Friday, February 26, 2010

Hmmm... over a week and no word from me!

Forgive me, I've been busy. The kids and I are thoroughly engrossed in the Winter Olympics. We have studied everything from the host city/country to the sports themselves. We have watched hours and hours of the fascinating goings on. We are even graphing the medals to see which countries do the best (with a great deal of cheering for the US and their standings). It's been a pleasure to preview each evenings tapings so that I know which sports are on and what will be good for the kids to watch the next day. Our little miss is fascinated with Figure Skating (entirely predictable with such lovely costumes and graceful motion) and the boys, who I thought would love things like snowboarding seem most enthralled with Ski Jumping! Of course, being all boy, they have to look at one of the most daring of the sports. I guess I can be thankful they are not speed demons determined to Luge, especially given the tragedy these games began with.

We also celebrated the boys Blue & Gold banquet for Cub Scouts. Being the official celebration of the Boys Scouts 100th birthday made this a slightly bigger deal than normal. The boys helped with the flag ceremony and did a wonderful job presenting their piece of the history of Scouting. They also received their Bobcat Badge along with the rest of the group. I am still very proud that they were the first to qualify. DD occupied herself with a new friend while there. It made me really wish we could find a girl playmate for her.

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

What's the Buzz!

OK, so I'm kinda stealin' that from Google mail (for those with gmail, they have added an almost Facebook type system right inside your email), but it does seem appropriate. There has been quite a bit going on.

On the Home School front, Dinosaurs are finally completely done including all decorating of the lapbooks. (Photos still needed so I guess I will have to add those later.) We are now diligently studying the Olympics. Our little miss is working on some new Math and Science activities I found over the weekend and enjoying them heartily. She needs to work as hard on her reading as that is turning out to not be a favorite most days. I think the reason is that it goes slower than she would like. She is picking up more than she realizes, but not during "lesson" time.

On the technology front, we have added a couple of new devices lately. I think I mentioned that my wonderfully sweet BIL donated his old computer to the kids. It could not have come at a better time because the one we had been using was just not working well. Other than trying to get around the whole needing a CD to play all their programs, the computer is great. We had decided to place it in the boys bedroom, but I am rethinking that, and believe we might better put it up in the loft. Well, with that new computer came a real dilemma about the old scanner. I have started using it nearly weekly, could no longer use it with it hooked to the kids computer, have constantly been fighting it on that old computer because it locks the computer so badly that I have to reboot several times each session, and really just needed to replace it with something I could hook to my machine. After a great deal of debate we decided to go ahead and purchase an all-in-one printer scanner. And after even more research, have ordered an Epson Artisan 810. It has a fax, which we didn't really need, but it has one of the best scanner resolutions available, high print quality and inks (for about the same price as the inks I've been buying), and it has WiFi. Yep, every computer in the house will be able to print to it! How nice not to have to copy files onto a jump just so DH can print them out!!!!

Well, then to top it all off, we were given another gift by DBIL and DSIL! They won a BlueRay player at a charity auction and gifted it to us. It's not a fancy one, but man, what a gift! Brand new, in the box! They of course, loaned us a stack of disks as well. We have now finally seen last summers Star Trek, which we thoroughly enjoyed and The Proposal, which I highly recommend. I don't think we have laughed that hard in years. I know I was nearly in tears from laughter and DH (who had not really been interested in it) has declared it as one to add to our own library. I think the last movie to get us laughing so hard was Waking Ned Devine.

So, we are busy, busy, busy and thoroughly enjoying life!

Thursday, February 11, 2010

I do love my kids!

OK, so some days lately I have questioned my ability to be a mother let alone teach any thing. But two things have happened this week to help me feel a bit better. First, was a break through with the boys that came much earlier than I would have expected. The boys math skills, although not truly behind, are lagging when compared to their reading. We are working on simple addition, and have begun the addition of double digits ending in zero. But I had this math sheet that was related to our Dinosaur studies (very loosely, but it did have dinosaurs on it). It was adding numbers like 9 +14 and 13 + 12. They were struggling and I was too, until all of a sudden the way of using the blocks to get the answer suddenly clicked for one and then the other. Before long we were adding things like 86 + 54 and getting the correct answer. We were jumping up and down, getting very loud and excited. We were having so much fun, it was hard to stop when the doorbell rang (we had a planned visitor).

Then today: well, let's just say they did something that I bet 99% of kids out there would never think to do, and yet mine seem to do it all the time. We had a math project that included graphing those little candy hearts that are available this time of year. Rather than investing in the little boxes that probably have like 20 candies, I bought a bag and poured them into a bowl. Not realizing it, I had given each of them over 50 candies. Once the math was done, of course they were given permission to eat them and I figured that lunch would be somewhat of a bust. Instead, each child ate maybe half of their candies, declared they were full and wanted to save the rest for later. Yep, all 3 kids, left half or more of the candy for another time.

Yep! I love my kids!!!!!!!

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Yeah! My Card Store is now open!

Well, it's really been open for about a week and a half, it's just taken a while to get the first cards approved. But I now have 4 in the store ready and waiting for sales, and twice that waiting for approval. You can see my cards or visit my store by clicking on the new widget off to the left or stop by at LMC Designs at Greeting Card Universe!

Friday, February 5, 2010

Been trying to do this all week!

With dinosaurs coming out our ears, I haven't even taken time to post. But I have some of the cutest shots of my fam's ice fishing adventure from last weekend. So, without further ado: