The four youngest kids and I met up with my sister, Julianne, and brother & SIL, Collin and Anne – and their children- at Chuckie Cheese the night before NDSU’s Homecoming. I have to admit I tried to talk them out of it. Noise and kids running around is not my idea of how to spend the evening before a busy weekend. BUT, they talked me into it. My kids thanked me profusely, which made it worthwhile.
Try as I do to get a picture of Louis … it’s nearly impossible! He’s a little man in motion.
Thank goodness for the spunk in this little guy. He actually reminds me to smile and laugh. I often wonder what I’ll do for a laugh when I do not have a toddler or a 5yo around.
Thomas the Train is huge in our house right now. We haven’t brought the TV back and the Wii is still incognito. Lots of imaginative play, which also means a lot of toys spread out ALL OVER.
Graham came up and asked if they could take Legos out in their room today, and added, “We’ll clean them up.” Yep, I’ve heard that line before! But, rather than say no, I asked him what his deadline to pick up all the Legos would be. “10 tonight,” he replied. Alright! I told him at 10pm, I
(aka the screamy Lady)
would come and throw away any Legos that are not properly put away. It’s just been one of those kinds of daysssssss.
BTW, the ‘screamy lady’ comment has become a joke of sorts between Graham and I.
Hey! What’s this!?! He’s working on his Warriner’s Grammar. We just went through the ‘50 Spelling Demons’ list and he did quite well (either Phonetic Zoo has served him well, most likely, or he has a natural inclination for good spelling, possible).
Looking out from my back porch... beautiful sunny day.
I am thankful for... the extra days of warmth that are predicted for this weekend.
I am reading… newspapers and kids’ essays!
I am praying for... the ability to complete everything that ‘feels’ like it ‘needs’ to be done by the end of this week.
I am hearing... Louis playing with blocks just outside the door to the schoolroom.
I am wearing… jeans and a black t-shirt.
From the sewing/craft room (aka. laundry room!)… laundry. I covered all the tomatoes last week and forgot to take the sheets off before Sunday morning’s rain. They were wet and MUDDY! Yuck. I’m almost done with the task…
From the School Room... just pluggin’ along. Dash is getting used to having to write more and that fact that he HAS to motivate himself. Angelina, Zeke and Graham are doing great. We are finding a rhythm.
From the Kitchen... purchased another lug of peaches and lug of pears. Both need a few days to ripen (thank goodness!).
From the Garden… the tomatoes did survive our hard frost, so I hope I’ll be harvesting a few to freeze or can.
From the FarmYard… pigs went to the butcher this morning. We are all excited about bacon, pork chops and sausage.
A few successful moments…
1. Hosted our first 4-H meeting on Sunday and were able to schedule most of our year’s meetings and activities.
2. Dash attended his first FFA meeting last night.
3. Fenced the chickens. They’d been wandering into my in-laws’ yard. The roosters are hooligans – especially the Barred Rock. He’s the adventurer.
A few plans for the rest of the week…
Tuesday: Hogs to the butcher, haircut for me, football practice for Dash.
Wednesday-Thursday: Football practice for Dash, days at home to do yardwork.
Friday/Saturday/Sunday: Home football game, Eric leaves for the NDSU/UofM football game on Saturday and will be gone until next Friday. The meeting season has begun.
Notes… can’t even remember that last time I posted, and I honestly haven’t missed it. It’s just been filled to the brim here and there hasn’t been time for much computer fun.
Joining Barbara in commemorating the year in once a week posts … just whatever is going on in your life: the mundane, the crazy, the normal, the everyday.
Prepped a LOT of corn for freezing.
Magic show from the resident 5yo Awesome Magician (I’ll post a bigger display on this later!).
The packaged corn is ready to freeze.
Cleaned my desk for the new school year.
Kids on the first day of school in 2011!
Everyone has a comedian, right??
Dash in his first, and so far only, JV football game. He’s on the lower right – #66. They won 22-0.
Yea, I’m driven all right. Driven right to my knees to beg for mercy. And patience. Although, I think at this point all patience is being driven OUT of me.
One of my kids is really testing me. I struggle with this child. Last week was our first week of school. We were all excited about new books and I was excited because I thought… ‘OK, we’ll leave the struggles of last year behind us because we have another year of maturity under our belts!’
