Mosquito Bites

The boys are home from Scout Camp and one counted 154 mosquito bites...we've tried heat (thanks, Ursula), baking soda (bummer when you forget it's on and put your hand in your mouth), banana peel (the dog especially liked that one) and apple cider vinegar. They all agree that the apple cider vinegar hurts waaaay more than the others going on, but does the trick completely taking away the itch for a few hours.

Wisdom Teeth

She had her wisdom teeth removed, got dry socket, then had a gum infection.  Inevitably the loss of time from her job led to the loss of her job.  Tough summer for a tough girl.  (12/13 edit: To date she can't stand the taste of cloves.)

Hulk No Like

THANK YOU Emily Warren for taking babysitting Katie all afternoon immediately following her surgery while I was otherwise occupied!

THANK YOU Katie Woolsey for being the kind of woman to drop EVERYTHING the day of Grace's graduation with relatives from out of town to sit with Will and so accurately assess his wounds while you waited for me to get back from the pharmacy. 

THANK YOU Meredith Woolsey for being the kind of girl that boys want to be the Hulk for and then taking such good care of them after their antics lead to injury.

Will (5) was Trying to be the Hulk For the babysitter this morning and picked up the couch and dropped it on his toe. ~8 stitches, not broken. He "blew out" the toe. He'll be excited to get to wear flip flops to Mass this weekend. #Whenittrains…

A friend responded "Hulk no like!"

My lovely daughter...and her dog. Both are such fashionistas.

Stairs Re-do

We took the carpet off, the kids' co-op class stripped and sanded the stairs for us. 

5 kids' + 2 adults' stuff (cothes, bedding, toiletries) brought downstairs to camp out in the livingroom for the weekend. Check. Wood putty stained, in, and sanded. Check. Caulked the gaps between stairs. Check. Stairs wiped down. Check. Now for the risky part - stain opened and being applied...









This is what WE do at 11pm at night when Dave is out of town.  Done with stain. Poly and paint left. 

We were going to sleep downstairs, but one of my BRILLIANT children (Em)
 

thought we could climb the ladder at midnight and slip in an open second story window. (Although in my case there was more scraping than slipping.) So that's what I did and I slept in my own bed last night. Our old dog couldn't stand it and broke through the barrier to come upstairs to sleep, but the stairs don't seem any worse for the wear.

Expanding the garden -- ultimate money savings

Thus morning Drew and I put up the Mother's Day present from Dave - bunny fencing for my extended vegetable garden. Then Pete and I planted it. Thank you Shannon & Christie for the MANY plants you gifted me with! The boys and I spent all this week planting the existing garden & clearing that bed to ready it for my new veg's!!

Pete's 11th b-day

 We packed a picnic dinner of pigs-in-a-blanket and Boston creme cupcakes, chips & pop (Pete's a health food nut) and had a screamingly cold swim in Lake James for the evening. The highlight of the evening was listening to 39 Clues on CD and putting the van in neutral at the top of a hill to see how far it would coast up the next hill before gravity took over. Will said, "I LOVE neutral," as if it were a ride on a roller coaster.

It's our 19th anniversary.

  This picture was taken when we were engaged and in my brother's wedding.

Jenn's B-day note

Will just wrote me a note (he keeps mixing up all his 'b's and 'd's): "Mom wut slub i dr uu beswa" -- when he translated it said "Mom, what should I bring you beeswax?" -- Em gave me 2 tiny cacti and grapefruit Burt's Beeswax for my birthday this morning.

My Easter bunny

 All my kids eat salad, but this is the only one who snacks on lettuce with no dressing! We have to throw him out of the kitchen when we're making salad or he steals the lettuce.

College Visits

We made our first road trip college visit. Katie MacDonald was inspired, Emily Warren was very interested and Cari Warren drove 10 hrs in one day! All in all a great experience at the University of Evansville. We were HIGHLY impressed by their Archeology Department!! 

It's VERY surreal taking this step with my oldest. I still see her as 2 years old! *tear*

More college visits - this one to Franciscan University in Ohio with K.K. & Brenners.

The 5 Year Old's Questions

Will is 5 and is desperately trying to figure life out. My mom is getting her marriage validated in the Church this weekend and Will has asked -- "If they're getting married on Sunday, what were they before?", "So now Grandma will be Catholic?", "How long after they're married will they start having kids?". When we told him all our family were coming to the Church he said, "The Pope is our family. Will he come to Grandma's wedding?"

Another day during Mass:

"How can He be the LAMB of God if He IS God?"
"What do the palms mean and why do WE wave them?"
"Why did the people change their minds about saying 'Hosana' and switch to 'Crucify Him'?"

