around blogland

thought I would share a few interesting links going around the blogosphere;

Go over to Ree's blog for a sandwich recipe that is promised to knock the socks off your man. She includes great photos of each step, just wonderful! I actually don't know what round steak looks like...(I'm glad she showed me so I can buy the right stuff!) If more recipes included step by step photos, maybe I would cook more interesting meals. Maybe. I will report back after I make this for my hubby...
Warning; her recipes are not for anyone on a diet...

April is National poetry month. You can go over to Poets.Org for a poem a day in your in-box. Hat tip to Circle of Quiet for this info.

A thoughtful article by John Mark Reynolds, Toward Virtue: Ten Lessons we have learned home schooling. Deep and encouraging, go here to read it.

And to leave you with wisdom I realized today, too late...

After letting your 7 year old son watch a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles dvd, know that the resulting 5 hours of "pows", grunts, banging of furniture, sounds of jumping off furniture, and endless "dude!"-'s and "cowabunga!"-'s heard even after light's off...are really your own fault.
Yes, I repent. Send it back, oh send it back....!

Because I am a cool mom...way cool...



or household gone wild...

We don't take the children out to restaurants very often. When we do, we usually have the children share meals. There are, after all, four of them, and they seldom actually finish a whole meal...(and I need to spend our money on other little things like shoes, clothes and groceries).
I am often heard uttering what are sure to be homey-nostalgic words of wisdom to my kids such as "if you are still hungry after, you can have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich when we get home" or, "everyone is having water". We actually do have McDonald's as a treat occasionally, it is a favorite to take to the park on library day or to take home on a busy day. But, we never actually eat at McDonald's because I have found a way to feed us all for under 8$. My secret? Cheeseburgers for everyone, the two little ones share one, we get one large fry and share that, and no drinks-the kids enjoy a juicebox at the park or at home. Yeah, I've learned to be cheap in some areas. They are supremely happy with the little cheeseburgers...I figure why waste funds for more exotic fare?

This weekend our church held a conference for the Elders and responsible ones from different localities near and far. Sky attended, and we had a dear friend and his daughter stay with us for this event from Washington State. The men-folk were gone everyday, all day...Friday and Saturday...So, left to ourselves-I planned some unusual fun.

Friday I took the older girls and their friend to Disney Walk and for lunch at the Rain Forest Cafe. (Which I have never eaten at...I have visited the outside many times with my little ones, but never actually had a meal there...again, that cheap thing coming into play...) The girls had a blast. I was disappointed with the food. I ordered an appetizer first, did not make my girls share a meal...and they hardly touched their food. Well, they did have a good time-but I will never eat their again-the food was not really good and was expensive.

We spent a couple of hours walking around and visiting the shops. Stopped at the candy store, of course! It was a beautiful California day, not too warm-just a wonderful day to be walking around outside. We ended the day with homemade pizza and molasses cookies from Trader Joe's-I had thrown caution to the wind by this time!

Saturday I took the older girls to the nearby mall and dropped them off to have lunch and to see a movie at the discount theater there. It was a really odd, milestone sort of moment to hand my oldest daughter some money for lunch and the movie..and walk away. Yikes! I could tell they were hoping I would leave..Yikes!, I am the mother of pre-teens!!
I took the littles over to the McDonald's in the food court and ordered them A! HAPPY! MEAL! each, with chicken mcnuggets and a soda. They thought they had won the lottery.
And THEY! GOT! A! TOY! Mutant Ninja Turtles...we like them at our house. I don't know why, but apparently we do...

I then walked around with the little ones and bought my oldest a few cute, trendy shirts because she really needs new clothes. And maybe I had to prove I was a way- cool mom. I found the girls on my way out to establish a meeting place later (because I was about to leave my flesh and blood baby girls at the mall without me!) and to showMeg the shirts I bought her. I got this hard to decipher strange look for my efforts..I think it was a "please leave, you are embarrassing me-look" ...not certain, I haven't received one of those before. Should I write the day down in her scrapbook for fond remembrance?
And so, I left, cuz' I can take a hint...eventually...

We ended the day with some dvd's (2-5$ movies from Target, cause I was just running hog-wild at this point) and In and Out for dinner, because our little Washington friend had requested it- In and Out being a California thing.

Sunday we ended the weekend over at Cortina's for pizza after the Lord's day meeting. A really fun time with old friends and a few of the bible school boys.

So, yes I feel like I went a little crazy with the spending and outings-but it is a rare thing, and the kids had so much fun.
That was my weekend, how was yours?

Sniffles and late night poetry

Suffering with insomnia here, several days in a row. I am a night-owl sort of person, but being sick, miserable and tired and not being able to sleep-it just stinks. My head is too stuffed to do much deep thinking, so I am sitting up reading Emily Dickinson:

Good Morning-Midnight-
I'm coming Home-
Day-got tired of Me-
How could I-of Him?

Sunshine was a sweet place-
I liked to stay-
But Morn-didn't want me-now-
So-Goodnight-Day!

