Random Pictures...because I have learned how easy it is to share photos from my Smartphone

Words With My Son - aKa Scrabble lunch break

A charming pic of my husband eating a burrito the size of my arm

Joey is awarded first place for blind Kata at his first tournament

Queen kitty perches on a ladder in our bedroom

I ordered a truckload of sunflowers, for the yard. :)

Have a good Monday!

Progress Report

This is the treehouse today: it's delightful to watch my men work together!

Before School Starts...

A Thursday morning, this is how you might find us...

Painting, building, writing, and I would be cleaning or out in the garden. :)

A Place To Play

I'm certain that there is a boy in my grown-man husband. All other projects came to a screeching halt when the boys began asking about a tree house.

And so the work began yesterday, I don't know who is more excited...the boys or my handy husband.

Very fun to watch!

Fresh, Hot Muffins Any Day

Muffins are a quick, easy & economical breakfast for our family...& everyone seems to be happy with a muffin & a piece of fruit.

I want to share my new trick with you, of course I think it's a moment of brilliance & I don't have many of those so I'm sharing:

When I make muffins, I double the batch. Sometimes I make two different batches at a time. Then, rather than bake them all up, I pour the batter into the muffin tin with paper cups & pop the whole tin into the freezer. When the dough cups are frozen I drop them into a ziplock & freeze up the rest of the batter the same way.

Then in the morning when I get up, I can pull 6 muffins (2/ per boy) from the freezer & pop them in the oven. I bake them at usual temp for usual time + 2 minutes, and we get fresh hot muffins any old day.

My boys LOVE it!

AND I love that I can put good, whole foods in my boys' breakfast!

On The Pace of Change

That day, you look up from your work and think, "When did you grow so tall & capable?"

Seems like that's happening repeatedly these days, Nate can make his own eggs, start to finish. Joe is beginning to enjoy sitting with the adults for conversations to test his own story telling & wit. Elijah, who is nearly 7 but seems to be 9, is as independent one moment and snuggled up next to me the next is stretching himself to fit in the footsteps of his brothers as quickly as he can.

It's all just too fast, but absolutely correct, I say. Before I know it...never mind.

Our Week in Review

It's Friday....Friday to kick off Spring Break.  Like most Fridays we did light school today.  Light school means that the kids work independently while mom runs to donate my blood and question the sweet lady at Sherwin-Williams.

While there our conversation went like this:
She:  Hello, can I help you?
Me:  Yes, would you come to my house and help me choose my colors?  (snicker g'fahh)
She:  Actually, I do that!
Me:  (Dumbfounded, just standing there...) Okay?  Realllly??

I'm thrilled!  We have so many walls on this floor that are screaming at me for color, but I really don't know where to start.  Living, Family Rooms, School Room, Stairwell, Halls and our Breakfast Room all need to be painted.  Teresa is coming over next week and then we'll be painting and painting...

Back to Light School.  The boys did their Math and Reading and then I came home (after a hard morning running errands) and took a long nap.  It was raining, couldn't be a better day for a nap, right?  I'm still tired from long nights of sick kids, I must be 37, this sleep is taking longer to catch up on.

********************

My favorite thing this week was...

Working on our Life of Jesus Timeline.  I worked on a timeline for the life of Christ, the boys and I started at his ministry in order to work up to the crucifixion and resurrection by Good Friday.  Each day I assign the boys to sketch a picture for an event while I read the stories to them.  It's been a fun way to work up to Easter.

Questions/thoughts I have....

Wondering how I'm going to keep these boys occupied over Spring Break, and still wondering how to keep my eldest student challenged over the next months.

Things I'm working on....
rearranging our school stuff, decluttering, decluttering, choosing paint colors, oh! and I have some studying to do too!



Books to go on the to-read list....

(Eli finished his first chapter book this week!)

The boys are finishing up their assigned reading, I'm looking through these lists:

1000 Good Books

Books for Boys & Other Children Who Would Rather Make Forts All Day (if you click on this link it will download a doc with a fantastic list of books)

I'm reading..... Total Truth by Nancy Pearcy (for book group), Shepherding a Child's Heart, & Great Expectations by Dickens.  Good, good books.

Something a Little Crazy....





New Fun Idea Here:

It comes from Pinterest, of course.  Hoping to promote some reading and writing I picked up some poster board at Winco (.37!) and drew up a fun map for Eli.  He's had so much fun, enough fun that his big brothers quickly followed suit and drew up their own maps. 

I almost forgot...queen kitty:

The Last Stretch is Stretching my Mind

Settling in after a long and wonderful last day of Classical Converations for this school year, I sat down to peek at some of your blogs.  Then I remembered, I could blog too!

I got out of the habit of blogging, but I'm missing it so, it's such a great place to process.  So I'm pulling up my keyboard, a quiet house for a few minutes, to ramble at y'all or no one but myself.  Either way, it's fine with me!

Math books sit patiently waiting through a wrestling break....THIS is home school at our house

Our school year can be broken up into trimesters, I've just realized. Two twelve-week sessions of Classical Conversations followed by a 12 week session of simple home school.

My boys have wondered why, oh why do we finish CC so early? They love it so!*. I love CC, and I also love shifts in schedule. So with 12 weeks to go I'm feeling inspired to switch up our school at home.

My plan:
•Continue on in Bible Study with The Long Story Short
•More Scripture memorization
*•CC review in game & quizzing form (working on my CC review box)
•Saxon Math

Nate reads "Swiss Family Robinson" with his mood ring on....on my pile of unpaired socks.  THIS is homeschool 

•beginning Latin's Not So Tough
•Wrap up Johnny Tremain
•Continued studies in Language Arts
•Creating out personal Lego books (fun idea, Pinterest)
•Working through my new Idea Box*

Joe works on writing while snuggling up the queen kitty (note the laundry in the background?)  THIS is home school

A new season brings with it inspiration & a renewed resolve to finish our school year well. I'm thankful for it!

I'm also looking at creative ideas for promoting writing & more of a love of learning.

All this, and I'm stumped.  You see, I have a  kid that I think needs more.  More WORK.  This kid breezes through his math, stomps all over his work so fast and thoroughly that I feel he needs something extra.  He's memorized the first 12 elements of the periodic table (#, element & mass) per CC this year and wants to finish the list...I guess this is where I can start.   He's not entertained by the idea of writing a LEGO book, so maybe it'll be a research paper on Black Holes.  I think he'll be doing some assigned dinner-making (I think that's cooking class) and certainly setting up some field trips for our CC group.  This kid needs to be kept busy...ier.  He needs his mind to be heavily stretched, some good challenges.

And please don't see that I'm focusing my attention at one kid.  The thing is, he's bright and he can work well on his own.  So I need him to be a little busier so I can attend to my younger students that need more of me yet.

So, I'm begging you all for ideas.  Brain stimulating, hands on or writing, memorizing or charting related challenges.  He's 10 with a bright mind and an inclination toward science...

Ideas?  Please?  I won't take no for an answer!