impact him in any way. He'll do his catechism, math, some writing, a lot of reading, and whatever else he decides. That will free me up to really focus on those 4 r's with his younger brothers.

Another thing I need to focus on is my health. We really hope to have more children, and I'm not getting any younger. I simply must lose weight to have any hope of having a healthy pregnancy (or, any hope of another pregnancy at all). Rather than start out with the idea of "I have to lose 50+ pounds," my dh and I are talking about taking it in chunks. It is fairly easy (relatively! ;-) for us to go low-carb (the *only* way I can lose weight in my pre-diabetic/PCOS state) and lose 15-20lbs. Then, though, we get tired of it, and discouraged, and we go off low-carb, re-gaining all the weight quicker than we lost it. So, we've decided we're going to focus on losing those 15lbs, then, if we're feeling tired and discouraged, we will work to simply maintain that loss for a month or two, before gearing back up for another round of hard-core, losing another 15-20lbs, hopefully. I suspect that perhaps that's more realistic for us than losing all the weight we need to all at once. And I know that if I lose 30-40lbs, I will be at a weight where, in the past, it has been easy for me to get pregnant. I am contemplating starting another blog about our weight-loss efforts, and doing low-carb while feeding our children in a healthy manner (I believe children can go low-*er* carb and be *very* healthy - but obviously not as low as dh and I need to go to lose weight.) In the past, it's been difficult for me when we go low-carb because I feel like I'm fixing two different meals every time we eat, and I am focusing on how to work more efficiently, and be healthy for all of us.

Two, I am making one grandiose plan, but it is for something I am excited about, not something I look at with dread. It has to do with books, and I'll post about it in a little bit.

Randomness

2007-12-11T11:09:00.000-05:00

Well, I've been away so long I've been wondering how to gracefully start writing again. Then Kelly tagged me with the "8 Random Facts" meme, which is a great place to start, don't you think? So, as I sit here in our beautiful Georgia weather (waving to my mom&dad up in frigid, snowy Minnesota!), my tissues and tea at hand (having a really irritating cold right now), here are 8 Random facts about me:

1) I love hand crafts. Crochet, knitting, cross stitch and embroidery - love them all! I've done crochet and embroidery since I was about 7 years old, but I've only recently taught myself how to knit. Right now I'm obsessed with knitting socks. I've done a tiny little practice sock (to learn the technique, which, while not hard, isn't intuitive), which thrilled me to no end. I got about half-way done with my first "real" sock when I realized that not only was it was way too big for any human being, but I'd also dropped a stitch, tried to correct it and failed, and so I've pretty much given up on that one! I started another one (meant for dh, but so far it's looking like it might fit A2, lol! Gauge isn't my strong suit!), and I've almost got the cuff done. I'm not so good at finishing projects, but I sure do love to start them. I'm fascinated with crocheting lace (think snowflakes and doilies), and once I get more comfortable with knitting, one of my personal goals is to hand-knit myself my own lace veil for church.

2) Unfortunately, I can't sew - that would be such a useful skill! Straight seams and all that ironing really intimidate me, though. My grandmother used to do completely gorgeous quilts - I would love to do that someday. I'm kept a wee bit busy right now with my boys to try something that ambitious - I'll stick to socks for awhile! :-)

3) One week before I met my dh, I told my mom that I was never getting married, and it was just too bad that she hadn't had more kids (I'm an only child), because she wasn't getting any grandkids from me. Famous last words!

4) I don't ever remember the plots to books I read or movies I see. I will hand J1 a book and say, "Oh, I loved that book as a kid!" and he'll ask me what it's about - and I really can't say. I remember liking books, but the details just don't stick with me. Movies, however, tend to leave me completely. Dh laughs, because I often have no memory at all of movies we saw together early in our relationship. He says he likes it, because he can chose a movie for us to watch and he'll know that I will like it, and it will be as if I am seeing it for the first time. We caught half of the movie "Conspiracy Theory" this past weekend, and at the end I said to dh, "wow, that was pretty good, we should see the whole thing!" And dh just gave me this odd look and said that we had watched it together in the theater, I loved it and talked about how we should own it. I don't remember it at *all*. It was good movie, though!

5) I have a guilty pleasure that will probably shock those of you who know me IRL. I like to smoke cigars. Yes, it's true! They're not addictive, have much lower health risks associated with them than any other form of tobacco, and I actually have discovered that it helps my asthma and blood pressure (no kidding!) I find that a good cigar is like coffee - you have no idea why you like the taste, but it is very, very pleasant. Dh and I like to sit together on our front porch swing with a glass of wine and share a cigar - one of the best things ever! I will be very sad if we ever manage to get pregnant again and I have to give that up for a couple years. Well, not *that* sad! :-)

6) I was an undiagnosed anorexic in high school. Now I'm obese - go figure! I won't admit to the difference between what I weighed then and what I weigh now, but it's stunning, even to me. Not sure what that says about me, but there you have it.

7) I have a terribly conflicted personality at times - I'm analytical and organized, with a burning need for routine - and yet I'm also intuitive, artistic, and messy. I love purples and blues, but tend to decorate my environment in reds and yellows. I chose to pursue a scientific major in college, but I had great musical gifts that I have ignored for way too many years. I often tend to get stuck in my life, with these two sides of my personality at war - I analytically plan things, with great organization, but then can't implement said plans when my creative side rebels. Not sure what this says about me, either. But I'm actually a really rather well-adjusted, happy person!

8) I met my dh on a blind date, just before he deployed over to the first Gulf War. I was there on the tarmac, waiting for his plane, when he came home 8 months later - we have a picture of our first kiss!

There you have it - 8 random facts as I randomly start blogging again. Or, maybe start sporadically blogging again? I actually probably won't write regularly till after the holidays. Hope you all are having a lovely Advent and a beautiful Christmas season. If you want to share 8 random facts about you, consider yourself tagged!

Muffin Men

2007-11-16T11:26:00.000-05:00

We haven't done formal, sit-down school in way too many weeks. But S3 and A2 are somehow reading more and more and more - I'm not really sure I can call them "non-readers" anymore, actually. We have extensive discussions about geography and history at the dinner table. (I highly recommend hanging maps in your dining room - great conversational spark! :-) We review our catechism every week for Sunday classes, though poor A2 isn't doing so well - he is just such a visual learner, simply trying to memorizing facts that we read to him leaves him terribly confused. This week we're trying something new. As we review, dh is pulling up pictures from Holy Cards on line to match the stories and information, and doing map studies of where everything happens. So far it seems to be helping quite a bit. Also, the kids have taken to watching Animal Planet obsessively and have learned all sorts of interesting facts about the natural world. I am continuously amazed at the knowledge all of them display, and to be honest, most of the time I don't even know how they know what they know!

I have a whole series of posts planned about my philosophy of education for my family - but they'll have to wait until after Thanksgiving, as my parents are visiting. They will be here tomorrow and I still have oodles and oodles of things to do to prepare for them! So for now, I want to just mention one touchstone that I use in our humble Academy. I see formal, sit-down academics as just one part of the education I want to give my kids. I not only want to see them leave my home with a solid foundation of basic and advanced knowledge, able to think and reason for themselves, but I also want more for them. Most importantly, I want them to grow to know and love our beautiful faith. My highest goal is to have them embrace their faith as young adults because they understand it and love it. They must know the facts, the reasoning, and the love behind what we believe. If I manage to do ONLY that I think I will have been a total success! Finally, though, I want them to be able to live independently, to be able to care for themselves completely when the time comes for them to be on their own. I want them to be able to do laundry, cook, clean, attend to their health, their finances - all those issues that you aren't born knowing or even wanting to know or realizing you need to know until it's critical!

To that end, yesterday J1 learned how to cook muffins. His first experience with baking. He can cook oatmeal, mac&cheese and scrambled eggs (sort of). Yesterday he made our "left-over oatmeal muffins" (which the boys inexplicably call "Muffin Men Muffins" LOL!)

Notice all the helpers he has? Can't really do much in my kitchen without having lots of helpers - I just love that! J1 did REALLY well making the muffins - to the point where I would now feel comfortable giving him the recipe and walking away. Wow, is he growing up!

It's so important, IMHO, to let kids practice in the kitchen. How can you know how to measure a cup of flour without actually DOING it? You have to experience it to gain the knowledge of what works and what doesn't. I kind of think all of learning is like that! :-)

I was so excited by how competent J1 seemed yesterday. I see a day in a couple of years where he will cook dinner one night a week for us. Oh, glorious day! :-) Especially since I am starting to see hints of that adolescent male hunger everyone talks about. J1 and A2 in particular are very preoccupied with When the Next Meal is Coming, lol! Already! Course, have I mentioned how much they're growing recently? I definitely get the sense that I need to teach all the boys how to cook before they're about 12, otherwise I will do nothing all day, every day, but slave in the kitchen. I feel sometimes like I do that already, so I'd best get busy training my helpers!

Sunday Church Picture

2007-11-16T11:22:00.001-05:00

It's been awhile since I posted a picture of the boys all ready for church. They're being awfully silly here. They all have blankets to take with them because the heat in our car wasn't working (we were able to fix it ourselves, thank goodness!) And oops - shoulda ironed J1's pants the night before, huh?

They're all getting so bleedin' tall - could they slow down the growing thing??

Whole-grain Crunchy

2007-11-15T19:19:00.000-05:00

My friend Kelly posted this questionnaire on her blog today. Fascinating! I will say this, though - this is really mostly aimed at us "women of child-bearing age." If you want to skip this very long entry, it's OK!

Being away from the whole baby thing right now, I forget sometimes just how "crunchy" I really am, lol! IMO, there are less opportunities to be obviously "crunchy" when your kids are older (as witnessed by the fact that 11 out of these 15 questions are related to pregnancy or very young children and babies). Here are the questions, and my answers:

Do you have homebirths?
15 points for “yes” (unassisted)
10 points for “yes” (with a midwife in attendance)
5 points for alternative birthing center
2 points for “thinking about/would like homebirth”
0 for “no” (wouldn’t consider it).

I'll take a 10 on this one, I think. Like my friend, I would LOVE to have a homebirth, but high-risk pregnancies prevent me from even considering it. If I had uneventful, non-risky pregnancies, I would absolutely have a homebirth, and I'd be very tempted by an unassisted birth - I honestly don't need help to birth my babies, lol! I'd be the type of woman who would be perfectly happy to go about my normal business until the last hour or so, then head off to a cave all by myself (might want hubby there, I suppose ;-), and have the baby. I have used midwives for my last 3 births, with no pain meds, though they were at a hospital with an OB on call. I and my babies might unfortunately need the medical help, and I'm grateful it's available - but if I had my druthers, it would be just me and dh!

Will you circumcise future sons?
-5 points for “no”
-0 points for “yes”.

Absolutely not, never have, never will. I feel pretty strongly about it, actually, though I am not quite as militant about it as I used to be. These days I figure more that the decision should be totally up to the parents, and it's not for me to judge. But for my family - no way! We actually put very large signs in the hospital bassinets with all our boys stating our preferences. When J1 was a baby, we had one nurse try to come and whisk him out of the room, and she was half-way out the door with the baby before we stopped her to ask what she was doing. She made the comment it was "circ" time, and we said we did NOT want that done. She was shocked, and quickly left. We do exclusive room-ins with our babies after birth, but I'm still always terrified that someone's going to come take baby away and do the circ procedure without our permission! WIth my last baby I had nightmares for months about that! No one's going to cut off a part of my baby, thank you very much!

Do you use cloth diapers?
20 point if you do Elimination Communication (no diapers)
15 points if “yes” (wash and make your own)
10 points if “yes” (wash your own)
5 points if “yes” (diaper service)
2 points if “thinking about it”
0 points if “no” (wouldn’t consider it)

Hmm... I'll split the difference and give myself a 5 on this one. We used cloth with J1 for about a year - he got too big before he potty trained, there wasn't a cloth diaper on earth that could have kept him from leaking everywhere when he was going on 3 and the size of most 4 1/2 year olds! I used cloth with A2 for the first 7 months or so. Then I got pregnant with S3 and just couldn't keep up with the smell and the extra work of washing, and I never got back to it after that. If we are blessed with another baby, though, I definitely plan to go back to cloth. I'm one of those weird people who love cloth diapers - they're so soft, I love the process of washing them and folding them and, quite frankly, they look a lot more comfy to me than that elastic tape and plastic of the disposables! Not to mention - do I really want all those chemicals of uncertain origin right up next to my child's private parts???

Do you observe your fertility signals using Natural Family
Planning/Fertility Awareness and use that for birth control/trying to conceive?
10 points for “yes” (observe and use for birth control/ttc) or you use ecological
breastfeeding/lactational amnorrhea
5 points for “yes” (observe for trying to conceive)
2 points “thinking about it”
0 points for “no” (wouldn’t consider it)

Well, yeah - definitely a 10. I AM Catholic! :-) I'd like to think that even if we weren't, though, I'd have come around to using NFP. Such an elegant, simple way to track your fertility. We were in the middle of studying to become a teaching couple when dh got sick. Quite honestly, these days I have no idea why people with normal fertility and health use artificial birth control. I mean, back before I "reverted" to Catholicism in my late 20s, we did use ABC, so I understand how you just sort of use it and not think about it too much cuz that's just what people do. But if you do stop to think about it, especially if you're married (which obviously, I think you should be, lol!) - why would you do it? Why in the world would you take a pill that stops you from having normal periods (or prevents you from having periods for months on end - I'm sorry, that just *can't* be good for you!) and has all sorts of health risks attached it its use? Why would you want rubber between you and your loved one? Why sterilize/mutilate your own body for convenience sake?? NFP has no chemicals, no rubber, no artificial hormones, no risky surgeries - I use it because I'm a devout Catholic (and I won't even go into all the theological/moral reasons why contraception is evil), but I'm pretty sure I would have come around to this even if I wasn't.

Do you breastfeed exclusively for the first 6+ months?
10 points if “yes”
5 points for “no” (use occasional bottles of expressed breastmilk)
2 points for “no” (use occasional bottles of formula)
0 for “no” (don’t breastfeed by choice).

Absolutely! None of my babies have taken solids much before 7-8 months, and all of them hated a bottle (two of them never touched one).

Do you co-sleep/family bed?
10 points for “yes” (all night every night)
5 points for “yes” (part/all of most nights)
2 points for “thinking about it”
0 points for “no”.

Yup, with all of them. I think co-sleeping and nursing is the ultimate lazy way to parent, lol!

Do you use a sling/soft carrier?
5 points for “yes”
2 points for “thinking about it”
0 points for “no” (wouldn’t consider it).

Yes, I love my sling. I found it the other day when we were cleaning out our basement closet - I can't bear to give it away as we SO hope we have more babies someday. And now there are so many more kinds, I'd love to try them all! :-)

Do you believe in/practice child-led weaning
(even if that means breastfeeding for several years)?
15 points for “yes” (complete child-led weaning)
10 points for “yes” (up to 3 years)
5 points for “yes” (up to 2 years)
2 points for “thinking about it”
0 points for “no” (you’ll wean the baby at 1 year or earlier).

Hmm...I'll give myself a 12 for this one as idea-wise, I'm a 15, but on average, real age-wise, I'm more like a 7. I've run the gamut, really. I had to start A2 on formula when he was 9 1/2 months old because my milk ran out from S3's pregnancy (absolutely devastated me). N4, on the other hand, nursed until he was 4. The other two were somewhere in the middle, and definitely child-led, though influenced by my pregnancies, I'm sure (J1 at about 2 1/2, S3 at 20 months). Other than A2, I can honestly say that all our weanings were child-led.

Do you tandem nurse/nurse during your pregnancy?
10 points for “yes” (nurse during pgcy and tandem nurse)
5 points for “yes” (nurse during pgcy, but wean before birth)
2 points for “thinking about it”
0 points for “no”(wouldn’t consider it).

Another hmm....I think I'll have to give myself an 8? I've nursed through all my pregnancies (well, not the first, lol!) and would have tandem nursed if my kids had wanted to. J1 did just a bit. He cut way back on his nursing the last few months of my pregnancy, and when I got home from the hospital after having A2, he asked to nurse, then was shocked, "there's milk in there now, mom!" And, while he nursed a few more times after that, he was never really that interested again. He tells me now that he sort of remembers it, and just figured he needed to save the milk for the baby. So sweet! A2 was just too young when my milk went away due to pregnancy, he hadn't gotten to that "nurse for comfort" stage, so once he started getting a bottle, he didn't want to nurse anymore with nothing there. I was really hoping he'd remember how and I could nurse him again after I had S3 (A2 was just 15 months when S3 was born), but he never did. For about a year, though, he would ask to "nurse", and he'd just crawl up into my lap, snuggle, and rest his cheek on my breast. Aww...S3 just totally self-weaned when he was 20 months old and I was about 6 months pregnant with N4, and he never looked back - I really thought they would be the ones who nursed together, and I was kind of looking forward to it. I would definitely still consider tandem nursing if the situation ever comes up.