Tomorrow-today! we have our book club and tea. We will be finishing up Ella Enchanted. I cannot decide on the next book, I have several in mind. Today we did our schooling, then Meg had violin lesson, we dog-sat the neighbor's dog for a few hours. Sky and the kids puttered in the garden-this will be our best garden ever!! We have several sunflowers of various sizes we just re-planted in the front...I love sunflowers, they are so cheerful. Lots of tomatoes growing, peppers, 3 pumpkins!, garlic...lots of fun stuff.

I will leave you with more Dickinson, before I retire to toss and turn...!

Yesterday is History,
'Tis so far away-
Yesterday is Poetry-
'Tis Philosophy-
Yesterday is mystery-
Where it is Today
While we shrewdly speculate
Flutter both away

Just stuff

The Spring reading book challenge is coming! It's official title is The Spring reading thing 2007 go to Katrina's blog to read more.

Well, I totally wimped out of saying anything to the Science teacher at the learning center today. Go here to read the background. I'll sum it up and say that I was uncomfortable with my kids shown scientific theory/hollywood political activism for a science class. I really could not come up with a way to talk to her or email her without, in my mind, the big possibility she could decide that I am some weird homeschooling freak who believes the world is flat and hides my kids in the basement so they will not have to deal with laws of nature such as, lets say, gravity. So, I didn't handle it by just not sending them to class today for the second half. Not proud of my wimpy-ness, but I thought some readers might be wondering what happened with that. I am still debating if I should ask her to notify me next time before she shows lets say- "super size me" or the movie where New York freezes over...scientific, cutting-edge stuff, I'm sure. Gotta figure out a way to ask that without sounding snarky. I don't think it can be done.

I wrote a month or so ago about having a family stay with us. It worked out really well with the wife getting a job in Santa Monica right away and the family decided to get an apartment there. They decided it would be hard on the kids to stay here and start school and then be pulled out again. So, they did not stay with us. I was relieved in retrospect, it would have been a disaster with un-organized me. I love how God knows all these things.

We are having our first book club meeting this Friday for my older girls and a few friends. I am really excited to finally be doing this. Our first book is going to be "Ella Enchanted". We are going to listen to the first chapter on audio-just to hook them in, and then have a real girly tea.
Fun, fun, fun! (in a bookish-lots of good sweets and tea, sort of way)

Amie's 5th birthday extravaganza is this Saturday. I am severely planning- challenged. Should I take bets to see if I can bring this off successfully? I'll have pictures later.

I signed up for the online homeschool record keeping organizer at SimplyCharlottemason. It is really cool. I am having fun playing with it, so far pretty easy to figure out, even for this techno-challenged mom. They are offering a free 30 day trial so you can see if it will work out for you. You can check it out, view a demo video and sign up here.

So, that is all the news that is news today at home.

Curriculum lust

In spring/early summer, a homeschool mom's fancy turns towards next year's planning. Ah, the yearly running of the homeschool supplies catalogs. We are helpless in the oncoming wave of homeschool choices. Cyndi over at Mater Magistra wrote a clever, cute post on the homeschool mom's sickness, er dilemma. Go on over and visit with her for a good laugh. Her post is here.

All that is new here at home... well, Sky and I have been fighting with a cold of sinister intentions. We are just not feeling good, Sky more so than I. We skipped Lord's day meeting, that's how bad he was feeling. This cold thing will just not go away.

The bible college boys are back. We are so happy to have them over again for dinner, our house has been too quiet Sunday evenings. Last night we had 11 over for dinner and fellowship. Many of them went on a Gospel sharing trip to Russia during the break, so we got to hear about their experiences on the trip. We had a few new faces over too, boys who just started the new term.

Meg had an orchestra concert Saturday night. It went really well, it was over at a large retirement community. It was really neat to have the kids sharing music with the residents there. They were such an appreciative audience, and so interested in chatting with the kids.

Sky's garden is progressing, I think this year with be his best year ever. I will post some pictures when everything is a bit more green.

Spring

Iceland poppies across the street. Our neighbor's yard is famous for it's manicured look, and for his beautiful poppies every spring. I love looking out our front window and enjoying this view. We are so in the mood for spring here. I've set out two new bird feeders on our front porch, Sky is busy in his garden and I am busy requesting books from the library to enhance our spring-time enjoyment. We actually had some light rain last night and today.

Today was a relaxed, lazy day at home. I ran a few errands in the morning, picked up pizza for lunch as a treat for the kids. We had a little friend of Demi's over for the day, since his school was out for the holiday. After lunch I had school with the girls: math, handwriting, grammar. History read aloud time from our Sonlight schedule. Demi was off the hook because his friend was over. They spent the day over-indulging in game cube, out in the tree house in between rain showers, and over at our neighbor's house (she is a re-tired teacher, one of the most interesting ladies I know, and she enjoys having our kids over!!)

Sky was at home today, and spent the day with one of our bible school friends, Philip. He shuttled Philip around to his first day meetings, had lunch and hung out. Meg tried her hand at making peanut butter cookies, Josie read and I puttered with the computer. It's been a nice, slow at home sort of day.

We will end the day enjoying our cozy fire, Meg practicing her violin, Josie practicing her memory work, Sky enjoying his Bible, and me reading something history-ish to Demi and Amie.

Close your eyes

and do not peek

and I'll rub Spring

across your cheek-

smooth as satin,

soft and sleek-

close your eyes

and do not peek

-Aileen Fisher