First Day of School, 2011-2012

So, I arrived home from Omaha Tuesday afternoon; rechecked all the children's uniforms and school supplies Wednesday; packed the lunches last night, got everyone into the bathtub and into bed early -- and then got everyone out the door, happy, smiling, and on time this morning.  Everyone, that is, except this little guy:

William -- who is sick with mild flu symptoms -- bad cough and tummy troubles.  So, (heehee!)  Mommy gets a reprieve from sending baby #10 off to Kindergarten for a day or four...  I do still really have a difficulty with conventional schooling.  It's most unnatural for me to send my children away for someone else to teach them.  If it weren't for the world's best Kindergarten teacher and our stellar Teaching Sisters, I so would not be doing this.  Thankfully, I do still have Happy Homeschooler, Catherine, here to keep me company.  I'm so glad of that!  And William's kindergarten class has off on Wednesdays.  Plus, I still get to teach my awesome autistic high school buddy, Brian, history and English three days a week.  So I shouldn't be too lonesome. 



Cathy, such an indus-
trious little student,
playing the wii...


 Hopefully I'll have a chance (finally, maybe) this school year to tap out some ponderful  posts on the conventional school vs. home school, vs. boarding school decisions we've made...  and will likely continue to re-decide and re-defne and re-make as the years go on.

In the meantime, though:  Anyone else out there already starting the school season with sickness?  I hope this isn't a sign of things to come!  Ugh.  What are your immune booster methods of choice?

Sunday Afternoon

Dan is in Denver this week and Michelle and Gabe are still in California, so it's just the five of us here at home: Theresa, Cathy, Anna, William and me.  With so few here, I catch myself looking over my shoulder a lot, feeling like I've lost something - or someone. Mind you, it's not exactly quiet around here (that's simply not possible with William in the house), but there's definitely less milling about of warm bodies going on.  And, as if I hadn't already had trouble adjusting to cooking without teenage boys around, preparing food for only myself and these three birdlike girls and William-who-never-eats is making me crazy. Anybody interested in some really good leftovers? I've got large quantities of spaghetti, bbq pork, pizza, and and chocolate cookie dough just waiting for a big appetite to show up...  Anybody's but mine, that is, because I'm on a diet.

Anyway, I'm glad you stopped by.  Welcome to our house.  Here's a little peek in the window at a slow and lazy Sunday with only 2/5ths of the kids at home.  (This is what you're missing, Dan.  Don't you wish you were here?)

A Musical Walk-through
(With Theresa on Keyboard)





Background Backstories For the Curious:

Flotsam and Jetsam from a Sunday morning.  We call the blue goo foofoo  -- Just the ticket for "slickin" up little boys' hair for Sunday Mass!  (Incidentally, I have no idea why we call it foofoo, except for that my uncle called it that when my brothers were kids.  You don't want to know what he said it was made out of...)



Anna is on a coloring kick, and was especially tickled when Sr. Corinne Marie gave her several coloring pages to take home with her from Saturday's work day at the school.  I don't know about most families, but we go through several different "play phases" every summer.  Some years it's cowboys and Indians followed by marbles or squirt guns; some years it's tea parties, followed by maybe faerie houses or dress-up days. This year, we started out early doing hoola-hoops and kittens,  and now that it's the dog-days of late August and too hot to hoola, the girls are teaching themselves to Irish Step Dance via Yootube lessons, while watching the hummingbirds fight for king of the feeder outside the patio doors -- and we're leaving crayons and markers all over the house. 

 

This year it's all about Nancy Drew.  All three girls (Theresa, Cathy, and Anna) are working their way through my old collection of thirty or so books.  Theresa just finished reading the Owen Francis Dudley series (aka: the Father Dudley books -- you can find Father Dudley's conversion story here!), as well, and is dipping into good ole Don Camillo.  But, Sunday morning is all about the comics.   Part of our conversation today will inevitably get around to a critique of them.  Everyone agrees:  most of them are pretty stupid.  But we all read them, anyway.



Always music of some kind going on in the background here.  If someone doesn't have her personal playlist going, Theresa's at the keyboard.  Right now she's teaching Cathy how to play.  Which suits me fine -- Two for one piano lessons are encouraged in big families, especially.

Not sure whether a couple kids finished a game and didn't re-set up, or William was playing "Guys."  Chess pieces are his Good-Guys vs. Bad-Guys figures of choice these days...



I think the picture tells the tale here.  Are you seeing what I'm seeing? 

Filed Under:

Oh, My Goodness!

I don't know about you,

 but young is not the adjective I'm thinkin' of.

Which leads me to this:  Chronic Back Pain May Shrink the Brain

An article, my ever-thoughtful chiropractor tipped me onto, explains a few things for me...  Like why I can't think, write, type, or remember where I put my phone.  At least it's my excuse du'jour.

Dreams

So, last night -- or rather, this morning right before William came in and woke me up, I had a pip of a dream.  I usually don't remember my dreams, but this one stuck with me.  And since I woke up and told it to William, I remember it still.  (Isn't it weird the way we forget dreams most of the time, just the instant we open our eyes and take in the real world?) 

Anyway, here it is:

The field between our church and the rectory had been plowed and there were big piles of dirt and deep creases in the ground.  My friend, Mary H., from our Denver parish, was visiting and I was showing her around the property.   She was a few steps ahead of me, picking her way through the dirt piles to go see the beautiful grotto at the edge of our church property and I was walking a few steps behind her when a skunk appeared from behind a hill just behind Mary.  I went, "Psst!  Psst! Mary!  Mary!"  in as loud a whisper as I could manage. 

