The Eerie Waiting

There has been an eerie silence around town today. Just preparing for Ike. And waiting. We went to Mass this morning. Father was so kind and such a good shepherd as he got us ready for the storm.

We went to the park with our friends who we were supposed to camp with this weekend. It was a nice morning activity!



With the breeze and clouds starting to come in, we've spent a lot of time outside today!









The calm before the storm. I'll put up some before and after pictures when we have power/internet; I assume we will be without it for a few days. We are ready for a family "camping" weekend indoors! We don't know anyone who has evacuated our area, except one of Steven's brothers. So I hope everyone stays safe! I'm praying for all our family and friends, all those rescue workers, and anyone who will be in harm's way in the coming hours. May God protect us all! May he keep our own home safe from harm and damage, and may this time of being together remind us of the blessing of family and the gifts that we have in our home, our food, our community.

Our Lady, Star of the Sea, pray for us!

Nature Club

On top of the world!



MC in Native American headdress and her shy little friend ;)


Not sure if you can see SJ sitting next to MC for circle time! He was in on it all!


Ellie performed her poem! (she actually did it 2 or 3 times, and then made up another poem...no stage fright for her!)

Translation:
"Happy Thought" by Robert Louis Stevenson
The world is so full of a number of things;
I'm sure we should all be as happy as kings.



The children made rain sticks and did a rain dance...we're hoping it keeps Ike far away from here! But that's not looking very likely and we've already had to cancel our big camping trip....bummer :(

A Day in the Life

I took some pictures of our school day today so I would have a record of how things went, and to show others who are asking me questions...just what do you do to homeschool a kindergartener? Keep in mind I've pretty much created our own plan, loosely using materials recommended by the Mother of Divine Grace and the St. Thomas Aquinas Academy programs.

We start with a simple morning offering prayer I made up, and then we say the Pledge of Allegiance and the Texas Pledge along with one or two patriotic songs. These are the flags we painted last year but still need to laminate or frame/decoupage and hang on the wall.


We try to start lessons around 9am. Today we started a little before 9, after waking up around 8! I heard the school bus drive by as I was dragging myself out of bed :) On Monday mornings we start with journal time to write about the weekend. Mary Clare narrates/dictates what she wants me to write and then she illustrates. Oh, and we had school in PJs today, fairly normal occurrence around here.


Close-up of her journal story about Daddy's Birthday and then a "poem" about rabbits she made up on the other side.


I offer to let Ellie dictate a story but she likes to write her own! She keeps herself busy while I work with MC. Oh, and she learned how to write a "P" and a "B" while writing this "story"!


Next, we practiced Mary Clare's current poem, "The Rainbow" by Christina Rossetti. I found it online and thought she would enjoy the topic and it would challenge her a bit since it's 10 lines. She did some of the poem-practicing while coloring a page of a random coloring book for a "break".

Her poems and narrated Bible stories are in plastic pages in a binder. It would probably be easiest to have one binder with tabs for poetry and the different narrations (Bible, journaling, nature), but we have a separate bound notebook as a journal. I like the paper with room for pictures at the top, and MC does too! She loves to illustrate but also loves to do it quickly! Ellie is working on a poem too, "Happy Thought" by Robert Louis Stevenson. I'll try to put videos of the poems up later this week.


We move on to math. I pretty much let MC choose the order of the subjects while I choose the subjects , and we end up covering everything in about an hour. Mary Clare is really enjoying Math U See. I am also really impressed with the approach and think it is a great fit for our family! I am fairly good at math but never learned all the good "tricks" to help me with memorization or to keep me from counting on my fingers. I love that it uses just one type of manipulative and tells you exactly how to use the blocks. The DVD is very helpful for me; I'm not having MC watch it with me just yet. Here she is showing a 3-digit number for her "test" today.


Then she (and Ellie) wanted to play with the blocks for a few minutes.


We're still trudging along through "100 Easy Lessons" for phonics. Neither of us is crazy about it, but I haven't found anything else that is grabbing me right now. We've done this on and off for over a year and we're on lesson 27. We're doing it every day now, though, so hopefully we'll make some headway soon. This is the part of school she likes the least...reading.


Ellie plays with the Leap Pad while we do phonics.


Today we ended with our bible lesson. On Mondays I usually read a new story in our Children's Bible. The bible I chose isn't necessarily a "Catholic" one, but one I bought at the Catholic bookstore because I really liked the illustrations.


Today we read "Jacob's Dream" and tomorrow she'll narrate it back to me and I'll write it out. We'll probably have to read it again before she narrates because she won't remember it all. She'll illustrate it tomorrow or the next day and may have me add on to her narration if she wants.


After a good 45 minutes of school time with a sleeping baby, I go to check on him...so sweet! I love babies first thing in the morning!


