7 Quick Takes -Flies and other homeschool relics edition

~1~

Meg's homeschool chemistry experiment went a little south and several large blue-bottle flies escaped. But wait, it gets even better!  Meg then went away for highschool girl's church camp and left me home alone with the two youngest kids and her escaped flies for company. Yes, I live the glamor life!!  Early on in our fly campaign, we discovered  this jumping spider on the outside of the glass, spending time stalking a few flies on the inside of the glass. It was fascinating to watch.  Eventually, I opened the window on top (double hung old-fashioned windows) and a few flies flew over and ended up between the glass and screen, which is where the spider happened to be.  I have to report that the spider did catch one of the flies, with Amie and Demi watching, mezmerized.  More homeschool science, yay...

~2~

Amie's Hogwarts for Muggles class last week was a potions class.  The kids had containers of  interesting things like "dragons breath", "mandrake tears" etc.  They conducted several experiments with their concoctions and made a lap book filled with chemistry facts.  So much fun!

~3~

extra bonus photo of my cute doggie.  I {heart} her.

I was lamenting that Oliver (a.k.a. Evil Kitty)  is a favorite photo subject because he is so much more easier to photograph, even though my dog is my big love. So, I thought I'd try to spend more time capturing her on camera.  She is a hard subject because she is so dark, she tends to show up as one big blob.

~4~

My sister and I spent an afternoon packing up mom's china.  This set of china has some history; her eldest brother brought it home from Hong Kong, during the Vietnam war- on the aircraft carrier he was stationed on...tucked away in boxes in the freezer. He was the cook. It's a special story, we wanted to make sure that her china ended up safe and loved.  I was lucky enough to take it home with me.  My sister took home another all white set.

~5~

my man-cub just moved up from a boy's size 6 shoe, to a man's size 8 shoe.  I was kind of sad.  Sky traveled up North for a family wedding, I stayed home with the two youngest, while Meg and Josie went to church camp.  Demi needed some up-keep done, such as a haircut (he wailed to me after it was done that he was now almost bald...I said, "good" in my best grumpy cat imitation) and then he needed new shoes and socks. Mission accomplished...it's sad though, how quick they grow up.

~6~

The new Dr. Who season starts this coming Saturday!!! We are so excited!  We are planning special food for the viewing, kind of like superbowl, but instead with time travel and mad men with a box  :)

Dr. Who Series 7 part 2 prequel

~7~

Just found out last night, that a new Miss Julia book will be out on Tuesday!  It has been a few years since the last one.  If you don't know Miss Julia, she is definitely worth a read- she is a very Southern older lady with moxie and a nose for mystery.  Outside her hard, proper shell is a heart of mush.  She is one of those characters that makes you wish that book characters were real and lived in your neighborhood :)

Miss Julia to the rescue

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Wordless Wednesday -Cat squared

Happy Wordless Wednesday!

Pinterest cake -nailed it! sort of

Our Amie had a birthday recently.  She is now Eleven-teen (ha!) and when I asked her for a cake request, she said, "not chocolate" which gave me a lot of creative leeway.  I let pinterest have its way with me....and decided to try out this recipe:

Vanilla cake with strawberry cream cheese frosting from Baby Gizmo

I make a truly from-scratch-cake about as often as the locust swarm...I'm usually a boxed-mix girl.  This cake was very, very tasty.  It was very, very gooey though.  I'm thinking next time around, I will try making little mini cakes or muffins and put the filling and frosting on top.

I realized, about half-way through trying to frost it, that I shouldn't have frosted the sides... My first thought was "Nailed it!!"   The un-frosted side is very pretty, though.

It was a very yummy cake, though very big!

The verdict?  A keeper recipe.  -I need to add a board on pinterest for pins I've actually done.

what about you, do you just pin things, or do you actually try many of them?

7 Quick Takes -missing in action edition

Howdy, howdy, howdy bloggy friends!  Whew, blog-break!!  Life has been crazy-busy here at {Home} -a girl can't catch her thoughts, much less blog...!  Here's all the crazy that I live:

~1~

Josie went in this week for her audition for the performing arts high school she'd like to attend next year.  I swear, this whole process has taken a year off my life, at least.  I admitted earlier that I think I have A.D.D. -at the least, I am scattered, Bridget-Jones -homeschool-mom and so imagine me trying to navigate a months-long process of detailed applications, different deadlines for different things, requesting transcripts, remembering deadlines, organizing/labeling/displaying artwork tastefully.... etc.  I had one midnight panic attack (I woke up Sky, sobbing my heart out because I thought I had messed up a transcript thingy- and it was either wake him up or call my E.S. in the middle of the night) and a dozen mini-panic attacks where my heart would jump and I'd ask myself "have I missed a deadline?"  and "the audition is on this date, right?" and then I'd have to go online and re-check.  And re-check.

