I love VBS week

This week my older 3 kids are at VBS up at SHBC. This means that I've just got Jojo with me in the mornings from around 8am until noon. I'm finding that when she's alone, Jojo is a completely different kind of kid. Right now she is sitting happily on the floor and playing with a duck game (not the way its meant to be played with but she's having fun and it isn't being destroyed so I won't say a word). She's quietly entertained herself every morning so far this week (except yesterday, she didn't sleep well the night before and was WOUND UP from being overtired so she was being aggressive and whiny and wouldn't lay down with me to nap while her sisters were gone, instead she napped for 3 hours after we had lunch).

This is the week I look forward to every year. We are in the period that usually Scott is going 6 months without a week vacation, so I use the VBS week to recharge with fewer kids around. Last year was Kimi's first year in VBS, and I used the week to relax and enjoy myself, reading good books, playing favorite computer games, and doing some errands and chores that don't get done usually with the kids around. This year's VBS week is no exception. I'm catching up on laundry, deep cleaning my kitchen and living/dining room, relaxing with my laptop (instead of playing games and reading constantly I'm working on getting ahead in my college homework and surfing Facebook), and just enjoying my time until I pick the kids up at noon. Monday I did a BUNCH of paperwork for our homeschool, including scheduling some electives, coming up with a working schedule for lessons, making a rotation list for activities to add in Missa's workboxes, and getting my notification prepared to send in late next month so that our homeschool is legal for another year. Tomorrow my plan is to take Jojo to story time at the library at 10am, and I will spend some time with books in the children's section scanning them to determine how much I want to accelerate our time in Sonlight core B followed by core C (I have to be sure they aren't too much for Missa) to make sure I don't hit core D (US history) too early with her, from a maturity standpoint. I will also pick up a few more readers for the girls, and return the ones that we've finished already from my trip there last Saturday.

And of course, I hope to get almost fully caught up on the laundry, clean the majority of the house up completely, and get some yard work done and freezer meals made for while Scott is off work recovering from his surgery. I love having things all planned out for me when we hit a crazy time, and I know that Thursday is going to start a VERY crazy time for us with his surgery. Hopefully I can get all the preparations made for that before this weekend is over.

Introducing..... S'more the hamster!

He's sleeping right now in the top of his habitat (this section snaps off to use as a transport carrier) so I grabbed the camera to get a shot of him. The girls also tried yesterday and Sunday to get a good picture of him, so I'll share the best they got as well from those attempts.



Don't you just LOVE the white stripe? They picked him out on Saturday at the pet store, and PRAYED that he'd be there still when they got to take daddy to get their pet on Sunday. Apparently, God listened because he was still there for them (he was the only brown one with a big white stripe) and Scott thought he was cute enough so he paid for the one they chose.

Liddy, Kimi, and Jojo love to watch S'more eat, play, and chew. They can spend all day watching him and fighting over whose turn it is to have the center spot for watching (the one with the best view). Missa, on the other hand, enjoys watching him but she's more interested in taking care of S'more. She has been making sure he has fresh water in his water bottle, brushing him, bugging me to put him in his exercise ball so he can run around the living room, and keeping an eye on his food dish and the condition of his habitat. She thinks it is great fun to take care of him. I wonder how she'll feel this afternoon when I have her changing the bedding in his habitat and washing the base of it (from his toileting habits)......... bet she doesn't find THAT part to be very fun.

Now, how long do you think it will take the novelty to wear off to where I'm the one taking care of his feeding, water, and cage cleaning and nobody wants to watch him, pet him, or hold him....... LOL

reading progress

Usually I post about how my older girls are doing, especially Missa, when it comes to reading. Well, today I'm bragging (again!) on my sweet Kimi.

This afternoon, after the kids got home from VBS, we ate and then took a nap. Jojo is still snoring away happily on the sofa, in all her 3 year old cuteness. So I took the opportunity of her being silent for a bit to work with Kimi on her reading. She's hit a bit of a wall lately with the Sonlight Fun Tales readers that we have been working on, so I decided to change things up at the library. I grabbed her a few of the easiest readers they have there for her to try out as a change of pace. Today, we read one. Its a Rigby 3 reader, so very simple. Each page has one simple sentence and the child is supposed to use clues in the picture if they have trouble with a word in the sentence. There are a total of 5 or 6 sentences in the entire book, so obviously a short book. She and I went through it together once, me helping her with the words, and then she read it by herself to me. Then she read it to her big sisters, and plans to read it to her daddy tonight when he gets home from work. We will *hopefully* spend the week reading this book and the other 3 of this level that I got and then next week we'll move up to the next level of readers if she feels comfortable with this level (I also got her a Dick and Jane book to try out if she wants). I have a feeling that this is exactly what she needs to get going and build her confidence quickly while we slowly work through the Sonlight readers.

