A Fine Day

Today was good. Really good. If they were all like this..... well, that sure would be nice, eh?

I spent my early morning entering assignments for the kids in HST, but I finished in time and the kids came down and ate their breakfasts without a fuss. And then we started school in our unusually neat (for us, you understand) school room.

That is my desk, and Travis's behind it, with hardly any clutter (relatively speaking).  Lately it has been buried under stacks of books and papers due to a lack of shelf space (or I suppose you might say, to a surplus of books, but I wouldn't), and yesterday I finally got a new shelf!  Isn't it spiffy? It is the one right by my chair, so that my most used stuff is easy to grab but Not stacked on my desk! Of course, the top of the shelf is covered in mouse traps, so as to discourage the cats, which does slightly diminish the elegance of the set-up, but you can't have everything.

In our newly orderly workspace, my kids did their assignments quickly and without complaint. It was miraculous! It is possible that my new bookshelf has magical powers, or aliens abducted my children and left well-behaved alien children in disguise, but whatever the reason, today was great!

Here are some of the some of the books we are reading this week...

Katie absolutely loves the Thomas Edison biography (not the suggested title, but the one I already owned) and also Around the World in 80 Days (abridged). Travis is especially happy with Otto Von Bismarck and also with Jim Murphy's The Great Fire. And I love Robert Browning, so we are all happy! (And I'm planning to read the Alexander Graham Bell biography myself, since I think it looks really interesting.). I meant to plug in a Louis Pasteur biography this week but I forgot.

I haven't actually checked either of the kids' Latin workbooks today, but I don't want to ruin my happy glow so am saving them for tomorrow morning. For tonight I am a happy, happy woman with perfect children!

Looked Like a Jelly Doughnut to Me

But it wasn't.

A jelly doughnut, that is. Our priest's wife taught Sunday school today. First she talked about Lent, which Ed and I mostly missed (the talk, not Lent) because we were in the kitchen setting up coffee stuff. By the time we got seated she had moved on to talking about Eugene Peterson's idea that images are important to help us grasp and focus on theological concepts. Okay. And I learned that The Message and The Living Bible are two different translations. Good to know. And then we got the the main thing, which was looking at a painting by Anneke Kaai from a book called In a Word, by Kaai and Eugene Peterson.

This is not the painting. This is another one from the book, and it is called Grace. The one we looked at is a big orange circle with a smaller orange circle in the middle and some yellow and black, and it is called Love.  Our class was supposed to look at the painting and talk about the feelings it gave us. I love our church*, and our priest's wife is a wonderful teacher and preacher (she happens to be a Methodist minister), but I am getting very tired of Sunday school classes in which all we do is talk about our feelings. The picture here, "Grace", is pretty, but I can't say I loved "Love."  Katie's class got out early so she sat with me and we snickered (quietly) over our art interpretation. I thought it looked like a peach, cut in half, and Katie thought it was a jelly doughnut, and we had some other ideas that seemed pretty hilarious to us, none of which made it onto the white board.

So we failed Sunday school, but we made an "A" on coffee hour!  My mom spent the past week baking and cooking up a storm, and her breakfast strata (eggs, Swiss cheese, mushrooms, bread, and I don't know what all else), bread pudding, cinnamon crisps, and blueberry crumble coffee cake were a great hit! We transported the food, set it out, cleaned up, and I washed the grapes. Very skillfully! And graciously accepted gushing compliments on my mother's cooking. So now we are off the hook for coffee hour for a few weeks and, I think, have pretty much compensated for our dismal lack of appreciation for modern art.

And we have flowers blooming in the yard (no thanks to me)! Yay!

*And I especially love our church since this year for Lent we are doing the Rite I form of the Eucharist. And today we sang the Trisagion and the Sanctus to the same music we used in Florida (otherwise known as The Right Music). The organist (who isn't really an Episcopalian) played with a bit more "vigor" than one have expected, but it was definitely an improvement!

In Which My Mom Joins the Chain Gang

Not really. Quite.
But...
This morning the kids and I were driving in to town to pick up my bifocals (which are absolutely Excellent, by the way!) and I slowed way down when we saw the signs and cones for road workers. Then I slowed down even more because the road workers were actually prisoners on trash duty (and there were lots of them and they were walking in the middle of the road. Not timid sorts of people.). There was a car pulled over on our side of the road, right across from the correctional facility van, and the kids both asked at the same time, "Isn't that Granny?"
And by golly it was Granny, chatting with the guard/van driver! I was a little concerned and pulled over just past her and called out asking if everything was okay. She said it was, got back in her car, and we both continued in to town. But the kids and I were very curious!

