Fri., Aug. 29 - Fri., Sep. 5

So. Hi. :) It's been a while, and guess what. It's not because we've been busy! Actually, on the contrary, last week was blissfully 'dull'!! :) Amazingly [and I mean, this BLOWS MY MIND and makes me SSSSSSSSO HAPPY!], I was able to begin making some progress on some projects I've been procrastinating for over two years!!!!!!!!!! Housework, yard work, laundry, shopping, cooking, reading, video gaming, and biking have filled many hours. We did get to visit Karen C. in the hospital, and now that she's in hospice, this week we'll probably go see her again. :*(

I've been gradually pushing us toward more 'school-ish' stuff, in anticipation of and preparation for adjusting our schedule in order to begin working into our lie the state's requirements. :) We have not yet 'pushed' either child in much seatwork/handwriting-type learning; I have been happy to notice on two occasions in the last few days that Justus isn't adverse to doing some!! "Color by numbers" seem to be his favorites right now, and complicated mazes a close second. >>huh!<<





Today a box arrived from Book Samaritan, an organization in Oklahoma whose ministry is to provide no-cost second-hand curriculum to homeschooling families who have 'financial needs'. I sent a letter telling them about our summer, and they sent a box!!! You don't 'place an order', they just send you what they can that they think you could use. Wow, I'm really excited about a few of the items in there! Yay, yay, yay!! Additionally, Carrie J. gave me some materials they are through with, so even though we've not yet placed our official curriculum order for this year, we do have good stuff to work with. WONDERFUL.

On the topic of homeschool curriculum, you are familiar with my infatuation with Timberdoodle, right? www.timberdoodle.com :) The Timberdoodle is a woodland bird in the northwest U.S. The word "timber" is one we don't have reason to use, evidently, because when I ended a sentence with that word last week, Justus immediately asked, "Timberdoodle??"

On Friday Grandview hosted Pray Over Iowa, an annual event started by Grandview something like 20 years ago. The attendance Friday was 280+, one of the highest attendance numbers ever. Six speakers spoke (five mintes each, only!), from all around the state, and in the audience were folks from NE, MO, and all corners of IA. The meal went well even though there were almost half-again as many people as we'd known to plan for using RSVP statistics; we enjoyed meeting a ton of people and seeing some old friends. A good time was had by all. I took the camera, having planned to take some pictures. I took only one picture, this one of Jeremy in one of his new suits; too bad the flash didn't cooperate to take the picture when I *thought* it was taking the picture! argh!




When the opportunity arises Jeremy plays some piano with the children.





I took a couple pictures of the process of N composing her first piano song. She doesn't know the staff yet, so inside the boxes (each one a beat) she wrote the letter name of the note. >>huh<<






Here is another effort at posting a video on my blog.... This is the song N wrote. Sadly, I'm confident you won't be able to hear it all, but maybe if you can hear a little of it you'll get an idea. (sigh)