Random Lessons from the week

1. When your 20 month old spills an entire bottle of white out on the wooden kitchen floor, you better get to it fast or else it's REALLY hard to get up. Let's just say I had to get out an SOS pad to scrub the floor. Note to self: Keep white out out of reach next time.

2. Don't get the girls started on a conversation of the Bill of Rights. It will go on forever, there are 10 of them right? We discussed our freedom of religion and the right to bear arms (you know, your right to keep your arms. haha) all the way to dance the other day. I didn't know what the third one was, so the conversation had to end. This all got started because we had learned that day in history how the Pilgrims had come to America to pursue religious freedom and the girls wanted to know what that was. Wouldn't you point them to the Bill of Rights too? History is really coming together at our house. And no, I did not get into Obamacare!

Last night while we were skyping with Matt, I was telling him about our conversation and he looked up the Bill of Rights and I remember him saying that number 7 or 8 was the right to not be punished with cruel or unusual punishments. Today this came up. We have talked a lot about how the English king and others punished people in the 1500-1600's. The girls wanted to know if we beheaded people here in America. That would go against "cruel and unusual punishments," right? Then they wondered if they still beheaded people in England. I said I don't think so. Bloody Mary didn't get her name for nothing back then!

During the same lesson, we were learning about the Puritans and it mentioned how they had settled at Jamestown (named after King James of England, of course) and about John Smith. I looked at Megan and said, "Now how do we know about John Smith?" She just looked at me. "Pocohontas" of course! I wonder how accurate that movie/ story is?

Then her next sentence was, "How come we are studying American history? I thought we were studying world history." We are studying world history, but this all ties together, I can't wait for American history next year! I sometimes have to stop myself with the history lessons and making connections.

Like right now, the girls are watching "Annie" and I just want to stop and point things out, but I'm not. You know the "Mona Lisa," "Venus", the red carpet, President Roosevelt, the New Deal, orphans, orphanages, New York, poverty vs. rich, etc. But not everything has to be a lesson, right? I'm sure they picked up on some of these.

3. Today we were out digging in the dirt. Three children, scoops, buckets, and we were just having fun. Soon we started to dig up these white little bugs that looked like roly polies. Right away Courtney said, "Mom, where is the computer???" She wanted to look them up right away and learn about them. We kept digging and burying these poor little bugs. Soon we dug up a worm and watched that for awhile. I think Christian would've picked it up if I would've let him! I think Courtney would have too, Megan stayed back!

Anyway, when it started to thunder, I made everybody go inside and right away Courtney wanted to learn about these bugs. I didn't know what they were either, so after some searching online, we finally found on that they were white grubs! This was no surprise, but the very interesting part was their life cycle. Courtney had learned in preschool last week how caterpillars spin a chrysalis and then turn into a butterfly. These grubs do the same thing! They go into a pupa and then turn into Japanese beetles! Courtney got out her notebook and copied down the entire life cycle of these grubs. These Japanese beetles then lay the eggs in the ground and they hatch in the spring. We had found the larvae (like the caterpillar stage). It's just so much fun watching them be so eager to learn!

4. Everyday during our Bible time, we read about a country or a specific people group around the world and the impact of Christianity in that country. Today we read about Haiti and learned that it is the poorest country in the western hemisphere (even before the earthquake last year, which I did not get into very much) and they speak French there. Megan caught that right away. Why do they speak French in Haiti and Spanish in the Dominican Republic? They are on the same island. I need to find the answer to that question before I go to bed!

Moving through quickly

This week, we have moved through our school material a little faster than usual. For instance, today we started about 9:45 and it is now 11:45 and we only have one subject left. We got everything done except Bible and we even included an extra history lesson. I usually do Bible class after lunch and then Courtney joins us. (This included many interruptions by Courtney and Christian).

Why are we getting through everything so quickly?
1. For some subjects, we talk about things and it is usually pretty short. There is nothing new to explain or we've done it before and Megan knows what to do. This is for handwriting, math, and language arts.

Sometimes language arts takes longer, but today we went over her assignment and she was good to go! Math was all review and we look at the next cursive letter in handwriting and she does it herself. We don't even do examples in class anymore.

2. For the entire year, we have sat down together and she has read me a chapter book. This is all a part of the lesson plans. I changed it up this week (not on purpose) and it made a huge difference. On Monday, we pulled out her new chapter book and started reading. We got to the end of page one and I got interruped by something, so I had Megan hang onto the book until I got back. Well, when I got back, she was on page 5! (These readers are too easy for her!)

