Back to the Grindstone

Yesterday we had such a great time with friends at a backyard barbecue.  There were four families there:  Angie and Scott and their kids, Candace and Kevin and their kids, Tom and Lisa and their kids, and us.  They're all people we're tied to through church, but it goes beyond that.  We went to school with them.  I've often said that one of the best things about the Bible college we graduated from is the connections we'll have forever with so many different people.  Anyway, Memorial Day was a lot of fun, but I forgot the camera so I didn't get a single picture.

~old lady intermission~

Baylee's got a cold, and I think I'm getting one now, too.

My broken toe still hurts, especially now that Mike and I are taking long walks together.  It's worth it, though.

~intermission over~

I just finished listening to an audio book called A Day No Pigs Would Die, by Robert Newton Peck.  It's the story of a Shaker boy growing up on a farm in the 1920s.   Actually, I think it's the story of the author's own boyhood.  It's really good, although a bit gruesome (pig butchering) in spots.  One of my favorite parts is this description of a time when the boy is getting a D in English at the little local schoolhouse, and a friend of the family decides she's going to tutor him:

"There now.  Jack hit the ball hard with Joe's yellow bat.  Let's see you diagram that."


"I can't, Auntie Matt."


"I know you can't.  But any schoolboy who gets a D had better learn..."


Picking up the pencil, Aunt Matty started to draw some lines and circles (and a few other gee-gaws that I'd never seen before and never seen since) on the sentence about Jack.  She put a zig-zag here, and a crazy elbow joint there.  There was ovals and squiggles all over the paper.  It was the fanciest thing I ever saw.  The part about Jack was still in sight, but now it had arms and legs that thrashed out in six directions.  It looked to me like a hill of barbed wire.  And the worse it got, the prouder Aunt Matty was of it.


"Behold!" she said at last, trying to pry loose the pencil from her own fingers.  "That is a diagram!"

I love it.

Staycation

Mike and I decided to treat this 3-day weekend like a "staycation."  Dumb word, good concept.  So far it's been full of really nice, relaxing family time.  Here are the highlights:

• We got to sleep in on Saturday.
• Mike and I went on the walk I told you about.
• We've read good books.
• The kids have been playing their heads off with other kids in the neighborhood.
• We watched three movies.
• Baylee had a friend over this afternoon.
• I stepped on the scale this morning after being on WW Online for one week, and discovered I've lost 5.8 pounds so far.  
• I needed new tennis shoes badly, so I bought myself some Chucks.  I like them.  A lot.
• Tomorrow we're spending the day with several friends from church.  I'm really looking forward to it.

Strolling

Mike and I left the kids with Zach and took the dog for a walk today.  It was so nice to spend that time together.  The weather was beautiful, and Mike showed me a pretty trail by our house that winds back into the woods and around a couple ponds.  I brought the camera.

 

Love You, Honey

Mike and I have this ongoing, peaceful disagreement about something.  He says I don't always listen; I say he never told me in the first place.

"I told you.  You weren't listening," he replies.

"No, you never said anything," I say back.

But, really, who knows?  Because maybe he did tell me.  I do have a tendency to be a bit flighty in my focus sometimes.  Or maybe he didn't.  It's like the dunking chair they used to use to figure out if someone was a witch or not.  There's no way to come out on top.  (Oh, she drowned.  I guess she wasn't a witch, after all!)

Kinda Like a Root Canal

Zach's doing a unit on reproduction in Biology.  Wow.  I sure wish I wasn't his teacher right about now, and I bet he does, too.

"Zach, what are the three purposes that God included in His plan for sex?"

"..."

"Why do two married people have sex, Zach?"

"..."

"Oh my gosh, you can't even think of one reason???"

"To have a baby."

"Okay, good.  What's another one?"

"Commitment."

"That's right.  They're strengthening their bond as a married couple.  What's the third?"

"..."

"It's obvious..."

"..."

Huge sigh.  "Pleasureokaylet'smoveon."

As cringy as it is to talk about this stuff with your 15 year old son, I do like the way this class covers some of the tough subjects like abortion and homosexuality.  It's got an unapologetically Christian viewpoint.

