Another reason why my children must be homeschooled

I can't send them to public school. Nope.
The "baby" who is 1st grade this year in here in the living room doing his math workbook on the coffee table.
As he does each problem, he says it out loud in a game show voice....."Seven plus two is...NINE. Then he sings his little theme song while he writes down the answer.
Dun-nu dun-nu nuuuuu dun-nu-nu-nu.
Which I guess is better than him randomly singing verses of "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" like he was yesterday.

Oh yeah, the PS teachers would just love this kid. He'd be "on red" and I'd get phone calls every single day.

I wouldn't have put money on it.

The youngest one is 5 and let's just say that he inherited his mother's talking gene.

Today is a beautiful ,albeit, windy day. It's also the first day of Spring Break and the neighborhood is infested with children to play with.

As I tried to convince the youngest boy to go outside and play, he told me that he couldn't go outside because of the bees.

Yep, that was his explanation."Because of the bees. I can tell the difference. Not the boys from the girls because they all look alike. I can tell the bees from the wasps. And those are bees.....plus it's windy."

I paused to register all this explanation and he continued, "The wind is blowing really hard and a bee might just get caught in the wind and blow into me and sting me. Even if he, or it might be a girl...even if she didn't even want to sting me."

Now, we don't have a bee problem. There are bees in the area because there are flowers. We don't have bee hives nor have I seen a mass migration of stinging creatures, so I'm not sure where this worry comes from. So I told him to take his chances and go outside anyway.

Wouldn't you know it, as soon as he stepped outside, a bee was blown into him.

She didn't sting him. Thank goodness. I would have never heard the end of that if she had.

Watch out for bees. Flying or wind-borne.

He did it

This is the baby sporting his relatively new glasses and playing around with my old camera that I gave him.
"It's new to me," he said before setting out to figure out how to take pictures with it. He couldn't just let me show him how to use it.

Isn't he just the cuteness. (Y'all ignore my voice on there.)

We are here. We are here. We are here. We are heeeerrrrreeeee!

Sam wandered into our room while ZD worked on his laptop. "I need a hair cut." he said in annoyance. ZD playfully asked him if he wanted a haircut like his...a soldier's cut with a little length on top.
Sam inspected his father's head and replied, "Yeah....but without all the bald parts."
We're still giggling with each other about that one.

It's been baseball central around here. Season I is finally finished and they are now onto Season II. On Saturday we had a bit of overlap. M & A had games over at the Y and the oldest boy had a double elimination tourney at our church league.
Holy Moley! That boy played baseball all day. The first game was at 9 am and they finally lost the last game at 5 pm. His team came in second place overall, which was how they were ceded coming into the tourney. The team that won really deserved it. We couldn't have lost to a more encouraging coach or nicer man.
I spent the time managing the dugout, keeping the score book, and knitting a very orange pair of socks. Oh yeah, and working on a seriously hot farmer's tan.


I spent half an hour trying to order curriculum for next year's school year. It should have been a quick click and then type in my credit card number, but the company's system wouldn't acknowledge my address. It kept trying to assign me to the town next door. I finally called customer service and convinced them that the two town share the same zip code...though we have our very own post office.
I felt like a "Who" trying to convince the rep in some cold Midwestern place that I really did exist and that I wasn't existing in the town she thought I was.


I'm just about to start the planning for next year's school year. I still have to order a new microscope and decide on a logic program. The basics are all done though. We're sticking with MCP math and Singapore math for the younger ones. Oldest boy will be using Lial's Basic College Math. Everyone is using Rod and Staff English, Spelling Workout, and Wordly Wise.
Oldest boy is reading short stories and poetry this year. We'll sprinkle in a few good novels and introduce Shakespere. But for now he is content to work through an Edgar Allen Poe collection.
Matthew has a school literature book and a whole shelf of biographies to read. This weekend he started with the biography of Albert Einstein. (Who, according to M, left his wife for his cousin. He was quite outraged by that.) The two younger ones will continue with Hooked on Phonics and Explode the code.
History is way off the classical method. Sam will be covering stuff through Five in a Row. A & M will continue with the Core Knowledge History and Geography series. Oldest boy is happy with a Geography and cultures textbook. (We had an interesting discussion about GDP this morning.)
For Science we're using Five in a Row, Harcourt Science, and PH Science Explorer Life Science.
Oh....and we're returning to Latin this year. I've ordered Latin Prep from Galore Park for my oldest. He plans to study it on his own. I think he can knock himself out on that one and I wish him well.
Now I just have to schedule everything to make the upcoming year as smooth as possible....especially since we'll have to move in the middle of it.


The pool opens this week. It's the last week of public school. So either way, my peaceful mornings are over.
If the kids don't bug me about going swimming, the neighbor kids will be ringing the doorbell at 8:30 in the morning.
On a positive note, the ice cream man hasn't been seen in weeks. Maybe he's moved on to more fertile pastures.


Last bit o' news. J has started his road to cosmetically straighten teeth. We start "stage 1 intervention" tomorrow. Let's just say that neither none of us is filled with joyous anticipation. Thank goodness for that Health Savings Plan and the fact that he could walk home from the orthodontist if he had to.

Enjoy your pearly whites, straight of not.

What if God were one of us?

At the baseball field on Saturday.
Sam runs up to me and hands me a book mark with images from Jerusalem.

"Don't 'woose' that. I got it from Jesus." (pronounced in a way to rhyme with Cheese-its.)
Really? From the Man himself?
"Yeah, so don't 'woose' it. It's my Jesus thing. Jesus gave it to Coach Bobby and Coach Bobby gave it to me.

Well, that clears things up a bit.
The book mark from the Jesus has been quite the favorite thing around here. Of course in Sam's eyes, Coach Bobby ranks as pretty important too.

Words from Sam

I was whistling while I was knitting. I guess I don't whistle much since Sam was impressed by my ability.
"Mom! You can whistle..........with your mouth!"

Huh? I was genuinely perplexed.
"Honey, what else would I be whistling with?" I asked because I just had to know how he would answer me.

He looked at me with that "oh you poor foolish woman" look and he sighed at me.
"With a whistle." he answered. The boy is convinced that his mother is daft.

That's why the Army guys love them.

Littlest guy Sam came running downstairs after dressing himself.
He was was wearing a pair of tan cargo pants and a red shirt and we was really excited.

"Mom....Mom...Mom....Look!" he yelled to me, pointing to the pockets on the legs of his pants. "I've got TWO extras. Two! See." He pulled apart the Velcro holding the pocket and immediately began stuffing little Star Wars figures inside.

Apparently, when you're a four year old boy, having extra pockets is one of the best things ever.