Category: School

10 Activities That Won’t Rot Your Brain

  1. Read a book just for fun, like Ribsy or Farmer Boy. Laugh out loud at the funny bits so that your family is curious and you can tell them about how Lucy got the taffy stuck in her mouth.
  2. Take a walk in the park and learn to identify wildlife tracks. Make plaster of paris molds, even if it is just lame stuff like birds or deer for starters. Someday you might get lucky with a bear or a mountain lion.
  3. Ride a bike for miles on old railroad beds. Just be sure to carry a water bottle so you don’t perish before you get home again. Some granola bars in your pockets would not be a bad idea either.
  4. Figure out how to fit a survival kit into a backpack or bugout bag. Do the research and collect items as you save enough money for them. Pack and repack obsessively and keep it ready to grab at a moment’s notice. Or even just when your family goes to the lake.
  5. Take music lessons and keep practicing until you master that instrument. Or you could watch John Ross painting videos and try your hand at landscapes. If you like poetry, try writing some.
  6. Collect things. Rocks or bottle caps or stickers or fabric scraps or bird feathers. Be savvy about storage or your parents will likely make you pare your collections down to tragical proportions. Just for your information, nut collections in your underwear drawer will probably hatch out disgusting worms, so that’s not the best idea.
  7. Learn to crochet or embroider or knit or knot paracord bracelets. This latter could turn into a small industry for you, so make sure your parents buy about 1000 feet of cord at a time. Mess with your projects while you listen to audiobooks.
  8. Ask your mom to teach you how to prepare your favorite meal. She will never turn down an offer to cook dinner and you can have spaghetti and meatballs really often.
  9. Think of something you are interested in and wipe out that subject on the library shelves. Research it and talk to everybody about it until they are tired of you. Then pick another subject and do it all over.
  10. Play Settlers of Catan or Qwirkle. Learn to watch for subtle cues on other people’s faces so you know what move to make for the win. Figure out your strategy and have fun with it.
  11. Go fishing, then clean your fish and fry them over a campfire. Or alternately you could gig bullfrogs since they are easier to skin and roast. Just don’t forget the salt.
  12. Just do something. Don’t be boring and bowed low over a screen. Swim, paddle your own canoe, build a clubhouse, sleep in the backyard, clean out the fridge for your mom, sew slippers out of upholstery fabric, rollerskate, ski, write to a friend, teach your dog new tricks, solve the mystery of the missing socks, bake cookies with a secret recipe, be happy.

Oops, sorry, that turned out to be more than ten, but it’s my blog and I am allowed to do that.

What did I miss? When my children say they are bored, I give them jobs to do. It helps a lot, but it still happens at times and we would all be glad for fresh ideas.

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Sprite

a poem about going to bed and the vice of drinking too much carbonated beverage, by Gregory

“Why? Why? Why?”

said little Billy Fie.

“Why must I be in bed by 8:00 at night…

when I could be up

drinking lots and lots of Sprite?”

“Because, dear,” said the maid Mrs. Piper,

“Sprite would make you hyper.”

But late one night Billy

drank 3 gallons of Sprite

and as he was straining to get the last drop,

Poor Billy went POP!

But it’s Friday night, so we are going to party and stay up late! What about you?

Thursday in the Life of an Uzzie

You have been waiting for this one, right? 😉

I awoke at three, mind in high gear for some reason. There were about five things I knew I simply could not forget if I wanted to have a successful morning. I could either lie there and run them in a loop in my head, or get up and make lists. All right. Fifteen things. Maybe twenty, if I counted the children’s lessons and chore lists.

I went back to bed once I had it all squared away on paper and I slept a few more hours. Gabe had an early school board meeting, so I fed the children cereal. I knew I had about a 75 minute drive to a book party and decided to leave early since it was snowing fuzzily. Addy was going along. The rest got careful instructions as to lessons and jobs that I expected them to be responsible for. Suddenly it was time to leave, and Addy couldn’t find her furry boots. I asked Alex, who is my right hand in so many ways, to help her find them. He had loaded my boxes and supplies earlier, but in the mornings he is just not speedy.