Nope. Same old struggle. I gave out the syllabus and asked said child to read and complete. I came to correct later – in this case tonight because it’s been a hectic weekend - AND the WORK IS NOT ALL DONE! Now, this is not said child mis-understanding what to DO, but said child not doing the work for some reason.
The reason doesn’t matter so much, because none of them are good reasons at this point. Also, I’ve already given said child opportunities to complete all the work (I checked on Friday night to make sure it was done, saw it wasn’t, and asked said child to do the work on Saturday).
I do not enjoy this.
Normally, I wouldn’t be waiting this long to correct schoolwork and I’d have caught it on the day. I just so badly want to be able to trust this child to work independently and keep giving said child opportunities to earn my trust (ie. earn it back). I’ve tried MANY teaching styles & ideas with this child, but if you have a suggestion, I’d like to hear it.
St. Thomas Aquinas (academics), St. Ambrose (learning), St. Nicholas of Myra (children), St. Aloyisious Gonzaga (youth), St. Jude (desperate causes/situations), and St. Gregory the Great (teachers) please intercede on behalf of this child.
QUESTION: Do any of you have a child who wants his/her reward before the work is done or before the work is quality … and says so?!? One of my kids and I go round and round about said child wanting X and being willing to work for X. I say, show me the work and I’ll give X, gladly! This child retorts that having X will ‘help’ produce the work!! Sounds like Fool’s Gold to me.
A STORY: Now, some may laugh, some may not, but this is my life and I’m a work in progress. So, my 5yo was with his dad driving back from Fargo last week, and he tells my husband, “I can’t wait to get married!” My husband was a little surprised at that kind of revelation from a 5yo, so he asked, “Why?” My 5yo replied, “So I don’t have to live with the screamy lady anymore.”
Mary, Mother of God, please intercede for this ‘screamy’ lady and instruct her with your gentle ways.
Good Night!
1. Cleaned the cooktop.
2. Hung a shelf and SIX pictures (Yes, I still have framed pictures that are not hung. Sad, but true. It’s only been 3.25 years since we moved.)
3. Finally stored the 4-H supplies we received from a former 4-H leader (been sitting in the dining room for 3 weeks).
4. Harvest green beans (only a handful as the plants are dying back) and tomatoes. I picked five tomatoes! That makes a total of about 10 that my garden has produced, but there are more that are turning. Hope the forecasted frost holds off cuz my tomatoes are so large they’d take a full size sheet to cover just one plant. Maybe I should just build a greenhouse over them!
5. Cleared the piles out of the dining room and kitchen.
6. Made muffins for hubbies RE class.
True or False.
8. Jesus Christ uses others to help Him teach us about God. (The New St. Joseph Baltimore Catechism, page 11)
The answer is True.
This question from Angelina’s religion studies today just serves to remind me, once again, that I dropped the ball in defending my faith. Believe me, the point is being hammered home in a number of ways!
The story…
In conversation with friends, it came up that a boy they knew was severely injured in an accident. The boy had a traumatic injury and was not expected to survive. I naturally felt terrible and it’s just second nature for me to offer up a prayer for the injured and his/her family – albeit silently. In talking about the accident a little further, one parent stated that it’s never easy to think of the death of a child the age of one’s own child. I must have looked confused (I actually was! Because I wondered why you’d talk about him being dead when he WASN’T dead!! Call me crazy, but I believe in miracles.), because the other parent looked at me and said – and I’m paraphrasing here - ‘well, it’s better that he dies. That would so hard on the family if he lived.’ Then one of their children agreed with the statement and they all nodded in agreement.
I was shocked speechless. In my mind and heart I disagreed, but said nothing out loud.
Later that week, I brought it up to Eric when we were alone. He felt the same way. Gee whiz! Two of us sat there and did nothing to support/defend this young man’s ability to lead others to Christ through his sacrifice.
Wish I could say lesson learned…
If anything, it has reinforced my belief in the purpose of ALL life, no matter what the state of that life. You’d be amazed at the number of times my conscience has been pricked since the conversation.
After seeing a few great deals on the Homeschool Buyers Coop, I decided to join and get in on the savings extended to homeschoolers. They offer group buying deals. The more items purchased, the greater the price savings. And, you can set the level at which you ‘want in’ on the savings.
