Monday, August 30, 2010

How God weaves the fabric

Today was a dance day, which means that L had to be at the studio for a 3:30 class with all the appropriate clothing and two pairs of shoes in hand. It's a challenge to get her there in time. Today we pulled into the parking lot with 8 minutes to spare, but I noticed that there was a small crowd of people gathered around a dark haired lady lying on the ground. Not good.

But let me back up a few months. This story does not begin on the parking lot of the dance studio. It began with a jeep, a few paper vines, and popsicles.

At the beginning of summer, our church was trying to get the word out about our upcoming VBS. Several people were going to walk around the neighborhood, handing out free popsicles and flyers. The event was planned for a Saturday, but the popsicles, for some strange reason, didn't freeze and it had to be postponed until Sunday. I couldn't go on Saturday, but Sunday was free.

Some of us met at the church and we decorated a jeep with all kinds of palm branches and paper vines and stuffed monkeys to go with our rainforest-themed VBS. We blasted ice cream truck music and we chose just a few streets to walk since the weather was sweltering. At one point I was bringing up the rear of the group and a dark-haired woman came out of a house behind me, calling to get my attention. She had heard about our VBS and wanted to sign up her young daughter. We chatted for several minutes while I filled out a registration card and the rest of the group disappeared around a corner. I had to race to catch up.

Soon afterwards, VBS started and the little girl came every day. She had a wonderful time, even winning a prize for memorizing Bible verses. Every day she stood with her group right in front of me as I helped to lead the singing.

Over the summer, we saw each other fairly often at the neighborhood pool. I'd wave or talk for a couple of minutes with her parents. It wasn't much, but it was nice to know a couple more people at our pool.

Our dance classes started up a few weeks ago and I was surprised and pleased to see the little girl and her parents there. It was strange that we had both chosen the same studio. I mean, it's a fabulous studio, but it is about 20 minutes away from our neighborhood. In a different city. In a different state.

Today, when we pulled in I recognized the little girl standing in the parking lot and saw that it was her mother lying on the ground. As they were walking into the studio, a driver had failed to look and backed right into them. The little girl wasn't hurt, but her mother was having painful spasms in her legs. I found a small bag to put under her head and some screens to block the sun from her face until the ambulance arrived. But the most important thing I could do for her was to assure her that I would take care of her daughter.

Because of VBS and the pool, both mother and daughter knew me and trusted me.

Because our girls' dance classes are at the same studio near the same time, I was there and I could get her daughter to class like the mother wanted.

Because we handed out popsicles and I had talked to her at her house, I knew where she lived and could take her daughter home to her husband (he recently had a stroke and can't drive).

Because I was walking at the back that day, she managed to catch me before we moved on.

Because K's softball coach had a meeting tonight, she didn't have practice and I had time to wait on the little girl and take her home.

A string of mere coincidences? No.

A series of carefully orchestrated events so that one little girl would be cared for and one big God would be glorified.

Thursday, August 26, 2010

I stink/stank/have stunk at grammar

Today I schooled my kids, graded every paper, recorded all the grades, filed all the papers in carefully organized notebooks, and filled out the attendance records the state requires. I went over several grammar concepts with K as she has a test tomorrow and she's having trouble with a few things. Like...

1. sneaked vs. snuck. Did you know that sneaked is the proper word? snuck has slowly worked its way from the kind of slang only backwoods idiots use to accepted English. At least according to the dictionary. So you can use snuck now, but not if you want to traditional about it. It's like "catsup" is now "ketchup" and "doughnut" is now "donut".

2. layed vs. laid and payed vs paid. Those darn irregular verbs and their irregular spellings. Rebels. Juvenile delinquents. They're too cool to follow the rules.

3. has drunk and would have sung. Just the phrase "past participle" makes my eyes glaze over. And I majored in English.

4. Pr, P, PrP, PP. Those are the answers the worksheet wanted her to write indicating if the verb or verb phrase was Present, Past, Present Participle, or Past Participle. Could you remember which one to write for which? Heck, could you even identify a past participle if it hit you over the head?

