Fall is here! Fall is here!
This is our favorite season around here - sooo glad the first day of Fall actually felt like Fall for a change!
Miss Baby is ready for Fall - how about you?
We "rang in" the first evening of Fall with the first fire of the season - we've been waiting for the first cool day/night for sooo long and it timed out just right this year!
HAPPY FALL Y'ALL!
Well, rolling through week 3 we accomplished all that we set out to do! Hooray!
Miss E and Miss A aced their spelling tests again!
Miss E did beautifully in her first lesson back in math and Mr. E and Miss A continued reviewing math facts to make sure they're solid before moving on - this next week we'll do a little bit more review and then they'll be off and running again with Mr. E hot on Miss A's heels in the realm of math!
History found us studying about the Medieval Period and monks and monasteries this week. We read quite a bit this week from our "Usborne Guide to the Middle Ages", a few more famous men of the Middle Ages including Justinian the Great, Benedict and Gregory (monks), "Caedmon's Song", "Life in a Medieval Monastery" and "Saint Patrick". In Geography, Mr. E, Miss E and Miss A finished labeling their world maps with some of the most well known mountain ranges, deserts and seas as well as labeling the Italian Peninsula in greater detail and identifying some of the major cities in Europe. Friday found us back at the kitchen craft table with paints in hand - this was a MUCH anticipated project - to finally get to paint their salt dough maps from last week! Here are a few pictures of the maps being created, painting them and the final product with labels intact and ready to show off to CKB when he got home from work that night.
Here's Mr. E creating his map:
A little paint here....
And voila!
Miss E carving her "carved head" statue for her island - she remembered reading about Easter Island (last week) and the carved head statues and thought it'd be fun to create her own!
Hmm, I wonder what that blue thing is....
Ah yes, a river! (closeup of Miss E's map/labels)
Ta-da!
Rolling something up here...
Dab, dab, dab....
And here we go!
After finishing painting their salt dough maps, the children all created a mosaic for their art project of the week. Miss E decided to do a picture of Miss Baby and Miss A and Mr. E also wanted to.
Miss A titled hers "Miss Baby After Dinner, but Before Her Bath" (note the greens in the hair and on the face - ahem - that's supposed to be baby food ;) )
Mr. A, always the unique one, wanted to do a picture of himself.
In Zoology news, we continued with Lesson 1 (this text contains 15 lessons and each contains quite a bit of new information and new terms - we are covering one lesson every 2 weeks to enable us to conduct all the experiments and take a little more time with all the new information). The children learned about the forces of thrust and drag and constructed their own gliders for an experiment. Each child made 2 gliders - 1 with a short/wide wing and 1 with a long/narrow wing. They each hypothesized about which glider design would fly farther on average and then we headed out to the backyard for the experiment. Each of the 3 older children threw each glider 10 times to gather data. Each time the gliders were thrown, the other 2 would measure the distance the glider traveled and then return the glider to the person who was throwing at the time. We have our science time in the afternoons and while we started this whole experiment, ie, glider construction, while Miss Baby was napping, it was well into the early evening and we weren't quite done - let's see 2 gliders x 3 children - each throwing each glider 10 times a piece....well, you do the math - CKB picked up dinner that night :)
Mr. E is first up to ....throw...
Then Miss A...
...and Miss E
Mr. A insisted he build a glider as well, so I whipped one up for him quickly and he joined in the fun too! Miss Baby happily watched until her tummy let me know that it was way past dinnertime and we were still outside :)
I don't have the faintest idea what is all over a few of their faces here....ahem...but it was muddy out there in some spots....hmm....the gliders are all lined up on the table...
Piano lessons went well this week also. Amongst all the "book learnin' " we did have time for some fun and Mr. E had fun creating this snack for everyone (the recipe should say that it's for 5 refrigerated biscuits - we had a can of 10 and had to make another batch of butter/sugar/cinnamon for dipping).
The proud chef shows off his creation!
And, lest you think Miss Baby has disappeared lately - here she is at lunchtime, I mean, during Culinary Cuisine 101 - waving for the camera and letting you know "I'm still here!"
And, I finally got a picture of her "skrinkle face" as we affectionately cal it - with Mr. A, it was a "stinker face", but she's too cute to be a "stinker"!
All in all, another great week! On top of a good school week, we thank God for the abundant rains we've been receiving and the COOOOOOLER temps - Fall is almost here! Fall is almost here!
