Because I can't support a site that accepts advertising from baby whipping advocates.  Sigh.  I like this place, too. 

http://www.odonnellweb.com/mtarchives/002299.php  Some foul language there, so I will quote a bit here that gives the gist without the language:

"Do Not Link to HomeschoolBlogger.com

Homeschoolblogger.com accepts advertising from No Greater Joy Ministries, who publish To Train Up A Child, a Christian parenting manual that advocates lashing your children with plumbing supply lines, because they sting, but don't bruise.

More On To Train A Child

In an article published today about a child abuse case in NC, Gina Suarez, publisher of Homeschoolblogger.com, is quoted defending the use of plumbing supply lines to beat your child.

"[The Pearls] are talking about something that would fit in a purse," Suarez said. "The only way you can kill a child with that is by shoving it down his throat."

Isn't that nice? Should the sane members of the homeschooling community really be sending traffic to their site?"

what with the moving preparation that has to be done.  Dh started his new job on Monday and has decided to stay.  So hopefully we'll move soon -- driving 5 hours a day isn't so fun, especially on snowy roads.  Amazingly, we've already had a tentative offer on the house.  I babysit for a neighbour who lives in this same townhouse complex, but doesn't like the unit she is in.  Hers is a bit smaller (because it has a larger fenced-in yard area) and she has noisy neighbours.  This complex is close to her kids' school -- likely the cheapest places that are walking distance to it, unless you go to an apartment.  And she loves our new kitchen.  If we sold to them, we could avoid the realtor fees.

Today, we mostly just read.  The kids played nicely together, thank goodness.  No tv, but probably more computer than they needed.  They played crazy 8's and yahtzee, lego, and they pretended that they were preparing to blast into space.  I bagged up 9 garbage bags full of clothes, toys, diapers, and other things to go to Value Village.  D helped me make supper while S raided the big utensil drawer for tools so he could "grind his bones to make my bread." 

OK, I'm one of those parents who considers cribs, playpens, exercausers, swings, etc. to be baby cages.  I admit it.  Someone gave us a crib when D was born, and when I realized I was only using it to hold laundy, we sold it.  A cousin lent me a playpen.  I think we set it up once for a day or two when D was a toddler.  So he could climb in and out on his own, we put a chair and a stool for stairs to get in, and a toy bin inside to climb down on or up out of the playpen.  He wasn't too crazy about it, it took up a lot of space, and so it went back away again.  Recently, I have been thinking it would be a good idea to get it out so the boys have a place to play with legos or other things they don't want M destroying.  People were generally cranky yesterday, so I decided to set it up as a diversion.  S was so excited about it -- he's never seen a play pen before, and I think the name made it sound more exciting than it really is.  When I was setting it up, he asked me where all the toys were.  :P  He wanted to go in first.  After a few minutes of hanging out in there with a transformer, a dinosaur, a stuffed unicorn, and a book of mazes, he wanted to come out.  D, who was laying on the couch sick, wanted to go in next.  I set up his pillow and blanket in there, and he laid down while I finised our school reading.  Then he asked for his starfall workbook, but didn't feel like doing much.  When he came out, M wanted in.  Once she realized she was trapped in there, I figured she would want out.  Not so.  She loved it in there!  She rolled around on the bottom, jumped, pulled herself up on the sides, ran the few steps from one end to the other and hit the wall and fell down laughing.  She would crouch down and look out through the mesh, then stand up and peek over the top edge.  After a while, I thought she might be getting bored, so I went to lift her out.  She ran to the far corner and crouched down as far as she could.  The kids spent most of the rest of the day taking turns in the playpen.  When N came home, he discovered that a blanket on top makes a fun little cave.  Oh, how M squealed with delight.  This morning, M wanted back in again, and it occured to me that the play pen is a great place for playing with messy things that toddlers like -- rice bins, bits of paper they want to tear up and toss around, etc.  We have a package of pasta that was spilled on the floor and was donated to the craft bin.  I put that in there with her and various containers and such.  She loves being in there, pouring them from one container to another, dropping them on her head, and tossing them around.  I'm not getting stressed out over the mess and having to crawl under the table and locate lost pasta.  Everybody's happy!  I don't know that I would have pulled it out when she was much younger than this.  But it is wonderful now!  We just need one that's a bit bigger, since all three kids want to be in it together sometimes.

I never thought I would see the day I would be singing the praises of a play pen.

for a few days.  I'm totally excited about moving and managed to convince myself that I need to spend all of my time searching for info on Toronto, the transit system, and apartments, or decluttering and figuring out packing.  :P  I think tomorrow morning (assuming I manage to drag myself out of bed) I will manage to let it go.  I have come to accept that when I get excited about something, I completely immerse myself in it until I start to get bored, and then I can be more rational about how much time I spend on it. 