Thankfully, I had the foresight to purchase the teacher guide with the answers, because I have to check it myself all the time to make sure I'm teaching it correctly.

Tuesday, August 24, 2010

Some of the cool stuff about homeschool

We're (kinda) officially 2 weeks into our new school year. That's the weird thing about homeschooling. There's all kinds of learning going on all the time so it's hard to pinpoint which days are "school" and which aren't. If we only count days we use actual worksheets, we're on day 7. So maybe we'll just say we're officially in our second week of school.

This week and next are shaping up to be really cool weeks. I'm digging the KONOS curriculum, but I'm just really using it as science and reading right now as the topics were hearing last week and sight this week. Last week we drew and learned that parts of the ear, did a couple of experiments, watched a couple of movies, played a few games, and read a few books on topics like the myth of Echo and Narcissus, Helen Keller, and remembering things that we see and hear.

This week (and some of next) we're learning the parts of the eye. Kate read some things and did a drawing of the structure of the eye. On Friday, our wonderful optometrist is going to be a guest teacher. He is doing L's eye exam and has promised to explain everything and show the girls what he's doing and what he looks for. He'll even show them see the inside of L's eyeball on a computer screen.

And then sometime between now and next Tuesday, a mysterious package will arrive in the mail.

And then some homeschooling friends will come over and we'll gather around the table and open the mysterious box.

And out will pop TWO EYE BALLS!!!!

We'll spend our afternoon slicing open cow eyeballs to see with our own two eyes what all the stuff inside looks like. Yep, it promises to be a rip-roaring, laughing good time.

Now, don't you wish you homeschooled?

Monday, August 23, 2010

Picky eater

My dog, Cindy Jae, has never been a good eater. When she first came, she would gobble her food as fast as possible without choking.

Who am I kidding? I think she did choke herself once or twice.

A large piece of concrete fixed that problem. And no, I didn't throw it at her. I put it in her bowl so she had to eat around it which slowed her down.

We switched from the expensive food that the kennel sent home with her to an expensive food that I could buy in bulk at the local warehouse store. At first she was fine with it, but she gradually became less interested in eating anything but socks and game controllers. There were a few times she would eat the whole bowl full of Smart Puppy Large Breed, but they were rare.

Recently it had gotten worse. She wasn't eating much and when she doesn't eat, she doesn't drink much either. No wonder she's smaller than her siblings. I even started trying psychoanalysis. Maybe she's anorexic. Maybe food is the one area she has control. Maybe she's eating socks because she wants to feel full.

"Psycho" is right.

Yesterday was the worst she's been. She didn't "busy" most of the day and she hadn't eaten much in a few days. She's been very confined lately (trying desperately to break the whole sock-eating thing), so I couldn't think of anything she might have eaten that she shouldn't. I remembered that when we kept another little puppy for a week, they kept trying to eat each other's food (they're on different types) *and* Cindy Jae is also almost a year old and that's when we switch them to an adult food anyway.

So last night I picked up a small bag of Beneful. It's brightly colored and smelly and I was hoping it would tempt that stubborn dog to EAT. I mixed some of that in with her regular food and stood back. That dog LOVED it. She polished off almost the whole bowl, but she did a pretty good job of eating just the new food and leaving some of the old type. This morning, she followed closely behind as I filled her bowl and even patiently let me put her eye drops in (she's got some kind of conjunctivitis) knowing that her bowl was coming. She normally hates the eye drops! When I let her out after a short stay in her crate this afternoon, she raced to the spot where her bowls are kept and turned away dejected that it wasn't dinnertime yet.

So maybe her problem all along was just that she hated the puppy food.

Monday, August 9, 2010

Wrestling Match in My Living Room

I got an email today from another raiser needing some puppy-sitting services. "Heck, what's one more," I thought. So I volunteered and tonight this was the scene in my living room.

Isn't he the cutest little thing? This is Charlie S. He's 12 weeks (I think) and is an absolute sweetheart. We met him Saturday at the pool party and L just cooed and loved on him. When I heard it was one of the newest additions to our group that needed sitting, I just had to bring him home, if only for a few days.

