Lucky Number 13

Today my husband and I are celebrating our 13th anniversary. I say it is going to be our lucky year! He is not so sure :P 13 is traditionally an unlucky number, but I think it will be lucky for us. I figure since we have had such a rough start that it is time for us to have some luck. My parents weren't very supportive of us getting married, Rand has been in school of 10 years of our marriage which has made for financial struggles, and we had 3 children in 4 1/2 years, mostly a blessing, but pregnancy and lack of sleep can put a strain on any marriage...

But we made it through it all and here we are 13 years later. I can truly say that I love my husband more now than I did when we got married. Here are 13 reason why:

1. I love that he makes me laugh everyday.

2. I love that he is a wonderful father to our three beautiful daughters. He is the "Fun Daddy."

3. I love that he knows a ton of stuff and loves learning ( i.e. he is a genius).

4. I love that he encourages me to keep learning.

5. I love that he keeps me from being boring. He is always looking for another adventure for us.

6. I love when I stay up until all hours, the bed is all warm when I snuggle in next to him.

7. I love that he is an amazing cook. He creates dishes that are better than you can get at a restaurant. I have no idea how he does it.

8. I love that he doesn't let me feel sorry for myself and be negative.

9. I love that he buys me cooler clothes and shoes than I would ever buy for myself.

10. I love that he buys me the chocolateiest, nuttiest ice cream when I am having a bad day.
Which he hasn't done recently, hum? Maybe I haven't had a bad day for a while...See #8

11. I love that he comes into the bedroom in the morning to give me a kiss goodbye even though I am sound asleep.

12. I love that he encourages me to be a better person.

13. I love that he is my best friend and that we get to plan our future together.

I'm Dreaming of a White Christmas

But I guess I won't have to dream this year! It has been snowing all day and it is still snowing.


Here is my cutie pie Arwen. She rag rolled her hair last night doesn't it look cute?


Sierra - sliding down the snow drift in the church parking lot next to our house. Fun, Fun!

Waiting, Catching up and other Randomness

My parents came to visit last week and now I am catching up on stuff. I feel like I have been neglecting this blog. Right now the biggest thing in our world is waiting to find out where we will be living next year. We are here in Utah on a one year position while my dh is finishing his PhD. He turns in his dissertation on Monday!!! He will defend it in January. We could end up staying here as my husband has applied and interviewed at the university that he is currently working at. But he has also applied to jobs all over the country. He has asked me to keep quiet on my blog about other places that he may interview at and my thoughts and feelings about the different places. I guess in case one of the intereviewers finds my blog and reads it??? So because of this "gag order" I am limited about what I can share.

Other than that, I am just gettting ready for Christmas. My parents left Wednesday and I got the house back in order yesterday. Now it is Friday, so I am not motivated to do school today. I may do a few days of school next week, but I am really feeling like it is already Christmas Break...

See my kiddos on You Tube

I've posted a bunch of videos from my kids' choir concert on You Tube for anyone who might be interested. Here is the link to my page.

http://www.youtube.com/user/blimesworld

My youngest got to sing a solo. I was one proud mama!

P.S. this choir is made up entirely of homeschoolers :)

Now we are really geeks

The other night at dinner we were looking at the map of the U.S. that I recently hung above the table. I had forgotten that we had it and had been planning to buy one, but a week ago Arwen found a mailing tube and opened it and pulled everything out and there it was. I guess curious, destructive children are useful sometimes...

Anyway, we started talking about how I remembered learning the states and capitals in the 5th grade and that since Sierra is 5th grade age that she should learn them this year, too. This lead to Rand quizzing me on all the states and capitals, which lead to Sierra and Kali pulling out the atlas and quizzing Rand on the capitals of all of the countries in the world.

By the time we were done it was way past the girls bedtime. Oh well, anytime the girls want to be geeky they can stay up as long as they want. Geography...check...

We have arrived!

I have never been the type of homeschooler that brags about how her child is reading at 3 grade levels above her age or how her 5 year old is doing 4th grade math.

No, I am more the type of homeschooler that is always worried about whether my child is on grade level or whether I am messing them up by homeschooling them. Should a 10 year old know how to spell the word different? Oh no, my 8 year old has forgotten how to subract! Ack! it's been a week since I have worked on phonics with my 5 year old, I am scarring her for life!

