APRIL FOOLS!

Two months ago Ricky randomly had the B52's song Rock Lobster stuck in his head for two weeks. He said it was horrible and all day at work he was thinking, "Rock Lobstarrr!" LOL! So last night the kids and I downloaded a rock lobster ring tone to his phone and this morning while he was in the shower I hid it under his car seat. As soon as he left this morning I started calling his phone. He called me back eventually (after he pulled over to find the phone) cracking up. He said he totally couldn't figure it out what it was at first.

Last night I froze bowls half way full of water to serve the kids cereal in today. So when they stuck their spoon to the bottom it was rock hard. lol. That one was Sage's idea, actually. It was great.

Charlotte taped a piece of paper over my computer mouse sensor so when I went to use my computer it wouldn't work. When I flipped the mouse over to take a look a little paper read April Fools Day.

When the kids came down for breakfast this morning Charlotte had Ethan's pajamas on and Ethan had hers on. I did a double take. They are SO hilarious!

Happy April Fools Day

settling in to everyday life

Doing spelling before breakfast (www.spellingtime.com) seems to be working well for us right now. Charlotte loves that spelling program. She says it really works.

Getting on a new schedule in a new place is going well. The new house is great. it seems like it's so much easier to live here. We seem organized and things are coming together regarding a routine!

Sage is doing better with reading bit by bit. It's still a slow process, he still is taking his own sweet time...but I actually saw him enjoy reading today! It was just a short few passages, but it was great! Him and Layla both do readingeggs.com which I highly recommend.

Charlotte has been doing paper quilling lately. She's doing a great job! These are not hers, but hers are just as cute examples: https://www.customquillingbydenise.com/shop/images/274Jungle.jpg

Little Sebastian decided to crawl at 6 months old, and pull up and stand at 7 months old. It's darn cute. But also darn sad. I want him to stay a baby. Why is he acting like I'm giving him extra growth hormones!

My camera's battery charger is lost. In the move I guess... so I can't take any pictures. totally annoying.

The rest of the kids are doing well. Earlier Layla asked me if I wanted to know how to be a good spy. So she takes me around the house showing me how to sneak and look around corners. Then she takes me in the kitchen and tells me how to hide under the table until everyone leaves and then sneak to get cake. Later on tonight (about 30 min later) she asked me for a snack. I tell her we just had dinner and it's bedtime soon. She then says in a very practical voice, "Buuuut mom, if you don't let me have a snack I'll just have to sneak something like I showed you."

Good point. LOL!

Today was really busy. I had people stopping by all day (pool estimate guy, water purifier estimate guy), homeschooling, company over, and housecleaning to do.

Everyday is a new day. I'm going to jump in a hot jet tub and wait for what tomorrow brings.

We love the new place

We have moved into our new house. The move was exhausting, but once in our new home we felt peaceful and completely thrilled. My dear husband has a 3o minute (sometimes 40 min) commute now to work. It used to be near 2 hours. Life is good! He helps me cook dinner in the evenings, and we have time to see the kids, have a glass of wine or 3...relax!

Most boxes seemed to unpack themselves as our lives unfolded into a new house. Our stuff fits so well. And we do too. The kids act like they have found a missing piece to life as they explore inside and out, play basketball outside on our blacktop driveway, and run up and down the stairs to their bedrooms. We all also look dreamily at the swimming pool hoping we can come up with the money to fix it up for summer! :)

I personally love all the windows in the house, the butlers closet in the kitchen, and my bathroom with jets in the tub. I don't love doing laundry in the basement however --but it's so old fashioned I tell myself I should try and like it ;)

We are now a hour and a half away from some of our closest family members. Family that we lived on the same property with for years. We are a long way from our closest friends as well. It's a little strange, and at times will be sucky...but it's also delightfully perfect to be where we are. It's good for us. And we are having a lot of fun. Our 82 year old house is full of surprises. Nearly every step creaks, each door has old skeleton key holes and crystal door knobs, the thick wooden crown molding throughout is dreamy, and the old feel is homey. I love my country kitchen.

