Reboot

The Sloths needed a reboot this summer.  Two weeks ago I had the priviledge of going on a retreat. I had written a long post about it but never finished nor published the piece.  (Piece? What am I a journalist now?) Anyway the retreat boiled down to a few bulletpoints. 

1) Silent, which was surprisingly wonderful and easy for me. 

2) Fruitful, at least I hope it is, time will tell. 

3) Penetential, not only did I not sleep while I was there,

 but I consumed some spoiled food. 

Don't get me wrong though, it was peaceful and intimate. The retreat was planned well because I returned home on Sunday night and Monday morning was the first day of Vacation Bible School. At first this made me nervous. The kids clothes would have to be set out the night before, we'd have to leave the house by 8am (which is gasp-worthy for homeschoolers like ourselves). Turns out it was a great way to ease back into the real world since I wouldn't have Things 1-3 for the mornings. Just me and the 'baby'. (Yep. He's a baby and I'm sticking to it.) 

The only downside to my retreat is, well, how do I say this delicately, Mr. Sloth put the house on survival mode. Actually, he put it on entertainment and survival mode. The night I left he had about twelve people over for a cookout including his brothers family who stayed at our house for the weekend.  I thought I would have time during the week to catch up with housework I was rather crunched for time.  I did get to take King to the little zoo for an hour or so and run some errands that aren't "Wow-are-they-all-yours" friendly.  Mr. Sloth on the other hand was having a horrible week. His stress was becoming quite visible so by Friday I made an emergency plea to Obscure to watch the kids while I take Mr. Sloth out to dinner. I realized half way through the day that it was a Friday and no longer during the Easter Season which means we don't eat meat. All I had was luxury fish sticks from Trader Joe's. Mr. Sloth hates fish. Mr. Sloth hates fish sticks. I don't know how he feels about Trader Joe's. When I told him we get to go out to eat his first words were, "Can I eat meat? "

Yep. 

I was able to convince him to head a favorite restaurant that is known for being an oyster bar. Mr. Sloth has been there many times for drinks but never really to eat. I reassured him that there was at the very least a burger on the menu (as well as duck, and pork, and lamb....) It was an ideal night for dining outside. It's a French Restaurant that even has the outdoor chairs you see all up and down Parisian Streets. At the last minute we both "settled" on steak. We had the Pommes Frites with Bearnaise sauce for an appetizer as we always do but I was pleasantly surprised to find out they came with my steak as well. More potatoes? More Bearnaise? Yes, please!! 

It was sometime during this week that we realized that we had completely forgotten to plan our vacation. Huh. Didn't make lodging reservations or even concrete plans. Huh. We decided to postpone our trip until later in the summer. Then all the kids sports will be over, we'll have more time to plan what we actually want to do and we'll be able to find affordable lodging. It wasn't long before we realized how providential this decision was. Some might be disappointed that they can't go on their vacation when planned but God's timing is perfect and I prefer to just go with the flow of the Holy Spirit. In my mind I thought, "Oh, well. We'll make it work sometime." 

Sunday ended up being the most awkward Father's Day yet. It started out normal but on the way to Mass King started fussing in the van for what seemed like no reason. I turned around an noticed that he had spit up his Cheerios a little bit. That was odd, but he didn't have a fever and it didn't smell like vomit. I decided try and hold him myself all through Mass in case he did throw up, I didn't want him throwing up on Mr. Sloth. Half way through Mass I realized he wasn't drinking his milk which is NOT like him at all. Then I started to kind of smell vomit. At the Our Father King insisted that Mr. Sloth hold him instead of me. Two minutes after Mr. Sloth and I did the prisoner exchange of King for Rooster King burped and threw up ALL OVER Mr. Sloth. 

Hello fellow parishioners. That just happened. 

I don't know what the etiquette is for cleaning up vomit during the Consecration but I'm apparently a trail blazer for standards.  The good news is that it turns out it was just something he ate, probably too much popcorn the night before. He was feeling better by 11am just as the clouds were breaking. We thought it was going to be storming all afternoon and we'd have to miss German Fest. At the last second we packed up the family and head to the city for our beloved once-a-year family event. It was so much fun. Perfect weather! It was pouring rain last year but we went anyway so it was nice to have great weather. 