Note to Self:  When Drew hits this chapter have Mike handle it.

Random Stuff

Does milk chocolate count as dairy?  Probably not, huh.

Yesterday Baylee slept in, then got up and got right to work on school before eating breakfast or changing out of her jammies.  I thought her disheveled look was kind of cute.

 
Playing with the cat is more fun than Biology.

 

I gave Drew a mohawk.

But then I cut it off.  It was fun while it lasted.

Last night Baylee was at Grace's for the kid exchange and Drew was at junior high youth group, so Mike, Zach, and I went to a tiny, hole-in-the-wall Chinese place that Mike heard about from friends.  It's called Fu Man Dumpling House.  Oh my goodness, it was good!  And fun!  It's so small that you might end up sitting at the same small table as other customers (we did), but the food and service more than make up for it.  

Is This Thing On?

Just seeing if Blogger works today.  It does.

And to make sure this post isn't a complete waste of your time, here are a couple cartoons that I found at a site called Indexed.

 

(That last one might only be humorous if you had to take English I, or maybe it was II, at GBC with Mrs. Tobian.  She made us read that horrible story.  I finished it and was left going, "Wait, what?  They're ghosts?  What just happened?")

Adult Gummies (It's Just Fun to Say)

I don't have very much time, as I've gotta listen to Baylee practice the piano and then pick Zach up from karate.  I just wanted to mention that I started WW again, but this time I'm doing their online program.  I'm tentatively...not exactly excited...but hopeful that I'll enjoy it I won't hate it.  Anyway, it's the ticket to riding my bike again, since I won't ride in my current state. I'm not going to be one of those women out on the trail.  You know who I mean.

Initial thoughts about the online version:

• When you check all the squares for something you're supposed to do a happy face appears.  This has motivated me to get happy faces today in the catagories of water, fruits and veggies, dairy, healthy oils, and daily multivitamin.  Apparently I'm still 5 years old on the inside.
• I had to go to the store and buy a multivitamin in order to make that happen.  I found "Nature's Bounty Adult Gummies".  They're vitamins, but they're gummy candies.  Make that 3 years old.

Bike, here I come!  Eventually.  When my butt's not so big.

News of Today

Well, That Was Awkward
Our sermon today wasn't the one our pastor was originally planning to preach.  Instead, in response to the news concerning the rapture that was scheduled to happen yesterday, he decided to deviate and talk about what our church believes about the end times.  He did a good job.  After the sermon one of the people on the worship team got up to lead the final song, but before the music started she said, off the cuff I'm sure, "I don't know about you, but I think Pastor Jim needs to listen to the Holy Spirit more often and preach like that!"

Review
I finished The Graveyard Book.  It's so excellent.  I loved it.  In fact, I broke my rule about saving the audio books for work, and laid in bed the last two nights listening.  At one point, a scary part, I was glad Mike was there next to me, snoring softly.  Here's the thing about audio books:  You can't really look ahead.  You find things out only as they happen, and if the person reading it is any good (which they always are), you're really in for an emotional ride.

My Toe
...is an interesting bloom of blacks and greens and blues.  I took a picture, but then I thought I'd spare you.  You're welcome.

Ow

About five minutes after I finished yesterday's blog entry I tripped over a laundry basket and broke the little toe on my right foot.  I think I'm the biggest klutz on earth.  Now my toe is black and blue, and it feels like a sharp pain...like pins are stabbing from the inside...when I put any weight on it.  The worst part is this:  Do you know you hardly get any sympathy for a broken toe?  All anybody says is, "Yeah, they can't do anything about that."  I want my baby toe in a sling, people.  I want meals brought to the home.  I want flowers and chocolates and balloons.

Yesterday after I broke my toe we all went to that thing with tacos and friends.  It was fun!  There were about 30 people there, all folks from our peer group at church and their kids.  We talked, ate, and laughed.  I only got a couple pictures, and not of everybody.

The men congregated on the porch.

A couple cute kids.  This family is new to our church and seems really nice.

The three amigas...Grace, Baylee, and Molly.  Grace is going through a crossed-eyes-during-pictures phase.

