Cold winter days

We don't usually get very many cold winter days here in the south. This winter, however, has been something else! We got several inches of snow last Sunday followed by some unusually cold days. The local schools were out for the entire week, but my kids weren't so lucky. I keep reminding them that they'll be glad we continued with school when we get to take 2 spring breaks.

I don't make New Year's resolutions, but being stuck at home for a few days this week resulted in some projects that go with that very popular "get organized" resolution. Traci at Beneath My Heart did a closet makeover party this week. I didn't do before pictures because there's enough tragedy in the world, but I did clean out our master bedroom closet. Hubby walked in an exclaimed "It's huge! I'd forgotten!" He's absolutely right - our closet is a great size. This is just the first time since early summer that I'm not using it to store the contents of our guest room closet(long story). It makes me happy to walk in and see it so organized!

I also went through our pantry, otherwise known as our kitchen cabinets as we don't have a real pantry. After throwing away a shameful amount of food, I moved everything except cereal, snacks, and bread to the empty bookshelf in my laundry room. I'm going to make labels for the front of each shelf so even the kids can help make grocery lists. Our other kitchen project was replacing our hideous fake brass light fixture over the kitchen table. It now looks like this:

instead of the three light version of this:

That empty bookshelf in the laundry room (doesn't everyone have bookshelves in their laundry room??? NO??) can only mean one thing - we've officially moved into our new homeschool room in our newly almost-finished basement! As soon as this project is finished, I'll post pictures. Love, love, love having a schoolroom! Did I mention that I love having a schoolroom? Well, I do. I know my dear friend in MS is anxiously awaiting those pictures. I promise they are worth the wait!

In addition to all of these projects, I put away all the Christmas decorations and even found time to read a couple of books and a stack of magazines. What a great week!

A moving obituary

Each week I receive a newsletter from GrammarBook.com. It provides a short review on a typically troublesome point of grammar. This week, however, it included the following article. I think we'll spend extra time on language arts this morning!

Goodbye, cruel words: English. It's dead to me.
By Gene Weingarten,
Pulitzer-prize-winning author

The English language, which arose from humble Anglo-Saxon roots to become the lingua franca of 600 million people worldwide and the dominant lexicon of international discourse, is dead. It succumbed last month at the age of 1,617 after a long illness. It is survived by an ignominiously diminished form of itself.
The end came quietly on Aug. 21 on the letters page of The Washington Post. A reader castigated the newspaper for having written that Sasha Obama was the "youngest" daughter of the president and first lady, rather than their "younger" daughter. In so doing, however, the letter writer called the first couple the "Obama's." This, too, was published, constituting an illiterate proofreading of an illiterate criticism of an illiteracy. Moments later, already severely weakened, English died of shame.
The language's demise took few by surprise. Signs of its failing health had been evident for some time on the pages of America's daily newspapers, the flexible yet linguistically authoritative forums through which the day-to-day state of the language has traditionally been measured. Beset by the need to cut costs, and influenced by decreased public attention to grammar, punctuation and syntax in an era of unedited blogs and abbreviated instant communication, newspaper publishers have been cutting back on the use of copy editing, sometimes eliminating it entirely.
In the past year alone, as the language lay imperiled, the ironically clueless misspelling "pronounciation" has been seen in the Boston Globe, the St. Paul Pioneer Press, the Deseret Morning News, Washington Jewish Week and the Contra Costa (Calif.) Times, where it appeared in a correction that apologized for a previous mispronunciation.
On Aug. 6, the very first word of an article in the Winston-Salem (N.C.) Journal was "Alot," which the newspaper employed to estimate the number of Winston-Salemites who would be vacationing that month.
The Lewiston (Maine) Sun-Journal has written of "spading and neutering." The Miami Herald reported on someone who "eeks out a living" -- alas, not by running an amusement-park haunted house. The Fredericksburg Free Lance-Star described professional football as a "doggy dog world." The Vallejo (Calif.) Times-Herald and the South Bend (Ind.) Tribune were the two most recent papers, out of dozens, to report on the treatment of "prostrate cancer."
Observers say, however, that no development contributed more dramatically to the death of the language than the sudden and startling ubiquity of the vomitous verbal construction "reach out to" as a synonym for "call on the phone," or "attempt to contact." A jargony phrase bloated with bogus compassion -- once the province only of 12-step programs and sensitivity training seminars -- "reach out to" is now commonplace in newspapers. In the last half-year, the New York Times alone has used it more than 20 times in a number of contextually indefensible ways, including to report that the Blagojevich jury had asked the judge a question.
It was not immediately clear to what degree the English language will be mourned, or if it will be mourned at all. In the United States, English has become increasingly irrelevant, particularly among young adults. Once the most popular major at the nation's leading colleges and universities, it now often trails more pragmatic disciplines, such as economics, politics, government, and, ironically, "communications," which increasingly involves learning to write mobile-device-friendly ads for products like Cheez Doodles.
Many people interviewed for this obituary appeared unmoved by the news, including Anthony Incognito of Crystal City, a typical man in the street.
"Between you and I," he said, "I could care less."