S has started practising writing letters.  He wrote four or so notes to me, all Ns and Os with an I or two thrown in.  Today, he pulled out a notebook of his and started writing lines of letters -- mostly Ns, Ms, Os, and Is.  He has also been working on sounding out short words.  He's figuring out about silent "e" -- I read some word to him recently when he asked what it was, and he asked why I didn't say the e.  I explained briefly that it was a silent e -- it didn't get pronounced, instead its job was to help us know how to pronounce the whole word.  He was looking at a book about a dinosaur bone today, and suddenly he exclaimed, "That's a silent e!  The word is bone and it has a silent e!"  :D

Both boys were feeling a bit under the weather today.  I started reading "Little Men" out loud at bedtime last night.  I read an abriged version of Little Women a long time ago, and came across this book on my most recent visit to the used book store.  Now I'll have to try and get Little Women from the library.  We didn't read much of it last night -- D was really tired and fell asleep almost before the lights were off -- and tonight, I asked him if he wanted to read it or something else, because I wasn't sure if he liked the book.  He said he loved it -- it had boys and dancing and tag, after all, what's not to love?

D played checkers with the girls we babysit who is about his age.  Since she had talked about playing checkers, I assumed she knew the rules.  D is a very rules-oriented kid (when it suits his needs, hehe), and I guess it didn't occur to me that not every kid is.  So she had to learn how to play while playing with him.  D won all three games that they played.  The girl was such a good sport about it -- when D announced the first time that he won because he took all of her pieces, she just said "Whatever, do you want to play again?" and going on to lose twice more didn't seem to dampen her enthusiasm for it.  I just hope D was soaking up her example! 

I am considering hauling the play pen my cousin gave me out of storage (I think we set it up once, D enjoyed it until the novelty wore off, and it takes up a lot of room) so that the boys have a safe place to play without M being able to get at them.  They haven't been able to play with legos or the train set or the marble track thing or the car track, or anything that she can demolish, for a while now.

I'm getting a little frustrated and dissatisfied at the moment.  One of the basic ideas of TJEd or Leadership Education as espoused by the DeMilles is to structure the time, not the content -- set aside time for learning to happen, but don't plan math for 9:30 to 10:00, French from 10:00 to 10:30, etc.  So that's what I've been trying to do.  I do loosely schedule my own studies, and I do have a basic schedule for our morning devotional and a bit of read-aloud, and then we call it "free school time" until lunch.  The idea is everyone goes about their business -- learning materials are stored in a cupboard or closet and the bookcases are in the living room, but really the only limits they place on school time is no friends, no tv, no comp/video games, and I agree with that.  But when free time starts, I feel like everything just falls apart.  The house gets messy(er), for one.  The kids sometimes get bored.  I feel like, this is the time for me to get some studying done (generally I like to work on my history studies, French, and practise piano in free time), but of course, there are interruptions.  I know I should welcome interruptions, but honestly, I feel so scatterbrained from all of them, yk?  Like I can never string together two thoughts in a row without someone needing something.  It doesn't help that the toddler is, well, a toddler, and an avid climber, and can find anything that gets left lying around, slide it across the floor to whatever she wants to climb on, and suddenly be trying to push over the cpu or standing on the piano keys or dumping out the contents of the spice drawer.  The boys get especially frustrated, because they can no longer have any freedom from her destroying anything they try to build.  She loves putting her hands into lego, shaking her hands around in it, and throwing it everywhere.  She feels terribly left out if they are building something or doing crafts on the table.  Giving her something similar on the floor doesn't help.  Sigh.  I have been tempted more times in the last few weeks than in the entire history of my motherhood to break out the playpen that someone gave us.  Hmmmm, I wonder if she might actually like it.  Or maybe the boys would like it, and she could climb on the table and feel like she is getting the better deal.  Not that we have room for it....

