Weekly Wrap-up~Week 5

I took lots of pictures this week, to make up for the previous weeks.  There wasn’t anything particularly special about this week, but we made it through our 6th week of our new school year and I’m just feeling very happy about that. 

Preschool~Laffy Taffy (almost 4)

I laminated his name and he’s been having fun practicing writing it.

He actually had these in order, correctly, I think they must have gotten bumped off the table and put back wrong or something, he’s actually a little better at number recognition than his 6 year old sister, scratch that, WAY better is the correct description.

He loves the gluing!

1st Grade~Bubble Gum Taffy (six)

Fun with Song School Latin, last week and this week we learned animal names.

3rd Grade~Blue-Raspberry (8)

He’s getting straight A’s in 3rd Grade Math.  I <3 Teaching Textbooks!  Blue-Raspberry has also been using Easy Grammar 3/4, I am amazed at how quickly he’s picking this up.  Honestly, I can’t find the difference between this book at the one that is called Easy Grammar Plus for the highschool kids.  He’s going to be so much more prepared for the standardized tests this year!

9th Grade-Strawberry Taffy

Doing Latin Alive!  I splurged and bought the DVD’s to go with the workbook and I’m so glad I did.  She’s really picking it up and enjoying it.

Here’s a map she’s been working on for US and World  History.  She’s making a lovely notebook with the all the great books she’s read through Beautiful Feet.

10th/College~Chocolate Taffy (15)

I guess I didn’t get a picture of him working.  Wow!  This child is really starting to blossom, if it’s okay to use that term with a boy…he’s really enjoying his college courses and can’t stop talking about them.  I never really knew what Chocolates gifts were until recently.  I think he’s been blessed with the gift of teaching.  Tuesday night he talked to me for an hour straight, telling me all the details about his classes and what he’s learned.  I was laughing and laughing.  He was so animated and energetic!  And to top it off, this child, with the worst oral hygiene habits ever, didn’t have one cavity at his dentist visit this week!  Lucky!

11th/College~Banana Taffy (16)

This is how he feels…he took this picture himself.  He’s a little overwhelmed, but he’s committed.  I’ve had to give him a few pep talks, “Take it one day at a time.”  “You can do it!”  “Should I make some coffee?”  There’s a little learning curve there, but he will overcome! 

Getting ready to write his first paper for college!  (Ignore all that sugar…it’s actually for the bees, but my pantries are too full to store it.  Mr. Taffy has had to feed our bees sugar because the summer has been so weird.)  I’m so proud of my sons!

Just for fun~

      

Need to relieve some stress?  Just give your hair a little “do.”

Even though these two didn’t participate in the spraying, they had fun watching!  And laughing…and advising…see?  He can’t stop talking!  lol

The last thing I’ll share is the fact that my big sons are a little too busy now to do chores. Not the big stuff like chopping wood and mowing the grass, but little things like vacuuming and dusting.  So to rectify the problem, I’ve declared Friday afternoon clean up time.  After we give the homeschool room and playroom a good cleaning we move on to other areas.  All the little ones help.

       

It worked pretty good and now I have a clean house for the weekend!  I hope your week was wonderful too!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

I’m linking up with Kris over at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Another year older

That would be me…My birthday was on Sunday.  The celebrating pretty much started on Saturday though when my daughter and her friend planned a birthday surprise for me.  First they took me to lunch at Chipotle!  Burrito Bowl here I come!  Then we went to the mall where they did some crazy things like go up the down elevator, ride the carousel and buy matching sun glasses!

Don’t worry, I was happy to live vicariously through their fun and I wasn’t alone, the momma of Strawberry’s buddy is my good friend!  We both enjoyed the “break” and had lots of fun talking!

Sunday started out with brunch.  Mr. Taffy bought a Groupon months ago to a fancy restaurant.  The food there is a little pricey so only 3 of us went-Mr. Taffy, Mrs. Taffy and Strawberry.  Marshmallow was there too, she just doesn't count as an eater.  The best thing about the restaurant was the strolling jazz band and eating on the garden patio.  The worst thing about the restaurant was the food.  This place used to be famous for their food, pretty much half the buffet was either an egg dish or had pecans added to it. Without a doubt the salad on the salad bar was bagged.  NASTY.  We would have been pretty sad had we paid full price for the slightly better than Old Country Buffet quality.  Still, the company was delightful and the music was cheerful and the flowers and fresh air divine!

After brunch we came back home and the family celebrating began.  Mr. Taffy sent me to my room  while they set up.  And since I didn’t have anything to do up there, I laid down and shut my eyes for a wink.  AMAZING!

