The boys started their new season of hockey.  Today was just evaluations and practice.  They won’t find out which team they’re on for another week.

Since the boys have hockey during the Lowe’s Children’s Workshop on Saturdays, they weren’t able to participate.  However, the nice guy at Lowes gave us a kit to take home and work on.  The boys did their project on Sunday, when Grandma and Grandpa were here visiting.

Monday:

We had a late start today, but we still managed to have a good day.  Today was Ty’s first day with his new Reader.  He will tell you that the story was “too easy” and he was a bit bored with it.  I have to say that the summer reading I had them do is direct result of why he was bored with it.  His reading skills are way above where his reader is starting out.  If it doesn’t pick up for him soon, I may skip him ahead a few lessons.

Ty had his first Math test today.  He aced it. 

Cam had a snack to make for his Math class today.  It was a snack mix, and after he made it, he and Ty happily munched while finishing up their lessons.  Of course, lunch for today was shot because they’re were full from snacking.  Good thing it we don’t do this every day. 

I had to administer Cam’s spelling pretest today.  He would finish writing the word before I was even finished with the sentence.  The words are pretty easy for him.

In Story of the World today, we learned about the early Egyptians who lived along the Nile River.  The boys wrote a summary of the chapter I read to them, then I read Bill and Pete Go Down the Nile (Paperstar) to them.  They thought that story was hilarious. We also read Croco’nile, by Roy Gerrard.

After that, we created our own version of the Nile River.  We used grass seed for our ‘crops’, and hopefully, I’ll be able to update it in a week or two with the grass sprouts.

Then we watched a Netflix movie called, ‘Riddles of the Sphinx‘.  While it didn’t have any information about the Nile River, it did give the boys an opportunity to see some of the ancient Egyptian monuments (and eat popcorn in the living room!):

Tuesday:

Today, Cam learned about planting crops in his Heritage Studies lesson.  He even got to plant his own crops!  He “planted” popcorn, sunflowers, and oatmeal. 

He also made a scarecrow.  However, true to “Cam” fashion, he opted to make his different than what the teacher did – he wanted his to be a puppet instead.

In English, he’s learning about punctuation and capitalization.  He’s also learning the difference between “telling” sentences, “commanding” sentences, and sentences that ask questions.  He’s really enjoying the ‘punctuation puppets’ in his lesson:  Exclamation Ericka, Question-mark Quentin, and Period Pete!

In Math, he’s learning invaluable “pre-algebra” skills:  finding the missing addends.  So far, it’s been almost too easy for him.  I have to say though, he really, REALLY enjoys pulling out his math toolbox.  “Matt” is the name of one of the Math characters (get it?  Matt/Math?):

Hey Cam!  What do you think of your Spelling class?

He also really enjoys his handwriting class too.  I thought I’d give you a peek at his handwriting song (complete with “Timothy Time” puppet).

Cam is a little silly sometimes…in case you missed it. 

Today Ty learned about Christopher Columbus in Heritage Studies.  He also learned a little bit more about maps, and had to draw a route on a map.

In his Language Arts class, he did more phonics work, and read some more out of his Reader.  In composition, he wrote what a mouse’s umbrella was (a mushroom, of course!).

In Math, he’s learning about basic addition problems, and using his unifix cubes to “visualize” the problem.

In Bible today, he completed his ‘Creation Timeline’, and learned that God provides for all humans and animals.

Story of the World got a little bit more interesting today, as we learned about the Egyptian gods and goddesses.  We read the story of Isis, Osirus, and Set, and went a little further by reading a story book called, Egyptian gods & goddesses (All Aboard Reading). To say the boys were captivated by this information would be an understatement.

For our activity, we made a ‘Shepherd’s Crook’ like the ones pharaohs would use.

When Scott came home from work, he saw the white canes drying on the table, and wanted to know what the candy canes were for.  LOL

After the paper mache had dried, the boys painted them.

The finished product!

After school, I had the boys play outside for a bit since it was the first day (in many) that it wasn’t raining.

Funny how ‘play time’ is no longer just about running off some energy.  In the picture above, they decided to dig for archeological clues.  I told them they weren’t allowed to dig big holes in the yard, so they settled for the sand that I had dumped in the landscaping (leftover from our dig the week before).

We finished our day with some swimming.