Monday I was finally able to get some good house cleaning done in the morning before we went to get groceries. Then it was lunch and naps before we drove to private swim lessons. The daughter of a friend of mine is a lifeguard and they have an in ground pool in their yard. Perfect set up for private swim lessons. Even though I have to drive 40 minutes I can get their lessons done at the same time, one on one and pay a really decent price. I would have taken pictures but King LOVES being in the water so my hands were rather full. Thunder rolled just as our lesson was wrapping up so we packed up and started the trek home in a storm. Being rush hour and having to make one slightly out of the way stop we took a bit longer getting home and had a quick dinner thanks to my crockpot that had chicken tacos waiting for us. 

Today the house was still nice and clean so I treated the kids to a day at the 'small' zoo and some early afternoon ice cream before heading home for late naps. It's already time to make dinner. Time flies when your having summertime fun! 

Here's some pics from the zoo & ice cream. 

King at the water table in the Children's Learning room. 

Rooster showing me what the tiger eats. 

Happy & King looking for koi in the conservatory (there were none) 

King looking adorable in the conservatory. 

King enjoying some Italian ice. 

Rooster enjoying his Sour Apple Italian Ice. 

Demand enjoying her Birthday Cake Italian Ice. 

Happy needed to try every single flavor in order to make a well informed decision which is why I don't have a picture of him by himself. He finally decided on mango. The kids are already plotting how to get back to the ice cream shop to try out some more flavors.

The Bounty

There are about ten days a year I look forward to with much anticipation.  The Catholic Homeschool Conference is two of them. This year I dragged brought Mr. Sloth along with me so he could get a feel for the conference in all it's paperback glory.  

I was proud of myself for sticking with my new minimalist goals and I didn't buy anything we didn't need or love.  I came with a decent list and stuck pretty close to that list aside from a few extra fillers and Christmas gifts. 

I suddenly feel like an old pro as I had my rolling suitcase to carry all my loads of book to and from the van, and I had my list prepared for each of my kids as to which curriculum I painstakingly picked out over months of thinking and weeks of research. 

The talks were pretty good. Dr. Meg Meeker was the keynote and the one breakout session I went to was Lacy from Catholic Icing. Not only was it nice to see her I got a few ideas for keeping the littles incorporated into the school day.  I'm sure you'll see more about that in another post. 

I was also wise enough, knowing that the second I walked in the door I'd be ambushed by the kids wanting to know what books I'd bought. Thankfully I thought ahead and had a fun book for each of them in my hand when I came home.  Not only were they completely excited and engrossed by their new books but I was able to sneak the rest of the materials in the house and sort them first and keep their little eyes from seeing some possible Christmas gifts. 

I'd say this is about 50-60% of what we need for next year. Some things we have as certain textbooks can be passed down. I still have most of their math and some history books to purchase online yet. No rush though. 

I put the books in order of subjects. Aren't they purdy?  On the left, Teaching Writing and Structure and then Student Writing and Structure for Demand and myself. Then All About Spelling 3 below (still finishing up 2) then for Happy we have Primary Arts of Reading including the Phonetic Farm and Phonetic Games. However once I got home I realized that they forgot my Phonetic Games, DVD, and Teacher's Manual.  And then for Rooster we have the first three books of "Explode the Code" which is a fun phonetic activity book.  Below that we have New American Cursive. Demand and Happy will both be working through workbooks A & B this year.

Since our normal Science has an age range in place of  an grade style of curriculum we only us it every other year. We used it this year for Physics so next year we'll do some fun physics activities here and there but mostly do Art & Music this year which we haven't done in a while so Demand is excited!  I also found this great Dictionary at my friends Usborne table and Demand and Happy are already obsessed with it. Demand keeps not-so-casually finding a word she needs to look up and it's only been four hours since I've been home.