But my third baby read a book! Yup, total proud momma moment here......

new pet

It all started yesterday at Wildwood Park. Scott took the girls there to play while I went to the library to get some books for this week. Liddy cornered a wild bunny just as Scott decided that it was time to go home. The entire trip home, and for a good long while after that at home, she threw a loud noisy fit over not being allowed to keep the bunny she had cornered.

So, we decided to look into what all is needed for a pet rabbit, and do some research at the same time about different breeds and caring for one. Basics, right? Well, we got information and then I went out to get some prices for stuff for a bunny, along with finding out what it will cost for the stuff we need. Of course, Missa and Liddy wanted to come along to see too. So off we went.

We fell in love with the mini lops, but yeah a little too expensive for us right now. So we decided to keep looking at other pets they had there to get ideas. They ended up picking out a brown hamster with a big white stripe around his middle (yes, we made sure we got a male). Then this morning I went and got a habitat, food, and such at WalMart (paid half as much as what I would have at the pet store). We got it all set up, and then went off to get their hamster. Once I get a good picture of him, I'll introduce S'more the hamster.

UGH at Scott's surgery

So, we had the scans done on Tuesday for his surgery, and they found a couple things in addition to the immediate problem. Great......

And to top it all off, my mother-in-law was going to watch the kids so I can go with him to see the surgeon tomorrow. Well, she's in the hospital now and can't watch them, so now I can't go because I'm not going to be able to find a sitter on such short notice who is willing to take 4 kids at 8am for a few hours so I can take notes at the appointment and make sure I have all the details I need for his recovery post-op and the long term things that we need to take care of because of the surgery. *sigh*

I'd ask what else could go wrong, but really at this point I just don't feel like pushing my luck any further........

looking for something!

I'm hoping that I get enough traffic that this may actually get answered, but if not then no big deal I'll keep searching on my own. I am looking for every free resource I can find for lapbooks, unit study ideas, activities, file folder games, and such that I can use for our homeschool. Also open to cheaper stuff (we have a few things we want to buy from Evan-Moor and Hands of a Child as we have the money) but would prefer to not spend *too* much. Anyone?

summer school theme 1

Well the kids want schoolwork daily, despite the break, so I'm doing a bunch of preschool unit studies and lapbooks to make this fun and to include all the girls. On Monday, we start our first week of this. We're going to learn a bit about mice. I have the book "If You Give A Mouse A Cookie" from Sonlight core P3/4, and I just printed off a couple minits from the lapbook at Homeschool Share for the cooresponding lapbook to make a mini lapbook (we'll cut the folders in half for this, it should be perfect). I have a mouse craft, and we'll learn the different parts of a mouse and some interesting fun little facts. To go with it, our baking project for the week will be cookies. Nothing big or fancy, but it should be interesting and light and fun for the girls. The older two will have copywork from the story as well, and they will each read the story to me by the end of the week. I'm not doing full-blown week units here, just a little theme activity to get them all having fun together and hopefully teach Jojo and Kimi how school works in our home so that they are ready when we get into the big lapbooks and studies this fall with each pair (if you didn't know, Missa and Liddy are a pair and then Kimi and Jojo are a pair).

And the bonus is that since I'm only going to do mini-laps with them, we only have a couple minits to do each one and it should be easily finished in a week. It is those longer units that take more than a week and/or have a dozen or more pieces for the lapbook that get me bogged down and overwhelmed.

proud momma moment

Let me tell you about my Kimi. She is 5, was a late talker, and is small for her age. She has an attitude the size of Texas, and a stubborn streak wider than the Mississippi. Needless to say, she's my difficult strong-willed child of the bunch. We butt heads regularly as she attempts to plow through the boundaries and rules in our home.

Well, today I believe we had a small breakthrough moment. She didn't get her way with a sister, and decided to stomp on her hand as a response to it. As a result, I smacked her butt and put her in her bedroom, prompting her to throw a lot screaming tantrum complete with dumping a bin of toys and throwing them around. She asked me after a bit if she'd be allowed out, and I told her (as usual) that she can come out after she cleans up the mess she made with the toys she dumped out and threw around. She did try to tell me that she didn't throw and dump any toys, but I just looked at her with that "yeah, right" look and she gave up. She pouted off to their room again. When I peeked in on her after about 10min, she had picked up all the toys PLUS put dirty clothes in the laundry pile, throw away a few papers, put some crayons back in the drawer the art stuff goes in, and was making their beds.