"School" has to wait we are busy exploring newness...

Because my town printed an article that said sleeping with your children is bad and dangerous...

I want the US Dept of Health services out of our bedroom.

We love sharing SAFE sleep.

pictures

Sebastian is sitting up now, he also loves cooing and gurgling away at us.

Below is a recently acquired New Years 09 pic

We had a fun little party.

I've metioned how I love to melt all over this little guy before, yes?

I can't wait for Spring. The real Spring. Not the cold one day then kinda warm the next March rainy days. The true go out and plant stuff spring. I swear we didn't have one last year. It just rained till it flooded and then snowed in April. Below Charlotte builds an impressive snowman. It took her quite a bit of work. I had to help put the middle ball on. I don't know how we did it. No kidding that middle ball had to have weighed 60lbs.

Today...

I have been packing with the kids all day and took a break to nurse the baby.

Humm, Penelope and Layla are mooning each other right now. The dog is barking loudly indoors. I'm being told it's snack time. So I go....

Math & Why I Homeschool

We have this book called 50 Mathematical Ideas you Really Need to Know. It's my husbands book and it's a great little bathroom reader almost laid out like a miniature for dummies book... except for this book is not for dummies. It contains everything from probability to topology to fractals to Fermat's last theorem.
In the introduction of this book I was happy to read a true statement of mathematical faith from a homeschool (unschooling) parents eyes; "The time and pressure of school does not help either, For mathematics is a subject where there is no merit in being fast. People need time to allow the ideas to sink in."

I wish I had been granted such leisure in all areas of "math." If so, I may not had grown up with such the distaste I had for math. The drudgery of repetition and memorization killed all practical need I had for math in my life. Forbidding me to use a calculator to help me learn concepts when memorization failed me made me bitter. It also made it hard for me to use calculators as an adult! Computing is no good if you don't understand the concepts!

Real life allows for people, adult people, to explore and express their interests freely. I so wish children had this luxury. Math scared me, haunted me, pressured me. So when I fell behind (in just the forth grade) I fled from it like one would flee a burning building. Throughout my public school career I'd gain some speed, only to be left in the dust over and over again. There were times I didn't even try, but there were also many times I tried so hard I thought I was finally getting somewhere...but, just more dust appeared.

I can appreciate math for what it is now. A richer companion to arithmetic within a complex world of numbers, methods and theories. A mysterious subject I've never scratched the surface of.

Unschooling Math
So, we unschool math. We take it all painfully slow. Or not so painfully I should say. I want every concept, every number, every method to make sense to the kids. My husband backs me on this and since he's really mathematically smart (and the one with two degrees;) I trust his opinion in this unschool venture of our own regarding kids and math. So the other day for some reason (can't remember the context now) I mentioned while talking to the kids that 1/4 was half of a half. I didn't think I was heard so I repeated myself. Sage pipped in, "Yeah mom that's 25%."

Another one of those stunned homeschool/unschool moments. Simple? Yes. Third grade appropriate? I don't know, perhaps. But the stunned part is because we do basic arithmetic still. We do money and time practice. We do some conceptual stuff like multiplication, but in a small scale. All in all the boys do basic stuff. They learn from it. They explore it. It's still fun for them, and most important not drudgery. The point is math is everywhere and they say things like this and pick up "education" like this from everything! And that is why I love "unschooling" so very much.

The First Three Reasons: Why We Started Homeschooling
1. I was told Charlotte (at age 7-8) may need to be tested "LD" in spelling.
Are you kidding me? "Learning Disabled" in spelling? This is idiotic. Like, can't she just grow up and be a self proclaimed "bad speller"? Do they really need to label her so that she has a bona fide excuse that will help to get her to pass classes? Big whoop you're not a great speller, my family is full of them.
Not to mention telling her at age 7 or 8 she's "LD" is setting her up for a lifetime of I'm not good so I'll never be good or a "why try then" attitude.

