What’cha readin’?

I have been reading a litt more than usual lately. I used to be a BIG reader. As in I could polish off a book in a day. Every day. But, that was when my kids were little, I could stay up past 10 without feeling like a zombie the next day, and I didn’t have a cable internet connection so the internet wasn’t quite as inviting.

I do love to hear what others are reading. It gives me ideas. That way I can go into the library with purpose. Don’t be shy to say that you are reading the latest Nora Roberts or the latest Janet Evanovich. This is summer time. We are supposed to be reading light and trashy, right?

I will go first.

The Guersney Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society    (Mary Ann Sheffer)- I picked this one up because the of the title. If an author can come up with a title like that, it has to be pretty good.  It was. It was written entirely of letters which made the book a quick read. I enjoyed the characters even if though I didn’t get to know them quite as well as I would have liked.  The book touched my heart, but WWII novels have that effect on me. It is worth a read.

The Last Patriot   (Brad Thor)- Don’t ask me why I picked this one up. It is kind of a boy book and really reminds me of a “Da Vinci Code” type book. I did finish the book, but I can’t tell you how it gets its title. I must have missed something. Can’t say I enjoyed it, and will not pick up another by this author. Each to his own.

Cold Hands, Warm Heart (Jeff King)- I picked this one up because my grandmother always said those words to me. (I have cold hands.) I knew nothing of the book and just dropped it into by bag. My Alaskan friends probably know the name, but I didn’t. Jeff King is an Iditerod champion, and this book is his story. I haven’t finished it yet, but I am enjoying it. I don’t know much about the Iditerod, so it is all new to me.

The Secret (Beverly Lewis)- I usually enjoy Lewis’ books. She gives me this happy, unrealistic little glimpse into the Amish world.  This book is a little more sad. I am only half way through the book and it is sad and confusing. Not sure how I feel about that. I pick up her books for a lite hearted read. If I wanted sad and confusing I would pick up an Oprah selection.

The Sugar Queen (Sarah Addison Allen)- cute, predictable, and sweet. Just like the title. If you are looking for a a book for the beach, this is it. Nothing heavy or sad about this one.

On deck is The 8th Confession by James Patterson.

Your turn.

 

In other news

How about some bullet blogging? Nothing much exciting happening. I go through my daily life thinking. Oh, I should really blog about that, but then I sit down at my computer and can’t remember what it was I was going to say. Hmm..

Anyway.

• Freckle Face has new orthotics. Fancy schmancy expensive orthotics. He doesn’t like them at all, but he doesn’t say as much. I just know by the way his demeanor changes while he wears them. He becomes very quiet and kind of sad. It makes me kind of sad.

 

• Spent almost 2 hours at PSD the other day. My ID card was going to expire and it was a do it or not be able to get on the base kind of situation, so we did it. It is always a joy, but I can tell you it is easier than it was in the “16 years ago old days”. Not faster, but easier. For my civilian friends, it is like going to the DMV times 5. (I was going to say 10, but it isn’t quite that bad.)

 

• Went and saw the new Transformers movie tonight. Pretty much zero plot, but if you like loud explosions and robots then, well, this movie is for you. I don’t mind them, but they aren’t my favorites.  Oh, but just a little side note, some of the movie was filmed on the USS John C. Stennis during the time that my husband was on board.  I kept waiting for something exciting to happen on it since it was this big “to do” while they were filming, but I wasn’t impressed. I won’t say anymore because I don’t want to ruin it for you, but when you see the movie just know that my handsome hubby was on that ship. Does that make him an extra?

 

• I am trying very hard not to get worked up over the whole “cap and trade” nonsense that the house passed last week. I even played the good citizen and called my representative to urge him to vote no. At the time I called he was apparently “undecided”. Obviously my call did little good because he ended up voting yes.

 

• I am one month into my summer and I have one week planned of the next school year. Yippee! I am so on the ball. My goal is to have the year planned so that I can hand the plans to my peoples and they can do the work. Discipline. I need a good smack of discipline. But the weather is so nice, and there are so many good books to read. I am also rethinking ancient history. It just seems so boring right now.

 

• Organ lessons are going well. As long as the fingering is written on the music, I do all right. My teacher is my friend, so it is pretty fun. Actually, her kids were the first kids I ever babysat. I was 11. So, we go way back. Anyway, she thinks I am ready for offertory. haha. No. But at least no one is singing during that, but the offertory is all about timing. I am horrible with timing. It goes like this in my brain.”Oh, shoot! How long do I have? How many rows left? Should I play the last page or skip ahead to the last measure? Shoot! I messed up. Oh, crap, where was I?” See? It is a mess. I am not ready for all that pressure yet.

I think that about covers it. Have a gret weekend! Happy Birthday, America!

 

The Redwoods.

Our final destination was the Redw0od forest. I can not remember the last time I was rendered speechless, but I was speechless. My pictures do not do the amazing trees justice. They were awe inspiring. I just wanted to plop myself down in the middle of the woods and stare at them.