But the time has come where I feel we are succesfully nerdy homeschoolers. Who cares if my 10 year old can't divide, yet. She -and her 5 year old and 8 year old sisters - can sing the U.S. Presidents in order!


I told them they can now go on Kid Nation. (I was all worried last year when the kids on Kid Nation had a challenge where they had to put the presidents in order and I knew that I was messing my kids up because they didn't know them, yet :P)

In related news, I added our book list from our recent government and presidents unit to the side bar.


Oh, and we got this song off of You Tube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsePr32vOxA

While you're at You Tube check out the Anamaniacs and the Nickelodean versions, too. Fun, Fun.

Politics, Schmolitics

I am admittedly clueless about politics. Pretty sad considering my husband almost has his PhD in Political Science. Growing up my parents voted Republican, still do, I think? So I thought I was a Republican. Then I went off to college and my liberal side came out to play and I voted Democrat in the very first presidential election after I turned 18. Since then I haven't been much into politics. I haven't live in the same town long enough to care much about the local political scene And every 4 years when it is time to vote for president, I wonder which candidate is lying more... Or I have a tendency to fall into the category of people that my husband despises - " People who want to vote for whichever candidate they would rather have dinner with."

When I was a senior in high school, I took a quiz in government class and I score exactly in the middle on both the Republican/Democrat quiz and the Conservative/Liberal quiz. I kind of still feel that way. I think both parties/sides have some ideas that I agree with and some ideas that I disagree with.

One of the local homeschool groups allows political discussions (well, if you can call it a discussion since most of the people's views are pretty one-sided). The other day I got brave enough to comment to someone who posted a political joke that had some elements in it that went against that person's religious views. Instead of responding to what I had commented on many people in the group started making all kinds of comments about how the government should not be involved in helping the poor. Apparently, I had been talking about the posts a lot and how many homeschoolers I know are anti government involvement and try and "stay off the radar" because this week as the girls and I were learning about presidents and reading about how President William McKinley was shot by an anarchist and the book described an anarchist as one who doesn't believe in government, my oldest said, "Oh, like the people in your emails..." Funny, funny.

I do know who I am voting for. It is my husband's job to understand international relations and ecomonics and the things he tells me make sense. So while I am becoming more curious about politics and would like to learn more so I can hold my own in a political conversation, I am going to vote with him on this one.

Michelle's 8 essential 80's movies

My friend just posted movies she considers to be the 8 essential movies of the 80's. A friend of hers is showing movies from the 80's at film series at Middlebury College. Since most of the freshman this year were born in 1990 - yikes! they missed seeing these classics movies during the 80's. In choosing movies my friend picked movies that were not only filmed in the 80's, but take place, at least in part, during the 80's in order to give the college students a taste of the culture of the 80's as well as the filmaking. I will follow this rule as well. Here are my selections, in no particular order:

The Breakfast Club

Back to the Future

When Harry Met Sally

E.T.

Ferris Bueller's Day Off

Top Gun

Sixteen Candles

Ack... I only have one more spot and 5 movies left on my list...


Um... OK...

St. Elmo's Fire


Runner's up:

Footloose

Say Anything

Lost Boys

Which movies are your 8 essentials of the 80's?

The Plan

Since I didn't buy much curriculum this year, you may be wondering how exactly I plan to teach my children. Here is my plan:

Reading - Arwen - Teach your Child to Read in 100 Lessons - I used this with both of my older girls. Arwen is proving to be a more difficult student, but we are plugging along. We also have a million easy readers.
Sierra and Kali - books. I instituted "reading time" this year. They have always read time at bedtime, but since they play so well together they don't often read during the day. I have assigned Sierra a book to read because I think she is getting old enough to have assignments. This month she is reading Caddie Woodlawn. Kali can read whatever she wants, but she wanted an assigned book, so I told her to read Kit from the American Girls series. She finished it in a few days and is now reading other books. I am having them narrate what they read, so I can gauge their comprehension. No boring workbooks for us...

Writing - Copywork, dictation, freewriting. Yeah, Charlotte Mason all these ideas are free! Although freewriting is an idea from The Writer's Jungle which is not exactly free. I plan to use more ideas from TWJ, but haven't gotten around to it, yet.

