I just love Sundays, for many reasons.  It’s such a family day for us.

Princess of the Universe wakes up and goes straight to Papa Bear for a Sunday morning hug.

Sunday afternoons are a special time for me because the house is quiet and I plan out my lesson plans for the next week.  I always jot down things as they come to me through the prior week, but Sunday is the day that I round things out and write out all my plans for the upcoming week.  The first thing I do is head to my tea cupboard.

Because who can do lesson planning without a cup of hot tea close by?

Today I opt for Tazo Wild Sweet Orange.  It’s very tangy, but made better with a spoonful of locally produced honey.

Now it’s time to go through books and papers and ideas and get everything written into the two planners that I use — one for my daughter and one for my son. 

I write down ideas as they come to me — even little things, because I know I’ll forget them in the busy-ness of the upcoming week, with work, fieldtrips, meals, etc.  Jotting something down helps me remember, oh yeah, I wanted to do it that way.

When all the lessons are written out, the books and papers we’ll use go into two shelves — again, one for Princess of the Universe and one for Big Joe.  This makes it super easy to grab what I need through the week.

I will share with you what’s on tap for the upcoming week.

Joseph
Monday:
Call out spelling words for sister’s test
Go over grammar lesson with sister, p. 26
Work on book
Japanese
Typing
Karate practice
Language Arts worksheet
Math concepts test and then we’ll go from there for the rest of the week.
Tuesday:
Work on book
Japanese
Typing
Karate practice
Math
Read about Wisconsin over tea
Spelling 34
Wednesday:
Work on book
Japanese
Typing
Karate practice
Math
Spelling 35
Thursday:
Work on book
Japanese
Typing
Karate practice
Math
Spelling 36
Friday:
Work on book
Japanese
Typing
Spelling 37
Math
Karate lesson
Notes: Joseph is working on writing a book as a creative writing project. That is what “work on book” means.  He has a science worksheet that must be completed by the end of the week.  Also, you’ll notice a variety of math resources on his shelf.  He has dyslexia and we are doing his math by covering concepts and then pulling from various resources to make sure he gets it.

Princess of the Universe
Monday:
Spelling test/grammar lesson – see Joseph
Read aloud – Caddie Woodlawn
Read newspaper article about reaching out
FIAR social studies The Raft
Saxon 19
Tuesday: Spelling
Read about Wisconsin over tea
Read aloud – Caddie Woodlawn
Saxon 20
FIAR Language Arts The Raft – we’ll be using words to do a creative writing project
Wednesday: Spelling
Read aloud – Caddie Woodlawn
FIAR – Art The Raft
Saxon 21
Thursday: Field Trip – Community Service
Saxon 22
FIAR – Science The Raft
Friday:
Spelling Test
Read Aloud Caddie Woodlawn
Read about classification together from What Your 5th Grader Needs to Know
FIAR Science The Raft
Karate lesson
Notes: Miss Priss has all week to read Little Oh and write a one-page book report. She also has a stack of cursive worksheets to pull from as well as a multitude of other colorful worksheets when she just wants something to do. And don’t even mention all the books she has to choose from!

I will add in other things for both children as occasions present themselves. You know part of my favorite quote is to “await occasions.”

You may notice that we’ve been on The Raft for awhile now.  It might help to know that this study has been interrupted by the Thanksgiving holiday (we took all week off) as well as lifestyle changes here after the heart attack that are taking time and thought to implement, but we will certainly wrap up this wonderful book this coming week and then move on to another exciting Five In A Row title for the following week.

I’ll let you know how things are going as we work our way through the week.

Happy Sunday,

Lynn

Walking.
Briskly.
Alone.
Chases away Old Man Blues.
Overtakes vague thoughts that wandered off while I was sitting still.
Leads me, step by step by step, to clearer thoughts.
Walking heals.

I love to walk.  I walk for 30 minutes, hard, during my lunch break.  It’s one of the simplest, most peaceful, most healthful forms of exercise.

It’s free.  You can meditate while you walk.  You can plan and think while you walk.  Or you can let your mind float free and just soak up the sights around you.

Do you walk?

Lynn

Do You Remember Year of the Doll House? I bet you do. This year of playing dolls and purposing to spend more time with my daughter has been amazing. Even though 2008 is not quite over, it’s been about a year exactly since the thought came so strongly to me.  I have been so much more aware of my actions this year.

