Ordinary Time

There was no post last night because J. and I went out to dinner with his sisters and husbands. Well, one husband, the other had to work. It was so good to see them all since it had been since before Covid began that we had. Too long. It also very good to just be able to go out; we don't get to do that very often. Since I missed the Friday bullets yesterday, I'll do them tonight. Look at this beautiful butterfly I saw in the dry lot today while we were doing stalls. I love anything with blue on it. Last weekend, J. took a few children (those who were interested) fishing. L. decided that maybe fishing is not her thing. On Tuesday, Kenzie and Aster got into a rare tiff over a treat that had fallen on the ground. They don't do this often, thankfully, but every so often they boil over. Usually there is little to show for all the noise and teeth, but this time, Aster managed to nick the very end of Kenzie's ear. This wouldn't be a huge deal except that ears bleed. A lot.

Brace yourselves, I'm about to head into full on homeschooling planning mode. I've already begun collecting a pretty decent pile of books, and I have so many ideas swirling around in my head, that I know it's time to start writing them down. I'm starting earlier this year because I'm doing a lot of planning. I only have one of my three co-op classes planned, plus I need to do our own school schedule. It's a lot in my head that is going in a lot of different directions. I may have to put off some of my reading for a while.  So for our own homeschooling, we are going to be doing Ancient Rome (which you probably already knew, and for which L. is very excited) and a unit study on earth science combining geography. This last one is kind of amorphous in my head at the moment, but I'm getting a lot of ideas from the books I've checked out. It's going to be sort of an all-about-the-earth unit study. My thinking is we'll start with the core, work our way

I got to visit this afternoon with a good friend whom I haven't seen in person since four years ago. It was great to catch-up and share our reading lists since they tend to be very similar. We also talk about adoption and trauma and parenting and homeschooling. We have a lot in common. During the course of our conversation, we managed to veer into talking about topic and coming up with a rather different take on it. We were both rather taken with our new ideas, so I thought I would share them here.  If you are in the foster/adoption world you probably have heard the phrase, "Fake it 'till you make it," referring to the process of attaching to your new child. I might have even used that phrase here on the blog.  [Sorry, I need to pause for an aside. Since I'm about to really critique the phrase, I thought I should do a quick check to see if I had used it. Evidently, my ambivalence for the phrase is long standing. I have put the phrase in two posts, but only to ref

D. and P. arrived home today from their cross-country adventure. They had a grand time and their travels went smoothly. They also arrived home with... This is Christina. Christina is a pheasant. This was actually planned, so P. and D. didn't just find a pheasant at some rest stop and think to themselves, "Hey! Let's put her in the car and bring her home!" The friend with whom they stayed with both directions comes from a farming family. Her nephew was raising pheasants... and then wasn't raising pheasants so that there was this one lone pheasant who wanted a home. Our friend asked if we could take the pheasant. Obviously we said yes. Today, one their way out of town, P. and D. had a rendezvous to pick up a pheasant.  D.'s text made me laugh. "Apparently on our way back, we're meeting XXX's dad at some random gas station on the edge of town to get the pheasant, like some sort of hostage exchange."  As far as I know they did not have to give an

Being out in the heat takes it out of me. After nearly three hours outside this afternoon, I wasn't good for much. We even ordered pizza because I couldn't fathom either making dinner or turning on more heat to do so. I keep trying to imagine how cold I will be come January and how much I would appreciate a little bit of warmth, but I am currently at that moment in the summer where I am convinced I will never be cold again. Extreme temperatures make me a little grumpy. I have no idea why I live in the land of extreme temperatures. The possibility of 140 degree temperature differences just seems a bit much, don't you think? (In case you question this, in the past two or so years we've seen highs as high as 100 degrees F and lows as low as -40 degrees F.)  Anyway, since I am clearly rambling, I should get to my one small story for the day. TM loves to give gifts. He is an extravagant gift giver. It is most definitely his love language. He knows that Y. loves gummy candy,

Don't you just love that term in the title? I have kind of a geeky appreciation of multi-syllabic terms with very specific meanings, and this one fits the bill very nicely. I'll get to what it means and why I'm writing about it in a moment.  Yesterday I made the decision to not finish three books I was reading. One was fiction that I started out liking but realized as I went on that I just didn't care about anyone or anything in the story, probably because it took far too long to actually get to the conflict the story was a bout. I'm okay with a long build-up, but this left me flat. So I closed the book and felt relief. The other two were non-fiction. One I had started, was interested in, then realized I pretty much understood the main point and didn't need one thousand more examples. The other was a book that so annoyed me by the second chapter that it was either close the book or deal with elevated heart rates every time I opened it. Because this last is defin

I have no idea what to write, so I will resort to writing a list. Because that is the good advice I offer to students when I am teaching writing. So, here are ten totally random facts that you might not know about me.  1. I am incredibly claustrophobic. I do not do tight spaces. Even mummy sleeping bags make me claustrophobic. 2. At the end of my senior year in college, I thought I wanted to become an interior designer, so applied to various graduate school programs. I received rejection letters from all of them. If you look at my house now, you will realize that this has ceased to be a priority for me. 3. I played (at) alto saxophone in the Northwestern University Marching Band in college. No, I wasn't really a sax player, but was a flute player. They are fingered the same, and I did not want to play flute in marching band. And no, I was not good at all at the saxophone. In fact, I'm not even sure I actually like the instrument.  4. At one point in my life I could type 80 word