I am looking through my pictures and I am noticing that I didn’t take very many. It must have been because I was too busy  trying to pick my jaw up off of the ground.

We are going back anyway. So, it is all good.

This next picture of the family was taken inside of a tree. It is the “Corkscrew Tree”. It grew in a twist and this smaller tree is inside of the larger tree.

Oh, lookee, I took a picture of it.

Well, that picture doesn’t do it justice. If at any time you have the opportunity to visit these majestic trees, you must go for it. There really are no words.

 

Organ lessons

I somehow managed to convince a friend to teach me how to play the organ. I am not sure quite what I was thinking. We were standing at recess duty and I mentioned that I would like to learn to play the organ. I remember telling her, “I can already play all the hymns on the piano, so it shouldn’t be too bad.”

I wonder what she was thinking when I said that. Whatever it was she showed great restraint by not laughing at me. Maybe she is teaching me to play the organ because she wanted to smack me with the humility stick. I definitely deserved it.

Actually, I am not quite sure that I like it that much. The fingering is much different. Thumb glissandos, or whatever they are called, are as difficult for me to play as they are for me to spell. All that connecting the notes is a pain. And the pedals! Heaven help me, but I want to run screaming when I turn them on. So, I am going to learn fake organ for now. I know that true organists use the pedals, but I am a fake organist so it works.

Most of my practice time of late has been on the organ.  My poor piano has been neglected, but last night I sat down and brought out my Mozart. Oh, the beauty! I could move again. I could move quickly. The notes are beautiful and distinct. Yep, I think I like the piano better, but I am going to keep going on the organ. I would like to play for church someday. Someday would be  2 or 3 years from now. I am fine with that.

 

Devil’s Churn

You know, we find the best places when we just pull off to the side of the road. This is Devil’s Churn. The conversation in the car went like this.
“Oh, here is a sign. It might be cool.”
“Do you want to pull off?”
“Yeah, let’s pull off.”
“Ok.”
This place was awesome. It was low tide. The waves were splashing on the rocks and there were tide pools everywhere.

 Just looking cute.

See? Splashing up on the rocks. Awesome.

What can I say? He loves me. And, we love grossing out the kids.

 

On homeschool conventions and bird droppings

Since we are homeschooling two of our hooligans next year, my husband encouraged me to attend the homeschool convention because they have motivated me in the past. I was a little hesitant to go, but Miller Pads and Paper was going to be there. I love that booth. I also thought that I could pick up some of the curriculum that I needed.

Well, I have to say that I was a wee bit disappointed. I guess when you start out with the FPEA convention in Florida nothing else can compare. Oh, there were a lot of booths, but not much for sale. I did drop $50 at Miller Pads and Paper, but that was easy. There were 2 booths selling various homeschool books, but most everyone else was either selling themselves or just had one product to look at and then you could order. That wasn’t what I wanted. I already know what I am doing for next year and had a specific list in my hand. If I am going to order, I may as well do that at home.  I guess it would be good if I was a new homeschooler and  didn’t know what I was going to do, but I am not. I also am past the stage of buying side workbooks such as Wordly Wise and Critical Thinking books. I am not knocking those kinds of books, but when you are on a budget there isn’t money for that. Plus, they are kind of just busy work. Better for the younger grades, in my humble opinion.

 It is kind of interesting to see how my homeschooling has changed. How it has changed since I began and after taking  a year off. The awful question “Am I doing enough?” has been answered with a definitive “Yes!” I don’t find the need to purchase the extras anymore.

So, I wandered around awhile, and when I realized that there just wasn’t anything else I wanted to look at, I left. Besides, I was starving. And needed a coffee in a big. bad. way.

How the heck do bird droppings fit into this? Well, I had to stop at the store on my way home. I was in the store 5 minutes. 5. I came out and there were 3 big piles of bird droppings on my car. It was almost like the birds dive bombed and mistook my car for a toilet. I looked up to see if I was parked under a tree. Nope. I wasn’t even close to the building. They  seriously took aim for my car, and it was a bulls-eye. I looked at the other cars. Nope, it was just mine. I am just lucky like that, I guess. I need to go play the lottery.

 

The Slugbug Game

Oh, the good ole slugbug game. We played it as kids. I don’t remember slugging my brother or sister over it, but I could be wrong. My kids have started playing the game, and with the advent of the new Beetle, it has become much easier to play.

I don’t like the slugging. For one, my oldest thinks it is really funny to slug me. I don’t think it is very funny. Then, there is all this “you didn’t really see one” or ” punch buggy back” stuff. I don’t want to referee that. I am trying to drive after all.

So, we invented our own little slugbug game while on vacation. It is parents vs. kids, and the rules are simple.