Our doll house adventures have taken on a blog of their own.  We craft together and play dolls and we want to share everything doll house in one place.  For more details about the crib above, visit our new blog The Homemade Doll House.  You’ll find everything dolls there.  The Year of the Doll House continues, for who knows how long!

Just wanted to share.  We hope you’ll join us.

Lynn

I’m stuffed. 

And thankful.

I won’t bore anyone with pictures of us eating.  Instead just a quick hello to all my on-line friends.  We had a wonderful day here.  I hope you did.

I was thinking back to past Novembers by way of pictures. 

In 2005…

we spent Thanksgiving at Grandma’s and Grandpa’s.

In 2007, last year…

I brought home roses from my maternal Grandmother’s funeral.  We missed her presence so much this year, but we are thankful for her example and the wisdom she sought to impart to her children and grandchildren.

Looking back through pictures, it’s easy to see children growing, time passing, things changing. 

I’m thankful for today and I’m learning more and more just to live in the moment and be happy for it.

Lynn

It smelled good.  The whole house smelled good, with the sweet and spicy smells from the kitchen, and the smell of the hickory logs burning with clean, bright flames in the fireplace, and the smell of a clove-apple beside Grandma’s mending basket on the table.  The sunshine came in through the sparkling window panes, and everything was large and spacious and clean.  (from Little House in the Big Woods by Laura Ingalls Wilder, the chapter entitled Dance at Grandpa’s)

We are busy here today: cleaning, straightening, putting unnecessary and cluttery things out of sight, and beginning the task of cooking for the Thanksgiving Holiday. A pair of new curtains has been  hung in the living room.  They are a lovely thrifted pair in the prettiest cream color with stripes of fruits running up and down — perfect for Thanksgiving.  The bowl of hickory nuts is out for all to see and talk about.  An array of books about Thanksgiving adorns our shelf in the hallway.  A bit of greenery, including several sprigs of rosemary, decorates the hearth.  Our thanksfulness tree is full of birds.

We have so much to be thankful for.

Are you ready? I hope you have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Lynn

If you’ve tried to visit me today and my site would not come up, or if you are noticing odd characters on my blog, I was hacked today. It’s sad that anyone would do that, but it happens — frequently. This is the first time for me.

Good reasons to back up your files. Keep your wordpress and plug-ins updated. And remember to smile. It’s just a thing.

Lynn

Happy Monday!  And I really mean it!  Ugggggggh I have to work today, and actually that groaning and moaning would be my first instinct, but my second thought — the better thought — is to take joy.  With the economy the way it is, I am so happy to have a job.  And not just that, but to have a job where I can work from home and save on gas and the other things that come with working in an office.  I really try to look at my work time as a meditation time where I plan out and look forward to what I am going to do with my free time.

That said, I had the opportunity to pop into Goodwill for just a few minutes this weekend.  I had to run out and get a few grocery items and the local Goodwill is right on the way.

I cut off the names of the some of the titles.  Sorry about that!  However, I think you can see that I found several much-related-to-each-other books.  I am very thrilled about this.  We are studying The Raft right now for Five in a Row, which involves a river.  How natural would it be to drift right into a study of rivers running to the sea, sunken ships and (Michele, I thought about you) the Panama Canal?  I was so lucky to find all of these books at one time, for 50 cents apiece.  The Magic Treehouse book is just a bonus.

Here are the rest of the books I found.  See the two Usborne books?  I always love finding an Usborne to add to our bookshelves.  We’ll be doing some reading this week!

Last of all is this very pretty, old lamp for $1.97.  Yes, you read that right.  I love the old switch that turns the lamp off and on. 

That’s it.  I did find some winter shirts, but they are in my laundry basket to be washed.  And just so you know, I do donate regularly to our local thrift stores.  It’s time, really, for me to do that again.  Things are getting cluttered here, even by my standards. 

Think of something today that makes you joyful.  I love the quotation that Tasha Tudor often shared:

The gloom of the world is but a shadow; behind it, yet within our reach is joy.  Take joy.

Lynn

Last night I used the book that my friend Alana sent me — The Most Wonderful Dollhouse Book, to make a new chair for the doll house.