Another by-product of teaching the boys about Ancient Civilizations?  Cam is making related items out of legos.  Here’s a picture of a “Nile Crocodile” he made:

And here’s a shot of Ty’s new desktop (as a sidenote, I had no idea Lego made Egyptian Lego sets!):

Wednesday:

We shook things up a bit by running some much-needed errands in the morning.  The first thing we did was get a haircut!  You know your boys need a haircut when the beautician asks, “when was the last time they had their hair cut?!”  Um…May?  Maybe?  I don’t remember.

After that, we went to the library to pick up some of books we’ll be reading over the next two weeks.  I spent a week before school started writing down every book we would need for SOTW and their Reading classes for the year.  I even went online and found out if my library had them, and where they were located.  It was a lot of work, but boy, is it paying off now!  I didn’t have any cute library cards, so I opted to print them out on index cards and attach them to the folders with a paper clip.

After a few more stops, we headed back home.  I had the boys eat lunch, then we started on our day.  They weren’t very happy about doing school in the afternoon, so I told Scott that next time we would either take the day off, or wait until school was done.

They both did their lessons with little fanfare, and we ended up finishing school in about (3) hours.

Our Story of the World activity was writing on Cuneiform tablets.  I had found this really cool “book” at Barnes and Noble about a month ago;  Hieroglyphics (Treasure Chests).    It was in the clearance bin, and as soon as I saw it, I immediately picked it up.  The only thing I can think of as to why it was on clearance was maybe there was a newer edition?  I don’t know.  All I know, is that it was in perfect shape, had all of the pieces, and contained a treasure of fun stuff!

When you open up the book, the first thing you see is a booklet about hieroglyphics.  This little book is full of great information.  Everything from written communication to games that ancient Egyptians would play.

You also see the hieroglyphics stamps, the clay for cuneiform tablets, a stylus, and a stamp roller that has pictures of ancient Egyptians on it.

Then, if that weren’t enough, there’s a “secret” drawer that holds a map, a Rosetta Stone poster, stickers, a paper model of the temple of Ramses III, and a Mehen board game.  Super cool!

When I brought this book out, it was like Christmas morning for the boys.  They were really excited to dig into it.  But I didn’t want them to play with it just yet.  I knew we would be doing only the Cuneiform tablet, so I just removed the stylus, clay, and roller stamp from the kit.  Tomorrow we’ll dig further into this treasure.

They decided to write their names on the clay. I opted to have them actually write their name out instead of using the perfectly shaped letters on the stamps.  Since I only had one “reed” stylus, I gave Ty a flat-head screwdriver to write with.   After they were done, we baked the clay, waited for it to cool, then painted it.  Below, you can see the letters in their name, as well as the design they rolled onto the clay.  Cam’s is first:

Thursday:

We started our morning by making paper!  I didn’t have any papyrus, unfortunately, but we used a newspaper/cotton/corn husk pulp.  We made it in the morning, so that it would be dry by the time our hieroglyphics project was due to begin.

We started by tearing up some newspaper:

We added water to the mix and watched the blender do the work:

After we rinsed the pulp (to make it less gray), we added more water and the cotton to the mixture.  Then we poured the mixture into the paper mold, pulled the mold out of the water, then sponged off the excess water.  Once it was no longer saturated with water, I took the paper outside to dry.

After that, it was on to Heritage Studies.   Ty is still learning about Christopher Columbus.  His lesson centered around what Columbus thought he would find, and what Columbus actually found.

Cam’s Heritage Studies class is still discussing farming; more specifically, cotton.  He immediately linked the cotton fibers we used to make our paper this morning, to the cotton the teacher was weaving in the lesson.  Of course, in true Cam-style, he wanted to pause his program and make his own cotton fibers.  I didn’t let him though.  I’m mean like that.  After the teacher weaved the cotton to make a fabric, she showed them how to dye it different colors.

In Phonics today, Ty is finishing up his color words, and continuing to build on his word families.

Cam is revisiting alphabetizing words (something he did last year in Spelling).  His worksheet today had him alphabetize words, and he says, “Mom!  This is kind of fun!” 

In Math, Cam is learning to add 3-digit numbers, and reviewing addition problems that he learned from last year.

Ty is learning about graphing, and continuing to practice writing his numbers.

