Ready for the Holidays!

Ok, so I am not physically READY, but I am ready to have a good time with family and food for the next 6 weeks! We are finishing up our "4 weeks on" this week and I am ready to be done. We decorated our Egypt notebooks today and we're moving on to fire safety (just a one day unit). I think we will make a fire plan, a meeting point, and check our smoke alarms tonight for FHE. We will also practice getting out of our beds and crawling out of the house. It should be fun!

If I can get to the library tonight, then we will start our Thanksgiving unit tomorrow. I did get Amanda B's Thanksgiving unit and it has tons of good stuff. I always like the picture books to go along with the lessons. I should just scour my bookshelves...I am sure I have some Thanksgiving books somewhere. There are just so many to go through.

I sorted toys today and just have this huge urge to just get rid of most of them. You know the reason I hold on to most of them? Because of other people's kids. I don't want kids to come to my house and say, "Don't you have any toys?" or "I'm bored!" Isn't that SUCH a silly reason? All my kids need are books, furniture, and blankets for capes and they are good! Maybe I will just box them up...not get ride of them, and see if anyone even notices.

The next couple of weeks are filled with fun things....Harry Potter midnight showing, Enrichment, crafting with homeschool buddies, Stake Conference for church, Natalie's birthday, and my brother and his family and my parents here for Thanksgiving! YAY! The Saturday after is the Jones family Thanksgiving and that is always so much fun and quite crazy with 30 of us:) Good times!

Food Storage in the Garage a.k.a. Answers to Past Post Musings

As I was reading past posts, I thought I should put in a post about this. Back in the spring, I wondered if our food storage was ok in the garage. It wasn't. Or at least some of it wasn't. Our big problems were moths and heat. The moths got into everything that was bagged (rice, powdered sugar) or bagged and in a cardboard box (baking mix, cake mix, hard taco shells). This last weekend, I opened a can of evaporated milk and it was solid-I think it got cooked!

So, my advice is be careful of what you put in the garage. If it's all in big tubs with lids, less of a problem. But watch things in cans because they get so hot. I'm just sayin.

Polaris Press

Wow, it's been a while with no news from our schoolroom, so here it is!

We started the year learning about Veterinarians, and then moved on to Robots. It was fun and informative. Levi really got into it. And if nothing else came from it, Seth learned to say "robot" instead of "bobot."

From there, we have started our Ancient Egypt unit. This one has been so interesting! There is so much information that it gets hard to sort out what should be taught. It's hard to not want to teach them everything! But the eyes eventually do glaze over, so I try to stop before that point. We have been doing a read-aloud (The Curse of King Tut's Mummy) which is a fun, true story of Howard Carter discovering King Tut's tomb. In addition to this, each day we try to do some Egypt related activity. We have built pyramids out of cardboard, made papyrus, written in hieroglyphs, and done geography worksheets, to name a few. This schedule seems to work well for us. Through the day, we also fit in vocabulary, spelling, math and reading.

We still do lots of extra activities. I think we will close up our Egypt study by going to the Indpls Children's Museum. They have an Egyptian room there that will be fun to visit now that we know lots more about Egypt.

We will take the week of Thanksgiving off and then back on for 3 weeks and then off for 2. I am thinking of doing a Thanksgiving/Christmas Holiday unit. I bought Amanda Bennett's Holiday Unit Study and am hoping there will be lots in there we can use. Her Unit Studies are SO full of info that I get a bit overwhelmed. But hopefully, I can go through and pick and choose what I want to use.

I can't believe that we are already to the holiday season! I am really excited to have my family here for Thanksgiving. It's always fun for me to be hostess! Except for the cleaning the house part:) Hoping to do some decluttering in my time off school the beginning of Thanksgiving week. That means I will need to have school planned for the 3 weeks before Christmas before Thanksgiving week. So, I have until the end of next week? Time just goes by SO fast, these days!

Well, if I don't post before Thanksgiving, now you all know why! Enjoy your holiday!

PS Does anyone have any "to die for" Thanksgiving recipes that they want to share? :)

Homemade Wheat Bread

I have decided that I really want to be an awesome bread maker. I want to find a yummy recipe and perfect it. I want to grind my own wheat, use honey from Harry and Linda and feel like I am really doing my part to provide for my family. I had this same thought last year, but then began to diet and bread was pretty much a no-no so I put bread-making on the back burner.

I have decided I have a bit more self-control with my eating and that I could practice making bread. I have made quite a few loaves and found a recipe I really like. It takes a long time, but as long as I am home and doing school, it works really well.

Except for the above batch. This batch was VERY depressing. I forgot the salt. A seemingly small omission, only 1 TB for 4 loaves, but the bread was no good. And I had decided at the beginning that I wasn't going to feel bad about throwing away practice loaves, so they went to the compost. But they looked good. And had the best texture so far. So sad.

I am not deterred, though. I will continue my bread-making practice. And from now on, I will not forget the salt.

Halloween Pics

Red Power Ranger, Ballerina, and Buzz Lightyear (with no wings or helmet, so he was only the toy Buzz...when he saw another kid in full get-up, he said,"There's the REAL Buzz Lightyear!")

Here's Seth as Tigger. The kids don't have much choice in the way of costumes. Whatever we have got in that size. Maybe someday, I will be creative, but it was not this year!

We enjoyed 4 Halloween parties and a Trunk or Treat at church. We didn't trick or treat on Sunday, so we ended up with lots less candy than last year, which is a good thing! I have eaten my fair share, though. Good times!

Happy Halloween!!!