Today I checked out a place near here called Homeschool Potpourri.  It's like a warehouse for used homeschool curricula.  You can either sell your old stuff there, or buy someone else's.  I was pretty impressed with the place.  The only slightly off-putting thing was that, at least when I was there, it was being manned by stereotypical homeschool moms.  That is, know-it-all types with bad haircuts and jean skirts.  Oh well, whatever.  I found the world history program I'm going to use for Drew next year, which is why I went.  (I decided not to use the online distance program for his 8th grade year, after all.)

I guess that's about it for today.  It's time to go limp around some more and get no compassion.

Quick Pics

I gotta make this a quick one today, because pretty soon we're going to a thing with a bunch of friends from church.  We're meeting at someone's house for tacos and Wii bowling.

It's a beautiful day!  I snapped this with my cell phone camera when Drew and I dropped Baylee off at her piano lesson.

We're making green flowers.  Why?  No reason.

Zach did some gnarly sentence diagramming today.

I love how indirect objects are diagrammed.  They get to be up on a pedestal.  It's one of those things that makes me inexplicably happy.

Zach and I got up and started school an hour and a half earlier than usual, and do you know what?  It's made this whole day so much better.  I guess the saying is true.

EARLY BIRD

Oh, if you're a bird, be an early bird

And catch the worm for your breakfast plate.

If you're a bird, be an early early bird--

But if you're a worm, sleep late.

 ~ Shel Silverstein 

Tiring

Sometimes I feel like that Alexander kid who had the "horrible, terrible, no good, very bad day."  Only, really, it wasn't that bad...it was just discouraging.  My friend, Jenny, whom I love, wrote on Facebook that in only seven more days she'll be finished homeschooling for the year.  She also linked to a place where she's quoted in a homeschool magazine.  Another friend whose blog I read, Kellie, talked about how she's wrapping up her school year, too.  Someone I don't know, but have linked on my sidebar, wrote today that they're actually done with their year completely.  And here I sit, far from being finished.  Zach still has at least a month in every subject, and he'll most likely be working on Algebra all summer.  I'm also far from caring enough to even read homeschooling magazines anymore, this school year at least.  Why would I want to read the happy stories of people who always have everything organized and together and who have wonderful, perfect, amazing, genius children?  My kids aren't like that.  There are never any stories about how teaching 3 kids can sometimes feel like teaching 10...or 100...and how sometimes you just want to go hide in the bathroom with chocolate and a book.  

It's been a tiring day.

School Today

Man, I'm so tired.  I'm not used to this schedule yet.  Or...well...I'm not used to being self-disciplined about going to bed.  When I get home at midnight (or so) I just can't make myself go right to sleep.  I take a shower and then read, and right now my books are so excellent that I might read until two in the morning.  I wonder if this is what a hangover feels like.  Oh well, there's always coffee!

Zach had to write a one-page essay on poetry yesterday for English.  Can you imagine how pleased he was to get that assignment?  The thing is, between that and the systematic way the course is teaching the subject of poetry, that kid now knows a ton!  I don't remember having such a good understanding of how poetry really works when I was in high school.

Today I had Drew watch a clip from the History Channel (that I found on Youtube) on the Grand Coulee Dam.  It's been really fun to flesh out his state history course by finding books and videos and things to go with what he's learning.  The other day he watched an excellent National Geographic documentary on Lewis and Clark that I found on Netflix instant streaming.  I think if I just had one kid, this is how I'd homeschool.  I'd piece things together myself using lots of different sources.

Speaking of Drew, Mike and I are thinking about using the Bob Jones Distance Online program for him, too, next year.  After watching the sample videos, I'm just so impressed.  For instance, in the American History sample that I watched, the teacher was talking about when the USSR and America were putting men into space.  They showed that moon landing clip where Neil Armstrong says, "That's one small step for man; one giant leap for mankind."  And in the life science sample the teacher is dissecting a cow's heart.  Yes, I could give him a great 8th grade education on my own; I don't doubt that at all.  But it's these extra little things that an online school with a big budget can offer...it might be really good for him.