I guess I'm just feeling like, if I had more of a plan for our time, I wouldn't feel like we were all over the place, and I might feel like we were actually accomplishing something.  D was bored when free time started yesterday, and sometimes I end up doing something with bored kids, sometimes I let them find their own solution to the boredom.  I decided to ask if he wanted to do some more math activities from his math book (Making Math Meaningful).  So, first off, we couldn't find these manipulatives we made and needed.  (They are just little strips of paper that we cut out of the book -- equal and unequal lengths, labeled with a letter of the alphabet, and they ask if b and c are equal or unequal, etc.)  Spent some time searching for those.  No luck.  So we went on to the next activity -- you needed long, thin objects, some the same length, some different (like pencils or pens).  Used pencil crayons.  The next activity, you needed ten each of links, counting chips, and linking counting squares.  Well, you really just needed three groups of similar-sized objects, but I did my best to find the same kinds of things:  paperclips, lego squares (we have some already separate for counting with), and these litte foam geometric shapes.  Oh, and we needed a paper bag -- some container for the kid to pull them out of.  I used a cloth bag.  But, it took time to gather everything up -- D was waiting and getting bored-er, M was getting into everywhere I tried looking for things and trying to climb everything, and S was in the bathroom (the kids' favourite place for making a mess).  D enjoyed the activity (pull out a random handful, sort the three groups of objects, and then I ask how many paper clips?  How many lego?  He writes them down, and has to write the equal or unequal sign), but it really didn't last very long.  We did end up having fun with this big magnet we have and the paperclips (it was strong enough to pull them around through our inch-thick maple table).  I guess my picture of "free time" is the kids, say, happily going through the material in the school closet and building lego castles or putting on puppet shows or putting on a concert or doing puzzles or making paper airplanes or sculpting weird creatures or making neat shapes with the tangrams or reading or doing dot-to-dots or writing notes to imaginary friends or going around the house measuring everything they can find or....  Instead, everyone is trying to keep away from M, the boys are constantly asking for tv or comp time, and I can never set a wonderful example of diligent scholarship for more than 30 seconds at a time.  I know M will only be a toddler for so long... kids grow up so fast... but right now, it feels like time is moving so slowly, and we're not making any progress.

D was a big help yesterday.  He was upset when he found out that I had done the load of diapers myself.  I didn't want him handling the dirty dipes, ick.  But, oh man, I just realized that when I told him he could go down and move them from the washer to the dryer, they had only finished one cycle -- I usually run them on a second cycle with no detergent to rinse them really well.  D also helped make dinner and unload the dishwasher.  The boys didn't watch any tv yesterday -- they did play a bit on the puter. 

so far.  Monday we took off; Tuesday we had a pretty normal day, with reading, playing, building, etc.  N was home a bit late from work and insisted on stopping to get a treat on the way.  He did and to my great surprise, suggested we have Family Home Evening that night (we usually try to have it on Mondays, but N is often home so late from work that the kids are getting ready for bed and we're all to tired to deal).  I don't know why I didn't suspect that anything was up.  So we had a hymn, a prayer, and went over our calendar.  Then N announces that we're having a family council (and explains the term to D).  He said he had been offered a job.  Now, I knew that the had applied for a job in Toronto, and they had called him basically to say that he met the criteria and they would call him when a spot became available (it is a gov't job, with the Revenue Agency).  So, apparently, they contacted him.  We went over the details, and I gave my concerns.  Turned out he had already prayed about what to do, and had decided to take the job.  He did want to hear any concerns I had before I knew that he was taking the job so I would be honest.  :P  So he'll be commuting for now -- it's 4 to 5 hours round trip.  :S  He starts in a couple of weeks, and it is 5 weeks of training at 30 hours a week, and then he starts full time.  I can't imagine what the gas costs will be.  We thought a bit about somehow short-term leasing or even buying a cheap, fuel-efficient vehicle (we have a mini van).  We'll see what happens.  While he's in training, I will be packing up and purging as much as I can, and then likely the kids and I will stay at my parents.  N will work on the house and put it on the market and look for a place for us to live while we're away.  I'm really hoping it will all go smoothly.  I've already packed up a few bags and boxes of trash and stuff for Value Village.  I'm pretty excited -- I was getting really sick of being here, not in the country and not really in the city.  I felt so stuck.  And this is at least a bit closer to the grandparents. 

I'm just hoping the tiredness I've been feeling isn't pregnancy-induced... I can't imagine packing up a house and moving while pg.

Today we took it a bit easier for school.  The boys were doing really well at playing together, having a fun time, so we just read a bit and then I let them do their thing.  I did the packing and tossing and searching around for info about Toronto and places to live.

We pretty much took Friday off.  If I recall correctly, it was one of the days when we actually had snow on the ground, and we went outside again.  The kids came in long enough to eat lunch (after our walk) and then went outside to play in the snow with the neighbour.  Oh no, wait, Thursday we had snow on the ground and the kids played outside.  When I woke up on Friday, it had rained and most of the snow was gone.  The kids rode bikes in the afternoon.