Grammar - First Language Lessons and Rod and Staff English 4 (which I already had from last year). Last year I did grammar with Kali and Sierra separately, but it was kind of a pain and they were learning much of the same things, so this year I am teaching them together. I use both books as a guide. We haven't done any of the written assignments, yet. I gave them each a spiral notebook to use for grammar and I have them write concepts that they learn in the notebook, like the 8 parts of speech and types of sentences, etc.

Spelling - Right now we are going through Rebecca Sitton's "no excuse" list and then we will move on to individualized lists based on words they misspell in their writing. For each word they misspell we will discuss the rules and patterns associated with each word and list other words with the same pattern. I have the book, ABC's and All of Their Tricks, to use as a reference for spelling patterns.

Math - I have all 3 girls using Singapore this year. Arwen is starting 1A, Kali is almost done with 2A, and Sierra just started 4B

History - Story of the World 2 - we only got 10 chapter into this last year, so we will continue it this year.

Science - Oh, how we love the library. I have picked topics based on What your __ Grader Needs to Know. We have worked through almost all of the topics in the K - 3 books and have a few more to cover in the 4th grade book. We have an electricity set from last year and I hope to start Real Science 4 Kids in the spring. I bought Lyrical Life Science Vol1, but I don't think we will end up using it this year. Maybe we will listen to the CD.

Music - Violin Lessons, Piano Lessons Composer studies using books and CD's from the library

Art - co-op art class, Artist studies using books from the library.

Foreign Language - We were using Rosetta Stone that we borrowed for free from a homeschool program in Colorado. When we moved I figured we would use the online library version, but the Rosetta Stone company took it off the libraries' databases - grrr... My plan is to get videos and CD's from the library instead. We also still have the Minimus Latin book, but I don't know if we will get around to using it this year.

This year's homeschool purchases

I haven't bought much this year so far. I didn't need much (I wanted lots of stuff, but didn't need much) and moving and entering the real world has been a shock to our budget. I sold a bunch of stuff during the summer to cover some of the cost, so my total outgoing is $108 right now. I got a several items used and acquired some. Here is what I got:

Lyrical Life Science Vol 1 - The songs are good. The text and workbook are not as exciting, but they cover pretty advanced science information and I think they might be useful later.

Singapore Math - I have switched my oldest from Right Start to Singapore. Right Start seems to provide a good foundation (we actually started in Level D and skipped around covering topics that Sierra needed, but I have Levels B and C that I have also used as a reference for teaching). However, as we started Level E, I realized that Sierra was confident enough with her math that she no longer needed daily teacher taught lessons and I, having 3 students to teach now, didn't have the time for the daily lessons. So we are trying Singapore starting with 4B. I bought the workbook, textbook, and Homeschool Instructor's Guide.

Wrap Ups - Full Math set addition, subtraction, division, multiplication, and fractions and States and Capitals set. Hopefully, these won't sit around gathering dust...

What Your Fifth Grader Needs to Know

Winston Grammar - I bought the basic set used super cheap and got the advanced set for free at a homeschool swap. I am not using them right now, but I could resist super cheap and free :)

The Writer's Jungle - loving the ideas in this. Hoping to find time to use them...

A " mice" way to learn about government curriculum guide and A "mice" way to learn about voting, campaigns, and elections - these book go along with picture books by Peter Barnes that I plan to get at the library. I should have know I would be disappointed by curriculum design for a classroom, but the picture books are cute and I am looking forward to reading them to the girls and discussing the concepts.

Logic Safari book 2 - I haven't used these, yet. We'll see if the girls like these.

Vroot and Vroom - this is a Cd rom that goes along with Signapore Math. It was kind of a splure. I needed to spend $150 on Rainbow Resources to get free shipping and even after I ordered some birthday and Christmas presents, I still needed a bit more.

I really, really, really wanted to buy Real Science 4 Kids, but I couldn't fit it in the budget. I am hoping to be able to get it in January or with tax return money.