This is what was waiting for me on the table!  Oh wow!

That one in the front there was called Bad Hair Day and tasted like burnt marshmallows.  Only Blue-Raspberry liked that one.

See the gold leaf on the top of that frontal beauty?

The one in the back there was my favorite, banana cream something or other, oh yeah!

This was so much more fun than a Costco Cake.  My husband knows me so well!  It was fun cutting into each one to see what lovely filling was inside.  We ate about half of them right then, everybody getting a taste of which ever looked appealing.

Then we put the littles down for Quiet Time while Mr. Taffy and Marshmallow took me shopping.  I ended up buying a Kindle with my birthday money, but I’m considering taking it back.  I don’t get the ad thing…I hate commercials.

We decided we needed a little exercise after all that eating, so we went for a family bike ride and then worked in the back yard for a couple hours.

Chocolate Taffy and I put together the Mother's Day trellis.  I LOVE IT!  It smells so good, it’s cedar.

And we worked on painting the shed.  We have a long way to go still, but at least we got started.  Banana Taffy made a fire to keep the bugs away and to burn some junk that was too big for the trash can.  We grilled for dinner, finished off the meal with the rest of the desserts and went to bed!  It was such a GREAT day!

My family loves me so much, each one in their own way really showed me that they do, whether it was the dinosaur card from Laffy or the Blue Crocs from Chocolate or the command to NOT buy anything for the kitchen from Banana, you guys are the best!  Thanks for giving me such an amazing day!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

Weekly Wrap Up~Week 2

Another successful week under our belt.  Don’t get me wrong, there are moment’s when I feel like screaming, especially when the baby is fussing and I’m trying to get the younger crowd to focus and the phone rings and the laundry dings and I’m feeling pulled in a hundred million directions.  But we made it through, we still love each other, we got our stuff done, so I feel it was successful!

The beginning of the week started out at the beach…our last visit of the season.  So long old friend!

This is my chair.  The umbrella attached to it has been a life saver, it keeps the sun off of me and Marshmallow.  I wouldn’t have been able to go every week if it weren’t for this chair!  Thanks honey!

These are Banana Taffy’s feet.  I just needed to document how big they are!  Size 16.  Yup.  Not kidding.

               

The rest of the week was pretty uneventful,  The days go by so fast!  We are settling in to a nice routine that goes something like this:

• 6:15-Rise and Shine Kiddos
• 6:30-Breakfast
• 7:00-8:00-Chores and stuff
• 8:00-PreSchool with Laffy Taffy
• 8:00-10:30-school with Blue-Raspberry and Bubble Gum
• 10:30-11:00-I read to the younger crowd
• 11:30-Start making lunch
• 12:00-Eat lunch and do chores
• 1:00-2:30-Quiet time, big kids finish school
• 2:30-4:30-Free time, finish chores
• 4:30-Start dinner
• 5:45-Eat dinner
• 7:00-Showers and bed time stuff for little people or we go on a bike ride or run errands, but if we are home, I put them to bed early. 
• 10:00 bed time for me. 

See the day is over already.  I’ve run a few errands during quiet time, but I will often bake or do paperwork or clean or take a nap during that time.  My sons have been working so they often leave for work around 4, but that all comes to an end next week.  I’m not letting them work their first semester of college.

I’m linking up with Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.  Visit her to see what other homeschoolers have been up to this week!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

Weekly Wrap-up~Week 1

It was back to school week for us!  I’m happy to report that it went better than I expected. 

Everybody was pretty much ready since I’ve been announcing the start date pretty much daily for a month, so they KNEW it was coming.  Still, some people were more ready than others. 

Here’s a run down on everybody’s favorite subjects so far:

Banana Taffy-He doesn’t actually have a favorite, maybe next month when he starts PSEO he’ll have a favorite.  He’s one that’s not very excited about school.

Chocolate Taffy-The Art of Argument from Classical Academic Press.  This is both good and bad.  He’s learning how to interpret what he’s reading and hearing, but he’s also acquiring the skills to know whether or not his parents know what they are talking about!  ha!   

Strawberry Taffy-Latin Alive!  Book 1  She really wants to be a missionary and she wants to learn a couple different languages, so I thought a good foundation for her would be Latin.  She loves it!  We’ve been studying some Latin  since she was in elementary school, but this is the first time she’ll be actually learning the grammar of Latin and all that it entails.  She likes it because Latin doesn’t have any silent letters and the grammar/phonics rules don’t change, like they do in English.  I bought her the DVD set so she has a “real” teacher. 