They weren’t hungry for lunch because they had snacked on Cam’s Math Snack Mix again, so after our lessons, I gave the boys (30) minutes of free time.   We would have jumped right into our Story of the World lesson, but the paper needed just a bit longer to dry.  We did a narration of the chapter, and once the homemade paper was dry, we were off!

They were genuinely fascinated with the finished paper.  I don’t know what they were expecting, but they didn’t believe that it was same paper that we had blended in the blender.

I cut the paper in half so they could create hieroglyphic scrolls.  Then I showed them how to find the right letters on the stamps.

They both stamped the same message:  My name is Cam/Ty.

After Hieroglyphics, they were able to spend the Treasure Tickets they had earned today.  Here they are digging through my Treasure Box:

Friday:

We started our morning with Show and Tell.  I wasn’t going to have Show and Tell this year, since really, the boys ‘show and tell’ about their toys constantly.  But they asked if we could do it, and I didn’t see the harm in it.

After Show and Tell, they jumped right into Heritage Studies.  Ty is learning about the different tribes of Native Americans, and Cam continued his learning about farming.

Cam had his first chapter test in English today.  He missed one question.  After the test, I gave the boys a 15 minute break, then we made the fruit salad recipe from Cam’s English class.  Our recipe was a bit different though.  We used strawberries, peaches, grapes, and a mango from our tree.

In Ty’s phonics class they continue to review and reinforce the phonics sounds and word families that he learned about last year.  He did some extra reading after his lesson was over so that we could give Cam enough time to finish his English test without any pressure.  I had Ty read, My Many Colored Days, by Dr. Seuss.  I thought it went perfectly with his theme for the past two weeks – color words! 

Cam had a Math test today.  He did great on it. 

Ty continues to learn about ‘even’ and ‘odd’ numbers, and how to group items in pairs to determine if the number is ‘even’ or ‘odd’.

Cam had his Spelling test today.  He aced it. 

In Bible today, Ty had an ‘Enrichment Lesson’.   Last year, Cam looked forward to the enrichment lessons because they usually have a really fun craft or food item.  This week, Ty made a lion puppet.

In Story of the World today, we did a review of the last (3) chapters.  I copied the review cards from the Activity Guide onto cardstock, colored them in, then laminated them.  I gave each boy their own set so that they could review the chapter cards any time they wanted to.  I put them on rings so that they could be kept in their binders.

The boys had a lot of fun this week.  Next week we’ll be learning about mummies!  We have a lot of activities planned for this chapter, so be sure to check back next Friday for a look at our week. 

When you first walk through the door and look left, you will see Ty’s workspace.

If you turn further left, you’ll see Cam’s workspace.

The bookcase, white board, and various learning posters are between the two boys:

My desk (across the room from the boys):

On the other side of my desk is our supply closet:

Try as I might, I couldn’t get a picture that showed the stuff on the top shelf.  So here’s just the top shelf:

The Pool Bath is off of our classroom.  However, right now it’s still storing some of Jessica’s stuff in it, so it’s not in use at this time.  However, I did put our calendar up on the door.  The bulletin board is still waiting for our Reading Rewards, which are coming in the mail from Pizza Hut some time this month.  And of course, my favorite wall decoration – Measure Man!

This little shelf used to hold our workboxes.  Since we aren’t doing workboxes this year, it’s now shelving our board games, library “books of the day”, our globe, and our Treasure Box.

And what’s a classroom without a pet???  We thought the very best pet for our classroom was one that needed little care, didn’t smell, didn’t need much attention, wouldn’t be a distraction, yet, would be interesting and useful.  This is what we came up with:

The boys name it ‘Venus’.  Go figure.  I was lobbying for something like “Mars” or “Neptune”.  I was out-voted.

So that’s our classroom. 

We also implemented a new incentive/reward system.  The boys earn tickets that allows them to ‘buy’ 30 minutes of screen time (tv, video games, movies, computer games).  If I color the star on the ticket red, they become “Treasure Tickets” and they are good for one treasure out of my Treasure Box.  You can purchase these tickets by clicking  here.  The boys earn tickets by:

• Completing morning chores (make bed, pick up room, clean their bathroom, brush teeth and hair, get dressed)
• Turning in their homework folder with completed work.
• Reading a book for 30 minutes (can’t be a ‘school’ book)
• Completing afternoon chores (empty dishwasher, put dirty dishes in the dishwasher, clean off the dining room table)

They earn “Treasure Tickets” by displaying good behavior, having a cheerful attitude when asked to do something, obeying the first time, and acts of kindness.

