*****************************************

8:00 I finally give in to my alarm that has been going off for about 45 minutes and crawl out of bed.  Ever since we were all sick a few weeks ago, we’ve had the hardest time getting going in the mornings.  I just don’t think we’re back up to our full strength yet.  Plus I’m not a morning person and the fact that it is January and cold out right now doesn’t help.  While I’d like to say I’m committed to getting up early and studying my scriptures, at this point I’m much more committed to my flannel sheets!  It’s my constant struggle.

8:10  I set up the hand wheat grinder so we can grind some wheat for cereal and turn on the computer.

8:20 The boys are up and taking turns grinding.  A cooks cereal so I can take a quick shower.  While they eat, I start making bread, then finish my breakfast.

9:20 While the boys get dressed and find their scriptures, I peel and chop potatoes and throw them in the crockpot with some chicken and an herb-garlic soup mix.  I’m all for quick and easy meals these days.

9:35  D goes outside to get a toy car out of the van and then decides to shovel the half-inch of snow off the front sidewalk.  A, C, and I sit down for 15 minutes of personal scripture study.  Somewhere in the middle of that, E gets hold of the broom and is about to whack something with it so I jump up from the floor to put it away and next thing I know I’m feeling way too lightheaded and I’m blacking out and crashing to the kitchen floor.  This has happened before, but unfortunately E has come after me and because he’s clinging to my leg, I guess he goes down with me. He seems to be more scared than hurt, although my knees sure whacked the tile floor hard.

9:50ish D comes in from shoveling the sidewalk and we have prayer and begin our Old Testament scripture study.  We’re following the seminary schedule, although we’re a little behind for the school year.  Today is Numbers chapter 14 about the Israelites scoping out the promised land and then not trusting in the Lord that they can go live there and are condemned instead to wander in the wilderness for many more years.  We have a great discussion about choosing faith over fear.

10:15  The boys have school checklists for the week and they pick what to start with.  A and C choose math and are mostly doing reviews and don’t need my help, so I get E dressed, then do grammar with D.  D plays with E for a minute and helps him string his new lacing vehicles.  I hunt for the camera battery recharger so I can take some pictures.

10:32  D does a Writing with Ease narration assignment with me, although E is now grumpy and distracts D enough that he can hardly remember anything that was read.  I try to figure out what toy E wants to play with.

10:45  C reviews his Latin flashcards, D does a reading lesson with me–reviewing -AU and -ALL words.

10:57  C starts First Language Lessons 3 with me (memorizing pronouns which was practically the same lesson D had), D begins math, A begins his Latin workbook.

11:15  E, who has spread his new crayons all over the living room but doesn’t want to color, is still grumpy so I let him stand up to the kitchen sink to play in the water and then realize I forgot to put the bread in the oven to bake.  I track down the timer so I won’t forget to take the bread out of the oven, redirect C’s attention to his grammar workbook, and give D the option of stopping his whining and just doing the rest of his math or grinding more wheat for a while.  He chooses math.

11:40  C is finished with grammar, has spent a few minutes entertaining E, and brings me his Writing with Ease workbook so I can dictate a verrrrrry long sentence to him.

11:47  The timer dings for the baking bread.  D finishes math and goes to play with cars in the boys’ bedroom.  I discover E is taking all the caps off the Mr. Sketch and Sharpie markers that didn’t get put away after our art lesson yesterday.  I find all but one and put them up high.

11:55  C continues dictation and since A is finally done with Latin, he begins a Caesar’s English vocabulary lesson with me.

12:10 p.m.  E wants to show me that the bread needs to come out of the pans.  (If there is anything going on in the kitchen, he is always the first one on top of it!  He’s our little chef.)  A adds Emily Bronte to his timeline and starts the word search from his vocabulary book.  I help C figure out where the five commas go in his dictation sentence and he files it in his binder.

A working on his timeline

12:18  Everyone has scattered and I’m checking email and writing this post when Daddy comes home for lunch!  Now that the two guys he’s working with every day are on diets and don’t want to go out to eat, he comes home for lunch more often.  We like it.