We did homeschool today -- dh works Tues to Sat -- and it went fairly well.  The toddler is definately a hurdle, as she wants to be in the middle of everything, and is very loud.  After doing our usual reading, we played a couple of "math" games, and then I declared it "free time."  I looked up something on the computer and then practised the piano while the kids played.  They were playing at something make believe together, and I completely forget now what it was.  :P  I also pulled out the noodles, a craft they haven't done in a while -- they are foamish little bead things that you moisten and stick together.  M fell asleep early and we had lunch.  D has discovered that he can do most of the work for baked potato skins with cheese.  He washed and pricked the potatoes, and then I baked and cut them open.  He scooped out a bit of the potato and put on the cheese; I put them in the toaster oven.  While he was doing the cheese part, he was singing "Chef D" again and again.  It was very cute.

I'm reading "Awakening Your Child's Natural Genius" by Thomas Armstrong.  He has a ton of ideas for activities do to with your child.  I tried one, where you draw together on a piece of paper, to communicate.  We ended up just drawing together, which was nice.  Oh, I did it with D. 

We've been having a good time, despite chronic late starting.  I get discouraged once we get going well with routinely setting aside school time -- seems like everything we do takes a long time.  Yesterday we did our usual reading, played a few games (a kids' yahtzee game and Go Fish), and then went out for a walk and a bit of snow play.  We did start late, and then by the time we were finished eating "lunch", the afternoon was practically over.  Today we started with our usual reading.  We are still working on memorizing the Articles of Faith.  I'm doing well with it, but D has lost interest.  I remembered that we have a poster with them written out on it that we bought through our church's distribution centre.  I showed it to the kids and suggested that we read them all and put the poster up somewhere to help us with memorizing it.  D decided *he* wanted to read them all himself.  Unthinkingly, I also told the boys that once anyone memorizes all of them, they get a little card with the A of F printed on it to carry in their scripture case.  Then I thought, is this bribing?  Rewarding?  Is it going to diminish the natural, intrinsic desire for learning and make the reward more important to them?  Gah. 

So after our reading, again we played some games.  This morning I printed out some math games from Joyful Math and dug up the rest of our dice, as well as checker pieces.  D and S found them (before school time) and decided to make their own checker board while I was showering.  It didn't quite work.  I let the boys choose books to end our reading time, and D chose the Magic Schoolbus book we have on hurricanes.  They go up in a hot air balloon in it, and in a sidebar they describe an experiment you can do with a pan of hot water, a bottle, and a balloon (you put the balloon over the bottle opening and put it in the hot water; when the air expands, the balloon fills).  The boys loved this.  Then we each chose a game to play.  We did yahtzee again, and then checkers.  We rolled to see which two people played first -- S and I.  I won (though he did very well, and caught on quickly).  He said I hurt his feelings when I won.  Then D and I played.  I won.  He cried.  I told him I had been practising playing checkers for 20 years, and this was (he told me) his third game.  Of course it would be nearly impossible for him to win.  But if he keeps playing against me, and notices how I play and what kind of moves I make, he will get better and better and win more and more often.  I'm not sure if that was the right way to handle it, but he felt better, anyway. 

That was pretty much the end of our school day, as M was majorly fussy and we were all ready to eat.  The boys were restless during quiet minutes -- probably because D chose his "airplane book" to look at and S kept trying to get in and see it too.  So I pulled out one of the Charlie Brown encyclopaedias that MIL gave us, on cars and trains, for S.  So of course D wanted one too; he got Machines.  We read from it after quiet minutes.  They then went outside to build snowmen, and are now playing at a friend's house.  Our babysitting charges will be here any minute.  I haven't done one bit of Hebrew or nearly enough reading to keep up with my reading challenge.  :P

So, we started as usual today; our poems were again from the Winnie the Pooh poems, and we read a chapter in Our Island Story.  I tried to find pics of Roman galley ships online (the chapter we read was about Julius Caesar coming and fighting against the Britons) but had no luck.  M was very fussy so it cut short my time.  We did French, but D wasn't too interested in it, and I wanted to practise for myself, so he made himself a snack.  He decided that he wanted to practise school again, so I told him it was math time, and he could sit at the table and I printed up some math worksheets for him.  While he did that, I printed up some French colouring pages (to learn the colours) and we talked about them, then while he coloured I marked his math sheets.  While he finished the colouring I "packed" him a lunch; after putting away his things, he (and S) ate at the table.  I am amazed at how well-behaved the kids are when they play school (S was joining in with everything).  After lunch, I told D it was recess time.  He isn't feeling well (has a cold), so I told him he could choose to go outside or stay at the table and do something quietly, like reading, colouring, or more worksheets.  He waffled a bit, and eventually decided he didn't want to practise school any more.  He says he doesn't want to go to school at all, but I have a feeling he will be asking to go again once the girls we babysit start talking about pizza day or gym or something.  I wouldn't mind enrolling him so he could see what it was really like, but I don't want to be a big pain for the school.