Here are our tickets:

Ready?  Here we go…

Monday:

We started our day with a new tradition:  Breakfast at McDonald’s!

After breakfast, we headed back to the classroom and started our new school year.  The boys’ schedules are as follows:

Heritage Studies
Language Arts/Reading/Handwriting
Math
Spelling (Ty starts Spelling in Week 3)
Bible
Lunch
Story of the World

The boys are really looking forward to The Story of the World (and so am I!).  We’ll be doing SOTW instead of unit studies this year.

Here are some pictures of the boys’ day:

After school, the boys decided to play a game of checkers:

Tuesday:

It rained all day (for the second day in a row), and everyone was kind of sluggish.  It took us almost SIX hours to finish school today.  Can you believe that?  I actually started thinking I would cut some of the subjects out in order to make a more reasonable day.  Ultimately though, I decided against it.

We start each day with the Pledge of Allegiance (to the US, and to the Christian flag):

In Story of the Wold today we made a time line.  I had the boys make a time line of their own ‘history’, and they really enjoyed looking at pictures of themselves as babies.

We hung the time lines up on our closet door:

Here are some pictures of the rest of our day:

One of the cool things about Cam’s math class this year, is that he keeps all of his math manipulatives in a toolbox.  The theme for second grade math features a lumberjack named, “Matt”, and a beaver named, “Paddy”.  Cam just loves his math class so far.

After school, Scott and I took the boys to go vote in the primaries.  As usual, the pollsters were especially attentive to my boys, and they came home with a few “I Voted” stickers (which they enjoy collecting).

Wednesday:

Today went MUCH better than the past two days.  We started at 8:00am, and we were completely finished with everything by 1:00pm.  That included the HOUR they spent in our ‘Dirty Dig’ activity (SOTW).  The dig was to teach them about what archaeologists do.  They had been looking forward to that activity for days, and they really enjoyed it a lot.  It was the highlight of our day.

Jessica stopped by for dinner, and the boys were really happy to see her.   She couldn’t stay long because she had an essay to write, but we were glad she came by.

Thursday:

Ty finished his first Bible lessons today.  I assign points based on how well they are able to memorize their Bible verses, and Ty recited his verse back to me perfectly!

In Math, he started learning about ‘even’ and ‘odd’ numbers.  It’s a new concept for him, and he is doing ok with it so far.  He still misses a few questions, but I have no doubts that he will catch on pretty quickly.

He still hasn’t started his Reader yet (starts next week), but he is enjoying his Language Arts class a lot.  Here is one of his compositions:

Cam is doing MUCH better finishing his worksheets this year.  He was dragging his feet a bit earlier this week, but today he zipped right through his work.

In Bible, he is learning how to find verses based on the chapter number and verse number.

He really enjoyed his Reading class today.  They talked about a book called, “The Giant Jam Sandwich”.  I had borrowed this book from the library, and when I showed him the actual book, he was anxious to read it for himself.

In Spelling, he started his Journal.  I allowed him to decorate with stickers, and he wrote a couple of sentences about what he did over the summer.

In Story of the World today, we learned about Nomads.  The boys wrote a few simple sentences that talked about who Nomads were, and how they lived.  After that, I passed around some pictures of real cave drawings that I had found and printed from the internet.  We tried to guess what story the cave drawings were trying to tell.  Then I had the boys make their own cave drawings.  Ty’s is a picture of him and Dad fishing (he said that the waves were very high that day), and Cam’s is of him walking our dog on a sunny day.

Friday:

This week just flew by!  We had ‘Show and Tell’ today.   Cam brought a Lego creation, and Ty brought a puppy.

In SOTW, we learned about Nomads, did some map work, and made a “hunter bag” out of animal skin (or fabric that just LOOKS like animal skin):

Notice the lizards they’re holding?  In our chapter of SOTW, the little nomad girl was catching lizards for her mother to make a lizard stew.  Naturally, my boys wanted to have lizards for their hunter’s bag too.  LOL

Our new hockey season starts tonight, so we’ll be adding “P.E.” to the curriculum too.

I will be posting pictures of our new classroom later this weekend.