Do you eat organic/whole/natural foods and limit your meat?
15 points for “yes” (grow own/buy organic, shop only at health food store,
grind own wheat, vegetarian, etc.)
10 points for “yes” (grow some of own food, buy organic,
use whole wheat flour, bake own bread, eat some meat occasionally)
5 points for “yes” (try to buy natural, whole grain foods, etc.)
2 points for “thinking about it”
0 points for “no” (wouldn’t consider it

Well.. probably just a 5 here. I'd prefer to buy organic, but our financial situation prevents us, for the most part. We do use mostly whole grains, and I plan to grind my own wheat as soon as soon as we can afford the grinder. We have no place on our property for a garden, unfortunately (HOA prevents vegetable gardens in front of the house, and with all the woods behind our house there is very little sunlight in our back yard), though I would LOVE to grow a lot of my own food. I did go through a vegetarian/vegan phase - quite honestly, I think it ruined my health! Now we definitely eat meat, though - we're confirmed carnivores and truly believe that it's actually good for you (check out Weston A Price - they are near to what my "nutritional philosophy" is...). We do try to get locally grown, grass-fed beef as often as we can, and if I had the financial resources I'd be pretty picky about organic/grass fed/free range, etc, meat products, definitely!

Do you use herbal/homeopathic remedies?
10 points if “yes” (very rarely see a regular doctor)
5 points if “yes” (but use a doctor occasionally)
2 points if “thinking about it” (see a doc for now)
0 points for “no” (wouldn’t consider it).

I'll say 5, I think. We avoid the doctor as much as we can, but we do try to keep up a fairly regular schedule of well-child/preventative appointments with a regular doctor. I'm not too keen on herbal medicine - like Mel, I think herbs can be very powerful and I don't know enough about them to be able to use good judgment. I use a little bit of homeopathy, especially for my babies, but not so much, really. Mostly we just try to stay healthy and offer supportive care (steamy baths, chamomile tea, saline nose rinses, that sort of thing) when we're sick. I am very glad for modern medicine (saved my dh's life, after all!) but for the most part, for minor illness (and maybe some major ones), I think our beautifully created bodies can heal ourselves if we leave well enough alone.

Do you homeschool?
10 points if “yes” (currently homeschool)
5 points for “yes” (will homeschool)
2 points for “thinking about it”
0 points for “no” (wouldn’t consider it).

A full 10 points here! :-)

What's your take on childhood vaccinations?
15 points for no vaccines
10 for delayed, selective vaccination
5 points for selective, on schedule vaccination
2 points for thinking about not vaccinating
0 points for vaxing on schedule.

Hmm...I'll give myself a 2, though I might be edging up on a 5. I pretty much give the older 'standard' vaccines on-schedule (MMR, Hib, tetanus, etc), though if we have another baby I will consider selectively vaccinating based upon which vaccines come from aborted babies - I was unaware of that issue when my kids were babies. For now, I don't get any of the vaccines that aren't required by law, and we always seem to be late on the schedule after that first year. I rather think that a good many vaccines are not so good for us, though some are certainly important.

Would you/have you ever breastfeed/fed someone else's baby
or have someone else bf your child?
10 points if yes (have or someone has bf your baby)
5 points if yes (would)
2 points if maybe 0 if no (wouldn't consider it).

LOL! Definitely a 5. Only with someone I know well and gives their approval, too, of course. I never actually have, mostly because the opportunity never presented itself when I was nursing and was friends with someone who wouldn't mind, either. "Wet-nurses" have a long, long history, I just don't think it's that big a deal. Trust me, if I had been nursing when I watched my friend Kelly's little one and she was so sad, I would definitely have offered!!

Do you use cloth/re-usable products for mom?
10 points if yes (make own)
5 points if yes (buy own)
2 points if thinking about it
0 points if no.

A 2 here. I have looked at purchasing some, and I've seen some good, simple patterns on-line and thought of making some - just haven't taken that step yet, though.

Whew! Here's the scoring:

Ratings
120 – 140 Super Nutty, Ultra-Crunchy Granola Earth Mama
90 – 119 Mmm! Love that whole-grain crunch!
60 – 89 Pretty Crispy
20 – 59 Sprinkled with Granola
5 – 19 Instant Oatmeal
0 - 4 Jell-O

My total score is 97. Definitely "whole-grain crunchy", lol! Like Kelly and her friend Mel, I have mellowed a bit since my oldest was young. I used to be quite judgmental, thinking my way was the only right way. I've come to believe that families need to make decisions for themselves. As long as those decisions are educated decisions and you are not unduly influenced by people around you - in other words, if you *honestly* decide what you believe is right for *your* family - then I'm ok with that. I think that God gives us the children that we are supposed to have, and He gives us the Grace to know what is best for our family if we listen to His voice. I no longer define myself by my "crunchiness", I define myself by my faith. But - I'm still pretty slightly crunchy, too! :-)

WAY too funny!

2007-11-15T18:49:00.000-05:00

How about a little early hint of the Christmas season?

http://www.elfyourself.com/?id=9515845353

H/T to PistachioChocolateWife (who is a sweetheart IRL!) - her little elves are absolutely adorable! :-)

First day!

2007-11-14T09:25:00.000-05:00

Horray! It's the official first day of dh's new job. We are just SO thrilled. He's salaried, so as we speak, he's getting paid. Thank God!

Right now we're waiting for the FedEx guy to deliver his new company laptop and a big packet of HR paperwork (the Big Box arrived as I was writing this). The week after Thanksgiving he'll travel to San Diego for a few days to do some training, and then things should (hopefully!) settle down into some sort of routine. I am SO looking forward to having good routines again!

We'll spend a good portion of the next couple of weeks getting the home office area ready. Right now our basement is a disaster area - and we've got guests coming to stay in the spare room down there in 3 days - yikes! We've got two large closets down there. When we moved a year ago, boxes that we didn't immediately need were just sort of stuck haphazardly in the closets. Well, now we have to entirely clear out one closet so dh can use it for all his geeky, company provided, computer equipment. So I'm losing one big storage area. That hurts! But, we are so lucky in that we really have a perfect area in our basement for dh's techie home office.

I'm really contemplating and pondering what our life is going to be like. There are six of us (including 4 rapidly growing young men!) plus 2 cats and 2 dogs. We homeschool. Dh now has a home office. We live in a raised ranch, 3 bedroom (with one more non-standard bedroom in the basement area), 2 bathroom (with an additional full bath off of the basement spare room) home. Our house is approximately 1600 square feet on the main level, and about 500 more square feet of usable space in the basement. It's quite nice - I LOVE my home! But - with 6 of us living, working, learning, 24/7, we are packed pretty tightly.

I don't believe we need a huge house. I believe that in our very nice, yet modest home, we can live, work, learn and play very well, thank you. But, we are going to have to be VERY efficient in our use of space. I would love to share my ideas with all of you as we go along.

I sure am counting my blessings today. I'm going to go and help dh fill out HR paperwork now. Wow - real benefits. It's been SO long! We are truly, truly blessed.

It's official!

2007-11-09T21:40:00.001-05:00

We got the email late this afternoon. Dh passed all pre-employment conditions (drug screen and background check) and his offer of employment is confirmed. He will be on the payroll as of next Wednesday.

I can feel the tension ooze from my body! Now we wait for that first paycheck in a couple of weeks, and for our health benefits to kick in the first of next month. It will take a month or two to recover, financially (and emotionally!) but the hard part is over! Thank you, God!

My parents are coming to visit for Thanksgiving, they'll arrive next weekend. Next week I'm going to focus on cleaning my house for our guests, and getting life organized again. I intend to thoroughly enjoy the holiday week with my parents, and I am looking forward to starting school in earnest after Thanksgiving.

My mind is going a mile a minute, thinking of how to integrate a home office into our homeschool here in our not-so-big home. I am so happy to be able to think about these sorts of things now! It's much more fun than trying to figure out how to pay bills and feed my family on nothing, and worrying about losing this precious home.

Now that we will have a "real" job again with a good income, I am bound and determined to really internalize and practice all these lessons I've learned from our years of meager means. I hope to share some of my thoughts and ideas with you all.

For now, though, I'm going to enjoy relaxing, and basking in gratitude for our good fortune! :-)

Oops!

2007-11-09T13:47:00.001-05:00

So, yesterday afternoon I took J1 out to get his allergy shots, and while I was gone dh installed the washer we got from our church a week or so ago. He later admitted to the following exchange with A2.

Dh was having a hard time moving our old, ancient, heavy wash machine outside into the garage and was using - ahem - rather colorful language. When he came back in, A2 met him on the stairs. "So, dad - did you get the f&$#@*g wash machine out?" Dh tried not to swallow his tongue or burst into completely inappropriate, hysterical laughter and gently told A2, "You're not supposed to say that word, A2. *I'm* not supposed to say that word, and I'm very sorry that I did." A2 calmly responded, "Oh, ok - it's one of *those* words, huh?"

Um, yeah. It is. *Someone's* got to clean up their act, huh? :-)

Reminds me of the time my dad was taking me to my grandma's house and we got delayed by the train. When we got to my grandma's house, I told her we were late because of the "g&$d#&n train". She laughed and laughed! Something grandmas can do, though us parents shouldn't!

Seriously. I've said it before and I'll say it again - sometimes one of the toughest things about being a parent is not laughing!

Ad apology

2007-11-06T10:52:00.001-05:00

Apparently I had some rather offensive ads pop up on my page recently - I've just deleted the ad widget to prevent that happening. Sorry about that! :-)

Playing with the camera...

2007-11-05T16:31:00.000-05:00

It's a gorgeous day here in Georgia! The boys and I spent most of the afternoon outside while dh had a big phone presentation/final interview. I was feeling anxious about the interview, and trying to keep the boys occupied, so we all sat on the deck for awhile, trying to relax. I snapped pictures of my children while they just sat and talked with me. It was really neat! Seriously - you should try it! Just take your camera, talk with your kids, give them 95% of your attention (camera will need a bit of attending to, lol!) and snap a whole bunch of pictures.

Here's A1 playing bubbles with the dog...

Daisy is SUCH a sweet dog! She's trying to get me to pet her belly here - she LOVES a good belly-rub!

More of A2...

He talks so much with his hands, I'd never really realized that before!

Here's a cool "action shot" of J1 and N4...

Here's S3 - look at those big brown eyes! And that brand-new hint of a tooth!

If A2 talks with his hands, S3 talks with his facial expressions...

and BOY does he have dimples or what??

J1 is at an age where it's difficult to get a good picture of him - he's old enough to be self-conscious most of the time, ya know? It's so neat to see him teetering on the brink of being a young man, rather than a boy.

He sure does have some baby blues!

I had the most fun getting shots of N4. You can see such a range of expressions on his face, from pout-y-face

to that mischievous sparkle he gets in his eyes...

he's just always had such a beautiful face!

and speaking of mischievious sparkles!

All in all, I had so much fun this afternoon! Even though we STILL haven't heard about Rick's job yet!!! Arrrggghhhhh!!!!

A women among men...

2007-11-02T23:31:00.000-04:00

So, J1 was watching the Food Channel with me *far too late* tonight (we are all SUCH night owls here at Aquinas Academy!) You can imagine the demographic for the Food Channel at 11pm, right? So there was an ad for Monistat...and J1 said, "Look at the size of those pills, can you believe that??" And, well - I don't hide things from my sons. J1 and all the boys have known from a fairly young age about femine hygiene products, a woman's cycle, that sort of thing. Not like details and specifics, but just the general information they need to live with a woman, ya know? So there's J1 tonight, horrifed by the size of the Monistat "pills". And I couldn't help it. "J1, those aren't pills that you swallow," I said. "What do you mean?" said J1, blankly. "Women sometimes get fungal infections in their vaginal tracts. It's a girl thing, you probably don't want to know." And the light dawns in my 10 year old's eyes. "I think I have a pretty good idea of what you're talking about, and I REALLY don't want to know! Curse you, mom!" he says in his Very Dramatic Voice.

I'd like to think he'll be a good husband someday. But for now, he's a rather traumatized 10 year old.

And I just can't stop giggling!

I'm boring...

2007-11-02T22:29:00.001-04:00

Or so my going-on-11 year old tells me. When dh was gone yesterday, J1 told me late in the afternoon that he really missed dad. Apparently he's gotten used to having dad around lately, and was distressed to have him gone for a whole day. J1 told me that "things were boring when dad isn't around." I said, "Oh, so I'm boring, huh?" thinking it was a big joke. And then J1 said, "yeah" and my heart was kind of crushed. Dad talks with the boys about fun guy stuff like comic books, scary movies, and computer games. I make them do their math, clean their room, and eat their vegetables.

I guess I am boring. But no - I'm not! I'm a very interesting person! When I was not much older than J1, I toured Scandinavia with a concert band (and also traveled to Chicago with the local Youth Symphony). I play 4 musical instruments. I've traveled to New York City and San Diego with my dear friend, Jenn (and since I grew up in the middle of nowhere, midwest - that's saying something!) I went to one of the top colleges in the nation. I've studied the genetics of fruit flies (Ok, that IS boring!), extracted DNA and got the only A+ ever given on a lab report in one of the toughest courses at said college (Cell Biology). I gave a presentation at Woods Hole Institute. I was, briefly, a military wife (hardest thing I've ever done!) I made the Dean's List at another great college(and still have yet to finish my bachelor's degree!) I've worked at a pizza house, a lawyer's office (I was a notary public!) and a title company. I've been pregnant 7 times, birthed four children (3 without pain meds!), nursed 4 children (for a grand total of 9 years!), potty trained 4 children, tought 1 child to read and am well on my way to teaching the other 3. I've lived through the critical illness of a spouse, years of on again, off again (mostly on again) poverty. I can cook up a storm, I can crochet, knit, and embroider (though I have yet to master sewing). I've been married to the same man for 15 years (and *that's* saying something, lol!!) I've studied Japanese, Chinese, French, and I'm picking up on a bit of Latin while I teach my kids. The things I've done! The places I've been! The experiences I've had!

And my children think I'm boring. I guess that's a good thing. I think that moms - good moms - are meant to be boring. When I confronted J1 and said, "Oh, so you think *I'm* boring, huh?" he admitted, "Well - it's just that you're always there! Dad comes and goes, but you're just - always there." I said, "Oh, so you just take me for granted, then?" and J1's face brightened, and he said, "Yeah! That's it!'

And he was so glad about that that I couldn't help but be terribly happy myself. I'm so very glad to be a taken for granted kind of mom! I wouldn't want to be any other way! :-)

It's finally out!

2007-11-02T22:22:00.000-04:00

The most stubborn baby tooth on the planet finally came out tonight - doesn't S3 look adorable?

Birthdays, Halloween, and interviews (not to mention Saints!)

2007-11-01T18:11:00.000-04:00

What a week it's been! Dh has had multiple interviews this week, starting bright and early Monday morning, continuing with cross-country travel today, and still yet another meeting tomorrow afternoon. *I'm* exhausted by it all, I have no idea how dh is keeping up with everything. The good news is, he now has a job offer, and it looks like he'll get another one sometime on Monday. I do believe our days of unemployment are coming to an end. Thank God!

The offer that he hopes to get on Monday will involve him working from home, with very occasional business travel. As homeschoolers, adding a home office means our life will be VERY home-centered. We will all just love that! My mind is burgeoning with ideas for setting up and organizing everything. I'm trying to play it cool until we see what kind of offer is presented - but gosh, I'm excited!

We had a wonderful birthday party for S3 - I simply cannot believe that my little peanut is 7 years old!

Yes, he loves pink! He always asks for a strawberry cake with strawberry frosting. I think this is the last year he's going to get to make that choice, though, as all of us seem to have allergy issues with red food dye. And notice that front tooth is *still there*!!!

S3 wanted to go to Chuck E. Cheese's for his birthday, and since I had a coupon we went and hung out there for a couple hours. Not my favorite place, but the kids love it, so we try to take them once a year around the little ones' birthdays. For anyone who's ever been, you know they very carefully stamp your arms with matching numbers and won't let anyone leave without checking to make sure you all belong together. I really appreciate their concern for safety! It was SO funny when we left, though. We were all holding out our arms for the attendant to check, but he took one look at us and said, "Nah - go on through. I don't need to check - you all look exactly alike!"

We had fun yesterday for Halloween, even though we just stayed in. We watched some scary movies (original Dracula, that sort of thing...) and I made some fun Halloween snacks. I thought my spider cupcakes turned out really cute! J1 liked the "black dragon punch", and has asked me to make it every year. I tried to do "bloody eyeball deviled eggs", but they didn't turn out as well as I'd hoped since I used ketchup instead of red gel (per above mentioned food dye allergies).

Here's a close-up of my spider cupcakes - aren't they cute??

Later on, I made a dinner of Jack O Lantern tarts and "bloody worm sandwhiches". I thought the boys would like the worm sandwhiches - you just slice hotdogs into long strips, and when they boil they curl up. Add some ketchup and it turns kind of creepy - too creepy, apparently, as none of the boys would eat them!