I'm doing well with my reading challenge... almost done Coppermine Journey and I think I'm starting The Chosen next.

We had a bit of a late start today, but nothing too drastic, and I managed to get caught up on the dishes and such, so I didn't mind.  Kids were a bit bouncy -- I think they're coming down with a bit of a cold.  Again.  M was fussy all day yesterday, and D woke up shortly after 5 am this morning and couldn't get back to sleep.  S has been a cranky pants all day so far, getting upset at everything.  They are all asleep now -- a small miracle which I am not properly appreciating, since it means they might be up late tonight. 

We started as usual, with singing, a prayer, and scriptures.  I'm roughly following the Old Testament Stories book, and this week is the Creation.  I was reading Genesis 1, and about the beasts being created.  D asked when, then, did God create dinosaurs?  and S wanted to know if the beasts that were created were like the beast in Beauty and the Beast.  Sigh.  We worked on our memorizing -- I recited the Articles of Faith I/we have memorized so far, and D followed along to see if I was right.  We did a brief review of the primary lesson from Sunday (I'm a teacher now, but I teach the class between D's and S's.  D's class uses the same manual, though).  We had poetry time.  I took out the Winnie the Pooh poems and let the boys choose.  Then it was history reading time -- we read a chapter from The Story of Mankind.  Last week's was about hieroglyphics, this week's was about how people came to the Nile to farm and live and how pyramids came to be built to protect the dead from robbers.  Since I printed this book without the pictures, we went to the computer to google for hieroglyphics and pyramids.  We found a page where you can [http://www.quizland.com/hiero.mv] translate into hieroglyphics and did our names, then [http://greatscott.com/hiero/] a more general page about hieroglyphics.  Then looking up pyramids, we found a [http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/pyramid/] virtual tour of a pyramid at the PBS website.  D loved this, and I thought it was pretty cool too.  Then we went on to the French cds and D, once again, was hesitant at first, but by the time we needed to start making lunch and pacify M, he didn't want to stop.  I had hoped to get started with Making Math Meaninful this morning, but it didn't happen.

After lunch, D said he wanted us to pretend we were at school so he could see if he liked it.  I said OK, it's quiet minutes time, so we'll have quiet reading time like they do at school.  You can choose a book to read and sit at the table (like a desk) and read it quietly.  He asked if we could do crafts instead, since they do crafts at school.  I said they do, but only when the teacher says it's craft time, and I say it's not craft time, it's reading time.  He said OK and we started.  About 6 minutes in, he leaves the table to sit on the couch.  I told him he couldn't leave without permission, since we were pretending to be in school, and he said he didn't want to any more, he hated sitting at the table.  I think it's mostly because he wasn't feeling well -- he just laid down on the couch for the rest of quiet minutes and fell asleep.

I've been trying to get my links to work, and I don't know what's up with them!  Arg.

I can't quite get the hang of Mondays.  Dishes and other housework has piled up from Sunday.  I always want to spend about an hour on Sun organizing school stuff for the week, but it never happens.  Dh is home on Mondays, so that throws a wrench in our works.  I think I managed to sit down and read a few pages of Little House on Rocky Ridge to the kids, and that was our schoolish stuff for the day.

The kids have been playing a few coin and dice games lately.  D has taken to playing the money game solitaire, where he uses both dice and sees how quickly he can get to $1 (your roll = how many pennies you get).  He now knows how to count by fives and by tens.  We started playing hull gull (it is described in Little House on Rocky Ridge).  It is for two players.  You both have 5 pennies; the first player puts a secret amount in his hand and the other guesses.  The guesser has to give the first player however many pennies his guess was off by.  So if I am hiding 2 pennies in my hand and you guess 4, you give me two pennies.  If you guess right, you get all the pennies in my hand.  Dh also taught D another penny game.  He placed 25 pennies on the table in rows.  You take turns taking pennies -- 3, 2, or 1.  The object is to make the other player take the last penny.

Sunday was the start of the 3000 page/8 week challenge, but I forgot about it until Monday.  I manged to get on track, though.  I have to read about 55 pages a day to keep up.  My scripture study is 4 pages a day (to get through the Old Testament this year) and I decided to start reading Coppermine Journey by Farley Mowat on Monday.  It is fairly short, about 3 days' worth of reading, and I have Sense and Sensibility on hold at the library, so I wanted a short read.  Such an interesting book.  Mowat went through Samuel Hearn's journals chronicling his search for the Coppermine River in northwestern Canada (I think it is now Nunavut).  Unfortunately I didn't put aside a paper and pen for note taking when I started reading it, and now I have a handful of dog-eared pages that I have to go back to and take notes on.  : P

We haven't done any school today.  I've been too busy using the new machines to catch up on laundry.  ('Cause, y'know, it's not like the machines do 99% of the work for you or anything... and it's not like I just put the clothes in and have 40 minutes of nothing to do... it is constant work, washing clothes with a washer and dryer.  Yeah.)  M woke up early and is now down for a nap... I'm still trying to catch up on cleaning and food prep.  I just need one good, solid, uninterrupted hour for it. 