It was very hot and humid, and there were people moving in all over.  Thankfully, since Jessica is on the fourth floor, the elevators made the move a little easier.  It wasn’t until we were unloading the last load that we found out you could rent a dolly.  D’oh!  Good to know for next year!

We were able to meet Jess’s roommate and her roommate’s family.  They seem really nice.  They were coming from the other coast of Florida, so I told her mom that her daughter was welcome to our house for dinner any time she wanted a home-cooked meal.

I took a picture of the girls before we went our separate way:

After we moved Jess in, and got her somewhat settled in, we went to McD’s for dinner.  I wanted to get a nice shot of the kids together, but they were being a little silly:

After dinner Jess headed over to Target to pick up some items she needed, and we headed home.

I can’t believe she’s starting college.  Seems like just yesterday I was walking her into her Kindergarten class.  Time flies by so fast.

If you would like to send any mail to Jess, send me an email and I will forward her address to you.  Or, you can send stuff to our house, and I will make sure she gets it.

Jess is currently staying in what will be our classroom.  She is leaving for college in ONE week.  Once she leaves, I will have exactly (3) days to:

• Build the boys’ desks
• Put up shelves in the closet (which will store all of our supplies and books).
• Assemble the boys’ computers and make sure they’re functioning properly.
• Put up any wall decorations.
• Put up our calendar.
• Organize and take inventory of our classroom supplies.

And that’s just off the top of my head.

The good news is that I have all of curricula materials.  The bad news is, they are stored in boxes all over the house.

The good news is the boys will finally have structure and routine again.  The bad news is that I will now be forced to get out of bed at a reasonable hour.  Which also means, going to bed at a reasonable hour.  LOL

Scott and I are planning to take the boys to Perkins McDonald’s (the Teacher gets an Iced Mocha instead of an apple!) for a “First Day of School Special Breakfast” on the first day.  We’d like to make that our tradition.  It works out better for us to take them to breakfast rather than out for ice cream after school.

For close friends and family who are reading this, I will need the following “junk” throughout the year, and if you could save it for me (I’ll pay for shipping costs to send it to me), I would greatly appreciate it:

1. Empty milk cartons.  Not the plastic jugs, but the actual cartons.  They can be orange juice cartons, half and half cartons, or whatever you have.
2. Empty shoe boxes.  Preferably with lids, but not a requirement.
3. Aunt Jan, keep those baby food jars coming.    And thanks for all that you’ve given us so far.  I really appreciate it.
4. Large, styrofoam meat trays.  I only need one really large one.  I’ve got the small and medium sizes already.
5. Empty, plastic water bottles.  I only need about (4) of these at this time.

I’m going to be trying to collect these myself, but if you have (or know you will be getting) some of these items already, shoot me an email and I’ll arrange to pick them up or ship them to me.

I’m also on the lookout for papyrus strips to teach my boys how to make papyrus paper.  So if you know of ANYONE who sells this stuff (Michael’s doesn’t) or sells paper-making kits, leave me a comment below.

Stay tuned next week for pics of our new schoolroom!

That’s all for now.  We’re off to Coldstone for ice cream! 

1. Since Grandma’s passing in May, my motivation to keep everyone up to date kind of dwindled.  Grandma was the one person I could count on to read this blog daily.  I miss her.
2. We moved in June, and we’re still not fully moved in.
3. I just recently found my camera again.

So, instead of blah-blah-blogging with words, I give you a pictorial of summer stuff.

Cam and Ty pose at one of the library events (Ding Darling was the presenter).  Cam is showing you (or rather, ME) a photo of a monitor lizard (or is it a komodo dragon?) eating an animal.  Lovely.

This crazy guy is “Geddy the Gecko”.  Another library event.

“Robbie the Ringmaster”  aka “The Best Library Show EVER!!!” (according to Ty, who was in stitches the entire time):

DOLLAR STORE SCORE!

So the boys wanted to taste a real coconut.  I bought one for them.

The boys were under the impression that the milk of the coconut was delicious.  Despite my SEVERAL warnings that it wasn’t going to taste good, they insisted.  Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Imagine their surprise when it wasn’t shredded and sweetened when we opened the coconut!  They didn’t like it.

