Tuesday, March 27, 2007

A fun game...

I had my first prenatal with my midwife yesterday. She attended Katy's birth, it was so good to see her. Anyway, she confirmed my due date so I am 16 wks, due mid-Sept as I had suspected. She has been playing the heart rate game: fast for one sex, slow for another. She said it has been accurate every time. I suspect this baby is a boy and the heart rate confirmed it. Of course, we are still early in the pregnancy and things can change. I do not believe I KNOW the sex of this baby but I love playing these guessing games, it keeps the pregnancy fun. So, in preparation of another boy, I started reading "Little Men" by Louisa May Alcott. I already adore my boys so much more just after reading the first 4 chapters. OK, gotta run to check out paint samples for the kiddos bedrooms.

(Just as a side note, we played the heart rate game when I was pregnant with Abby and it was the heart rate of a boy so I know this is not fool proof, just fun!)

Monday, March 26, 2007

Catch-up!


OK, not a big deal, just your average, cheap outdoor furniture. But it is/was my outdoor furniture. This was a spot to congregate w/ the kids, draw in our nature journals, enjoy the outdoors while working on school work, afternoon snacks, lunches, and sometimes dinner. Again, not a big deal but we enjoyed it. So Thursday evening, the kids are in bed, I'm in the living room (the room beside the deck) and I hear a loud crash. After regaining my composure and nerve, I flip on the outside lights & this is what I find.
We can not figure out what caused it to shatter. There were no tree limbs or debris in the glass. I half expected some injured animal to be on my deck but no signs of injury. Maybe the weight of the pollen got to it. The pollen is outrageous, it looks like a thin snowstorm, everything is covered with yellow.

We had friends over for dinner on Friday, they
brought pizza. So the girls decided to make brownies and mint choc chip cookies, they did a great job considering I was hardly in the kitchen to oversee their work. The only snag was when Abby misread the recipe for the cookies, she thought it said to add 2 quarter cups of flour rather than 2 1/4 c. flour. Luckily, this error was noticed before the cookies were in the oven, used the teaching moment to master some fractions (how much is 2 quarter cups, ok, so if you have 1/2 c of flour & you need 2 1/4c how much flour do we need to add to make up the difference), stirred in the extra flour and the cookies were saved.

Saturday morning we had a house showing so the house was clean by 10:00 am, the rest of the weekend consisted of enjoying the outdoors and clearing off debris from an area we want to plant a Sunflower and Butterfly Garden. Eric bought a chainsaw and started doing some major clearing, Seth and Katy decided to dance (she is a princess, he is a prince, of course), the boys played in the hose & "swam" in a bucket.


OK, so your all caught up, see you next Monday! Have a great week!

Monday, March 19, 2007

We're here...

We are back in our house in GA. It is somewhat bittersweet to be here. I love this house despite all of it's problems and quirks but I do not like living away from hubby during the week. It is hard to say good-bye Monday mornings knowing we won't see him again until late Friday night. He is still staying in our rental house sleeping on a mattress on the floor. I am hoping to convince him to bring the pull-out couch so he will at least have a decent bed to sleep on while he is there.

Over the weekend we try to fix, clean, and re-do some of the things that needed doing since we haven't lived here in almost a year. In the process, Eric did a thorough walk around & under the house to discover there is a lot more to be done than we first thought. We could be here for quite a while to get everything updated. It is an overwhelming task when I think of everything that has to be done but I am trying to focus on one room at a time. I was going to work on the basement first, which is our playroom/workout room, but the girls really need the boost and motivation to help me in the other rooms so we are working on their room first. We will start removing wallpaper today and take a trip to Lowe's or Home Depot to look at paint for their walls, trim, and loft bed. I also want to pick out new carpet and new bedding. I have a mirror I need to find and paint the trim to go above their dresser. I'm not sure how long it will take to get it all done but I can do this without needing Eric to be here.

We also need to get back into our school schedule, this will make life a little more consistent and routine breeds comfort so hopefully everyone will feel more comfortable with this part of our lives back to normal.

The kids are so excited to be here, they love playing in the woods, just that room to run makes a world of difference in their spirit. I have to admit that I love watching the deer at the creek in the mornings or the rabbits scurry around in the evening. The birds are abundant and diverse, we saw a Pileated Woodpecker pecking a downed tree right outside the kitchen window, so we have no lack for good nature study. All that being said we miss our friends so much! Tea parties and days at the park are just not going to be the same. They have had such a powerful influence in our lives that can not be replaced and we anxiously look forward to being close again. It's lonely here during the week but maybe that's where God wants me, so I will look to him for companionship.

