Little o' This, Little o' That

Note: My apologies to all who tried to click on this post yesterday! I had one of those (not infrequent) moments of hitting "publish" and then waking up in the middle of the night (at 3:00 a.m., to be specific) thinking, Good grief, I can't believe I put that out there on the internet. I immediately headed out to the living room and reverted to draft form.

I have since deleted the portion that caused me so much angst. Suffice it to say that it was just a bit overly negative. (It's been a very, very hard week.) Not that we should never share negative things on our blogs - to the contrary. But the section that made me uncomfortable had not been processed long enough in draft form, or developed fully enough to share properly. I have pasted it into another draft, and will (possibly) work on it for the future.

And now, after far more detail than you wanted, here is the rest of that post!

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Hi, everyone!

Time for a quick hodge-podge post of what's been going on around here lately.

Unfortunately, I have no memory of anything longer ago than yesterday. Or possibly this morning. (Twenty minutes ago?) Thankfully, I have my pictures to flip through, so I'll try to dredge up some memories for y'all.

(Can you tell that I'm tired? "Why, no," the reader responds politely.)

Ah, yes! Our eldest turned NINE! The birthday that I have been anticipating/dreading for years, if not decades. We are now at the halfway point in raising this child.

Wowza.

Wasn't he just born yesterday, or thereabouts?

He made out like a bandit for this birthday. A bucket of WWII soldiers, a hobbit costume, and a bunch of play weapons. (I love foam swords.) The 3yo was pretty excited about everything as well.

And now for my cake-decorating prowess (hopefully it beats my pie-making skills):

To make the cake, I printed and cut out this coloring page, and then traced it on the cake with a toothpick before icing. The cake (Hershey's Chocolate Cake) was iced with the chocolate icing from the recipe, and I then used plain buttercream frosting for the decorations (the brown was tinted with chocolate, the yellow was tinted with turmeric).

Our next parenting adventure: Moving into pre-teen-hood. Wow, this parenting journey really leaves me breathless. There's always something new.

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We also attended our state's homeschool convention, but I will cover that deliciousness in another post.

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We hosted a family reunion for one side of our family. Despite my mother-in-law's recent diagnosis of breast cancer, we had a wonderful time and got a lot of great pictures.

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My latest deal at Goodwill. Fellow home educators and mothers of boys, if y'all aren't drooling... you should be.

Now, if I could just figure out where to put the bookcases, I'd be set.

As a side note, my annual spring cleaning has been postponed indefinitely while I wallow in angst over furniture arrangement (bookcases among other things).

You see, I can tell when something is vaguely displeasing to my sense of placement and personal comfort, but actually identifying the source of displeasure and, even worse, figuring out something to do about it - well, that is usually beyond me.

But I also know that when my house is cluttered and/or ugly, I very quickly lose the ability even to think straight, let alone be civil or be productive. So I need to work on our home, even if I lack the talent to do so.

My project of the moment is figuring out what furniture to ditch, and which to rearrange. It's a huge, head-ache-y mess that usually leads me in circles.

"Let's see, I want to move the bureau into the girls' room. But I can't do that until I move the bookcases. I can't move the bookcases until I sell the armoire. But I can't sell the armoire until we get rid of the VCR. And... where was I?"

This week, thanks to answered prayer, I finally was able to make one furniture arrangement that pleased both myself and my husband. I feel encouraged - now on to the other ninety-nine decisions that have to be made!

Perhaps I'll post pictures when I'm done! Then you all can think to yourselves, "Wow, she really DOESN'T have any decorating skills."

But you can post nice, encouraging comments anyway.

("Wow, that looks, um, interesting! Very unique! Yes, unique!")


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Sometime last week, someone (Someone) FLIPPED A SWITCH with our little girl. She went from rolling aimlessly around the carpet to... scoot, scoot, scoot. In one day. Suddenly, she showed up in the kitchen. In the bedroom. EVERYWHERE. She is on her way.

 

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The 9yo recently filled up his first memory sheet that we began using this year. We're very proud of him! Now he gets to go out for an ice cream cone with Daddy.

Next time I'm putting 12 spaces on the sheet instead of nine. Otherwise this could get expensive.

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In other homeschooling news, I am thrilled to announce that....

(Drumroll, please...)

We have found a history curriculum! I love it. It's working beautifully.

Which history curriculum is it?

I shall keep you all in suspense until I have time to blog about it (which will be so long from now that anyone reading will have forgotten about it entirely).

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I'm sure there's more, but... my brain is dead.

Have a wonderful week, dear friends!