Running out the door to measure windows, pick up blinds, install them, and then back to the house to work on the program for our community theater production of “Little Women,” figure out my quarterly sales tax return so that I can file it electronically before midnight tomorrow night (I always seem to hit the transmit button at 11:48 p.m. the night it’s due — one time it went through at 12:01 a.m. and cost me an additional $85 in late fees — argh!)

Exciting things that have happened — our homeschool co-op found a new home (the facility we used last year was not available to us this year and we were getting worried thinking we would be “homeless”!)  We went to see another community theater group’s production of “The Scarlet Pimpernel” Sunday afternoon — it was fabulous and I have serious costume envy . . . this theater group’s been around since 1943 and is well-established.  I discovered that last season they did “Cinderella” and spent $10,000 on COSTUMES ALONE.  Our budget for our first production (“Little Women”) is $8,000 TOTAL.  Well . . . we’ll get there!

My Cutco knives came in.  They were ridiculously expensive, but so beautiful and so sharp and my old knives were so useless . . . well, my guy convinced me it was okay . . . so yeah, it will take 5 payments (I still have 4 to go) to pay for them, but they have a forever guarantee and so I guess it’s okay.  I plan on enjoying them!

I’ve gotta’ run for now — I hope this little crumb of an update will keep ya’ll until I can hop back on for something more entertaining!  Hugs to all!

I was told in a recent comment to “update already!”  And so here I am.    It’s just been CRAZY around here, people!  I’ll try to give you the quick rundown, since it’s almost 11:30 p.m.   But we’ll see how quick it is, considering how long it’s been since I posted!

Okay, now, how sad is that.  I started to say, “Well, last week . . . ” and I was so brain dead I had to go get my calendar to refresh my memory on what’s been going on.  Sheesh!  Well, we’ll start with Saturday, June 24 and go from there —

6/24 — My sister had her little boy’s 7th birthday at Minute Maid Park in Houston — too cool!  Now she rarely splurges like this.  It’s usually cake and ice cream at the house, thank you for the gifts, goodbye.  But this year she paid the fee to have his birthday at the ball field.  He got to have his birthday cake and open his gifts in one of the boxes above the ball field and then a wonderful fellow gave him and his buddies (and us, too!) a tour of the ballpark.  We got to walk on the gravel (after being told very seriously that “only coaches and players get to touch the grass . . . “) and then sit in the Astros’ dugout for pictures!  Granted, the ‘Stros have had a tough time of it, but it’s still kind of cool to think — hey, World Series sweat has been on these benches . . . and Roger Clements is playing here tomorrow night!  Hopefully things will turn around for them.  The last couple of wins are encouraging!  Junction Jack, the mascot, came in and gave the kids autographs . . . it was cool.

6/26 — We finally got the piano tuned.  Yeah!  We found a used piano back in February — the seller wanted $350, but accepted $275 because it needed work.  Well, the loveliest old gentleman came out and tuned her up — he was not optimistic when he first looked her over, but miracles of miracles, he was able to get her up to speed (perfect pitch) and only charged $90!  I gave him $100 because he was so nice.  I also was able to find out that our little piano was made between 1931 and 1940.  Pre-WWII!  I wish, oh how I wish that little piano could tell me who all has tickled her ivories!

6/27 — Went to the beach with some of our home school crowd.  It was so nice.  We got there about 6:00 in the evening and stayed for a couple of hours.  It stays light for so long that we had a great time without the worry of sunburn, etc.  Looking forward to doing that again!

6/29 — Lost my mind and bought a set of Cutco knives.  Spent way more than I should have, but my knives are crap and these are incredible.  Lifetime warranty, too, so if anything ever happens to one of them they will either sharpen it or replace it.  How cool is that?  There is something so lovely in using a decent knife, you know?  Plus the gal selling them is one of our home school grads and a lovely girl.  It’s her summer job until she goes back to Pensacola Christian College in Florida.

6/30 and 7/1 — Had a garage sale.  Have discovered we live just way too far off the beaten path to expend that much effort.  Made about $100 overall — took the rest to the Salvation Army.  It was nice stuff, so hopefully it will be beneficial to someone in need.  From now on, I suppose I’ll just donate it, or maybe try the eBay thing out.