So I said to her, "Why don't you just read the rest of the book to yourself and I will just ask you the questions out of the lesson plans?" She thought it was a great idea and by the next day, she had the book done. I asked her the questions and she got them all right. I hadn't even read the book yet!
So instead of reading a book to me everyday, we are now done with our readers for the next two weeks. There were 10 chapters and we were supposed to read one a day.

I think there is merit in reading outloud, so I am going to have her read me the next book, but this sure helped. Another homeschooling mom had recommended that I do this, but I enjoy sitting down and listening to Megan. She is an excellent reader. I am definitely going to get her more advanced readers next year!

3. I just think we are getting the hang of this homeschooling thing!

Now I have time to do Bible this afternoon and work with Courtney. We've been working on "at" words this week, such as bat, cat, that, Matt, etc. As long as it is hands on, she enjoys it! Today we are going to work on writing and maybe play Bingo with the words she knows.

It's time!

You know it's time to do the laundry when your daughters say, "Mom, you need to do the laundry. We can't get anymore dirty clothes in our hamper!" as they try to get the lid shut.

Fine, I will do it today. :)

Why do you have so many dirty clothes anyway?

While I am doing laundry, maybe I should figure out what is going on in the kitchen sink. Yikes!

PS Matt says I procrastinate way too much around here, which is probably true. But he is also out of town and I need to spend a fair amount of time teaching the children. Don't forget about playing taxi service to preschool and back, dance, AWANA, finding clothes for the summer, feeding and kissing wounds on the children, homeschool classes, breaking up fights, bathing children, changing diapers, playing outside, chasing 1 year old, etc. etc.

Apparently dishes and laundy have not been high on my priority list this week!

Choo-choo or Whee?

I think I am going to hear these a lot from Christian this summer.

"Choo- choo" means he wants to walk down to the trail and see the trains that pass by.

"Whee" means to slide. He wants to go play on the swingset. He's already been at the back door a couple of times banging on it as he says, "Whee! Whee!"

I was putting his shoes on him this afternoon and he looked at me, "Choo-choo??" "Whee?"

Sorry Christian, not right now!

Tough Word

We read Megan's science lesson today on "anemones".

How many times can you say that really fast??

PS They are really interesting!

History Class

Who had way too much fun learning about Henry VIII and all his wives and children this morning?

Me.

It was quite fascinating!

wife #1 annuled
wife #2 beheaded
wife #3 died after childbirth
wife #4 annuled
wife #5 beheaded
wife #6 Henry died

I didn't even want to stop teaching Megan to go get Courtney because I was right in the middle of the Spanish Armada getting creamed by the littler, faster English boats! This was further in the lesson.

Ah, the stuff I never learned!!

PS I am sure glad Megan is enjoying history too because I am having a blast!

Finished!

By about 4:30 pm, the room was done!!! Yay! May we never spend an entire weekend cleaning one room in the house ever again!!

Since we were all starving and the room was done by 6 pm, we were all off to CiCi's pizza! I didn't have to cook!!

We got Courtney some ice cream on the way home for having a good attitude all day. Megan tried hard, but she ended up in time out once, so she didn't get ice cream.

Now the trick will be to keep it clean, but Matt and I have a new strategy, so hopefully it won't get so bad again!

Still cleaning

Wow, after cleaning from 9-11 am and then again from 1-7 yesterday, the girls are STILL cleaning the playroom today. They started about 1:30 and we are going on 3:30 with still work to be done.

Matt and I made a deal with them.

If you get done by 6 pm, we will go to CiCi's Pizza for dinner. If you get done by 6 pm AND you have a good attitude, we will stop and get ice cream afterwards.

If they were done by 4 pm, Matt said he would take them on a ferris wheel ride at Scheel's.
I don't think we are going to make that one.

I have been helping them on and off (such as taking my hand and pushing everything off the table onto the floor, pulling everything out from underneath the dresser and making a pile in the middle of the floor, going through containers/ toy boxes and pulling everything out that doesn't belong in there). I am always surprised at what I find. I think we are up to 5 pairs of underwear, at least 4 odd socks, candy, rice krispy bars (packaged), a game I was looking for, colors in the barbie box, scraps of paper EVERYWHERE, plus beads all over because we had a friend over to play one time and she threw about 3 handfuls of beads all over the room. I have just started vaccuuming those up!!