Wednesday, March 7, 2007

School on the move

This week has been crazy, I actually think we are moving this weekend. I have been avoiding packing because of how uncertain everything has been. Half of the house is packed but the other half is just a mess. I am reluctant to put things away because I keep thinking I should leave them out to pack but then they just sit on the counter and somehow make their way to the floor, sigh! In the midst of it all we still have to carry on with school, actually, I think this gives us a sense of normalcy, something consistent we can count on, school must get done, to some extent, everyday. I love our CM organizer, it keeps me from going overboard and gives me slack when we don't finish everything due to time. But anyway, here we are on Wed, I need to get more boxes so I can finish packing. I have to just do it now. We spent the better part of the day working on stories and reading them at the park with friends over a picnic. What a wonderful way to visit and squeeze in school at the same time, I LOVE homeschooling! This is our 2nd time reading stories as a group and it is such a great experience for the kids, they get the creative writing experience, grammar and spelling instruction, and then public speaking experience. We are so blessed to have these opportunities and I am so grateful to be able to share these experiences with my children. Now as we head out the door I'll grab our CD to listen in the car that has our folksongs, hymns, and pieces from our current terms composer. When we get home we will squeeze in some math and history and then I will leave the girls to some lit & free reading while I make dinner and I think we will get in a full day of school, I'll pack when the littles head to bed and I think we can call it a productive day. I better scoot if that plan is going to work out. Oh, I just downloaded about 165 pics from my camera so I should have a few to share in the next week or so, as time allows.

Tuesday, March 6, 2007

To move or not to move...

We have been in the process of moving since the beginning of Feb. We have been in limbo, living out of boxes, trying to be ready to leave on a moments notice. My mail has been forwarded since Feb 8th and my phone was turned on at the other house and yet we haven't moved. Here's the situation, Jan 2006 my hubby took a job in AL, we lived apart until June. Staying with him when we could and he would make the 6 hr drive every Friday & Sunday to come home to us. The house still had not sold and we decided to rent a house in AL so we could all be together. Here we are the following Jan, the house still has not sold, the rental house is falling apart (& the landlord does not care), and I'm pregnant. The only thing left to do is to go back to our house in GA and see if we can do some updating (new carpets, etc) to try to make the house more appealing to a buyer. Not too mention the house is not falling apart and a health hazard as is the rental house. The only problem is that a pipe burst under the kitchen in our GA house & we are waiting on a plumber to come out and repair it. This should not be that big of a deal, we have a plumber we have used before so we call & he says he'll get it done that week, the next week we call & he says he'll get it done, the next week we can't even get in touch with him & finally the next week my hubby catches him in the morning and he can't get to it for another 3 weeks, ugh! So, plumber #2 says he can get to it in 2 to 3 days, that was over a week ago but he says he went over last Wed to see what needed to be done and he should be there today to finish. I'm not holding my breath but it has got to get done at some point. So if he does finish today then we are moving this weekend. So say a prayer that it goes smooth so we can get back to some sense of normality. I don't do well living in transition, I need to know what is happening next, it gives me a sense of security.

Thursday, March 1, 2007

Scheduling a Charlotte Mason Education

If you are using Charlotte Mason's teaching methods to homeschool your children you know how difficult it is to schedule things like Nature Study, Artist and Composer Study, Hymns, Folksongs, narration, dictation, copywork, etc. Not too mention trying to keep track of everything to explain to nosey Aunt Hilda that you actually can teach Dick and Jane without textbooks, tests, and grades. Well, finally, someone has come up with a really good CM Organizer. Check it out at http://simplycharlottemason.com. It is brand new and they are offering a free 30-day trial. I signed up right away and spent a bit of time putting in our resources, it's so easy, they even had some of the books we are already using listed in their CM Bookfinder. There are a few improvements I would like to see but I won't list them, you can find out for yourself or maybe it won't even bother you. But all in all I am so excited about this organizer. It generates a daily plan for each child and a progress report whenever you want it for the day, week, month, year or whatever time frame you specify. So simple, you just check off the assignments for that day as they are completed, you can add notes if you choose and change things around as much as you need. Can you tell I'm excited about this?