Cindy Jae was very excited to see a new puppy come waltzing through her door. I was a bit worried that she would be too aggressive, but she's been awesome. She is rather possessive of her toys, but she has shared some and she loved playing tug of war with her "squeaky". She'd grab it and pull Charlie around with it, but he was holding his own fairly well. When he'd get tired and wander off to find another toy, she'd follow him around and pester him until he'd play again.

I think it'll be a good experience for them both as they're getting along well so far. The girls have promised to be Charlie's caretakers and they are so excited to have him. The cat was not quite as excited to see yet another one of those smelly, slobbery things in the house, but she'll survive. It was so funny to watch the puppies play together tonight. It was interesting that neither dog barked or made any real noises except a few quiet growly noises from Charlie when he got really excited. You really can teach a dog not to bark. There were even a few moments when Cindy Jae let Charlie think he won.

But just for a moment.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Split class

During my own elementary years...

(you know, back in the Dark Ages)

...I attended a very small school. My 1st grade year was spent in Ms. Johnson's class. She has one small group of tiny desks facing one chalkboard and another group of larger desks facing a different chalkboard. The tiny desks were for us first graders and the larger desks were for a group of 3rd graders. She split her time and attention teaching both grades.

The very next year, I moved to the bigger desks because that year she taught 1st and 2nd.

I wonder what she felt going into each year. What grade levels would she have? How was she going to get each group to focus on their own work while she taught the other side of the room?Should she should get a bigger paddle?

(Remember this was the Dark Ages.)

We're starting school this week. After last week's cleaning frenzy, my house is mostly clean and I've been working on getting all of my school stuff organized. At the end of the school year, I tend to just shove everything out of sight because we are so ready to be done with it. The beginning is when I'm motivated to clear out and organize. So I've been tossing old folders and pulling out the boxes of curriculum I kept from K's first grade days.

My books are neatly shelved in my new yellow cabinet and the forms I need to keep for the state are mostly done. I need to get in touch with their office during business hours to reopen our school and add L to the roster. Since kids don't have to be registered until the school year they turn 7, she's never officially been to school. Actually, I never officially closed our school when K went to public school last year, so I need to find out how that's going to work. And I need to unenroll K from her elementary so they'll stop calling me and sending me forms for free or reduced lunch.

There's still much to do for lesson planning. One friend commented that she had her lesson plans completed through Thanksgiving. Sigh. I've got most of the first 5 days. For K. Ah well, we don't start until Wednesday and I've decided this week will just be getting started with the KONOS curriculum. That's been the most difficult to pin down and I'd like a few trial days to see how it works for us.

The idea of teaching 5th grade and 1st grade is a bit daunting. At least I've gone through 1st grade before with K and all of L's phonics, reading, and writing will be taught by a teacher on video. A teacher who has the patience to repeat and repeat and repeat. That will keep L occupied while K and I work on her math and language. This is the year of diagramming sentences, the thing I hate the worst about grammar. And yes, I did buy the teacher key for her language book; I stink at grammar.

Another year of split class. Maybe we should celebrate our first day of school with banana splits all around. Yep, I'm definitely putting that in my lesson plans.

Thursday, August 5, 2010

Working hard

I'm working right now. Working I tell you.

I know. You're asking yourself how I'm working and blogging at the same time. It's not like blogging is working.

Nope, I'm sitting in my brown chair that I just glued the leg back on. The wood itself broke on the little short stubby legs. And when you are gluing wood back together, you have to clamp it. Well, I can't exactly clamp the whole chair, so I had to come up with something different.

Like sitting in it.

So I have 30 minutes of enforced inactivity. I can't complain. The laundry is done. The black cabinet is now a lovely yellow. The kitchen is kinda clean. I'm getting there. I'm watching a movie with L.

Oops, my 30 minutes is almost over and I've got to brace the leg with brackets and then go help K clean her room. Fun times.