After I got home I called my parents' house, hoping to find out what Mom was up to. Only she wasn't home yet, so I told my dad about it, and then he was curious too!  A while later my mom stopped by (with sugar snap peas, because she is generous like that!) and so we got the story. Turns out that she's been distressed by the amount of trash by the roadsides, and when she saw this civic minded group (the van wasn't there when she first pulled over) she thought maybe she could join them! She asked if they were volunteers and they laughed! Of course, we had to tease her about what she would have to do to join this gang (I don't think my mom has ever had so much as a speeding ticket), but really I think that her eagerness to volunteer and make the world a better, cleaner place is wonderful. And I'll bet the guard is still chuckling!

And these pictures are from yesterday morning...

They don't begin to capture the lovely pinkness of the snow and the sparkle as the sun hit the icy branches, so you'll just have to take my word for it.  And the snow is pretty much all gone now, which is also just right!  Now we've had our snow and we can move right on to spring!

And this is one I took of the cats this afternoon.

I heard the clink of cups and turned around to see the cats playing with Katie's tea set!

Snow Day

We drove up to church this morning to find only the priest there. He told us church was cancelled (and the e-mail sent out around 8:20 am, after I checked) due to the weather. Since it was just drizzling down where we live and light flurries up the mountain, I was kind of annoyed, but we quickly resigned ourselves to a peaceful Sunday at home.
And by mid-afternoon it started doing this...

It was a nice day for reading, crafts,

and Latin quizzes!

(Don't let his frazzled expression fool you -- he actually spent most of his day messing around on the computer! But he has perfected his Tragic, Persecuted look and it would be a shame not to share.)

And eventually there was enough snow (barely!) for the kids to go out and play in it.

 Ed did not particularly want to go out, but Katie is very persuasive!

This is Travis's snow mage, with his faithful pig companion,

and Katie's Very Happy snow (and grass and mud) man. Doesn't he look sweet and trusting?

Saturday

Today was beautiful! Spring-like. After lunch we went with my parents over to Stone Mountain.
They met someone a few weeks ago who told them about a "stone house" off the trail, and they thought it was something we would enjoy seeing too. We did!

The rocks were enormous, and look as though they were cut and arranged.

After playing on the rocks, we went up to the summit and admired the view.

And then ice cream!

Now it is overcast and getting colder, but we had a grand day out!

World's Worst Mom

that's me.

My kids are not enthusiastic eaters of fruits and vegetables. That is putting it mildly. I've been trying to feed them properly since I got them (Their prenatal nutrition was excellent!), and they were okay with pureed bananas, but bananas were as far into the wonderful world of fruits and vegis as they would willingly venture.

Still, at dinner every night (okay, most nights) I require that they consume a serving of fruit or vegetable (both would be good, but I can only stand so much conflict. and I give them multi-vitamins.). Tonight Katie had a carrot. We were out of bananas, and Travis declined oranges, apples, and applesauce. Things were getting ugly. I told him to look in the pantry (thinking maybe he'd like canned peaches or pears). "I'll eat jam!" he said.
        "Jam isn't a fruit; it's a condiment."
        "It's grapes."
        "It's sugar!"
        "Grapes are the first ingredient -- look!"  He showed me the label. Grapes are the first ingredient -- right before the high fructose corn syrup.
        "Fine,"  I said. "Half a cup of jam and we'll call it a serving of fruit."

     He was surprised but since he was winning, cautiously pleased. I think he knew there was a catch of some sort.  So he measured out half a cup of jam.

(here he is noticing that jam is very sweet...)

 (but he is stubborn!)

He ate it. Every spoonful.

And he didn't throw up, which had been Ed's prediction.

He says he won't eat jam again (as a fruit), though, and later, when I told him I had thought he'd choose canned fruit, he said that of course he Would have if he'd seen any. So he did learn a lesson after all! (He learned that we keep the canned fruit on the lower right hand shelf of the pantry. And that jam Is a condiment, not a fruit.)