Today we went to church and saw lots of kids dressed up in really adorable saint costumes for the All Saint's Day party our homeschool group holds. We didn't stay for the party - what with all the other stuff going on this week I'm just about completely spent!

I hope you all had a great All Hallow's Eve, and a very blessed All Saint's Day!

Happy Birthday to us!

2007-10-28T16:17:00.001-04:00

Late October is a big birthday time here at Aquinas Academy. N4 starts things out - he turned 5 this year, which is just unbelievable to me.

Despite our financial difficulties, thanks to grandma and grandpa, and "Aunt Jenn" (my best friend from high school who lives just a couple miles away and is my kids unofficial "auntie"), N4 had a great birthday.

The coolest present he got was a kids' digital camera. Or maybe it was the really neat bug stuff (house and a vacuum thing to suck up the bugs to study - now *that* I've gotta love! :-) The kids spent days catching moths, beetles, and a lizard. They cried when we let the lizard go! But I have to say - it's just so interesting to look at the things a 5 year old takes pictures of! Almost every picture he takes of me or dh is from an angle we've never seen before - looking up from about waist level! Lots of pictures of his bears, the furniture, the inside of his brother's mouths or their ears or... I will post some of N4's pictures soon - some of them are quite good!

Next was my birthday. I'm now officially in my "late" 30s, as opposed to "mid" 30s. Not so sure how I feel about that, but I had a great day. I did get one present - a bookstore gift card from the aforementioned "Aunt Jenn" - I can't wait to use it!! My other friend and my dh conspired to give me a mini-surprise party. We had a great time! I got beautiful flowers from "Monkey1",

plus a fun pizza dinner and my very own cake. When I had 9 young children singing me Happy Birthday, along with my husband and great friend, I felt like the luckiest, most blessed woman on earth!

This week, S3 wil turn 7. My head spins, wondering how in the world my tiny little babe got to be 7 years old! I'm really wondering if he'll have front teeth on his birthday. I took this picture a month ago when we realized his two front teeth were almost ready to come out.

But they're still there! One tooth in particular is just hanging there, but that last root will just NOT break. I told dh he just has to get it out before he goes out of town - I just do NOT do the tooth thing! S3 is going to look so cute with no front teeth!

Where chaos reigns...

2007-10-28T15:43:00.000-04:00

October has been an absolute total wash here at Aquinas Academy. We really haven't lifted a pencil all month - thank goodness it's only our second official month of school and we have plenty of time to catch up.

Dh's continued unemployment has really thrown me for a loop so far this year. I just don't handle stress well anymore. I think I used to be better, but years of critical illness, job loss, poverty, several moves, and wild uncertainty have really used up my emotional reserves.

I have spent most of the month berating myself for not sucking it up and getting things done, regardless of our circumstances. You'd think with all the practice I've had, living with unemployment and financial hardship, I'd be better at it. Ah, well. Can't change what I've done or not done this month, but we can move forward.

The good news is, dh has two major interviews this week that we're hoping and praying result in very good job offers. Next week, if needed, dh has an interview in Phoenix, AZ. I don't want to move! While I don't love Atlanta traffic, I do love my friends, the community I have here, I love my house, and I really, *really* love my church. The only real plus about Phoenix is that they have a more reliable water supply than we do here in the drought-striken southeast - and I can't believe I'm saying that! I so hope that it doesn't come down to us having to move. At any rate, hopefully, God willing, this time of unemployment and pending financial doom will be over with soon!

My plans for me, the kids and school is still a bit nebulous. Quite honestly, I think I'm going to take a different approach for a month or two. We're going to give this week a total miss - we've got a huge interview for dh on Monday (I get too nervous when he's interviewing to do anything but bite my fingernails!), a birthday on Tuesday, Halloween (though sadly, we can't afford costumes or candy, so the plan is just to have cookies and popcorn and watch scary movies all day), All Saint's Day, and dh is also travelling to Chicago for an interview on Thursday (it's a local job, he's just meeting people from the national office there). So, it's going to be a busy week and I won't set us up to fail by setting up big plans. Next week, however, I do want to get back to a bit more active learning. I think I'm going to save the really formal lessons till after the Christmas season, but we do need more structure in our day, more opportunities to learn and grow. I'm actually excited about this. I will post my ideas on what we'll do as the weeks progresses. I'm thinking along the lines of art and music study, perhaps a poetry unit, math games, puzzles, memorization, read-a-louds, nature study, some informal, kid-friendly science experiments. Basically, I think we'll just do a lot of learning activites that I find fun! I'll still do math and reading with the younger three, and J1 can do his math and whatever else interests him if he wants to. But, for the most part, I just want us all to get into a rhythm of enjoying learning together!

I will definitely keep you all posted on how things go! I really hope to get back to regular blogging, I really do miss writing about our days. I'm actually toying with the idea of starting another blog or two. I'll keep Aquinas Academy about our school and kid-related stuff. I'm thinking of some sort of "home" blog, too. I've learned so many lessons about being frugal that I'd love to share, plus I love to cook and plan and dream of decorating my home. I'm also thinking of another blog about my faith, a little politics, a little ethics and molity and philosophical musings. I'm debating keeping this blog, or creating a new one and just putting everything in one spot. I'm not completely sure what to do, quite honestly - any thoughts from my regular readers? :-)

The Fruits of Home Schooling...

2007-10-06T16:49:00.000-04:00

Every once in awhile I manage to have an "ah ha!" moment, where I realize, despite all my self-doubts, that these children really are learning. Oftentimes these moments are fleeting, and I barely acknowledge it to myself, let alone write about it here. But just now, I noticed the following exchange between J1 (oldest) and N4 (youngest).

The two of them were off playing some Age of Empires type computer game, when all of a sudden they walk down the hall together, and J1 tells me, "N wants to know what a river delta is..." and they go over to the maps we have on our dining room wall. J1 says, "Hmm...let's see. Oh yeah - Egypt! Look there - see? That's the Nile River. And do you see those blue streaks there at the top? That's where the Nile breaks up into lots of smaller rivers, and that area is the river delta. It floods now and then, so it's got really good soil, and there's lots of farming there. And, especially in the ancient world, where there was good farming, there were cities..." And N4 follows J1 back to our computer room with a definite sense of worship, lol!

It's so cool to see it when they teach each other, especially when they're just having fun, and it's all a natural part of their lives. I just love that!

Thank goodness!

2007-10-02T12:43:00.000-04:00

Thank goodness it's the beginning of the year. I have plenty of time to make up/catch up with all that we're NOT doing right now!

We had a really good first three weeks. Things went well, and we had a nice rhythm and routine. And then, the end of the third week, I fell behind in my planning and organizing. Somehow, last week went by without anything getting done. I thought that would be ok, because year round school works better for us anyway, always has, and this weekend I worked out a nice schedule of 3-4 weeks "on" school, 1-2 weeks "off". But I didn't get to that planning stuff again. And yesterday went by without me having a chance to get to it. And this morning, when I went to correct J1's work and get him set up for the rest of the week, I couldn't find the books and materials I needed. I realized that I have become completely, hopelessly disorganized.

The stress and uncertainty of dh's continued unemployment is really taking a toll. I do NOT deal with this well at all. So, I talked it over with dh, and we've decided we will give formal school a miss the rest of this week. We are going to spend the next few days (in addition to dh continuing to look for work, of course!) cleaning and organizing. Taking this time to hard-core clean will keep me actively busy, and that always helps me deal with stress. Getting better organized will make all the things I need to do during school time easier. And it will just flat-out make me feel better - for me (not so much for the men in my life, unfortunately!) living in chaos makes it that much harder to deal with the stress in my life.

So, even though I feel bad about not doing much formal school work last week and this week, I know I will feel better if I get my home under control. To make it more fun, I will try to post some "before" and "after" pictures. Check back later today to see what I do with my kitchen/dining room areas!

Flight of the Bumblebee

2007-09-24T10:05:00.000-04:00

This morning we somehow brought up "Flight of the Bumblebee" - I think dh was talking to J1 about The Green Hornet, and mentioned he heard someone play "Flight of the Bumblebee" on the trumpet, and wouldn't that be really hard? I agreed, and J1 asked what "Flight" was. I did a bit of searching, and came to one of my favorite music resources here in our homeschool, Classics for Kids. They've got fabulous information about the instruments of the orchestra, music games (including a very nice "note name game" for those learning music...), and flash versions of a lot of famous classical pieces. For some reason, though, I couldn't get the music to play there this morning, so I jumped to Wikipedia's entry, which led me to this awesome video. If you want to watch something truly funny, and admire someone's incredible talent at the same time, all while reminiscing over how "they just don't make entertainment the way they used to", please watch it! Gave me a hearty laugh this morning! In fact, let me experiment and see if I can embed this video here in my blog!

Tommy Pederson
Uploaded by trombone-usa

So far, so good!

2007-09-23T17:00:00.000-04:00

The uncertainty and stress continues in our life, with dh still unemployed and our financial situation rapidly deteriorating. (Though dh is VERY busy as he looks for work - with all the people he's talking to I have to believe something's going to come through soon.)

But, despite all that, we've gotten off to our best start ever here at Aquinas Academy! We began everything slowly, and I really think it's been to our benefit. I realized, with all the extra stress, things would never be perfect - so I relaxed and resolved to just do the best I could with the situation and materials I'd been given. Anyone who knows me well knows what a leap that was for me, lol!

At some point this week, I hope to list all of our materials, our routines, just to get it all down on "paper" for my own records. But for now, here's an overview of how the guys are doing...

J1 continues to do quite well. He's flying through pre-Algebra, I'm actually thinking about letting him accelerate a bit more. It can be hard to know when to let him push ahead and when to hold him back a bit. We'll see how next week goes, how he's feeling, and decide from there. Teaching a gifted child is such an intricate dance! He's doing pretty good in grammar, and he's really having fun and doing well in the writing assignments I've given him! We've started slowly in history, though it's still one of J1's favorite subjects and he's itching to fly. Sometimes I think I should just give him free reign in history, see what he does with it. Something to consider, definitely. He's loving his science this year, though convincing him to write neat, comprehensive lab reports is kind of a challenge. That's ok - he is just 10, after all! He's also suddenly doing really, really well in his piano lessons. If this keeps up, I'm going to have to look for an outside teacher next year - he really enjoys it, and is quite good. That's really fun for me, too, music geek that I am!

A2 is doing really, really well. Unlike his brothers, school doesn't seem to come "naturally" to him, he's a visual learner and slow to mature. But I can see a glimmer - he's finally starting to get it, he really is. He's really willing to try and work, and I just can't even begin to tell you how pleased I am with his progress so far this year. He's about 1/2 way through 100 EZ lessons, and he's finally, finally starting to really read. He isn't fluent yet, but he's actually reading the stories in 100EZ lessons with very, very little prompting from me - it is just so neat to see the light dawn with him! We've started Math-U-See with both him and S3, and at first I was concerned. A2 just didn't seem to "get" it, and given that MUS is supposed to be one of the best programs out there for visual learners, I was concerned. But, it took just two days for him to figure out what the program was asking of him, and now he's taking off. I'm so proud of him!

S3 is amazing - he just flies through his work. He is getting started on 100EZ lessons and is pretty bored - I wish I could figure out how to accelerate through that book a bit. He's almost figured out reading all on his own, he just has to make the connection between what he already knows and "sounding out" the words. Once decoding 'clicks' with S3, he'll be reading fluently - he is SO close. He LOVES Math-U-See, thinks it's the most fun thing ever and gets each lessons right away. School seems to come easily to S3, and it's great to watch him grow.

N4 is right in the thick of things - even though he's technically not even in Kindergarten yet, he's well able to handle K work and he's blazing through basic math, handwriting, and phonics. I'm about to try to start him on 100EZ lessons, because I think he might be ready. Again, school comes easily to him. He just LOVES to sit with me and work on things - he would spend hours working with me if I had the time!

We haven't really gotten off the ground with history yet, I'm tossing around some ideas in that regard - mostly that involve letting the kids just follow their interests and using a big time line to tie everything together. I'll keep you posted on what I decide - no matter what, it promises to be another great adventure!

Really, everything's going well. We have a nice, relaxed rhythm to our days, and life, despite it's stresses, is Good!

Ember Days

2007-09-19T09:43:00.000-04:00

Now that we've been attending our traditional Latin Mass parish (run by the FSSP) for a full year, we're delving a bit more deeply into the traditional church calender. Today marks the beginning of the autumn Ember Days. These days, set aside for fasting, abstinence, and prayer, are set in the early part of each of the four seasons. Please do visit this page for an awesome summary of what Ember Days are all about:

http://www.fisheaters.com/emberdays.html

and here is a good page with pictures, poems, and fun things to do with your kids during this autumn "Michaelmas Ember Days".

http://www.fisheaters.com/customstimeafterpentecost8.html

Today we'll read some autumn themed poems, draw some fall-ish pictures, and talk about how things are changing this season. I will show my kids the awesome picture over here - isn't that cool? (I wanted to insert the picture itself, but I'm having some blogger trouble - I'll try again later!) I'm also particular fascinated with the folk lore that each day of Embertide can predict the general weather of each month of the year. We are going to keep track and see if the folk tales are true this year!

I'll leave you with these words of Blessed Jacopo de Voragine (AD 1230-1298), which I found at the main Ember Days page at www.fisheaters.com. How wise our Saints and Blesseds are!

The fasting of the Quatretemps, called in English Ember days, the Pope Calixtus ordained them. And this fast is kept four times in the year, and for divers reasons.

For the first time, which is in March, is hot and moist. The second, in summer, is hot and dry. The third, in harvest, is cold and dry. The fourth in winter is cold and moist. Then let us fast in March which is printemps for to repress the heat of the flesh boiling, and to quench luxury or to temper it. In summer we ought to fast to the end that we chastise the burning and ardour of avarice. In harvest for to repress the drought of pride, and in winter for to chastise the coldness of untruth and of malice.

The second reason why we fast four times; for these fastings here begin in March in the first week of the Lent, to the end that vices wax dry in us, for they may not all be quenched; or because that we cast them away, and the boughs and herbs of virtues may grow in us. And in summer also, in the Whitsun week, for then cometh the Holy Ghost, and therefore we ought to be fervent and esprised in the love of the Holy Ghost. They be fasted also in September tofore Michaelmas, and these be the third fastings, because that in this time the fruits be gathered and we should render to God the fruits of good works. In December they be also, and they be the fourth fastings, and in this time the herbs die, and we ought to be mortified to the world.

The third reason is for to ensue the Jews. For the Jews fasted four times in the year, that is to wit, tofore Easter, tofore Whitsunside, tofore the setting of the tabernacle in the temple in September, and tofore the dedication of the temple in December.

The fourth reason is because the man is composed of four elements touching the body, and of three virtues or powers in his soul: that is to wit, the understanding, the will, and the mind. To this then that this fasting may attemper in us four times in the year, at each time we fast three days, to the end that the number of four may be reported to the body, and the number of three to the soul. These be the reasons of Master Beleth.

The fifth reason, as saith John Damascenus: in March and in printemps the blood groweth and augmenteth, and in summer coler, in September melancholy, and in winter phlegm. Then we fast in March for to attemper and depress the blood of concupiscence disordinate, for sanguine of his nature is full of fleshly concupiscence. In summer we fast because that coler should be lessened and refrained, of which cometh wrath. And then is he full naturally of ire. In harvest we fast for to refrain melancholy. The melancholious man naturally is cold, covetous and heavy. In winter we fast for to daunt and to make feeble the phlegm of lightness and forgetting, for such is he that is phlegmatic.

The sixth reason is for the printemps is likened to the air, the summer to fire, harvest to the earth, and the winter to water. Then we fast in March to the end that the air of pride be attempered to us. In summer the fire of concupiscence and of avarice. In September the earth of coldness and of the darkness of ignorance. In winter the water of lightness and inconstancy.

The seventh reason is because that March is reported to infancy, summer to youth, September to steadfast age and virtuous, and winter to ancienty or old age. We fast then in March that we may be in the infancy of innocency. In summer for to be young by virtue and constancy. In harvest that we may be ripe by attemperance. In winter that we may be ancient and old by prudence and honest life, or at least that we may be satisfied to God of that which in these four seasons we have offended him.

The eighth reason is of Master William of Auxerre. We fast, saith he, in these four times of the year to the end that we make amends for all that we have failed in all these four times, and they be done in three days each time, to the end that we satisfy in one day that which we have failed in a month; and that which is the fourth day, that is Wednesday, is the day in which our Lord was betrayed of Judas; and the Friday because our Lord was crucified; and the Saturday because he lay in the sepulchre, and the apostles were sore of heart and in great sorrow.

We have one, too!

2007-09-15T21:11:00.000-04:00

Horray? Or not!! I've been horrifically fascinated with these pictures over at Deogratias (she takes far better pictures than I do!) We live in the same general area, and since we've had lots of spiders over at our house, I was kinda wondering if we'd see one of these lovely (!?) yellow creatures here a the AAA house. Well, wonder no longer, because this is what we saw today!

While it WAS kinda cool to see this large, brilliantly colored spider build her very cool web, my feelings can be perfectly seen in the expression on my eldest son's face!

Since this spider is (so far) on the outside of our house, we will leave it in peace, and I will squelch my need for chemicals! We might even try to get outside to do some nature journaling of all the various spiders around our house this week - as long as dad's home! :-)

My monkey boy

2007-09-15T20:34:00.001-04:00

Not to be confused with my favorite Monkey Children (and say a prayer for them while you're over there, they really need it!), but we've always referred to our #3 son as our "Monkey boy". And yes, there's a reason for that. Way back when, when he was not yet 2 1/2, we got great chuckles out of him climbing our fridge.

A couple of years ago, when we lived in an apartment, he often climbed the doorframes - I thought I had a picture of that, but can't find it, sad to say.

Now, though, he gets taller and taller every day. And of late, he has discovered, he's tall enough to do this:

Yes, S3 got almost up to the ceiling all by himself, no A2 is not holding him up, just pretending to! What an amazingly athletic child! I can't decide if it's a good thing, or a bad thing, that we've never had money for martial arts or gymanstics training! I shudder to think of what he might do with a little knowledge, lol!

My "fifth son"

2007-09-14T16:40:00.000-04:00

My dog thinks he's one of the boys. For instance, the boys have a game where they call for a "super hug". They all come and hug me both individually and finally as a big group, before pulling apart and tumbling everywhere as they yell, "Atomic Boy Bomb!" (they are SUCH boys!) Biscuit will usually come over and try to "hug" me, too - one time actually jumping up and putting his paws on my shoulders. Very sweet! Until recently, it was kind of a joke about how much Biscuit wants to be "one of the boys" - but then I saw this picture, and I'm starting to think he really believes he's a Real Boy!

Biscuit sleeps on the couch at night, but the minute someone leaves their bed space, he crawls in their place. Used to be, when dh left for work early, the dog would wait till the garage door opened as dh left, then hop up into bed with me. Sometimes, though, if N4 has ended up in bed with mom & dad for some reason, Biscuit likes to jump into the boys' bed and sleep with S3.

The other morning, dh woke up early and took a picture of this scene in the boy's (messy) room:

The dog with his head on the pillow is just TOO funny - the sleeping boys are pretty cute, too! :-)

My studious children...

2007-09-14T16:32:00.000-04:00

Too bad this one's blurry - J1 looks so serious as he works on his first lab report...

And my younger guys looked so cute today, all working on their handwriting at the table. Awww...

It wasn't all perfectly studious all the time around here, that's for sure, but we've had a good week. I'll try to post more details tomorrow!

Where were you??

2007-09-11T02:19:00.000-04:00

It's 9/11 - wow! Can you believe it's been 6 years since the terrorist attacks? I just can't fathom it. We've been watching some shows on the History Channel tonight about that day. And I remember, so vividly, what it was like. I thought I'd share - and I'd love to hear what you were doing that day...

We lived in St. Paul, MN at the time, and we had 3 children under 5 years old then. When I first became aware of what was happening, I was in our dining room, feeding my children breakfast - it was oatmeal, I remember so clearly! Around 9am, my mom called me, "Have you heard? A plane flew into the World Trade Center in NYC!" I turned on the radio - the big Christian radio station in the Twin Cities - just in time to hear the second plane hit the towers. I listened to the news on the radio, and once the kids were done with breakfast, we went downstairs into our basement, where we kept our only TV. I turned on CNN, and I remember being absolutely hysterical as I watched the news coverage. I vividly remember looking at J1, my oldest, who was just 4.5 at the time (younger than my youngest now!) and I told him, "We have to pray. We have to pray really hard. You need to try to remember this, because this is just terrible and will be remembered forever. We need to pray, there's nothing else we can do." I remember A2, just 2 years old, with his big dark eyes, so aware of my stress, and S1, not quite a year old yet, being his normal, happy self. I called my dh, who at the time was a manager with a large computer firm that did computer back-ups and storage. He knew many people who were either travelling in the air or were in NYC at the time. I talked more with my mom, and called a friend here in Atlanta - her father worked in Washington DC (thankfully, he was fine). I watched the towers fall, and just cried. My husband had had a massive stroke less than 6 months earlier. He was still very sick and very weak. I remember thinking, "If it's really bad, and we have to evacuate or something - what will we do? I can't carry all 3 children by myself, and my husband can't help me - what will I do??" It was so confusing for those first few hours, as a plane hit the Pentagon, and another one went down in PA. Not knowing what would come next...It was a very vulnerable time for me, for all of us, and just such a horrific tragedy. I finally turned off the news, because the kids were so upset...And then I remember, later that day, after my dh came home, and we went outside - how quiet it was. We lived over a flight path to the airport, and with all the planes grounded, it was just so darn quiet, so eerie...

I still can't believe it happened. Can't believe it's been 6 years. My prayers are with all the victims, and the survivors, of that day. May we never forget!

Still stressed - another silly quiz!

2007-09-10T23:46:00.000-04:00

You Are a Red Crayon

Your world is colored with bright, vivid, wild colors.
You have a deep, complex personality - and you are always expressing something about yourself.
Bold and dominant, you are a natural leader. You have an energy that is intense... and sometimes overwhelming.
Your reaction to everything tends to be strong. You are the master of love-hate relationships.

Your color wheel opposite is green. Green people are way too mellow to understand what drives your energy.

What Color Crayon Are You?

I just don't think this sounds like me, though the men in my life (dh, oldest son) say it is!

h/t Lapaz Home Learning - though she's a green, to my red, I promise to try not to "shake things up"!! :-)

Stressed out, so why not take a silly quiz?

2007-09-10T21:23:00.001-04:00

For more fun, somewhat more related to school stuff, see this: The Apostrophe Protection Society. Isn't that totally cool? (Now I *know* I'm a nerd! ;-)

h/t to my friend, Rational Jenn! Thanks for the laundry distraction, Jenn!

Poor Daisy!

2007-09-07T13:01:00.000-04:00

Our poor pup - she was spayed on Tuesday, and is miserable with stitches and a big cone collar. She obviously feels fine, wants to jump and play and run, and is so upset that we're not letting her. A couple more days and she should be good. I had a Traumatic Childhood Moment when I was around 4, and my dog split her stitches after her surgery, so I'm a little bit extra cautious!

Our puppy's plight provided rich fodder for our paragraph writing exercise this week with J1. We started out by picking a topic. I asked questions such as: what are you interested in, what has happened lately in your life, what about the weather, or your favorite book...He immediately talked about Daisy and her cone. So, I asked him to talk about it a bit, and I wrote down the sentences for him. After we got those ideas down on paper, he put them in a somewhat more appropriate order, like this:

3. Cone is funny!
5. Daisy thinks it's a creature.
4. Biscuit is confused.
1. Daisy had to go to the vet.
2. She had to get spayed.
3. She shouldn't nip at her stitches.

Next, he took those sentences and wrote a rough draft on his own. (I made no editing corrections or suggestions to this first draft.)

"Yesterday Daisy went to the vet, I wasn't awake for it but dad brought her home today. Daisy went to the vet for surgery so she couldn't have puppies. Daisy started nipping her stitches at the vets'. They gave her a cone, it's very funny how she keeps slipping. Biscuit does not know what it is and is having trouble figuring it out. Daisy is also confused, she thinks it's a creature trying to dominate her."

Then, we talked about how it might be a stranger reading this, and they might have questions, like - who is Daisy? Who is Biscuit? What kind of cone? We also talked a bit about run-on sentences, and proper tenses, etc. I wrote for him for this last draft (he talked, I wrote - good for handwriting-challenged, yet verbal, children!), and offered a few prompts as to how to make things clearer. This is the second draft.

"Daisy is our 7 month black lab puppy. She had to go to the vet yesterday. She had to have surgery so she can't have puppies. Daisy started nipping her stitches at the vet's. They gave her a cone collar, and it's very funny how she keeps slipping over the collar. Our older dog, an English Pointer with lots of brown spots named Biscuit, is confused. He doesn't know what the cone is and is having trouble figuring it out. Daisy is also confused. She's acting like it's a creature trying to dominate her!"

Next week we'll talk about more descriptive, vivid language, and a strong opening sentence. I'll also have J1 copy it and correct his grammar and punctuation. I feel much better now that we're addressing his writing skills.

If only Daisy felt better!

First day...

2007-09-05T10:17:00.001-04:00

I'll post pictures soon, though probably not till this weekend!

We had a good first day. Dad got donuts to start the morning, which was a big hit. J1 admitted that it was very "relaxing" to go on a break, but it was also nice to come back and start work again. So, he's ready for school, and did quite well his first day. He flew through the first lesson in pre-algebra (a side note: I simply can't believe I'm mentioning "algebra" and my child in the same sentence!), his handwriting is, well, the same messy 10 year old boy handwriting, and his weakest subject is still English grammar (which still cracks me up, because he's one of the most verbal children I've ever met, always has been - how can he struggle with grammar when he has such a facility with the spoken language??) Our focus this year is going to be on English grammar and composition. He's at ease in all other subjects, and while he doesn't do badly in Language Arts by any means (I have him working in a 7th grade text, 2 grades "above" his age level...) he just doesn't have the ease that he does in all other subjects. My goal, in particular, this year, is to work on his writing and communication skills. As grandma and grandpa, who on rare occassions receive emails from their oldest grandson, can attest - his writing needs a bit of work, lol!

J1 was disappointed that we're not starting science and history for another week or two, so I pulled out his science books and stuff to give him a bit of a preview. Which led to the memorable quote of the day. We were looking at the equipment lists for his science experiments:

"Eye protection? That's disturbing!"

LOL! He's going to love it!

Getting Ready...

2007-09-03T23:01:00.000-04:00

Tomorrow's the day! I'm still not ready, but that's ok. We're going to have a nice, slow, "rolling" start. This first week, a short one anyway, we'll start with Religion, Math, English (includes grammar/phonics, spelling, and composition), Handwriting, Music, and Physical Education. Next week we'll add in Latin and Science, and finally, in the third week, History. Tomorrow I'll get J1 started, the next day add in A2, then Thursday S3 will join in, and finally, on Friday, N4 will get his start.

I've pretty much got everything all set to go for J1, and a great deal of my own organizational stuff is done. I've got a very nice binder for my own school stuff, I'll post pictures tomorrow! Speaking of pictures, we took "school pictures" today.

Our students...

J1, age 10.5, "5th" grade:

A2, age 8, "2nd" grade:

S3, age 6.5, "1st" grade:

N4, age 4.5, "PreK"

I have to say - even though I am feeling pretty stressed out, and mostly unready for school this year...I just love all the organizing and planning, the excitement of the kids, the anticipation of a new year. I am so very, very happy and blessed to be able to homeschool my beautiful, wonderful children!

Who knew??

2007-08-28T16:54:00.001-04:00

So I made a list today of all that I have to do to get ready for school. It's already up to 20 items, and about half of those things need to be subdivided into steps, so it's probably easily 3 times that many things. This year is the year I decided to go truly out on my own, I have no pre-packaged lesson plans. I never used them directly (we used a combo of CHC and Sonlight), but it was nice to crib from them to make my own schedule. Being on my own is partly exciting, and partly terrifying. I feel like I did when I went from elementary school, with the nice, safe, one or two classrooms and teachers to deal with, to middle school, where we changed classes every hour and had lockers and stuff. It was exciting, and it felt "grown-up", but also absolutely terrifying and overwhelming. For some reason, that's how I feel this year.

And I'm just not ready, as I mentioned before! I have lots of great ideas, lots of notes scribbled here and there, tentative lesson plans for at least the first 6 weeks in most subjects. But, how to organize it all? I know I'll make more binders for the kids, but I'm currently without a planning system of my own. I've used a Franklin Covey Monarch planner for years, but lately I've decided it's just too big, bulky, and heavy. I have a PDA, which I love for basic calender functions (and ebook reading!), but it doesn't help me with lesson plans, household management stuff, etc. Also, as I've experimented with electronic stuff, I've come to realize that I'm a very visual, tactile sort of person, and I need stuff Written Down. Preferably someplace pretty and clean and organized.

So, in a great confluence of events, I came across Lissa's Planning Post. It led me on great rabbit-trails! I have not researched planners in quite some time, and boy oh boy is there lots of cool stuff out there. There's all the ones in Lissa's post, plus this looks like a place where I could really drop a lot of cash (if I had it, of course), as does this. This is a great article, and so is this. And wow! Who knew? An entire e-store devoted to all things planners?

The mind boggles with all this great stuff and ideas. It's probably a good thing our finances are in such a bind, otherwise I'd be spending it all on planners! Instead, I will use the wonderful ideas I'm coming across and utilize what I have.

I'm considering just making a whole bunch of binders. I can decorate them prettily, like Kim did with her household management notebook last year. I used to think that I wanted one binder with everything in it, which is what I tried to do with my big Franklin Monarch planner, but it just isn't usable. I'm thinking about creating several - an education binder, a household management binder, a personal binder (with my journal and prayer journal, stuff like that pertaining just to me), in addition to revising my kitchen binder a bit.

Hmmm...lots to think about and ponder. I really wish I could have all my Systems down before school starts, that was the original plan. However, life intervened, and I'm afraid I'll be thinking about this for months. And that's ok, cuz for a planning kind of person like me, it's kind of fun! :-)

I'm just not ready!!

2007-08-28T16:15:00.000-04:00

A week from today is when we'll officially "start school" for the year. I am in a mild panic, because I am so far from being ready it's not even amusing. There's lots of reasons, of course...

Having our AC out for almost 6 days in the last 3 weeks has thrown me for a loop, cuz when it's one of the hottest months in years here in north Georgia and your AC is out, about all you can do is lie around, panting, begging for the repairman to come. No cooking, no cleaning, no planning, no organizing is possible. Not for me, at least, spoiled that I am by modern technology.

The last 10 days I've had a monster of a cold - I'm only now, as I start to recover, realizing how very awful I've felt the last week or two - no wonder I have felt like doing nothing remotely productive! (the 4 day fever should have clued me in, I suppose...)

Having dh home the last couple of weeks has been stressful - not because of having him here, which we actually enjoy, but the specter of unemployment and financial ruin has caused me a Great Deal of Stress. Plus, there's all this uncertainty - what will he be doing next week? Still looking for work? Going across town during normal business hours for a 9-5 job? Starting a work from home job? Working nights at the grocery store down the street to keep some cash coming in while he continues to look? We just don't know!! And how will dh's schedule impact our schedule? If he commutes to a 9-5 job in the metro area, he might not be home until 7pm each night. If he works from home, will he take over my school room, or will he move into the basement spare room? When and how will we set up the basement area, and what will that do to my schoolroom supplies? If he's still looking, and/or working nights, that will impact what we do, how loud we can be, where we do things, etc. It's just maddening to me! I am a creature of routine and habit. I truly don't deal well with uncertainty and change. Sigh...

And these people! All these people in the blogosphere, oh my goodness! Homeschooling moms are some of the most amazing, creative, dedicated people in the world, they really are. Check out this Carnival, the Loveliness of Back to School. Check out Lapaz Home Learning and By Sun and Candleligh t, just to name a couple of examples of "Wow! These moms have it TOGETHER!" kind of blogs.

And that's just not me! One of my email lists had a post today from someone talking about how everyone seemed so "perfect" and she felt rather intimidated, and oh, how I can agree with her sometimes! So, I am here to announce to all my readers (all 4 of you! :-) that I am NOT perfect. My schoolroom's a mess, my desk is a disaster, my life is in turmoil, and I'm just not ready!

And you know what? That's ok. The Lord has given me this precious family and this crazy life, and I am certain He knows what He's doing. This is where I'm at right now. Others are in different places. We all do the best that we can, and for some people, some years, that best looks AMAZING. Some of us, in some years, their best is more subtle, more cluttered. I am confident that my children are learning ALL THE TIME, not just when they're sitting down with me Doing Something. I will do my best with what I've got, I will get as much ready as I can, and next week, we'll start slowly with just some basics (reading and math, some art and religion projects, some read a louds). I think perhaps what I'm meant to learn from this is that it's not about the Lesson Plans. I just dearly love to plan, and think about organizing (the actually doing of it, not so much ! ;-) and I can totally get carried away with it all. I don't need to have each and every minute of every day planned out, cuz with my kids, that will Just Never Work.

When I think about my "style" of homeschooling, I think the word that fits the best is not unschooling, not eclectic, not classical or Charlotte Mason or anything like that. I think I've decided that I"m a "stretchy" homeschooler. My life twists and bends, we pull things tight and work really hard for awhile, but we can't do that too long or we'll become brittle and break. We'll relax back down and be flexible and comfortable before we stretch a bit again. This year, I need to start out slowly and carefully, without pulling too tightly too quickly, because we're a little bit bent right now.