Wednesday, August 4, 2010

Still busy and some awesome recipes you have to try

It's just been one of those weeks where there's lots to do. Fun stuff. Good stuff. Just lots of it!

Today we ran errands. I had a long grocery list with a couple other stops to make. The many delays we ran into that turned a quick trip into a 3 and a half hour adventure were almost funny. The store didn't have what we needed, the registers broke, the aisle with the one item we wanted was blocked and no one was around to help, every customer in Target decided to check out at once, I forgot a pen to mark items off my list and kept having to backtrack, etc., etc. Thank goodness we weren't on a tight schedule.

We finally got home with almost everything we set out for, and I spent the rest of the afternoon cooking. I put the brisket in to marinate for Friday and I made chicken spaghetti for the church dinner tonight. I highly recommend you click both those links and go make some for yourself. They are 57 kinds of amazing. But don't believe her when she tells you how many servings it makes. Remember she is feeding hard-working cowboys and what they call a "serving" is probably more than you eat in a day.

Today I also did lots of laundry, washed sheets and remade my bed, made the children smoothies and taught the oldest how to make them, and started painting the cabinet thing I bought at a yard sale. That's in addition to taking care of the dog, the cat, and making the kids feel that they're important to me.

Yep, it's been a crazy busy day. And there's a whole list of the same and more to do tomorrow. Like make 3 of these for Friday night. Haven't tried them, but they look amazing and I haven't been disappointed with any of her recipes yet. I love having people over, but it's a whole lot of work.

Ok, it wouldn't BE so much work if I would keep my house clean and stay caught up on the laundry on a regular basis. Maybe I should just invite people over more often so I would be motivated.

So when are YOU coming over?

Monday, August 2, 2010

Sick, busy, the best mom in the whole world, and a funny story

Over the weekend, I had what can only be described as the summer plague. It's like the summer cold, but it comes with fever and the desire to bury oneself under the covers for days on end. Once the fever finally breaks, the lingering cough sends everyone around running for cover.

It's a pleasant way to spend summer break.

I was finally clear of the gunk late yesterday, just in time to make a lunch date with a friend who has adopted 4 children from China. I managed to convince her 10-year-old, who has only been home from China for a month, that I speak Chinese. Well, at least we think I did. She started spouting a whole conversation until I had to tell her I couldn't understand her. That is indeed one of the few useful phrases I know in Mandarin. I could ask her if her food was good, tell her that my daughter had the same name as her sister, that she and my daughter were almost the same age, that she had cold water in her glass, and that I could not understand the words that she was saying. All very useful vocabulary.

After lunch, I went over to another friend's house to pick up a book of math tests she is letting me borrow for this year. We were already on that side of town, so I just combined my errands. When we got there, the little girls disappeared to go play their games of princess and Barbies, but there wasn't much for K to do. So she sat with her head 6 inches from mine while I tried to have a grown-up conversation with my friend.

Do you know how hard it is to concentrate when there's a 9-year-old listening to every word that is said? It really puts a cramp in the conversation.

I told her to play with the dog. I told her to play checkers with the little boy. My friend's older son came home and half the kids went out to swim, so I sent K out to put her feet in the pool. She was soon splashed by the boys, so I told her she could just go ahead and swim in her clothes. It wasn't going to hurt her and we weren't going anywhere afterwards AND I immediately became the coolest mom in the whole world.

I love it when I can say "yes" when they fully expect the answer to be "no".

We ended up staying 2 hours. Eventually the little girls came downstairs and L stood looking out the back window. I cringed knowing what was coming next. "Why is K swimming?"

"Because there wasn't anything else for her to do," I answered.

"Does she have a swimsuit?" L demanded.

"No, she's just wearing her clothes."

L looked down at her favorite China Doll outfit she was wearing. I guess she figured it wasn't worth messing up her nice clothes, because she just responded with "Ok" and went to watch TV.

My friend and I fell out laughing at my youngest who is such a princess that she chose NOT to swim rather than get her pretty clothes wet.

And that's my funny story for the day.