E helps set the table

12:30  We finally corral everyone at the kitchen table for sandwiches and grapefruit.  We find out that even E likes grapefruit, after that initial cold bite that made his eyes open wide!  I put away the dishes in the drainer and make a mental note to spend more time supervising D when it’s his week to wash dishes after dinner as 50% of the silverware has to go back into the sink for another try.

1:05  We finish clearing the table and everyone picks a job off their list to do.  We have a new job routine, I’ll have to post about it soon.  E helps me put a load of laundry in before going in his crib to play for a bit and then take a nap.

Arranging his blankets just so

1:20  D is reading, A and C are working on their handwriting with a timer to forestall dawdling.

1:30  A begins his Writing with Skill assignment, while C and D work on a lapbook booklet about Theseus and the maze.  A joins us to listen to The Hero and the Minotaur and part of a book about the mystery of Atlantis.

2:00  A goes back to writing, I put the laundry in the dryer and then move on to science with the other two.  Tuesday is usually our art day, but we didn’t have what we needed for science yesterday, so we did art instead.  (Everyone that knows me knows how infrequently art happens around here, but hey, I bought a new curriculum and we’re actually using it!)   History, art, science, and geography are generally saved for E’s naptime as they’re generally more hands-on and involved.   C and D cut out a flapbook about mammals and we read a book about giraffes.  D narrates to me, while C writes his own sentence inside the flap.

2:20  A brings me his outline to check and starts reading about the Minoans in the Illustrated History of the World and adding information to his timeline.  He talks me out of having him take notes on his reading.

2:45  We try to watch some videos about giraffes on YouTube, but my computer needs an update so we we read another fabulous book about a real giraffe who was taken from Africa to India and eventually to China in the 1400s.

3:00  Computer is finished updating, so we watch several videos on giraffes at National Geographic Kids and Discovery.  Then A goes back to the music room table to finish up labelling his science sketch of a bird and write vocabulary definitions.

3:15  D starts looking at Tintin books while C sits down at the piano and I add the books we read today to our reading list and continue to add to this post.

3:24  C is reminded to actually practice and not just play around.  A finishes science.

3:30  D breaks out the trail mix for snacks and I decide to run a comb through my hair for the first time today.

3:42  C can’t find the Primary songs he’s working on, so I print them off again.  D now wants me to read Tintin to him.

4:00 A talks us into playing Ticket to Ride Europe.  He wanted to play yesterday about 15 minutes before dinnertime and I had to tell him no since it’s about the longest (time wise) board game we own.  C opts to read instead so there are just three of us playing.  While I wait for my turn, I get caught up on record keeping for my cello students’ payments so I can go to the bank when E wakes up.

Playing Ticket to Ride

4:40  E finally gets up from a nap just as DH pulls in the driveway.  I ask DH to pretty please either run to the bank for me or else take my place in the game.  He chooses errands with E and I send him to the county library with the books that are due as well.  I usually drop them off when I go to orchestra, but we’re rehearsing at the University of Utah tonight instead of our usual space.  I can’t find one book and I’m wondering if I took it to the city library yesterday instead.  Proof that I should probably stick to one library system….DH doesn’t leave after all as he reminds me it’s cub scout night and we need to eat dinner now.

4:50 We set the table and eat.  Hooray for crockpot meals! (Which I would make more often if I thought about it before 3 p.m.)

5:20 DH takes C and D to scouts, then comes back to pick up E before running to the bank and library for me.  A and I clean up the kitchen and then finish playing Ticket to Ride, playing D’s cards for him.  I prolong using up all of my train cars first so I can show A some strategy.  I still win though…barely.

6:20  DH goes to pick up C and D, while A and I get ready to go.  DH comes back for us–A goes to 11-year-old scouts in a different building (and there is confusion over what time it’s now starting, but at least it doesn’t overlap cub scouts–the past few weeks have been crazy trying to get everybody where they need to be) and I am headed to a three-hour symphony rehearsal.

7:00-10:00 We sightread piano concertos that we’ll be performing this Saturday with some young soloists who won a competition last summer.  The music’s not too hard–I’ll only have a few spots to practice–but even so, it’s a long night.  During our break I read a few pages of In the Heart of the Sea, my current (very fascinating) read.

While I was gone, DH let C and D watch some old Pink Panther cartoons on Netflix until A came home from scouts and then they went to bed.