Anything for Science

Travis's earth science program is progressing very satisfactorily. It involves a reasonable amount of reading and enough review and thinking questions that I think the boy is learning something. And today we started the geology video course I bought from The Great Courses and I think that, while it isn't really aimed at middle schoolers, Travis (and I) will be able to follow it fairly well.

Katie's science is also going well, but this week's experiments were not exactly what I'd call rigorous. The chapter was about the layers of the earth -- the core, the mantle, the crust -- and we read the material and looked at pictures. The activities (in fairness, I'm not even sure they are called  "experiments" are supposed to reinforce the idea of "layers." We cut an apple in half and compared the core, flesh, and skin to the core, mantle, and crust of the earth. And ate the apple.
Then we layered in a one quart jar (actually a commemorative Jack Daniels mug that Ed had when I married him) white sugar (core), brown sugar (mantle), m&m's (crust), chocolate chips (rocks on top of the crust?), and flour mixed with baking powder & salt (earth's atmosphere).

We carefully and scientifically noted the layers, then mixed them with butter, eggs, and vanilla.

 Then we baked and ate them. (For the record I would like it noted that Katie was concerned that the m&m's would be crushed in the mixer and lose their distinctive m&m qualities, so I took the earth's layers apart before mixing and stirred in the m&m's last. Because I am That dedicated a mother. And scientist.)

They were very educational.

And, on more of a literary note, Travis has been tinkering with the messages on the sugar hearts. I think this one is particularly unromantic, don't you?

OH! Well THAT Makes Sense. Or not.

This afternoon I finally decided to "man up" and buy bifocals. I've needed them for quite a while, but  ... well... bifocals. But we have enough issues to deal with with math and teenage hormones, without me being crabby because I can't read with my glasses on and I can't see the white board or much of anything else with them off and I'm constantly taking them off to read and then not being able to find them again because everything except what is right in front of my is a blur. Anyway...

So, on Saturday Katie and I went to Walmart, to the eyeglasses shop, to look at frames. We saw a couple we liked, but I knew I needed Travis and Ed to render their opinions. While we were browsing, I overheard another shopper asking the salesman if they accepted her insurance (something from Blue Cross). They didn't, but he told her that he'd give her a 10% discount. So I figured when I was ready to buy I'd ask for a discount too (she was young, but not knockout gorgeous or anything, so I figured it was a "real" discount).

This evening Ed and the kids and I went to Walmart and settled on The Frames. They are nice, and actually cost less than the ones I bought last, in Florida, about nine years ago. But the cost of the Lenses!  My word! So I told the salesman (same fellow) how I'd overheard him mention a discount for customers whose insurance wasn't accepted and asked whether it might be available to customers who didn't have insurance at all. I thought for sure it would be -- I mean, why not? The store gets paid the same either way, right?  But I was Wrong! Turns out that if you Have insurance, even if Walmart doesn't accept it, they give you a discount, but if you are uninsured you pay full price!  Weird, huh?  

But I still ordered them. And I'm really looking forward to being able to look from text book to whiteboard without fumbling for misplaced glasses!

And just so I won't have spent the entire post moaning about The Injustice of It All, here are some pictures from our co-op Valentine's Day party (which was yesterday).

The mom here holding the American Girl doll with the head twisted backwards (I'm saving you the trouble of staring at the photo trying to figure out if she really is doing that!) is actually explaining about how she recently sewed some Civil War era gowns for her daughter's American Girl doll. Which she's going to bring to class next week so we can see them. And, more to the point, so that our daughters can see them and immediately demand that we sew period costumes. I really need to find less talented friends.
Aside from that, co-op was great, and this week is actually going pretty well.

Sunday

Late last week one of our co-op moms asked on the e-mail loop what we had planned for Valentines Day.  Sigh. 

I had in mind buying a few boxes of chocolates for my family at Walmart.  Another slacker mom and I tried suggesting that the kids might have outgrown Valentines parties, but we were called out as Valentine grinches and shamed into participation. 

So I bought Travis a box of Valentines to print names on (he Has outgrown the "valentines for the whole class" thing), and Katie made hers. With the glitter which I forgot to throw out after cleaning up last year's glitter mess.  This year I didn't forget. But she had fun.

And we made cookies to share. That really was fun!

