Apr. 3, 2007 - Next Year's Curriculum
I've gotten the all kid's curriculum for next year all bought and a rough plan for the year lined out:
Language Arts:
Brandon
Journal-writing daily in a journal
Reading-The All-In-One The Pilgrim's Progress
Grammar- Easy Grammar Grades 5 and 6
Spelling- AVKO Sequential Spelling 2
Emily
Explode the Code
Handwriting Without Tears
Spelling and Vocabulary (Houghton Mifflin)
Math:
Brandon
Saxon 65
Emily
Various workbook pages from:
The Complete Book of Numbers and Counting
More Everything for Early Learning
Mathematics The Path to Math Success Texas Edition
Science:
Brandon and Emily
Flying Creatures of the 5th Day
Swimming Creatures of the 5th Day
Emily
Christan Liberty Nature Reader Book 1 (We're already reading this I probably should have bought the set)
History:
Brandon and Emily
Diana Waring's Ancient History and the Bible
Emily does have her own workbook for this, but I'm not sure if it might still be too hard for her. At the very least she can listen to the stories.
Bible:
I'm not doing a separate Bible curriculum this year as I feel it is already throughly covered in Reading, Science, and History.
I also plan to try to get Bran more computer literate.
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Apr. 3, 2007 - Adventures of a Five Year Old Girl
I love my daughter. She is me! She is beautiful and yes it is true I admit that she gets that from her Dad, but the personality is all ME! Sometimes when our hard heads bash up against each other it is a bit rough but for the most part I am thoroughly entertained by her. For instance…..
Curiosity Killed the Cat…
The other day I was trying to watch American Idol and cook supper at the same time. So, as I’m in the bed room trying to catch a song before I check on the food I hear my daughter crying and screaming and her father (who doesn’t do stress well) screaming “HELP!” OH MY Gosh! She did she get burned, cut, is she seriously injured? I run out of the room to find the screams weren’t from the kitchen they were from the hallway past the kitchen. “What on earth could be so wrong in the hallway?” I wonder until I come completely around the corner….
Did I mention that she is Daddy most precious little wonder and joy? Daddy is freaking out….. I run in and try to figure out why they are screaming....
Our front door, you see, has one of those little knobs you twist to lock and the door has been shoved open too roughly on many occasions and put a small hole in the wall. What do you do with a small hole in the wall? Why you stick your little finger in there of course! Then your finger swells up and won’t come out.
So Mommy sends Daddy away because his panic is feeding Em’s panic and uses a syringe to squirt oil into the wall around the finger…and when that doesn’t help you use a knife to cut around the finger. In the end she didn't trust Mom enough and Daddy had to come back to cut it out....
But Em evidently isn’t the only child like me, cause my son announced , “She must have pushed her finger in too far, cause when I did that I pulled my finger out when I felt it getting smaller and I didn’t get MY finger stuck!” LOL
A Box….
I was sorely disappointed when we bought our new fridge and it didn’t come in a box. So naturally I was overjoyed when our lawn mower did! Yes, a big box for Em to play house in. Not as large as a fridge box but she is a very petite girl. We handed the box over and yes she was thrilled! I knew she would be. What I didn’t know is that instead of a house she would throw in a blankie, pillow and battery operated night light and go to sleep! I wish I had a picture of her curled up in there but she never goes to sleep on time or out of my bed so I was too scared I’d wake her with the flash!
I’ll Learn What I Want… When I Want….
I have been worried that Emily doesn’t know what other kids her age know already. I am not worried that she is mentally slow. I am more worried that I never really get around to doing school with her on a regular basis and that I may be I am letting her down. Even her Daddy nags that I don't work with her enough. (Deep down I know there is plenty of time. She may pass the other kids in her age range and leave them in the dust when she really starts doing regular school work, but I’m tired of having her being questioned and compared now.) That and when I do bother she resists and plays games with me. By play games with me I mean she acts like she doesn't know stuff to avoid work. For instance she can count to ten one second and gets lost at 2 a moment later. I can tell when she really doesn't know the answer because that is when she doesn't want to do school anymore. If it is not easy or doesn't come to her naturally she would rather not mess with it. Also, she is five and doesn’t know her colors??? Is she colored blind? Well, I sat down to do a little school with her a couple days after complaining to a friend that Em was having a hard time learning her colors and not only did she say all her colors but several of them she could recognize the names of the colors in writing…. I guess I SOOOOO need to get over this. She is clearly going to learn things in her own time!
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Mar. 31, 2007 - Spring is Here, Time to Get in Gear!
Well I know I’m dangerously close to not keeping my blog up again. So here it goes.