7/3 and 7/4 — First day prepping for our annual Independence Day cookout (nodding in Miss O’Hara’s direction regarding the “Independence Day”/”Fourth of July” designation . . . )  It was touch-and-go in that we’ve had some major rain the last week and wondered if we’d even be able to have our little party.  Tuesday morning the water was shooting off our roof in sheets (the gutters shuddered in feeble resignation as they overflowed with the torrents) and we moved furniture around to accommodate the roughly 25 people we were expecting.  Fortunately, about an hour before they showed up the skies cleared, my guy was able to fire up the grill off the side of the carport (so if it started raining again, he could finish up the venison burgers and hot dogs without drowning . . . )  There was tons of food, 24 people, and lots of fun had by all.  It didn’t start raining again until the next morning.  Yeah!

7/6 — Measured and quoted two jobs and then spent $600 on new tires for my truck.  Hated spending that money, since I had almost enough to pay off my guy’s motorcycle note.  Oh, well.  When you’re on the road as much as we are, you’ve gotta’ have decent tires, and mine were just about shot.  Went ahead and got that lifetime alignment thing, so that’s good.  Since I spent so much on the tires, they gave me an additional discount — so I got 4 tires, an oil change, and the alignment thing for $599 and change.  Play rehearsals followed my afternoon camp out at Firestone.

7/7 — My girl got her braces.  I am so proud of her.  She hasn’t complained one bit and she is being incredibly diligent about brushing her teeth and avoiding problem foods.  I have to say, I think she looks cute with braces!  She just has them on the top for now.  The bottom will come later.  When we finished up with that, we went up to Huntsville to see some friends and put temporary shades in the windows of the new house they are finishing up.  And if you ever happen to wander through Willis, Texas — I HIGHLY recommend the Pizza Shack for dinner.  Sounds like a dump (based on the name), but it’s actually a very nice restaurant with AWESOME food.

And all this brings us to today — we spent the majority of it installing blinds and taking care of service calls.  After we grabbed some dinner at Johnny Carino’s, we went to the teacher supply and I bought a planner and a handwriting curriculum, because we’ve got to start getting ready for the coming year.  Handwriting has been a chore for my girl, and so we’re going to try the Handwriting Without Tears program to see if it is more enjoyable for her.  I’ve heard great things about it, so we’ll see!

Well, I’m gonna’ say goodnight for now —

A new Supermarket has just opened near our house has an automatic water mister to keep the produce fresh. Just before it goes on, you hear the sound of a thunderstorm and the smell of fresh rain.

When you approach the milk cases, you hear cows mooing and witness the
scent of fresh butter fat.

When you approach the egg case, you hear hens cackle and the air is
filled with the pleasing aroma of eggs frying.

So far we have been too afraid to go down the toilet paper aisle.

What a weekend!  I attended the SETHSA (Southeast Texas Homeschool Association) Conference in Houston on Friday and Saturday.  Friday I carpooled with some gals in my homeschool support group and Saturday my guy went with me.  Both days were a great deal of fun and very informative. 

I attended one particular workshop called “Avoiding Burnout” that I think will prove very useful over the longterm.  One thing the speaker asked us to examine in ourselves was our reason for homeschooling.  Were we homeschooling because we were “running” from public school or because we desired something better for our children?  He said that if we were only “running” from public school, it would be difficult to maintain our momentum in that the more time that passed since our public school experiences the less we would remember of them.  And so eventually we’d come to a point of saying, “Why are we doing this?”  He encouraged us to think of the positive reasons for homeschooling, because those reasons would give us the energy and perseverance to go the distance.

Another workshop speaker did a presentation on “journals” that I found very intriguing.  I’m hoping to work this into our studies this next year.  And when I say “journals,” I don’t mean diaries necessarily.  The speaker utilized journaling or notebooking in her homeschool experience as a tool for her boys to document their discoveries in certain areas of interest.  She had quite a few examples for us to look at.  One particular journal was created by a young lady who wanted to visit Venice, Italy.  Her mom explained that finances didn’t allow the trip at this time, but how about taking a “virtual” trip to Venice?  So the girl researched all aspects of traveling to Italy and created a “virtual” travel journal of her trip.  The journal included all the travel arrangements followed by pages depicting all the things she might see and do if she actually went to Venice.  She included pictures of the “virtual travelers” (her family) as well as pictures of the things that they might have seen if they’d really gone there.  Each place included a written explanation of where it was, what its significance was, and why she thought it was interesting/important.  Cool, huh?