And so, that was our Monday morning. We had ballet this afternoon and everything went fairly smoothly for a Monday. I hope the rest of the week continues on this track and that that Hurricane Ike stays FAR FAR away from here. We're going on a big camping trip this weekend with our homeschool group, so we're praying for good weather and healthy families.

Hope everyone had a happy Monday and a wonderful Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary! (We celebrated Friday so we didn't do anything special today) Happy Birthday, Blessed Mother!

Funday Sunday

Steven has become the "fishing guide" for all our friends :) We spent a few hours at the park on Sunday afternoon, fishing and having fun!

The girls fishing


Daddy caught a big bass--1.2 pounds!


I think this was Steven Joseph's first time to sit outside and play. He was a little apprehensive but had fun putting things in his mouth! I'm sure he'll have a blast camping this weekend. Mommy isn't looking forward to chasing him around and fishing things out of his mouth though!




And here's a video of our big boy who just learned to walk with his little walker toy last night!

¡Feliz Cumpleaños!

Our Saturday!


A special gift painted by the girls


He picked up breakfast for us! The best donuts on the planet!


We went to a high school football game tonight at the brand new stadium nearby...so much fun! And our friend K and her boys were there! Steven Joseph wore his camo outfit from Grampatti in honor of the birthday boy!


Ellie was wide-eyed at this whole event! And here she's clutching her blanket. Before we went to the game she said "Mommy I not doing football? I do it when I get bigger?" and "Daddy is going to do it."


MC is just growing up before my eyes! One of her top teeth is loose. I think she'll be toothless for Christmas!


Going to a high school football game brought back so many memories. Hanging out in the stands with friends, and my years on the drill team...


The band was great! In fact, the director used to direct our middle school band. The middle school band I changed my mind on, after I was already accepted for percussion. I decided to do "FAPA" (Fine Arts Practical Arts) for my elective, where we had a different elective each 6 weeks...woodworking, homemaking, choir, theatre arts, etc. I still regret that decision. I wish I could play an instrument and read music and I think I would've loved band. Okay, no regrets, right?


And I keep forgetting about my new tab rule! I've done too many other things while writing this. And how is it 1am already? My my. Well, we had a wonderful day celebrating Steven's birthday. Hope everyone is having a fun weekend! And here's to another great year, Steven!

Dear Sweet Ellie-Lu,

Tonight I listen to you breathe as you have fallen asleep on the floor beside me, and I am so thankful for those sounds, that life that stirs within you! Hopefully you will not remember the horrible day we had on Wednesday. I had just written the blog entry below about multi-tasking when I truly discovered that I cannot keep so many "tabs" open at once.

I won't go into all the details, but the point being that you went with your sister to get some toys out of the car in the driveway, and she came back in. You didn't. I didn't notice. About 5 or 10 minutes later Mary Clare asked where you were, as I was talking on the phone and trying to nurse Steven Joseph to sleep in bed. My heart dropped as I rushed out to the car. You were okay, very upset and hot and scared...but Mommy is still shaken up.

My heart truly goes out to all the families who have lost children in this way. The guilt is haunting. The memory vivid. And this was a happy ending. God bless those dear parents who have suffered the loss of a child. What a heavy cross they must carry.

And so, Ellie, I treasure your sweet life even more today. I hug you tightly and tell you how much I love you, over and over again. I watch your dancing, your songs, your sisterly play, and I sing and pray with you with new vigor. I love those silver glitter shoes more than ever, and your Ellie-isms are especially sweet!

Today was the first First Friday class of the year. And this year, I am YOUR teacher. I have done so much with Mary Clare and am giving so much attention to Steven Joseph, that sometimes you become that "middle child" who gets left out. I am so happy to be spending the time planning and leading your special Preschool Pray and Play class! Today we celebrated the Birthday of Mary. You wanted to answer all the questions and sat by your sweet boy friend, J. You got your own backpack and folder and made a beautiful package for the Blessed Mother. We had a party at the park and you kept busy playing with your friends. I think you're going to be the leader of the little 3yr-old group. You are a few months older than most of them and they all adore you!


(If you can spot my girls, they are as close as possible to the rosary made of cupcakes!)

And I adore you, my gorgeous Lizzy-Lu. Your sweetness lights up a room, and brightens my heart. I pray that God gives us many more fun years together and I thank Him with my entire being that you are here today...breathing, living, singing, and dancing!

Love,
Mommy

And so readers, please hold your kids tightly and watch them oh so carefully! I am so much more aware of how accidents can happen in an instant. Guardian Angels, protect us!

Ellie (ie "Hannah Ana") performing Twinkle, Twinkle a few days ago!

The Principal's Visit

on Labor Day!

