Odds & Ends

• We had one day of relative warmth this week, and we headed for the park with our Chick Fil A lunch in hand to soak up the rays.  This was on Wednesday after CBS.  We met dear friends there, and the kids had a great time running and sliding and swinging.  Benny slid down the medium-sized slides twice, with no one to catch him at the bottom either time.  He ended up with a mouthful of mulch and I was picking mulch out of his onesie that afternoon.  Fun times!
• Query from the DLM as he lay in bed awaiting sleep one night:  “Mom, why are the Angry Birds angry?”  🙂  Deep thoughts from a four year old!
• Singapore Math (Primary Mathematics) continues to go well for Lulu’s fifth grade studies.  It’s not exactly open-and-go, but I appreciate the clean layout so much and yes, I want to have to think to do the math.  Otherwise, I’m not sure I’d feel like I was doing a good job.  (Put this in the Homeschooling:  If You Don’t Feel Crazy, You’re Not Doing It Right category. 😉 )
• Our co op hosted a skating party on Thursday in honor of Valentine’s Day.  Fun times all around.  None of my kids really skated–it was more like they marched around in a pair of roller skates, avoiding the non-carpeted areas.  The video games were the big hit for the DLM, especially.  He finally earned enough tickets (70? 80?) playing the proto-slot machines games to buy two Tootsie Rolls and a mini Three Musketeers.  Generous folks they are at this skating rink!  😉
• We gathered up our sixty-something library books this afternoon to return today, on their due date.  I went online to renew a few that we needed to finish (or hadn’t read yet), and I realized our current bedtime read-aloud, The Orphan and the Mouse, was unrenewable.  Yikes!  We’re far enough into it that I don’t want to abandon it, so I guess I’ll be reading double-time this weekend to avoid more late fees.  (I pay late fees pretty frequently, yes, but I don’t mind too much because our libraries are SO good to us and I figure it’s a small price to pay for so many books that I don’t have to store!)

• I think I only walked three times this week.  Steady Eddie’s early departure time twice this week really threw me off.  It has also been pretty cold, so there is that.
• Fun Friday today saw us doing a couple of art projects (including the snowman resist which we started weeks ago), playing math games, “checking out” on our memory work, and catching up on a few other things.
• I was piddling in the kitchen one day when the DLM came in and announced, “I don’t like to read!”  It was an “Elizabeth, I’m coming home!” moment for me.  😉  Then I noticed a mischievous half-grin and twinkle in his eye, and I realized my buttons had been pushed.  He then confessed that his hero, my fifteen year old nephew, doesn’t like to read, so neither does he.  I was just about to text my sister a threatening text when my better sense and humor took hold.  😉
• I finally got a haircut this week.  I considered growing my hair out, but really, the only advantage I can think to having longer hair for me is more reading time while I dry it.  Simplicty wins!
• The girls finally got their hands on the final Sisters Grimm book mid-week, and they have both devoured it.

• I’m feeling the urge to purge, thanks mostly to Annette’s progress.  I finally started reading the book I won on her blog to help me along.  Now to find the time to dig in!  (This will be a LOOONG project, friends.)
• I read Stephanie’s Project Life post this morning and immediately began scheming as to how to bring scrapbooking back into my life.  After taking lots of photos (some of which I’d love to share but can’t presently due to a communication problem between my phone and my laptop) and thinking about it today, I’ve finally concluded that my best bet is to use the Project Life app and make digital pages and have them bound into a photo book at the end of the year.  That’s my plan right now, and I actually think it might be doable!
• Last week I mentioned that Benny has given up the paci, but as I feared, I spoke too soon.  What he has done instead is switch brands.  Yes, he has gone from MAMto Nuk.  Go figure.  🙂
• I handed Lulu Toliver’s Secret this afternoon to read as a history go-along, and she read it in about an hour.  Granted, it’s not a classic, but it is about on a fifth grade level, and it’s of average length–well over 100 pages.  One hour seems super fast to me–as in I couldn’t read it that fast.  I don’t say that to brag, but rather, to ask: does this seem fast to anybody but me?  I asked her to narrate back to me the gist of the story, and she did.  Hmmmm. . .

• Well, that’s it for me.  I’m headed to bed!  Tomorrow will be a busy day:  basketball, groceries, library, and then, our traditional Valentine’s Day supper of heart-shaped pancakes with strawberry syrup and all the breakfast fixin’s, to which we have invited all the grandparents.  I’m looking forward to it!

How was your week?