Saturday my guy went with me and we purchased the language arts and mathematics materials that we’ll need this next year.  We are going to use “Studying Language Arts through Literature” and “Easy Grammar” for our language arts program.  Neither one of us likes a school book that is cluttered with a lot of fluff and these books are very straightforward.  The “language arts through literature” books look very interesting and cover grammar, reading, vocabulary, spelling, composition, research, and study skills/higher order reasoning.  We will be using Farmer Boy (Laura Ingalls Wilder), Mr. Popper’s Penguins (Richard and Florence Atwater), Trumpet of the Swan (E.B. White), David Livingstone, Foe of Darkness (Jeannette Eaton), Meet Addy (Connie Porter), Strawberry Girl (Lois Lenski), Amos Fortune, Free Man (Elizabeth Yates), and Caddie Woodlawn (Carol Ryrie Brink).  The funny thing is, my girl has read half of these books already, but she loves to re-read books she has enjoyed, so I think it will be okay.

The “Easy Grammar: Grades 4 and 5” book is primarily for reinforcement of grammar concepts.  Each unit covers a part of speech (prepositions, direct objects, verbs, etc.)  Lots of great worksheets with sentences where the student is directed to, for example, “cross out any prepositional phrases.  Underline the subject once and the verb phrase twice . . .”  There are also games included to help students retain information.

The mathematics curriculum looks to be a bit wooly-boogery (cool word, huh?).  Fortunately, my girl will be taking a class through our homeschool support group for this subject.  I have to sit through the class with her (yee haw . . . ) but maybe we both will learn math, eh?  It’s called “Super-Math” and the designer of the curriculum has come up with a system for helping students achieve true mastery of math, rather than just getting by and passing to the next level.  He was at the conference and every hour or so would have students from his classes do demonstrations of mental math calculations.  He gave a calculator to an observer and would ask a question of his students (such as, what is 512 squared?) — often the student had the answer before the observer could finish punching in the numbers on the calculator.  It was very impressive, and I think with diligence it will be quite beneficial to all of us.

A few fun things we purchased:  a place mat with a map of the world on one side and a map of the United States on the other (good for learning where everything is while eating one’s Cheerios), a book of Celtic songs for the beginning piano student (she starts lessons on Tuesday), a book of opening chess moves (she loves to play chess with her daddy), two books of “Mad Libs” (to be used as rewards when assignments are completed) and a very nice coloring book featuring “ponies of the world” (because if it has four legs and hooves and says “neigh” it is beautiful . . .)

The highlight of the day came at the very end when we attended a workshop on “courtship.”  While this has very little to do with “homeschooling” in an academic sense, it was incredible and made us realize how much there is that we can do to protect our girl from unnecessary heartache.  Now I’ve said before and I’ll say again, we’re not homeschooling to keep our girl in a box isolated from the rest of the world.  Not at all.  However, we can protect her as she grows older from those whose intentions may be less than honorable, and in the process hopefully save her from some of the heartache that we ourselves experienced as teens and young adults.  The family that did this workshop practice what they preach and of their five daughters, four have married incredible young men using the practice of courtship.  Basically, kids don’t “date” in their teens and they don’t really date when they are older.  If a young man is interested in seeing one’s daughter, he approaches the father first and states his intentions.  If Dad thinks that he is on track lifewise (meaning he’s a Christian, mature, has goals and a means of supporting himself and eventually a family) Dad will ask the daughter if she is interested in getting to know the young man.  Daughter either says yes or no, and then Dad conveys the answer to the young man.  This takes an incredible burden off the daughter’s shoulders (how many of you have gone out with someone because you didn’t want to hurt his feelings, even if you weren’t really that interested?  Or even if you said “no,” you felt badly about hurting his feelings?) 