One tab only

I am a multi-tasker. And it's not always a good thing. It's hard to do one thing well when you are balancing 5 other things at the same time. But it's how I work. I frequently am cooking a meal, cleaning up a mess, talking on the phone, feeding a baby in a high chair, fixing a child's hair, and pouring another child juice at the same time. There is always a project going on in my head.

I was doing something last night that really showed how inattentive my brain is at times. Usually when the kids go to bed, I feel like I need about 2 hours of "down time", which is usually time vegging on the computer reading blogs, message boards, and taking care of emails. Last night I started by going through emails and starting to respond to some things that needed my attention. But once an email message needs my full attention, I switch to "veg-out" mode and make another tab on my browser to start reading some blog or other "light" reading, while that email message waits for me to complete it. Then I start to respond to someone's blog post. I get stuck in the middle...how do I want to word that? So I open a new tab and start reading something else. Pretty soon I have 5 or more open tabs and have not completed any of the messages I was trying to write! Then I have a baby up for almost 3 hours crying and I really get behind! My new rule...only ONE open tab! I think that could go for other areas of my life too!

I currently have several big projects/activities going on and things are falling by the wayside! First of all, I am wife and mommy. I have housework and cleaning that are rather urgent...dishes to clean, about 12 loads of laundry to fold, clean bed linens that need to be put back on beds, and a playroom that needs supervised cleaning by the girls. Don't dare to ask when my bathrooms last got a good cleaning!

Then I have Mary Clare's schoolwork. A necessary daily event. I am still working out our schedule and received a few more materials in the mail today. So I'm pondering how I will fit in Saint stories, Latin chant, and narrative writing...I'm really already doing all those things so it's more how I will add some of the suggested ideas from those materials into what I'm already doing. I'm trying to be consistent and steadfast with Mary Clare, who is still testing limits and sometimes outright refusing to do what is asked of her. We're improving though! We got through all our work with no breaks this afternoon! And hopefully she'll have her new poem to perform for the blog later this week.

Then I have my other homeschool group duties. I am leading the First Friday class this week. I have a lesson to finalize, supplies to get together, all kinds of charts and things to print out, and I need to check up on several people who are helping me put all this together. I need to have everything ready tomorrow night so that we can get there early on Friday morning. I am also planning a new member social next week along with a family camping trip. I offered to host a back to school swim party, but that may not end up happening. As you can tell, my plate is full!

I am involved in a lay movement which thankfully helps me to put this all in perspective. Tomorrow we are having our first meeting at our "center" instead of at my home. This will require a very early wake-up and drive, plus the purchase of a snack to bring with us to share. I am helping to plan the morning monthly retreats for this year. I just completed most of what needs to be done for September's retreat. I have prayer commitments which are sadly the thing that has been suffering, which would make all the other things on my list to go much smoother if I had my first focus on Christ and my reflections and discernment about the day's activities to happen first thing in the morning.

And I have some side work projects going on. We do packaging and other work for my parents' business, Candy Spirit. There are 2 candy stick orders in my living room waiting for packaging. I have some wooden crosses that I am planning to handpaint and sell on their website. I am talking with some families about arranging to be a childcare provider for one or two children during the week. And I also have a homeschool project which I am hoping to submit for publishing in the next few months. So I need to put together a basic proposal for that in the near future.

So if I haven't exhausted you already, I also have two walls I've started painting in my bathroom. This needs to be completed so I can put the bathroom back together! Would it surprise you to her me say that I'm not really stressed out? Sure, I'm busy and my mind is VERY busy. But I think I actually thrive when I have a lot of things to do. They may not be done perfectly, but they are completed eventually. My life is a little crazier than normal right now, but I'm sure once the initial beginning-of-the-year hype dies down, things will smooth out and I will no longer sound like a soap opera character to my poor friend Veronica! She never knows what new crisis will be shared the next time I call her!

In the time it's taken me to write this post, I have entertained a baby, comforted him after a head-bonk, nursed him, taken 2 phone calls, and wiped 2 hineys! I think it's time I get to the laundry mountain and check that off the list. Hopefully writing this out will help me to organize my thoughts a little and help me to discern the way I handle all these obligations. I hope it wasn't just another way for me to waste some time and avoid my ever-growing list of to-do's! I'm sure many of you out there have a life like mine...how do you make it all come together? How many "open tabs" can you handle at one time?

A quick pic

from our homeschool group's ice cream social last week. This is but a fraction of our exceeding-60-families Catholic group which we are so blessed to be a part of. Ellie was refusing to get in the picture but ran over at the last minute, MC is in the middle wide-mouthed, and Stevie is in the arms of the little girl in the middle row on the far right. Fun times!

Thanks, Neen, for the picture I just stole :)

Labor Day

The principal is visiting our school today :)
But the pics won't upload. Hopefully I can get it to work shortly. Hope everyone is having a fun holiday weekend!

