School?  Today?  We had 3″ of snow last night, the first since December.  But we are trying to do school amid the excitment of seeing a blanket of white.  Finally it feels like winter here.  OKAY, that’s long enough, how soon will spring come?  Oh, yea, we’re getting more snow tonight followed by freezing rain.  Now that’s the kind of winter we have here.

Our 3-1/2 month old puppy just went to the door and cried to go outside.  YIPEEE!!  I think we have turned the corner on housetraining.

The report is she did a oney

For the first time ever I received chocolate for Valentine’s Day.   And TWO boxes, one each from each son.   Pat brought home a bouquet of flowers too.  What a great surprise after we all went out for Chinese.

Although the wind is blowing the house around tonight we had a taste of summer today when we visited Longwood Gardens. ScienceKid asked to go there to help him in Biology. He told me that he is a visual learner and he knows he learns so much better when he can see the item he is reading about. A chip off the ol’block was my reaction. That’s the way I learn too. We headed to Longwood for an enjoyable afternoon.

How’s this for a little sunshine?

Or how about some orchids?

I felt like a Bird-in-paradise at Longwood.

Just one look at these orchids got me thinking happy thoughts far away from the wind trying to blow the building down.

Summer, that’s just how it felt all around us.

Yellow orchids

Purple orchids:

And lady sliper orchids. (Ok, I know that’s not their true name but it is what I call them.)

Oh, just looking at these photos brings back the smell, the odor, the lovely flavor of summer.

Orchids were everywhere.

Oh, let’s go back and look at some more orchids:

And while we’re there looking, let’s have some nice violin playing:

Now, I have never, ever had a woman, in my garden, playing a violin while I looked at flowers.

This week I went through ALL our history books, pulled ones the boys have outgrown, which I find that part depressing.   That means they are growing up, moving on, becoming responsible young men.  Oh, now that part is good.

The shelves were cleared, books were put into piles according to their ages; Ancients, Middle Ages, and then I had to leave those general time periods to get more specific, Explorers, Pilgrims and Early Explorations, Revolutionary War, Early 1800’s, Civil War—those books take over a 3′ book shelf, Late 1800’s, WW1, WW2, Korea, Vietnam, and all the post WW2 books.   Then I went through all our fiction books that we just have and, gulp, shelved them according to the author’s last name.   It was good going through them all.  Refueling, which is what I needed.  Amazingly ScienceKid was refreshed by it too, and MilitaryKid discovered a few books in the process that he wants to read now.

Then I skimmed through all our science and math books and pulled a few of them too.   What a huge pile of books.  Last night I entered all the book titles and conditions into the PC, sent it off to a few friends in my area to see what they might like to grab, and in a few days will start listing the items here and over at WTM For Sale Boards.   Presently the list is 6 pages, single spaced for the most part, in length.  My boys are not hard on books so all of them are in great condition, and many look brandy new.

So, check back for the list early in the week.

Oh, and our school room now looks neat and tidy, without piles of books laying on the floor since there wasn’t any room for them on one of the 44 x3′ long shelves, or 132 feet, or  1,584 inches of bookshelf space.    My living room on the other hand looks different with piles and piles of books, so please buy some!

In honor of my youngest-oldest sister’s birthday in February I thought I would share a things I learned from this sister of mine:

1–siblings can get along and enjoy each other’s company (Visiting her home and seeing her children enjoy each other in ‘88 made me realize that #1 was possible. It took a few years before SK finally came along but if I hadn’t learned this from her he would not be here.)

2–recipes can be used as guidelines. Soup is meant to hold any leftover that is in the refrigerator. Meals are meant to be enjoyed, and if you don’t like it then something else from the frig or cabinet should go into the pot.

3–getting older means your kids are getting closer to your age since your age never alters.

4–dogs are not meant only for families with young kids. This is why I did not take into account that my kids will be off in college and I will still have their two dogs here with me.

5–being a parent means doing for your kids what you want to do for them. It does not mean you have to do the same thing for them as your parents did for you. If you want them to have 6 pillows then they can have 6 pillows even though you were never permitted to have more than one pillow.

6–it is possible to parent differently than you were parented. You just have to work at it a bit harder.

