Look at this beautiful baby♥

Abigale is seven months old. An absolute darling baby. We call her Peaches and Babs and Abby. We love her to pieces. She doesn’t crawl or sit up, she doesn’t move much at all! But she loves to snuggle and stand on my lap, she loves to sing and read with me and she has the cutest laugh you ever heard. She is patient and quiet. She drools a lot, no teeth in sight.  She falls asleep in the bath, every single time. I love the way her hand wraps around my shirt collar,  a thumb in her mouth when she falls asleep in my arms. Peaches is my baby, my sweet little baby girl. I am a happy, lucky mama.

K~

I am still learning.

February will be over in a few short hours, spring is in the wings, preparing to come out on stage.

There is beauty in the winter and while I am anxious for spring, I cannot help but feel thankful that winter comes every year.

Winter is a stark and magnificent beauty.

And she is, in her cold darkness, Hope.

I love to sit on my porch sometimes in the bitter cold night, all wrapped up and marvel at how clear and bright the night sky is, how absolute the silence, the air is clear and brisk and I drink it in.

So the wind blows against my windows and the snow dances into elegant drifts,

My fire burns bright and there is a warm quilt around my toes, a steaming bowl of hot stew and a book just waiting for me to return…..

I am happy, I am grateful, no matter how hard, no matter the difficulties, no matter that sometimes it seems that these long winter days will never end…..

They will end and I will remember them with fondness.

Because Joy can be found even in the darkest of days.

~K

Dementors

There is a bottle of red hair dye, a mug of peppermint tee and a small chunk of dark chocolate sitting in front of me.

It has been one of those days.

I rarely dye my hair when I am feeling chipper, it usually happens in February when I want to move into the deep, deep south. Also, you know, St. Pats is close by and I like to go red as a nod to my one small drop of Irish blood.

In truth, when I woke up this morning and my eyes opened, I realized that crawling out of bed was going to be a miserable chore. I through a mini tantrum in my head. My head hurt, my nose had no shut off button and the rest of me was all ” Your on your own we are fighting a war here, a war!!”

I crawled out of bed.

I managed school and driving into town for much needed groceries.

And if I am being totally honest I drank way too much Theraflu.

My hair is ready to be rinsed. One of these days it will be brilliant fire engine red. Maybe tonight. I hope so.

Wish me luck.

K~

Pictures of Scout, our new puppy, coming soon! Also, updates on POE and how much we are love, loving it:)

Random-u-um-see-lo-shus

Everyone is asleep.

What? You didn’t hear me?

It is 10 PM and everyone in my house is out cold.

I chucked stuffed animals at the suspicious looking ones to be sure.

Out cold.

I am giddy with excitement.

The sensible part of me would suggest getting right to bed, but I have that poor section of myself gagged and bound.

It is probably dead come to think of it.

That would explain my lack of filter lately (always?!).

Well.

Ohhh! I could knit!

I can’t really, the cats have declared war on my yarn. All of four of them. They know where it is, they sit on my yarn box and wait.

The cats are never really asleep.

There is a cat sitting on the bed snoring right now, if I tossed a stuffed animal in his direction right now he would ninja up and grab that thing mid-air, disemboweling it before it hit the ground.

Cats are freaky awesome like that.

I try to stay on their good side.

No. I am not folding laundry. I refuse.

I am not sorting papers.

I could vaccum.

Too loud, never mind.

I did have a date to clean the toilet…….

Ohhhh, shiny new thought!

Shiny, hahaha, the toilet is not going to be shiny tonight.

No, where was I going?

I often feel like the mad hatter and his entire family have moved inside my head.

“Oh my ears and whiskers, how late it’s getting!” (Lewis Carroll of course.)

Pinterest. I knew it would come ’round to Pinterest.

Maybe a book.

Books are dangerous. Once started they refuse to be put down, they can be quite demanding.

Worse then Pinterest.

Yes, much worse.

But ever so much more satisfying,

Books are a gateway drug to a life rife with imagination and excitement.

I need to go find a book to hold, its cover hopefully worn, the pages smelling of libraries and    jam, the words reaching out, pulling me in…..

K~ Introvert Ninja Master

“I’m sick of following my dreams. I’m just going to ask them where they’re going and hook up with them later.”