And last week, we had a visit from our newest cousin.  Cam loved her.  He was fascinated by her.  Ty?  Not so much.  Jealousy reared its ugly head, and Ty began to accuse me and Grandma Donna of only loving ‘that’ baby.  Despite our best efforts to assure him that wasn’t true, he would hear none of it.  Good thing he’s the baby of our family, huh?

Here’s Cam playing peek-a-boo with his baby cousin:

And here he is holding her:

Isn’t she a cutie?  I love her giggle.  It makes me laugh each time. 

So what’s new with us?

1. We live on the water now.  It rocks.
2. We have a new address.  If you need it, email me.
3. Jess got a new job at Red Robin, and she loves it.
4. We’ve lived here 6 weeks and we’ve already met 4 new families.  We’ve also been invited to dinner by one of our new neighbors.  I think we’re going to really like it here. 
5. I’m learning to bake bread from scratch.  My homemade cinnamon rolls were fab!

So this is probably it until school starts back up for us again.  Stay tuned!

P.S.  Be sure to check out my Amazon.com widget (located in the upper right hand corner).  I’ve updated it with some new books we’re currently reading.  Also, every purchase you make through our Amazon store will give our homeschool store credit for more books.  Simply click on the widget (it will take you to Amazon.com) and order whatever you’re looking for.  Thanks in advance for your support!

In looking for the positive in our situation, I find there are many.  Smaller house = less cleaning, less expensive energy bills, and requires me to get a handle on my hoarding (if you saw my garage at the old house, you would call A & E’s “Hoarding” show!).  There’s no garage here, so it forces us to really ask ourselves, “do we NEED this?”

Our new house sits on a salt water canal.  There is just something so peaceful about being on a canal.  And our canal is literally minutes from the river/Gulf.  Friday afternoon, as I (finally!) took a shower, Scott and the kids were out by the pool.  Jessica spotted some  large wake in the canal, and went to check it out.  Apparently, there was a rather large dolphin hunting in the canal!  The dolphin swam up to our dock, carrying a large fish in its mouth.  I missed the experience, but it was obvious by the excitement in their voices, that it was a pretty cool event.  So…dolphins in our backyard.  How neat is that??

I can’t wait for the boats to arrive.  But, like packing up the house, the boats have to be prepared before we can bring them over.  We’re waiting on bottom paint.  A friend of Scott’s was able to secure 2 gallons of bottom paint for us.  For free.  That stuff is incredibly expensive (over $100/gallon), and we feel so blessed to have received it.

Our neighborhood is quiet.  At night Scott and I sit out on the pool deck and just enjoy the peacefulness of it all.  A vast change from our other house, where one street over is heavy with traffic 24/7, and there are fiestas that last all weekend long.  Don’t get me wrong; I enjoy listening to the music of Spanish guitars and trumpets as much as anyone I know, but somewhere around 2am, on the second night, I’m over it.  And of course, I won’t miss the “cackling witch” who hurls f-bombs and gets into screaming fights with whomever has irritated her after a few cases of beer (or whatever it is she drinks).  I won’t miss that at all.

This house isn’t without its problems though.  The property management company is less than stellar; slow to respond to email or phone calls (if she responds at all), and we’re quickly realizing how hard it is to find a company who responds to their customers.  I don’t know when crappy customer service became normal.  It sucks.  And it’s not just the property management company either.  It’s the handyman, hired by the property manager, to fix the toilet that leaks.  He takes a week to schedule us, promptly busts the water line to the toilet (water gushing everywhere) – after being told by Scott that there isn’t a shut-off valve on the toilet – then panics as he struggles to shut off the main water line to the house.  After he “fixed” the toilet, he tells me that he’s going out of town and will call to schedule another appointment next Wednesday.  I offer him my list of things he needs to take care of.  He reads it, and assures me he will take care of all of it.  By the way?  The toilet is still leaking.  Scott’s going to fix it.

We had to call an air conditioning company to come out and figure out why the house isn’t cooling down.  The guy crawls up in the attic and informs us that the A/C ducts have been chewed up by critters.  That he can’t fix the problem until the critters are taken care of first.  Sounds reasonable enough.  So we contact the property management, and for once, she responded quickly and had a pest control guy out to take a look the next day.