I am also finding things that I knew were just on the floor, and now they are put away in the wrong spot! UGH!!! This is how it got to be such a mess in the first place! Colors go with the colors, markers go with other markers, scissors with other scissors, don't mess them up! This is where my OCD kicks in! Barbie clothes do not go in the polly pocket box or vice versa. We also do not need to keep every single picture that you have ever drawn. We will keep the special ones.

I am just amazed and most of it is honestly Courtney's doing!! I love her dearly, but she is definitely our messmaker!!

Why can't this just be done and we can go outside and play??

How long??

How long does it take a 5 and an 8 year old to clean their playroom?

It is 6:30 at night and I think they've been in there since 1 pm (with breaks of course) and they still have plenty to clean. They have come a long ways, but it still needs some work. Let's just say that the room was DESTROYED!!! We had closed it for the last two weeks because they wouldn't clean it.

They were even in there a couple of hours this morning.

Yikes!

PS This was even with some help from me, but I just can't help them all day!
If they don't get it clean soon, Matt will go in there and clean it for them. :)

Eager to Learn

After lunch today, Courtney said to me, "Mom, let's practice my reading, math, and will you please teach me how a seed grows?"

This is on a Saturday!!

So, I got out a science book and showed her how a seed grows. Then we did about 6 pages in one of her preschool workbooks and drew some pictures in her notebook. She wanted to keep on coloring, but I insisted that they go clean their playroom.

She wasn't too eager to work on reading or writing today, but I'm ok with it. We're working on other things, but I do want to get back to reading and writing on Monday!

PS Courtney has been joining us for Bible time for a couple of weeks now and this last week, she listened to our read-aloud book. I purposely waited for her to get home from preschool on Friday to do these two subjects! She always wants to see what Megan is doing in math too and then she wants to do the same thing, so I have made up some simple problems for her and she is doing great!

I love homeschooling!!!

Food situation

Now I swear just a couple of days ago, our fridge was filled with food.

Now I look in it and there is nothing to eat! What happens to all this stuff??

Seriously, for lunch today, we didn't have many choices.

We have no bread for sandwiches, no jelly for peanut butter and jelly. This is what the girls eat EVERY SINGLE DAY.

I had to break out the dreaded hot dogs. (They were 98% fat free turkey dogs, does that make them better?)

We also don't have any eggs.

I have some bananas that would be great for banana muffins, but you can't make banana muffins without eggs.

That would mean no chocolate chip cookies either. :)

We are going to get groceries later today. It's a must.

We are also out of bagels for breakfast. This has been the popular thing lately and seriously, I don't know what else the girls would eat.

I am also done buying cow's milk. We are going to switch to either almond milk or rice milk. I have read too many articles on the problems stemming from cow's milk and I have seen some problems here in my own family, so we are done with that. I talked to our new chiropractor about this and she said as long as my family eats plenty of fruits and vegetables, we will be getting enough calcium. She said the calcium in cow's milk is not good for us anyway. Why do our doctors push it so much?? Again, I am very irritated at the medical field right now!

I made macaroni and cheese yesterday with almond milk. It was not a winner with Courtney, so today at lunch she prayed that it would not taste like almond milk. Almond milk tastes like chocolate and it is really thick. I also tried rice milk yesterday and it was a lot thinner and tasted more like cow's milk. We might try that for awhile. So no more shopping for the best price on a gallon of milk! But we won't be drinking as much either, we might just use the milk for cooking.

The snack drawer has also dwindled down to nothing. I need to restock that too!

AWANA vests

You know you haven't cleaned off the kitchen counter all week because the AWANA vests are at the bottom of the pile or the same place you put them when you got home last Wednesdsay night!

Yikes, I wonder what else is under there!!!

Ten on Tuesday

I have so many thoughts running through my head today, so I wanted to write about them.

1. I love Christian's new vocabulary lately- I think "roar" is his favorite word! If you say, "What does a dinosaur say?" He'll say "roar!!" It's so cute!

2. He is also having flashbacks of our water slides from two weeks ago. He walks around the house going, "dada whee!" We say "whee" whenever he goes down a slide and dad would always take him down the water slides. If you ask him, "Do you want to go down the water slides again?" he will respond with "Uh-huh!"