Once we had everything packed-up, labeled, displayed in a beautiful manner...my mad scrapbook skills came into handy at 1 a.m. as Josie and I cropped digital art and used double-sided tape to put things into place.. who knew that particular skill would come into such important play?!...once it was all ready, Josie was dressed up, hair curled, subtle make-up in place....I delivered her to the door of the school and walked away.

The rest was up to her.  Poor thing then had to draw for 90 minutes.  She survived, and I did too.  We have to wait several weeks now to see if she got in.  I try not to think about it.  She really wants to go.

~2~

Standardized State Testing season has begun.  Demi and Amie had p.e. testing, and then Josie had to take the Math portion of the California High School Exit Exam the morning of her audition for the arts school.  Yeah, fun times.  Poor thing.

We also ended a round of key assignments for the charter school (my high school students) * I really hate these, stuff for a future post.  I contemplated pulling Meg out three months before graduation to avoid these.  I asked Meg how she would feel to get a diploma from St. Jennifer's Academy and she was a bit ambiguous about it.  I decided to try to wait it out.  We also had portfolio samples due.  This month has been really, really crazy!

~3~

Amie loves her Hogwarts for Muggles class.  They had a class all about owls and dissected owl pellets, measured out different owl species wing spans, studied their diets and did a craft.  This week, they studied frogs and made chocolate frog candy.  She has such a blast with this class.  I love the lapbooks she brings home.

~4~

Demi is taking an eight-week creative writing class through Biola Star.  This is his first class with Biola, his older sisters have been taking high school classes with them for years now.  It is a great class to get his feet wet with them.  Next year in 8th grade, I am hoping to have him take an intro to composition class and Latin with them.  It is very strange to think that next year I might only have one student taking classes with Biola Star.

~5~

Monday I said goodbye to our very last hen.  Our flock has slowly diminished to one lone hen, and she was very, very lonely.  Ironically, Annabelle was the ornery hen.  Once she was alone, her personality changed and she became timid and tried to hang out with us when we were outside.  She was pretty misanthropic before, this change was pretty big.  We found a friend who has hens, to adopt her, so she left for hopefully a happy retirement with new friends.  It's a bit strange, I keep catching myself saving my morning blueberries for her, or checking outside to see if she has water, or just looking outside to see what she is doing.  I am no longer Hen-Jen.

~6~

The Bible College boys are back for Sunday Night dinners (we miss them when they are on break), the weather here has swung from cloudy/cold to hail and rain, to sunlight on the same day as hail, back to foggy and then today it was really warm.  I am hoping the warm weather is back.  The hail was pretty exciting, since we really don't get wild weather here.

~7~

Gas prices here in So. Ca are painful!  I am hoping they go down soon.  I drive about 60 miles each way to take Amie to her Hogwarts class once a week, Demi's writing class is 20 miles away, and Josie's fencing class is 45 miles away. We are about to yell "uncle!" with the gas prices!

Well, bloggy friends, I am really looking forward to getting back to a normal, quiet homeschool week after this week of chaos/stress.

Hope your week is wonderful!

**7  Quick Takes happens every Friday over at Conversion Diary

The week in progress- Oak Meadow History

Our homeschool is much more productive when I type up weekly assignment sheets for the high school students.  Not that I always do, ahem...but I should.  Here is what they look like, not high-tech at all...

I type them up on google docs (it's in the cloud so I can move around on different computers) and I don't mess with tables or charts, just type them in and add big, bolded o's for the kids to put a check-mark in when completed.

This is Josie's sheet.  She is on week 16 of Oak Meadow World History.  I simply look through the OM syllabus and through the textbook and decide what she should do for the week.  There is a lot of reading and information to cover in the textbook and we have to keep moving, so I try to keep the work not too-involved most weeks.  Her Biola classes also keep her very busy.  This week, I pulled the bolded words out of the text and asked her to make a definition page, this is not in the OM syllabus.  The OM syllabus has a list of great essay questions after the reading, so I did assign one of them, and then asked her to think about another (because I know she has a lot of writing to do with Biola already)  As I was looking through the chapter in the textbook, my mind keeps wanting to go down rabbit-trails...so I did add in two documentaries from Netflix, and some extra reading and short 2 minute videos from history.com  -because I just have to do the rabbit trails... {help me}  I made an effort to keep it simple so we could move on to the next chapter next week, but it was an effort...