Stretchy. I like that! Maybe I'm ready after all! :-)

Chemicals! I want lots and lots of lethal chemicals!

2007-08-27T09:29:00.000-04:00

THIS is what I saw today in my house!

Massively huge spider - IN MY HOUSE!! Call the exterminator, I want a quadruple batch of really lethal chemicals sprayed all over my house! Need exterminator!!

Yes, that is my oldest son's size 9 shoe in the left of that shot. The spider was bigger than his SHOE!!

Still mildly hysterical...

(But hey - what a brave kitty!)

And I am actually REALLY THANKFUL that my husband is unemployed right now - thank goodness he was here, right down the hall, and came running the instant I let out a horrified bellow...I locked myself and the kids in our bedroom while he disposed of the vile creature. Thank you, honey, for being even braver than the kitty!

No, we did not do the appropriate homeschool nature study thing and capture the thing to examine and study. Nope, sorry, too bad! It is dead, and I am glad!!

I'm sorry...I know spiders are part of God's Creation, and they are an important part of the ecosystem of this world, yada, yada, yada...but they do not belong in my house!!!!

Speaking of growing up...

2007-08-20T14:15:00.001-04:00

How did this happen, anyway? As of yesterday, I'm officially married to a 40 year old man!

Happy Birthday, honey - I'm so glad I get to grow older with you!

And remember this cute little thing?

It's tough to get a picture of her these days, she's either running around with her playful puppy energy, or she's right in your face, begging for love. But this should give you an idea of how much she's grown...

She still has that pink puppy belly, though quite a bit larger these days...

And while she loves all of us, boy does she have a special bond with dh and A2...

Hard to believe we've only had her a little over 3 months and she's grown so very much!!

Whenever did they get so reasonable???

2007-08-19T14:47:00.000-04:00

Much to our shock, amazement, and pride, the following scene played out at the dinner table last night...

A2 (age 8): "Yay, I get the last piece of bread and butter!"

J1 (age 10): "Wait a minute, A2, how many pieces have you had? Cuz I've had two..."

A2: "I've had 2."

J1: "How about we split it?"

A2: "OK" and tears the slice in two and hands one to J1.

It was just so - understated. There were no tears, no screams, no fights, no parental suggestion or involvement. They just calmly worked it out amongst themselves. Dh mentioned how well they handled the situation and how we were proud of them, and they just took it all with a grain of salt, like it was No Big Deal. Amazing! The years of patient (and not so patient) teaching of babies, toddlers, and preschoolers really does pay off!

It's so bittersweet, to watch these people grow up. We left J1 alone for the first time yesterday. We had to take our van in for repairs, and our sedan will only fit 5 of us. We talked with J1 to see if he would be OK with it, and he said sure. We left phone numbers and careful instructions. We were gone less than an hour. The brothers were quite traumatized at leaving their brother, "But won't J1 be alonely?" (no, that's not a type - in our house being by yourself is called being "alonely" - very, very cute!) When we got home J1 said he was fine, just pretty bored, he missed having his brothers around. Gotta love those homeschooling sibling relationships!

Leaving J1 alone, though, shortly after reading this post of Elizabeth's, and this post over at the Onion Dome...well, it all kept me awake for quite some time last night. My little boys are growing up, and before I know it they'll have separate lives of their own. I hope and pray that we are able to have more children eventually, because I'm just SO not ready to be done with child-rearing. I have so much to learn! So much I'd like to do better next time!

I enjoy having my children with me so very much, I really do. I'm so thankful and blessed to be able to homeschool these children, I just love watching them together and having them with me, helping them learn and grow. I just don't understand people who talk about how they can't wait for their kids to get out of the house (whether it be to away school, or college, or whatever), because we are having so much fun in our family I am just so sad at the thought of these times ending.

But I'm also preoccupied, wondering - will I teach them well? Sometimes it can be really overwhelming to be a homeschool mom, to realize how much responsibility rests on your shoulders. As we start our new school year, and I ponder how fast they're growing, I hope I can balance the urgency I feel to teach them well and prepare them for the world with my greatest desire to enjoy this precious time while I can.

Any Braves' Fans Out there???

2007-08-17T20:28:00.000-04:00

OK - now that the AC is back on at our house (yes, indeed, we went about36 hours without air conditioning here in the Georgia heat wave - however did those Southern Belles do it a hundred years ago???? Thank goodness for modern technology and good repairman, that's all I have to say about the matter!!) I can start to come back to humanity again. I came across this earlier tonight - anyone who is a Braves fan will DEFINITELY want to check it out - SOOO funny!!! This is one of those great things about the Internet, IMO - perfectly normal people with moderate talent and creativity can be discovered in a fairly big way - these guys are going to perform this song in the plaza at the Ted (the Brave's stadium, for those Not From Here), and then play it in HD in the dugout so the Braves can play it on the Big Screen for everyone to watch - way, way too fun!!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lDHjGrbXiD4

17 Years Ago Today...

2007-08-10T12:14:00.000-04:00

I met my husband! My friend's fiance was stationed at Fort Bragg, NC, and she was frantic about the Kuwait crisis, and the possibility of him deploying. She decided, on the spur of the moment, to drive from our hometown in Michigan down to North Carolina. I had just quit my summer job, had some time on my hands before starting back at college, and thought that in her panicked state she shouldn't drive all that way by herself. So, I went with her. We left at 4am, and drove for about 13 hours. Fun, fun. All I wanted to do when we got there was collapse in a sodden heap and sleep for the weekend, read my book - I figured I'd be holed up in the hotel room while my friends spent some quality time together. We were there with said friend's fiance not 5 minutes when he said, "So, we're going out to dinner in about 10 minutes - hope you don't mind, Jen, but I set you up with a friend of mine..." I was SO not thrilled. I was definitely NOT feeling up to a blind date - any date at all, in fact. I'd sworn off men earlier that summer. In fact, the weekend prior to this I sat on our deck with my mom and gave her this big song and dance about how she better get used to the fact that she would never be a grandma, cuz there was no way I was ever getting married. If she had wanted grandchildren, she should have had more kids, cuz they just weren't going to come from me...You can imagine how dramatic I was at 19 years old! ;-) Anyway, I tried to get out of this blind date, but escape was not to be had and I soon found myself in a dark, dank corrider of a Fort Bragg barracks. It smelled of stale beer, pizza, and sweaty socks. I felt SO out of my element. I went to Smith, genteel women's college, after all - this bastion of maleness was NOT my thing. Friend's fiance knocked on a door, and a voice called out, "Just a minute!" Dh now tells me that HE didn't want any blind dates, either, and when he got the call from friend's fiance, he made arrangements to go out with another friend of his that night and was trying to get ready and get out the door before we showed up. So there I stood in this dark, smelly hallway, and then a man answered the door. He wore nothing but jeans and had the most gorgeous, muscular chest I'd ever seen. And, right at that very moment - I KNEW. I don't know how I knew, but I KNEW. It was, literally, love at first sight. Dh says it was love at first clear sight - he had to go back in and put his glasses on, and when he turned around and saw me, HE knew, too. We went out to dinner at a tacky Mexican place, had a great time. He had to get up halfway through dinner and use the restaurant phone (this was before cell phones, remember!) to call back to base. He was on a 2 hour "leash", and had to call in every 2 hours to make sure he didn't have orders to deploy. It was all very surreal, being there as the whole base prepared for war in the Middle East (the First Gulf War). But, when we were together, we had a *great* time. I was just immediately comfortable with him in a way I'm usually not with people at first. Not only was he gorgeous, but he was super-smart, kind, respectful, funny - just unlike any guy I had ever met. We saw each other one other time that weekend, and when I got home, I wrote in my journal that I had met the man I was going to marry.

He got deployed a few days after we left NC. I heard rumors that he had asked for my address, but I didn't get a letter from him for weeks. I finally decided to ask for HIS address and wrote him. We wrote letters all through the 8 1/2 months he was over in the war. We still have most of them! I was able to meet his plane when he came home - we actually have a picture of our first kiss! A year later, we eloped (and seven years later had our marriage blessed when we found our faith).

In our 15 1/2 years of marriage, we've had 4 kids, we've been richer and poorer (mostly poorer), we've had health and sickness (serious sickness), we've had better times and worse times. It has been an amazing, wonderful life together. I wouldn't trade it for anything!

Love you, honey! So glad you answered the door that day, 17 years ago!

***See dh's blog for HIS version of what happened 17 years ago....

Being the Mother of Boys...

2007-08-07T10:32:00.000-04:00

A friend of mine, who, like me, has 4 boys, made a comment on her blog the other day about living in a "male dominated" household. Boy is that the truth! The older my kids get, the more BOY they become. I adore it, quite honestly, but it can get overwhelming at times! It's always so loud here! And their humor is such GUY humor - they can laugh uproarously with their dad about something that I find...boring, at best! Recently I've had to institute a new policy in our house. Never in the past have I ever had any trouble with my children and physical violence. That all changed recently, and I have gotten increasing tears over such comments as, "He hit me, mom!" "He hit me first!", etc. Finally, after 3 incidents in one hour I got my most stern mom voice and stated, "That's it! There will be NO hitting in my house! Anyone who hits a brother will be fined $1! And if you don't have a dollar, you will WORK for it!!" They stared at me with wide eyes and simply said, "OK!" So far, no more hitting, though they have taken to tickling each other, instead.

And the comments I make to them! There is a book out called "Please Don't Drink the Holy Water!", written by a women with 5 daughters, I believe. In MY house, almost every night, I have to say, "Please don't fight over the holy water!!"

I don't think the mother of daughters need to say these sorts of things! :-)

Change in plans...

2007-08-07T10:14:00.000-04:00

Well, once again, the best laid plans and all that. Dh has been notified that his contract will end in 2-3 weeks or so, and we are now frantically cutting back expenses, and looking for a new job. We don't have many resources to keep us going without dh's income, and he's been looking for another job for 7 months now without much success (albeit half-heartedly), so I'm trying hard not to worry.

I cut back the school books we will use to a minimum, and thanks to grandma and grandpa (thanks again!!) we will actually *have* these school books to start our year. It's hard for me to re-organize and plan for school when I have no idea what dh's schedule will be like in the coming months. Will he be home, looking for work? Will he get a job in another city out of desperation? Will he have to take a job with lots of travel? I don't deal well with uncertainty, so this is tough for me.

I think the message for me to take away from this is to, once again, not get too caught up in the "planning". Stick to the basics of what's important, work hard, and pray hard. Everything will work out in the end!

At any rate, my ambitious meal planning is on hold for awhile as we don't have the means to purchase a month's worth of groceries all at once at this time. I will be working on some frugal week at a time menus, hopefully streamline the process a bit still to free up some of my time. I think I will change my focus to our chore system. Definitely need to work on us all working together to keep this house running smoothly!

Bird Stories

2007-08-07T09:39:00.001-04:00

Last year, when we were looking at our house, the previous owners showed us how some birds had made a nest in the hanging basket on the front porch. By the time we moved in, it was only an empty nest.

About a month ago, we noticed some birds hanging out on our front porch a lot, singing sweet songs that we heard clearly through our front window. I believe they are Carolina Wrens. These sweet little birds apparently mate for life and stay in the same territories together year-round. Sure enough, we quickly noticed these birds making a nest in the same hanging basket that they did last year.

We have porch swing, and dh and I like to sit outside there for a little mom&dad time in the evenings. We would often see the poor mama bird flitting around nervously before finally, bravely, flying in to sit on her nest while we sat there, 3 feet away. We would occasionally try to look in the nest to see if there were eggs, but it was so cleverly constructed it was hard to see into it.

This weekend, dh and I were sitting there, and the poor little bird flew in, carrying something in her mouth - an insect, it looked like. She perched on the chains of the other hanging basket right in front of us, looking at us, measuring us, and came back a couple of times before finally flying in to her nest. The minute she reached the basket, we heard tiny little "cheep, cheep, meep, meep, meep" sounds - there were babies in the nest!!

We tried to get a picture of them yesterday - it didn't turn out so well as the babies are hard to see. They are so little, so new! It looks like there are 2 of them. We will try to post pictures as they grow as it's always so neat to watch babies grow up! :-)

Also this weekend, we had an amazing hummingbird experience. We have 3-5 hummingbirds buzzing around all the time, fighting over the 3 feeders I have out in our yard. We love it when they buzz us as we're taking the feeders for cleaning and refilling! They are so animated, we just love to watch them. When dh and I were out on the porch swing, we watched a hummingbird fighting a wasp over a small window feeder. At one point dh got up and flicked the wasp off the feeder so the poor hummingbird could get there. A little while later, the hummingbird came, took a drink, then buzzed over to us. She hovered for a few seconds, then settled down on the leaf of one of the trailing plants in the hanging basket. She sat there, watching us, for a good minute, while dh and I held our breaths and marveled at her smallness (she didn't even make the leaf sink down at all!) and her braveness (this tiny creature was just an arms-length away from me!) She watched us, and it was if she was saying "thanks" for the nectar we put out for them. Then she flew off. We just love our hummingbirds!

My existentialist 4 year old

2007-07-29T21:36:00.000-04:00

Says N4, age 4, "Mom? How long is forever?"

Me, thinking quickly, "Um...until the end of time..."

N4, "Oh! You mean - never ending?

Me, greatful for his understanding, "Yes! Exactly! Like - I love you forever!"

N4, grinning widely, "Oh! Ok, then!"

Gotta love the insight of those pre-schoolers!

Dwelling on what is most important...

2007-07-26T23:52:00.000-04:00

I've been super busy thinking about our upcoming school year. Planning, organizing, making lists, buying supplies...it's been quite the mental whirlwind, if not all that much has actually been completed and accomplished yet. And I realized tonight that I was really getting Caught Up in it all. The planning, the reach for what will Work, the striving toward Perfection. My life-long battle with perfectionism, indeed.

Not that I still don't have a lot to do. Not that thinking about systems to make my life easier isn't valuable. Not that curriculum planning isn't important. But...I'm missing something. Something that I have a tendency to miss, again and again. Something that, until very recently, I didn't even really realize I *was* missing.

This post led me here, which took me here. And it all opened my eyes. About how critically important I am, as the mother of these young boys. "To be a Mother is to be the sacrament--the effective symbol--of place. Mothers do not make homes, they are our home." How beautiful is that? But it also got me to thinking about how difficult it can be to love without boundaries, difficult even - perhaps especially - to lose yourself in love for the Divine. I can show these boys that Love that transcends all else, in fact I must. Because what else is there than that?

It's not about academics. It's really not. It's not about teaching them "life skills". I hope they are accomplished, academically, and I want them to be able to live independently, sure. But it's not what it's about. It's certainly not about preparing them to be good little worker bees, another cog in the economic machine.

What is most important - what is all that really matters...I want them to Love the Lord.

I really, really want to show them the joy and awe and wonder of knowing the Lord, and loving Him. It is, truly, the *only* Important Thing. I can pick just the right math program, I can push them to excel academically, I can carefully plan out fiction reading to match up with our history spine. But how will I show them Love?

I can certainly demonstrate the love I have for them, their dad, and the Lord. I can live it, every day, and that is most important. But I also think that it is something that must be taught as much as caught.

My husband was a convert in his early 30s, and I was a woefully poorly catechized "revert". There's a lot about our faith that just doesn't come naturally to us, a whole lot we still just don't know. Oh, intellectually, we've got it in spades. My hubby has his bachelors degree in systematic theology. We can talk and and analyze and intellectualize quite well, thank you. But Loving the Lord? Contemplating His majesty? Meditation and prayer? It's difficult for us. But the glimpses we see of this fullness of faith - it's so incredibly awesome. I want to share that with my children. I want to show them. It's all that matters.

So...I'm thinking about how to do that. Suggestions are welcome!

I think instituting nature walks, and nature journaling, is more important than I realized, and I will definitely be adding that in. Studying the wonders of God's creation all around us will help - seeing how much God loves us in the things of this world He left for us is one path to knowing Him.

I think one thing I'd like to try, one thing that will be difficult at first...I want to add some quiet time into our day. Time to just sit and BE, to THINK, to let that "still small voice" speak to us...it's so important, and so lost in our oh so busy world. Definitely lost in the cacophony that is a houseful of boys.

More time for prayer and scripture study - how better to learn to know Him than to talk with Him and study the words He left for us?

I'd like to get more children's books about our faith, some coloring books perhaps, about the Rosary and the Eucharist. I need to speak to them on their level about all of this, and that's not always easy for me.

I have a lot to think about. Don't we all? :-) What an awesome responsibility we parents have!

Systems...school day plans

2007-07-24T19:17:00.001-04:00

I'm still working on my kitchen systems, but I'm also starting to mull over how I want to organize our days come formal school time.

I have a general routine that I follow when I think about "schedules". I am a planner, a list maker, by nature, so I *love* making schedules. I can create a schedule down to the very last minute that lists everything I have to do and makes it all look really easy. But, when I try to put it all into practice, I don't even last a day. I wake up late, and feel overwhelmed by the progression of tasks. I end up only discouraged.