3. I had a little flashback of teaching 8th grade German today. I have been working with Courtney on her reading. We've been learning out of the book "Teach your child to read in 100 easy lessons." Well, it is working, but yet it isn't. We are on lesson 26 and Courtney dreads reading lessons every day! I can kind of see why. Every day they do the same thing. 1. You learn or review sounds. 2. You sound words out (and these aren't necessarily the same words from the previous lessons). 3. You read a short two-sentence story with a picture.

I will say that she has learned all her sounds, including the short and long vowels and hard and soft C sound. She has a problem putting them all together though. She loves the story, but they often take words from two or three lessons earlier (that they didn't review in the lesson) and put them into the story. This is the same pattern for 100 easy lessons!

I know Courtney has a huge desire to learn, but this just isn't working too well. She wasn't retaining the words because she just wasn't using them enough. I started to think back to my teaching days. I knew I had to pull in more hands on activities and get her out of the book.

My first thought was a word wall. I went to walmart and bought a poster board and took all the words that she knew by sight and put them on the poster board. We then went over a new lesson and put those words on too. Now, I can go back and review these words plus add more with the next lesson.

Today we did something different too. I took every word, there were 20 of them now, and put them on sheets of paper. I then spread these sheets of paper all over the living room floor. I said a word and she had to stand on it. She thought this was pretty fun. The next thing she had to do was build sentences. Megan and I got involved in this too. For instance, she found the words, "Mom is a Ruwe" or "Dad is on the sock." She did great and I really hope this gave her some extra practice with the words. We were sure laughing as we were doing this, we were making some crazy sentences.
Now, what do we do tomorrow? Continue to drill these words or add some more?

4. School took from 9 to 4 today. Yikes. But this included everything for Megan PLUS our time with Courtney. We also had lunch about 11:15 and dance rehearsal from 12:15-12:45, so we had some time off.

5. Homework is going better with Megan, we are starting about 5 now, so in case we have a fit, we still have plenty of time to get homework done before bed.

6. I am super impressed with our read-alouds that we have with our Sonlight Curriculum. We just finished "The Stallion of Lippizza" and we are now reading "The Apprentice." I love it when Megan says, "Just one more chapter, please??" I usually don't read more than we have to, we won't get anything else done.

I plan on using Sonlight for both kids next year, but only language arts for Courtney. I also plan on getting Sonlight Science and Horizons math again. I am open for other curriculum, but I can't seem to find other ones that I like.

7. With my hour I had free after school today, I managed to get the toilet paper put away that I bought about three weeks ago. I am so glad that is out of the laundry room doorway now!

8. Speaking of laundry, I finally have that going. Again.

9. I am sure glad it's raining today and is a bit cooler. We had a lot of trouble last week trying to find summer clothes and I didn't feel like dealing with it again this week. I spent two mornings last week trying to find summer clothes and that took time away from school, so we were finishing school Friday at 5! I would rather finish by noon!

10. Why can't my three children play and get along? I love my three children, but three means odd man out, I can't stand it some days! Why do they fight OVER their brother??

Bagel Trouble

Courtney was having trouble with her bagel this morning. One half of it accidently broke in half, she came to me with it and said, "Mom, can we tape it back together?"

Umm, no Courtney, we cannot tape a bagel back together and then proceed to put it in the toaster and then eat it.

Crazy girl!

Ear Trouble

I have learned a lot this week about ears and ear infections.

It all started last Saturday (a week ago) when I woke up and my ear hurt. I didn't think it was a big deal, so I just dealt with it. The ear ache seemed to go away as the day went on.

When I woke up Sunday, it hurt terrible. That morning, as I was picking Christian up, he hit it and I wanted to scream. My ear was swollen and VERY tender. I decided to head over the Quick Care at HyVee to get it looked at. They determined that it wasn't quite an ear infection, but since my ear was so swollen and tender, they were going to treat it as one. They said it was not red at all on the inside. I gave them my money and I was off to the pharmacy for some antibiotic ear drops.

They had told me that if it wasn't better within 3 days to go see my regular family doctor. Ok, I can do that!

Well, Wednesday came around and it still hurt. Still on Thursday, so I called this new chiropractor that I have been seeing. I wanted to ask her what she thought and maybe she could do something more natural. She said she wanted me to go back to my family doctor since they had my information from Sunday and they knew what antibiotics they had put me on.