After thinking about it for a long time, we finally had Stanley Steemer out yesterday for what I thought would just be an estimate.
After they arrived, took a look and told me what the estimate was - they said "we can do it right now" and since they said it would only take about an hour and I thought the estimate was reasonable....we now have clean carpet again - hooray!!
Whose brilliant idea was it anyway to put carpet in the dining room?????
I'd read reviews a long time ago about SS and about some awful experiences folks had had with them and been a little concerned, but I have to say that the crew that was sent out did an excellent job, did not try to pressure me to do additional rooms or buy additional services and did a fantastic job. (They were even very tolerant of our curious crew that kept popping out of their bedrooms to see what "those guys" were doing).
Yay for clean carpet!!!! (now how long will it last??????? eek!)
Well, I don't know that I'll update every week, but for what it's worth, we have completed week 2 of school and are well into week 3 - time just isn't as abundant for blogging!
During Week 2 we continued reviewing math for a few students and released one to go on to new lessons which involve the principles of parallelism and perpindicular..ism :) among other things, like division.
Spelling tests were aced by all - hooray - and Mr. E even grabbed a sheet of paper and took Miss A's spelling test along w/her and aced it w/o knowing ahead of time what the words were and studying them at all :) That boy!
In history, we studied 5 "famous" men of the Middle Ages and learned about their lives - the children's favorite was Clovis because he converted to Christianity after praying for God to help him in a battle and not only converting, but going so far as to destroy pagan idols and statues in the land. We went over quite a few geographic terms and learned/reviewed all the continents and oceans of the world. Afterward, each of the children created a salt dough map of an imaginary land and were required to include some of the geographic terms they'd learned, such as plateau, inlet, peninsula and so on. The maps are drying and will be painted and labeled this week (stay tuned!). We also read more about the Middle Ages, "Brigid's Cloak", and "Saint Valentine".
In Zoology we worked on our first lesson "What is Zoology?" and conducted an experiment whereupon the children became 'human atomizers' according to CKB :) The experiment dealt with air pressure.
Here they are in action...you'll have to ask them about it sometime and hopefully they'll be able to recount the principles they learned!
By the by, do you know all of your shapes? Of course, you say? Hmmm....well, I'm sure you know circle, square, triangle and so on, but did you know that the shape of a bird's wing has a name? If you did, great! If not, see if you can find out what it is and leave us a comment and we'll let you know next week if you're right :)
That's it for now - we had a great week 2 - how's school going in your neck of the woods?
Miss E! She is looking so big these days!
This is the 2nd recently and she even pulled the one before this one all by herself!
Here she is showing off the gap right in front!
Here she is on the phone sharing the news with Grandma and Grandpa! I love her expression as she's giggling!
Well, we've officially finished our first week of school. We began last Monday and made it through Week 1 with great success.
Miss Baby is napping fairly regularly now twice a day so I have a pretty good idea of when I'll have about an hour or so in the morning and in the afternoon to get some things done that require a little more quiet than we usually have while she's awake.
Sorry to say there aren't any pictures from week 1 - just too much to do and I believe I was carrying Miss Baby around with me most of each morning as I was going from one child to the next helping them get started with everything and work through their first few lessons.
We're trying a few new things this year from Rod & Staff and so far I like them and I believe the children do as well - that works out nicely, eh?
Here's the Fall lineup:
Miss E - our 3rd grader (yikes, when did she get so big?)
Math U See Delta
Handwriting without Tears Cursive
Rod & Staff Level 3 Reader/workbook
Rod & Staff Level 3 English (grammar)
Rod & Staff Level 3 Spelling
Tapestry of Grace Year 2 (history, literature, geography, arts/crafts and more!)
Exploring Creation with Zoology 1: Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day
Miss A - our 2nd grader (we have a 2nd grader, too???)
Math U See Beta
Handwriting without Tears Cursive
Rod & Staff Level 2 Reader/workbook
Rod & Staff Level 2 English (grammar)
Rod & Staff Level 2 Spelling
Tapestry of Grace Year 2 (history, literature, geography, arts/crafts and more!)
Exploring Creation with Zoology 1: Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day
Mr. E - our kindergarten kiddo (is he really only in K?)
Math U See Alpha
Handwriting without Tears Printing
Rod & Staff Level 1 Reader/workbook
Tapestry of Grace Year 2 (history, literature, geography, arts/crafts and more!)