The pest control company was called out on the first day we started moving.  He confirms that yes, there are critters in the attic.  Yay.  Here’s the thing; the pest control guy refused to crawl up in the attic, and tosses bait up there instead.  Scott tells him that we don’t want critters dying up there because it smells awful when they die.  The guy tells us, “don’t worry, they’ll eat the bait and try to get out for water.  They’ll die outside.”  Scott was right, and the critter died within 24 hours of the pest control company tossing bait up there.  How do I know?  The house reeks of dead animal.  Turns out, there are no baits or poisons that forces critters to vacate the premises and search for water.  It’s a line of crap.  If you don’t want their corpses rotting in your house, you have to find them and remove them.  Actual traps work best for that.  So FYI, if a pest control company tries to tell you that, they are lying.  And lazy.

So they send a second out a couple of days later to spray the house for bugs, and to take care of the critters in the attic.  The guy tells me how he’s afraid of spiders and snakes.  Really?  And you work for a pest control company?  Oh, and he tells me it’s extra for critter control (it’s not, it’s included in the contract), and he won’t go into the attic.  Where the hell is Billy the Exterminator?  I want THAT guy taking care of our pest control.  I won’t even make fun of his mullet and spikey shoulder pads.  Scott calls the pest control company AGAIN and gives them an earful.  The house stinks, the critters may or may not still be in the attic, and he wants someone to come out and take care of this problem — THE WHOLE REASON THEY WERE CALLED TO BEGIN WITH!  They tell us that the “manager” will be coming out with the technician to see why they won’t go in the attic.  They were supposed to be here on Friday.  No one came.  No one called.  I am not happy.

We scheduled Century Link to come out and hook us up with the “Triple Play” package (phone, internet, satellite tv).  This was our chance to break free from Comcast and their crappy customer service.  We seized it.  The guy comes out, and the only phone jack in the entire place doesn’t work.  He rigs up a jack in our bedroom instead.  While I wasn’t terribly happy with the final outcome, I can’t blame the technician.  He did do everything he could to get us up and running.  By the time he came into the picture, I was just irritated in general.  It was hot in the house because the A/C isn’t working right, it smelled like a dead rat throughout the house, I was sweaty and filthy from unpacking and organizing, and the heat index outside was over 100 degrees.  I found myself irritated that the Century Link guy was wearing all black too.  Black, long-sleeved shirt, black jeans, and a Panama Jack hat.  I even asked him why he was wearing black when it was so hot right now.  His response, “it was an unseasonably cold winter, and it’s an unseasonably hot summer.”  Huh?  Um, ok.  At one point he wanted to crawl up in the attic and do something with cabling.  I made the mistake of telling him that it might smell up there because a critter had died the night before.  He promptly took his ladder back to the truck.  He wasn’t going up there.  I can’t say I blame him.  But had I waited until he was up there, I might have been able to convince him to bring the dead rodent down with him.  Then again, maybe not.

Ok, so back to the positives.  I love the kitchen.  The over-the-stove microwave doesn’t work, and the dishwasher racks are rusted so badly that we can’t use it, but I still love the kitchen.  As I hand-washed the dishes from dinner last night, I imagined what Christmas baking would look like.  All of that counter space to cool cookies on!  I was almost giddy with the thought!  I have enough counter space now that I can actually place my small appliances on the counter instead of hiding them away in a cabinet.  It’s really nice having all of my appliances within arm’s reach now.

I really like the way the living room is laid out too.  I wasn’t sure how we would arrange stuff in there, but once I had it all laid out, and put some pictures on the walls, it just looks right.

The dining room is still a storage area for some of our boxes, but we are still able to eat in there.  It’s been nice eating dinner at the table.  We all have enough room to freely move around.  To be honest though, I keep thinking of how much fun it will be to do school projects in there.  The whole room is surrounded by windows and it gives off a light, airy feel to it.

The master bedroom is small compared to our bedroom at the other house.  It makes organizing a challenge, but I’m sure we’ll get it all figured out eventually.  I mean, aside from sleeping in there, we won’t be hosting parties or anything, so it serves its purpose.  My main challenge is what to do with all of my books.  I simply can not get rid of them.  I weeded through them before I moved them here, and what I have here, I intend to keep.  A couple of years ago my father-in-law built me a wall-to-wall, ceiling-to-floor book case in our old house.  Trust me when I tell you that I was actually running out of book space with that unit.  And that didn’t include all of the children’s books I have.  When I tell you have I have a lot of books, I truly DO have a LOT of books.  And I’ve read them all – several times.  Scott threw out the idea of building a bookshelf that lined the top of the wall in our bedroom.  I’m not opposed to that idea, I just think it won’t be enough.  We’ll see though.  I’m open to any ideas on how to organize them at this point.