So I called up my doctor and guess what? My doctor no longer works there! I had just switched to her too! So I called my chiropractor back up and made an appointment for Friday. I knew this would be a whole lot cheaper and I would probably get a real answer (I am soooo frustrated with the medical field right now!)

I went in and the guy doctor that works there (they are a husband/ wife team) took a look at my ear and said that it was not infected, but my ear drum was inflamed. My ear was still a little swollen and a little tender. He said that ear infections are usually caused by a virus and most doctors prescribe antibiotics for them. This is why a lot of kids have reoccuring ear infections- antibodics don't work on viruses!

They assumed that since my ear still hurt on day 5 that I had a virus. They said that they had a remedy that I could try, so I went for it. The doctor actually had two suggestions and they both involved garlic! Obviously the antibiotics didn't work and I am trying to go more natural in some things, so I listened!

The first solution was to take a pill of 600 mg of garlic each day. She (I was working with the lady dr. at this point) said that garlic is anti-microbial, anti-viral, and just good for your immune system, just like vitamin C and zinc. Her other suggestion was to go to the store and buy a clove of garlic, mash this up, and then combine it with oil. I was supposed to heat this up for a short amount of time and after it cooled off, put some of this solution into my ear. The point here was to put the garlic right where the problem was. I took her up on both offers and have been taking these garlic pills and putting garlic in my ears for the last 3 days. Needless to say that after I had bought all my stuff to make the eardrops, I found out that there were garlic drops available at Whole Foods! GRRRR!!!

My ear is feeling a lot better, but is it because of the garlic? I'm not sure. Was I on the mend anyway? I could've been. Who knows for sure!

The doctor said that this solution is also good for kids. I asked her why so many kids have reoccuring ear infections and get tubes and her response that it was all about money. She said if doctors would tell their patients about this garlic solution, the kids would be in a lot less pain and probably wouldn't have to get tubes put in their ears. She said her husband had 7 sets of tubes put in his ears when he was younger and now he can't hear very well because of all the scar tissue.

I just found this very interesting and hopefully soon I can be done with garlic! It's really not that bad. It was cheap and it worked a whole lot better than those antibiotics!

Didn't know that...

Remember the other day when I was saying I was behind on laundry and Megan didn't have any underwear. (Ok, she has some, but she refuses to wear certain ones, so I really don't feel sorry for her.)

Today I heard, "Courtney, can I go borrow another pair of your underwear?" Courtney responded, "Sure!"

Good thing they wear close to the same size! Made me feel TERRIBLE, so I said, "You know Megan, you have some clean underwear in the dryer, why don't you go find some of your own?" And she did!

Geez!!

Quote of the Morning

"Courtney, you always let Christian have his way, that's not how he learns!"

Said by Megan to Courtney when she was sticking up for her brother again!

Here's the story: Christian was sitting in his chair eating out of a bag of cereal that was on the table. Megan took the bag of cereal to eat some, so Courtney got mad at Megan because she was making Christian mad. Courtney doesn't like it when Christian gets upset and is always sticking up for him. Courtney was taking the bag of cereal back away from Megan to give back to Christian. Hence, Megan let Courtney have it!

In the end, it was Christian's fault! He doesn't need to get so mad about things! And Megan is absolutely right, he will not learn if we keep letting him have his way!

(He definitely has a problem with this lately!)

Too busy!

You know you have too busy during the week when:

1. It is Friday and even though you have 4 day lesson plans, you have an entire days worth of lessons to do yet on Friday afternoon.
2. Groceries, that you got on Monday, are still sitting on the counter and need to be put away.
3. The girls are out of underwear! oh wait, am I behind on laundry? They can just do what my dad always told me to do- put them on inside out! (Hi Dad!)
4. Even though you pulled the containers of clothes out of the attic to see what you have for this abrupt 80 degree weater, the clothes are still in a big pile on your bedroom floor. The girls have been going through them, so it's quite a mess.
5. After buying the kids new sandals on Wednesday and then they took them out of the boxes and sacks immediately after you got home, the sacks and boxes are still laying on the floor where they left them. In the middle of the piano room floor.
6. Every inch of kitchen counters is covered with something! and the island is about a foot high!
7. Something is beginning to smell in the kitchen sink.
8. My grandma has been in the hospital since Tuesday and I haven't found time to call her.
9. My grandpa had surgery on Tuesday and I haven't found time to get a card in the mail.
10. If I don't clean up the kitchen floor soon, we'll have every inch of that covered too! As I sit at my computer desk here, I see 7 pairs of shoes, a paper plate, an easter basket, a magazine, a berenstein Bears book, an empty ice cream cone box, an empty craft box from Sunday, some little people toys, a straw, a dump truck, a jacket, a blanket, and some matchbox cars. really, this is not my mess!!
11. Toilet paper that I bought about two weeks ago is still sitting by the back door- why don't I just put that away?
12. Contacts- oh yes, I was supposed to order new ones about a month ago, haven't gotten there yet!
13. There is a play this weekend at the Rose theatre that we can get free tickets for- maybe I should give them a call and reserve some.
14. The suitcases that we took to Des Moines last week are still out and sitting in the hallway.
15. Bills, Bills, Bills! I wonder if we're past due on some of them. I should dig them out from under the pile!
16. We made some cool treasure map craft projects on Monday- they are still on the counter and need to be finished. Wait, I think they are buried under dirty dishes!