He couldn’t find the boots either and sat down resignedly on the recliner. “Just get other shoes. And socks.” Addy was fussing because she didn’t like his selection and I saw that he had one purple sock and one blue. “Not those socks! And you have got to notch it up a bit!” I did not say it kindly. We got out the door, put our destination into google maps, and it said 1 hour, 40 minutes. Whoa. What? I was going to be late for that 10:30 party. And the snow… But we were excited to be going together, Addy and I. I get into my happy place when I get to show books.

We weren’t driving long until I felt the sting of regret for my hastiness to my son who had, after all, been helping me. Sigh. I will have to apologize when I get back. I practiced my book speech on the way, and Addy said, “Mama, I don’t think anyone is listening.”

A few minutes before 10, my hostess called and wondered if I had trouble finding her house. Suddenly it washed over me. The party was supposed to start at 10! I made all those lists and still got the crucial information wrong in my head. Thankfully we discovered that the GPS was taking me to the wrong spot, and I was only 2 miles out. Some of her guests were already there when I spread my purple tablecloth and arranged the two boxes of books that I had along. They all knew each other and were happy to chat while they waited on me.

The thing I like the most about doing book parties is getting to meet new friends, hearing about their children, helping them find just the books they need for their families. I get a high from it. For real. 😀

We concluded the party with a snack. I packed up my stuff and set it outside on the patio, then collected Addy who had been having a grand time with the other little preschool girls who were there. Just as I was driving away the hostess came and motioned to me that I had left my boxes of books on her patio. Whatever other impressions she may have gotten of the Usborne Lady, “methodical and coordinated” did not likely enter her thoughts.

We drove close by my sister-in-law’s house, so we detoured a few miles and dropped off a late birthday package for her. I hugged the sweet little nieces, ruffled the nephew’s hair, had a cup of tea called Joy, looked at my talented sister-in-law’s latest projects, pulled Addy away from her Indian play (she was Squanto), and headed home.

It was early afternoon. The Bigs (what I call the older 3) had done all their lessons and were sitting around reading. My husband was working on a writing assignment. The living room was in good shape, except for K’nex scattered to the four corners, and they had cleaned up the kitchen as well as they could with dirty grey water backing up alarmingly from the drain. I had a session with Drano, but it is still not quite fixed. Someone whose identity I shall withhold poured grease down the drain yesterday. “I didn’t know!” was the wailing confession.

Addy and I had a lie-down and a story by Patricia Maclachlan. She was soon snoring, because she was definitely not tired. I got up and fried 6 pounds of hamburger to make chili soup for the school’s open house tomorrow. It was what was for supper as well. Times like this I am so happy for my quart jars of tomato juice and black beans.

I remembered my apology to Alex for my hurry this morning, and all was forgiven. The boys finished up cleaning the basement after supper and the little girls again did the dishes as well as they could. It requires a bit more finesse when the sink isn’t functional.

I entered the books into the online order form and contacted my hostess with the amount for her rewards. That is also a lot of fun! I like when companies funnel their advertising dollars into programs that encourage word of mouth recommendations. 🙂 You don’t need commercials and billboards if you have enough very happy customers. And these books make people, especially children, very happy. So that’s why I do it. That’s what I like about being an Usborne lady (she said for the tenth time). It is also good to get out every once in a while.

This being Thursday, it was movie night for the children. We watched Paper Planes and enjoyed the neat Aussie accents. It is rare that we hit a happy medium with something that interests both the Bigs and the Littles, but this one worked for ours.

Well, my husband just submitted his writing assignment. Time to call it a day. A day in the life of a part-time Uzzie.

And here, for your edification, is one more parting shot.

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A Chilly Story

Bob the Penguin

 

Bob the penguin lived on the ice. He was happy except for one thing. He only ate icicles, chopped icicles for breakfast, raw icicles for lunch, and minced icicles for supper.