So, for the last few months, I have foregone planning all together. I don't make schedules or lists. In a way, it has been freeing. I have come to understand that I am a very intuitive person, and as much as I like to plan, I am actually somewhat spontaneous in that I like to react to situations. I love days like we had several weeks ago. We took an extra 20 minutes at J1's piano lesson, when he asked me about how different notes played together sounded differently. I explained major and minor keys and how different sounds can impact our mood. I pulled out an old copy of Stravinsky's "The Firebird Suite", and we listened and discussed how the music actually tells the story of the Phoenix. We spent a whole morning enjoying ourselves, and we learned SO MUCH. I LOVED it. And so did J1, and I noticed A2 surreptitiously listening in, too. I feel like, because I have embraced a more fluid concept to my days, rather than a rigid schedule, I am more ready to take advantage of these teachable moments, more ready to throw my plans out the window and have fun learning with my kids. And I feel like that is when "Real Learning" happens!

There is, however, a downfall. In these fluid, free-flowing days, I have troubles. I can't keep up with the work of running my household, and there are some school-ish things I wanted to accomplish that I didn't.

So, I am pondering a compromise. I am sure others have done it before me, and much better, and I would like to thank all of you because those of you who have talked about this before have put ideas into my head that have perked for awhile.

My tentative plans for our school days involve using set "pegs" or "hooks" to hang the flow of our days upon. We'll have fairly rigid times for meals and snacks, and we'll try to be done with more formal stuff when dad gets home. (Though I suspect that J1 is going to have enough extra work this year that he might have to resign himself to doing some things in the evenings. Since he doesn't like to start his work much before 10:30am, I don't feel badly about this!) I'll have some things I want to accomplish each day (outdoors play time, for instance) that will usually happen after something else, but is more flexible. We'll have time for doing chores and projects, and we'll have certain days for errands and science experiments, etc. I'm still in the idea phase of this, but so far it goes something like this:

8:30am-9am - breakfast for all

9am-11am - schoolish stuff (I'm thinking we'll start the day together, with prayer and some set routine to get us going)

11am - snack and story, then play outside

12pm - 2pm - more schoolish stuff

2pm - lunch

2:30pm - 3pm - chores and clean up for daddy's homecoming

3pm - dad's home, mostly done for the day

6:30pm - dinner

Younger kids will have freetime after that, J1 may have more work, we may have some time later in the afternoon for more chores. I'm thinking that we'll mix things up a bit on Fridays, run some errands in the morning and make cookies for the weekend. Maybe do our science experiments on Fridays. We'll see. I like having a set time for certain things to give our days rhythms, but also long blocks of unscheduled time to pursue our learning.

More details to follow as I flesh this out some more, and I will definitely let ya'll know how it goes!

My Kitchen Systems - cooking

2007-07-23T19:16:00.000-04:00

Awhile ago, I posted about my kitchen binder. I love it, and it has been useful, but it has had some drawbacks. For one thing, it keeps getting bigger! As I add more and more recipes, it is becoming rather unwieldy. This has led me to not use it as I should. In addition, as I consider how to improve my household systems, I realize that this would be a good place to start.

I love to cook! I spend an inordinate amount of time looking up new recipes, shopping, cooking, feeding, and cleaning up after cooking, for my crew. I enjoy it, but it takes up so very much of my time. I have been thinking about how I can simplify this whole process. I also believe I waste a lot of money going to the store 2 and 3 (or more!) times a week. Even when I can stick to one shopping trip per week, it still feels somewhat wasteful to me, both in terms of time and money. I have always thought about trying to do "once a month" cooking, and "once a month" shopping. Never tried it, though, as it seems very daunting to me, but I am revisiting the idea. Basically, I have come to realize that I need to simplify things in the kitchen.

For the month of August, the month before school starts, I am going to try to do a monthly menu, with one large monthly stock-up shopping trip supported by 2-3 short shopping trips for fresh vegetables and dairy products. I am taking our favorite recipes, repeating a few of them over the month, and including variations on them. Basically, I have about 20 recipes to use over the course of 31 days. One day per month we will enjoy a dinner out, and one day I'll use to try out a new recipe. Several of these recipes can be easily made ahead, and several of them have components that can be prepared in advance (browning ground beef, cooking sauces, etc...) I will take one day toward the end of this month and do my shopping, and the next day I will do a lot of cooking ahead and preparation.

In addition, I am going to create breakfast and lunch plans. I will keep these simple as I want to leave as much time as possible for school and housework during the day.

My long-term plan is to have seasonal menus. Right now I am in the summer season, so there is a lot of salads and non-oven baked food. In the fall I'll have more soups and stews, etc. I figure if I change up our menus every few months, we won't get bored, but it won't be as much work for me as creating a new menu each week.

In my binder, I will put my monthly menu plan in the front, followed by all my recipes. After that I will put my breakfast and lunch plans. I will include a master shopping list in the back, and possibly a pantry/freezer inventory. I am planning on having a white board or a bulletin board or something like that, either in my kitchen or dining room. I will list our menus by week there, so that the family knows what to expect.

In the coming days, I will post all my plans. My month-long menu plan, the recipes or links to the recipes, my shopping list, and my "step by step" plan for how to get this all done. The tentative plan is to do a big shopping trip in the afternoon on Monday, 7/30, when dh will come home from work early, and then spend Tuesday, 7/31, cooking all day while dh works from home to help me out with the kids. I don't envision cooking very part of every meal in that day, I've got 2-3 meals where I can do most of it ahead (say, cook a filling type of thing for 3 casseroles, then I'll only have to add the toppings and throw it in the oven, make up a salad, and dinner's done. Also brown ground beef, cook and cube chicken ahead of time for those meals I'm not making ahead, that sort of thing....)I'm still working on the details, but when I'm done, I will post what I come up with and let you know, over the course of the month, how it all goes.

Systems

2007-07-23T18:57:00.000-04:00

As I think about this fall, and getting back to a more formal style of school, I am a little daunted by how busy I will be teaching 3 (probably 4!) young boys. I think it's a product of having multiple children close in age. When all my guys were very young, it was so overwhelming to have 4 kids under the age of 6. Just mind-bendingly hard work. Lots of rewards, of course, but definitely overwhelming. The last couple of years, as my youngest moved out of toddlerhood (and is now well over 4), with my oldest (now 10 1/2) getting older and becoming a true helper, things have gotten SO much easier I can't even begin to tell you - I've become downright lazy as a result! ;-) But I realize that right now, I have multiple children in a very "needy" part of their learning, with 3 ready to learn to read, and in early math while handwriting isn't a strong point resulting in a lot of hand-holding and direct involvement. In addition, my oldest is going to start some high-school level work this fall, so I will have more record-keeping to do to make sure I have transcripts and such covered in case we need them. I think that this year, and possibly next, will be among my most overwhelming years, school-wise, in a similiar way to how overwhelming it was to have 3 kids in diapers.

So I have been thinking a lot about how I can make the rest of my household run more smoothly so that I can concentrate most of my time and effort on schoolish things. One of the problems I have had in the past is that, when things are going well, school-wise, my house seems to fall to pieces around me. I reach a certain level of frustration, and then tend to drop off my school efforts in an attempt to get my household back together. This start and stop leaves me very unsatisfied, and I don't believe it is efficient or really useful for any of us. I have decided I need better systems.

So, I am going to spend the next several weeks not only reorganizing some of my household spaces, but developing new systems. I will share my ideas and progress with all of you, in the hopes that some of my ideas spark your own ideas.

Menu Plan Monday

2007-07-23T18:38:00.000-04:00

So, I've been very busy over here at Aquinas Academy this past week. I think that I'm out of my weeks-long "blue funk" and I'm feeling ambitious again. Look for lots of posts soon on some good stuff I've been working on regarding the household work that so often gets "in the way" of homeschooling (or vice-versa??)

For now, though, here is this week's menu!

Monday: BBQ beef sandwhiches (made from the leftovers of a slow-cooker pot roast we put in on Saturday), chips, coleslaw

Tuesday: Hamburger gravy, egg noodles, peas&carrots

Wednesday: Mom & Dad dinner night! We'll get steak, garlic bread, and salad. The kids will enjoy chicken nuggets, bread and butter, vegies, and a movie while they "picnic" on the floor. Fun for all!

Thursday: Grilled chicken (this recipe is so yummy and easy!), rice, broccoli

Friday: Salmon Patties, creamy noodles (egg noodles in a white sauce), salad

Saturday: Hamburgers, chips, vegies&dip

Sunday: Grilled Chicken salad, biscutis

Hope you have a great week! Head on over to Organizing Junkie for more great ideas!

Menu Plan Monday - Summer break edition!

2007-07-16T21:40:00.001-04:00

Ok, we have been enjoying our "summer break" far too much! J1 stays up till after 1am, reading the Lord of the Rings trilogy, I'm up till all hours myself, and we all wake up sooooo late (think - after double digits in the morning - horrors -- I feel soooo lazy!) It's great fun, but I think another couple weeks of this and we'll all be ready to start back to a more routine-orientated schedule. I sincerely love homeschooling, where we can follow our own inclinations, rather than some outside authority! At any rate, here is this week's menu!

Monday: Cube steak, baked potato, cauliflower and cheese sauce

Tuesday: Grilled chicken, spinach, rice

Wednesday: Crockpot pot roast, homemade bread and butter, salad

Thursday: Lentil chicken curry, brown rice, salad

Friday: Grilled salmon, (fish sticks for the kids), salad, grilled bread

Saturday: Hot dogs and brats, chips, coleslaw

Sunday: Grilled steak, salad, homemade bread and butter

Hope everyone has a great week!!!

Menu Plan Monday

2007-07-02T17:54:00.001-04:00

Ok, it's that time again - what's for dinner this week? Well, the menu is still ruled by our need for frugality in our food budget, and also how hot it is here in the south right now - crock pot or grill, at most stovetop - no oven foods right now if we can help it!! So, here's the menu this week...

Monday: Mom's night out (horray - a cafe sandwhich for me!) dad will cook the boys hamburger gravy, and hopefully some kind of veggie, though I won't hold my breath! :-)

Tuesday: Using leftover chicken from Sunday's dinner, tonight will be chicken gravy and biscuits. Also a salad.

Wednesday: Happy Fourth of July! With the drought so bad here in Georgia, most fireworks are cancelled, and dh has to work, though he does get to work at home, so it's *sort* of a holiday. We'll try to celebrate with BBQ Beef Ribs, potato salad, corn on the cobb, and a Banana Split Cake for desert. Yum!

Thursday: I think today I'll try Slow Cooker Swiss Steak, serve it with rice and broccoli on the side.

Friday: Grilled Pizzas - I use the "self-rising pizza crust" here, and when I roll it out, I put it on a lightly greased sheet of tin foil, then put the foil on the grill. The foil keeps the bottom of the pizza crust from getting burnt. I usually make a triple batch of dough, divide it into 6 smaller pizzas, one for each of us. We'll use vegetarian toppings since it's Friday.

Saturday: A2 has requested hamburgers, and I've still got a coupon for a free box of Bubba Burgers from when we went with grandma and grandpa to a baseball game, so we'll have hamburgers tonight, with coleslaw and chips.

Sunday: A nice steak ceasar salad with that yummy grilled bread I posted about last week.

Make sure to head on over to Organizing Junkie to get more ideas! Have a great week!

Overheard at the Aquinas lunch table...

2007-06-26T14:28:00.001-04:00

S3 (in a slightly scary, monster-style voice): "No one touch that last slice of watermelon or I will tear you limb to limb!"

J1 (in a rather condescending, superior, tone): "It's limb FROM limb, not limb TO limb!"

S3 grins in a rather maniacal way...

And mom is left wondering - does it really matter if it's 'from' or 'to' when you're this bloodthirsty - or watermelon thirsty, as the case may be?!

A picture and a plea

2007-06-25T14:54:00.000-04:00

First of all, here's a "before church" picture of the boys from yesterday for you to enjoy:

Now for our plea to those of you who know us in "real life". Many of you who know A2 know that he has a special toy that he calls "XLR". This toy is a rubber lizard and a rubber snake. A2 uses it to re-enact the monster movies that are in his head (think Godzilla type monster movies). "XLR" has a lizard body and snake-like "tentacles". A2 goes no where without XLR, and spends, quite literally, hours, off by himself, creating scenes from the movies that he has inside his head. Unfortunately, XLR is falling apart. We're on our 3rd pair of tentacles, and snakes are pretty easy to find. However, the lizard body is on its last legs - almost literally. And just any old rubber lizard isn't going to do for A2. He needs one very, very similar, if not exactly like, his current one. I took some pictures of "XLR" so that you could get a sense of what to look for. Basically, a light blue rubber lizzard (it was originally filled with a bean-bag type material, though all the little balls fell out long ago) that is about 8" long or so. Here are two pictures. The second picture I put a spoon alongside "XLR" so that you could get a sense of scale...

So, to all our friends and family - please oh please! Be on the lookout for a light blue rubber lizard. As you can see from the pictures, XLR is disintigrating before our eyes, and a certain little boy is very distressed. We will reimburse you for your cost (should be minimal) and shipping, if need be. A2 and I will be very greatful if you're able to find the right lizard for XLR. And someday, when A2 makes his XLR movies, I'm certain he'll give you an on-screen credit.

"This film is dedicated to our dear friend who got me a replacement XLR lizard when I was 7 years old...."

Menu Plan Monday

2007-06-25T11:33:00.001-04:00

We're still in major frugal, "clean out the pantry" mode here at Aquinas Academy. Thankfully, after buying a side of beef, and carefully shoping the sales, our meals are definitely not wanting for anything! Here's the plan:

Monday: Grilled Chicken (bone-in breasts, on sale last week - can't have beef *every* night, after all!), mashed potatoes and a simple gravy, green beans

Tuesday: Grilled Steaks, grilled bread (a great recipe, only I substituted 2 teaspoons of minced garlic for the fennel - YUM!), salad

Wednesday: Chicken Enchiladas (we decided last week we like red sauce better with our beef enchiladas, so this week, since I had a TON of white sauce left over from the beef enchiladas last week, we're going to try enchiladas using that white sauce, flour tortillas, and leftover chicken from Monday), corn, chips and salsa

Thursday: French Dip Sandwhiches, French Rolls, French fries, vegies & dip (we didn't get to this meal from last week)

Friday: Shrimp stir-fry (we have shrimp in our freezer all ready, so this is actually a frugal meal!), rice, and if I'm feeling ambitious, perhaps egg rolls, too

Saturday: Slow Cooker Round steak, homemade bread, salad

Sunday: BBQ Chicken (still on sale this week!), coleslaw, garlic bread (with the homemade bread from yesterday), corn on the cob, watermelon

Make sure to check out Organizing Junkie - there are usually over 100 Menu Plan Monday posts, so there are LOTS of ideas! Have a great week!!

Some thoughts on homeschooling

2007-06-25T11:01:00.000-04:00

As I've grown into this "homeschooling mom" role, I've definitely gone through stages.

Way back when my oldest was a baby, when I was immersed in "attachment parenting" and saw how beautifully, naturally, my toddler learned things, I thought that I would probably be an "unschooler". When J1 was about 4, and showing signs of being extremely bright, I read "The Well Trained Mind", which I enjoyed and led me to do more research. I encounted the Bluedorn's website (they still have a great article called "10 things to do before your child turns 10") but they didn't exactly fit with the Catholicism I'd just re-discovered at that time, and I read Laura Berquist (who is Catholic), overall becoming quite seduced by the "Classical" method of homeschooling.

But J1 was very good (ie, stubborn!) at showing me that I couldn't force him into any kind of nice, arranged, pre-planned role. He was, and is, very much his own person, with tremendous strengths, some weaknesses, and a whole lot of individuality. He has forced me to think and act in ways I never imagined I could! Isn't being a mom wonderful?!

I've been contemplating my upcoming 5th official year of homeschooling, I'm pondering the experiences I've had this year with my completely different, visual-spatial learner 2nd child, A2, and I'm considering the fact that next year I will be "legal" with THREE BOYS!!! And I am starting - finally - to become comfortable with where I'm "at" as a homeschooling mom. I have 4 very bright kids, and not a single one of them fit in a standard "mold" of age or grade. We don't fit into a curriculum type, in fact, with my smart, individualistic children, I can't fit into one single label. I'm sort of an unschoolish, classically flavored, with Charlotte Mason aspects, type of homeschooler. And low and behold - there's a lot of people out there like me, who can't seem to fit in any one particular approach. We take bits and pieces of several learning philosophies, we adapt it all to our family and our individual children's needs. We design our own curriculum, such as it is, and learning is an all-the-time adventure.

As John Paul II said, "Families - be who you are!" I am only now beginning to appreciate what a profound statement that is.

