Tuesday, April 26, 2011

Our crew on Easter Sunday.  They are getting so big!  

We are waterlogged and flooded in Western Kentucky but so far we haven't had any major damage from the storms at our house.  MSU was closed today, a rare occurrence.  Another round is expected tonight.  I am hoping this pattern ends before our week of camping at LBL in May.

Thursday, April 14, 2011

They are DONE!!!

The kids composed entries for their books while in Germany.  They picked the photos and chose the titles.  We tried to keep them up to date and had them nearly done when we came home.  Notice I said "nearly".  Over the last few weeks I have been tweaking them to make sure I catch all our mistakes and then I ordered them...or tried to.  Apparently when you make a book over a period of 5 months things change.  So...I have new software and their books are totally redone yet contain the same commentary and photos (join me as a I moan).  I have lost more hours of sleep than I care to mention, but they are done.  Those of you who are local can see them at the coffee house event this year.  Those who aren't and who'd like to take a peek online can do so by contacting me for an invitation to view the books on blurb.com.  Because these are composed of the kids' personal writings I have decided not to make them open to the public at large.  Send me an email or comment here and I'll get you a link to each of their books and you can see what they thought of life in Germany!

Saturday, April 9, 2011

Mental Note

Shopping for bras on behalf of one's 93 year old mother-in-law is difficult.  Taking your 6 and 8 year old boys with you makes it virtually impossible.  I just bought every one in the store in her style and size and left asap.

Monday, April 4, 2011

Teaching All Four

I was warned: "This will be a really hard year" the folks who sell me most of my materials said.  Today was the first day of teaching all four kids full time school.  Wow.  It was an 8 1/2 hour school day.  One has to understand for us this literally means Mom is teaching for 8 1/2 hours- no busy work, no breaks, just one or more kid(s) after another working with me at the school table.  Thankfully Laurel pitched in and fixed lunch and helped Katey with her math lesson.  Lets just say we have some bugs to work out and we have to find more efficient ways to get things done.   Tomorrow we do it all again and we haven't even started the daily hour of read alouds (literature written in or about the time period we are studying) planned in our curriculum.  YIKES.  I am off to bed so we can try starting a little earlier tomorrow.