Eventually I will get caught up on the housework and everything else. Someday. :)

Who wants a good laugh before bedtime?

Last night Megan brought me her book of knock-knock jokes to read before bedtime.

She actually has two books, so I had one and she had one. We read jokes back and forth to each other. Some of them were pretty good!

If you ever want a good laugh before bedtime, bring out the joke book!

PS They were nice and clean jokes!

Viking Adventure

ok, so you know the kids listen during history class when they start playing "viking adventure" in the dining room.

They have the chairs blocking the doorways and this is their pirate ship

These is what I am hearing:

Get undercover, they are shooting their canons at us!
Where are our canons?
Quick, row to shore. It's only 100 feet yet.
Jump from the ship.
I need to get my sword!
Lower the anchor!
We're at the beach!
Let's get off now!

Sunny Weather

Today it was about 80 degrees out here in Omaha.

The problem at the Ruwe house is that the girls, mostly Megan, have NOTHING to wear!!! (with exasperation!)

I pulled out some old summer dresses from last year and all I heard was, "those are too short" or "those just don't fit me anymore!"

Well, what do you want me to do? go to the store RIGHT now and buy you some new summer clothes??

I could've went into the attic and maybe found some, but when I opened the door, I saw wasps nests, no wasps, right by my head. I didn't want to go in there.

I found a few dresses for Courtney and they still fit her.

It made me laugh because there were two certain dresses Megan was complaining about, so at one point, I threw them at Courtney and said, "these will probably fit you now." Wow, that made Megan mad. But she had just said they were too short.

I guess we'll go shopping sometime for some new summer clothes!

Trains at 3 am

Dear Union Pacific,

I just wanted to let you know that it is not cool to run your trains at 3 am, especially the heaviest ones you have.

When you run these trains at 3 am, they shake our house. The heavier the trains equals the more the house shakes. When the house shakes, you wake my 20 month old up.

Not only did you run your heaviest train last night and woke him up once, you did it again about 10 minutes later. And woke him up again. I am not happy with you this morning.

Sincerely,
A tired mama with a tired son.

Ear Infection

I brought a souviner home from vacation- an ear infection!

Yesterday I had an ear ache all day, but last night, I couldn't even sleep, my left ear hurt so bad. This morning, Christian accidently hit it and I could've screamed.

I left early this morning and I went over to a Quick Care Clinic at a local Hy-Vee and the PA there determined that I have a mild ear infection. She said there was lots of swelling and it is very tender, but no redness. She gave me a prescription for ear drops, so now I get to deal with those for the next five days.

Lucky me!

Eye drops, ear drops, what's next?

Egyptian Exhibit

As if going on three tours this week wasn't enough, we're doing another one today!

The Joslyn Art Museum has a display on the ancient Egyptians (which we have also studied in history), so my mom is coming in and we're going to go see it this afternoon!

Yay for field trips and bringing history alive! I love it!

G-U-M

Everyday after lunch I get asked by a certain little girl in this house if she can have a piece of candy or gum. It is becoming a habit and I don't really like it. I sometimes let her, I sometimes don't. My little game lately is that I make her spell the words gum or candy in order to get a treat.

Let's just say that now we know that gum is spelled g-u-m.

Let's add that to the list of words she now knows how to spell. Go Courtney!!

Water Park Stories

1. I really wish I would've caught this on camera, but every time Courtney came down the water slide by herself, she would holler (all the way down), "Daddy, catch me. Daddy Catch me, daddy catch me, dadddddyyyyyyy, daddy catch meeeee" until we heard her come around the last curve and her eyes would bug out to make sure daddy was there!

