Has it really been a week?

Wow! It's been a while since I wrote. I've been busy with kids and snow days and TRYING to clean house! How do you do that when the kids are there all day long? I'm pretty sure they have "clean house radar!" Everytime I get the vaccuum out or the dishes done, they make sure to mess it up as soon as I'm done. Like, let's empty the backpack onto the floor. Or, here's the dishes that you couldn't find earlier. Or, let's sort Mom's sewing stuff and cut up all the yarn and make something out of it. Ufda!

For the last few weeks, my son keeps complaining of not having any bread in the house. So, on Mon. we baked bread. A lot of it! He and I made 2 loaves of honey-wheat bread. 1 loaf of french bread, 3 sheets of buns, and 2 sheets of breadsticks. (secret here...... that's how I make use of bread dough that flopped or didn't rise well!) Calico Kid was so proud of himself for helping me make all this bread that he just HAD to take a picture of it for you. He even told me it was for my blog!

Then on Tues. we had another snow day, so Mystery Girl and I make some bread. I think we are set for a while. Of course, having that much bread with out preservatives in it means that most of it went into the freezer. I wouldn't want it to look like Dawn's son's "gross food" seen here! http://www.mom2my6pack.blogspot.com/ Speaking of which, if you need a laugh for the day or a reason to be thankful for what you have, you need to visit Dawn's site. She's wonderfully funny!

Let's see, oh, yes! I ordered some iron on transfers to iron on some dishtowels that I thought the kids would like for their future hope chests. I finally ironed them on Tues. night and showed them to the kids. They loved them. So much so, that Calico Kid asked me if he could sew the racoon. Well...I guess! I got him all set up, let him pick the colors from leftover floss, knotted the floss and gave it to him, hoping that it would look okay and that I wouldn't have to redo it later. Here's the results of a very proud 9 year old boy. I assure you, I am NOT pushing him into this! He just "loves to sew!" At least that's what he told me!

Now he wants to do the other 6! Well, I guess I'll just have to order more dishtowels and transfers so I can do some! These were supposed to keep ME busy, not the kids! Oh, well, that's what happens when the kids have 16 snow days since Jan 7. They need to be occupied too!

Mystery Girl wants to do some too, but she doesn't stay at it, so it may take a few months to get one done! Oh! guess what! She finished one of her classes today! She is all done with Inventions, which is part of her Reading Class, The other half of that is book reports and, well, it's going to be a while before we get those done. But, I'm so excited, we have one whole book finished with Science slated to be finished in March. WoooHoo! Now comes the part where I tally up all the scores and submit them to the school so she can get it on the next report card! The school will give her a final grade based on the grade I submit for daily work and the one they give her for tests. Tests are 80% of her final grade so, hopefully she'll do well. I'm estimating a high C. Cross my fingers. We will be ordering her next years' school stuff in a couple of weeks. We get an early bird special in we order really early, and she still has until next October to finish. We WILL make it thru this year. As bad as it has been and sounded, I'm still more happy with her results than I was at public school. Here, I think she gets a more honest grade and I'm really pretty tough on her about getting stuff done. (Which is why it has been so hard) Maybe I'm too tough on her, but I know what she is capable of and I am really able to moniter her progress and catch the "missing link" before we move on and get lost. I think I may start school a little earlier this year and spread it out a little more. I didn't count on so many vacation days and snow days. We were out of days by New Years this time around. Well, the scheduling instructions recommended that we plan for 10 holiday days and an extra 5-10 days for sick days. So, this year we had 5 days at Thanksgiving (split over 2 weeks) so that threw our Spelling off among others. Then we had 11 days over Christmas and New Years. After that, we have had about 15-16 snow days, I've lost count, and a 2 day midwinter break. So, we have had about 30+ days off this year so far. And we still have Easter or "Spring break" and Memorial Day coming up. Ufda! Wish I was getting paid to not work like our teachers are! (Contract, you know!) Ok, so maybe they only get paid for so many days, but......! In any case, our whole schedule is screwed up and the catch up is just not coming. She's tired of pushing so hard on school days and I'm tired of trying to make her. Besides, it's not really fair to make her work the whole time Calico Kid is home. Poor kid! Summer will be a welcome break.