I've been outside much of the day and I am now officially done with summer. The whole upper 80's, lower 90's thing with extreme humidity is not my cup of tea. Even going out to bring the horses in made me sweat. Yuck. Just to be clear... I'm not done with summer vacation, just summer weather. Earlier in the week, girls wanted a tent set-up so they could sleep in it. G. made it three nights, Y. for one, and L. really wanted to sleep in the tent but ended up in her bed each night. The tent is still up with no one sleeping in it anymore. Today, the last five family members got their second covid vaccine. So far, so good with after effects. With the uptick in numbers, I am incredibly thankful that all of my children are old enough to get the shot. I'm afraid if they were not, we would be probably starting to hunker down again. K. has decided that he wants to try to create the city of Chicago in Minecraft. I have put a large photo book of Chicago buildings on hold for hi

A while back I promised to write more on homeschooling high school and creating transcripts, and since I am fresh out of ideas for tonight, this seems as good a time as any. I'll start with the basics of how to think about a transcript and from there I'm quite sure it will veer into non-traditional views of high school. I'm feeling in that kind of mood.  High school always seems as though it is an enormous hurdle whenever someone is thinking about homeschooling. In the general thinking, high school is this big "thing"... a momentous time of life, a preparation for further studies, the place you meet your best friends and find your first love. It's as though everyone collectively has forgotten what high school was really like and has replaced it with the Disney version. High school wasn't horrible for me, so this isn't sour grapes. There was plenty I enjoyed about it, I had a decent amount of friends, and I did well in my classes. (Okay, let's back

I mentioned a while back that we were enjoying greatly a book series that friends of ours got us onto, The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place by Maryrose Wood. We finished the first book, The Mysterious Howling , and loved it so much we moved right into the second, The Hidden Gallery . We're all so happy that there are six books in the series because it is always a shame when a book you love ends and that's all there is. I don't want to give away too many of the secrets, but essentially there stories are about three children, their governess, Miss Penelope Lumley, and Lord and Lady Ashton who have taken the children in. The best thing about them is that they are laugh out loud funny. In the chapter I read today, I actually had to pause a couple of times for people to get quiet again so I could continue reading.  The second best thing about them is that amidst all the fun, they are actually educational. A fact of which Miss Penelope Lumley, a graduate of the Swanburne Aca

Yesterday was our visit to the neurologist which we do twice a year. I'm glad it's not any more often than that since it is about an hour and a half away. (I'm willing to travel for good doctors.) It was the shortest and easiest neurology appointment ever. We don't need to change any medicines and the doctor is pleased with the amount of progress she's seeing. Every time we're there, she actually expresses amazement that H. and R. are as functional as they are given what their CAT scans look like. (Swiss cheese, that's what they look like, if you're curious. Even I, with no training reading them, can see that there is nothing good in those pictures.)  R. and H. don't mind this appointment at all. They love the doctor and she is incredibly good with them. They are amused by the activities she asks them to do... tough their noses, follow her finger, try not to let her pull them arms down, walk across the room in various ways. It's all pretty low ke

Here is my next lesson plan installment. This time Ancient Greece. As before, I will note topics covered, which if no resources are given, assume that I read the corresponding pages in the main texts we used. To document our learning, we created lapbooks , making the individual booklets as we went along, putting it all together at the end. I will also note what subjects we made booklets about. Our main resources were: Oxford First Ancient History The Ancient World: Greece (Robert Hull) The Usborne Illustrated World History: The Greeks #1 Introduction to the Greek world -- How we know about it -- Why we study it          - Looked at a map of the area          - Added the periods of Ancient Greece to timelines #2 Minoans          - Added Minoa to timeline          - Made a booklet about bull jumping          - Read In Search of Knosses          - Watched Ancient Civilizations: The Minoans #3 Heinrich Schliemann         - Read The Hero Schliemann  by Laura Amy Schlitz          - Made book

A couple of months ago, I ordered a set of hand-painted Chinese peasant paintings through the woman who took us shopping both times we were in Guangzhou . They arrived today!! Do you want to see?  The paper is very curled so it was a little difficult to take pictures of them. Y. helped to choose which ones to order. Her favorite is the second from the top; the winter scene. I kind of love that we accidentally chose a painting from each season. Now to get them framed. That might have to be a tax refund expense because I really want to be able to hang these on the wall soon. They make me happy... and they make Y. very happy, too.

Life continues to head towards a more calm trajectory, though we aren't quite at our usual equilibrium yet. I'm not complaining, though, since it's so much better than Wednesday. I took Y., G., and L. to the eye doctor yesterday. L.'s prescription for her reading glasses hadn't changed, so she didn't need new anything. G. and Y. both needed reading glasses as well. I wasn't surprised as they were both complaining of slight headaches after they had read for a while. Interestingly, G.'s prescription is exactly the same as L.'s. Those twin genetics run strong. P. and D. left early this morning on a road trip across the country to visit our friends the H-S Family out in Washington. Tonight they are staying with a family friend in Sioux Falls, SD.  I was walking next to the vegetable garden that never got planted this year making it a pretty impressive collection of giant weeds. And then in one of the beds, I happened to notice that maybe not everything

R.'s sleep last night was not terrific, but sleep did happen, and she was better today. I am significantly better. J., who is the best husband in the world, changed his schedule to work remotely today (and I am genuinely thankful for this aspect of the pandemic), so he decided he would be on R. duty today. He works out in the shed when he is home, so he set her up with different projects to do while he was working. It went better than I could hope. He got work done, she occupied herself, and I got a much needed break. Respite is an amazing thing. J. said there were a few moments where it looked as though things might be heading off the rails again, but some coaching from him helped to get her back on track.  At one point, J. looked over at what R. was doing, and mentioned that it looked as though she had made a book. So he wrote down her title for it and she added pictures. Then she wanted to make a second book so she did. J. had left them in the kitchen, and when I saw them I thou