After looking at Lyrical Life Science and needing to wait to buy Real Science 4 Kids, I decide to do science one area at a time starting next year. I have been skipping around through Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Earth Science using What Your __Grader Needs to Know as a guide, but I am thinking with RS4K dividing their curriculum into Biology, Chemistry, and Physics, it makes sense to learn about one area at a time. I think that will also make it easier to use Lyrical Life Science along with RS4K Biology instead of trying to skip around. My plan is to do some Physics topics this year - electricity (because I have a set that I bought last year and never got around to using), magnets, and simple machines. I also want to do a little unit on reproduction. It has been 3 year since the girls and I have really sat sown and discussed "the birds and the bees, " so I thought it might be time to revisit that little topic. And then next year we will do Biology, followed by Chemistry the next year, and then Physics and Earth Science the year after that. By that time Sierra will be a high schooler - ack! OK, I must go before I freak out about that.

More educational TV shows and other random stuff

I recently discovered 2 educational TV shows that I have tracked my kids into watch. The first is Liberty's Kids. This show has been around for a while. I tried to get my older daughter to watch it a few years ago, but I don't think she was old enough to understand what the show was about.The show takes place during the Revolutionary War and each episode has some historical facts mixed into the fictional storyline. My kids are loving this show right now.

The other show is called Crash, Bang, Splat. My friend, Heidi, recommended this show to me and I wasn't sure if I would be able to convince my daughter's to watch a science show, but they like it especially my oldest.

In other news, I am starting another blog called Behind the Mess to chronicle the boring details of our homeschool life. For those interested, I will be posting our learning experiences daily (or weekly if I get busy). It is mostly a way for me to keep records and to see in black and white exactly what we are accomplishing each day, but I figure it might be of interest to other homeschoolers.

Also, I have added the books that we used during our recent weather unit to the booklist side bar. Enjoy!

The first week in review

Overall, it was a good week. Up until this year, we have done a lot of school all together. The 3 girls and me. We've done lots of read alouds and discussions. This year I want my oldest especially to take more responsibility for her school work. One idea I had was to print out a chart of our schedule for each day. It has worked brilliantly. My older 2 can read the chart and know exactly what is expected of them each day. I can't believe I didn't come up with this idea earlier. It includes a special chart for morning chores that I expect them to get done before we start school at 10 am which includes:

Get dressed AND put away pj's and put yesterday's clothes in the laundry basket

eat breakfast AND put dishes in the sink

brush teeth AND put away toothbrush and wipe out sink

Make bed NEATLY

Brush hair

It was so nice to be able to refer to the chart to make sure they had done everything. Then once we started school the girls helped me stay on schedule using the chart.

10am - Topic Read Alouds - next week we are learning about weather
11am - break
11:15am - spelling or grammar, alternating days, Kali and Sierra together
11:30am - Writing - alternating copywork, dictation, freewriting, etc.
12:00pm - Lunch
12:30pm - break
1:00pm - Math
1:30pm - Reading
2pm - freetime
4pm - Practice Piano, Violin (Kali), Typing (Sierra)
5pm - Clean up


This is the schedule for Monday and Tuesday. Tuesday we do our weekly chores, so free time doesn 't start until 2:30pm.

Wednesday and Friday we have afternoon activities so we have to shorten our school day. I haven't exactly figured out how to do that, yet. Something will have to be skipped.

Thursdays, I have the girls signed up for a choir that meets in the morning. I don't generally like morning activities because it messes up our whole day. None of us feel like doing school in the afternoon after getting home from a morning activity. But this year I have a plan. My dh had an idea to do stations like his favorite second grade teacher. At first I thought, "How am I going to fit this into my already super full schedule?" but then I realized it would be a perfect thing to do on Thursday afternoons. Arwen was feeling a bit sick, but the older girls did the following stations this week.

1. Do math wrap ups. Multiplication for Sierra, Addition for Kali
2. Practice spelling words
3. Do a Mad Lib
4. Draw a picture and write a short story
5. Silent reading

It worked out really well. The idea was to spend 15 minutes at each station, but some didn't take as long. I helped keep time while I got the dishes done. And right now the girls think it is great fun.

It was a busy week. I had meetings Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday evenings, a homeschool planning meeting on Wednesday afternoon, and a Homeschool Potluck on Friday. And I am now feeling the repercussions of it. I am defintely sick today Of course, it didn't help that poor sick Arwen was breathing in my face all week because sick kids alway need lots of snuggles... I am hoping to feel better by tomorrow, so we can a a good first full week of school next week.

You Are Pocahantas!