My Mom’s gone AWOL weekend was great. We ate well, we drank well, we stayed in a fancy suite, we got manicures and pedicures, I won $50, and we shopped and laughed. What more can you want in a weekend away from responsibilities?
I am not sure if it was the break or that spring is coming but I really got my rear in gear with doing school with the kiddos. I have so been slacking with Emily. I keep telling myself she is only 5 we have years and years to teach her all she needs to know. But it is time to do way more than I do with her. Great news is Brandon is starting to work more independently. And he has caught his mom’s addiction to curriculum because next year’s stuff has come in and he is dying to start it! LOL
My husband, as any one that knows me will tell you, I adore. I do. He is wonderful to me. I am very grateful to God that He provided me with this man. But he was SOOOOOO great about this Mom’s gone AWOL weekend .Really I have never been so spoiled. Buy what you want, stay gone as long as you want, enjoy yourself, live it up, this is your weekend honey, don’t worry about us, and the whole time he was working and taking the kids to work, and rushing them here and there. What a guy! I could really get used to that. So, I have decided I’m going to be such an awesome wife that he’ll want to treat me that way all the time.
First step in that direction, one of the best ways to be a good wife is to be a great mom. If I have the kids and house running well that takes stress out of his life. So, no more kids in the living room and our room. Both children have TVs in their rooms and there is no reason they should bring all their stuff to the other rooms to play and watch TV. Plus it is soooooo past time for them to sleep in their rooms and not the living room or our room. I’m an attached parenting kind of mom but hey this has gone too far!!! LOL So, this weekend we are working on cleaning their rooms and organizing them so that they are such wonderful places to be that they never want to leave them.
Once I accomplish step one It will be easier to keep our room, the living room, and kitchen clean. My next step is keep clothes washed (not being 10 loads behind in other words), kitchen always neat with no dirty dishes, the bedroom a safe haven to come home to at night (right now it looks like his office) and supper by 6 o’clock.
Since he is working 12 hours a day, sometimes 7 days a week, I also plan to start doing some the chores that are traditionally his. He bought a great self propelled lawn mower that will help. It is not a riding lawn mower but beggars can’t be choosers. But my absolute biggest goal is to clean out the storage shed and purge purge purge all this Ca- Ca this family has piled up around the house, yard and shed.
So if I’m not blogging for a while..... Hopefully it is because I’m working my tail off .....which hopefully will help with my other goal of losing 30 pounds! Send good vibes my way!
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Mar. 22, 2007 - Fasts, Weddings, Viruses, Adoption, and Mom's Gone AWOL
OK I haven't blogged in 2 whole months so here is all the wonderful stuff that has been going on that really deserves a full length page all by themselves but aren't going to get one right now.
1. A close friend of mine, Brandon, and myself went on a Biblical Daniel fast for 21 days. We had nothing but fruits and vegetables. It was all about discipline and putting God first for me. It was very hard and very much worth the effort.
2. Heather and Aaron got married on March 10th. Of course that is her and Em at the top of the page. Isn’t she just beautiful? There are new pictures running down the side of the page also. The last picture is of her and Aaron our new son. It was a wonder and sweet wedding service. I pray many blessings on their marriage.
3. My niece that came to the wedding had 2 children with a stomach virus. To top it off my close friend here at home has 2 children with a stomach virus and it was also going around in Houston. Regardless where we got it the whole family came home from the wedding sick and stayed that way for a week. Cecil and I still have moments when we fill the virus is hanging in there.
4. As you may know from my post around Christmas about Santa paying off our lawyer, Cecil is adopting Branflake. Well, the first court date got cancelled. The judge was busy? Anyway it was rescheduled for today. So, here is my morning so far…..
Just to set the scene… Panic has set in.
Cecil wakes me up around 6:30 this morning.
Cecil: "You have to get up and call the lawyer!"
Me: "What?"
Cecil: "You have to get up and call the lawyer!"
Me: "Why?"
Cecil: "I'm scared. What if I miss heard him?"
Me: "He said 1:30 right, the after lunch session?"
Cecil: "Yes but before he said all cases started at 9 AM and they just saw you as the day went."
Me: *lean over and look at clock* “Well honey I can't call him right now."
Cecil" "No, but ya'll better go ahead and get up and be ready to go by 8 in case when you call him it really is at 9 AM.
Me mentally: Sheesh doesn't he realize he's already got this gig? I mean he has had the kid calling him Daddy since he was 2 years old. (For the 1st year he called him SeeSaw.)