 

“I opened-up a yogurt, underneath the lid it said, “Please try again.” because they were having a contest that I was unaware of. I thought maybe I opened the yogurt wrong. …Or maybe Yoplait was trying to inspire me… “Come on Mitchell, don’t give up!” An inspirational message from your friends at Yoplait, fruit on the bottom, hope on top.”

Mitch Hedberg ladies and gents. A guy who was just too funny for this world. I sometimes like to think he must be doing stand up in some sort of neutral limbo-ish ground, God and the Devil sitting side by side, busting their ribs with laughter.

I just took something away from Chantelle. The shock on her face……..

Still don’t regret spoiling my sweet pet.

Proof I do occasionally wake up early. I took this pic through my living room window in the house. Pretty, Pretty.

Lolly reading Dr. Seuss to Ron.

I didn’t want to fold laundry so decided to clean out the junk drawer. It quickly became a game of I-spy.

Abby. Shhhh…

Listening to ” I got a dream” from Tangled. I have a dream, it involves self folding laundry.

K~

Negative Space

Alright, I confess, by 11 at night I have had it.

I am tired and exhausted and I just want to not be needed by anyone.

I don’t want to know where someones crap is, I don’t want to get up and point to it sitting right in front of their face.

I don’t want to cook another meal, I don’t want to make another pb&j  and, under no circumstances, do I want to fetch another drink.

I don’t want to read another book and I don’t want to hear one more time the epic tales of adventure that happened earlier in the day and that has been recounted five million and one times since.

I don’t want to spell another word or hold a baby while I try and use the restroom.

I don’t want anyone withing five feet of me.

This varies night by night.

Some nights I can take it, but not tonight.

Not tonight.

Tonight, I am huddled up in bed, blogging on my more then neglected blog, printing out math for the week and feeling squashed.

I want to knit, watch something on the BBC and sip hot cocoa.

I am too tired. Too unsettled, ruffled, discontented.

I wish had not been so grumpy putting the children to bed.

Try again tomorrow I will.

K~

 

2013 School Curriculum Plans

School Curriculum plans are all set for 2013!

We start our new school year on the 7th of January.

September to September was not working for me and since we finished up pretty much everything we were working on in November I decided to start a new school year in January. I have us scheduled for six weeks on, one week off all year. Well we will take two weeks in August and the full month of December. I am excited to see if this works for us, and if it doesn’t well we just change it up again!

Our plans

POE  (middle school supplement for Katie)

MUS Beta,  Gamma, Delta, Epsilon

Jump In writing

Sequential Spelling

Spanish

Apologia Anatomy and Physiology using the Rainbow Resource lab kit

OPG (learning to read)

POE and Jump In writing are new programs for us. Crossing my fingers.

I really love Apologia science and while science is included in POE I think anatomy and physiology is something we need to cover, we can take it at a gentle pace and so all will be well.

I didn’t really like the Apologia student notebooks, we will use plain old notebooks this time,  I did LOVE the Rainbow resource lab kits we have used in the past, very well put together, everything was labeled and when it was time to for an experiment it was grab it and go, in my busy life that is a big huge A+!

The Rainbow Resource lab kit is different then the one you would buy @ Home Science Tools, RR is more expensive but everything and I mean everything is included.

Math U See is still a big winner for us. Something about slow and steady?:P

Spanish is new this year. Alice has been begging Joff to teach her, so this will be for her (and her siblings) to work on and then Joff can give additional help if they need it. I really wish I could afford Rosetta Stone, I barely speak legible English, I don’t trust myself to try and teach another language at all.

I own both 100 EZ lesson and the Ordinary Parents Guide to Teaching Reading, I like and dislike both for a variety of  reasons, Elenore and Everett are learning to read and so far Evs has done better with 100 EZ lessons, while Elli seems to favor OPG. We will just keep going with what works!

We will continue a relaxed/unschooling approach for Caleb.

I feel like I am forgetting something, but my box of books and my planner are right here…….so if I have I will edit it in later.

Oh! Alice suggested we name our school Jammy Academy. At least we are comfy while we work!

K~

Piano. My kids are starting piano this year. Memo to self, go buy a piano.

When reading curriculum plans on other homeschooler’s blogs I often wonder the ages of the children because grades mean next to nothing to me ( I know what they mean, but homeschooler’s do not often follow grades, using them only as a guide.) So my kids are, Katie (12) Alice (10) Felicity (9) Everett (8) Elenore (6) Caleb (5)