"Slowly, quietly walk toward the rectory," I said  "There's a skunk behind you!" 

I don't know whether she actually heard me or not, though, because as soon as the words escaped my lips,  the skunk turned around and started walking toward me!  I literally spun on my heels in panic (doing exactly what I didn't want Mary to do) and started to run away from the skunk.  But the next thing I knew, I was lying on my face in the dirt.  AGH!  I didn't know where the skunk was and I was afraid to get up, afraid to say anything to Mary to ask her.  So, I just lie (lie,lay, laid, lain...) lay there silently, quivering.  Until...

I felt the barest weight and soft little feet, padding up and over my legs: one, two, three, four.  I wanted to scream, but knew I couldn't...

Ayeeeeeek! (I shrieked silently)  And then I woke up.  In practically a cold sweat.  With William having crawled into bed beside me.

Little stinker.

It Drives Me Crazy...

* When people get themselves a glass of water, drink a couple of sips out of it, leave it on the counter or the kitchen table, then come back later for more water, get a new glass, drink a couple sips out of it, and leave that one on the counter, etc, etc, etc...

* When public figures, who are supposed to know how to speak properly -- say "jewlery" instead of "jewelry" or "nucular" instead of "nuclear" or "cannidate" instead of "candidate"...  (Don't get me started -- botched phrases and mispellings are even worse!)

* When people take my hairbrush and leave it in strange, God-forsaken corners of the house, like: smashed in the crack of the couch, hidden amidst the cookbooks in the kitchen, tucked in between the flower pots on the top of the piano, lying alone and cold on top of the chest freezer in the laundry room, sunning on the windowsill in the living room...

* When Charles Krauthammer starts taking cues from -- whom? Lindsey Graham?  Mike Castle?  (Pick your favorite Rino...)  Or maybe he's just lost his mind.  Praying to St. Dymphna for Sir Charles...

* When the kitties pull up the mums out of the big pot on the front porch and then use the pot as a litter box...

*When I am standing at the cash register with my money in hand, ready to pay for an item in hand, and the sales clerk makes me wait while s/he picks up the phone and has a long conversation about something that they do or do not have in the store with a person who may or may not ever be standing right in front of said-clerk with money in hand...

* When people drop their lunch boxes and bookbags on the floor right in front of the door, literally jumping over them to get into the house, without realizing that some of us are neither as nimble as they are nor as inclined as they are to think that this is a normal and proper thing to do...

* When slow people drive in the left lane.

* When certain labrador retrievers find their way into the RV overnight and pull the big boys' formerly safely-stored socks underwear and pillows all over the front lawn.

* When people are twelve inches from the laundry basket and throw their dirty clothes on the floor right beside it.  (What is with that?)

* When people go up the slide and block me from sliding down.

* When I write a six paragraph e-mail that gets zapped to Neverland because this ancient laptop is so schizophrenic...

* When I have a million pictures to share and a kazillion things to say, but my (thank goodness temporary, but lousy) computer set-up won't allow me to download from my camera and my old laptop is too cantankerous to absorb and utilize pop-up blocking super-heroes...

* When I can't blog or write anyone without fearing that I have a contagious disease that I may be spreading to others' computers! 

(AGH!  I'm dreadfully sorry, folks, if I've done this; it's awfully strange, but some people are getting messages that some kind of "malware" is coming through on the blog.  Which seems very odd, indeed, because it seems that if that's happening, it must be Blogger that's infected. How could it go from my computer to a general space like Blogger? But, I really don't know...  I'm very ignorant about these kinds of things.  If anyone out there knows anything about this stuff, let me know, ok?)

=sigh=  Anyway... This list was way too easy to write.  I may be needing an attitude adjustment...

Next time:  Things That Don't Drive Me Crazy

Oh And...  I haven't forgotten about homeschooling vs. conventional schooling vs. boarding away.  I'm working on it, but have decided I need to wait for my new computer to come so I can finish up the post without going crazy -- and so I can have pictures...  Thanks for being patient. :)

Tell Me Why...

* All the rain here lately has doubled the size of  the flowers in my flower bed but quadrupled the size and number of dandelions in my lawn.

* An open bottle of  vinegar appeared on my otherwise clean counter overnight last night.
(Sleepwalking chefs maybe?)

* Orange kitties seem to always be boys.  What's with that? (This one's name is Butch)

* William's plastic dinosaurs appear to be multiplying -- but, according to him, they're all boys.
(This, he tells me, is how a T-Rex stands...)

* As soon as you think you've got everything under control,  flying monkeys show up.

* There's never a pen/pony-tail holder/fly swatter when you want one.

* Dogs smile.  Cat's don't.

 Happy-go-lucky Noe on the left... Always-grave Lizzy on the right...

* Out of hundreds of children's books in our house, we have to read the same four or five over and over a thousand times.

(I Spy, Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs, The 46 Little Men, The Spider and the Fly...)

* Girls naturally coordinate their outfits and boys don't.

(I didn't get a picture, unfortunately, but you should've seen the get-up my better half was wearing yesterday... )

* The long days of summer seem so short.

 Check out these two.  Aren't they wonderful?  This song is an old standard around here.  Perfect for lullabies and harmonizing.  Judging by the Guinness shirt, etc, we think we'd really like this couple...

Not Quite Wordless

(Late on a Wednesday...)

William is

Like Colorado.

If you don't like the weather,

Wait a while,
Walk a mile.

Or find someone to cheer you up.

A Monkey Tale

In which Lester, the stuffed monkey, has an adventure and Gabey learns not to stand under trees and throw his toys in the air.

All's well that ends well.

A Day in the Life

Everyone is home.

(Can you see me smiling from where you are?)