Here Katie is dipping cake balls (strawberry cake crumbled up and mixed with chocolate frosting) in coating chocolate...

and making cards (this picture is pre-glitter).

And here are our heart cookies. They are very good.

Balance (as in, Finding My)

Which, I suppose, means that I am unbalanced. Only that is a bit farther than I want to take this. What I mean is, I have such a hard time finding time for everything I want to do. Unlike the rest of you out there, who do manage to get your stuff done, I keep getting these rinky-dink little 24 hour days, which are completely inadequate for my needs. As my kids are always telling me (though not about the length of my days), this is So not fair.

But anyway.  I haven't blogged about a month. And while that hardly qualifies as a loss to the world (in fact, those who fret about the quantity of drivel on the internet would call it a blessing), it does mean that I have no record of all my children's (and cats') charming antics. And, my memory being what it is, that means I have No Idea what we've been up to.

School, mostly, I think.  Actually, math. A very small amount of math dragged out over an unbelievably long amount of time. Epic math, as Travis would say ("Epic" is currently one of his words. Only when he uses it it does not mean a long narrative poem, but, rather, "cool." Only he doesn't say "cool." Because he says it isn't.).  We started this year with a generic version of Chalkdust Algebra (Larson's Elementary Algebra with Houghton Mifflin dvds). I thought Travis was ready for this, but he kept making sloppy mistakes (lots of sloppy mistakes) and I finally decided he needed more practice with pre-algebra to get the hang of methodically working out multi-step problems (you probably already see where I was going wrong, but I didn't see it. Then.).  So I bought Margaret Lial's Pre-Algebra and we started over. And the sloppy math continued. There were battles (you might call them Epic battles) over the importance of Showing Your Work. You might have thought that a student (not to name any names) who every day had to do his assignments over (and over. and over) because of sloppy mistakes would eventually realize the value of working each problem with methodical care. But you'd have been Wrong.  We've been supplementing Lial with videos from Derek Owens's Lucid Education site, and in January I finally decided to drop Lial and try Derek Owens's books.  And they have helped! So far math is taking much less time, which only makes sense, given the level of difficulty of the work and the amount of time Travis has now spent on this part of pre-algebra! And he is Still making sloppy mistakes and not showing his work. But, fortunately for him, Katie has now hit a rough spot in math and I've taken to starting my mornings with a couple strong screwdrivers and just don't care any more.

Not really. About the screwdrivers, that is. Or the not caring. I do.  But somewhere around the beginning of this year I realized that I've neglected my Latin study so long that I've forgotten the little I learned, so I need to somehow catch up, so I can help Travis, who is really struggling with Third Form. Only the catching up seems sort of hopeless.  I have angst, and I heartily disapprove of angst. Woe!

But I don't despair! Some things are going well. Katie is doing well at Latin, and both kids are progressing well with their writing! And writing is an important skill, right? Katie has gotten to where she reads her assignments, writes her papers with little or no input from me, and then types them! Happy, happy day! And Travis puts up a heck of a fight about doing the exercises in Lost Tools of Writing (he'll Do them, just with so little care and thought that he might as well Not), but his last paper was, in the end, fairly good. And our new science programs (Katie is doing Classic Science's Earth Science and Travis is doing Kolbe Academy's program using Holt's Earth Science book) are going well. Not incredible, but pretty good. And history, as always, is fun! We are almost through the Civil War (yay!), and it has been interesting. Very sad stuff, of course, but interesting! None of us much cares about the battle strategies, but Travis and I just finished an interesting video on Lincoln from the Teaching Company, and Katie has been reading and listening to Little Women (last night we watched the 1994 movie, and Katie Loved it but was dismayed that they ended it so early in the book). And, of course, reading lots of other stuff.  Actually, having typed all this, I realize that mostly things are going quite well! I Knew there was a reason I should be blogging!

Finally, as I said at the beginning, I need to find more balance. We were all sitting on the couch last night, watching Little Women, and I realized that it might well have been the first time we'd all watched a show together this year. And I Like watching movies with my family! We haven't been playing enough games, either. And I miss blogging regularly (maybe not so much the blogging as the Having blogged and being able to look back on things. But you can't have one without the other, can you.)  So I guess I'll work on spending less time anguishing over how to get my kids through math (not No time, just Less time!) and more time on enjoying my kids. They are pretty lovable kids, even if they Do stink at math!