D did sit down on the couch with scriptures this morning and proceed to read the front cover, spine, and intro page.  He was very thorough, did need some help on longer words, but was very excited to figure out most of them for himself.  The boys played with lego and got themselves breakfast (cinammon buns I made last night).  Uhm, it's still Christmas holiday... right?  ;)

We had a good day today, though we started late (surpise, surprise... D wasn't even awake until after 11 am.  Sigh.  I am so bad at bedtime).  We did our usual stuff, talked about God's promises to us (this month's theme in primary is about God's promises to us being in the scriptures -- D has to give a talk in primary about this on Sun, in fact...).  We read about Noah and the rainbow, and by then the kids were very bored.  (I'm making my kids be the annoying kids in Sunday school... I was reviewing the story of Noah and the Ark and said that Noah brought two of every animal on the ark, then corrected myself and said there were seven of some of the animals.  D vehemently disagreed with me, so I found the scripture and read it to him, and we talked about why we thought God told Noah to take seven of some of the animals, and only two of others.  He's going to be correcting the teacher next time that comes up.)  So I turned on the French -- today, when we got to MY limit (M was going crazy, again, and not happy that she couldn't eat the activity book), D didn't want us to turn it off.  We aren't practising it outside of the time when we listen to the audio cds, though, and I know we should.

After lunch, we had quiet minutes, and a friend visited with the boys.  I had a friend come over for our book club.  It was nice chatting with her.  I didn't actually read the book this month -- I read it about 1/2 year ago and couldn't manage to get it from the library again.  I didn't remember it well enough to write an essay on it, but the discussion we had helped. 

I really didn't feel like tackling any house work once M finally went down for her nap, and the boys were still occupied with their friend.  I took out some of my books and binders and tried to plan/start my history studies somewhat.  I ended up filling in a few dates in my history timeline notebook and starting a section (which I will move to my scripture study binder) for my Old Testament history studies.  I'm going in chronological order atm, so today I just wrote "Pre Mortal Life" at the top of the page and started finding and writing out scripture references.  I find that writing out scriptures I'm studying helps me slow down and digest them better.

Now my kitchen is a mess, I don't feel like cleaning it -- I had a sudden burst of kitchen energy but it was all used up on cooking.  I just want to open my books again, but they will get covered in peanut butter and jelly and pancake and hard boiled egg.  So instead I'm at the computer, with my view of the kitchen conveniently blocked.

Hmmmmm... can I remember what we did yesterday?

Started off as usual.  Read a chapter from Our Island Story and a short story from the Friend.  Listened to more of the French stuff (Power Glide).  D seemed a little more interested.  Again, I sat down to do it myself and he came to do it with me.  He has quite a bit of difficulty pronouncing some of the sounds -- especially the R.  It must be discouraging for him. 

That was about all we did.  We started late.  I am trying to read through the ancient history book I have, but it is slow going.  Oh that's right, M was crazy today, always getting into everything, fussing, yada yada yada.  Then N said he would likely bring someone home after Scouts to help take out our old washer and dryer.  He ended up calling a friend at about 9:30... I had moved anything that might be in the way already, but then I ran around cleaning up too.  All of the kids were still bright eyed and bushy tailed when this friend showed up.  Sigh.  He and his wife are having their first baby in the spring.  I hope we don't look like awful parents.  He really enjoys talking with the boys, though, so I think it was fun for everyone.

to do everything I want in school time.  I think this is why I tend to not try hard enough to have school time -- even when I make the effort to have it, I always feel like we run out of time too soon.  Today, we sang and read scriptures.  We are starting the Old Testament to go along with our ancient history study for this year.  So we are reading about the creation.  I'm trying to keep up with primary lessons also in our devotional time, and the class lesson for both boys this past Sunday was Happiness Comes from Choosing the Right.  So I found the latest Friend magazine and they have a nice index system, and there was a story referenced for "choose the right," which we read and discussed.  I read a chapter from "Our Island Story" for our Canadian history reading for the week (and did a bit of figuring to decide how many chapters/week to read from each of our history books).  I then wanted the kids to do French.  D had no interest whatsoever.  He said he didn't want to learn any more French than he already knows -- bonjour.  I told him how Dad has his job now because he could speak French, and might be getting a job near the Grandparentses because he learned French starting when he was 3.  Then I told him that I was going to listen to the story, and went to the computer and did my thing.  We are using PowerGlide, it includes stories on cds, so I started listening to the first one.  It didn't take too long for both boys to drag chairs over to the computer and listen along.  I practised saying the French words that were used in the story (my pronounciation is fairly bad, I mean it is an accurate representation of the French I heard growing up, but it was, hmmmm, rural French, I guess).  We did just the first "lesson," and I'm thinking we might do the same one two days in a row, to help it sink in (especially since I'm not "requiring" them to sit and listen to it).

