Our First Day of School!

Well, it's finally arrived.  I didn't quite feel as prepared as I had hoped, but the closet renovation was more or less done before we started today (Jesse and I did stay up late painting and reorganizing to get that part done).  And the playroom is now a lot closer to looking like a school room instead. 

Like I said, it's not all the way done.  I still have to make curtains for the room.... do you remember this fabric that I mentioned months ago?  Well, it's been sitting around my house waiting for me to get to work for months now.  Then there's the issue of our seating- we have an old church bench that needs to be cut down and some chairs that I've had forever (and when I say forever I mean before Diego and Eliana were around) that need to be refinished and put in there.  And then, while our original plan was for the closet just to have shelves like this.

We've since seen this and think that eventually the doors might be a great addition.  But this is a lot of extra work (and Jesse is in school too). So, I'm not thinking this part will be done anytime too soon. 

Right now, we've taken our coffee table (and the kids chairs that usually sit around it) from the living room and have placed them in there until the table and seating can be done.  When we get a few more things finished, I'll let you see the room.

But for now, here's pictures of the kids for their first day.  I saw a similar photo shoot from Living Creatively and thought this would be a great tradition to document their first day each year.  (Usually, I see photo ideas after the fact and then feel sad that I haven't documented that way from the beginning...ever been there?) But this year, I hope to have started a new tradition from the get-go!

Alrighty, Jesse's going to be home soon so that I can go to the PTR. This was something else I had planned to do before school started so I could be prepared, but a stinkin' water main broke and they decided the best place to store things so they wouldn't get wet was in their childcare area.  Which means they're not taking care of kids on Wednesdays right now.  Boo!  So, it's taken me until now to arrange my own childcare so I could make it down there.  I'll only have about 45 minutes before they close... hope that's enough!  Happy Monday!

Pwa!

Diego: Pwa! Pwa!

Me: What does Pwa mean?

Diego: Don't put salt on my head.

Me: Okay, I'll try not to.

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My kids have recently learned that "Woof" and "Ruff" are not the only things dogs say.  Apparently, they also say, "Barf!"
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Jesse: (to Eliana) Stop moving around, I'm not playing with you!

Diego: She's not playing, she's whining.
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My kids have been taking turns being sick for about two weeks now.  Whenever I take Eliana's temp she "reads" the thermometer and tells me: "twenty-four."

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When we began to discuss the fact that we were going to do school at home, Diego wanted to know if other kids were going to come to our house for school.  I told him that it would just be the kids in our family.  A few days later he told me: "Mami, you need to have 10 babies so that we can have lots of kids in our school."  I told him that as cool as the Duggars are, we are not the Duggars.

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Recently, when I ask Eliana what she wants for breakfast, her response is: "Pizza!" (Something tells me she will do just fine in college.)

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What are your kids funny sayings?

Now that it's cool again...

My house -that is, not outside. (I wish it were cool outside, then we wouldn't have been dying these past two weeks as we were waiting for our a/c to be fixed.) Anyway. Now, I've been trying to prepare my home and life to begin homeschooling Diego this fall. 

As many years as I taught in "real" classrooms (more on this later) and as many years as I was home-schooled myself, you'd think this thing would be a cinch.  But it's not.  Home-school curriculum has evolved tremendously in the 20+ years it's been since my mom started homeschooling us.  Back then, I think all anyone in the home-school community had heard of was Konos.  There are more options now.  A lot. More. Options.

But, I'd heard rave reviews about My Father's World, and after taking a good look at it and going to two of their sales rep's seminars, I was convinced (and excited to give it a whirl). For those of you who are counting, Diego just turned four and so technically isn't due to start school for another year. (Actually the state of Kansas doesn't require most students to be in school until 7. Crazy, huh?) But I've decided to give it a try this year because Diego knew his uppercase letters before he turned two and has always seemed to take a real interest in reading and this way if I mess up royally he's not ruined for life.

My Father's World is only supposed to take 1 to 1.5 hours at the Kindergarten level and I figure I should be able to handle that. We'll soon see.  In the mean time, I'm gathering books that I'll need throughout the school year (where did my copy of Ferdinand run off to?) and writing a few weeks of lesson plans (the state of Kansas requires a hard copy, so I might as well begin to write all I plan to do down) and work on our school calendar (there's only 28 weeks of lessons in this curriculum but Kansas doesn't have a set amount of days or hours for Kinder so I'm not too worried).

Things I am excited about:

• Lots of new books and lots of integrated science that is simple enough for even me to understand. (Science is my weakest area.)
• Weekly themes like: Sun- Jesus is the light of the world. (Just like the sun.) And Moon- I am the light of the world. (I should reflect Jesus' light just like the moon reflects the sun's light.) How cool is that?
• Being able to schedule school around our life events like: a new baby, holidays and Jesse's school breaks.
• Getting my playroom reorganized and turned into a school room.

Things I am nervous about:

• Getting my playroom reorganized and turned into a school room.
• Having enough time to teach on Wednesday which is filled with BSF and my job as director of  the Wednesday night kids outreach ministry.
• Making myself get up at a consistent time and back on a real schedule.

Okay, home-schooling veterans, your turn to sound off: What is your best piece of advice for home-schooling success?  Would love to hear from all of you! 

Cruel Summer Friday Favorites (and a Winner!)

Some of you may remember this song as a Bananarama song. Not me... to me it's an Ace of Base song. Either way, it's seemed appropriate this summer. (Especially the "leaving me here on my own" part.  I think maybe I ought to sing it to my absentee a/c guy.)

We spent a couple of weeks in June waiting for our a/c to be fixed (it needed a new a-coil) and almost two weeks ago, it broke down again (this time it's the compressor- which was fixed last year, too). This is a four year old unit, folks. (At least our a/c guy told us it was brand new when we bought it.) So out of the four years we've owned this unit, we've had serious trouble with it half of the summers we've owned it.

We're praying that it is fixed today. (Well, actually we were praying that it was fixed last week, but that didn't happen.) In the mean time, we've been floating around in record breaking heat temperatures (can we say 108 degrees?) from air conditioned home to air conditioned home of my family. Thank you, thank you! And as a result, my blog has been ignored. I finallly realized what I needed to do to be able to use my lap top at my parents' home today, so I've decided to share my dreams of coolness via my Etsy Treasury of the week.

Have a cool weekend, everyone!  And congrats to Emily @ Cottage Industrious, who won the vintage clothes pin bag!  (I'll get it to you next week when we get together.)