National Museum Day (Saturday)

Many cities in America had FREE entrance to their museums on Saturday. Our little (88K) town has 4 museums and all were free on Saturday. We've been to the Fort several times. We just went to the Nature Center in the last couple of weeks. I would love to go to the Fine Arts Museum but really I think I'd be too slow for the younger group to enjoy. Mike is REALLY slow at a museum ::snort::.... In fact this adorable character trait led to some reminiscing about a visit to an air museum in Pensacola with our family and the R family. We've NEVER been to the train museum....off we went...those who were home and available....

We were given a tour guide who had worked at our Historic Santa Fe depot (98 years old) for 40 years. He was passionate and knowledgeable. (He also had peppermints that he handed out to everyone but we noted Stacia and Arielle got HANDFULS!)

Huge to scale model that the kids can climb in

Lots of train set ups - this one is a living room sized set up - made me wonder....

Date Nails were pounded into ties and then they could tell which year the ties had been placed...

All enjoyed these but Zander was mesmerized...

What's wrong with this photo

Hmmm...A Christmas Idea? Maybe.... Well it would be a family Christmas/Birthday toy as I'm quite sure it is over their $50 per child Christmas budget. LOL

They had several real train cars for us to climb around on

An "almost" family photo ::grin:: Jared took it and the older 3 are off and about....

Re-Cap Again -

Maybe I'll quit trying to keep up over the weekend.

Friday night - Mike didn't get home at 5:30 but was home by 11:30 p.m. We did have dinner with some friends and then came home to wait until time to pick up Mike.

Saturday - we lazed around in the a.m. We visited a train museum. We prepared for Sunday School.

Sunday - Sunday School began. It was nice to be back in the routine. Mike and I are teaching the younger set this year....we had a good time...small class....4 of our children and 1 new family.

We left directly after Sunday School to drive Jamin and Jared to World View Camp - 4 hours away. We met some friends at the camp who were dropping off THEIR children (Brad and Brenda - Mom and girls). We went to dinner and visited...then drove back home. We got back home around 11:00 p.m. Mike then helped Cy edit a paper that was due today....got a uniform ready for work, and did something else - I was comatose by then and haven't a clue.

Monday - getting the week going. We've worked on school, gone to Curves, and sent in a Shop Natural co-op order this a.m. It will be interesting to have only younger ones around here. Josiah is still home but he's closing every night this week and has college classes - we go several days without seeing him - we usually see him on Sunday. LOL

Photos later.

New Short Story

Jamin has published the first part of a 3 part short story set in AK on his blog, if you care to read.

Produce co-op, friends, phone calls, pizza, movies - Friday night.

The boys are out with friends and the youngers are watching The Big Green again. Michael's plane was delayed but he'll be in sometime tonight...

Stacia's Play School

I'm going to steal Deja's term. It goes well with my endeavor to funschool! LOL

At our MNO on Monday our speaker, Julie, shared some of my all time favorite verses (Philippians and James). It was encouraging.

She was also practical. She shared that she puts her twin 2 yos in their high chairs during school. Jared used to sit for HOURS and play in his chair while we did school. No one else has enjoyed this idea.

Julie also shared that she lets her twins make books. THIS was an idea that had real potential. I bought a pack of .39 blank index cards. I hole punched them. I put them through one of those notebook ring things. I bought the CHEAP teacher stickers at Walmart.

Sure enough - we started to do couch school and she started fussing. She wanted up, down, a bottle and was just very noisy. I grabbed her "book" and the stickers. She spent the whole time we read peeling stickers off and putting them on cards.

We moved to writing at the table and I brought out

Here's my confession of the week: years ago I banned all crayons from our home. ALL. I was tired of finding melted crayons in the car, marks on stray cushions and walls....I did buy colored pencils.....but I went and bought crayons....and Stacia had a great time playing with them while we worked on writing. There you have it - I think my transformation from school at homer to funschooler is now complete. I let Legos back into our home. I make messes quite often in school. Maybe I still need to figure out the whole salt dough thing? I'm oh so very close to being a real funschooler. PBS emailed that I'm getting "The Relaxed Homeschooler" in the mail.....

Thursdays

Continue to be our busiest day. Tonight I was once again armed with dinner in the crock pot. The boys gave the Chicken Divan in the pot a thumbs up. I don't think it was as good as my oven version, but it tasted near the same. I added crackers and cheese in the last 30 minutes....I think next time I'll leave the lid off...the crackers weren't as crunchy as typical. The boys would rather have ANY Divan than NO Divan...they certainly wouldn't have gotten Divan from the oven on a Thursday without the crock pot. LOL

Yes, I watched Miss Potter last night. I loved it. I missed having the girls here to watch with me.

My back has really been hurting a LOT since Saturday. I've not mentioned it because I'm stubborn and determined that my decrepitude is not going to take over my focus and life. By last night I could barely walk. I finally took meds and spent the night in pain with a hot pad. Today I skipped working out and continued meds. I'm sore....and praying it heals quickly. I'm guessing I'll have to skip work out again tomorrow....and sit with heat....please do pray if you think of it.

We got school done - see post above.

I took on of my gals, whose dh is deployed, to lunch. It was fun.

I ran to the store to pick up a few items for some care packages I was putting together.

We drove two boys to HoF.

The youngers and I then delivered care packages.

We came home and started rice and did a quick pick up.

We ran to pick up boys.

Back home for dinner. Josiah came home for Divan and took Jamin and Jared to work and CAP for me. YES! That is one less road trip I need to make - and I can sit with the heating pad instead. Poor Josiah worked today, had homework and a class, and went back in to help out tonight...the good thing is he'll get a nice bonus AND he can bring JAMIN home so I don't have to go get him at 10:00.

I'll go pick up Jared tonight from CAP and call it a night.

Friends - that has to be the best part of the day. Lunch with Debbie and then Brenda called. We met Brenda and her family in San Antonio when we lived down there. I'd been thinking it had been a LONG time since I heard from her. I kept emailing and then stopped and figured I'd better call....but you KNOW how calling is with me....I am still planning. I got a call today as I was driving (brief) and my emails for the past year had been caught by some spam and all delivered at once. We're going to talk tonight. Some of her young adults will be at the World View camp this week that Jamin and Jared are attending.

Ewwwww....

Does this look the face of a child capable of such GROSSNESS????

Our house MOVES on Thursdays!

I was busy getting the final touches of the Chicken Divan into the crock pot (we'll see how it works) when Stacia came running in. We'd let her play in the back yard (off the library so several students were RIGHT THERE) while I finished in the kitchen.

Stacia ran in and said, "Jared - LOOK! I have poop." And she did. In her hand. Turns out it was Beatrix' dog doo. ::ugh::, ::gag::, ::pfft::

I'd forgotten how the Nikon tends to make folks "blink"....but here's a shot of her first hair cut....yes, it's short...because she or Zander cut 1/2 the back week's ago...I waited for it to grow enough to be human and then evened the back and cut the bangs....as I said it's a work in progress to cut her and Zander but by Sunday she should look fairly spiffy!