Menu Plan Monday

2007-06-17T17:55:00.001-04:00

A temporary (hopefully!) financial crunch has me on a frugal kick. One of the things that is absolutely invaluable right now is having a well-stocked pantry. The half side of beef in the freezer, plus my full pantry shelves all mean that my grocery budget is easily kept to a minimum for the next few weeks. One thing I've learned in all our years of turbulation, is to stay well-stocked when times are good. When crisis comes, whether it be financial, or perhaps a natural disaster, etc, you can rely on your pantry, which is a great help and comfort! Without further ado, here is our plan this week:

Monday: Chicken Drumsticks (we'll try these on the grill), Baked Beans, coleslaw, corn bread

Tuesday: Enchiladas, "Army Man Rice", Corn

Wednesday: Pasta and sauce, salad

Thursday: BBQ Beef Sandwiches (made a double batch of this last time and froze some, I'll be using the leftovers for this meal), Onion rolls, Chips, Corn on the Cobb, vegies&dip

Friday: Tuna Noodle Casserole, Salad

Saturday: French Dip Sandwiches with French Rolls, French Fries, and vegies&dip

Sunday: Grilled Steaks, cheesy grits, salad, bread and butter

If you want more dinner ideas, be sure to check out Organizing Junkie. Have a great week!

This is absolutely amazing....

2007-06-15T20:36:00.000-04:00

Please do take a few moments and look at this clip. I can't stop watching this, and crying my eyes out! And anyone who knows me knows I'm no fan of American Idol or anything of that nature. But this clip is just absolutely amazing. My dh and I have been just crying over it all evening. Watch it, and watch it again, and again!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k08yxu57NA&mode=related&search=

H/T: House Wren Studios

May you all have a wonderful weekend!

Menu Plan Monday

2007-06-11T14:11:00.000-04:00

Hope you all are had a good weekend! Here's the menu at Aquinas Academy this week....

Monday: Crockpot pot roast (didn't fix it last week) mashed potatoes, green beans

Tuesday: Lentil Chili, garnishes (cheese, sour cream, avocado, salsa) corn chips, salad

Wednesday: Steak Salad, homemade bread

Thursday: Liver and Onions, hot buttered egg noodles, vegie

Friday: Fish Tacos, salad, chips and salsa

Saturday: Hamburgers, chips, vegies and dip

Sunday: Father's Day - dh has requested to cook, so I'm not sure what he has in mind. I'll probably make a yummy desert - maybe blueberry pie?

Head on over to Organizing Junkie if you're looking for more ideas! Hope you all have a great week!

Congratulations to my hubby!

2007-06-05T13:12:00.000-04:00

After way too many years to count, much struggle and effort, he is finally "educated" (tongue firmly in cheek!) As of this Monday, he officially has a degree in systematic theology from the University of St. Thomas. Congratulations, honey!

Kid Pictures

2007-06-05T12:59:00.001-04:00

The kids are pretty cute, but excuse the messy house pictures!

A2, with no front teeth!

S3 and N4 and the yummy strawberry pie I made last weekend!

Oldest and youngest relaxing....

and the middle two relaxing together with the dog!

I've taken so many puppy pictures lately I actually don' t have as many kid pictures as I usually do! I will work on that and post more soon!

Pet pictures

2007-06-05T12:42:00.000-04:00

Cuz I've got the cutest animals!

I love this picture - and the puppy sure does love the boys!

The two dogs love each other, too, I think!

There seems to be some tolerance between Suki and the dogs - but notice our other cat, Rosie, is no where to be seen in these pictures!

Can you see the puppy? Black blanket + Black lab = almost invisible!

Suki, the best cat ever - usually he's far too dignified to look this silly!

Oh, if only *I* wasn't in this picture - a terrible picture of me, but such a cute picture of the pups I have to put it up!

Isn't she just so cute???

More pictures of the kids really soon!!

Finishing up our school year

2007-06-05T11:20:00.001-04:00

Because we school almost year round, we are still in the midst of active school work here at Aquinas Academy Adventures. We'll be done with this "year" before the July 4th holiday, take a month or two off then start back in August/September sometime for next "year". Just thought I'd share what we're doing here in the last month or so of our school.

Let's start with A2. What a conundrum that boy is for me! He'll be 8 the end of July, and would *technically*, age-wise, be starting 3rd grade next fall. When I think about that it almost sends me into a panic cuz he's not even *close* to doing "3rd grade" work. He's more about in the middle of first grade work in most areas, quite honestly. He's doing pretty well in handwriting, and he loves religion. He learns quite a bit of history and science just through soaking up all our conversations, games, and real-life experiences. Math is mostly ok - he understands addition and subtraction, but he only likes to count things out, he refuses to memorize his math facts for the most part. He doesn't seem to get the "patterns" of math, either (as in - if you know 5+2 is 7, then you can guess that 5+3 is 8, cuz 3 is one greater than 2, and the answer 8 is one greater than 7, kwim?) I am planning on switching him over to Math-U-See next year. I have heard great things about it from everyone I know who uses it, and I think that it's really going to work well with my oh-so-visual child. Speaking of my visual child - I found these pages over at Apple Stars. They make me feel SO MUCH BETTER! Because, they describe my dear A2 perfectly. And it makes me want to just relax about his continued struggles with reading. He is making progress, and I truly believe if I just give him more time, teach to his way of thinking with the help of pages like this - my mommy instincts tell me it's going to work out just fine. We'll just keep plugging away, and I will continue to work on learning how best to teach him.

J1 is flying. He's done with all his history and science work for this year. He has just a few handwriting pages, he's continuing with his catechism study, and he's almost done with his US geography project. Other than that we've slowed down or stopped just about everything else but math. He's determined to finish Saxon 7/6 before our year ends. He began this year in Saxon 5/4. He finished that by mid-year and was bored out of his mind. So, we skipped a year and started Saxon 7/6 in February, I believe it was. He's going to finish it by the end of the month, and the faster we move through it, the better he does! I will detail my plans for next year here soon, but suffice it to say, we're planning some major acceleration for J1, completely at his request!

Next year I'll be "legal" with S3, too, and that is going to be interesting. He's reading quite well - he's almost completely taught himself. He can read a book like "Fire Cat" and read about 85% of the words and have almost perfect comprehension. Or at least he could. It was SO interesting to read that book with him. The first "chapter" he "read" it and understood the whole thing. But - he didn't accurately read each word. He skipped words here and there, used the pictures heavily to assist his comprehension, and sometimes substituted words for others. What fascinated me most was when the book would read, "She went to the house," and S3 would read, "Her went to the house." Now, my youngest 3 kids have *horrid* syntax. They regularly mix up their pronouns, use improper forms of past tense ("goed" instead of went, for example), that sort of thing. Dh and I have talked about how they almost have their own language sometimes. A3 is growing out of it to a large extent, and I expect the younger ones will, also, and we've been trying to be more diligent about correcting them. Anyway, I am fascinated by the fact that S3 *saw* the word "She", and he correctly substituted the word "Her". "She" and "Her" look nothing alike, how did he *know* to read "Her", the word that S3 uses for "She"? It's just utterly fascinating to me! Anyway, the more I read the book with him, and the more I made gentle corrections, the less and less he *could* read, and the less he was interested. It's like I completely got in his way by trying to make him properly read every single word. What does reading really mean, anyway? Is it comprehension? Reading every single last word? I know *I* don't read every single last word. What about every single letter? (Check out this page to see how you can read words if just the first and last letter are correct!) It's all just really interesting. At any rate, I think with a little bit of phonics instruction S3 is going to be off and running very quickly. He's a math whiz, too, I expect he'll be accelerating the way J1 is before too long. He's interested in everything - he just doesn't want to sit down at it for too long! He would definitely be my "project" kid. None of my other guys care one whit for projects, art, that sort of thing, but S3 will definitely do that.

It's been an interesting year, and next year promises to be even more interesting! I'll detail our plans for next year soon!

Menu Plan Monday

2007-06-05T09:20:00.000-04:00

Or Tuesday, as the case may be - better late than never! We just got a 1/2 cow, so our meals are beef-heavy right now. Yum!

Monday: Hamburgers, french fries, coleslaw

Tuesday: Cube steak, mashed potatoes, mixed vegies

Wednesday: Slow-cooker pot roast, rice, grilled vegies

Thursday: Enchilada casserole, salad, chips and salsa

Friday: Fisherman's Quick Fish (we might try this on the grill), biscuits and butter, sliced tomatoes, corn on the cobb

****Incidently - if you're looking for an easy, no-fail, yummy biscuit recipe, this is definitely the one. YUM!

Saturday: Grilled Steaks, baked potato, salad

Sunday: We'll be going out to dinner after the Corpus Christi celebration at our church. It should be so much fun - we're the only church in Georgia making a Corpus Christi procession. I am so happy to be a part of it!!

That's all for this week. If you're looking for some other ideas, check out Organizing Junkie's Menu Plan Monday!

A fun little diversion...

2007-05-31T12:32:00.000-04:00

Take the Quiz here!

I'm reading Pride and Prejudice right now, I guess I'll put Sense and Sensibility next on my list. Dh and I love the movie, though!

I can't sing, but other than that, yeah, I guess the shoe fits! How about you??

Good Dog!

2007-05-24T10:36:00.000-04:00

Monday was an eventful day at Aquinas Academy. A2 had an emergency dental appointment which revealed an abscessed tooth (no, we aren't that lax about our dental hygiene, he had a crack in this tooth which meant he needed a crown put in about a year ago - so bacteria got in around the crown). He's got antibiotics to clear up the infection, he'll have the tooth pulled in 2 weeks, then 2 weeks after that a spacer put in. The dentist said we caught it in time and there isn't too much pain for him. Poor baby!

Anyway, during the day, I noticed that our dogs spent a lot of time under our deck, and Biscuit (our 1 1/2 year old English Pointer) came in the house with nice orange feet, courtesy of our red Georgia clay. When A2 and dh got home from the dentist, the kids started telling him about the big hole under the deck. Oh, great, I thought, the dogs are going to undermine the foundation of the house...(yes I tend to think in worst-case scenarios!) So dh went out and checked it out, told everyone it was just fine, they were just digging a hole to cool off in, and we should leave it alone.

A little while later, he took me aside and told me what actually happened.

The dogs killed a snake. It was just a small rat snake, a baby, probably (which dh tossed over the fence before we could see - mostly for my sake!) Our neighbor told us his dogs had killed 2 in his yard recently, so there must have been a nest nearby (remember our snakeskin of last year? Probably mom!) Now, rat snakes are non-venemous, and are certainly helping keep our rodent population down, which I really do appreciate. And I'm definitely glad it's a rat snake and not a copperhead, which also live around here. But, still - there was a snake in our yard where my babies play!!!

And so, late at night, I snuggled with my dogs and cried cuz they're such good dogs! Especially Biscuit (Daisy is probably too young to do much more than watch older male dog kill the snake - and learn!). We rescued Biscuit from a shelter, and he is, quite literally the best dog we've ever had. Daisy is an absolutely adorable puppy, and she will grow into her personality and maybe end up tied for best - but right now, Biscuit reigns supreme! Good dog!!

Tragedy of the most minor sort!

2007-05-18T08:12:00.000-04:00

I've seen tragedy, I've even experienced tragedy, and no, this isn't it - but it makes a nice post title! What's really going on is just a minor annoyance. See, my laptop died here at Aquinas Academy. Just as I was getting into the groove of regular posting again, too - I am so bummed! Thankfully, the poor computer is still under warranty. Unfortunately, it will take at least a week and a half, maybe up to a month, before I get my laptop back. In the meantime, I have to share time on our workhorse PC with the dh who works from home once a week or so and uses it all day, and the 4 boys who use it for games and some school-related tasks. I'll have computer time, but not the free access, send an email or write a post anytime I have a free 10 minutes or so kind of time. Bear with me for a few weeks as my posting becomes, yet again, irregular.

More pictures of the cutest puppy in the world!

2007-05-14T16:34:00.000-04:00

Well, it was quite the week of adjustment with our new pup, but things are starting to settle down a bit now. Daisy is feeling much more comfortable, she knows her place in the family better (low man/dog in the pack!) and she is just a joy to have around. She's starting to sleep through the night more often than not - or at least, from the time I go to bed around midnight until dh gets up for work around 5:30am. She wakes up *hungry*, and boy she's growing like a weed! When we got her, she weighed 12.9 lbs. By the time we took her to the vet just 4 days later, she was up to 14lbs. She is small for a lab, the vet predicts she'll be about 50lbs, which will be a nice size with our 45lb English Pointer, Biscuit. Here are just a few of the adorable pictures we have of our sweetie, Daisy!

Biscuit and Daisy LOVE to play together! (and yes, we've mowed the lawn since we took this picture!) Hard to believe that Daisy will be a bit bigger than Biscuit in about 10 months or so!

It is awesome to see the boys with the puppy - they take good care of her, and she adores them!

She is just so absolutely adorable!!

Menu Plan Monday

2007-05-14T15:40:00.000-04:00

Hi, all! Busy day - I made bagels! Homemade bagels are just the best, and quite honestly pretty easy - check out Tammy's blog for details. I've made them twice now, and I'll post some pictures and a few details on my cinnamon-raisin bagels soon. In the meantime, here's the menu for this week:

Monday: Pork chops, mixed greens, cheese grits

Tuesday: Lentil Chili, corn chips, salad

Wednesday: Beef Stroganoff, peas, salad

Thursday: Grilled chicken, rice, a vegie

Friday: Crockpot BBQ beef (didn't get to that last week!), onion rolls, coleslaw

Saturday: Grilled pizza, salad

Sunday: Hamburgers, chips, vegies&dip

Make sure to check out Organizing Junkie for more great ideas! Have a great week!

Piano Lessons and Music Appreciation Part I

2007-05-12T07:08:00.000-04:00

I've been wanting to write this post for a long time. I have some very definite ideas about music, and thought I'd record them here.

First, a little background. When I was younger, I was a fairly accomplished musician. I can say, with humbleness, that I have true gift from the Lord for music. I always loved music, and playing musical instruments came so naturally to me, it's still is a bit eerie. I never could sing, but I could play just about any instrument I picked up. My main instruments were piano and trombone, and I could also play flute, a little clarinet, and some oboe and baritone. I was a total "band nerd" in high school, and I even made a little money acccompanying soloists, playing in pit orchestras, at weddings, and in a small jazz band.

For whatever reason, I quit playing so much in college, and dropped it all almost completely once I got married. I always had plans to get a piano, give the boys lessons, maybe take up violin with them, and one of my long-time "life" goals is to learn to play the cello. However, our life has been so tumultuous the last 6-7 years or so, I hadn't given it much thought. Then, when we bought our house last summer, we had the opportunity to keep the previous owners' piano, and I have had SO much fun playing again, I can't believe I ever stopped! I've started piano lessons with J1 this year, and we have both had a great time. I'll detail our experiences more in Part 11.

Someone recently asked, on an email list I'm on, about music lessons, and when they should begin. I'm all for "kindermusic" type programs, if you and your toddler want to do that (with an emphasis on the *and your toddler" part of wanting it - I tried that back when J1 was little, and he cried the whole time - I only took him twice. Hard to believe my little social butterfly was once a very shy, reserved toddler!) But I'm speaking of formal lessons. Personally, I think that unless a child demonstrates a passion and/or a gift, formal instruction shouldn't begin until at least age 8 years old, probably closer to 10 or even 12. If your child has a gift from God the way that I do, you will know it. I begged my parents for lessons from a very young age, and they finally let me begin when I was about 7 years old, but I wish I had started at 5 or 6. If you don't sense a gift or passion for music, just wait! Forced instruction is a sure way to kill a love for learning of all kinds, but especially in music.

That said, I also believe that every person deserves an understanding of music. I think piano is particularly beneficial because it provides a basis for so much else that you might want to do with music, and because it involves both hands it is really awesome at building your brain in new ways. I think all kids should have 1-2 years of piano instruction, when they are old enough to be self-motivated.

Now, music lessons can be expensive, especially with multiple children. I know we couldn't afford it! But, if you've had at least 2-3 years of piano instruction yourself in the past, you could teach your child. Or, you might know someone, (like me!), who doesn't have enough formal instruction to be a "professional piano teacher", but knows enough to give your kids the basics for a year or two and would do it for a reasonable price, or for barter (piano lessons for babysitting or housecleaning, anyone?) If you live near a college, call up the music department and ask if they have any students who would teach - college students will often teach cheaply, or even barter for, say, access to a laundry machine! You should also have a piano, obviously. It doesn't have to be an expensive new one, I've only ever had beat-up old pianos, and they're great! You can usually find a used piano via word of mouth - tell everyone you know you're looking for a piano, say a prayer, and you'll be amazed at what turns up! If you just can't find a piano, or lack space for one, even just an electric keyboard could work (though in my opinion it's just not the same, it would be adequate for the kind of basic instruction I'm talking about).

In Part II, I'll detail what we're doing in our lessons, and also share some music appreciation hints and tips.

Book Meme

2007-05-12T06:59:00.000-04:00

Ok, I'll bite - saw this a couple of places, including here, at my friend's new blog (gotta get that blog roll thing going!), I'll give it a try!