10:00 DH picks me up and for our 10-minute date (sometimes the only uninterrupted time we can find in the middle of the week) we stop at the store for milk, eggs, and various items needed for tomorrow’s science experiment.

10:20 We come home to find at least two children still awake because their books were much too interesting to put down.  Sigh… I have a hard time cracking down on lights out and books away because I remember what it was like to want to read just one more chapter at night….ok, who am I kidding, I still stay up way too late sometimes myself for this very same reason!

I sit down to finish this post and then it’s off to bed!

Notes for tomorrow: D needs to have his personal scripture reading time with me or DH, A needs to remember to practice the piano, and C needs to watch his next Latin lesson video that we forgot today.

***********************************

To read more “Day in the Life” posts, visit Chocolate on my Cranium.

So I had to speak in sacrament meeting today.  Despite staying up way too late putting the finishing touches on my talk, I could not fall asleep for anything last night.  Eventually I must have though as DH and I both slept through our alarms and woke up at five to eight this morning (which I suppose is better than five to nine when church is at nine!)  I made it on time (barely) which was good since our Area Authority Seventy decided to come to our ward today.  Talk about a small heart attack moment!  I survived my talk though and came home and just kind of crashed.  I was so exhausted after this entire week.  I took a nap and woke up with 10 minutes to spare before another meeting regarding a stake family history fair that I’m now involved in.

At some point this week I also realized that I had previously been asked to play my cello in church today.  I just couldn’t play and speak so I backed out of the music.  Our poor ward music director–I think the last three or so times she’s asked me to play I’ve had to back out or postpone for some reason or another.  I’m not a flake, I promise.  Now I’m committed to play February 12.  Funny, my talk today was on commitment.

Let’s see, Monday was a great day!  I was planning on school despite the holiday, only because we still haven’t gotten back in a good routine since Christmas break, but C had cub scout winter camp so those plans went out the window.  The other three boys went out and had fun with Daddy for a few hours during which I was supposed to practice my cello, but instead I lounged around, wasted time on the internet, got caught up on some reading and had quite a nice couple of hours to myself.

Tuesday was a really great school day, but sadly it was the only one this week.  I’m not sure what happened exactly, but the week went downhill from there.  Everything seemed to go wrong on Wednesday as we were trying to squeeze in some schoolwork and make tapioca pudding to take to history club before we had to go meet Grandma and Poppa at the airport (we’re car sitting while they’re gone to Panama for a couple of weeks.)  DH and I had a miscommunication over what car was headed where and I lost about a half an hour waiting for him when he wasn’t coming, then we practically had to turn around to drive D back to Kindermusik class which we were woefully underprepared for.  And then DH had a meeting that night…”Oh, didn’t I tell you?”  No….

The rest of the week kind of continued in that same vein.  Nobody could concentrate on schoolwork.  Everything seemed to take twice as long as it should have.  We’ve got some serious math issues and that’s all I want to say about that.  It was also concert week, which meant two more nights away from home and family for me which is always hard.  Besides missing the boys’ bedtime, evenings are my downtime and my school prep time and when I’m gone essentially four nights in a row, I just can’t seem to keep up with everything that needs to happen around here in the daytime.  Staying up late to catch up of course always backfires on me, and I’ll admit I’ve been quite crabby and have had a few meltdowns of my own this week, but maybe that’s just my hormones talking (screaming?)

Plus I’ve been trying to carve out enough practice time so I’d feel good about the concert.  It’s was our children’s concert, but some of the music was not easy at all and we’ve had just under three weeks to get it down.  We played “Ride of the Valkyries”, “Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity” from Elgar’s The Planets, the storm movement from Beethoven’s 6th Symphony (Have you ever noticed that the thunder always comes before the lightning in that piece?  We figured it was because he was deaf!) and Superman, among other pieces.  The theme was “Up in the Air.”  Superman is the music our conductor likes to pull out when his college orchestra students say, “Let’s play something easy like movie music.”  Superman is not easy!  Despite a few moments this week of wondering how in the world I was going to pull off everything I was committed to, the concert at least went very well last night and we had a nice crowd despite the incredibly snowy, yucky to drive in weather.

