Quick Pharaoh Update

I realized the other day that I hadn't changed the Pharaoh's salt in a while. By a while, about three weeks. Then I just put it off because I didn't want to deal with it in case it was gross. But I didn't smell anything from the box it's in, so I was hopeful. Then today at the party, one of the kids wanted to see it, so I took it outside and opened it up.

It was fine, but I was quite concerned for a while.

And that is how it became 9:00 on a Saturday night and instead of enjoying a cheesy tv show and some hot cocoa, I was standing on my porch in 50 degree weather, changing the salt on a chicken. (And, the 50 degree thing, give me a break, I live in Southern California. It's chilly out there.)

So I took a picture and wondered again what I'm going to do with the thing. I suppose I could wrap it in linen, but I really don't want to store a mummified chicken forever. But I've put so much work into it that it seems a shame to stop now. Maybe I'll give it to another homeschooler that doesn't want to start from scratch but wants to have experience. And they can have a turn with the whole salt thing. Then when they are finished, they can pass it on. It'll be like the exersaucer of homeschooling.

I'm brilliant I tell ya.

Here's the picture I took. Please remember that it was 9:00 on a RAINY cold night and we were in the dim light of my porch.

The Week That Was

I have decided not to complain on this blog anymore. In that vein, let me tell you of some of the exciting new challenges this week has brought. There is no end to to the dishwasher situation, which means that I have been without a working dishwasher for four months now. My crock pot cracked, but the crack was in a cool spiral pattern, so that was kind of interesting. My printer broke mysteriously, which makes my kids happy. And on Friday my car got a flat tire after the kids' sports class. The timing is only interesting because a friend's kid noticed the flat as I was turning to go to Costco to go buy a new crock pot. Instead I got a new tire, but at least we had lunch as planned.

Anyway, I swear I'm not complaining. Earlier in the week I did, but now it's just an interested chuckle. We'll survive without a dishwasher and possibly without a crock pot. The printer is important because of school, but we're off next week so that can wait. The tire was important and was fixed promptly and since the old tire was pretty new I got a discount on the new one. (Clear as mud?)

As far as school goes, we did some. All of the kids did their required number of days of math, reading, grammar, writing, Latin (for those who have it), and history. We were a little more hit and miss with spelling and science. But if we did everything perfectly I wouldn't have anything to blog about.

There were no real huge leaps this week. Most of what we're doing is plodding along until the next interesting thing comes up. So we're fine. Harry is flat out obsessed by Algebra and I've caught him multiple times this week trying to get the older neighborhood kids to teach him some. I had Sam read the Story of the World chapter to Annika this week, which was cute. And it was good for me to hear just how far he's come with speech therapy.

Being without a printer makes it much more difficult (really, almost impossible) to entertain my 3yo long enough to do anything of note with the other kids. She depends on the letters and other things I print out while we do school. So I've had to be a lot more creative. And that's good for all of us. She did things like cut out the toys she wants for Christmas and glue them to paper for her Santa list, empty an entire box of needles into the brown upstairs carpet, and cut even more papers out to give to me. Most of them say "Emma." So I'm keeping them all. Maybe I'll glue them to a piece of paper for a Christmas list. I need more Emmas in my life.

So, that's about it. Normal chaos around here. I hope this doesn't bore anyone. I'll try to put up a list of books we're reading on the sidebars in case anyone is interested.

Oh, we do have a birthday on Monday, so we had a birthday party today. Sam is soon to be 9. I don't have any pictures of Sam on my phone, so here's Perry the Platypus instead. You can call him Agent P.

Excuses, Excuses

I was just looking back on my recent weekly reports and if you just read those you would probably think we never did any lessons or schoolwork. We have had some things come up lately. Some things have been good (the Grand Canyon) and some not so good (multiple doctor appointments). In general I try to keep our mornings completely clear so we have good blocks of time to work. However, that doesn't always work as well as I'd like it to. And we made the Grand Canyon plans a year ago, so we knew it was coming up.

I did a few things before school started because I knew we were going to have some breaks before the end of the calendar year. I started lessons earlier than I would have normally, even before the public school kids went back. This was a major source of contention with my kids. They couldn't figure out why they had school every day when their friends didn't. We took it pretty easy and stuck to the basics, but it still gave me a little bit of wiggle room when I needed it. Right now we are working through the day. This won't last forever and it's not true of all of my kids, but we are schooling all day right now. My first grader obviously isn't and even my third grader doesn't spend the same amount of time as my fifth grader. But we are still working longer than we would have without the breaks. Of course the kids have recess and snack time and lunch. It's not like they wake up, start working and then go to bed. And since we have already taken a lot of breaks, our holiday breaks won't be nearly as long as they would have otherwise been. We're taking three instead of five at Thanksgiving and probably not two full weeks at Christmas.

I don't want to burn us out or anything and eventually we'll get back to a more relaxed feel around here, but for now, this is how it is around here. We've had a good few months of playing and taking trips and now it's time to make sure we are on schedule to accomplish what we need to.

What a Difference a Week Makes

This is part of the family last Friday. My two daughters stayed home in the sunshine with their Grandma while the boys, my husband and I hiked down into the Grand Canyon and then back out. There were some moments when we weren't sure if the "back out" part would actually happen, but it did and we all made it back to the Rim. Where it snowed. It's only a couple of inches but that seems like a lot when you live where it doesn't usually now at all. (Hence, the shorts on Sam.)

Anyway, we took the week of Halloween off for the trip (not saying the boys didn't learn anything, it just wasn't official) and then tried to get back to things Tuesday of this week after Grandma left. To say that things went slowly would be an understatement. Because of the Big Trip and Grandma's visit, I think it was okay.

We'll get back to things for real next week and I'm sure I'll write something truly enjoyable about how wonderful our week was!