Family News

I made Apple Pie today.
We had it for dessert with ice cream and I promised the girls we’d have more for breakfast.
This earns me good-mama points.  At least from the kids’ perspective.
Can’t be worse than syruped pancakes, and is probably better– since there’s more fruit.
Steak for dinner too.
Good smells in the house tonight!

Jay got all his ladies flowers back on Friday night, so it was really fun they made it to (and through) Valentine’s day.
A few days ago I sent him a link to a blog post under a “For your not-to-do list” subject line.
I thought the post was funny. I never guessed it would actually [...]

And currently we’re looking at using French for the kids’ second (spoken) language.
I’m looking into materials for young learners just now.

Natasha has had a cough for a few days, and yesterday it was more persistant.
When she started complaining about it I offered to give her some medicine designed to inhibit coughing.
I went and got it, and when I came back she recognized it.
“That stuff tastes weird,” she said.
I suggested having her water bottle ready for [...]

Watch me rearrange.
Ayup. Rearranged the front room again. Just for fun; wanted a change.
Jay says he likes it, so it’ll probably stay this way for a while.
Don’t have any pictures to share (an “after” feels weird with no “before”), but I guess if you can remember the way the room used to look [...]

So I did my first “concurrent” lessons today.
One thing I’ve wondered as I think/plan for this new job (homeschooling) is how I will prepare different things for different needs.
While the girls were napping today I read some more of a homeschooling book and took a couple ideas from there to make some “Language Arts” [...]

Well that was a total shot in the dark.
Our girls have been staying awake more than an hour after being put to bed. Whenever they are put to bed.
Granted, we haven’t put them down before 8 p.m. (and one book I have says you have to have littles down by 7:30 or they [...]

Dude. I am going with Option 1. (PDF)
Talk about simplifying my life.
I found some more teaching materials yesterday (reference and textbooks were half-off at Forget-Me-Not this week). Just went through that and what I’ve already collected, organizing them into an Excel sheet so I can find and keep track of what I’ve [...]

Natasha wrote her first Thank-you notes today.
She and I practiced the letters in “THANK YOU” (She only wanted to do caps) until I felt they were recognizable, then I drew a straight line in a blank card and she wrote her thank-you on it. Then she decorated all the rest of the inside with [...]

So, mainly from recognizing the influence that goals had on me as a foster parent, I’ve decided I need to set goals for my own kids. And these are going to be basic, realistic goals here.
“Independently using the potty” is too big a goal for Melody just now. We’re going to start with [...]