Keeping 'em busy

Today is officially the last day of summer vacation for all the public school kids in area and so it was also the last official day for lots of *stuff* to be open during the day. Things like Carowinds and my friend's community pool will henceforth be evenings or weekends only. So we finished up school quickly this morning, packed a lunch, and had one last hurrah with my friend and her 3 girls at their pool. Where we were the only ones there. Seriously. Geez, was everyone else out shopping for last minute school supplies? Don't they know it was their *last chance* to swim before 4pm on a weekday? What is wrong with these people?!?

I do love hanging out with these particular friends. Her girls range in age from just older than K to just older than L and they all get along fabulously. Strangely enough, the hit of the day was L's barbie dolls. Unfortunately, 3 dolls + 5 girls = trouble. K *never* plays with barbies, but she and the other oldest decided to steal the dolls from the younger ones and taunt them with keep-away. After an impressive lecture on why we never act like a bully or we will never be allowed out of the house again, K played nice and even brute-forced the others into playing nice, too. Sigh...

After that little incident, the girls had a blast with the big slide and the huge kiddie area (this is one nice neighborhood pool) and Mommy had a nice time hanging out and chatting with another adult. We ended up staying over 4 hours, then finally headed home to clean up and get dinner. On the way, W called and said he would be late, so a change in plans was called for. Hummmmn... I took the girls to Sonic and as we were sitting at the little order screen, it started to get a bit warm in the car. I figured it'd cool down after we got on our way again. Nope. Uh-oh. It was just after 5 on a Friday evening during the hottest part of the year. And my A/C was out.

Thankfully, it's under warranty and the dealership has Saturday morning hours. Stinkfully, my car was a mess and needed a good cleaning before I let anyone else see it. Then the thought hit me. We're still in our swimsuits and the apartment complex has a car wash bay complete with trash can, vaccuum, water, and a cover, and I know the girls would *love* to help me clean the car. So after 4 hours in the sun and water, they thought I was the most fun mom in the world because I "let" them help while I unloaded all the seats and stacked them under our little porch, emptied the car of everything that wasn't trash, and headed over to the car wash bay with the cleaning supplies. We opened all the doors, vaccuumed, and wiped down every surface with Lysol. (Yes, I know Armor All would have been the most obvious choice, but I didn't *have* any Armor All and I *do* have 2 kids and an open-eating policy.) The girls really did enjoy this, but maybe because it was a prelude to getting to wash the outside. We finally got to the outside and we would scrub a bit, then I would rinse both the car and the girls who were screaming, "Spray me!" and laughing hysterically. By the time we were done, we were so wet, W (who had walked over to see what we were up to) had to drive the van back to our apartment while we walked.

Between school, swimming, and car washing, we didn't stop all day and I'm hoping I wore the girls out so they'll sleep until noon tomorrow. Of course, I still have to get up and have the car into the shop around 8, so it really won't help.

PS - Marybeth, if you read this, I'm blaming you for my A/C quitting. I think my van was taking lessons from yours!

I am so cool (or at least my phone is!)

After waiting anxiously for our contract with the "other" provider to end so we could keep our numbers, we switched to Cingular and got cool new phones. Hey, when your only phone is your cell phone, it needs to be cool. At least that's how I justified getting the model with a high-resolution camera and super-deluxe music functionality. Thankfully, W gets a work discount on these things.

After months of having a "scat" ringtone (the vocal kind of scat, not the nature kind used to identify animals, but I digress), I finally got adventurous. I bought the new Hairspray CD and decided the song "I Can Hear the Bells" would make the perfect ringtone. So I imported the CD into iTunes, bluetoothed the song over to my phone (I *love* technology!), and was sorely disappointed when my phone wouldn't accept it as a ringtone. No explanation, no nothing. I spent the afternoon at the pool with 6 kids (yes, I was counting heads every 30 seconds) and that blasted phone trying to make it see things my way. Maybe it's just not a Hairspray fan.

Then I got to thinking...maybe the song was too long. Sounds stupid, but I couldn't get anywhere with file format or memory location, so let's try the most un-technical answer. Besides, the beginning of the song makes a goofy ringtone. Surely there was a way to save a short segment from the middle of the song as a small file for the ringtone. I decided to research possibilities and use my resources wisely, which means I asked W how to do it. We decided GarageBand could probably handle it easiest and I could just drag the file from iTunes and drop it into a new project. GarageBand than neatly turned the file into a digital track split into beats and measures! Technology rocks! Then all I had to do was find the part I wanted, copy it, and paste it into a new track. I deleted all the other tracks, and viola! There was my ringtone file! After using the share function to save it as mp4 (just like the one I tried earlier), I bluetoothed it over to my phone, which immediately asked me if I'd like to use the new file as my ringtone. Why yes, I would.

Now my phone says "I can hear the bells" whenever someone calls and I have a feeling I may be giving everyone their own custom ringtone soon, 'cause this is all just too easy and too fun.

Differences of Homeschool Opinion

Every few days I find an email in my inbox from a homeschooling resource that includes several short articles from different homeschool writers. I generally just delete them, but I had a few minutes and read through the beginnings of the articles and one of them just raised my hackles. The writer was saying that she can categorize all homeschoolers into two categories - those who stick to a traditional school model done at home and those who are more creative, expressive, hands-on, and teach more with life experiences. She said those in the first group need prayer and guidance from those in the second group, who should find every opportunity to offer commentary and resources on why the second way is the *only* way to homeschool successfully and happily.

As you can probably tell, I belong to the first group - those who use a more traditional school model at home. I supplement with lots of activities and can do far more one-on-one fun activities than a traditional school can accommodate, but it's still essentially school with textbooks, workbooks, curriculum guides, tests, and grades. And, whadaya know, it's been both successful and happy for us.