The next table is the bulk of our History program. While the kids love "Story of the World" and it is easy to use and very classical and in depth it's also written by Protestants. I was planning on getting the "Catholic Version" this year but I ended up being kind of disappointed with the structure or lack there of. There's basically a very rough overview of a teachers guide but then a great number of books to read. All the books are great but it seemed a great deal, 50% were based on Catholicism and I want a REAL study of ALL History in all the cultures of the world, not just the fun stuff. Because it's all important. So we decided to merge the two programs. We'll take out conflicting chapters of Story of the World (for the time being) and then read all the great books recommended from the Catholic History program according to the time period we will be studying at the time.

More History material and then a tiny bit of Math. I'm going to half to buy the bulk of our Math curriculum online, but thankfully I just have to buy workbooks for John as we already have the textbooks and then to be honest I'm not sure what I'm doing with Rooster. He's got his preschool material down so I guess it wouldn't hurt to try Kindergarten with him and just go at his pace.  

Aside from the Math and History books I need to purchase I plan on getting "Classically Catholic Memory" . It's classical in that it promotes memorization which is so important in the younger years and it's also Catholic (apparently there was a protestant version out there first) so you would buy the book that coordinated with the time period you are studying. This year we are studying late-medieval through early settler. Each week the family memorizes facts/quotes, etc from eight different subjects. I'm pretty excited about this supplemental curriculum.

Also, being a history major (yep I have an actual degree in something) I have been finding the history curriculums out there lacking for my taste. To me if you know History and know it well so many more pieces of information will fit into place. This also goes for Geography.  So inspired by this, and I've been wanting to do it for a few years now, our family is starting a permanent timeline on our playroom wall. (It's the largest wall in the house. )As we study subjects and topics we'll add them to the list according to time and country so that we can get a grasp as to what was happening across the world at any given time. For example, our kids were confused as to why the children in Narnia had to 'go live somewhere' out of London for a while. If we were to place the Chronicles of Narnia (either the date it was published or when it takes place) on a map would could see when we study WWI WHY the children had to leave. Or what was going on when Hemingway wrote his famous works, or Shakespeare or when Picasso or Michelangelo were creating great works of art.  And did you know the pyramids existed when the Holy Family fled to Egypt? Jesus, Mary, and Joseph mostly likely saw the VERY SAME pyramids that we can see today, isn't that awesome??  What was it like for the Creator to see one of the worlds greatest creations one that his enslaved people built! The timeline will also be a great work of art on our walls and something to talk about with guests.  So if we study and invention, a poem, a discovery, a war, artwork, music, literature,saints, sinners,  etc it will go on the timeline for whatever country produced them.  We can't wait to get started! In fact we might now wait too long at all, the kids are anxious to get going with their new books! I can't blame them they all look like so much fun!

Laundry Room Upgrade

For at least a year I've been making a defense  case with Mr. Sloth that if I had a counter on top of my washer and dryer I would be able to keep up with laundry.  He never warmed to the idea much but a few weeks ago Obscure made the suggestion that I check out counters at Ikea and then we could cut one to size.  Ah, trusty old Ikea! Wouldn't you know that they had the EXACT size I needed and it was pre-cut?


So last Wednesday I headed to Ikea while my mother in law was 'spending quality time' with the kiddos.


Ta-Da!!




I wanted the room to be as cheery as possible to entice me to spend more time there so I bought a pretty teal vase and pink orchids  for $3 total while I was at Ikea.  I still had the little bird house that Demand made for me a few years ago which goes great with our bird themed room.  My tiny St. Joseph statue wasn't working on my kitchen windowsill so I moved it in here for extra motivation.

The basket on the left is for clean rags. I'm on a minimalist journey right now (another post) and I'm trying to move away from paper towels. Having the rags easily accessible has made the transition pretty smooth so far.

The wall that now holds the picture frames used to just hold the key  hooks. They weren't a great uses of space and needed a makeover so I quickly painted them white and Mr. Sloth relocated them to a small wall that was also a more natural place to hang or grab keys as you walking in/out the door.