Speaking of weather, on top of the meeting DH forgot to tell me about Wednesday night, he was gone overnight with A on Friday for A’s first Boy Scout Klondike derby up in Heber, where it snowed tremendously and made for a white-knuckle drive back home in whiteout conditions yesterday afternoon.  They got home safely, although two children at two winter camps managed to lose three winter hats.  What’s up with that?!

And next week is a concert week again.  I certainly hope it’s not a repeat of last week.  I’m worn out!

There are some really good things happening around here though that I want to share, if only I could find time to sit and write about them!

OK!

So after mentioning last week that I’d gladly leave dissecting for high school biology, DH was willing, and dare I say it, eager, to take on the responsibility of dissecting…something.  Anything!  I decided to go with it and before long I had an email saying, “Your order has shipped,” or as we’ve been joking all week long, “Your frog’s in the mail!”  And I must say that Home Science Tools was incredibly fast!  We ordered a dissection kit on Monday night and it was on our doorstep on Thursday.  DH had the afternoon off on Friday, so that was the big day!

Before attempting an actual frog dissection however, I made the boys watch the virtual frog dissection first.  They were somewhat willing.

I’ll admit I was a little squeamish myself!

When my dad first started teaching high school, there was a very small choral program and he was given the option of filling his schedule with either band, biology, or American history.  He chose American history.  I would have as well.  The idea of dissecting frogs just doesn’t appeal to either of us.  Although I don’t know that he would have had to do that as a teacher.  I never once dissected anything in school, virtual or otherwise.  And now look at me…

For all the people who thought our chicken mummy project was disgusting, this was worse, although fascinating in a strangely morbid way.

DH loved it.

I was really glad we went through the virtual dissection though.  The animated frog was a lot less messy than the actual frog and it helped us recognize a lot more than we probably would have otherwise.  I highly recommend it!

So here’s DH cutting open the package of the leopard frog.  A is assisting.  I am taking pictures from as far away as possible.  E is sleeping, and C and D are also trying to stay away as much as possible.

Cutting through the jawbone:

Looking inside the mouth, DH’s finger is on the tongue and the two nasal passages are at the bottom:

(Sorry for the blurriness.)

The frog is pinned and ready to go:

A is reading the instructions:

Slicing the skin down the abdomen:

After cutting open a layer of muscle, the abdominal cavity is exposed:

The frog had been injected with some bright pink dye, which made everything inside kind of messy and harder to identify in my opinion.

Here are the liver and the stomach (resembling a shrimp, C may never eat shrimp again!)

Slicing open the stomach to reveal the frog’s last meal, probably a cockroach:

And then, by all means, let’s see the digested material in the large intestine.  Look, it’s frog poop!

Revolting is what I call it…

Here’s the abdominal cavity with most of the inner organs removed.  We were never quite sure what was the spleen, but we identified the liver, lungs, stomach, large and small intestines, the heart (the bright pink marble sized organ still attached), and the oviducts (it was a young female frog.)  Here DH is preparing to slice open the leg:

Checking out the leg muscles:

So that was the highlight of the week!  (At least for DH and A.)  Now we have a grasshopper and an earthworm to dissect as well, so I’m sure they’ll show up in blog posts sometime in the near future.

As exciting as that was, we did do some other schoolwork this week as well. C and D learned about more mammals and we read books about elephants, hippos, and zebras.

In history, we wrapped up our study of ancient India.  We learned about Prince Siddharta who became Buddha and read some Buddha stories.  A did a notebook page about him and also worked on an outline from the book Ancient India.  We also read about the Mauryan Empire in Story of the World and read several Jataka tales.

We also added math and Latin back in this week.  A and C just spent the week reviewing Latin vocabulary.  In math A did a section on finding the area of a triangle and started a review section.  C did the sections on capacity and graphs.  D worked on adding coins.  He also had some reading lessons on words with -00 sounds, like tooth, smooth, pool, and book, look, and wood.

Technically, at 18 weeks, we’re midway through the school year, but it doesn’t feel like we’re halfway done with anything.  We’re on track with history and science though, and moving right along with everything else.  It just feels like it’s been weeks (months really considering the holidays) since we’ve had anything resembling our normal school schedule.  This week especially, we’ve taken it pretty easy.  I finally feel like all the bronchitis we’ve been passing around is on its way out the door and when we went back to the doctor this week, E’s lungs sounded clear and his pneumonia has gone.