She has gotten behind in her Math, so I am assigning two pages most days.  Her Biola class syllabus are pretty involved, so I just ask her to check and follow them, and then check mark that she did so.

My younger students just do what I tell them to, though some weeks, I do sheet for them, too...but not often, it's just a bit too much for A.D.D. mom

I am really enjoying Oak Meadow, I like that it keeps me moving, and that everything is in the textbook...as long as I don't get distracted!

how's your week?

Farmhouse bed {love}

We've had the same bed-set since we were married.  Yeah, we are a little sentimental about it, it was the first nice set of furniture we owned. {However} the bed had a foot-board, that was sort of like a min-bench.  About thigh-high, picturesque and great for sitting on to put on your shoes..but it was also the perfect level to jam yourself in the thigh, in the middle of the night. Or the middle of the day.  Emma-the-wonder-labradoodle even walked face-first into it one night.  (Which began her tradition of not moving through our room if it is dark, she will stand still and groan until I come get her or turn on a light.)  We've had many a bruise and scrape from this bed.

It finally occurred to us a while ago, or so, that maybe we should do something about this night-time terror.

And then we'd forget, until dark time and danger came lurking and then we'd say, "you know, we should get a new bed!"

But we didn't, then once in a while we'd agree that we should, specially after another midnight bruising incident.... and then it occurred to me that I do have a husband who builds things...

Sky used the plans from Ana White.  And then, Mr. Woodworker/ Civil Engineer/ Building Inspector / former contractor...didn't read the plans, or at least very quickly scanned the plans and built the headboard two-times too big!!  After I questioned the scale, he had to take it apart and build it again.  His favorite quote is "measure twice build once"  {ahem}

Here it is!  {love it}

We were going to distress it,  but decided we liked a simple white-wash look.

And we skipped the foot-board.

Amen.

7 Quick Takes Friday -wild parrots of spring edition

~1~

Here in So. Ca we don't have seasons that stand up and shout, so to speak.  But, I know Spring is here when the magnolia tulip trees in the neighborhood bloom.  I {heart} these trees.  This is the tulip tree across the street.  I opened the blinds in our big front window the other morning and saw a flash of green.  The wild parrots were in the tree, eating the flowers.  I see seven here, how many do you see?

~2~

My kids are sick, so the great homeschool progress we made last week has been nullified this week.  Yeah, team!! We did manage some read-aloud time, we read 3 more chapters of Don Quixote (but didn't finish it) and we finished the chapters on Jamestown and John Smith in The Story of US vol. 2.  Amie continues to love her Hogwart's for Muggles class and Demi starts a new 8 week creative writing class tomorrow.

~3~

I was so excited to have this book arrive from paperback swap:

I read the first in the series, An Assembly Such as This- and thought it was the best Pride & Prejudice spin-off that I have read.  Our library didn't have the sequel so I was so excited to get it from paperback swap.  And then, about 1/3 through it, I started thinking that the story seemed really, really familiar...and then I realized I have already read this one and I needed vol. 3  Oh well, this one is a really good read, so I will finish it and order the next.  This is so good that I suggested to Sky that he would like it.

~4~

Did I mention my kids are sick?

~5~

Sky is building a really large round table for someone (6 feet in diameter).  He made this amazing jig to enable him to cut out a huge circle, he is really amazing.  When I saw it, I told him that I would have just run around for days, trying to find a really big circle to trace...and that is why he is the "do-er" in this relationship and I am the "non-doer"...

~6~

Demi-Sky's lacrosse game last Saturday was amazing. They were missing some key players because of an out-of-town tournament, and because of bad weather and they had just enough players to take the field. This meant that there were no substitute players, the boys had to play the entire game with no resting.  This also meant that if players were taken off the field for a penalty, that the team was short players on the field. This is Demi (number 57) and a team-mate out for a penalty. Ahem.

~7~

Sky and I are a bit practical and we don't like going out to crowded restaurants, which is why we don't have date-night during the weekend, so we spent a very quiet evening home for Valentine's day.  The highlight was taking Emma to the groomers for her "day of beauty" which was actually a gift I gave myself- a nice smelling dog is a gift that keeps on giving...

hope your week was wonderful, internets :)

7 Quick Takes Friday is hosted over at Conversion Diary, hop on over!

Wordless Wednesday- Sunlight

Happy Wordless Wednesday! (er, not so wordless...)