I haven't used these picture frames for years but saw this empty space and thought they would look nice. Then I got the idea to put pictures of our kids when they are messy to remind me that messes are a fun part of life (sometimes).  The frame on the left is  of Happy when we were in Rome a few years ago. I love how he's searching for more pasta in the picture by lifting his plate up. The pictures on the right are Demand in Assisi having "hot chocolate" which is actually just melted chocolate to Italians. Then King, this picture was conveniently taken last week after a hershey kiss from the chiropractor. The last picture isn't messy but I couldn't find one of Rooster. He's actually a pretty clean eater. We love this picture taking from last years German Fest it was pouring rain that day but it was still a lot of fun. Happy and Demand are chowing down on a  pretzel and Rooster is pounding a Root Beer.

Mr. Sloth installed the shelf for me to keep my detergent and (almost never used but looks so cute and the color goes with the room) fabric softener.

So far so good. The room has been a mini-retreat for me and has stayed neat and clean even through three parties this week.

Project Week Ends, Party Weekend Begins

It's hard to say if Project week was a success, but it definitely had some fun moments.  Some projects were a success, some were a bust, and some still, were a draw.  Below, Happy fell asleep while waiting to build his castle with me. We tried, but I can't figure it out. There's over 400 pieces and no instructions. Good grief! 

As if having three families over at our house during the weekend, and Demand's First Communion weren't enough fun, Rooster thought we should reorganize the boys room. I sent him upstairs to get dressed. I found him standing on the dresser in his closet after having had thrown all his previously hung shirts on the floor and dumped all the Duplos out on the carpet. I was thrilled.

King thought he'd catch up on some books while everyone else cleaned up. That is if he can navigate the mess. 

Thursday my Religious Ed class received Confirmation.  It was a great experience and you couldn't leave without at least having felt the Holy Spirit breeze past you.

Friday I made 5 minute Frozen peach yogurt for the kids. Frozen peaches+ yogurt+ food processor= tasty snack. I could even serve it for breakfast if I wanted to.

Late Friday night one of friends arrived with their family. We all went straight to bed as Saturday was a big day. They had a Wedding but we had a First Communion.  I kept fearing we would forgot, but we knew Demand wouldn't forget. Isn't she beautiful?  I LOVE her dress with the capped sleeves and tooling skirt.

My friend (with five girls) gave me the tip of buying an inexpensive flower girl dress and using my wedding veil. Perfect! Inexpensive and symbolic! Demand was so excited to wear my veil and tiara. At the last minute I let her wear my wedding necklace. I had it made. The bead is from my mother's wedding dress, and the same wedding dress my Grandmother, Demand's namesake, also wore. It was again, a perfect addition. 

Demand's other grandmother gave her a ring that belonged to her great-grandmother. The ring fit Demand perfectly, like it was made for her. 

After her First Communion Mass, which is a post in itself. We head home to change quickly then out for pizza. By the time we got home we were exhausted. Everyone went down for a nap. Two hours later, at 4:30pm, Mr. Sloth and I woke up. Yikes!I still had to get groceries before dinner. We ate a little late but simple. Rotisserie Chicken and salad. Mr. Sloth and the kids had started "The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe" while they waited for me. After dinner we all prayed and then finished the movie together.  The kids liked it, but not as much as the book of course. They are quick to point out what wasn't in the story and what was left out. 

Sunday morning started like usual but ended up being completely exhausting. We went to 8:30 Mass with two of our out of town families then back home where Mr. Sloth  and I made brunch for everyone. After brunch I started working on the celebratory desserts for the Canonization of John XXIII and John Paul II. When everyone had woken up from their naps we had "Divine Mercy Sundaes" for snacktime. 

I spent most of the rest of the day in the kitchen cleaning. Our third familiy of friends showed up at 6:30 for dinner. It was after 10:30 when everyone left. I put the kids to bed and collapsed in bed myself, what a fun, but exhausting day! 