Now if the daughter does want to get to know the young man better, it’s done a lot differently than going off to the movies or dinner or whatever.  The young man comes to the house and spends time with the whole family.  It’s true that when you marry someone you marry the whole family, not just that person.  And so it’s important for the family to like him, for him to like them, etc.  And if the young man is not willing to go to the “trouble” of doing things thusly, then he’s not really the right one anyway.  Someone who supposedly loves you should be willing to do whatever is necessary to get to know you, to spend time with you, etc.  One of the speaker’s son-in-laws was there and he said that at first he kind of went “What???” and then as he sat there thinking about the daughter that he wanted to get to know better, he asked himself  “is she worth it?” (worth going through the “trouble” of courtship) and he came to the conclusion that she was “totally” worth it.  It was so cool, because they were both there and they’ve been married 11 years and it was so obvious how much they love each other.  They have a five year old daughter and he has already started telling her bedtime stories about how there is a boy out there who is her perfect match, but he’ll have to prove himself worthy someday.  And they pray for him, whoever he is and wherever he is.  How cool is that?

After the conference, we went by the surf shop where my guy’s longboard is on layaway.  It is just beautiful.  I wish I’d had my digital camera with me so I could post a pic, but I will when he gets it.  We grabbed some dinner at The Cracker Barrel and then picked our girl up from my mom’s house.  I started getting a sinus headache and thus . . .

The Lost Day.  I took some Benadryl last night and again today — and I have been sleeping all day long!  Seriously, I only woke up for an hour here and there, but I spent the rest of it snoozing on the sofa.  I had plans to accomplish so much, but I guess I’ll have to save it for another day.  Hmmm . . .

Well, I’d better go catch a few more zzz’s, believe it or not.  We have to drive up to Huntsville tomorrow to measure some windows for a good friend and as I’ve been feeling today, I need the rest so I won’t feel icky tomorrow.

Have a good one.

Exciting things happening here!  I mentioned a few weeks ago that we’d joined a theatre guild down the road — a little community theatre in a tiny Texas town.  Well, auditions for “Little Women” were held Monday and Tuesday night.  Initially, only our girl was going to read, but the Mr. and I decided to jump in and see what happened as well.

My guy will be playing the role of “Mr. March,” father of Meg, Jo, Beth, and Amy!  My girl will be playing one of the little girls who delights so in Amy’s disgrace over the contraband pickled limes!  And I will be understudy to a very talented lady playing the role of Aunt March!

I am so thrilled about it all . . . it’s things like this that we’ll look back on and smile.

Monday we get our scripts and rehearsal schedules.  I have to say that I’m somewhat relieved to be an understudy, as I will also be handling photography and a good bit of the publicity for the play.  My plate is overflowing, but only with good things!

The dance recital was this evening and my girl danced beautifully.  I don’t know where she gets it from (certainly not me), but she’s a very graceful thing when she slips ballet slippers on her feet.  I wasn’t sure that we were going to make it — the dress rehearsal was earlier today and right when we were getting in the truck to leave, the back glass of my cab SHATTERED.  Yep — I’d gotten in the truck. leaned over to unlock my girl’s door and the glass fell out in tiny pieces.  We figured that my guy must have kicked up a pebble when he was weedeating the drive earlier and the ping of the pebble on the glass damaged the glass’s integrity.  The slight movement of the truck as we opened doors and moved about caused the glass to disintigrate.  Thankfully, my girl was not in the truck yet and no one was hurt.  My guy vacuumed out the cab and cleaned up the drive.  He took a couple of those noodle things you play with in the pool, ran a slit down the side and used them to cover the raw edges until I can have the glass replaced on Monday.  It’s a very stylish look (not).

Anyway, inspite of all the “excitement” we made it to the recital and my girl was BEAUTIFUL.  I will try to upload a pic or two tomorrow.  Have a great Mother’s Day!

I think I mentioned a while back that my husband’s younger sister was getting married and that our sweet punkin’ was a junior bridesmaid.  Meant to post a pic of my girl when we got back from the wedding, and I’m just now getting around to it.  Some days I look at her and I can’t help but wonder, “How in the world did WE produce HER?”  I mean, don’t get me wrong — we’re not painful to look at or anything , but I mean!  She’s simply gorgeous . . . of course, as Mom, I am slightly biased. 

A dog, her girl, another dog, and her boy . . .