Since there were two slides and we never knew which one she was coming down, Matt would stand in the middle of the two until the last moment when he would go to one or the other, reach out his arms, and catch Courtney so she wouldn't go under. It was a great matter of trust on Courtney's part!

One time he kind of missed her, so that is why she hollered every time down the slides!

He was known for letting two certain children go underwater on this trip. I swear one of them was going to drown! Christian went under about 3 times in one foot water and one time when Matst brought him down the water slides, he got going too fast and had to pull Christian under with him when they got to the bottom. Christian was not too happy about that! I wasn't either! But everybody survived, so it was all good in the end!


2. One night, we didn't get back to the hotel until about 7:45 from supper and we had promised we would take the girls swimming. I mentioned to Matt that maybe I should just stay home and put Christian to bed, he had about a 15 minute nap that day and was looking tired. I think Christian heard about this plan because he went over to his water toys, grabbed a scoop, and brought it over to me saying, "wawa?" which means "water" in Christian language.

I asked him, "Do you want to go swimming?" He replied, "Uh-huh!" with a super-excited look on his face! Ok, fine! We're on vacation! So we all went swimming for about 45 minutes, I'm glad I took him though. I think he is going to have a blast this summer at the swimming pool!

Home Sweet Home

Isn't the best part about taking a trip coming home? I love seeing the Omaha skyline as we get closer. I love pulling into my driveway and going into the house for the first time after being gone awhile.

I love that my mom taught me to always clean up before going away. :) Then when you come home, it's all clean!!

Ok, the parts I don't like about coming home. Unpacking. Ugh. Laundry. Double ugh.
Getting back into the routine. Ok, not so ugh.

We didn't do any school this week, but we did see historical sites and school came up a lot, so that counts in my book. Megan says the best part of her trip was going to the Salisbury House. Courtney said her favorite part was watching "Animal Planet."

Tomorrow we were supposed to have a playdate, but that got cancelled, so who knows what we will be doing now. I'm not going to start school again until Monday, so it's kind of a free day.

Unpack, laundry, catch up around here, that sounds like a good plan.

Things I have learned while on vacation..

1. Water slides are still super fun!!
We got Courtney to go down by herself and matt even took Christian down a few times. It was a family affair! The only problem was that Matt had to go first because he had to catch Courtney (she can't swim yet and the water was a little too deep). Then Courtney, then myself. Megan could go anywhere, she is a little fish!
2. A hotel with cable is great! The girls may be spending too much time watching "Animal Planet."
3. I don't like it that our hotel does not have breakfast, but the muffins I made at home and brought along seem to do the trick. We might actually have to go out tomorrow morning, we only have 2 left after today. :) Capri Sun apple juice also works great!
4. How much stuff do we need for 3 days??
5. The later to bed, the earlier to rise (Christian!!)
6. Why can't the fan on the room heating unit just work constantly instead of the kicking on and off all night.
7. The girls each have a queen bed to themselves. I am so glad they are old enough where I don't have to worry about them falling out of bed at night.
8. If we go swimming every night, do we really need to shower every morning? Do you know hard it is to rinse off a 20 month with a shower head that does not come off the wall. I got soaked yesterday!
9. I decided not to bring school along because once I thought about it, I determined we wouldn't have much time. (I did bring some workbooks along though that are not part of our curriculum.)
Doesn't visiting historical sites such as the state capitol and Salisbury House (modeled after a castle in England from the 15th century) count as field trips and therefore school??
We went on a tour yesterday of Salisbury House and the lady complimented me on the way out because the kids were very well behaved and they asked very interesting questions. If you are ever in Des Moines, I would highly recommend this historical site. We learned so much and since we had studied the middle ages, we had talked about many items that we in the house, so it was fun to put it all together!
10. Today we are going to Terrace Hill (the governors mansion) and maybe the zoo- depending on the weather. If this doesn't work, then we are going to to the Iowa Historical Society. I think both will be great!
11. I love not having any chores to do- not dishes, no letting the dog out, no cleaning up, no fighting the children to clean up, no laundry, no homework! We have close quarters here at the hotel and if you don't pick up, you are going to be stepping on things. Luckily the kids have a room and Matt and I have a room.
I love housekeeping, they make my bed and pick up my dirty towels everyday! Did I mentioned endless hot water for showers??
12. Megan is loving the ice machine down the hall.
13. Thank heavens for the GPS- I would be completely lost here in Des Moines without that! Of course, it doesn't always take you on the best route and through neighborhoods sometimes, but we usually get where we are going in the end.
14. I have to admit, it is sometimes hard to watch the GPS and figure out what lane you are supposed to be in. It's hard driving in a new city!
15. I can't believe we go home tomorrow. Matt is going to take us to Pioineer tonight and show us where he works. We have to have his rental car back to the airport by noon tomorrow, so we should be home in the afternoon. We really need to get Megan back by 4:15 for dance rehearsal. Ugh, can't we stay longer??