Exploring Creation with Zoology 1: Flying Creatures of the Fifth Day
Mr. A - pre-K (he MUST do schoolwork along with everyone else!)
Learning to Read
Learning addition
All sorts of other things!
Miss Baby - (7 mos.)
Napping 101
Culinary Delights 101 (exposing her palette to many new flavors and textures)
P.E. - learning to crawl, sit unassisted, stand, walk, etc.
Communications - general babbling, sound formations, word formations and much more!
Reading - looking at a multitude of books and having many books read aloud
Time permitting we'll add in Rosetta Stone Spanish along the way.
We're also running through the Rod & Staff Music Workbook 1 (all children except Miss Baby, of course :) ).
Week 1 went well, as I said. We began last Monday with everyone coming to start their schoolwork in a staggered fashion which enabled me to help each one get started with the new curriculum. Everyone did very well on their first day and we celebrated the first day of school by meeting CKB (a.k.a. Daddy) for dinner at El Chico! What a treat!
Day 2 went well also and Day 3 found us still on track and making it to piano lessons for both of the girls that afternoon. Day 4 and 5 and we finished up the week by setting up the pool in the backyard and enjoying the afternoon and evening outside. Miss E, Miss A and Mr. E reviewed math last week and will pick up this week with a little more review for some and new lessons for others based on how their review week went. Both of the girls aced their first spelling tests. Miss E, Miss A and Mr. E have all taken to their readers and accompanying workbooks very well and so far I'm very happy with this addition to their schedules. The same goes for the R&S English - I think we may stick with it instead of going back to Easy Grammar after this year. I definitely think it's working better for Miss A. She did o.k. with Easy Grammar, but I think the R&S is better suited to her and Miss E is doing fine with it also.
We enjoyed a busy, but fun Labor Day weekend. We took a "staycation" and ran some errands, took care of some of those "to dos" that never seem to get done and just enjoyed not having to BE anywhere at any specific time. The highlight of our weekend aside from just all being together was a nice drive in OK to the Chickasaw National Recreation Area. The water in the park has a high sulphur content - after you try a sip from the fountain there, you'd think you'd just eaten the yoke of a hard boiled egg! Mmmmm. :-P
Now, we head into Week 2 of our school year. We will add in Tapestry and Zoology this week in the afternoons. I look forward to sharing about our first lessons in these subjects after we delve into them in the coming days!
Well, this morning I received an email from the property manager that we should hear something about the a/c within 2 days. O.k.
I was thrilled later in the early afternoon to receive a call asking if I'd be home for the next hour or so and the call was from the a/c folks! Yay!
Fast forward an hour and a half and we appear to have a/c working again - yay!
I'm so thankful for the speed of the service company, that the Lord saw fit to keep the temps low today (high today is only 84!) and the house didn't get hotter than 80 so far today!
So glad this isn't anything like the experience we had last year!
Thank you to everyone for praying for us to have this resolved quickly!
Well, you won't believe it, but I'll tell you anyway....the a/c started acting up last night.
Yes, you heard me right. Hmm....seems it stopped working the end of October last year....and it's August....ugh....I hope that doesn't mean we're in for another a/c ordeal.
We noticed the house just wasn't feeling very cool and checked and there was a nice big blob of ice forming around one of the little pipes off of the indoor a/c unit. Ack. We shut down the a/c overnight....not something you want to have to do in TX in August, but the Lord had mercy on us and sent a nice big thunderstorm last night to cool things down some. Also, thankfully each bedroom has a ceiling fan or another type of fan and that helped. This morning CKB turned the a/c back on and by the time I got up and going for the day the ice was starting to form again. NOOOOO!
I shut the a/c back off and we're a tad on the warm side right now waiting long enough to make sure it's completely thawed out before we start trying to slowly cool the house down - we probably will wait 'til evening to start when the heat of the day is over. It's a balmy 88 degrees outside today....let's see what the ol' thermostat says right now.....hmm, 83, at least it's a little cooler still in the house somehow. Here's hoping the a/c unit just needs freon this time around!
Hopefully this is not the beginning of another a/c saga...but if it is, I'll let you know how it turns out this time...if I don't melt first!