So maybe, just maybe, we’ll be up to full speed this next week.  We still have grammar and writing to add back into our lives.  If all goes well, we’ll get some good work in between now and spring break.  Wish us luck!

The other three had fun with school though.  They were so ready to get going again.

We had some hiccups with science.  I spent Christmas break trying to get better rather than prepping for school.  So I was a bit unorganized and accidentally printed out the wrong unit for A’s science on Monday.  Rather than the plant kingdom, we’re moving on to the animal kingdom.  When I found the right unit and saw that we needed to gather worms from outside (in January?) we opted to move on to another unit yet again.  C and D are also moving on to the animal kingdom in their lapbooks and began with mammals.  So far, their science has been aligned with A’s, but there is no way that will work for the next few units, so we’re not going to worry about it.  They read about lions and cheetahs and A learned about fish.  Our experiment didn’t work out so well, but he did a nice job labelling his diagram of a fish.

Looking ahead, I can see that we should probably do some dissecting for biology this year, but I’m not sure I have the stomach for it.  So…high school?  Yes, high school will be a great time for dissections (when they can be done independently!)

For history, we also rearranged some of our plans and moved onto ancient India this week since we’ll be talking about China and India in history club this month.  We read Story of the World chapter 9 and part of 30 and did the accompanying mapwork and lapbook pieces.  We also watched two videos about the ancient city of Mohenjo-Daro (thanks for the links, Ritsumei!) and read one Indian folktale and a book about the Ganges River before my voice just gave out!  A also did an outline of a chapter in a book on Ancient India.

So I guess you could say we did a little writing this week as well.  D asked for a reading lesson one day also and then I had him try reading Danny and the Dinosaur to show him that he really can read–a lot more than he thinks he can.  He is constantly saying that he can’t read yet.  While it has been slow going, it is going!

The books we’ve read this week:

In the Old Testament this week we read about the Day of Atonement in Leviticus. For the few times I’ve played the Kol Nidre for the synagogue up in Park City, I’ve never really understood what Yom Kippur was all about.  Now I know!  I am continually amazed at how homeschooling has helped me understand and correlate all these random bits of knowledge I seem to have floating around inside my brain.  (I know this one could have come from scripture study rather than homeschooling, but obviously I missed it the last time I went through the Old Testament on my own.)

Now to decide what to add in this next week.  I’m pretty sure we’re not ready for everything yet, but perhaps math and maybe a little Latin?  We shall see…

Making pizza dough:

Getting ready to help Grandma with cookies:

Helping out with a crockpot meal (he especially loves the crockpot):

Attempting to zest his own orange after watching me do it while making Christmas treats:

And yes, making his own birthday cake.

Wait, I make my children make their own birthday cakes?  What kind of mother am I?

What can I say?  This kid loves to cook!  You can’t mention cooking or baking or say, “Let’s go make something” without him immediately running to the kitchen and pulling a chair up to the counter, ready to help.  If you’re cooking on the stove, he pats your leg insistently two or three times to let you know you better be lifting him up to see what’s in the pans, and soon.

So for his birthday, we thought we’d indulge him.  We let him choose breakfast.  He picked eggs, which of course he wanted to stir.

And we waited to make his birthday cake until he got up from his nap and could help.  He was one happy boy. (At least at that  point in the day.)

We also played at the park in the morning and then had chicken nuggets at Wendy’s for lunch so we could use some of our free Frosty coupons besides.

Hooray for abnormally warm temps this January!  I don’t think it’s every year that we’ll have such a great time at the park on E’s birthday.

After dinner, we had chocolate cake and presents.  E didn’t want to blow out the candles so we could put whipping cream on the cake.  That month of lighting Advent candles every night really sparked his fascination with fire.

Eventually though, his brothers couldn’t wait any longer and blew out the candles for him.

I tried to get a good picture of the birthday boy, but they all turned out something like this:

He wouldn’t smile for anything!  He was so solemn while eating cake and opening presents.  It was the funniest thing.