One of the things about Baylee's curriculum is that it weaves in Bible verses and good character traits.  I figured out the other day that by the end of this year Baylee will have learned (and been tested on) 72 different verses.  I'm not sure how many character traits she's learned, but it's a ton, too.  Right now she's learning about the character trait of being available.  That is, "being ready to do what I am asked to do," as her schoolbook says.  Today she had to write about a time when she was available, and she chose to talk about the work day our church had a month or so ago.  She went with Mike and helped him install new soap dispensers in all the bathrooms.  Part of the assignment was to draw a picture, too.  Here's what she drew:

(It's bigger if you click on it.)

That's her in the smelly boys' bathroom with her Daddy.  She's saying that it's gross in there, and he's telling her to deal with it.  LOL  I can just imagine how that day must've been for Mike, with a talkative, sometimes complaining 9 year old skipping along beside him.  At least he had a smile on his face!

Work in Progress

There's still some kinks to iron out, but it's getting closer!  Drew's been working with his teacher for the finger picked melody at the beginning, and a great guy at church named Mark for the "chords with a bass walk" that he plays when Baylee sings.

Here's the first verse and chorus:  

Adventures in Babysitting

Zach has been able to stay home alone for quite some time now, and in the last year we've started  to allow the two boys to be home by themselves for an hour or so, but it wasn't until recently that we began letting all three of them be alone, with Zach in charge.  The reason we waited wasn't because of Zach; it was because of Baylee.  We didn't think she would listen to him.  (She can be a naughty little sister sometimes.  I know that's extremely hard to believe.)  Anyway, so Zach has been babysitting once in awhile lately, and it's been working well.  The other day Baylee told me this story:

"Guess what, Mom!  Last night Zach did something called "dictator hour!"  He made me, Drew, and Gibbs all sit on the couch, and then he threw Fruit Loops at us and we were supposed to catch them in our mouths.  Every time we caught one we got a point.  Gibbs won.  Then Zach told us to pick a kids' movie from Netflix that was either G or PG.  He made popcorn and we had a movie night!  We watched Toy Story 3, because he hadn't seen it yet."

LOL  Doesn't Zach sound like the kind of babysitter you wish you had as a kid?  Still, he keeps them safe and makes them go to bed on time...sort of.  We're really pleased with him.

Promoted!

Zach's been taking Tang Soo Do for several months, and tonight he was promoted to a higher belt.  He's in an adult class, which is run very differently than the kids' Tang Soo Do school he went to when he was about 10 years old and we lived in Michigan.  This adult class is much more geared toward precision.  There's no real discipline problems or crowd control issues, because everyone who's there wants to be there, and because they're adults (or teens) and can control themselves.  They can get right down to business.  It's nice, but in some ways it's harder to move up a belt, because you really have to have everything down pat.

Anyway, Zach moved up!  And the really cool part is that he skipped orange and went right to purple!  That's the way this particular teacher likes to do it with older students:  Have them work hard and learn a lot, and then let them move 2 steps up instead of 1.  Zach's pretty excited.

Book Review

Right now I've got two batches of books I'm reading:  my work books and my home books.  My work books are the MP3 ones that I listen to while I clean in the evenings.  Last night I finished my first one, a mystery (and only okay), and started a second one.  This one is great!  It's called The Graveyard Book, and it's written by Neil Gaiman.

 photo from here

It's about a boy whose family is murdered when he's a baby, but who manages by sheer chance to escape to the graveyard next door.  Now he's being raised by ghosts.  It sounds a little silly, but so far this book is completely charming.  I think part of its draw for me is that it's read (in the audio version, of course) by the actual author.  He does the voices of the characters in a way that made me laugh out loud several times as I walked around cleaning toilets and dusting and stuff.  He's also an Englishman, which always makes for fun listening.  Besides that, the story itself is interesting and well written.  I recommend it!

Baylee's First Sewing Project

Today Grace, who can make her own clothes, started teaching Baylee how to use her sewing machine.  I handed them a camera and told them to take a few pictures of the process.  Except for the last two snapshots of the finished product, this is all them.  I think it's really cute.

