The boys decided (last minute) that they wanted to take their spring break this week. Seeing that they told me this late Sunday afternoon, I wasn't prepared for projects that needed to be done while on break. After some pondering while washing dishes this morning, I made some goals. To get ready for our annual garage sale coming up in late April we will go through closets, clothes, and the frig also needs a good cleaning and so do my bathroom cabinets. We have a day and a half of errand running and some site visiting. Plus a day at the family farm for some nature study and play. I think our week will be full.
I started Caleb on going through his clothes this morning. It actually goes really smooth when they are old enough to do it themselves. Those of you with little ones, have hope! Tyler and I will tackle his clothes this afternoon after some play time outside. This project is a little scary!
Arrival of spring is late in our area (and I assume most everywhere this year). I'm really missing green! I tried to go through my pictures and find some spring flowers and green, but I couldn't find any. I'm sure I could find some in our nature scrapbook! I did find pictures of my Irises from last year. It looked like they bloomed mid-May last year. I assume they will bloom around the same time this year (I think spring was late last year too). This is something to look forward to especially since they didn't all bloom last year due to moving them the previous fall.
Going through my pictures, I found some of the big snow storm we had in 2011. Pictures like these make you thankful for our (hopefully) ending winter weather.
Now onto school stuff. I was sick for over a week. A nasty head cold, but it was weird as I was the same sick for over a week. Typically you are bad a period of time and then gradually get better. I was very sick the whole time and I woke up and was completely better one day.
This has caused Morning Basket not to happen the last two weeks. My voice was not capable of reading out loud for 30 minutes to an hour that morning basket requires. We are behind on that.
I did decide to return the Fix It! form IEW in exchange for the first two books of their updated version. The samples looked great and I like the revised books better. We are still waiting on them to arrive, so that has been put off.
The Student Writing Intensive from IEW that Caleb was working on has been put away (perhaps forever). It is too big of a struggle. I really think this program is worth his efforts, but he disagrees. I finally gave up on it last week when he was (verbally) fighting me about doing it and Tyler got in on the fight too and let me know that he wouldn't be doing that program in the future. Instead we may work on some character training as it is not ok for them to talk to me that way. \:( Teaching kids to respond and give feedback without being disrespectful and rude is a challenge at the moment.
Our bird study is going very well and we are enjoying the book What's That Bird. We are also watching a couple of videos from The Happy Scientist and the boys love this guy! We watch the videos for fun too.
Caleb's attitude towards math has changed and he is really pushing forward and making progress. I don't know what changed his attitude, but we will take it.
Planning next year is still weighing heavily on my mind. I'm still undecided about some books and how much to put on Caleb's list. Lots of prayer is going into this!
We had our first spring storm last week. We didn't get any severe weather but we did get a quick downpour. As you can see from the above picture, we were on the edge of one system and you can see another system further north of us. Both had severe weather but thankfully they missed us. Of course, we really could use some rain!
We discussed what to do during storms and at one time we started to prepare as there were tornado warnings with these systems. The boys were told to locate shoes and put them at the basement door and gather any things they wanted to take with them to the basement. The below picture is what Tyler gathered up. His "babies", a blanket "to cover his eyes" and a DS to play with because "you have to have something to do while you are waiting to be rescued!" Hammy was in his pile to, but didn't make it in the picture.
Wow, look at all that snow!! Your photographs are gorgeous, really nice light on all of them. And that Iris (?) love it, used to have those in another house, first house actually after we were married. They are stunning.
ReplyDeleteI have a peach iris somewhere that my mother-in-law gave me. I'm hoping it blooms this year! I had a "black" (very deep blue) one too, but it stopped blooming a few years ago. They are one of my favorite flowers! I had a collection of them before I was married. I dug them up and brought them with me. ; )
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