5. Tomorrow is my Moms Gone AWOL weekend. I am off for a whole weekend of fun with some friends. No kids, no housework, no spouse, no responsibilities, nothing but selfishness. We are going to stay in a fancy hotel suite, eat good food, get manicures and pedicures, and shop shop shop. I plan to make the most of it. I can’t believe Cecil is letting me go much less has agreed to spend the money this involves. I may never get a chance to be this self indulgent again! God is good. Cecil is good.
Other than those things the days have been pretty much the same old stuff around here. Lots of school work and lots of house work. We did get our taxes in and bought a bunch of much needed stuff and a few things we shouldn’t have. I went ahead and bought my entire curriculum for next year. I’ll tell you all about my new buys later. Your roughly filled in now on my last 2 months and hopefully I won’t fall off the blogging wagon again for a while! LOL
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Mar. 20, 2007 - I am alive.
I know it has been forever since I've blogged. I just got side tracked really. And I know this isn't really what you want to read after looking at the same unblogged page for weeks on end. However, I did at least get rid of the snowmen and changed to a spring look. As I really just spent WAY TOO much time doing just That today, you'll just have to wait for me you fill you in on all the stuff we've been up to until...... tomorrow? Ok look I'll really try to update tomorrow. Promise!!!
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Jan. 25, 2007 - Emily the Perfectionist
Emily has a friend coming over to play tomorrow. So, first thing off the bat this morning she announces she needs to clean her room.
OK WELLL... knowing that Emily is truly my daughter I knew that she wouldn't be able to think of anything else but cleaning her room once her mind was fixed on it.
So.....
I started Bran on some school work and went in to help her get her room straighten to her satisfaction. I was hoping against all odds that this would relieve her mind so I could get her to concentrate on school work afterwards...
During about 15 mins. into the work this is just a few of the things said to me:
"No, MOM that doesn't go there."
"MOM, that goes to the other castle."
"No, we are going to play with that, leave it out."
and my personal favorite...
*heavy sigh* then.....
"MOM, don't you know I want it to look pretty!"
I have capitalized MOM because she said it real snotty like that.
After all this lip I decided I obviously have NO idea how to clean up a 5 yr old's room and left her to it. It appears clean to me now, but she is still in there making final touches. May be one day when she has the patience she will take the time to teach me the proper way to clean.
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Jan. 24, 2007 - A New Home for the Piggies.
I am AWESOME!! OH, OK so is Brandon. I love building things. OH, the sense of accomplishment! OH, the joy of success. OH, the happiness of showing your husband you can figure out things that he can't and that YES you can do it without him! In the land of 3 guinea pigs in one small cage there was much trouble. A tad bit of fighting it seemed. So, I was given an extra cage exactly like the one I already had and separated them. OH, the pain and anguish this caused the little dears! They chewed and chewed on the wire between them. They wanted to be together. I really think it was just the small space that drove them to fuss with each other. So..... I took to two solid metal bottoms and drilled five matching wholes down one side of each and took bolts and wing nuts and bolted them together. This made a little 1 1/2" ledge they have to hop over. Just to be safe I used a wrapping paper tube slit down the side to slip over the ledge to make it a smooth transition from one cage bottom to the other. Next I took the two wire tops and cut a side out of each one. I left extra wire on one side to wire the two together. Brandon was a lot of help here. Neither of us really had the hand strength to make this an easy job. So, I’m really glad I had his help. I guess this could count as a shop class credit? The result was a cage twice the size of the original and very happy guinea pigs! When we put them back in they started popcorning. This is a cute little jump they do where they kind of just pop up into the air booty first. Any way it was great to see them happy again. Also Bran is really proud of the work we did together to make such a nice new cage. He had me take pictures to post but I can’t find the little adapter to hook my camera up to the computer to transfer the picture…. So I promised him I’ll post one as soon as I can.
Ok found the cable here are a couple of pictures of the piggy's new cage: 
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Jan. 23, 2007 - New Carpet, New School Room, New Dining Room!!!
Laying carpet seems like a simple enough thing, right? You move a little furniture, roll out padding, roll out carpet, and put the furniture back. Simple. Well, I don’t do simple. See my grandparents had a wood burning stove that wasn’t set up correctly when this was their house and because of that our ceilings were stained and covered with soot. Well, actually when we moved in everything was but we had cleaned and painted everything but the ceilings. I decided while the furniture was out of the living room we should paint the ceiling. Since our living room is fairly large I had divided into a living area and a dining area. However, with carpet in the living room I decided I was going to have to move my school room into the living room and move my dining set back into the dining room. So, a one day job became a four day job.
