I'm tired.  It is 10:39pm and no one is in bed yet.  I allow for late bedtime so dh can get some sleep.  He gets in a little after 12am.  He gets up a 6am to go to the 2nd job and comes back home to sleep so he can go to the 1st job at 3:pm-12am.  Plus the baby took a VERY late nap.  I put him down at 7:30pm  I meant to get him up at 8:30pm..  I woke him up at 9:00pm( I know I'm crazy!!) But I'd rather him go to sleep at 11:00pm and get up at 9:30 or 10am than getting up at 5:00am WIDE AWAKE.   I know, getting up late allows for a short day though.  Big Sigh!

We are praying that this is just a season of dh working 2 jobs. 

Today was harrowing for me mainly b/c I got shaken in my faith.  Our utility company has kindly informed us that they are charging us for the next 6 months an excess of $400/mo!!!  They say they are estimating that we will use that much gas and electricity and costs of heating fuel is supposed to go up 80%.  That puts us way over our budget.  I spent 2 hours at least on the phone with them asking them what was wrong with them :-)  I called dh.  He came home for lunch and he told me we were going to lay hands on the bill, pray and believe and trust God and called our heating bill for this winter paid!! And we did!

So we started our lessons today at 11:00am and we were doing ok until the mail came and I opened up the utility bill around 3:00pm.  The next 2 hours were shot. 

But we managed to get lessons done. 

Bible Study:

We read the story this morning of how Joseph's brothers came to Egypt on thru to when they told Jacob that Joseph was still alive and his whole family came to Egypt.    Then we continued on to a poetry lesson. 

Literature:

(After a tense few moments when I got impatient and upset that all my questions of review of the long O sound  were met with a bunch of "I don't know's" right after I kept giving her the answer AND after she burst out in tears and I had to calm myself down we were able to accomplish the following:)

Big Sigh Number 1!

We read a poem about snow called FRED'S SLED by Kenn Nesbitt and talked about the imagery-what pictures come to mind when u read it.  We discussed how some poems rhyme and I encouraged her to write her own poem that rhymes.  I explained poems can be silly or serious and can be about anything whe wanted.  She chose to write about a favorite book. This is what she wrote:

My Silly Dilly Book

My favorite book is Look

It is blue and it is in my shoe.

It looks silly.

It's name is Dilly.

made by Alexis Roberson

We made a little book out of construction paper where she made a cover page.  She wrote 1 line of the poem on each page of the book and drew a picture about what that line of the poem is talking about.  The last page was her closing page-"Made by Alexis Roberson".

I thought that was wonderful.  So we got over that hurdle but I believe that set a kind of bad tone for the day.

We broke for lunch and physical activity. 

Math:

We did a very brief math lesson on the dime and how a dime is worth 10 cents.  I asked her to show me 10 cents in pennies(she did), in nickels(she did) and in dimes(she did).  Tomorrow we will work on putting combinations of coins together and adding up their value.  And also we need to cover quarters and how 4 quarters= $1 and 2 quarters=$.50.  We also reviewed pennies and nickels and how much they each are worth.

So I  opened up the mail and I got frazzled....$438.00 a month!!!

Big Sigh Number 2!

  The children were strangely quiet while I was trying to find some relief from the bill.  They all came downstairs with me after  I got off the phone and I was able to see that my 4 year old had taken scissors to his hair, his sister's hair(all of her hair WAS long...he cut a little chunk out AT THE ROOT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) and I did not discover until this evening that he also cut the baby's(1 year old...his hair is just starting to cover his head!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) hair.   He also cut his sister's barbie's hair.  His 6 yo sister was not upset at all about her hair being cut nor her barbie's and that upset me even more!!!!  I sent them to their rooms.  6yo dd later wrote me a letter asking me why I'm so mean.  4 yo ds stated on 2 different occasions today "mom, I'm glad you did not yell at me"

Can we say CALGON!!!!!!!!!!! TAKE ME AWAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Big Sigh Number 3 !

Dh came home at 6:00pm for dinner/lunch.  After he left we finished our unit study on health/dental hygiene.  I finished reading the book to them entitled TOOTH DECAY AND CAVITIES and we talked at length about brushing teeth GOOD and how too much sugar is bad for your teeth.

The only thing I did not do is read Heidi which I determined to do earlier today.  I'm too tired to read and not in the mood.  The mood here has improved...so much so that while I'm typing this in my blog 6yo dd wrote me a letter.  It states: (with original spelling and mistakes and all)

To my frend Mom.  Mom is a grat mother of all.

And she drew a picture of me and her standing side by side.

I hugged her and kissed her and thanked her and told my children to pray for me when they see mommy having a rough day...that mommy makes mistakes too and that I need them to pray for me.  DD says "mommy u made me cry today" .  I apologized to her and she replies with "mommy I forgive you" .  The 4yo barber chimes in and says "yeah, I forgive you too".  They both give me a hug and that I kissed them both and told them I loved them.  The video is done now and I'm sending everyone to bed.

I did not even get a chance to read my Principle Approach and to create my lesson plans on God's Principle of Individuality.  Oh well, another day.  Stay tuned for it though. 

Good night from one tired but victorious in Jesus, mama!!!