Free-spirited and wise. You have a strong passionate spirit that touches and changes all who know you. The wisdom and common sense that you have is really what guides you through life. Even so, you also have a very playful side that loves adventure and excitement.

Which Disney Princess Are You?

First Day of School - Homeschooler Style

Last week as I was reading blogs, I noticed that a lot of my friends and family members were posting First Day of School pictures. Well, we started school today and I thought I would post some First Day of School pictures of my own.

Here are my children at 8:30am:


Here is a slightly blurry picture of my youngest who is officially a kindergartner this year - Yikes! I am sure I would be sad and emotional if I weren't keeping her home with me.

I think the picture is blurry because Arwen kept sticking her legs up in the air and showing her underwear. It is probably a good thing that I am not sending this crazy child out into the world just yet.


And here is a picture of all of my students getting comfy on the couch for our read aloud time. I meant to take more pictures, but I got busy with the, ya know, doing school thing and forgot. It was a pretty good day. I will post more about it later since I should probably get to bed so I will be ready for the second day of school - homeschool style.

35

I turn 35 today. A few months ago when I thought about this impending birthday, I felt good about it. I felt like I had come to a point in my life where I feel good about myself, I know who I am, and where I am going. I have known women in their 40's that seem so confident and sure of themselves, flaws and all. I was starting to feel like I was getting to that point in my own life. Sure, I have started to notice a few wrinkles in the last year or 2 and I am still 15 lbs over my pre -baby weight even though my baby is 5 years old, but I haven't found any gray hairs, yet, and attractiveness is 3/4 confidence anyway, right?

But then I went to the mall...

If you are over 30, I do not recommend shopping for clothing at the mall. I haven't shopped at the mall for years. I figured I couldn't afford the clothes there. But we just moved and I wanted to check out mall here and I had birthday money to spend. So Saturday, I went to the mall. Now, I gave up shopping in the juniors section when I was 29, but what I didn't realize is that the mall (except the department stores) is one big junior's section. When I came home crying - yes, I really did cry, I guess I am not quite as self actualized as I thought - my dh pointed out that, of course the mall is a bad place for a 35 year old to shop, the mall is designed for 13 - 21 year olds to hang out at... Duh!

But here is my dilemma. Where do women in their 30's shop? The cute clothing at the mall and in the junior's section is not cut to fit a woman in her 30's, skinny or not. Nor is most of it really appropriate either. I have been looking for graphic t- shirts, but I don't think a 35 year old mother of 3 should run around in a shirt that says," I kissed a girl and I liked it." I was also looking for a lace bottomed tank to wear under stuff, but apparently if you have short waist, the lace will hit you about mid thigh and that is just not attractive at all. But I don't want to wear old lady clothes, now or ever really.

So I have resigned myself to plain colored t- shirts and jeans. And until I get nominated for "What Not to Wear," I will be shopping at Target, Ross, Marshall's, and Macy's (sale rack and store brand) And carefully avoiding the junior's section.

Maybe next year I will become the confident middle aged - ack! - woman that I dream of becoming...

My name is Michelle and I am a booklist junkie

I admit that I have a problem. That is the first step, right? I just love looking at booklists. And I can't just find one great booklist and use it for our homeschool. No, I have to search out every booklist I can find and consolidate them into my own personal booklists. So for all of you booklist junkies out there. I have published my lists on Google Docs and set up links in my side bar.

They are in excel spreadsheets. Be sure to check out all of the sheets. Some of the lists have several sheets. I couldn't figure out how to give each column a heading and still be able to organize the lists. They should be easy to figure out. I put an X next to the books we have read and stars to indicate how much we liked the book. I also noted age level for some. My kids are 5, 7, and 10, so most books are appropriate for that age range. I also noted if we owned the book. If the documents have more than one sheet, it is usually because each sheet is a separate sub category. For example, the Around the World Books are divided by area of the world. And the ancient history list has separate sheets for Egypt, Greece, and Rome.

This is just a portion of my lists. The rest are still hand written. Check back as I will be adding new lists after I get them typed into excel. Enjoy.

My 100th Post

I started this blog 18 months ago and I am finally at my 100th post. That averages out to about 5 posts a month. That sounds about right. I started this blog after reading many homeschool blogs in an attempt to figure out what I am doing with this whole homeschooling thing. And this blog started out as mostly a homeschool blog where I tried to share ideas and a place to vent when homeschooling was tough.