Bob was tired of icicles. So he went to the sea. He looked into the water. Sudenly  he saw something flash past then he saw it agian. After a while he jumped in and swam after it untill he caught it he then eat it. Because all the swiming made him huggry. And to his surprise it tasted good.

So for the rest of his life he eat fish.

-written by Olivia on a cold and blustery day

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(pexel free photo)

 

(Can you tell where she got tired of checking her spelling? 😉 )

(Also, Olivia hates fish. I find that doubly amusing.)

 

Thursday in the Life…

It was a thrill to look out at fairyland this morning after a restless night with a child who couldn’t sleep. Nothing is quite the same loveliness as a sticky snow.

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I packed my husband’s lunch, saw him out the door at 8, then dismissed my scholars for a late start at school, since we can’t seem to count on plentiful snowfalls anymore. It has tended to rain this winter, and the beauty of every surface outlined was inspiring for us all.

Our school started at 10, after morning chores, dishes, and a romp outside. I spent a few hours assembling my Usborne book stash for a party at school. Meanwhile my mom texted me to see if we want to come make donuts at her house. I ended up dropping the four younger children off with her while Alex helped me with my party.

The school children did a fundraiser where they got sponsors for a reading challenge: at least 30 minutes of reading a day for 2 weeks was the challenge. They blew me away with their diligence and tenacity in finding sponsors (suggested donation was 5cents a minute.) I promised prizes for anyone who got either 5 sponsors or raised $100. Out of 22 students, 14 of them hit one or both of those goals. The fun part was when the children got to make book choices equal to 25% of the funds they personally raised. It may have been a little chaotic for a bit, but there were root beer floats and salty snacks to tide over anyone who got tired of waiting while the book lady did the orders. 🙂

It took me until 4 PM to wrap that up, then Alex and I joined the others at my folk’s place for pizza. The donuts had happened while I was gone. I asked Mom if it was a little nerve-wracking, and she conceded that it may have been. Just a little. Ha. There is a reason I hardly ever make donuts.

We picked up our mess and came home at 6. The roads were still a bit slick in the back country, so I was going quite slowly, maybe 30 mph, when a deer with a death wish tore out and took a flip off the Suburban hood. Bummer. Now we have another crinkled dent and some broken plastic. The deer ran off, seemingly only stunned. I wouldn’t have minded butchering it and chewing it, but maybe tonight it was best if it did survive.

We had to attend to the animals and finish up the household stuff, like folding laundry. I had forgotten about my yogurt straining in a colander in the fridge, which means it was more like a brick than Greek yogurt. After I whisked  some of the whey back in, it came out almost normal.

The children watched a movie while I entered the school children’s book order and got happy feelings about how much they will enjoy their rewards. Now I have a headache and sore shoulders, (it’s that deer’s fault) so I will hie me off to bed with some peppermint oil on my temples. If we are fortunate, my husband will be home soon! His shift is longer than mine.

Just another Thursday. Good night, all.

Thursday in the Life…

…of an ordinary woman who tries to be faithful in that which is least, but mostly it’s just stuff that has to be done so her people don’t starve or join the anarchists.

7:30-9:00

  • Wake up with a start and realize that the midnight chat with your husband after brothers’ meeting has you off to a late start already. That’s all good, because you signed up for this flexibility when you decided to educate the kids at home.
  • Get dressed, fill the teakettle with water for coffee, start the cream of wheat cooking because fewer people fuss about that than oatmeal.
  • Read your Bible at the kitchen counter while you wait for the water to boil. Discuss the parable of the rich man and Lazarus with your husband. Press the coffee.
  • Ahhhh. Coffee.
  • Call the children. Direct the kitchen helper to make toast and set the table.
  • Blend a protein berry shake and eat breakfast.
  • Hand out morning chores to the children and finish your coffee.
  • Brush and braid little girls’ hair.

