It's Wednesday, David

Though I was just sure a few hours ago it was Tuesday. I hate losing a day like that.

I’m trying to be faithful to blog, but I don’t know what to blog about. Somehow, I can’t remember a single thing about yesterday. I’d be worried about old age getting to me or something had I not been just as forgetful (or worse?) when I was a teenager. So the only logical assumption is that I’m perfectly normal and healthy. :-)

Today has been a good day, although it didn’t exactly go as planned. In the end, I can see several accomplishments so that makes me happy. I hadn’t planned on doing laundry today. I didn’t get to it on Monday and had a fleeting thought that I’d just wait until next week and do both weeks’ worth together. Shouldn’t be a problem… we sometimes take two or even three week trips and get by okay. Well, yesterday James bought some underwear because he didn’t have any in his drawer. Joe heard about it this morning and said, “Yeah, I don’t have any shirts in my drawer.” Then Sam said, “This is my last pair of socks!” And they had holes in them. Ha! So I guess it was time for laundry day after all! And maybe a trip to the thrift store in the near future...

The kids worked hard on school today and…

Katie finished 3rd Grade!!!!!

Again. :-) She had actually completed most of a 4th Grade curriculum, but when we started into S.o.S. we put her back into 3rd as a sort of a review to make sure she was ready to move on. She had several tests to take today and did great, for the most part. Most of the things she screws up on are just stupid mistakes borne from rushing through or not reading the directions carefully. But she finally got everything taken care of that she needed to and is forever finished with 3rd Grade! Never to return again, this time. :-) I printed out her report card (24 pages of it—whoa!) and she had 99% or 98% as her overall score in each subject. She is thrilled and feels the satisfaction of having accomplished something big. She’s not so thrilled about our upcoming school plans for her…

We’ve decided to wait and start Joe into 3rd Grade (though he’s doing 4th Grade work right now… it’s so confusing around here!) and Katie into 4th after Assembly time next year. It just feels like it will work best that way instead of starting into a new “year” for them right now. So between now and then we’re going to be concentrating on lots and lots of math and reading/writing assignments. Specifically: book reports. Our kids read soooooooooo much (I’ve often wondered if I should take a picture of the stack of books each week before we return them to the library—as part of our homeschool records!) and I think it will be good for them to learn to write reports. Besides, I had to do that in school and I hated it, so it’s only right that they should endure the same misery. Ha! As for math, we’re going to give them lots of drills each day. Some addition and subtraction to just keep them fresh, but mostly multiplication—until they’ve got their tables down pat and don’t have to struggle to think of what 8x7 is. (Like their mother still does sometimes!) Joe’s been doing some pretty good long division, but it would be sooooo much easier if he could quickly recall ALL of the multiplication facts instead of struggling with them. So it’s going to be books, reports, and loads of math around here for the next few months.

And speaking of math… Sam’s been doing GREAT in his 1st Grade book and seems to thoroughly enjoy it. Although he’s still in the very beginning stages of learning to read, he does well—and lots of the exercises are helping him. But yesterday he got into some regular math work (3+4 and stuff like that) and he LOVED it. Begged for more. So today James printed out several extra math pages for him and he sat down and worked through all of them—and did fantastic. I think he only missed one or two problems total--and there were a bunch. And he finally feels SMART, which is the most important thing. :-) It’s been tough on him knowing that Katie and Joe were both reading at age 4 and he’s 6 and still isn’t “really” reading. So having the numbers click for him has got him sooooo excited. “Mom, my brain was made for numbers!” he told me this afternoon. :-) I’m so glad he’s feeling satisfaction like that!

Back to the book reports… I hauled a bin in from the shed today labeled “Bec’s Memories.” I knew I had some of my old school work in there and I wanted to show the kids how to do book reports since they've never actually seen one. Well, that turned into an all afternoon venture! Not because I couldn’t find the reports, but because there was so much cool stuff in there I hadn’t seen in YEARS. It was sooooooo fun sorting through all of it. School work and class pictures and report cards from elementary school, mementos from Camps (one with a picture of me “in” a mirror from my very first PeeWee Camp where I got saved), a chunk of the airplane I crashed in (a small chunk—ha!), old prayer lists, letters from friends (I think there were 88 of them from you, Emilee! I didn’t actually count… they’re all numbered)… Oh, I can’t remember what all. My first pair of glasses! HA! Oh, that was hilarious!!! They are HUGE!!!!! I had no idea they were that big! The lenses are about the size of small coasters! Ha! The kids thought that was great. Old diaries. That was pretty embarrassing! I didn’t have time to actually READ all the letters or diaries (it would take weeks!), but I skimmed enough to laugh a lot. It was just so fun to see all of that stuff again. And I did find 3 or 4 book reports to show the kids how it’s done. And remind myself of the same. ;-)

I was having so much fun rooting through my history that I totally lost track of the time and suddenly it was after 5:00. I had boiled three chickens and had plans to cook a meal with some of the meat tonight. It was already dinner time so I figured I’d just make some noodles and throw in the pot with the broth and some of the chicken meat and a few seasonings—voila—chicken noodle soup. You can’t make noodles without eggs and I didn’t happen to have any of those. (A terrible thing to run out of!) Oops. Okay, poppy seed chicken casserole—an old favorite around here. Nope, no minute rice. Um… chicken cornbread casserole? Nope. Don’t have any bell peppers either. It was already after 6:00 and James was hungry and about to get cranky (ha!) and I was running out of options. He finally said, “Everybody in the car—we’re going out for Chinese!” So although I had great plans for a nice home cooked dinner, we ended up eating sesame chicken and rice. Then we ran to the grocery store to buy eggs and bell peppers. :-)

And that’s pretty much our day. Seems like there were a few other things… Oh, I printed out the sheet music to Yesterday for Joe. He has no interest in that song, but would love to learn how to play Tim Hawkins’ Chick-Fil-A version. In fact he was looking at the chords and reading some of the lyrics and finally said, “Hey! …That’s not how it goes!!!” Ha! I had to explain that this was the real song; the Chick-Fil-A version was a spoof. I transposed it so he could play it in a key he could sing it in. He said it didn’t matter—he didn’t need to sing it, just play it. I told him if he didn’t sing it folks would just think he’s playing Yesterday… you know, the song about being all sad ‘cause you lost your girl… He decided he’d better stick to C or D where he can sing the Chick-Fil-A lyrics to avoid any confusion! Ha!