So...at long last, here's one of the pics from her 6 month photo shoot - I didn't have time to add a border and such. Isn't she a doll? :) Right after our return from the Association, Miss Baby began her adventure in fine dining with some rice cereal. She is the first of our 5 to actually like it and finish an entire box! She has now started on veggies as well as other types of cereal and so far, she has taken to all of the different foods very well. 
Tomorrow she'll be 7 mos. and I'll need to take some more pics! Time flies!!!
...for school to officially start, that is!
I've been using the remaining few weeks of Summer to tidy up, organize, clean, etc. as much as I can with an almost 7 month old in the house and I'm pleased w/the progress so far. I don't have all the books on the bookshelf yet and we have another bookshelf like the one in the picture that will go at the other end of the tables probably, but we're getting there in the "more organized" realm of things.... 
Here is the main work area. All nice and neat. I will be laying down the law, so to speak, on how this area must be put back in order every day when our work there is done...this area became the "Craft Emporium" the past few months and I can't stand it when it's a big mess (especially since it's one of the first things you see when you enter the house - it is straight down the hallway right beside/down from the front door, no less!).
Anyway, we will begin this coming Monday. We will start all subjects except for Tapestry (history, literature, geography, art, etc.) and will then add Tapestry into the mix the following week (Labor Day week). I'll try to update later to share how our first week or two are going.
Here's the whole crew patiently moving around from one pose to another as I tried out different ways of arranging 5 children for a nice portrait - coming soon!
Here are a few quick pics from lunch today - (Miss A was finishing up practicing piano and missed out on the picture taking this time).
Remember those yummy Bugles? I happened to spot them at the grocery store last night and couldn't resist....so much so that I popped open the bag when I was putting up groceries and had a few for myself (shhhh!). ;)
I read an email the other day that said if you have a 6 month old and your memory isn't so great, you're not losing your mind - you're probably just sleep deprived and distracted.
Well, I definitely feel like I'm getting more sleep these days, but distracted...well, that goes without saying! Not only do I have a 6 month old, but I also have an 8 year old, a 7 year old, a 5 year old and a 3 year old! :)
Time is flying by and computer time is not a priority - hence the lack of blogging these days.
For the past few weeks we were extra busy with a visit from my parents. The time always seems to go by so fast and then they're gone again. Sigh. One day maybe we'll live even closer to one another...you never know!
The 4 older children all had a week of swimming lessons and did very well - the last day they all got to jump off the diving board which was a big treat!
Mom and Dad got here in time to go to a few days of their lessons and enjoyed it a lot. We ended that week after the last lesson with lunch at a park and snow cones afterward - yum!
Mom and Dad traveled with us to the Primitive Association and enabled us to stay in the local hotel (the rooms weren't big enough to house all 7 of us in one room). The girls bunked with their grandparents, while the boys and baby stayed w/CKB and I. I think the hotel was pretty much filled with those in town for the meeting. It was so nice running into everyone in the halls and lobby at breakfast. The meeting was very blessed and we're so glad to have been there. Mom and Dad enjoyed it as well. This year I decided it would be best to not attend the evening services Friday and Saturday, but instead to take the children back to the hotel and get them ready for bed - this worked out well even though I really missed being at the meeting - I think it helped a lot, especially with Miss Baby to keep her on her regular routine as much as possible - she slept like a champ in the hotel for a change and did so much better in that regard that she had 2 weeks prior at the Camp Meeting.
Back at home we enjoyed having Mom and Dad here for a few more days and enjoyed a visit from my Dad's sister (my aunt) who lives about an hour from us and my cousin (I can't believe I didn't get a picture while they were here - argh!). Aunt M was "sweet" enough to bring a jug of sweet tea to go with lunch and we had a really nice visit with them in spite of the crazy weather and loss of power for about an hour!
The day before Mom and Dad headed home Dad had lunch with some old friends and Mom and I took the children to ride the carousel. Mr. A has the most expressive eyes, doesn't he? :)
Now, Mom and Dad have returned home and we're finishing up our "catching up" in History and starting to make preparations/planning for the new school year. I'm looking forward to getting started and hoping things will go well while at the same time knowing that each day will go however it will and I have to relax and remember that with a baby in the house, things aren't going to go perfectly smoothly every day. Be flexible......right?
Here are a few other miscellaneous pictures - enjoy!
Here's Miss Baby showing off her fancy new shoes that Grandma got for her - they match an outfit given to us by our good friend V!
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