...and then answer those questions with 5 year old vocabulary!

A day in the life

Forcing an unmotivated kid to do school, helping a struggling learner, keeping track of a kid whose a great learner but can fly under the radar unnoticed if I'm not careful, keeping a quiet non-squeaky wheel in my sights no matter how loud the other ones squeak - whew - some days remind me that no matter how long I've been at this job, it's still heck-of-a-lot of hard work!!

Kate's 17th B-day

Happy 17th birthday, Katie in San Jose.  She had a plate of watermelon with a candle since she's gluten & dairy free.

Happy 5th Birthday to my 5th child

Church Doctrine is...FUN?

Friendly Defender cards are great for apologetics, but they seem a little 'confrontational' for learning church doctrine.  I was looking for something FUN.
I've known about Arma Dei products for a while, but just rediscovered them for this purpose.
Cathletics Playing Cards are great for regular card games and for learning some church doctrine as flashcards.  Another tool for this is Cathletics KEY Cards.  Once the kids have mastered several of these, they're well on their way!

I also made a Catholic Kids TRUTH or DARE card game for learning church doctrine.  If they get the truth question right (answers are on the back of the cards) they GET to play a DARE card.  The kid with the most cards at the end of the game wins. 

If you're on the Arma Dei  site, consider A Treasure Chest of Traditions for Catholic Families -- a GREAT resource for ideas!

New Giveaway by Memoria Press ~ Any Famous Men Set!

  I'd like to win the Modern Times set.  We've used the Ancient & Middle Ages sets extensively during those years.

THIS post is just too good not to put in a more permanent post than on facebook (which is where I've been for the last 4 months). 
The Bad News About Homeschooling   - I LOVE this post!!

I haven't posted in seventeen THOUSAND days and then this isn't even a post.  I'm having problems with blogspot and have tried to migrate to wordpress unsuccessfully twice.

The reason I'm posting is I wanted to share THIS:

2011 Lesson #2 : Don’t Carpe Diem

Organization Tool - Spreadsheets!

I'm so pleased with this tool. Just using slash marks I can track what we've done and what we need to do at a glance without worrying about rescheduling my lesson plans if we're off a week or two in a subject. Click on the link to see it bigger.

2011-2012 Assignments Example



How I use it: Each row is a week of school. I include a row for vacation / holiday time. In the date column, I'm also tracking what weeks we have Monday co-ops (orange=co-op). Theoretically I have 36 rows. Each column is a subject. "Seton" is this child's grammar book. I decided that I'd like her to do 5 pages per week. So I list the lesson numbers.

As she completes a lesson, I put a slash mark through it (mine are diagonal -- yours can be any direction you like). So, if she/we get the flu and we're off for 2 weeks, I know right where we left off. In a workbook it doesn't seem like I'd need this kind of tracking, but it also keeps me accountable for grading (it's happened that in March I think "it's been a while since I've graded grammar" and I pick up the book to realize I haven't graded since October, so I have no idea what she's learned and what she hasn't. I usually make up for it in the final months of school cramming what she missed *blech*.)

Math-U-See is done at the child's pace, so, as she completes a worksheet, I put a slash through a, b, c, d, e, f (the numbering for the worksheets in that chapter). When she get 100% on a worksheet (a-f) she can move onto the test, so I circle the (T). Once she passes the test, I put a slash through (T) and move onto the next chapter. It doesn't matter which week we're actually in when they get to an assignment. For example, we could be in week 5 by the date, but she could be working on chapter 7 in Math. It's a math curriculum for mastery, so she may stay on one chapter for a month and cruise through others.

I can also see at a glance if we've accidentally skipped spelling for 2 weeks when I thought it had only been a week while we caught up in science. The form itself reminds me that at the beginning of the year I really wanted her to write a paper per week in either history or literature and now that her wrist is healed, 6 weeks later, it's time to get back to it.

With this system I can daily track math and grammar while I only need to test on Vocabulary weekly. When something is strung out over multiple weeks (like history units), I can accommodate that. At the end of the year I can see what we skipped from my original plan and decide that summer fun is more important, or I'm desperate to read that literature book to them.

If I wanted to make it a page longer, I could add blank rows under each week and track grades with this sheet.

I developed this originally for my high schooler, but I keep a copy and give one to each child in 6th grade on up so they can fill out their student planner.

It doesn't seem like brain surgery -- but this has been GREAT for me! I've made them for 2 other families this fall. (it's too fun to keep to yourself!) You might have to make yourself a legend so you remember what your own abbreviations mean, but .... that's O.K.

(Did everyone know about a tool like this all these years and just not TELL me???)