Then I don’t know if I mentioned this but this is gently used carpet given to us by and older couple so we didn’t exactly go out and buy just the right measured amount for our living room. The end result was that we didn’t have enough for every inch of the room. So we have a hallway from our front door to our back door. This in the end turns out perfect, because now all three doors coming from the outside come in on linoleum before you ever step on the carpet. We still have to go get some new linoleum (our current flooring is 20 years old, doesn’t match anything in the room and is u-g-l-y) and we need to get a long transition bar from where the carpet goes to linoleum. I used some of the left over pieces of carpet to make a rug in front of each door and used double sided tape to hold them in place. My biggest concern was that I always sweep up so much sand and dog hair and now it’s going to be all in the carpet… Well, as I’m behind on blogging about this the carpet has been down a week and a half. I vacuum it daily. I know I’ll slack off when the newness wears off but oh well. Oddly enough all the floors seem to be staying cleaner, less sandy, etc. I think the little mats by each door are making a world of difference. Who knew it could be so easily solved?
The dining room looks so nice as an actual dining room. We had stopped eating as a family at the table together every night, but have reinstated that tradition since the change. It has been really nice. I was also really surprised by how homey-er the living room looks with carpet. But the biggest surprise is that we’ve always just used the school room to hold our school supplies but now it is actually functional and we use it every day.
Our FREE carpet ended up costing us supply money to get it laid, plus we paid a neighbor to show Cecil how to lay carpet, then the paint that I added in, then we still have to buy new linoleum to match, BUT I think it has made many well worth it improvements to our house and family.
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Jan. 18, 2007 - Tagged - 7 Weird Things About Me
I have been tagged by my friend Ladyhawk, which is good because I've kind of slacked off on blogging! THE RULES: Each player of this game starts with the ‘7 weird things about you.’ People who get tagged need to write a blog of their own 7 weird things as well as state this rule clearly. In the end, you need to choose 7 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says ‘you are tagged’ in their comments and tell them to read your blog.” 1) I love lemons! I cut them in half pour on the salt and go to town. However, I don't like anything lemon flavored. No cookies, cake, pie, nothing will do but real lemon with salt. 2) I have a habit of saying bold when I mean bowl. I don't know why I add a "d" I just do. I also drag out aluminum and cinnamon. alummmmmminininummmmm LOL 3) I don't feel like doing housework until sometime around what is considered bed time. Then I get a huge burst of energy and a consuming desire to move furniture and scrub things. 4) I've found teaching phonics challenging because I've discovered that I mispronounce so many words and trying to pronounce them right is almost painful. 5) I'm a compulsive talker or nervous talker, whatever you want to call it. When I catch myself blabbing on… the more I try to stop… the more I go on and on and on and on and on..... 6) I have traffic issues. I can't stand multiple lane highways, overpasses, bridges, road construction, etc. And I don't mean I get irritated by them or road rage, I mean I hyperventilate and have a huge urge to jump out of the vehicle. 7) Once I start something I can’t stand to stop until it is finished. It doesn’t matter if it is reading a book or painting a room, what ever the project is I WANT IT DONE, I WANT IT DONE ALL AT ONE TIME, I DON’T WANT TO PUT THINGS UP AND FINISH IT TOMORROW OR LATTER, I WANT IT DONE NOW! Now, I can put doing things off forever…but once I start I want it done and nothing else exists until it is done! OK now ya'll know. The secret is out. I'm weird!
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Jan. 3, 2007 - Back to School
Well today is the day. Back to school after the long Christmas break. I tried my best to get the house clean from all the holiday stuff before we went back to work, but then a neighbor gave us their carpet! So now I have this huge roll of carpet and carpet padding in the living room floor until next week when Cecil says he’ll lay it. We had a great break and I made sure to spend a lot of vegetable (umm….err is that valuable) time with the kids. We played board games, had a fire, popped fireworks, made cookies, set up a bed in the living room and camped out there with snacks and movies. (nope that is definitely vegetable time) But today is back to work day. How are we doing? Well, since our bed times are shot both kids were still up to around 1-2 AM. This means I was up until 2 AM. However, despite that I got up when DH got up to go to work. I woke Bran up about 30 minutes later and Em up an hour later. I had Bran eat, walk the dogs then do about 20 minutes of exercise to get him going. So far he has done Bible and started his new Saxon 65 (thanks Carmen). He is about to start his history assignment for the day after that I imagine we’ll have to break for lunch. Emily has drawn a few pictures this morning while I read to her. We read The Story of Exodus, Dr. Seuss’s ABC, Ira Wordworthy, and Puddle’s ABC. Then she did a few pages in her HWT. After that she promptly announced she was tired, crawled into my lap and I’m now typing around her little body in my lap! Not a bad start I guess. Well, I better get off and get to working with Brandon on his History.
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