I told her that she can go outside and play if she wanted, with Jojo. I think she is starting to figure it out....... And I hope that her cooperation this time wasn't just a one-time thing. She's becoming such a wonderful and helpful young lady lately, these little moments of sweetness and rule-following have been happening more often.

Just so I can remember this later

Scott has his pre-op testing on the 21st, needs to be there at 7:30am and fast at least 8 hours prior. Then the 24th at 9:30am he has the surgical consult. Gotta ask his mom if she will watch the girls the 24th so I can ask a hundred questions and take notes and all that since he will NOT be smart enough to do it for me, and then I need to uhhhhhh CRAP what did I forget on top of this all? Oh well, I'll remember later. Oh yeah, I need to type and print out a full list of things to ask the doctor and make sure its in my binder with blank paper for me to take notes and write down answers to stuff.

And I need to hit the ATM tomorrow so I can go to JoAnn's for some fabric, I need a couple new dresses and got a coupon for 50% off one item (a single cut of fabric counts so I'm gonna get enough of one pattern to make me a few dresses/skirts I think). I need to oil my machines and get them ready, and I need to remember zippers and a couple other notions to finish a few pending projects. Yup, that should cover it. I hope.

(yes, I totally just used my blog as a notepad to keep track of stuff, you *will* see that quite a bit for now so that I can keep track of everything with the chaos of Scott going in for surgery soon, hopefully I don't start posting chore lists too LOL)

PROOF that I got a second lefty kid

I was trying to keep Jojo from throwing a FIT over my saying no to watching an inappropriate tv show, so I told her to pick an activity. She chose to do school, strange child.... lol Anyway, I did her math with her (she is not doing Math-U-See with her sisters this year in attempt to hold her a year, instead she's doing Singapore Earlybird) and then we did a lesson in All About Reading. She got the biggest kick out of doing her math lesson and then doing reading stuff. We talked about same and different, and compared sea animals in a picture in her math workbook. In her reading lesson time, we did the capital B lesson. She loves her lessons time, it gives her a chance to have one on one time with me daily and we snuggle and giggle and talk and play games.

Anyway, I like telling people this little useless trivia that we have a perfect 50/50 split in dominance for writing. I'm a lefty. along with Missa and Jojo, while Scott, Liddy, and Kimi are all right-handed. Well, I've had a few people tell me that it isn't possible for me to know that a 3 year old is a lefty, so I decided to get a little proof. So, here we have it, I took these pictures of Jojo during her reading activity page today (she doesn't do the craft part of these pages, she so far just wants to color the pages instead so we do that together)




See? I do know what I'm talking about here. I've been able to identify dominance with each of my girls before her third birthday, and Jojo is no exception. So, 3 lefties and 3 right-handed in this household. Totally blows away the statistic that less than 10% of the population is left-handed........ or something like that.

well I was right

I mentioned Scott may need surgery in the near future...... He has an appointment in 2 weeks for a surgical consult to get things going there, and also has pre-op scans and tests scheduled. He could be off work for 4-6 weeks recovering, so my life is going to be turned upside down here real soon.

And the kids asked to do lessons, so I had Missa do her journal and then we did step 2 in All About Spelling and Liddy did her journal while Kimi did her handwriting practice. They just came in from recess (they are afraid it may rain) and in a bit we'll do some math and other stuff. I got all our materials for a full day of work pulled out, so if we do it all cool. If not, no biggie. Its not like I have to finish cleaning the house for a friend to visit since he decided to cancel on me last night. So I guess the 11 years we've not actually been face to face in person will continue to go on longer....... since there weren't enough people here that he wanted to see that were available this weekend for him to feel like it was worth coming up. Yes, I'm slightly hurt to know that my family is not worthy enough of a visit if he can't see a dozen others, but hey life goes on. Its not as if I actually spent all week scrubbing my house down and then bought some steaks that I couldn't really afford on my current food budget so that I could feed him a good meal. Its not as if I saw his coming up as a special occasion and got all excited like a kid looking forward to Christmas. I don't feel heartbroken and want to just break down and cry because I got my hopes up. Life goes on, I've got too much to do to be bothered with doing all that stuff.