What a summer!

This was one of the busiest summers we've ever had! We didn't travel much, which is very unusual for us, but we did get to have friends and family come to visit. We had six straight weeks of company and when I say straight, I mean every night for six weeks. So much fun! Our last friends actually left after we headed to Myrtle Beach with my sister and her kids.
The day before we went to the beach Curt and I attended a leadership meeting at church. A friend asked if we were still thinking about hosting an exchange student. I had shared with her that Curt and I had briefly discussed this as a possibility sometime in the future. I told her that we might, but asked why she was asking. She had received an email looking for someone to host a sixteen year old German exchange student immediately. A medical emergency had occurred in the family who had agreed to host her this year and they were trying to find a replacement. After a late Sunday night flurry of paperwork, a few phone calls and email on Monday, a brief interview and home visit on Saturday, and let's be honest - some frantic house cleaning!, Lisa arrived on Thursday! We've really enjoyed getting to know her and look forward to introducing her to friends and family.

Altered Clipboards

Sarah loves doing art projects and making crafts. She always requests a project as part of her birthday party with her friends. Last fall we saw some really cute clipboards in a local gift store and decided it was a great project for her next party. We stocked up on some clearance clipboards, gathered a bunch of my scrapbooking paer, and shopped for some cute ribbon. Each girl chose her coordinating papers for front and back, as well as several kinds of ribbon she liked. We used Mod Podge to adhere and coat the paper and then used a Cricut to cut out each girl's inital. They finished by tying on lots of ribbon in a variety of colors and patterns. Didn't they turn out cute???

Arithmetricks

A couple of years ago I did a few fun science mini-camps for my kids and their friends. We did electricity, dinosaurs, and messy science experiments camps. They lasted for about 3 hours and were all hands-on activities. This year I decided to do a couple of camps again, but went with math camps instead. Sarah worked really hard in math this year, but we rarely took time out to play with math. Even though she would have preferred more science camps, I think there will be long reaching benefits when she realizes that math isn't just boring texbooks, but something that can be fun.

I spent a few hours going through a huge stack of math books I've been storing. I found more than enough activities to get us through our 3 mornings. In fact, it was hard to narrow it all down! Here's what we did this morning:

1. Bingo - a good warm-up game. We made it a little more exciting by playing "speed bingo." I read the problems VERY quickly and they had to race to find the answers. No time to compute - they just had to know.
2. Number magic tricks - You know what these are...write a 3 digit number. Use those same digits to write a new three digit number. Find the difference. Total the sum of the digits of the difference. Subtract 5. Your answer - 4, every time!
3. Line designs - These came from a great book called Enrichment Units in Math Book 2. You can see an example on the bottom left corner of the book.

4. Snack -Can't have a group of fourth through sixth graders without a lemonade break!
5. Math Olympics - The kids did a variety of activities like long jump, running, etc. and timed each other and computed their team's average. These activities came from this book:

6. Combinations - Another unit from the Enrichment Units book. We ended the morning by trying to come up with as many of the 242 ways to make a dollar using quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies as we could in 15 minutes.

We took some kind of score for every activity and then declared a winning team at the end. It was so much fun to see this group of homeschooled kids work together on some fun math activities. They encouraged each other and had such a helpful attitude. What a great way to spend a morning!

Growing up too fast!

You know how one day your kids walk up to you and you realize they've grown at least 2 inches overnight? It's an overwhelming reminder that they're growing up way too fast. We had one of those moments last week as Sarah got ready for Courtney's wedding. One minute she was playing with the dollhouse, then in the next she looked like this. It's seems like just yesterday that Stephen and Sarah were running around this same driveway blowing bubbles and giggling. Now look at them!

A great start to summer vacation!

I just spent Memorial Day weekend with my mom and sister in Myrtle Beach, SC. It was 3 days of reading just-for-fun books (rather than school books), shopping, eating, and MAID service. It was so relaxing to hang out and reconnect with them. We go to the beach every summer with the kids, but this was the first time we've ever had a girls' weekend. What a blessing to have time alone!
I've read a lot of blog entries about Ballard Designs in the past few weeks. Curious, I visited their website and imagine my delight when I discovered they have 2 outlet stores in our area. S2 and I went this afternoon. It was a lot like Pottery Barn outlet, with loads of discounted furniture and some home accessories. We'll definitely be stopping by from time to time to see what treasures await. The beach and a Ballard outlet in one week...what could be a better start to summer vacation???
Well, we're headed to Kentucky tomorrow for a family wedding. We'll get to catch up with the whole family while celebrating C&C's big day. S2 is involved and looks beautiful in her dress. I'll post a picture soon. We haven't seen the family in months and we're really looking forward to it.
Have I mentioned how much I love summer vacation?