Month: September 2016

I am manically trying to squeeze in some reading before Ammon wakes up…but I forgot to blog yesterday. Actually, my early bedtime hit before I could blog, so I put it off until this afternoon.

I thought I had no pictures to show from yesterday, but lo and behold, Lydia’s teachers posted a bunch on the FB group for her school. Hurrah.

Also, when I went to drop off Lydia’s registration papers at the central school, I fell in love with the neighborhood. I have to get Abe on board so we can have a goal to relocate in three years.

We had leftovers for dinner. I also baked five loaves of zucchini bread (from our overgrown zucchini) and spicy chocolate cookies. All I want is to eat more of those cookies, but I am restraining. I figure I will bake some right before leaving to pick up Lydia from school. That way the house will smell good when she returns.

These are the pictures I snagged from FB. They are doing a Native American unit and built totem poles in class.

Today was a marathon! With Lydia’s new Wednesday schedule, we had to switch her harp lessons to 8am on Tuesday morning. Usually Lydia is the first child up (sometimes even beating Ammon), but today, of course, she slept in. I had to wake her to get to her lesson on time.

And then Mary, who usually is up by 8, slept in until almost 9:30. She had Let’s Play Music at 10, and so we raced to get her ready. My mom was a great help because Mary had wet her bed. Taking care of that AND getting Mary to music on time was only made possible by my mom.

We also had ballet and errands today, not to mention home schooling. It was a packed one.

We had Thai red curry with potatoes, eggplant, and peppers. There was some tofu in there too, but if I had included that information in the previous sentence, it would have read like the ingredients list in a recipe.

While the girls were in ballet, I took Ammon to the splash pad. He was adorable, as usual.

Today Abe and I went on another early morning run. I really like those.

Even though I squeezed in some family history letter transcription and a chapter of reading, the rest of the day felt very to-and-fro-ish.

Lydia screamed for two and a half hours during harp practice today. I took a video of a short bit of that two and a half hour long session. We went straight from that to piano practice, and from there to Let’s Play Music. After that, I let her off the hook for the day.

We had Hawaiian haystacks for dinner, and I baked sweet potato pies (without the crust) and zucchini bread for our teatime during the rest of the week.

Abe has been exhausted all weekend and needs to go to bed, so this will be short. We had a great Sabbath. There was church, visiting teaching, lots of family history, dinner outside, and tons of reading with Lydia.

Oh, and we had chicken pilaf (from food storage), salad, and melon for dinner.

Here is a picture of Mary coming in to talk to Abe and me. She was being an “officer.” An officer, she explained, gives cards to people. I should have gotten a video because she was to-die-for cute in her explanation.

Yesterday Karin came by for dinner. She brought Thai food and cupcakes with her. We all enjoyed visiting so much. Not only was all of the food so yummy, but then she gave my mom and me birthday presents! It was so fun to celebrate our birthdays in September.

Today Abe and I went on an early morning run together. I can run twice as far when Abe is with me, and that’s a literal fact. We haven’t run together since we lived in the Salt Lake Avenues, and so this morning was fun.

We got a lot of errands done today and the kids spent the day playing outside with the neighbors, playing inside with each other, and watching Daniel Tiger. I am reading Mind in the Making which said that television can actually be a powerful teacher as long as the content does not include aggressive behavior. Daniel Tiger feels like a safe bet.

Abe took a bunch of stuff to the dump, I mowed the lawn, and then we all ate dinner outside. I am also reading the book, Dinner: A Love Story. The author says that she has catalogued their family dinners every day for years. I thought that was a great idea! She says that writing it down makes her feel a (false) sense of control over life. I also think that writing down keeps you accountable. Since one of the mantras of the homeschool conference I attended was, “Copy, but don’t compare,” I will copy this neat idea.

Tonight we had sweet potato soufflé and salad. Yesterday we had take-out Thai food and cupcakes. The day before that we had black bean soup, avocados, salsa, and tortilla chips. The day before that we had eggplant rollatini…and that’s where my memory stops. If I blog every day, maybe I won’t have to rack my brain to figure out what we’ve been eating all week.

Afterward Ammon watched the girls play. He was so glued to their movements that we joked that he looked like he was watching TV.

The big news of the day is that I discovered a school for homeschooled children today. They attend for one and a half days a week. For the full day they cover the full range of academic subjects, and for the half day they have “specials.” Tomorrow is specials day, so Lydia will cover the following subjects: hand sewing/crafts, musical theater, fibers (e.g, learning how to make yarn out of wool, etc.,) and math games. I am so excited for her.

Also, this charter school BUYS ALL OF MY CURRICULUM for me!! I have spent hundreds of dollars on math and writing curriculum, but this school will purchase whatever curriculum parents want and give it to the parents. All of the curriculum I’m using I could have gotten for free. It’s unbelievable.