Grab the nearest book.

Open it to page 161.
Find the fifth full sentence.
Post the text of the sentence along with these instructions.
Don't search around looking for the coolest book you can find. Do what's actually next to you.

"The idea generally received is that this, as well as three smaller vortices among the Ferroe islands, 'have no other cause than the coolision of waves rising and falling, at flux and reflux, against a ridge of rocks and shelves, which confines the water so that it precipitates itself like a cataract; and thus the higher the flood rises, the depper must the fall be, and the natural result of all is a whirpool or vortex, the prodigious suction of which is sifficiently known by lesser experiments'." The Raven and Other Writings, Edgar Allen Poe (Can anyone guess the story this sentence is from?)

(And boy! That Poe fella - he writes *llooooonnnnnggggg* sentences!)

J1 was reading Poe, not me - no scary stories for me, no sirree. I read The Tell-Tale Heart back in highschool, and that was more than enough for me!

A kid funny...

2007-05-10T09:32:00.000-04:00

So, S3 and A2 were in the kitchen, and suddenly A2 comes in and says, "Hey! He kicked me!" So I call S3 in and ask him why he kicked A2.

S3 looks at me earnestly, with his big brown eyes, and said, "Cuz he was trying to tell me something I didn't want to hear!"

More school stuff

2007-05-10T09:08:00.000-04:00

Ok, yesterday I wrote about J1 and his current scholarly progress, today I'll write about A2.

A2 is becoming, in my humble opinion, a case study in the value of waiting for formal schoolwork until a child is ready.

I've written before here and here about some of the difficulties I've had teaching A2 up to this point. He is an intensely unique child, and does just about everything his own way, in his own time. I am certain that in a traditional school setting, he would be "labelled" in some way, with a learning or behavioral disability, and his spirit would be crushed. Of all my kids, he is the one that will benefit the most from homeschooling, in my opinion.

As a baby, he was intensely physical. He crawled at 5 months of age, walked at 11 months, and just ran, jumped, kicked and stomped with abandon through toddlerhood. But he didn't talk hardly at all until he was well over 3 years of age. He didn't really talk well until he was almost 5. Now, at 7.5 years of age, he can out-talk all of us (which is saying a lot in our family!) He has absolutely no problems with diction or construction (well, except for all the boys having problems with feminine pronouns - they just have no experience using them, lol!), etc. He has some interesting ways of looking at things (his infamous "He's a lady baby, mom!" is just the tip of the ice berg), and I do think he *processes* language differently than most - but I don't think he has any true problems.

I always thought - and my dh and mom agreed with me - that his approach to schoolwork would be much the same way as his approach to talking. He would wait till he was ready, refuse to do anything until that point, and then he would take off. And that is exactly what I've seen, and now, at 7.5 years of age, he is starting to really fly.

So, here is what we're doing. Alex is 7.5 years old - age-wise, he is technically at the end of 2nd grade, but because of his very late July birthday, and his way of approaching things I talked about above, he is doing first grade work. I believe that I would have "held him back" if he went to a traditional school, anyway, and I believe that he will start to "catch up" over the next few years, now that he's ready.

Religion: I am alternating the first grade Faith and Life book and The Catholic Children's Bible. I read about two chapters a week in Faith and Life, then ask questions and talk about it with him. I also try to read about 2 chapters in the bible story book each week, hoping to finish up the entire book by next fall. After I read, we discuss the story. This is going well, A2 is interested and engaged and I believe it is helping his listening skills, too.

Math: We're in the middle of MCP Math book A - I don't know that we'll finish the whole book by the end of the year, but I think we'll cover enough of it that he will be ready to begin the MCP Math book B next year. I'm not overly fond of the MCP math program, but it is working for A2, so we'll stick with it for now. As I did with J1, I do a lot of his writing for him. We do 2-4 pages a day, and he tells me the answers and I write them down. I periodically make sure he can write these numbers, but for now, writing is too laborous for him and I don't want it to interfere with his learning the math that he is ready for. His older brother was exactly the same way at this age, and he's absolutely fine now, so this doesn't worry me. I think he'll be ready to do his own math writing next fall.

Handwriting: This is the most amazing thing of all to me! A2 has never been interested in writing. All my other boys were interested in writing and learning letter forms by about age 4-5. Not A2. He doesn't like to draw, he doesn't doodle, he doesn't try to write. In the past, as recently as just after Christmas, whenever I tried to teach him handwriting, he balked, cried, and just didn't seem to "get" how to form the letters using the lines on the paper. I was really starting to get worried. As we started back to school after our brief Easter break, I decided to try using the used Seton 1 handwriting book I'd picked up at our church's Christmas bazarre. I've been so impressed with Seton's handwriting with J1, I thought, why not try it. The first day he complained a bit, but he was doing it! The second day, he complained a bit less. By the third day, he was actually enjoying it, and doing great. Now, suddenly, he is just absolutely amazing. Holding his pencil correctly, tracing the letters with ease and making good-looking letters on his own. Using the lines completely appropriately, everything proportional (something his older brother still struggles with), just - beautiful. Ok, he still has beginner's handwriting - but I am just truly amazed. I think in another year he is going to have really, truly good handwriting, and you could knock me over with a feather over that realization! The other thing is, Seton handwriting books contain beautiful artwork, and we spend some time discussing each picture, which A2 really enjoys. He has a much greater appreciation for art than his brothers seem to - he is truly interested in composition, etc, which I find very interesting. Perhaps another sign of his visual-spatial learner tendencies?

Phonics: We tried to continue with Explode the Code, and I just didn't really feel that he was learning anything. He needed too much prompting from me, and nothing seemed to be sinking in. So, I switched to a used copy of MCP phonics (1st grade book) just last week, and it is going *much* better. MCP phonics is much more visually appealing than Expode the Code, which seems to be important to him (again with the visual-spatial learner thing?) He is a little bit bored with some of it - I think he would be comfortable more in the middle of the book, but he needs to cover a bit more of the basics before we can get there. I'm skipping a few things, just trying to feel my way through what he needs to know. He is also having great fun coloring the pictures when that's part of the lesson. He is very interested in chosing the proper color for things - again, very different from his brothers. Intriguing!

Reading: We are really, truly making progress, which is making both of us really happy. We're on Lesson 30 in 100 Easy Lessons. It is somewhat slow going - like I said, it just doesn't seem to come naturally to him. Reading hasn't "clicked" with him yet - but he's getting close, I can tell. In teaching 2 children how to read, I see some "readiness" signs, and I think there is a "click", a mental shift that occurs when it finally all makes sense. A2 is showing all the "readiness" signs that come just before that "click". He is playing with language - word games, rhyming games, laughing at funny words, alliterative words, etc. He has never played with language the way his oldest brother did almost from birth - not until recently. So, I now believe that A2 really will read. A few people have asked me if I think he might be dyslexic and no, I really don't. He doesn't seem to have problems with reversals, or writing/sounding out the letters out of order, just nothing that would indicate dyslexia. Like I said, I do think he processes language differently than most in some way - but I don't see it as a big problem, I really don't. I expect that in about 2-4 months, he will be reading real books and enjoying it. That will make us both very, very happy!

Because I am focused on his reading, (w)riting, religion and 'ritmetic (the "big 4" in my opinion), we don't have any formal study in history or science. I am planning to change that in the fall, though, as the whole family will start ancient history again, and I might have everyone do science together, too, I'm still pondering that one.

I'm excited. I really feel like I *will* be able to teach A2, and he *will* be able to - *is* - learning.

Back to school stuff...

2007-05-09T09:47:00.000-04:00

Ok, I have been woefully negligent in talking about the main subject of this blog - our homeschooling! Quite honestly, we've been so busy doing stuff I haven't had time to write about it all! Any ideas on how to make time for blogging? Any ideas on how to make time for stuff like laundry and housework? ;-)

Anyway, I thought I'd start with J1, since he's our oldest. He is 10 years old, and traditionally, he'd be in the last part of fourth grade. For my own record-keeping, let me just list what we've been doing the last couple of months:

Religion: We read and discuss one chapter from the Baltimore Catechism and one chapter from Faith and Life each week. This is a big "dinner table" school topic. Dinner table school is my inner moniker for the great discussions we have around the dinner table. History, current events, religion, and even science are big dinner table school subjects around here.

Math: J1 continues to do well in Saxon 7/6. We are accelerating quite a bit, he's more than half way through the book and we've only been working on it for about 2 months. We only work about half the problems in each lesson (odds or evens, usually), and about once every 10 lessons or so, I assign no review problems ("Mixed practice", for those of you familiar with Saxon) but two lessons of new concepts ("lesson practice") only.

A side note: One thing that J1 has always struggled with is carelessness in his work. For the most part, I've ignored it. As a homeschool mom, I know that he understands the concept, even though he made 6 careless mistakes, know what I mean? It got marginally better when we skipped ahead a year in math back after our Christmas break. I thought, correctly, that part of the problem was that he was just so bored. However, the last few weeks things got pretty bad again. The day he scored just a 75% on test (all but 5% was careless mistakes), I got kind of upset. I have a whole other post running through my brain about this sort of thing - should we use school to address character issues, like diligence and patience, etc? I'm not sure of the answer, though I have lots of thoughts I'll share soon. For now, I'll simply tell you what we did. I considered slowing down, making him do all the problems in every lesson for awhile...but I just didn't think that would help. He was consistently getting all the "Lesson practice"/new concept problems all correct, just getting careless in his review work. So I didn't think that assigning *more* problems would neccessarily help. I talked it over with him, and he admitted that he was very distracted while he was doing his work. Thinking about games, and fiction books, and his own imaginary goings-on. Dh said that was pretty typical for a 10 year old boy. So we talked about the importance of what he was doing, and we came to an agreement. He no longer gets to play any computer or board games in the morning before school (I know, bad habit, huh?), and if he doesn't get at least 85% on his work that day (at mom's discretion - I would let up a bit over honest mistakes that he learns from), he doesn't get to play computer or board games after schoolwork, either. I don't think I would do this with every child, or a struggling child, but I know that J1 is capable of this work. In fact, even though he's almost 2 full years "ahead" in math, he is still only barely challenged. To prove my point, after our agreement, he is now averaging 93% on all his work.

Handwriting: He's on track to finish Seton Handwriting 4. I have a funny anecdote about why his handwriting has suddenly gotten better over the last week or so, but I'll save that for it's own post. Handwriting continues to be one of his weakest subjects. Again, pretty typical for a 10 year old boy!

Spelling/vocabularly: We started the Seton 7 spelling book a few weeks ago, and it seems to be a good fit for him. Because he is such a voracious reader, spelling and vocab come very easily to him. In fact, he told me last night that he still finds spelling easy and boring (he's only gotten 3 spelling words wrong in the first 4 lessons). He says he knows almost all the words already. We'll keep going, though, because I want to reinforce his good spelling, and he enjoys the stories and artwork in the book.

Science: We've completed our study of the human body, and starting, ever so slowly, on our survival skills unit (more on that soon over at dh's blog). J1 admits that he has been really bored with our science this year. He's always had a love for science, and in making sure the basics are covered, I have bored him to tears this year. Poor kid! Hopefully we can remedy that next year.

History: We're on track to finish our first run-through of American History. J1 tells me he loves history, and we're both satisfied with what he's learning, though J1 craves even more depth and detail. We're using "How American Grew" as our spine, and lots of living books (He just finished "Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry", then he'll read "The Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson" and "Tom Sawyer") to flesh things out.

Art: We're using CHC's "Learning to Appreciate Art", which is an *awesome* introduction to art and art history. J1 is really enjoying it, and I think we'll expand our art history study next year. We continue to do not so well with the actual *doing* art - drawing, etc. I am going to look into what we can do next year to get some basic drawing skills.

Music: He's started piano lessons with me, and we've done some music appreciation - it's a whole other post, but we're having a *great* time and it's going really well.

Latin: We started using "Our Roman Roots", as Henle Latin was just a touch too advanced for him (primarily because he needed a lot of input from me or dh, and we weren't being diligent about making time for it). I like Our Roman Roots, it seems like it will be a good intermediary step for him. He loves Latin, and it helps that we hear it every week at our Latin Mass parish.

Geography: We're going through CHC's US Catholic Geography Bee program, and it's going well. J1 enjoys doing his assingments, and I think he'll have a good grasp of US geography by the time we're through.

Which leaves us, I believe with the subject we're struggling most with this year.

Grammar/English: We are really struggling with this subject. Which is funny, because J1 has always been *such* a verbal kid, he really has an amazing facility with language (he is *definitely* my dh's son in that regard, as anyone who knows dh can attest! :-) So I'm not sure why he struggles so much with grammar and writing. I think that I just haven't found the right approach. Intermediate Language Lessons was a dismal failure - many tears, which distresses me, because I don't want him to cry over learning! So, we're dropping it for now, going back and skimming over CHC's 4th grade grammar to cover some basics. But, we're in discussions about what we're going to do next year to further our study of the English language. My main concern is to get him writing. He has such a wonderful "voice" when he tells stories out loud, but he struggles to get it down on paper. I haven't had much success with anything we've done so far, though I might re-visit Bravewriter. I might actually get the book if finances allow for it, and I might even try to sign him up for an on-line class next spring (again, depending on finances!) We've had some good discussions about this, and I think next year we'll be able to improve - more details soon!

I feel like I've forgotten something, but I think I'm going to go ahead and hit "publish" now, just to get this out there. Soon I'll write about A2!

Menu Plan Monday

2007-05-07T17:14:00.000-04:00

Ok - it's been awhile! For those of you who have really missed it (Hi, Jenn!), I hope to start doing a Menu Plan Monday every week again! Make sure to check out I'm an Organizing Junkie for lots more great ideas!

Monday: Easy Shepherd's Pie (brown 2lbs ground beef, cook 1-2 packages frozen mixed vegies, add 1 can cream of mushroom soup, 1 can beef broth or beef gravy, mix it all together, throw it in a pan, top with leftover mashed potatoes, bake till bubbly and warmed through), small side salad, bread and butter for the kids

Tuesday: Grilled chicken, homemade mac&cheese (my mom said Emeril's recipe was really good, so I'm going to try something similiar), brocoli, cauiflour and carrots on the side

Wednesday: Jen's Easy Taco Salad (make a salad with lettuce, tomatoes, peppers, brown 1-2lbs ground beef and add taco seasoning, put meat, shredded cheese, and crushed taco chips over salad. Pour catalina dressing over all, or use salsa and/or sour cream as a dressing)

Thursday: BBQ Shredded Beef (I'll make this in the crockpot, and use this awesome homemade BBQ Sauce), with onion rolls, vegies & dip

Friday: BBQ Pizza (we just make small pizzas for everyone, put them on tin foil and throw them on the grill), salad

Saturday: mom&dad dinner - steak, baked potato, salad and kid dinner - chicken nuggets, french fries, celery & carrot sticks

Sunday: roast, mashed potatoes & gravy, green beans & carrots, blueberry pie for dessert

Have a great week!

Our new addition!

2007-05-06T20:51:00.000-04:00

Today we got a new puppy!! We are so very excited! We worked with Atlanta Dog Squad to adopt an 8.5 week old lab mix puppy, and we've had a wonderful experience. Her name was Jersey, but because she might be the only girl baby I ever have :-), we wanted to give her a more "girl-y" name, and have decided to call her "Daisy". This fits in with the other female in the house, our cat, Rosie. We also got her a pink collar to further satisfy my girl needs! :-)

So far things are going well. We need to work on the housetraining a bit, and she needs some encouragement in not nipping or jumping on the kids - nothing unexpected in such a young puppy. But she has been so relaxed, so at ease around us and our pets, I know that her foster family did a fabulous job with her. She is going to be a wonderful addition to our family. Here are a few pictures of our new baby!

Meeting her new friend, Biscuit:

With A2:

She's going to fit right in with the crew!

The grill is oh so interesting!

Looking absolutely adorable...

I'm sure you'll see many more pictures of our new cutie in the days to come!

A great new link!

2007-05-03T12:22:00.000-04:00

My hubby has decided to start his own homeschool blog, and I am so excited! I would love to see more "daddy blogs". If your dh blogs, send him over to my dh's blog and they can do the link exchange thing!

Check out Aquinas Academy Dad!

Before and after, flowers or stripes?

2007-05-03T10:43:00.000-04:00

So, we finished (mostly) painting our kitchen. A few touch-ups remain, but it's looking good, if I do say so myself. Drastically different from the bland white walls we've lived with since we moved in 9 months ago. Here is before:

And here's after:

Now, here's the burning question - I have reversable curtains (thank you Wal-Mart!). Which should I put up with the new paint color - the flowers (above) or the stripes (below)?

Here's a close-up of both:

or

I dunno...in the pictures, the flowers (IMO) look better - but in real life, the stripes look a bit better. What do you think?

As if I - and you! - have nothing better to do than obsess over curtains! Must go get to schoolwork! More soon....