Lately I have been posting more about life in general. I don't know whether that is because I am more confident in my homeschooling ( I doubt it...). Or because we haven't been doing much formal schooling with moving and summer (that might be it). Or because more family members have been visiting my blog and blogging is a good way to keep them informed about what is going on in our life.

In any case, I think this has become a hybrid blog. I am sure I will post more about our homeschooling when we get back to more formal schooling in the Fall and I will continue to post interesting happenings in our life. Something for everyone to enjoy :) If you are a frequent visitor, leave comment. I'd love to know who is enjoying my rambling on homeschooling and life in general.

I am a Feeder Watch Flunkie

Last Fall I signed up for Project Feeder Watch. It seemed like a great home school project and my oldest daughter loves birds. So I paid my $15 registration fee and went out an bought a bird feeder and seeds. You are supposed to record the number of birds at the feeder for 2 days in a row each week throughout the winter. I never did. Not once. Never. At first there were no birds at the feeder each time I looked and then I could never find 2 days in a row to take the time to look. I know, seriously sad that I couldn't schedule 5 minutes 2 days in a row to look out the window, but I couldn't. I finally just gave up. I am a Feeder Watch Flunkie. I am sure it would be a great project for some homeschool family out there, but not ours. My husband even made fun of me for paying $15 for the opportunity to do research for someone else :P

I Love my Mop

You know you have sunk (risen?) to a new level of housewifedom when you start proclaiming your affection for a cleaning product. But I just love this mop. It is the Clorox large area mop with the terry cloth cover.

You see, my husband hates when I mop. He doesn't like the smell of the cleaning solution and he doesn't like that the floor stays wet for 20 minutes and he can't go in the kitchen. Now it would make sense for me to mop when he is not home, but I prefer to mop the kitchen at night when the kids are in bed, so I don't have to deal with keeping them out of the kitchen.

The floor in our old kitchen was white and always looked dirty, so it needed mopped rather frequently. I thought about getting a swifter mop after I saw someone mopping with one and noticed that the floor seemed to be dry almost immediately, but I really didn't like the idea of constantly having to buy the replacement pads.

Then a friend mentioned terry cloth mops. I had never heard of them and thought I might have to order one online. But one day I went to Target and there they were - a whole selection of them. I have to say now that I am so glad I got the large area one.

At first I tried to use the mop swifter style. I put cleaner and water into a spray bottle and sprayed the floor and then mopped the sprayed area. It didn't take me long to figure out that the dry terry cloth made too much friction and was difficult to push across that floor. So I tried wetting terry cloth and using the spray. This was still kind of a pain, but better that the ol' sponge mop and bucket routine. Then brilliance struck. I wet the terry cloth and put the floor soap on the terry cloth and squish it around, put the Terry cloth on the mop, and go. Swish Swish, Swish and I am done. The floor is dry in less than 5 minutes and I have no bucket of yucky water to deal with. I pull the terry cloth off and throw it in with the dirty laundry. And you can buy extra terry cloths (which I did), in case one is still dirty and you need to mop.

I wouldn't recommend using this mop for a gross - o mopping jobs, but for regular floor cleaning, it is great! Also, if you have crusty stuff stuck on the floor, you may to to keep a scrubber sponge (another one of my favorite cleaning products) handy. You know, the one with the yellow sponge on one side and the green scrubber on the other. The terry cloth isn't so good at the crusties, but still better than the bucket and mop... You can get terry cloth mops with their own scrubbers build it, but the large area one didn't have that feature.

Go, buy yourself a terry cloth mop. I highly recommend it.

...end commercial...

A Math Equation

Returning from a family vacation + a broken dryer =

This:


+ This:

The good, the bad, and the ugly of our new house

Welcome to my new house. Are you ready for a tour? It's good, it's bad, and it's ugly. I cut off this picture so you can't see the other side of the duplex. It looks just like our side only reversed. If you walked in the front door you would see this:



Well, actually it would look more like this:

Here is the other side of the front room:The kitchen is bad and ugly. It is small and has no counter space. Our IKEA table takes up half the room

The counter NEVER looks like this. We have no dishwasher, so the counter is always covered with dishes. There is only on thing I like about this kitchen and here it is:

Why doesn't every kitchen have a built in cookie sheet cabinet? I have been wishing I had something like this for years!