Blue-Raspberry-He is my most enthusiastic about school.  I hope it lasts all year!  His favorite thing right now is Teaching Textbooks 3.  I’m not sure if it’s the actual math he loves or the fact that he gets to use my computer to do it!  He also loves his handwriting, he’s learning cursive this year and I think it makes him feel grown up.  I bought some of these smencils from Timberdoodle.  I only let him him use them when he’s doing school work, they make his learning time even more special I think.  He is also crazy about his Astronomy book by Apologia.

Bubble Gum-She says she doesn’t like school…not sure I totally believe her.  I did just ask her what her favorite subjects are and she said reading (Bible Nurture from Rod and Staff) and Math (Mathematical Reasoning Level B), she does love her Smencil too.  lol 

Laffy Taffy-His favorite so far is his Pasting book that I found at Costco.  Timberdoodle sells it too!

One thing I’m trying to do this year, that I haven’t done in years past, is to give the school room a good cleaning on Fridays after we finish.  It was a chore that the kids had but not on Friday’s.  Something about finishing a school week with a clean school room just appeals to my need for order.  There were so many scraps and pencil shavings and bb’s on the floor.  I’m going to attempt to keep my messy little people out of there until Tuesday when we resume.  It might not be possible but they are sick…so maybe.

I’m linking up to Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.  If you want to see what other homeschoolers did this week, just visit this link!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

Salt Water Taffy

                 

She’s getting so big!  She’s a little over 2 months old now.  She’s so long!  And chubby!  Just look at her cheeks and double chin!

Personality wise, she is definitely happier when we stay home.  She doesn’t really like to ride in the car and doesn’t really like all the strange noises of new places.  But she is starting to get more adaptable.  She seems to startle easy, so sleeping with her and holding most of the day keep her more peaceful.  She still gets the hiccups all the time, just like when she was still in utero.  She makes us very happy though, especially when she looks at us the way she is in this picture.

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy

A little bit of catch-up

I know I haven’t been blogging much lately.  I think I’m still adjusting to having a new little person in the house.  Salt Water Taffy is so precious!  She has been a little fussy off and on, usually depending on what her bowels are doing, but she has been smiling a lot too and making the sweet little baby sounds that bring such joy to my heart.

She’s so big too!  She’s grown three inches and gained 3 pounds in her first 6 weeks of life!  She’s 8 weeks old now. 

Besides her, I’ve had some strange scenarios to deal with.  One is on the homeschool front.  I’ve mentioned in the past how in MN we have to turn in quarterly report cards to the school district.  This is only for parents without a college degree…anyway, third quarter report cards were due the beginning of April.  I sent them in for the older three kids but I forgot to send in Blue-Raspberry’s.  So the school district called me to remind and since I had just had a baby and wasn’t thinking about report cards I completely put it out of my mind.  Then this week I got a letter from the Minnesota Department of Education telling me that my school district is reporting me for not abiding by MN law and if I don’t respond within 15 days, they are going to start proceeding to take me court, etc.  It was a very hostile letter.  I did send in Blue-Raspberry’s report card, it was a month late, but it was well before I got this letter from the MDE.  In response, on the exact same day as I got the letter, I scanned all the asked for documents into my computer and emailed them to the Superintendent.  You know what, he hasn’t responded to me yet.   Figures.  Mr. Taffy sent him an email too.  I guess I’ll have to call on Monday.  It all seems a little extreme to me!  I made their 4th quarter report cards today, they are due next week.  I’m trying to figure out how I can get proof that they are delivered without paying for delivery confirmation.  Maybe I should just hand deliver them, the office isn’t too far from my home.

Doesn’t it look like bubbles are coming out of his ear?  Ha!

Besides that, I’ve also been dealing with a weird skin infection on my ear.  It was a bug bite gone berserk, and now I’m antibiotics.  Nasty mosquitos!

Banana Taffy graduated to being a licensed driver this week too.  I think I was as nervous as he was!  Phew!  He did great though and he did the whole test in a big ole suburban!  Can you parallel park a suburban?  I can’t!  The man at the Testing Facility said he was the only teen who paid for his own license that day!  I was so proud of our son!  Only 6 more kiddos to go!

 

We went to the zoo today.  The forecast was humid, hazy and hot!  Boy was it!  We were sweating just standing still.  We had a great time though, despite the heat.

We are going to start up summer school next week.  I’ll do a separate post about what my goals are there and what we are doing.

I hope your enjoying your spring/summer too!  I don’t know about you, but I LOVE air-conditioning!

Joyfully,

Mrs. Taffy