First I started with an empty baking powder can.  I used a Sharpie to outline where I would cut with my sharp Xacto.

You can see how the chair will be shaped.  The most tedious part comes next, and that is cutting a piece or two of fabric and smoothly hot-gluing it on so it looks upholstered.

But it turns out well!  What did I use to fill the inside?  I simply measured out enough stuffing to fill up the seat.  I then cut a circle of fabric and laid that stuffing in the center of it.  I pulled the fabric together all around it like a balloon and tied it together with a piece of string.  The tied-with-string end went down into the seat first, leaving a pretty puffy pillow look on top.

Mama Doll loves her chair.  I ended up covering my fabric “seam” on the chair with a ribbon I had recycled from some old PJs.  It worked perfectly. 

Fancy, no?  Princess of the Universe loves her new chair.

Remember to supervise the use of all crafting tools.  I always do the sharp work myself and supervise my children very closely when they are working with things like this to avoid injury.

Lynn

Saturday mornings always find Princess of the Universe wanting to play. Yesterday was no exception. A little friend of hers came over and they played “camping.” This little boy loves how Princess of the Universe is able to really play boy games, but hey, she has three brothers after all.

They are building their tent.  At least that’s what they said.

On my way out for my wintery Saturday walk during my lunch break, I took a picture of the two little kitties snuggled up on their favorite chair.  The one on the right is the tailless cat.  She’s much bigger, but much more shy than the smaller kitten.

All during my walk, it sounds as if little critters are walking along with me, only they are in the mass of trees and vines by the road.  Every so often I catch a glimpse of a little bird here or there in the carpeting of leaves under the tangled trees.  The animals blend right in and are hard to see.

It is very cold, but I do love my walks.  With most of the foliage gone, the train track looks long and lonely, like it only goes to somewhere even colder than here.

Another tangle of vines and trees, filled with hidden animal sounds.

When I return, the kittens have moved and Oreo has taken their spot.  I love how cats pull their legs tightly up underneath themselves to sleep when it’s cold. 

There’s not much color overall in the cold landscape of late fall and winter, but there’s something about it I love.  I love the contrast of the clear blue sky and the black silhouettes of the trees.  I love the sharpness of the air.  It makes me love and appreciate our little home even more. 

Lynn

I was pretty surprised, and excited as a little kid, when we woke up to snow falling yesterday morning. I love to look out into the yard on a snowy morning, when it’s still dark, with only a yard light shining, and watch the snow falling through the light. It’s a wintery feeling for sure. We don’t get too many mornings like that here in North Carolina, but I keep hearing people say it’s going to be a cold winter.

We have set up a couple of really warm places for all the kitties to sleep. We have two carriers which have been filled with fleece bedding and then covered with layers of heavy rugs on top of the carriers to break the wind and keep in some warmth.

The littlest kitties seem to be doing well. We often find the two oldest — Oreo and their mother Fluffy — wrapped almost around them while they sleep. They all four sleep together in the same carrier.

Once the sun came out yesterday and shone on the porch I went out to play with the kittens for a few minutes. They are very spoiled. They have a porch as their house, practically two mamas with Oreo helping with everything, a nice garden to play in, and food three times a day. What more could a kitty want?

We will be making a major vet trip soon to get the kittens their first shots and check-ups and to get Fluffy spayed. I better start putting money back now, right?

The tom cat hangs around all the time now and is getting more brave around us. I would love to be able to catch him and take him in for a check-up, but I’m still a bit afraid of how he might behave, if I could even catch him.

Today is a work day for me. Sigh. I will be sitting in my work chair, wrapped in a fuzzy warm shawl, with my warm winter slippers, sipping green chai tea with milk and honey and looking out the window while the kittens run around scaring away the birds. I think I can manage.  but it’s hard to quiet the urge to get up and straighten the kitchen or play doll house with Princess of the Universe.

The melting snow on the leaves of this rose bush were so pretty. The ground is soaking up this moisture. Going by years past, in December I’ll have snowdrops, by January I’ll have crocus poking through the ground, in February we’ll have daffodils, and then in March I can really start thinking about spring. It’s a cycle that goes very quickly and makes me want to just settle down and enjoy the beauty of winter.

Have a nice Saturday!
Lynn