Project Week

A few weeks ago when it was 20 degrees, rainy and snowy, some of the local schools had their spring break, including our next door neighbors. Everyday the kids would knock on our door and ask the kids to play. I would have to tell them no because we were doing school. We'd have Spring Break when spring came.

Spring has arrived! I had decided that we'd take the week after Easter off for our Spring Break and really celebrate the octave of Easter. Instead of just 'not doing school' I thought it might be fun to have a project week. Each child would get to pick a recipe to make during the week, and we'd do crafts, art projects, and other fun projects throughout the week.  It's difficult carving out a time for projects the kids are asking to do when I feel like I'm triple booked as it is. If I can get school done, laundry done, dinner on the table, and the house picked up I'm happy, but I'm also exhausted.

If this idea works we may do it again in the fall.  Since this is our first attempt and I'm just making it up as I go who knows what will work and what wont. Of course people like Demand that want to know every detail of every minute is having a hard time comprehending what this week will be like, I think we'll all be happy in the end though.

Here's the line up so far.

Food

Demand: picked meringues from a children's cookbook that she's been wanting to make for ages.

Happy: pick "Swamp Smoothie" from a Tiana Cookbook we own.

Rooster: I picked M&M cookies for him since I bought the mini-M&Ms weeks ago for something and never used them.

Projects

We have the Cross/Jesus puzzle I gave to the family for Easter that we can work on this week. Happy is really great at puzzles.

Snap Circuits: Happy received Snap Circuits for Christmas and hasn't gotten too much time with them since an Adult is need to supervise. Wouldn't want to short a circuit and ruin the whole toy.

Glitter Slime: I flipped through my Pinterest folders for a few of the hundreds of ideas I thought the kids would like but I never remember to plan for. This was one of them. Glitter slime.

Wooden Castle: A year or so ago I stocked up on some wooden kits from Michael's on super-super clearance thinking I would give them as Birthday gifts but never remember. So now we might put one together. We have a few castles and a pirate ship I think . Now that I think of it, I think Demand received the Eiffel Tower a few years ago.

The rest of the week has yet to be determined. I will probably have them paint as some point as they all like to paint and I found some sidewalk chalk activities I think they would enjoy and King received side walk chalk for Easter.

Grandma often comes on Wednesday mornings so a lot will depend on if she is coming over. If she doesn't we may head to the Science Museum. Tomorrow is MY last night for Religious Ed. My students take their final test and get Confirmed on Thursday. Friday we have our first field trip in a long time, the nature center. We are going to a class on soil. The kids will be so excited. They love that place!


Here are a few pictures from day one.

We attempted to make glitter slime.  I think we messed it up but the kids had fun and played with it again first thing this morning.

They got to play with Happy's "Snap Circuts" for a while. They love doing it but need to be under supervision.

Then we made M&M bars. I only had gluten free flour but they turned out perfect. Wouldn't know the difference.  I forgot that our children have a hard time understanding the rules in the kitchen. I guess I need to have them help more often.

So that was day one of Project week.

An Easter Miraclel

Isn't it wonderful? After six months of cold, dark and snowy weather we finally have the first BEAUTIFUL day on Easter Sunday! Praise God who creates all things new! That said I feel like I deserve a T-shirt that says, "I survived the winter of 2013-2014".  I'm still having a hard time leaving the house without a coat on. I feel like it's a trick. Perhaps this is some sort of post-traumatic winter syndrome. 

Things went smoothly Sunday morning. We were up and ready with plenty of time for the Easter Bunny to set out baskets while everyone was in the van waiting Mommy to finish getting ready for Mass. Ahem. Cough. Cough. 

Here's how things looked before Mass. Bikes staged. Baskets filled with goodies. I have to say we did a good job of balancing treats this year. The baskets were 80% from the Dollar Tree, plus a book and rosary for each of them and a few pieces of candy. 