My office is  located in our bedroom as well.  I decided to get rid of my desk and use this beautiful cabinet that Scott and I redid a couple of years ago.  At our old house, we used it as a tv cabinet for our bedroom.  Since this house has one of those devices that allows you to hang your tv from the wall, we are going to use the cabinet for my computer instead.  Fortunately, it’s our business computer, and its sole purpose is to host Quickbooks for me.  I don’t even have email on that PC.  So it should work fine.

All of my classroom stuff is currently being stored in the utility room.  When Jessica goes off to college, her room will be our classroom.  Her room has its own bathroom, which is kind of cool (from a classroom standpoint).  I can’t wait to get it organized and ready for school.

I finally found my camera (briefly lost during the move), so I hope to have some new pictures up soon.

P.S.  Jessica turned 18 on Friday.  We’ll have a party for her on Tuesday. 

This week’s lessons were primarily a year-end review for him.  In Language Arts he focused on syllables, punctuation, and capitalization.  To say that this seems almost too easy for him would be an understatement.  He blazes through these lessons with such ease.

In Math he learned about “renaming” numbers.  When I was a kid, we called it “carrying over”.  He is fascinated with this concept, and views it as a game of sorts.  He likes to see how high the numbers will go.  Right now it’s just adding 3-digit numbers, and the answers never go higher than 999.

We spent every day this week packing up our belongings and getting ready to move to the new house.  It took me an entire afternoon just packing up the classroom!  Who knew we had so much stuff???  I think downsizing is definitely the way we need to go right now.  I mean seriously, my entire garage is packed full of stuff we never use.  When I think of all of the money that we’ve wasted…ugh…I don’t like to think about it.

We will be moving the big stuff early next week, then getting stuff ready for the garage sale.  It is my goal to have everything moved over to the other house as soon as possible so that we can get back to “normal”.  All of this moving has made everyone a little on edge.  None of us does well with chaos.

Jessica had ‘Awards Night’ on Thursday.  This was our last official event with her school.  She was awarded her BIG scholarship and various other scholarship awards at the event.

She also received a Level 5 Gold Star award (50 tests with a grade of A), a music award, and an academic achievement award.  She also received a trophy for being on the Principal’s Honor Roll for the entire year.  To be honest, I don’t ‘get’ half of the awards they give out.  “Academic Achievement”?  That went to kids who completed all of their coursework.  An award for completing your school work?  Really?  And she received a “Music” award…simply because she had it as a class.  Not because she excelled at it.  It almost cheapens the whole award thing.  But then, I’m not big with participation awards.

I digress.

We are proud of Jess.

And we are proud of Ty’s achievements this year.

And we are proud of Cam’s achievements this year.

I can’t wait to see what summer will bring us!

Here are some pictures taken during Jessica’s graduation BBQ:

We are so close to finishing the year now!  We have roughly one more week before we can officially put First Grade “in the books”.

At this point in the school year, we aren’t doing a lot of extra work, nor are we doing many crafts.  It seems like it’s all we can do just to finish the worksheets.  But we’re trucking through it.

Cam finished up his Reading class this week.  He was very excited when he realized he had finished his reader.  This past week has been about sealife, shells, and treasures, so Cam has requested a field trip to the beach.  We’ll see how that goes.

In Math, Cam is learning about adding three-digit numbers.  He has been doing very well with the numerical problems, but struggles somewhat with the word problems.  It will come to him in time, I’m sure.

On Friday, Cam had his first end-of-year evaluation.  Seems that we both did pretty well this year.    The evaluator recommended some other curriculums to check out…something that would be more ‘hand’s on’ for us.  I am definitely going to check out some other options.  Doesn’t hurt to see what else is out there, and she gave me some recommendations of some programs that I was already interested in.  As you all know, we’re going to be doing ‘Story of the World’ next year, and in talking with the evaluator about it, it looks like that program is going to take care of a LOT of what we need to do in order to be competitive with our public school counterparts.  I’ll keep you posted! 

Hopefully next week I’ll have some pictures for you.