9:00-10:00

  • Send the older three children down to their desks to start their assignments.
  • Jot a quick note to a friend.
  • Wander through the kitchen and do a quick tune-up of crumbs missed on the countertops.
  • Wander into bathroom to brush teeth. Brush with right hand and do a counter wipe with left hand.
  • Dig wash out of the hamper where the short people can’t reach.
  • Go downstairs and sort laundry; start a huge load washing.
  • Settle at your desk and field questions; coach dictionary skills for the 3rd grader.
  • Organize the first grader’s papers and call her away from her drawing. Admire her picture of a farm, complete with canary cages on top of the rabbit hutches.

10:00-11:00

  • Teach first grader her 12’s addition and subtraction family. Work on her arithmetic until she can power along on her own with her worksheets.
  • Do speed drills; coach cursive writing.
  • Help the dictionary child again. Tell her brother to stop volunteering how to spell words. She is supposed to look them up!
  • Admire the poem the boy wrote and feel secretly amused because of how often he has protested that he doesn’t need to study Language since he will never be a writer.
  • Talk on the phone with Mom for a while.

11:00-12:00

  • Clean up the sewing area, (which is handily situated right next to the classroom) where a pile of mending converges with scraps from canvas slippers, stuffed foxes, and embroidery projects. Only the mending is yours; pull children one by one to clean up their own messes and send them promptly back to school.
  • Sew the L shaped tear in the flannel sheet. Alter the little girl’s Goodwill dress with some elastic in the huge neckline. Iron a patch onto the khaki cargo pants that are too nice to pitch.
  • Change the laundry loads, out of washer, into dryer, another huge load into washer.
  • Do some quick swipes with the iron and put it away.

12:00-1:00

  • Dispatch the son on kitchen duty to make quesadillas. Serve them with leftover chef salad.
  • Enjoy the sensation of all sitting around the table at lunch, chatting about the day.
  • Assign cleanup to the girls, since it’s just paper plates and forks anyway.

1:00-2:00

  • Take the boys back to class to finish up assignments.
  • Take your daily dose of algebra instruction. Find yourself pleasantly surprised at how it is starting to all make sense. Pinch yourself a little.
  • Quiz the 6th grader for his geography bee.
  • Change out loads of laundry again.

2:00-3:00

  • Sweep the kitchen floor before your sister-in-law gets to your house.
  • Sit and drink tea with your sister-in-law for a while. Snuggle the sweet little baby and chat about anything and everything.

3:00-4:00

  • Mix up a custard and put it into the oven.
  • Dress warmly and head out for a 30 minute walk.
  • Listen to The Grand Weaver by Ravi Zacharias while you bask in the sudden rays that burst from the clouds.
  • Watch the turkeys in the field and the hawk soaring above it.
  • Wave at the neighbors.
  • Get home just in time to take the custard out of the oven. Scour the fridge for supper. No joy. Oh well, you have a plan.

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4:00-5:00

  • Remind your son that he has a guitar lesson tonight.
  • Briefly connect with your husband and feel grateful that he is home so you don’t have to haul everybody across the mountain to the lesson.
  • Load up the milk jugs to fill at a friend’s place.
  • Stop for cheap cereal at the little discount grocery store en-route.

5:00-6:00

  • Drop your son off at the teacher’s house.
  • Browse at a nearby fabric store for the happy feeling it supplies.
  • Buy a lovely piece of twill with some Christmas money. Also white thread and black thread since the children have used up every scrap of it for their projects, which you didn’t know until you went to do mending and had to use bobbins and hope they wouldn’t empty before you were done.
  • Impulse buy a rusty tin sign that says, “Life is beautiful.” Because Christmas money.
  • Yawn and yawn on the way home. Listen as your son explains how spies can tell if someone is watching them by faking a yawn.
  • Arrive home to a surprise. The little girls have folded their laundry and vacuumed the living room. Praise them extravagantly.