Make video montages at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Releasing the Butterflies

Photo and video editing at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Edited to Add:

I was thinking about how it's a shame the pictures can't do justice to how cool some of that stuff is, but then I realized it's just because they're too small.  If you want to see something really neat, click on this one so it becomes bigger.  When you do that you'll clearly see the butterflies inside their chrysalides, waiting for the right time to come out...especially the top one.  You can also see the two leftover caterpillar skins (including heads) that are still hanging on.

PS:  Is it just me or does an almost ready chrysalis look a lot like a Vietnamese spring roll?

photo from here

In other news, Pioneer Girls had their last night this past Wednesday.  They did an awards night/talent show thing, and Baylee did great!

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Butterflies!

Something was wrong with Blogger over the last couple days (I even lost a couple posts), but it's working again and I've got news:  The butterflies have all emerged!  Capturing even just one of them on video was practically impossible, because when they come out it's such a quick thing and you just never know exactly when it's going to happen.  There are clues, like right beforehand the chrysalis becomes almost transparent, making it so you can actually see the pattern of the butterfly's wings on the inside.  The first time I knew it was about to happen I got a phone call and missed it.  The second time I had the whole butterfly house right next to me on the dining room table as Zach and I did geography, and then we got caught up in learning about Russia and I missed it again.  The third time I walked away to clean something in the kitchen...and...yep.  Missed it.  The fourth time (and last, because the butterfly whose chrysalis fell and was lying on the floor of the cage died) I was determined.  I watched and watched, and when I couldn't watch I made one of the kids watch.  Finally it happened!  It was really cool to see it firsthand, and Zach happened to be right there so he got to see it, too. 

Waiting...

One is out!

When the butterfly emerges, it looks like it's bleeding.  Actually, according to the information that came with the kit, that red, drippy stuff is "leftover color and unneeded tissue from the butterfly's wing formation."

Another is out...

Aren't the butterflies a pretty color?  If you look at the remaining chrysalides, you can see how they're becoming transparent.

The third!

Finally, here's the video.  It's kinda shaky.  Sorry about that.

Make photo slide shows at www.OneTrueMedia.com

Mom

Mike and I sent my mom flowers for Mother's Day, and when they arrived at her house she really wanted to get a picture of them so we could see what they look like.  Dang new-fangled cameras.

I love her. 

School, Etc.

Sorry about my whiny post yesterday.  I'm gonna try not to complain about my new job anymore, especially since 1) The money will come in handy and 2) I heard through the grapevine that the people in that building are really happy with how clean the place has gotten over the last week.  That does help.

Today in state history Drew and I read that Native Americans introduced European explorers to potatoes, beans, and corn.  "Without the Indians sharing this information," I added, "we wouldn't be having shepherd's pie for supper tonight!"  I'm good with the relevant illustrations.

The kids are finally starting to finish off subjects for the year, one by one.  Baylee completed Social Studies and Literature/Creative Writing, and today Drew finished his course with Marie the Canadian English teacher.  I'm gonna miss that lady.  Who else drives around in a El Camino with a bumper sticker on it that reads "Punctuation rocks!"?  We'll see her next year, though, for the 2nd and 3rd levels of grammar and for her essay writing course.

Alright, I'm off to clean up the joint and then make some Indian food.

Not A Little Princess

When I was a girl I could make work pass by quicker by pretending things.  I liked to pretend, for example, that I was Sara Crewe from A Little Princess.  Of course, I drew from the second half of the book, where she's kicked out of the boarding school as a student and made to live in the attic as a maid.  Even in high school I had the trick of using my imagination to make drudgery more interesting.  I remember one hiking trip in the Smoky Mountains going by faster by secretly pretending I was a kidnapping victim.  (The trip itself was a huge amount of fun [and it included rapelling!], but the hiking part of it was sometimes a lot of painful exercise.)

All that to say:  I've lost the ability.  Nothing is making my new job cleaning an office building at night any fun.  Oh well.