Blogger Slacker

I can't believe I haven't blogged for over 4 days. You think I fell off the face of the earth or something. nope. just busy.

here's what has been going on:
1. Nothing much more than usual. Matt was gone from Tuesday to Thursday, so I held down the fort.

2. We are getting into a grove with homeschooling. I know I keep saying things are getting better, but they really are. EVERY day we have school in the morning. I either take Courtney to preschool and come home and teach Megan (MWF) or we get up and get school going right away. (T TH)

We usually start with our read-alouds too (wouldn't you want to be read to first thing in the morning?). We are currently reading "White Stallions of Lipizza" and I would highly recommend it to anyone! I can't wait until Monday when we get to read the next two chapters. Megan is enjoying it too because it is all about horses and her favorite animal right now is horses!

Math is also interesting lately. There are things presented in her math book that we did not learn until pre-algebra in 8th grade. Such as 8+n=11. This is algebra! But she's doing it in 2nd grade math!! I looked ahead into the 3rd grade book and some of those problems are (3+7)+ n= 15, rounding to hundreds and thousandths place, 519 X 4 = n, 7 x n=56, and 2/3 is less than or equal to 8/24. I know the answers to these problems, but was I taught this stuff in 3rd grade? No way!

We usually get a couple of hours done before lunch and then finish after lunch. Right away- I don't let the girls play an hour anymore. We clean off lunch and get right back to it.

This has worked much better- My theory is "Let's get school done so we can be done for the day, then you have the rest of the day to play and I don't have to worry about it!"

3. I always save our Bible lesson to do with Courtney. We are going through the book of Joshua now and we have had a GREAT time! The girls draw a picture to illustrate the passage, so we have had some great pictures from Joshua 1,2,3, and 4!

4. Courtney has wanted to join us for math too, so I always give her something to do. Oh, and handwriting. She doesn't want to do her reading lesson anymore, but she wants to do everything else. I figure as long as we are doing something one-on-one with her, I don't really care what it is (well, as long as we are close to reading by the fall, so I can start her in 1st grade readers!)

I really think Courtney is going to be my hands-on learning. She brought me an art book yesterday and said, "Let's find a project mommy." So we did. We found what we needed and made her project. It was cute! A little out of the box for me because I am just used to reading to Megan all the time, but this is the nice thing about homeschooling, I can cater to their learning styles. I have also had to come up with creative/hands-on ways to teach her reading and math.

5. Christian has been a busy boy lately. For the first time today, I heard "ape" which stands for "grape." He has added some new words lately, "O" means "no" but you have to imagine him saying "OOO" with his arms crossed (gee, I wonder who he learned this from!) and of course "mine" is very popular these days.

"Tractor" and "choo-choo" still seem to be the favorites.

6. Matt is busy working on the basement- he has almost all the framing done, so hopefully we can be done by...perhaps Christian's birthday in June.

7. My house is a COMPLETE disaster! You can tell the girls have had more time to play together because the house is destroyed...oh and maybe I am no so strict and am not so good at encouraging them to clean it up at night. :)

8. I do manage to keep up on the kitchen and laundry. Those are my two goals and now that we are done with school by early afternoon, I have some time to get some housework done. Yay for me!

9. Matt is done at the end of March with going to Iowa. It will be nice having him home full time again, but he won't be able to work from home anymore. But his new job isn't far away, which means a short communte, which means he will be home more in the evenings and even some in the mornings.

10. We are taking a little vacation this week with Iowa to Matt, it will be a lot of work, but will be fun. Courtney does not have preschool Wednesday or Friday and since Megan is homeschooled, we have the freedom to take off. We are going to stay at a water park by where Matt works. It will be a nice break for all of us!