7–if you want to do things differently then you best study or read so you can change

8–Children are to be enjoyed, for all times, and at all ages. There is no such thing as the terrible-two’s or any other such negative labeling. We do not need to grow out of enjoying to be with our children, ever.

On Friday afternoon we joined our homeschool group for an afternoon of roller skating at the local rink. I, of course sit and chat with other moms, and then a phone call came for me. The rink doesn’t have very good reception so I headed outdoors to chat. When I came back in I found ScienceKid being talked to by one of the referees, and he called me over.

Oh no, what did he do? What was this all about? Actually the HUGE smile on SK’s face told me that everything was quite alright. SK shared that he was pulled off the rink cause he was going way too fast around the rink, and now the referee was inviting SK to join the rink’s speed skating team. LOL….LOL….LOL

SK was so pleased, really, really pleased. And he skated slowly the rest of the Friday afternoon session. Sunday morning before the sun was up (what was I thinking when I agreed to do this?) we headed to the skating rink. No one was there. SK convinced me to buy him a donut at the Dunkin Donuts place nextdoor, and while he ate and drank his hot chocolate I enjoyed my large cup of decaf. He shared what he had done at the sleep-over birthday party he attended Friday night, and we just had some nice mom-son time, for 30 minutes. And then the cars started rolling into the skating rink.

The practice lasted for 2 hrs and SK had a SUPER time. He totally loved every minute, even when he took a fall. But he fit right in. I liked it that the skaters ranged in age from youngsters to middle-aged folks, all interacting with each other, and many of the skaters have known each other for years,. We’ll be back next week too.  Maybe by then SK will be able to convince his brother to join in.

MK worked really hard this week and amazingly got all his work done! YEA!! For the week he did:

Math: an exercise each day in his Singapore Math 6A book, and 3 speed drills from the R&S math book

History: 2 outlines from Kingfisher History Enc, updated his timeline, and finished reading The Sword in the Circle—finally. He’s been trying to get through that book since New Years Day. He did some research reading and then wrote a topic report on the Feudal System. It was one page, double-spaced, handwritten, and not bad.

Science: We read How the Weather Works, he read a Lesson in his Science textbook and did the required practice tests. He also started working on his Bio-Process Science Olympiad event with his partner, and they flew their glider for the first time. Tomorrow he’ll work with his partner to build two more gliders.

Logic: He completed a problem in MindBenders B and started a new one. These are quite challenging for him.

Classical Composition: The fable this week was the Dog and his Shadow. Ya know the one, the dog has a bone in his mouth, crosses a bridge, sees a dog with a bone in the water, and tries to grab the bone. The dog loses his in the process. MK outlined the story, re-wrote four sentences, five different ways, and re-wrote the story from his outline 3 different ways. Directions for each re-write is clearly explained in the manual so there is no guesswork or planning on my part. CC has worked well with each of my boys, and I think it is because the directions are so easy for ME to follow.

Grammar: MK easily did 5 lessons in his R&S 6 book this week, concentrating on the proper pronoun to use. I only ever have him read the writing exercises in the R&S book. This is the one subject where we do not use a secular grammar program and for the most part I do not find R&S’ book to be preachy or objectional. We are Christians but I’d rather not have our textbooks filled with Bible verses and Biblical tales. Classical Composition is not secular either once you are out of level 1 but we just skipped the lessons that were totally Biblical based.

Latin; ahh, MK’s least favorite subject but he worked through Lesson 7 in Matin Latin 2.

PE: MK did swim team twice this week, and we joined the new Y in our area. I am sooooo excited about this. They have a great looking pool which should be awesome to use. Actually, I think I’m more excited then the kids. We’ll fit this into our budget by dropping MK’s swim team workouts, which will more than pay for half the monthly membership fee for our entire family. And I promised to stop pestering DH for an endless pool for our home.

Oh, MK asked his Dad if he could buy an IPod nano with the money he has saved. DH said he would agree if MK were to complete all his work from now to the end of the year as I have planned it out. Amazing what this little carrot has done for motivating one boy

One last point—GO PATS!!!  (Terri, please understand, I lived in MA for 16yrs, my boys were born in MA, and if they don’t win, oh well, it won’t be the end of the world.  I’ll still talk with you and Peyton.)