I had to go to a Primary meeting after that, and by the time I got home, DH had figured out why E was so glum.  He had a messy diaper!  He had a terribly messy diaper, as in Mommy got so caught up in looking at photos, trying to get cake and dinner underway, and getting D to Kindermusik (we were late) that who knows when the poor child last had a diaper change.  To which I say, if you’d just talk!  Wet, diaper, change me–any of those words would do.  Poor birthday boy!  It was definitely a mommy-fail moment.

He was all smiles when I got home though and had to get out of bed and show me the trike Daddy assembled for him.  We got one that could be a rocker first of all, but I think he’s already decided rockers are for babies and he is a big boy who’s ready to go places.

There’s no stopping him now!

For my part, I can’t believe he is two already!  The years are flying by, but we are so incredibly blessed to have this little guy in our family. E is such a bright and happy boy and has brought us so much joy.  (And not just because he’s finally sleeping through the night…usually.)  I am always amazed at how children can come into our lives and our families and fill a space that we didn’t even know was empty.  And then we can’t imagine life without those moments…

Those moments when he taps me on the leg to get my attention, even when I’m already looking at him.  He reminds me that there are some fascinating things in the world around me and I should be more attentive.

When he beckons us to follow him.

When he stops and points at the ceiling every single time he hears a plane overhead.

When he gets so excited to find the moon in the sky at night.

When he pats me on the back when I pick him up, just like I pat him on the back.

When he goes running for the back door when I say, “Daddy’s home!”

When he mushes his face into mine and hugs me for all he’s worth.

For these moments and for this child I am grateful.

I’d love to say “Look who’s talking!” but he’s not.  E’s words can still be counted on one hand, although he can sure communicate well by grunting, squealing, and with his favorite, “Huh!”

I have more to say about this kid, but, well, I have a two-year-old in the house…and I have to run D to Kindermusik right now.

For now, here are some of our favorite images of our 2-year-old cutie from the past year.  (Hint for the grandparents: Clicking on any photo will open them all up to a slideshow, if you’re reading this on the blog and not from a reader.)

More later…

Here then is my list (which I’m sure I’ll veer off of; just ask me about a certain book I’ve had on my reading list for 4 years without once cracking it open!)  But it’s a good starting point.  Like last year though, it’s heavily weighted towards fiction, so will someone please do me a favor and give me some fabulous nonfiction titles to read?  I love history…and music.

1. Troubled Waters by Dean Hughes (Hearts of the Children vol. 2–continuation of the WWII series Children of the Promise that I read last year)
2. How Many Roads?  by Dean Hughes (vol. 3)
3. Take Me Home  by Dean Hughes (vol. 4)
4. So Much of Life Ahead by Dean Hughes (vol. 5)
5. Eldorado by Baroness Orczy (read The Scarlet Pimpernel last fall and wanted to read the sequel that figures into the movie)
6. The Greater Journey by David McCullough (got distracted from this last summer after getting to page 30)
7. The Killer Angels by Michael Shaara
8. In the heart of the sea : the tragedy of the whaleship Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick
9. The History of the Ancient World by Susan Wise Bauer (intended to start this in August but never did)
10. Curse of the Narrows: The Halifax Disaster of 1917 by Laura MacDonald
11. The Bronze Bow by Elizabeth George Speare (to discuss with A for school)
12. The Eagle of the Ninth by Rosemary Sutcliff (to discuss with A for school)
13. The Silver Branch by Rosemary Sutcliff (ditto)
14. The Lantern Bearers by Rosemary Sutcliff (ditto)
15. Black Ships Before Troy by Rosemary Sutcliff (read aloud with boys)
16. The Wanderings of Odysseus by Rosemary Sutcliff (read aloud with boys) (maybe I should have a whole category devoted to Sutcliff, as we’ll probably read her Arthur books when we hit medieval history next fall)
17. The Invention of Hugo Cabret (for boys’ bookclub and so we can see the movie)
18. The House of the Seven Gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne (because I’ve never read it and I’m interested after seeing the House in Salem, MA, this fall)
19. Cranford by Elizabeth Gaskell (so I can see the movie)
20. Emma by Jane Austen (re-read because I finally saw the 2009 movie and want to see if I’ll like Emma in the book any better after having seen that movie version)
21. Sallie and Captain Sam (an account of a sea captain and his wife that comes out of DH’s family history in Maine in the 1850s; we picked up the book on our trip back East)

What are you reading this year?