Eh

Today has been a nice, quiet day.  Mike took the boys over to the peninsula after church, and they took Patty out to lunch.  Baylee and I went to see a cute movie.  During church I did a reading about Mother's Day during the service, and Baylee got to put a rose in a vase up front, representing those of us with mothers who are still living.  (An older lady put a white one in the vase, to represent those with mothers who are gone now.)  I feel sort of...eh...about my part in it.   I felt pretty good about how it went, but then I asked Mike what he thought, and he said, "You did the best you could with what you had to work with."  I know what he means and I even agree with him, but still, I wanted to hear something along the lines of, "Great!"  Sigh.  You know how sometimes people say, "What?  Do you want me to lie to you???"  Yeah, I kinda do.

Saturday

I'm feeling so much better after a full night's rest.  I needed that.  Let's see, since last we talked I...

...read more than half of The Hunger Games.  Wow, it's a GREAT book.  It's about how, sometime in the future, there's a city called Panem that rules over 12 outlying regions, and makes them send one boy and one girl between the ages of 12-18 to compete in something called the Hunger Games once a year.  The Hunger Games is a televised fight to the death, and every year they change where it takes place...it might be in a desert, it might be in a polar region, it might in a forest.  The contestants do whatever it takes to stay alive over several weeks, and the last one standing is the winner of fame and fortune.  Basically, the book is about how horrible this all is, and how it can bring out the best or the worst in people.  Wikipedia says it's a statement against big brother government, but I think it's more of a statement against our "reality television" culture.

...was given this Mother's Day gift.

The card says:

Dear Mom,


Thank you for being the best mom ever!  I'm so happy God gave the world wonderful mothers like you!  You're such a nice mom that looks out for me and makes good decisions.  You're truly the best mom ever!  I'm so happy to have a mom like you!


Love Baylee!
Happy Mother's Day!

LOL  She laid it on a little thick, and we might have to work on appropriate exclamation point usage, but I loved it.

...found out we're getting a recliner.   At this rate there might actually come a day when we don't look like squatters!  (Just kidding.  Sort of.  But when we first moved into this house from our last one, which was much smaller, we definitely didn't have enough stuff to fill it, and my friend Beth said it looked very "stark.")

Night Job = Takes Some Getting Used To

I kept thinking through the day of different things I could blog about...cute things that happened or that someone said.  But I'm too tired today.  So this is all you get.

School Today...and Sundry Other Things

Today is a really good day of school so far.  I borrowed a couple more books to supplement Drew's Washington state history course.  One is a public school textbook called The Washington Adventure.  It's excellent.  The other is a novel called A Horse's Tale:  Ten Adventures in One Hundred Years.  It's about a wooden toy horse and how, over the course of time, it gets passed from one child to another.  Each child lives in a different era of Washington's history.  Between the Abeka State Notebook that Drew is already using, and these two new resources, I think we've got something great.  By the way, today in the State Notebook Drew had to choose one of Washington's industries and write about it.  He chose Starbucks, and in response to the question, "Where is this industry found in your state?" he wrote, "A stone's throw away from anywhere you are."

Last night I started a new book called The Hunger Games, by Suzanne Collins.  I saw a rave review of it on someone's blog, so I put it on hold at the library.  That was months ago.  No lie, I was somewhere around 850th in line to read this thing.  That sheer number of people bodes well for the book, but we'll see if it's really good enough to take me away from my beloved Miss Read for long.

In English Zach is studying poetry.  For some reason I'm loving this unit.  To me learning about the weird little details, like different meters and feet, is fascinating.  Zach, on the other hand, finds it very boring.  By the end of today he was telling me stuff like, "Oh how I hate poetry, it's so very bad.  If it didn't exist I would be less sad."  I asked him to tell me the rhythm pattern of that.

We've been enjoying delicious bran muffins every day, and you can, too.  Here's the recipe:

1 cup oil
4 eggs
3 cups sugar
1 quart buttermilk
5 cups flour
5 tsp. baking soda
8 cups Raisin Bran cereal

Mix it all together, then let sit for several hours or overnight.  This is obviously a lot of batter, because it makes 5 dozen!  It will keep in the fridge for 2 or 3 weeks in a closed container (I have mine in Tupperware).  Whenever you want, just scoop some out into greased muffin cups and bake for 20 minutes at 350 degrees.