Here is the upstairs bathroom. The yellow counter top is pretty ugly, but at least is matches with my butterfly shower curtain.


The girl's room: They wanted to all share a room, but the room is so tiny. They look like little orphans with their beds all in a row.

Here is the other side of the room with its tiny carpet space showing.

With the girls sharing a room, the other upstairs room became the play room:

I know we have way too many toys.

That's the whole upstairs. It is very tiny, but this room saves us from killing each other due to being crowded:


It's a basement, but it gets tons of light. And this room is huge. It can fit our new couch, the TV, all our instruments, both Rand's and my desks, and several book cases. And still have floor space for the girls to play games. I was tempted to make this room the play room, but my dh wisely suggested that we should make this big room a room that the whole family could enjoy.


Here is our bedroom. My dh bought all the decorations when we lived in Colorado. He did such a great job. It is the nicest decorated room in the house. And now it is in the basement... When we first got all the decorations up my dh said it looked like our old bedroom had been shrunk in the dryer...

We have a garden plot in our backyard. That is one of the "goods" assuming I can get anything to grow. I have tried gardening before, but I never really had a good space to work with. I love planting pretty flowers, but I haven't had too much luck planting things from seed.

Here is another on of the "goods. " This is the view from our backyard. Feel free to be jealous and then remember I have no dishwasher.

Only a 5 year old...

I came upstairs yesterday and found this on the kitchen table. It took me a minute to figure out what I was seeing. Yes, that's right, someone had been STAPLING a graham cracker. It only took me one guess to figure out who had been doing this. I confronted the culprit:

Me: Arwen, have you been STAPLING the graham crackers?

Arwen: Yes

Me: Um, why?

Arwen: Because I wanted to.

Me: Uh, OK.

What was going through that 5 year olds mind? Did she come up with the idea to staple the graham crackers and go and get the stapler? Or was the stapler sitting on the table while she was eating the crackers and stapling them seemed like a good idea? Who knows, but I am stilling laughing at the sight of the stapler with the graham cracker crumbs in it.

The 10 year old gets her ears pierced

OK, I was going to post something sentimental yesterday about my oldest daughter turning 10, but by the end of the day's festivities, I was exhausted. We went to our homeschool group's park day in the morning - and brought treats. Then we met my dh on campus and had lunch in the food court - yuck. We then walked around campus and went to the art museum's family art festival. Back to the student center for ice cream- yum. Home for a bit before heading to the library for their Shakespeare for Kids activity (Sierra insisted even after I suggested we skip it since it was her birthday). Then home for dinner (lasagna - Sierra's choice). At 7 pm we had Sierra's new friend from church over for cake (cheesecake - Sierra's choice). I wasn't planning any kind of friend party since we just moved here and I didn't think Sierra had made any close friends, yet, but I was informed on Sunday that her friend Emily was so excited about Sierra's birthday and wanted to give her a present. Well, what's a mom to do? So, I quickly came up with a plan to have the friend over for cake in the evening. So as you can see it was a very busy day that led to a very exhausted mom at the end of the day.

But that is not what this post is about. Last year my dh decided that Sierra was old enough to get her ears pierced if she wanted, but she didn't want to, yet. This year she was ready. Here are some hilarious pictures of her reaction to getting her ears pierced.

Before the first piercing... feeling a little nervous


Time for the second ear. The crying has begun.
Getting the second ear pierced. Love the reaction!



Very happy to have gotten her ears pierced?



Feeling better

An impromptu camping trip

Last Wednesday we decided to go camping on Friday. My dh had been talking to the girls about going into the mountains on the new moon to look at the stars and since the new moon was on the 3rd we figured Friday night was close enough and when better to look at the stars than on a camping trip. It was very tempting to say that I was too busy to go camping, having just gotten settled into our new house, but I am glad I didn't. We had such a great time. And the star gazing was only a small part of the fun of the trip. We hiked through a creek bed that led into a canyon, up a hill that led into a canyon and and in a wash that led through a canyon with huge walls on both sides. DH, of course, had lots of geology tidbits to share along the way. We also explored a pioneer town in the area and saw petroglyphs. We left Friday morning and were home by dinner time on Saturday.

Here are some pictures from our adventure: