Cindy's Life as She Knows It

Today we had our first homeschool review of third grade.  The county reviews do not stress me out like they do alot of my other homeschool friends.  I have never had a bad experience in the thirteen years I have been doing them so I don't find them to be something to dread. We got to the library around 9:15 with my daycare child and my son.  I had decided to leave my granddaughters with their other grandmother because they can be a bit of a handful, plus lugging all my gear for school and 3 little girls didn't seem like a lot of fun. Our review was with a new gentleman and it ended up taking 30 minutes, about 20 minutes longer than it normally does.  Everything went well and he got a good review.  The gentleman was kind and engaging and my son was polite. After the library we picked up the girls and they were both crying by the time I drove the 2 minutes home.  The next hour was hectic, getting 3 kids fed and the baby a bottle and all I managed to inh...

Today we added a new friend to the mix. Brooke joined us for daycare and she is six months younger than my oldest granddaughter.  We took my before/after care child to school and then when the granddaughters arrived we took 45 minutes to feed and settle everyone before starting our day.  It was really, really nice outside, so while Dakota did his morning work I let them go out on the deck after sweeping off most of the wet leaves.  Dakota and I did our math and spelling out on the deck....probably for the last time before April.  That's a sad thought. When it was reading time and Koda went inside to read Mr. Popper's Penguin for our book club, I read Curious George and the Dinosaur Tracks to the girls and then we used magnifying glasses and followed our own dino tracks out to the picnic table on the deck and got to make their own dinosaur tracks by pressing their toy dinosaur feet into Play Doh. Dakota and I were able to get our language arts done and he read a sho...

Today Dakota and I are back to homeschooling while doing daycare, but with a twist.  Not only do we have 2 1/2 year old Natalie, but we also have 6 week old Rebecca.  And next week we get 23 month old Brooke! This morning the girls arrived just as we got back from taking our M/T before and after care friend to school and we all had some waffles before sending my daughter back to her job with the Howard County School System.  I put the baby in the swing at my feet and Natalie went to play with her toys while Dakota and I started our day.  He did his morning work and wrote in his journal about his playoff experience this weekend.  He did some spelling, math and language arts and then, while Natalie ran in and out from the deck, we started our I Survived:  The Sinking of the Titanic book.  We talked about plot, conflict and resolution, figurative language and flashbacks in a story.  We have the book downloaded on our Kindles so we read the first th...

For my family, football is more than a game....it's a way of life.  Since 1999, when my oldest son was six years old, we have spent most fall evenings at Lake Waterford, watching the boys go from green and inexperienced, to fierce competitors over a course of a few months is nothing short of amazing.  We have had our share of mediocre seasons as a family, but we have also experienced some spectacular seasons where alot of hard work paid off in a championship run. This was, for all intents and purposes, Dakota's first real season of football.  He had played when he was very young (3-5), but he didn't like it and really had no part in the game other than standing on the field.  Now, at 9, he has accomplished so much. He is playing under his father's coaching and he has gone from scared and timid to an aggressive, intimidating offensive lineman who is a force to be reckoned with.  I am really excited to see what the future holds for him. This season we went und...

Today is the last Monday of just Dakota and I.  Next Monday my 2 1/2 year old granddaughter and my 6 week old granddaughter will be here from 8:30 to 4:30 and the following Monday, 23 month old Brooke will join them.  We will have lots of fun and find a new normal, but while I plan to enjoy these three little girls completely and totally, I also know there will be much more chaos and tears and shrieks of joy and shrieks of anger lol.  Newborns cry.  Two year olds cry and throw tantrums.  But they also give the best snuggles and say the cutest things. Dakota and I got in a great Monday.  He did his morning work and then had a complete Social Studies lesson from Time for Kids on The Battle For Bats.  He read the magazine, did the work pages that went with it, watched a video off the website and took a quiz.  He started a new book called A Dog on the Titanic in preparation for our Titanic unit that will start tomorrow and run for about 2 weeks. ...