This was Happy's Basket. I made last minutes decisions and accidentally gave him Rooster's basket. Whoops.  No one but me seemed to notice though.  There's an Easter book, glow stick, chocolate cross, silly string,peeps, ring pop, and notebook are all from the Dollar Tree, then there's a rosary and Twistable crayons. Plus a peanut butter Egg just for good measure. 

This is King's basket. Sorry for the blurry picture, again, we were in a hurry. Same deal here although, no bike. (Sorry Buddy) and he received bathtub crayons, and a LITTLE chocolate cross (thank you Dollar Tree) and then a beautiful Catholic Board Book. I had purchases a number of new prayer cards to make him a new prayer card ring but forgot to make it. Whoops. No one will ever know. I'll make it later this week. 

Demands basket. Easy to find, it's the only pink one. She received some pretty notebooks and pretty pens from Dollar Tree. Gosh I love that place. She's always after my good crafting pens. She received Twistable Colored Pencils which are quite fun.

Rooster. He received a "Knight's City" pop-up book which I'm sure I'll regret soon. 

Family Basket. This year I tried Shower of Roses idea and made a Family Basket as a gift to the ....family. I just said family a lot.  Everything in the basket represents symbol of Easter.  

Cross: Cross shaped puzzle

Lily: Lily

Eggs: A "My Spy Birdhouse"

Bell: A dinner bell Mr. Sloth will install outside our back door. 

Peacock: A peacock coloring book, fits nicely with the new crayons and pencils everyone received. 

Butterfly: Godiva 'Butterfly Chocolates"

Bread: Two items here because I couldn't make up my mind. Cookies from a Monestery that look oh, so tasty and "Kateri Bread". We'll save the Kateri Bread for the feast of St. Kateri which we celebrate most years. 

Lamb: A lamb mold for making either chocolate or butter lambs. 

Finally, the last gift was suppose to go in King's basket but there wasn't any room. The basket of roses are crocheted roses for praying the rosary. He'll put a Red Rose in the basket for every Hail Mary, and the White one for the Our Fathers. I found the cute little basket at Michael's last week and thought it was a perfect fit for storing the roses. Cute, huh? 

Not only did we make it to Mass on Time but we were able to get second row seats! Sweet! Mr. Sloth had to dash out during the homily when this guy decided to start giving his own homily. And he projects like a Shakespearean Actor. Mr. Sloth regrets ME not taking him because Father used so much incense that I thought I was going to get sick, and that was the just the first of four times during the whole Mass. Oh, that was rough. I was sick and nauseas the rest of the morning.

Getting kids to take pictures after they've sat (mostly) still for an hour and know there are treats waiting for them at home its quite a tricky business.

Or getting them to look in the same direction at all. 

I like this picture because they are in close proximity but not fighting. Very rare.

We had one shot at a family picture. 

Then it was home to discover some fun. No pictures were taking as the kids were all a blur and I was still nauseas from all the incense. Fun and happiness were experienced though. Eventually brunch was eaten....and ring pops.

King's already worn out. 

So handsome. 

Look at the center piece I made. Isn't it loverly? Better than I planned. I bought the basket at Target. Every since I experienced a Austrian Easter I love the colors of green and yellow for Easter. The Austrians use so much of nature in their decorations. I love it. So I placed a short square vase in the bottom of the basket and filled it with yellow roses and a bouquet of spring flowers. Mr. Sloth loved it too. He was wondering where it was on Holy Saturday but I had hid it in anticipation of Easter. 

The rest of the day was quite nice.The kids had fun with the egg hunt. My idea of giving the kids each one color of eggs to find is pure genius. And the gold eggs with a "ransome that was paid" gold coin in them were a hit too.  We ended up having starting a fire and enjoying our patio after the kids were in bed. Absolute perfect night for it. In the sixties, still wind, and no bugs. Lovely. Today came the real miracle. I forgot to arrange childcare while I took King to his first well-child check so Mr. Sloth had to stay home for the morning. In the end he decided to take the whole day off. It's an Easter Miracle!! He's not sick or traveling but he stayed home, to enjoy himself.  Yay!!

Happy Easter Everyone!