A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

 I'm not sure why I'm so full of self-doubt and complaints as I am right now, but it's a reality. I'm healthy again.   Just left with the sniffles and occasional congestion that will probably follow me until spring. But no fatigue or weepiness anymore. I got the Christmas books ready. I suppose we need a prettier basket, but I'm quite pleased with how many fabric gift bags I've sewed this month . . . and how pretty they are. (That baby gift bag on the left is how Lola chose to package one of her gifts to a sibling. 😆 ) On Monday afternoon, I sat with the kids and read all of the books we'd missed from the first to the 9th.  It was a lovely time with so many expressions of joy and remembrance as favorite books appeared.  With the fire burning and the Christmas tree lights glowing, it felt like Christmas! Their assignment that day was to choose one illustration from one of the books--each child had his/her choice--and reproduce it as well as possible.  I d...

Random picture of Lola--it's so classically her.  She's got drawing supplies outside without permission; she's on the front porch surrounded by chalk drawings; she's got her manicure set for company as she works on Pokemon art.   We have a couple of birthdays in September, and our activity schedule has been rather full, so we shuffled birthday celebrations around to less full days.  However, that made the first week of September very, very full! Little Princess is our resident baker, cake decorator, and cake decorating teacher, so she was quite busy!!! One simple, elegant cake One fun Pokemon cake--this is Gastly Little Princess could quite successfully open a gluten-free bakery.  These cakes were so delicious, so moist, so fluffy, so perfect!! But she doesn't want to.  So we get to enjoy everything she bakes. :) On the subject of Little Princess' baking, we've accidentally started the tradition of her making us all homemade chocolate chip cookies on dance d...

Last Sunday, Sir Walter Scott watched Field of Dreams with the kids.  It was the first time watching it for most of them (if not all).    When it was over, the kids had a lot of questions, so Sir Walter Scott pulled out photos of when he was able to actually go there. It was a sweet shared moment of family history . . . and perhaps a laying of groundwork for a Dad-kid outing someday. Then it was Monday, and we got up and began getting ready for the day! My youngest sister hosted, my middle sister and some of her family traveled from Utah, and we drove back and forth each day.  Each sister took a day to either provide food or entertainment, and Grandma/Grandpa helped with everything. I was on the first day's entertainment, but it was the first day, so everyone was kind of getting used to one another and catching up.  My attitude about activities this day was to hang out, swim, and jump on the trampoline.   Card games! The trampoline was in almost const...