The homeschool also has optional, whole-family field trips.

Lydia had a great harp lesson today. I observed her teacher teach her how to figure out a piece by ear. I felt like I was observing a work of pedagogical art. She is such a talented teacher.

We spent the rest of the afternoon and evening outside. I spent a peaceful hour with Ammon studying scriptures while he crawled around. The girls then played with the neighbors, and we all had dinner. After dinner Abe drew the girls on the basketball court. Cute pictures to follow.

And from tonight after baths:

Today was our first official day of home schooling. The word “official” means we followed a set schedule, held all of the learning in our classroom, and recited the Pledge of Allegiance at the beginning. Lydia exclaimed multiple times that the best part of the day, which included ballet, an outing (to the grocery store), and playing outside with friends, was –home schooling! I can’t even express how happy that made me.

Mary also seemed to enjoy it, although her attention span is a little shorter. 🙂 Mary had Let’s Play Music today, and it was a parent day. I haven’t had much, if any, alone time with Mary for a long time. Parent days are nice that way; Mary and I get to cuddle, play together, and bond. My mom made that possible by staying home with the kids today.

Ammon is starting to stand for short periods on his own. He has been doing this for a couple weeks, but he’s starting to do it more regularly now.

Abe is heading down the home stretch of the quarter. He had a four day weekend and so today was a catch-up day. On top of that, he had six meetings. I don’t know how he handles it all so well.

 

On Friday Abe and I used our date night to go to Ikea and get stuff for the homeschool room. While there we ran into one of my mission friends, Sister Coblai. Her kids were adorable.

Then we rushed over to the Greens’ storage unit to help them load their truck. By the time we arrived, they had already loaded everything and there was nothing to do but say goodbye. I am not great at goodbyes and generally avoid them, but it was nice to see them before their move to Missouri.

On Saturday we…wow. I can’t remember what we did on Saturday. Oh, yes. We worked on house projects and spent the afternoon visiting with the Andersons. They were in town and so we sat around and chatted with them for a couple of hours. They saw our end-of-the-world prep in the living room, and that started off a very lively conversation. We miss our conversations with them!

On Sunday we Face Timed with family and I wrote up my Relief Society lesson for September. It’s nice to have that out of the way, although I will still keep thinking and praying about the subject (which is honesty and integrity).

Today my mom and I cleaned the church while Abe stayed home with the kids. He put Ammon in a pack’n play outside while he mowed the lawn. We then deep cleaned the house. Abe worked his tail off. I took a nap in the middle of it because I was up half of the night with Ammon, and I went to Office Max for some last minute classroom materials. Between those two things, I only worked a fraction of the amount Abe did.

He is amazing. I was feeling daunted by all of the work, but Abe turned on the Curious George soundtrack with Jack Johnson singing and we ended up having so much fun. Abe’s cheerful, can-do attitude never ceases to astound me. I just love him so much.

We have not been taking lots of pictures, but I have one in my inbox from Sunday. This is of my mom and Ammon Face Timing with Soren.

Oh, and Abe just sent me a bunch of pictures he took today.

Yesterday I went to yoga in the morning, finished transcribing my grandfather’s letters after that, and in the afternoon we all went to Costco. We put Mary and Ammon in the shopping cart together. At first Mary did not like sitting next to Ammon because he played with her band aid and kept patting her back. Mary is still slightly tentative around Ammon and almost always does not like him to touch her.

But at the end of our trip she did this!

We were thrilled.

Yesterday evening was the stake picnic. We stood in line for a long time and then discussed emergency preparedness with both sets of Andersons.

After we put the kids to bed Abe and I spent a long time researching 9/11 online. I found this website , Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, to be very compelling. Abe found the rebuttals to the website to be more compelling. Finally I fell asleep and Abe stayed up reading one of the NDE books that has my mom and me so fired up. He also read a bunch of online rebuttals to Visions of Glory.

Personally, I don’t see how the book is hurting anyone. You can go to any seismologist and see that we live in the middle of multiple fault lines. Our water line crosses the fault line nineteen times, and experts estimate that when the quake hits, we will be without water for THREE MONTHS. Not only that, but our roads will be impassable and the airport will be broken up, making it hard for planes to reach us. Also, when the quake hits, that dam up in Provo Canyon will burst and much of the Valley will experience flooding from that on top of liquefaction from the underground lake. The rocks tell us that this area has experienced major earthquakes every 350-400 years. The last major earthquake here happened 350 years ago. Do you think we should be prepared??? Do you think we should be spreading the word to others to be prepared???? Um, I think the answer to that would be yes.

Abe took today off to set up the home school room and get the basement ready for the food storage delivery.