Audiobooks with the boys

1. The Calder Game by Blue Balliett 1/6
2. *Ballet Shoes by Noel Streatfield 1/27
3. Gone-Away Lake by Elizabeth Enright 3/24
4. Return to Gone-Away by Elizabeth Enright
5. Twenty and Ten by Claire Huchet Bishop 4/12
6. *The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis 5/
7. *Prince Caspian by C. S. Lewis
8. *The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C. S. Lewis 6/2
9. *The Silver Chair by C. S. Lewis 6/11
10. *The Horse and His Boy by C. S. Lewis 6/27
11. *The Magician’s Nephew by C. S. Lewis
12. *The Last Battle by C. S. Lewis
13. Cheaper by the Dozen by Frank Gilbreth Jr. and Ernestine Gilbreth Carey
14. The Mostly True Adventures of Homer P. Figg by Rodman Philbrick 8/13
15. Urchin of the Riding Stars, Mistmantle Chronicles book 1 
16. 100 Cupboards by N. D. Wilson 9/29 (very weird and I don’t recommend it!)
17. Rebecca of Sunnybrook Farm 10/21

Boys’ book club books

1. Swiss Family Robinson 3/3 (audiobook) (boys’ book club)
2. The BFG by Roald Dahl 7/1 (audiobook) (boys’ book club)
3. Ben and Me by Robert Lawson  (boys’ book club)
4. The New Adventures of the Mad Scientists’ Club by Bertrand R. Brinley 10/11
5. The Phantom Tollbooth (audiobook) 11/3

My book club books

1. *Little Women by Louisa May Alcott 8/17
2. The Scarlet Pimpernel by Baroness Orczy 10/3
3. East of Eden by John Steinbeck 12/8

Ancient history literature to read and discuss with A

1. The Golden Goblet by Eloise Jarvis McGraw 9/21
2. Gilgamesh the Hero by Geraldine McCaughrean 11/10

I know I’ve said it before, but Moms should not be able to get sick.  I guess I’ll blame this one on D.  He picked up this cough around Halloween and it just would not go away.  Then half the household got colds right before Thanksgiving, then the cough came back.  Somewhere in early December, D finally kicked the thing, but by then C had picked it up and now E and I have it.  E, however, coughs a little bit here and there, then runs off to play and is happy and cheerful and oh, so full of energy.  I, on the other hand, feel like I’ve been run over by a truck.  I don’t know if it’s just overexertion from this last semester of school catching up to me or what.  I’m exhausted and have essentially done nothing since Christmas night.

The upside is that DH has been home to take care of me or rather, to take care of everything else while I’ve retreated to my bed.  He had Monday off, then went into work Tuesday morning.  I muddled through until he showed up again after lunch saying his boss sent him home for the rest of the week due to his “use it or lose it” time.  I was so grateful.  He’s been the Mom for me this week. I don’t know what I’d have done without him.

With him, though, I’ve been able to sleep in and not worry about breakfast.  Really, I haven’t worried about preparing any meals, which are always the bane of my existence.  Three square meals a day are overrated anyway.  Tonight we had cold cereal for dinner (and chocolate chip cookies A made today) and it was just fine!

I’ve been able to catch up on articles I’ve bookmarked to read for the past month or two.  I finished my book.  In fact, I’ve done more reading than I have in weeks.  No read alouds though, which has been hard.  Talking too much (talking at all really) just sends me into spasms of coughing.  We have a stack of Christmas books we still haven’t read which I was hoping to fill this week with so as not to feel like Christmas was here and gone in just one day. I was hoping to fill up the days until Epiphany with more activities this year.  Maybe I’ll feel better by the 6th.

I hope I feel better by the 6th!  DH has to work the entire day and evening on New Year’s Eve, then it’s back to work on Monday for him.  We will definitely be doing a very modified and simple school week next week.  It’s always hard to get going again after holidays, but the longer we put it off, the harder it will be.  So we’ll do scriptures and another subject or two and slowly ease our way back into it again.

For now, I’m going to rest up so I have a hope of even managing that much.