I have all respect for those homeschooling moms who thrive on researching different curriculums and choosing and implementing different unit studies, doing all kinds of activities and projects to broaden their kids' experience. They, no doubt, have lots of fun and get a great educational experience. I, however, have no desire of spending my every waking moment devising fun and creative schooling ideas when I can simply take advantage of the work already done by so many other very intelligent, experienced educators.

I also know that if I didn't have a set curriculum that tells me exactly what we need to get accomplished each day, I would never get us motivated to accomplish anything. That's just me. The other approach sounds like lots of fun and we'd probably enjoy it a whole lot more while we were doing it, but I know that my reality clashes with my idealism and I'd be overwhelmed in no time and then just...shut down. And I've seen that happen to other homeschoolers who should probably just get a full school-at-home curriculum and *do it*. Instead, they get very excited about the idealistic homeschool styles, get started with the best of intentions, then the efforts just slack off and school takes a backseat to life's daily demands. The sad thing is that the kids end up learning *nothing* and fail to get the foundation they need for all advanced learning.

So, my dear writer of the offending article, please don't pity those of use who choose to "school at home". By all means, sing the praises of your own homeschooling choices, but don't dismiss what works for the rest of us. After all, my daughter can score well on a standardized test *and* find solutions to challenges on her own.

They're learning more than we think

Often kids come out with completely unexpected statements that show just how much they are really absorbing from life, even when we aren't looking. Yesterday both my girls gave their own unique examples of this.

My goal yesterday was to wash every piece of dirty laundry in the house (and this is a huge task!), so as soon as I got dressed, I stripped and remade all the beds. L came trudging upstairs looking for me just as I was putting the comforter back on our bed. "Wow! You made your bed!", she said in obvious wonder and amazement. Even the 3-year-old has noticed that Mommy doesn't often perform that simple task.

In Kathryn's schoolwork, she is reviewing the fact that sentences start with a capital and end with a punctuation mark, usually a period. For the first time, I was supposed to dictate a sentence for her to write to see if she remembered those simple rules. The sentence I was supposed to give was "Jan hit it." So I gave the sentence, she started to write it, then covered her work saying, "Mom, don't look." When she was finished, she had written, "Jan, hit it." Well, we might as well just promote her to third grade. When I asked her why she put the comma in, she said, "It just sounded like there was a pause right there." So then we started to talk about how the comma changed it from talking about Jan to talking to Jan, which prompted her to change the period to an exclamation point. Apparently, if we're telling Jan to hit it, we may as well tell her with some excitement.

Just because these are good!

Today for lunch we had mini pizza pockets. These are so good and easy that I wanted to post our directions here.

Ingredients:
canned biscuits (the large ones)
pizza sauce (we found some in a squeeze bottle)
pepperoni, chopped into small pieces
shredded cheese

Flatten a biscuit, spread a little sauce in the middle, and sprinkle with a little pepperoni and cheese. Fold the biscuit in half and use a fork to press down the edges tightly. Bake at 350 until golden brown.

Yummy!

The Importance of Organization

I love days like today when things seem to run smoothly, even when we're so very busy. It really only happens when I take the time to get organized and prepared *before* I have to dive into the week, so you'd think I would have noticed this and done it more often by now.

Yesterday, I took the "Leaning Tower of School Stuff" (of which there were several and they were *growing*) and organized it into neatly labeled hanging file folders in a file box I had saved from my "real" teaching days. W and I spent a couple of hours last night making sure all the papers and supplies for the week were organized into daily folders for each girl and I had the table cleaned and everything set out for our first activity of the morning.

We were up and breakfasted in good time, then got right to work and had a good start on everything before I had to leave for a rheumatologist appointment (K made a 100 on her first spelling test - woohoo!). W worked from home to watch the girls and K worked incredibly hard on her seatwork while I was gone. When I got home, I made lunch for me and the girls (W wasn't too interested in the ham sandwich-on-a-stick things I made for the girls, who by the way ate them with much more enthusiasm than if I'd put the exact same ingredients on a normal sandwich) and we finished school. We then went to visit a friend who has 3 girls that my girls love and they got to play and I got to help paint and get in some adult conversation :-) We then headed home, cleaned up, went out to dinner (I forgot to thaw the chicken I originally had planned - whoops!), came back, and I got to run out to Target *all by myself* where I plugged my headset into my phone and had a long conversation with Mom.

I finally have a few moments to sit and play on the computer and I feel like I've earned it and there's nothing else I ought to be doing. Except laundry; that has its own Leaning Towers that need to be dealt with. And I should probably unload the dishwasher. And find those screws to fix the kitchen chair. And straighten up the living room. And finish emptying that last box I finally got moved upstairs to our bedroom.

A mother's work never ends, no matter how organized she is!

A Crafty Kind of Day

In response to lots of begging from the girls, I cleaned off the table and pulled out the craft stuff. We had paid a visit to our local craft store and the girls picked out gifts to make for Aunt Angela's birthday, so they were anxious to get started. The girls painted while I made L a new bow and finished her dance bag, then we finished the boxes for Aunt Angela, then I put the elastic in the skorts Grandma sent, then I finally put clips on 2 bows I made over a year ago and put the trim on K's new purse. Lots of loose ends tied up :-)

I'm including pics of the bag, purse, and the boxes, so Angela will get a preview of the girls' gifts that (hopefully) will get put in the mail tomorrow. I didn't get a picture of the girls in their new outfits, but they wore them to the church picnic tonight and got lots of compliments. Lots of "oh they're so cute" and "your mom's a wonderful seamstress" so kudos to Grandma and thanks for the very cute clothes!