Then we basically did "free time."  D read a Dr. Seuss book to S, they snacked, they took turns doing Study Dog and Starfall on the computer.  I need to start restricting this to the last 1/2 hour before lunch, or else it is all they want to do, esp. D.  He even said to me today, all he wanted to do was to sit around in front of a screen and either watch tv or play comp games all day long.  Arg.  He is so my son.  :P  I worked on organizing my binder and studies.  I am taking part in a 3000 page in 8 weeks challenge through a TJEd forum; it will start Jan 8.  So I made up a page for that, put in my OT chart in my binder too, and started a page for notes for studying history this year.  I pulled out some of my history resources to figure out what periods exactly I want to cover this year.  I started reading the intro to "Ancient History from Primary Sources," and that's about as far as I got with my studies for the morning.  M was fussy and wanting action of some kind.  So I sat down at the piano to practise and pulled up a little bin for her to stand on, so she could bang at the high end of the keys. 

Now I just have to figure out what we're eating for lunch.  I have borscht in the fridge that I have been eating -- I could eat it for lunch every day -- but the kids are sick of all of the leftovers we have.  Should have started a loaf of bread this am.  Maybe I'll raid dh's pizza pocket supply for them.  :)

I want to put up a big timeline on the wall with a roll of paper, but dh is worried that it will look -- to quote him -- "lame."  I think the kids don't get too excited about a lot of the things I study because I am reading my books and taking my own notes, etc.  But when we have things up on the wall, they can share in it. 

Ahhhhh, a fresh start... a clean slate... whatever other stale cliche applies here.  I am sitting here trying to plan a great year of studying for me, with the kids in mind, without concentrating too much on "teaching" them.  Leadership education is a lot like unschooling with little kids.  As I try to make my simple list... there are so many great things I want to learn and share with the kids.  My list is getting too long.  Here it is, so far:

old testament
hebrew -- scriptures, mem
poetry (memorizing)
french -- powerglide; poetry?  scriptures?
piano/songs
math foundations? / mmm
history, focus on people, stories
nature study -- use handbook; start w/astro (abraham?)
Can history -- start w brit
handicraft skills? crochet; sewing?
book club books
*make a list of ancient history books to read this year (from cd?)
AO artist -- 2005-2006 TERM 2 Jan Vermeer (1632-1675)
Biography / Thumbnails of Vermeer's complete collection of works  
1. The Milkmaid 
2. Woman in Blue Reading a Letter 
3. Woman Holding a Balance 
4. Art of Painting 
5. The Geographer 
6. The Alleghory of Faith 

AO composer -- 2005-2006 TERM 2
Henry Purcell (1659 - 1695, Baroque)
Listening selections for this term:
Selections based on the CD "Essential Purcell" from the Hyperion label.

.........................................

I would like to get into the habit of reviewing my plans and goals each Sunday and planning out the next week.  Dh is always exhausted on Sun, it is hard to get any uninterrupted time when the kids are awake.  He is trying right now, downstairs with all of the kids, and a very fussy baby included. 

I feel like tomorrow is the first day of the year of schooling and I will be totally unprepared for it.  Doesn't help that it is N's day off, so our day will definately be messed up.  I'm mostly concentrating on getting through the whole Old Testament.  I have a lot of other ideas for what I want to accomplish, but if I just do that, (I hope) I will feel successful.

Sure, hsmomof2!  I actually thought I had you added already, but I probably just remember thinking I should add you and then something interrupted before I could.  : P

We have been doing some reading, but our loose routine is out the window.  The boys did pretty much what they wanted yesterday -- I just made sure we had scripture reading, other reading, and quiet minutes at some point during the day.  And meals.  We went out in the evening looking at Christmas lights.

Today is supposed to be cookie day.  I'm going to be ambitious and try to make sugar cookies, shortbread cookies, ginger snaps, and peanut butter cookies.  Mmmmm, cookies.

