A Week, Briefly (10/2/17)

General Conference was amazing!!  While we watched, I finished sewing Mister Man's doll.  I've been sewing all of the kids little wool/cotton dolls starting from the youngest and working my way up.  Mister Man and Brother were delighted to have their dolls play together when the last session ended.


Monday

Poop.

That dominated the day.

Lots and lots of poop.

On bodies
On clothing
In carpet
In trash cans
In hidden locations that would not be discovered for a day or so

It was a very poopy day.

But the teens and I had productive meetings;

I was able to commiserate with a mother who is trying to adopt via foster care and is hitting all of the same challenges we did;

This week the apple tree is a pirate ship.  Here's Mister Man in the crow's nest, looking for other ships.

The Elementary 8 and I finished chapter 3 of How's Inky? and we did a little writing/drawing assignment about our individual gifts and talents and how we can bless others in our own ways;

As a family, we reviewed The Living Christ.  We do remember it, but after General Conference this weekend, I decided it was important to renew our relationship with it and bring it more to the fore of our minds than it was.

The teens and I discussed 10 or so questions about E.T., completed a few more puzzles from A Case of Red Herrings, and read about Bartolomeu Dias and Vasco da Gama for history.

Rose Red got the Old Navy job!  It introduces far more complications to our lives than I imagined, but we'll find our way.

Family read aloud time brought the day to a gentle close.

Tuesday
We started this day with a budget crisis . . . and more poop . . . but we'll be fine as long as we're creative and careful.

Rose Red and Pixie headed off to work.

Super Star and Belle rode bikes to and from the library.

I took the Elementary 8 to Cave Spring for some school and play.

"Mom!  Mom!  The water comes out of here!!!!"

Studying the floaties that the plants grow

Letter of the week for Beowulf.  The camera caught him mid-/m/.

Mister Man had all of these nuts in his pockets.  We used them for some math games.

The boys played "camping" for a long time over this fire pit.  Here they are "roasting marshmallows."

Counting rings to see how old the tree was . . . only about 50 years!  We thought a tree of that size would be older!

Ladybug got 2 fillings at the dentist.

At our library, we found some Scholastic book videos in Spanish, and we substituted them for our usual Whistlefritz half hour after lunch.  The Ezra Jack Keats stories were read slowly and clearly, but Make Way for Ducklings was read at a regular speaking pace, and it threw the kids for a loop!  They were mad that they couldn't keep up, but I'm planning to watch it several times, and I think they'll start to get it . . . eventually. :)

I put away the wading pools and found a dead space of lawn and terribly compacted dirt.  I have both clover seeds and spring bulbs to plant in the space.  When the kids saw me digging, they ran to help.  We had a pleasant hour of gardening together.

Wednesday

Rose Red has a driver's license!!!!!!

She took her test in the rain, and she was so nervous, but she passed with 94% and a compliment to her driving instructor for doing a particularly good job.  (Sir Walter Scott got that credit!)

Seminary is always later on Wednesday mornings, and I have been gone every Wednesday of the semester with the seminary crew while Belle holds down the fort at home.  This morning I had the luxury of being home, and as we delay Morning Meeting until the whole family can be together, I had time to read Diogenes and His Lantern.  It was a fun read especially because we're reading The Well-Wishers as our evening read aloud right now, and a mysterious psychologist calls one of the characters Diogenes as he guides her through the forest with his flashlight.

The kids loved finding out who Diogenes is and making connections between the two stories.

The teens and I had a thorough Symposium in the morning because Rose Red would be gone in the afternoon.  I finally figured out how to use our The Easy Spanish textbook correctly, so the girls took a lot of notes in Spanish.  We also finished our discussion questions about E.T., assigned essay topics for the same, and read about Lorenzo de Medici for history.

It was raining, raining, raining, so Pixie and I ran off to the thrift store to see if we could fill in the gaps in our rain boot and rain coat supply.  We had limited success, but we took what we could get, and I got the Elementary 8 ready for a rain walk at the lake.

Mister Man dropped to his hands and knees all of a sudden, "Look at the clovers!"  We stopped to see if we could see what he did.  He and the rest of the kids were fascinated to see the rain beaded on the surface of the leaves.  We had an impromptu lesson about plant cell structure.

Frog hunting.

More water beads

We managed a pleasant hour of exploring, but then we saw lightning, so we got in the van and headed to the grocery store for a snack.  The rainfall got so intense that even all decked out in our gear, we were soaked walking from the parking lot to the store entrance!  We picked up some potatoes and green beans for dinner, and we chose dried apricots and nuts and potato chips for our snack.  The rain was still falling so very, very hard that we ate our snack in the van, and I read our history and science read alouds right there in the grocery store parking lot.

At home we watched some Scholastic book videos in both English and Spanish, had quiet time, and then released the crew to play out-of-doors in the warm late afternoon.

Pixie takes geography quizzes online. She's conquered Asia--geographically speaking.

And I let Rose Red take goofy pictures of me as I made dinner.  It amused her and kept her talking to me about her day.  I told her I'd keep this one with Lola--who is ALWAYS at my side when I'm cooking. :)

Thursday
Rose Red drove herself and her sisters to seminary without a parent!

Hooray! 

There are not words to describe how happy I am to finally reach this milestone a year and a half after I thought we'd reach it!

It was so very good to be home, keeping my finger on the pulse of the household, and getting breakfast ready half an hour earlier, allowing for more breathing room in our morning.

It wasn't raining or cold, but it was cloudy and damp.  Usually we'd have dance in the afternoons, so we mostly stick close to home on Thursdays, and even though dance was cancelled because the director and her family were on vacation, we still felt the rhythm of the week in our desire to stick close to home.

So the Elementary 8 and I had a really academic morning:

poetry (R.L. Stevenson)
How's Inky?
history
science
coloring pages (to go with the stories/selections for history and science)
narration
art--making a color wheel (far easier said than done!)

We were seriously exhausted by the end of the morning, so we had an early lunch and went to the park for a couple of hours.  I sat sewing while the kids played.

Then we experienced a miracle . . . of having a new van basically dropped into our laps.  It's not free or anything crazy like that, but it is a miracle--especially considering we started the week with a cash crisis.  It's a complicated story to explain, so I won't.  What I will do is bear witness that God moves in mysterious ways, that He is very aware of His children as individuals, and that He will provide.

We sign the paperwork and pick up the van on Saturday.

We are blessed beyond measure.

Rose Red's license and new job are inspiring her to get some schoolwork done.  I had a hunch it would work this way.  She's feeling good about her accomplishments, and I am grateful that she's inspired.

Pixie danced the evening away while the rest of us read quietly at home.

Friday

After rehearsing the musical number that the oldest 5 girls are singing (with me accompanying) for Little Princess's baptism this weekend, I took the Elementary 8 to the nature center.  First we did some school stuff at the picnic tables (and sailing of acorn cap boats in the mud puddles), then we went inside to enjoy the displays.

The teens were disappointed to find the homeschool bonfire/hayride cancelled due to inclement weather, so they invited a few friends over for a movie.  They were motivated to get schoolwork and housecleaning done so they'd be ready to receive friends.

Between the baptism, lunch with cousins, picking up our van, and getting the teens off to the local amusement park for the evening on Saturday and then church on Sunday, we've got a full weekend ahead.

But it will probably be a good kind of full . . . at least I hope so!  I know Little Princess is just glowing with excitement!

With just hours to go before her baptism, she finished reading the entire Book of Mormon for herself!  She is well-prepared to take this important step.

(linking here)