Work & Play

1.

Changed around the schedule a bit. I get on the computer early and first thing in the morning and Viking Man gets the kids up. So far, so good. He is an early bird and happy in the morning. My motto is, "Sing and talk all you want. I'll even get up with you. Just do not involve me in all of that lovely banter until 10 a.m." The result is that  we are all getting started on the day with more direction. The only downside is Flower, who has actually cried a couple of times about being tired (cause while Viking Man is home later in the mornings he is also home later, sometimes much, much later in the evenings making bedtimes difficult).

2.

School consisted of Cub and Flower doing math workbooks plus story problems and thinking skills. I discovered WWE again so we've added that back in. It's elementary for Cub but he loves the stories and I want him to have dictation down solidly before we move on. Flower is working through ETC 7 and will be done before Christmas. Cub continues to work through Writing Tales and Science 5. He has been begging to have his writing typed instead of hand-written so we'll probably switch to that this week. Feche's second paper was due this week and he is now late. Coming up with a strong thesis is cooking his grits, not to mention the fact that he wants to write dramatically instead of coherently. Chem test coming up, too. Latin every morning. He is loving Shakespeare right now- Henry V- and would rather haul gravel than do the rest.

3.

We have a 3-5 year age gap between each of our kids and finding activities to do together has always been a challenge. Finally all of the kids are old enough to play games! We've been playing Settlers of Catan all year and Blokus and this week broke out Monopoly. We are on day 3 of a game started on Monday. Flower has a deadly monopoly set up on the yellows and collects a cool $1000+ per victim player. So far, she has accumulated a lot of property and favors (a future career in politics perhaps?), while the rest of us band together to try to survive. The odd thing is that there are houses and hotels all over the rest of t he board but somehow hers are the ones that are landed on each go around.

4.

Watched Blind Side. A bbeautiful, compelling story.

5.

Read The Last Disciple (review on Saturday). Didn't know till the epilogue that Hannegraff (the Bible Answer Man) had written it in response to the Left Behind series, which I read some of. The first couple of books were good, but after that it all seemed like such a stretch and so sensational that it just wasn't believable, or constructive.

6.

Tried to get a walk in daily which didn't always happen. It's hunting season so we are keeping strictly to the road as we hear shots throughout the day. It's a bit surreal to look out of the window in the morning and see a bow hunter, complete with bow, casually strolling past the house.

7.

I was thrilled to be nominated this week in the 6th Annual Homeschool Post Blog Awards in 2 categories, Best Homeschool Mom Blog and Best Nitty Gritty Blog, along with several of my bloggin' friends- Jen over at Home is Where the Heart is, Ana at Ana Henebry's Blog, Susan Wise Bauer of TWTM fame, Brook at Brooktopia, the Homeschool Village and several others. Take a minute to go check it out and while your there cast a vote for  a good blog or 2! (I'd love it if you voted for Golden Grasses = )! Go HERE to vote or click the button on the top right side-bar. Viking Man mentioned that it was difficult to find the actual voting place. Scroll down to a list of categories, click on a category and you'll get the list for that category. To vote, click the button; to view the blog, click the blog title.

For more Quick Takes hop over to Conversion Diaries.