I've been getting worried about Christmas gifts for the boys -- we really just had books to give them, and most of them were homeschool books.  (Not that there's anything wrong with them, I just thought they might be disappointed with having no toys to play with, especially after having three gift sessions between Christmas and Boxing Day last year.)  I went to the $0 holiday thread at MDC, and decided to try making beanbags.  I managed to find myself wide awake at 4 am today and went down to rummage through my scraps.  Of course, this would be the first day in a few weeks that S (he's 4) decided to wake in the middle of the night.  It took a long time for him to get back to sleep.  Then D woke up unusually early.  Ugh.  I think I will sew three sides of the bags with the kids down there -- they likely won't take much notice of me if they think I'm just practising (and they get to watch a movie).  Then I'll fill and finish them tonight.  I'm also going to make popcorn balls and fudge on Christmas Eve after they are in bed and put those in the stockings (along with the cookies they help me make today, lol).  I have decided to accept the fact that the floor in the kitchen and dining rooms likely won't get scrubbed before Christmas; neither will the upstairs carpets get vacuumed. 

Our washer started smoking Tuesday morning.  With all of the research that is out there on the effects that smoking has on your health, I'm surprised that it took up the habit.  I'm hoping a new belt will help it break the habit.

Somewhat back on track today... we did our singing, scriptures, and reading, reading, reading.  I was a bit distracted getting ready for a friend to visit.  I was also a bit tired, as I was up at 3:30am.  I meant to stay up late last night and do more cleaning, but fell asleep fully dressed nursing the baby.  I made good progress with the cleaning, but my washing machine wasn't so fortunate.  I managed to do a load of clothes, then with a load a diapers the belt just couldn't take it.  I turned off the machine as it was sounding really funny, and noticed smoke wafting around me.  Ick.  So that cut short my laundry room clean up.

Baby is sleeping now, I should be doing some decluttering in the living room.  Today is supposed to be the livingroom/dining room for cleaning, but I don't anticipate staying up too late.  Instead, I'm looking at some of the online books at Ambleside Online.  I printed up a few yesterday, I love free books!

We started late today.  I slept in until 9!  We did our usual reading, and instead of breaking for a snack, we broke for lunch.  D and I team read a book together -- we did a page each.  He really seemed to enjoy it.  We had quiet minutes, more reading, and then the boys headed outside.  Their friend came over to play once they were to cold to stay outside.  I spent the afternoon writing up lists and plans for the next week, looking up recipes, and printing up a couple of the Ambleside Online books.  I have decided that it is OK to give the kids their curriculum for Christmas!  I wouldn't have minded not having much for them, but my parents might be coming to visit between Christmas and New Years, and we will definately visit in January.  So they have just started their Christmas shopping and already have more for the boys than we planned on getting them all together.  Not that I want to make it a competition, I just didn't want the fun, frivolous, plasticy, noisy toys my parents are sure to buy be the whole focus.  I want to present the books as being just as special.

Monday, being N's day off, is always all messed up.  It throws me off starting our "school week" this way, but it is fun too.

I spent the morning tidying up and getting ready for us to get our Christmas tree!  This was always a big part of our Christmas celebration growing up.  My dad is a big tree guy.  I had talked to my parents on the phone on Sunday, and they had spent the evening decorating their tree, which they cut from their property.  Not surprisingly, there ended up being some Frankensteining going on.  Some big gaps were discovered once they set up the tree, so they took some extra boughs and screwed them in.

We went out and did some Christmas shopping -- lights we needed, a snowy batting tree skirt thing, wrapping paper, stocking treats.  I bought D's gift from us -- an Asterix and a Tin Tin comic.  N loved these growing up, though he read them in French.  We did groceries, too. 

I spent the rest of the afternoon still trying to catch up and tidy up and make ready for the tree.  N went out to Home Depot to get it.  For anyone who is planning to get a tree at a store like that, Home Depot will make a fresh cut on the trunk when you buy it!  It was a big deal for us, since N is mess-phobic and would be doing the cut outside on the front lawn in the dark.  It is a nice size, a balsam fir (I like that kind), nicely shaped -- which is lucky, since I don't think either one of us wanted to do any trimming.  Once he set it up, I was in charge of decorating.  We bought all white lights -- I would have gone for multi colour, but I knew that dh prefered it so we went with the clear.  Our decorations are little apples, some baked homemade dough ornaments we made (blue bells, yellow stars, and red hearts), a couple of glittery pinecones that survived my purge last year, and a few ornaments that we have been given.  The bottom section of the tree is bare of ornaments, since M can reach them. 

We snacked on roasted chestnuts, potato wedges, cheese and crackers, and egg nog, read Christmas stories, and sang carols.  Then we watched the newer A Miracle on 34th Street on CBC.  After the kids went to bed, I stayed up until close to 2 am cleaning in the basement.  But I finished what I wanted to get done for Monday.  Tuesday will be the laundry room.  Gah.