• Everyday the counter starts at zero.
• The new slugbugs are worth one point, but to get the point the color must be called out. Ex. “Slugbug yellow”
• Vintage slugbugs are worth two points. To get the two points you must call out the vintage color. Ex. “Vintage slugbug multicolor” (There are a lot of those.)
• Vintage convertible slugbugs are worth 3. No, new convertibles are not worth extra. There are too many of them.
• If you call out a slugbug that is not a slugbug it is minus 1. You would be surprised to realize how many PT Cruisers look like  slugbugs from a distance. I was caught on a few.
• Points are added and those with the most points win.

What do you win? Bragging rights, of course. Hubby and I were awesome while we were on vacation. On the last day we were up by 15 buggies. That is what happens when your kids are too busy paying attention to the DS to look for slugbugs. Well, and you are on I-5. Around town they kick my tail. I am too busy trying to figure out why the driver in front of me is braking at a green light.

It just gets embarrassing when you call out “Slugbug Vintage orange” and then remember you are the only one in the car. Yeah. Good thing the windows were rolled up.

 

Tree Huggers

 

Homeschooling the Freshman Year

So, I kinda sorta have a plan. I am slowly getting that plan down on paper. I thought it would be sorta kinda fun to put it down here.

For the freshman

Bible History~ History of the Church. Not really sure the material that I am going to use. I plan on asking my pastor for a little help in that department. I  want him to study the history of the creeds including the Apostle’s, Nicene, and the Athanasian. We will stop before we hit Reformation. I think we will also do a “What’s in the Bible” kind of study using Book of Books from the People’s Bible. Maybe we will do that first because that will tie in nicely with the release of Concordia’s The Lutheran Study Bible which will be out in the fall. I am really looking forward to that.

Math~ That one is easy. Saxon Algebra 1.

Science~ Apologia’s Exploring Creation with Biology. Thanks to Donna Young for her very cool schedules. You can visit her website by hitting the button over there. —> I need to purchase a microscope. Anyone know where I can get a really, really good one for $50? Yeah, me either. Saving for that.

Latin~ Henle Latin 1. I am trying to decide if I should drop the cash and purchase the lesson plans from Mother of Divine Grace or if I should just go ahead and make them myself. Decisions, decisions.

Spanish~ Rosetta Stone. *sigh* We are going to try this again. If Latin and Spanish at the same time is too much, I will let him pick the one he wants. Personally, I think he is brilliant enough to do them both, but we will see how he feels. I am not an ogre after all. Well, most of the time anyway.

English/Writing~ I am going to use IEW because a very cool mom gave it to me, and I like it well enough. I am going to tweak it a little by adding some boring ole Writing Strands but only because I already have it. Truthfully, it is because I am a Well Trained Mind groupie. I just can’t get past that. I have issues. What can I say?  I don’t really plan on having him write just to write. Writing will tie in with Biology, History, and Literature. We are not going to do book reports. Period. The end. Amen. I despise book reports for this level.

History/Literature~ These are going to tie in together. He is going to be studying the ancients. We are going to use History of the Ancient World with a little of Spielvogel’s Western Civilization. We will probably pick up some books from the library to go along with it. He is going to read the Odyssey and the Illiad. He is excited about that, so I say go for it.( Hmmmm…I just thought the book of Daniel. I can tie that into Bible. Wow.) I am not sure what else for Literature. I figure it will come up when it needs to.

Fine Arts~ Well, he wants to sing in the choir for church, and I am all for that if they will have him.

PE~ It is possible that he may help at the school for cross country. I think that would be great. He will probably also run track again. He has recently discovered that he kind of likes running the mile. Crazy boy. So, we will work on that. I am also going to try and get them both in a CPR class.

Logic~ If by some stretch of the imagination we have time for this, I think I will use Introductory Logic from Memoria Press. I hear it isn’t too time consuming. We tried Critical Thinking and I didn’t like it. I need to dispose of that before I start having guilt issues for not using it.

I think that about sums it up. Maybe it isn’t so bad. I just need to get lessons plans written and life will be fine. I also need to get course descriptions written. I started that tonight. I finished the math one. I know. It was tough.

He is really looking forward to being home again. I hope that attitude remains with him, and he doesn’t give me much trouble. Right now I am on his good side because we are watching old episodes of LOST together. Why did my hubby have to show me that show? I am a sucker for a cliffhanger.

 

Baby Birds

I am just a chatty Cathy lately, aren’t I? I finally thought to take a picture today of the baby birds that were born while we were on vacation. When we arrived home, they were still featherless. I would say they are probably almost a week old. They are getting a few of their real feathers. I guess the watering of the strawberry plant didn’t hurt them after all.

It isn’t the greatest of pictures because my camera doesn’t focus too well up close, but you get the idea. Four baby birdies keeping their mother very busy. They are pretty crowded already. I can only imagine what that poor nest is going to be like in a couple of days. I really hope one doesn’t get pushed out. They need to play nice and get along.