Funny sayings of today:

After reading about Jacob and Esau.
Mommy: "And Esau planned to kill his brother."
Ellie: That was a bad choice.

Mary Clare, refusing to finish her reading, puts a crown on.
MC: "I am queen of reading and I don't have to do any reading any more!"

My eatin' boy!

Mmmm...first teether biscuit!


First peach chunks!


Wouldn't let me feed him today, so I let him "drink" jarred baby food out of a cup!


Bad idea, Mommy!

St. Augustine

and little saint Augustine Patrick, pray for us!
His announcement
How loved he was and is!

I think I've mentioned before that I try to remember my miscarried babies on that saint's feast day, since I purposely didn't remember their due dates. These feast days would be special days we would have celebrated if they had been born, so I try to think of it as a special feast for our family as we remember these souls in heaven, ask for their prayers, and continue in hope of our eternal destination together! Hopefully in the coming years I will remember to do something special with the children in their siblings' memory.

St Augustine and Monica by Ary Scheffer


Today I entrust 3 special family intentions to sweet Augustine Patrick,
as well as heartfelt prayers for my friend K, a single homeschooling mom with cancer and some complications.
Can you please send up a little prayer for these intentions?
Thanks, friends!

Freedom

(I wrote this after a drive to Adoration last night where I had a flashback to my high school days, driving around the area I now call home, without a care in the world!)

Cruising in my white sports car
Hair blowing in the wind
Not a care in the world
But for the crush
And next week's biology test

Out with the girls until night's wee hours
Going no place
Thinking of no one but myself
And the crush
And the next school dance
Oh, the "freedom"!

Bouncing out of the dorm
Facing a brand new day
Smell the fresh air
Biking cross campus
Hair blowing in the wind
Setting goals
Finding Christ
Maybe I am going somewhere

Sitting in that field
Speaking to You
Begging for that love
That crush
Wanting nothing but the life I now live
Chained to the desires of my heart

A car full of car seats
Cries and whines
Dripping ice cream cones
Blankeys and books
Dolls and drawings
My mind is everywhere but here
Friends and finances
Children to teach
Bills to pay
Cleaning to do
Running a household isn't quite what I dreamed

And yet you know it's exactly what I need
Stretching my arms, my legs, my mind,
My heart
Nothing is mine anymore
Not even them
The little souls you've placed in my arms
It is all yours
Me and him and them and everything
And that's how it should be
Because here is where
I find freedom.

Back to Ballet

Today the girls started ballet again at their wonderful Christian studio. We recently got the DVD of their recital performance of "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" and it was amazing...I'm sure we'll watch it over and over again! We are so blessed to have this studio close by...wonderful instruction, wonderful families, and Christ as the center!

Ellie has 4 little friends in her class, and Mary Clare has 2. I guess I did a good job of promoting their dance studio! I didn't realize we'd see all those friends today! Here are the beautiful ballerinas...

Elizabeth Ann Marie, queen of the Beginners!


Sisters after class


Playing outside...the studio is in the "country"


Gotta love this look. This morning when I wouldn't let her do something she wanted to, she yelled, "Mom, you're ruining my entire life!" We have a long way to go with those teenage years ahead of us!


Ellie fussing about something. I think it was the sticker she lost. Love this look too ;-)

School update

One week down, another begins!

I can now declare myself an official homeschooler, no longer "we're planning to homeschool" but we are a homeschooling family! I am very at peace with this. I am totally confident it's God's will for our family right now, and the stress I thought would come with this new phase is really not there at all. Yeah, it was a hard week with discipline issues in particular. But not much different than any other week I've spent as a stay-home mom. We just have an hour of school each morning along with it. Easy peasy. (I'm sure when February rolls around, or another time this year I'll be eating my words. Week one with a kindergartener isn't too hard.)

My expectations are not too high or too low, I hope. I think I'm going to try to work on one new routine or activity each week. For example, the past few days we've been working on keeping the playroom and schoolroom clean. Now I have the room set up to finally have lessons in there tomorrow morning! And the calendar even says August! Yay me :)



Some other things I want to work on: chores for the girls, my sleep schedule, my prayer schedule, adding art into our day, nature notebooks, consistent library visits (no more fines!), organizing closets, deep cleaning...I could go on and on. Baby steps...

I'm also still finishing up Elizabeth Foss' "Real Learning" and loving it. I'm reading about chores right now and just finished the chapters on the Arts and Sports and how they fit into the life of a homeschooling family. I'm hoping to read Alice Gunther's "A Haystack Full of Needles" next. A great way to start the year with great books!

And my thoughts and prayers go out to all those friends with little ones starting school this week. Such an exciting time of year and I remember well the days of preparing for the first day as a student and as a teacher...so much fun! I can't wait to see those pictures of the jumpers and backpacks :)

Have a great week!