2. I found out Charlotte was being pulled out of regular class for extra reading help.
The real kicker: She was being pulled out of class when the rest of the class was practicing for spelling tests. This explained how poorly she was doing in spelling! And I'm the one that had to point it out to the teacher! What's even more, I found out she was missing recess time for not finishing work. When was this work supposed to have been done? ...wait for it... while she was at extra reading help! (No Child Left Behind Program sponsored.)

3. Charlotte started coming home crying everyday. She didn't want to do homework and I wondered what in #!%& they did all day long only to have homework at night.
I was done with the nonsense. When taken out of public school she turned back into my happy go lucky bright eyed child again almost overnight. Within 2 years a kid whose teacher said she wasn't reading chapter books yet so that made her behind had read the whole entire 7 book Harry Potter series herself.

much needed update -click to enlarge picrures

I'm not happy when I spend time online when I have so many other things to do. BUT, I'm not happy when I don't spend time on my blog or website because not only do I enjoy it, it also stores bits of my life here and there that will one day only be a glimpse of me and these days past. I want my kids to be able to read my blogs (which I print up and store in notebooks) and see what mine and their lives were like.
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So lots has happened. Pretty fall days and Thanksgiving came and left.

I perfected my homemade organic pizza and learned how to make good home made tortillas finally (Which my kids dubbed better than the ones they had in Mexico --very flattering lol! Not sure they are that good, but okay!)

I also made and perfected homemade apple turnovers.

We switched all our flour and cheese to organic! yay! (buy through a co op)

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Christmas came and left without a trace ... well there are toys and lots of new bills too pay..sigh...

We had a beautiful time with Ricky home for lots of days in a row. And I'm wishing for a replay of all the wonderful family fun time.

Pictured here is our X mas breakfast -all 8 of us are in there. Sebastian was nursing, so you can only see his super white bald-ish head in front of me. Look at us...Mom and dad are having having mimosas :)

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Sebastian is a happy joy of a baby still. BUT teething has struck our household early. He is fussy this month. He is pushing on 5 months old (not until the 23rd) and he is unhappy about the havoc being caused by teeth buds. :( It's making this mama tired and the house fall apart a little bit too.

Oh well such is life. Poor little guy. We use hylands teething tablets, Boiron teething drops, homeopathic Belladonna, and Motrin.

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I am proud to say my husband passed the Series 7 exam! for work. Which is a big deal. (We read online only 30% of people pass it the first time --so it could have gone either way)

He spent a lot of time preparing for it. Actually, he was only home about half the month of December. It sucked. And his studying obviously paid off.

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Enough is enough

The commute to the city for Ricky to work is just enough now. He says he'll do it longer, I say hell no. The money we are spending on rooms overnight, gas, Etc. adds up. I'd rather spend that on a mortgage.

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Well, we finally found the perfect house for us. We made an offer and it's been accepted. Now we deal with costly home inspections, the process of getting our pre approved loan actually approved, and blah blah blah.

The home is lovely. The best we could do given what we want (better would be more land, but this is okay!)

We would be on 1 acre, have a old historic style house that sits right across from a old peaceful cemetery dating back to the 1800's. It has a 20x40 ft in-ground swimming pool surrounded by a fence of grapevines! It also has a small pool storage house, 2 detached garages, good trees ... one old tree particularity worth mentioning as it is huge and perfect for climbing and/or for a tree house.

The home is 4bed 2bath +2 extra small rooms, full basement (unfinished but in good shape to finish), sun room off kitchen, oh and tons of lush creeping ivy outside. I love it. We love it. It looks like home. Let's hope all goes well. Our closing date is actually set for Jan 31. Talk about getting stuff done.

...we will see...

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Penelope is crying at me and this is exactly why I don't blog any more...too much to do, too many kids to sit still ;)