Mama On The Move

That's some good sleeping right there.

Katie is taking an art class. I am loving this class and wish I had found it sooner. When Ben and Emily were little, I had lots more free time to plan art projects for them. Now that I am homeschooling three different grade levels and centering my life around carting them to their various activities, art time is not so easy to plan. Thank heavens I can outsource some subjects. Their first project was printing with ink. All projects this session revolve around dinosaurs which is not Katie's favorite subject matter for art, but she's trying to be nice about it and not complain (too much) to the teacher (yet). First, they covered a piece of plexiglass with black ink. Then they would use Q-tips and napkins to draw a dinosaur design in the ink. Next, they would crank it through a rolling press to transfer the design onto paper. The first drawing here is a "ghost print" which means it was the second run through the press. The second drawing is a first print, and...

THEN NOW Yes, that's his tongue. *on a side note, after I uploaded this picture, I noticed Ringo peeking in the window between Emily and Katie's heads. He doesn't like to be left out.

I told the kids to go through their drawers and get rid of all the clothes that don't fit or that they just don't wear. Ben and Katie each filled a garbage bag full of clothes. We took them to our church to give to the needy. There are a group of us who all meet and sort out the food and clothes which have been donated. While we all chatted, I sorted through the clothes we had brought, folding them and separating them into sizes and styles. In Ben's bag, I found a pair of Kerry's shorts, one of Kerry's shirts, and two pair of my jeans. "Ben!" I glared at him while holding up the clothing I had just rescued. "What are these clothes doing in the give away bag?" "You told me to get the stuff I never wear, and I never wear those!"

In case you ever wonder........ If you are vacuuming your daughter's room and you accidentally run the vacuum cleaner over a pen, the pen will snap in half and spew black ink over about four feet of light beige carpet. The spinning brush of the vacuum will grind the ink in quite well. In case you ever wonder....... A mom who has just smeared ink into the carpet, can sprint through the house and hurdle over a very large dog in search of a can of aerosol hairspray and be back to the mess in about fifteen seconds flat. In case you ever wonder........ A can of aerosol hairspray and a carpet steam cleaner used 27 times can get all traces of black ink out of a light beige carpet. In case you ever need to provide such information on "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire" - I could be your phone-a-friend.

Many years ago, when we lived in North Carolina, Emily took dance lessons. She had a very good friend who was also named Emily. That's My Emily in the center, leaning on the star. Her friend, Also Emily, is on the far right with her chin on a star. Aren't they cute? When we moved to Hawaii, Also Emily lived here already. We were thrilled to have friends here who could show us around and help us get settled in. We call the girls "The Emilys" or "Emily Squared". See how they have grown!! Now it's time for Also Emily to move away again. It's one of the hardest parts of military life, leaving our friends, or having them leave us. And maybe in a few years we will have another photo of The Emilys when they are in high school and I will be able to embarrass the heck out of them with their dance photo. Won't that be fun !?

Let me start by saying I did not invent this. I'm not sure who thought this up, but this is the way we review science with the middle schoolers at our co-op. All the other moms have been doing it this way, and as I was teaching the module on fossils, I did it this way too. I just wanted to share this in case anyone else needs a good way to review a subject. First, take colorful post-it notes and lay them out in rows and columns on a flat surface. I used a white board but it was very humid and some of them did not stick so well. There should be three post-its of the same color in each spot. On the top post-it write the point value of the question. In this version, the easy questions were worth 100 points and the hardest questions were worth 500. You can make as many rows or columns as you need. It's easiest to have a different color for each column so the students can call out, "Yellow for 400, Bob!" Underneath the point value on the second post-it, write the qu...