Which speaking of my busy life, I may not be around much for a while. With getting things in order for Scott's surgery next month, the kids insisting on doing schoolwork anyway, and keeping up with my college classes I have enough on my plate that I may not be able to post much of anything. If you are one of my Facebook friends, I'll have myself logged in with the window minimized while I study. If you want to message me, feel free and I'll get back with you during a break from my studying.

summertime plans

Like I said last week, summer is one of my favorite times of year. I had originally planned to spend the summer working full speed with history, science, the basics, and all our extras. However, every time I set out to do a full day of lessons I get stopped by life and I get a feeling that I need to focus on other things. So, I do believe this year we will get a summer vacation and only do a bit of math, reading, and journal work a few days a week so they don't lose what we've done.

The biggest reason right now for that is because Scott is having a *small* health issue that will require him to have surgery at some point, likely in the near future. I am not sure what will happen when we are in that place, but I have faith that we will end up just fine and all will work out in the end. Scott is worrying about how we will pay the bills, but I don't think that we need to have any worries at all.

That has also lead to us trying to simplify our lives. I'm sorting through everything we own to cut down how much we have and hopefully make everything easier to keep track of and cleaned up. I'm hoping that this summer we can have one heck of a yard sale to bring in a little extra money (which will have the added bonus of easing a little of the worry about money that Scott is having).

Of course, there are other things beyond Scott's health that we are juggling. But only time will tell what is happening with those things. So there you have it.

summer treats

I love summer. We had to get a new grill to work in a pinch while Scott does some work on ours (the ingition system is malfunctioning on one burner) so we got a cheapo charcoal grill. He bought it Saturday and we've used it twice already, and I'm planning to again tonight I think.

But it is also popsicle season. This year we decided that instead of buying them we would try making our own. And my recipe that I used is a total hit. For less than $1 I can make 24 popsicles that are similar texture to the ones that are $4 for a box of 12, and the flavor is WAY better. We just finished off the ones that I made 2 days ago, so I need to make more and refill our molds. The nice thing is, I can do any flavor combination I want, as I'm only limited by the flavor availability of Kool-Aid and Jello powder. I'm sure it can be tweaked to use natural ingredients, but part of the fun of popsicles, in my opinion, is the lack of nutrition on top of the cold smooth frozen goodness. If you've never made your own popsicles, here's what I use for them (and you can do them in paper cups with store bought sticks, or in ice cube trays with toothpicks if you like)

1 small packet Jello
1 packet Kool-Aid mix
1 cup sugar
2 cups boiling water
2 cups COLD water

Mix the jello, kool-aid mix, and sugar. Add boiling water; stir until fully dissolved. Add cold water, stir and pour into molds. Freeze until solid.

What are your favorite summertime treats?

what's gonna work? TEAMWORK!

If you have preschoolers, you are probably beating your head on the desk now at that image and the reference to their teamwork song. Unless you don't have television, then you are lucky. (for those of you who fall in the latter group, that is a picture of the Wonder Pets, show same name is on Nick Jr. and they focus on teamwork and problem solving skills)

So how does this apply to my home? Well, yesterday Missa and Liddy started their guided journals from Write Foundations. They each had a verse from the bible to copy, and then a journal prompt. Since they are both in book 1.1 the expectation is only one sentence answers for journal topics. Missa loves doing such things, she thinks it is great fun to copy books into a notebook and doing writing prompts. So, it wasn't much difficulty for her. I just explained to her what to do with her page and let her loose. Liddy, on the other hand, hated it. She has fine motor delays, and tires quickly with writing. She can spend hours reading daily without issue, but writing tires her out in seconds. She also didn't quite understand how to do the work, since she has never done a journal topic or copy work before. Lots of whining and complaining from her obviously, with me helping her figure it out until I got frustrated and told her to ask Missa because I can't take it any longer.

So a few minutes later I go back to the table to apologize to Liddy for losing my patience and help her finish the assignment, and what do I see? Missa scooted over close to her, with her journal right there to use as a model to explain how to do it. They are one grade apart in age, but have such different strengths that they are worlds apart at times. I think I need to take advantage of their strengths more often like this, teach them more about teamwork and working together to do things when one is struggling. I've discovered yesterday that they are an amazing team, maybe I should use that with Missa's math struggles to try and get Liddy to help her with math and see if they can teamwork their way to Missa mastering her basic facts, or for Liddy's hatred for history to get Missa to help her with the work when we are working together in history lessons. This is something I need to consider, I'd never thought that they could work together like that so well.