The main reason I joined was to get a break on the cost of Dave Ramsey’s course for homeschoolers.
The plan is to have Dash go through the course and then his reward upon completion will be a checking account. He’s old enough for the responsibility (already has a savings account and Paypal debit card) and we want him to learn financial responsibility while at home. An extra workbook was ordered for Angelina, who will be completing the course in the future.
I do enjoy listening to Dave Ramsey on the radio. He makes sense and gives advice from a Christian perspective. We haven’t gone through his Financial Peace University, but I did purchase a few other resources for Eric and I (both audio and book format) with a group discount.
While a bit cheesy in spots, I liked this movie and so did Eric. The singing is EXCELLENT. Of course, I’m a huge fan of George Strait and the original Pure Country, in which he starred.
The first day of school has come and gone. The notebooks, books, and binders are back on the shelves and ready for tomorrow …thank goodness all is corrected!
And I didn’t even raise my voice today -- at all. A few tense morning moments occurred when the busy toddler rode his noisy musical zebra into the schoolroom, but after a couple times I remembered ‘the toddler boxes’. Louis played with elbow macaroni noodles, a measuring spoon and a cup the rest of the morning.
Pictures taken the night before.
As I’m a planner, I did lay out a plan for today. The difference is that this year Eric and I talked to the kids about the plan last night. This helped very much!
We’d all eaten breakfast, dressed, and had time for reading the paper and doing a few chores before our 7:40am rosary time. The rosary went well. Louis played quietly, and Graham has really grown up a lot over the past year because he’s now able to sit quietly. I actually had the hardest time because my head and thinking are fuzzied up by allergies right now. This has just been a nasty year and nothing seems to help for long.
By 8am, we were ready for pictures, Schultutes, and measuring (height and weight). I saved the poster-board schultutes from last year and just used new tissue. Easy – peasy. The kids loved getting new school supplies, a few rare fruit treats, and one snack-sized candy bar.
We officially started lessons at 9am. Everyone, but the high-schooler finished by noon (we expected this outcome and I had prepared Dash for more work).
The Freshman:
The Sixth grader:
The Third grader:
The Kindergartener:
The Toddler:
Other photos from today:
We ended the day with a JV football home game. The Loboes won 22-0. Dash now plays guard and is #66.
He’s at the right edge of the bottom photo.
It’s NDSU Bison Football time! The opening game of the season is Saturday; we plan to attend.
This pic is from 2004. We’ve been in the same seats for years and have made friends of the couple who sit behind us. Good thing, too, because we keep getting larger and noisier with the passing years! It’s a good section because it’s been very family friendly. NO obnoxious people around us … only one year we were a little worried, but the young man either learned to tone it down or moved his ‘party’ mouth and behavior to another section.
As we’ve been in the same seats for so long, we’ve also added family to the section. Three of my brothers and my parents have season tickets, too. Makes for a very fun time when we are all able to make the games (for sure at Homecoming). This is our family time in the Fall months.
Go Bison!!
First, I want to thank you for the prayers. They helped tremendously in making my decision.
A couple weeks ago, I was asked to serve as DRE at our country church. The past DRE has served for 30 years…I can’t see myself serving quite that long.
I asked her for a week to pray, think and talk it over with Eric. I prayed, wrote of list of pros and cons, talked with a good friend, talked with my mom, wrote a list of goals/ideas, and talked with Eric. I also talked with our new priest (he arrived in July) and with the current DRE.
Eric and my good friend were very encouraging. My mom knows me well, and knows that I don’t like to do a job without the ability to do ‘it’ fully (I am like her in this regard). She knows I get stressed when things don’t go as smoothly as my perfectionist self would like, but she could also tell I was leaning toward accepting.
This Fall, the treasurer position for our homeschool group will be handed over to someone new. One of my reasons for doing this was to create time to contribute more to our country church. In fact, this position had entered my mind over the past year, so when asked …I was not taken aback. However, I just didn’t think the opportunity to serve would present itself quite so fast!!
My biggest cons, as I see them, are the time commitment and the fact that I’m homeschooling a freshman (ie. high school) this year. However, I’ve decided to give it my best. I’ll work with the current DRE this year, then take the reigns next year.
In my mind, I am committed to three years. Then, I’ll re-evaluate what I can or cannot do in this capacity.
Continued prayers are welcome!