6:00-7:00

  • Serve cereal for supper. Yup. Cold. Plenty of milk, plenty of Kix, and even some “chocolate frosted sugar bombs”. Everybody loves you.
  • Do dishes while your husband and sons finish the chores in the barn.
  • Fold the laundry that was too challenging for the girls to do.
  • Read stories to the little girls and record their reading challenge times for the day. Olivia: 2 hours. Rita and Addy: 1/2 hour.

Call it a day.

February the One’th

Here we are! I have been thinking about my February tradition of a daily post and worrying about it just a little bit. All my spare time has disappeared alarmingly into the maw of daily algebra lessons. Not to make too big a deal of it, but if I don’t know this stuff anymore by the time I am fifty, it won’t be the fault of Pensacola Christian Academy’s Algebra 1 teacher. Her homework assignments are quite rigorous enough, thank you!

Tomorrow I plan to give you A Day in the Life, just so you are kind if I don’t make it with my daily posts. I do relish the challenge, though, and I really love the connections. I actually even made a plan for some of my posts so that I don’t scratch bottom too hard. This is a huge departure from my usual winging-it style. No outlines though. Not yet.

We are deep into projects at our house these days. The floor can only be described as “rubble-covered” for a great deal of the time. There’s mud outside, with occasional blanketing snows that only last 24 hours, thanks to our indisputable global warming. The younger children are drawing and coloring, taking turns to read aloud from our current favorite storybooks by Elizabeth Enright. After we finished The Saturdays and Four Story Mistake, we went on to the Gone Away Lake set. I love stories that were written in the 1950’s and 60’s. Sometimes I wish I could go back and raise my children then.

In wintertime, I make a point of stepping outside the house every day, usually for a walk and some outlook renewal all by myself. Today I felt so annoyed at the chaos that accumulated from our “normal” living that I figured it would take a really long time to step it off. It was colder than I thought, though, and I hadn’t dressed warmly enough. I came to my senses speedily and was glad for shelter inside my own front door again, despite all that mess. So then I did the logical thing. I fixed my bed and cleaned out a drawer. It was 4 PM.  Haha. At least there is one restful place for me to go and one organized drawer I can open and feel good about. (It harbors a super-secret bar of dark chocolate, which is actually where the good feeling comes from.)

I had been out long enough to make up my mind about supper. It was definitely going to include a chef’s salad and mac n cheese, since these are dishes my kitchen-duty son could handle. I decided to do the stripes of goodies myself, just because cooking should always be this much fun.

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It’s February! Shall we travel it together? When we come out at the end, spring will be just around the corner. HE PROMISED.

 

 

 

A Thrill of Victory

We had a moment aglow with achievement yesterday, my son and I. Ever since the beginning of 9th grade there was a bit of a thundercloud hovering over the Algebra 1 coursework. “It’s too hard! I don’t get it and I never will. There’s no point in learning something I will never use, etc.etc.”

If you have ever tried to reason with a teen on the merits of discipline and HARD WORK when they see no immediate personal gain, you know how futile this feels. We looked at the chaos of his bombed quizzes and tests and my husband tutored him whenever he was home, but this was not reaching around to the everyday frustration. I would look at his assignments and dredge back into my school years, coming up with… nothing. I realized that I had never covered this coursework, having only done pre-algebra.

Well. Nothing for it then. We went back to the second unit and we did all those bombed out lessons again. I did every homework problem that Alex did, and we checked our work together. Guess what? I got an F on my first quiz. This was a new sensation for me and humiliated me a little. :/  I had to go back and review the first unit, memorizing formulas and forms and a ridiculous amount of basic rules for order of operations that I had forgotten.

There was a spot where it was all so muddled in my head; I would stay up studying until Gabe got off work, then whine to him about how hard this was for my brain crammed full of so many other things. He would unscramble my problems in a few concise sentences and I would go to bed with at least that day’s classwork done. “I don’t have time for this,” I would mutter. But I knew if I quit, my son would see the bad example of wimpy-ness that I was not allowing him to use as an excuse.

Slowly we scraped and scrabbled our way out of the pit of sucky-mud defeatism and climbed our way to consistent C’s and then we started getting B’s. It was shoulder to shoulder all the way, every day. And yesterday, oh yesterday! My son reached the pinnacle of a perfect score on his test! I made a dumb mistake and got 94%, but I was so happy for him that I could live with that!

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I will savor the taste of the expression on his face when he saw that 100% for a long time. It will get hard again, but we can do this. It’s only Algebra, but it’s life too.

You can do this, Son.

 

The Smartest Kids in the World

“The sign at the door says the purple tags are 90% off,” I mentioned to the clerk. “Does that include things like these roller blades?” She looked blankly at me for a bit, then said, “Yeah, 90% off all purple tags.”

“That’s great. I will take them,” I replied. It was a good deal. The blades were tagged $24.99 and looked new. I dug in my purse for $2.50. When I looked up, the clerk was gone, threading her way across the store with a calculator in hand, calling for the manager. I heard the instructions, “Just take 24.99 times point 10. That’s your price.”

I didn’t want to show my incredulity, but really??? Every 5th grader in our great nation is supposed to learn percentages and 10% is the easiest one to do in your head when you are 11 years old.

I  just finished reading The Smartest Kids in the World, where the author explores how it is that American school children are scoring so very low by international standards. Why is it that entire countries full of children (Finland, Korea, Poland) tend to score much higher than  our American students in matters that require common sense and thinking through problems?

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I  have always thought that my goal is to teach my children to THINK. Yes, I want them to enjoy learning, but that is my secondary goal. If they cannot apply what they are storing in their heads, it doesn’t do much good.

There is a relatively new test called PISA (Program for International Student Assessment) where we U Sers are getting our butts whipped, especially in math. This is the language of logic, of disciplined, organized thinking. There are rules to follow and when you follow them, you get the right answer. I quote Ms Ripley, “Mastering the language of logic helps to embed higher order habits in kids’ minds: the ability to reason, detect patterns, make informed guesses.” (pg. 70)

As a nation we do a lot better in reading comprehension, which is good news. This also means that without the background of logic, we are a nation of people who can feel for others, empathize, recognize problems, etc, yet have no foggy idea of any absolutes or certain outcomes that follow certain behaviors.  Add to this the self-esteem movement, where teachers and coaches dole out praise trophies for just showing up, no effort required. There was a huge outcry in some states when it was proposed that high school students cannot just put in the time in class, but must actually pass exams in order to receive a diploma. Again I give you a pithy quote, “Vague, insincere, or excessive praise tends to discourage hard work and attempting new things.”

The poor children raised under the “You are the specialest person in the world and can always have anything you want” quickly find out in the adult world that they are pretty small stuff unless they are actually prepared to work hard and think carefully about their choices.

PISA also has a lengthy section after the academic questions where participating students spend nearly an hour answering a questionnaire on their background, motivation, and family habits.  The interesting thing about this survey is that there are no right answers. The researchers are looking for diligence, to see if there is a link to overall success. Well. Duh. Those kids who had learned to persist, even through seemingly meaningless assignments, tended to score higher overall.

The author calls it rigor.  It is what they have in Finland, where people have been determined survivors of long, sunless winters and the neighboring Big Guys for centuries. They focus on motivation, self-control, persistence. We might call it character. They don’t skip recess either, even in bad weather. Turns out rigor is a bigger deal than interactive white boards in every classroom and multi-million dollar sports programs where the vast majority of the students sit in bleachers and cheer for the favored few.

Admittedly, there are big problems when education is so dead serious that Korean children have been known to become suicidal if they fail a test. Recognizing this, the government actually has task forces assigned to patrol at night to be sure the tutoring schools close before midnight. These children literally go to school all day. They know how to think, but they don’t really have a life.

Then there was Poland, a country that scored discouragingly low in the first PISA test they participated in, in 2000. The next year they introduced some sweeping reforms: dumbed-down textbooks got replaced with rigorous ones, many of their teachers were required to improve their own education, and fundamental goals were set countrywide with accountability in the form of standardized tests. By 2009 Poland outperformed the U.S. despite spending half as much per student. They don’t have the fancy stuff in their classrooms, but they decided to implement the grit that has kept them alive through some of the most horrendous wars in history. They quit expecting failure in school.

What really matters? How can we best help our children learn to think? Toward the end of the book, Amanda Ripley condenses a vast subject into a few fairly simple expressions:

Conscientiousness > smarts

Self-discipline > IQ scores

Rigor > Self-esteem

In my head I knitted all these concepts about educational systems with our cultural bias against sweat and rules and moral absolutes, and it all makes sense. We are in trouble here in America, but we do not need to despair. We can teach our children to think and to work past failure. Someday it will save them.

I highly recommend this book for anyone who is concerned about their child’s education. It will put some steel into your spine when your child/student thinks Algebra is dumb and research reports are too much work and nobody should ever have to do speed drills. Too bad, sonny. This is about your survival! This is about how much I love you. (This is so that you can instantly figure 10% at the cash register.)

 

A Material Post

That’s not fabric, for any who may feel concern. I am embracing my maven side to share with you some of my favorite products, specifically those acquired during the last year. Ever hear the term, “You vote with your dollars”? That’s what I am talking about. Certainly money cannot buy happiness, but it can buy stuff that puts sparkles on the happiness you already have. Let me just take a spin around the house and show you a few products, how about it?

I start with office supplies. Always I have felt that a skipping, scratchy pen is the worst implement. It depresses me worse than a rubber spatula that has gotten knicked in the blender, and that is saying something. It deserves to die. These days businesses give out decent pens all the time. These are the ones you put in a cup beside the phone for all comers to use. The pen you use for writing a letter or drafting an essay or journaling… that is another pen entirely. The right one makes the words flow like silken threads and even the ruthless edits feel slightly elegant. My personal favorites in this genre are the gel ink untra-fine tip Uni-ball style. You can buy them in a range of colors and sizes at any store that has a good stationery section. I just bought a year’s supply for $7 at a Staples sale, and I have to admit, they make me happy. In the year 2000 a friend introduced me to Bible journaling and the suitable pens for it. It marked the new millenium for this girl! I have been loyal to the brand ever since. They do not bleed through the pages and you can write super-small and legibly right in the text if you want. These are the Sakura  micron pens; the 005 size is the one I recommend for Bible marking. The links I am providing are just for the visual, or what comes up first when I google them. I buy them when they are on sale at Christian Book Distributors (also a great source for journaling Bibles) or in craft stores. In this day you may not ever use a pen for writing, but I feel a little sorry for you if you have never experienced the pleasure of a pen that is a friend. I leave you to your own opinions about keyboards.

I decided to get the older children quality mechanical when school started this year. Each has a different color and I have been pleasantly surprised at how well they keep track of them. I did tell them that if they lose them, that’s it until next year. Aren’t I the sweetest mama? 😀 My idea was to remove the ultimate school child stall of grinding away at the pencil sharpener. It hasn’t exactly worked out that way because it turns out there are about 15 ways to mess with lead and run out of lead and twist or break the nifty erasers. For times when they feel a need for a stroll, they can dredge up more dull colored pencils than you would believe possible that simply must be sharpened for map skills study. At least we don’t have horribly smudgy homework done with a stumpy Dixon No. 2.

How about we trek to the laundry room? This year I did my laundry with Norwex detergent, just to see if it was what is was cracked up to be. The very worst aisle in any store for me was the detergent one. I would nip in quickly, grab my unscented Purex or whatever, and leave before I sneezed my head off.  I had a very expensive and frustrating washer repair where the expert said I am using too much detergent and it gunked up my HE machine. Allrighty then. When I compared prices, I discovered that Norwex compares to Tide for price per load, which I sometimes resorted to when things started looking dingy from the lower priced soaps. I am very happy to put this little bitty scoop of detergent into a ginormous load and have it emerge smelling, not like Irish Spring or somesuch, but just like nice, clean clothes. And it doesn’t make me sneeze.

Then I thought, what about those dryer balls? Everyone is supposed to know how toxic fabric softeners are, even the unscented ones. The wool balls have been a really good investment. They really do cut down on drying time. If I do 4 loads in a day and it takes 10 minutes less per load, that’s a whole 40 minutes saved, or 25%, just like the company says. I no longer use fabric softener for anything except stuff that doesn’t go through the dryer, because I cannot stand static in winter and I haven’t found another solution. I can even hook you up with the best little Norwex consultant you ever want to meet. 🙂 Hi, Rose!

A kind friend gave me a wonderful tool for hair time. Sometimes after baths I look at the mass of tangled heads and wonder about dreadlocks. Well, not really. But my girls have the tangliest hair. Enter the Wet Brush to the rescue. You have to feel it to believe the difference! They panic when I pick up the old brush, and actually manage to get most of the snarls out by themselves. Thanks, Ellen.

rita

“Work smarter, not harder,” the successful people say. In my quest for household fluidity, (is that even a thing? maybe it is just an elusive quest…) I noticed that my old vacuum cleaner was ready to put to pasture. I had used my mother-in-law’s rollerball vacuum cleaner and liked it so much that I started watching eBay for a replacement. I endured months of email notifications and Facebook ads before I found an affordable deal on Black Friday for the Dyson Ball Animal cleaner. We chose that one because we have animals and we have children who love animals. I feel like a clean freak when I vacuum my house and empty out the dirt canister. It’s a novel feeling and it makes me more than a little happy. Was I happy before? Absolutely. But you have to clean your floors, whether you like it or not. This is just a different layer of happy, a fascinated thrill that the dirt is no longer in the carpet.

Our favorite property investment this past year is our barn, representing days and days of sweat and splinters. It swallowed up our spare time for the year and taught us a lot of skills, some we never hope to need again. (Like putting on the ridge cap.) Sometime I will do a start-to-finish post on that project, but here it is: the view from my kitchen window this morning. We feel actual affection for that structure!

barn-in-winter

My husband is a master of repurposing, wouldn’t you say? But wait until you see what we put in the bottom story!

The little girls are thrilled! They love all creatures, but especially furry or feathered ones. First thing in the morning, before she has even rubbed the sleep out of her eyes, Addy asks to gather the eggs. She doesn’t care if it’s cold and nasty outside. Sometimes it takes her so long that I worry she may have gotten hurt, but when I check on her, she is just holding a chicken or petting the piglets. There are 25 pretty red laying hens and they all look the same to me, but they can easily recognize the favorite. One day they came in breathlessly excited, “Mama! We can ride our goats and they don’t even sag!” I thought surely the thrill will diminish, but it has been months and they are as enamored as ever, completely undeterred by yucky stuff on their boots and multiple baths. Expense and extra work aside, the animals have been a good investment. The three goats are all very pregnant, so the thrills continue!

In the photos of Addy you can see her favorite accessory of the year, the very popular puffer vest. One of the cousins had one, and then we found 4 of them at Goodwill! Alex is still waiting for one in his size, but he is a hoodie kind of guy anyway. Our children hate to play in coats, unless of course, there is snow. With Pennsylvania winters turning mild, this is just the ticket for outdoor play. Don’t be too shocked. Children in Siberia run into the snow to play in their undies for a few minutes every day in order to build up their immunities. This is a much discussed fact around here, and at least the vests are a little warmer than that. 😛

Well, I seem to have meandered outside and my time is up. As a career SAHM, I send you cheer and my best recommendations for some stuff that may make your life easier. This is a pretty rough career I would say, but one I am happy to pour my life into. Blessings on the new year! May your pens never sputter and your Goodwill trips be fruitful! May your laundry smell fresh, no matter how you do it. May all the tangles in your household hair come from healthy activities and may God be the Sun you crave upon your face.