I'm waiting

Our second modem (the Tx modem) broke day before yesterday. The phone company says this is a coincidence. I'm not certain. Because both modems have broken since we moved the phone wire from the bedroom to the addition, I think it's something Ian did when he connected the wire. The guy from the phone company says if this modem breaks within a few weeks we should check the voltage coming from the power lines. Have I mentioned that we've replaced our landline phones three times in the one year that we've lived here? Moving on...

I'm waiting. For what? I'm waiting for the mudding work to be finished in the new bedrooms. We still need two more coats. I've not been allowed to mud for fear that I might make it harder for someone to finish- but I'm getting a little impatient :)

I'm waiting for the kids bedding/sheets to come so I can match paint colors for the bedrooms. I'll be waiting for a while. When I ordered the boys' sheets- I ordered from a company who actually didn't have them available. Of course it took them two days to let me know, and thier charges are still on my credit card, but then I quickly ordered from amazon because they always have fast shipping. So, I'm waiting on them. While the girls' bedding was delivered, it was delivered to TEXAS! Oops, that was my fault- I checked the 'use same as billing address' for shipping, and actually my billing address was wrong. Sooo, I'm waiting and hoping that one of our friends in Tx can pick it up and mail it. I'm hoping that the people that bought our house will give it to our friend.

I'm waiting to decorate the kids' bedrooms. We're going all out on these bedrooms, and I'm so excited to see it go together.

I'm waiting for my mom to move in to her new house- which is 5 minutes down the road!

I'm waiting to finish the Roman unit of TOG. Of course, I can wrap it up whenever I like, but I really want to do all the crafts, so it's taking longer that it should- because we're doing all the crafts. And actually, it's not taking longer- I'm just desperate to know what happens after the fall of Rome... hehe

I'm waiting for Christmas, so we can go on a road trip in our new van!

I'm waiting for a title for our new van, so we can get a license plate for our new van!

I'm waiting to take our shoe boxes in for Operation Christmas Child. I love filling our shoe boxes every year, and one day I hope one of us can go to pass them out!

I'm waiting for this modem to break, so if you don't hear from me for a while- it's probably broken.

Actually, my list of waiting things looks pretty silly from a more serious perspective, but it's really fun for me to plan.

Did I mention that I'm waiting for Asher to miraculously potty train himself? I am.

nothing really interesting...

We have decided:

1 That Becky will manage our money again.

2 That we will buy a whopping big 15 passenger van tomorrow.

3 That we will go to California in December in our whopping big van to visit family.

4 That we will be finishing the new kids' bedrooms in time for Gabe's 4th birthday party.

5 That Gabriel is having a space rocket birthday party and the room will be space.

6 That we will have heat/air installed in the addition now.

7 That we will finish up Year 1 of TOG just before Thanksgiving and then focus on math and science till we leave for California. In January we will start Year 2, and then my yearly cycles will line up with the calandar year! That is exciting to me for no reason at all :P)

The sound of silence...

My modem has been broken since the last post. We replaced it with a modem that we used it Texas two years ago. It works fine, and it has its own router. How did we not know that in Texas? Anyone local need a router? We now have an extra. It's been quiet on the blog, and I just deleted hundreds of emails without reading them, so I have to say that the cyber world has been very quiet as well. I don't have tv and don't really go anywhere, so the world in general has been quiet also. Just not in my house. No, my house has been very loud. I'll tell you all about it later though :O) We have been faithful to do school, and we've had a lot of fun. Tomorrow is a cleaning day after our campout Friday/Saturday. We celebrated the Feast of Tabernacles Friday night with some friends here at our house. We know, it's not the right day, but it was fun to do with the kids. We've been learning about it as a group (their children and ours), and it was a fun memory to share. I'll p0st more about that later. But tonight, I'm off to bed. Ian's warming it up for me as the temp has gone down to the low 40s. I actually turned the heat on tonight. I'm nervous about being able to buy enough propane this winter, but I know God will provide for us, and I don't want Elizabeth sick because it gets cold in the house at night.

The school house!

Our little playroom/school room is shaping up. I have a couple more posters and a lot more art frames to hang, but I ran out of adhesive. I have some more organizing to do inside drawers and in boxes, but that doesn't take long. And as you can see, Ian has to put up baseboards and trim and cover the stairs. I took the picture from the floor to the stair to show if I could the legos hiding underneath. So this is what school looks like!

Micaela's new desk...

Nathaniel's new desk...
Nathaniel building decimal street...
The lower level... Micaela obviously not working, and Nathaniel being studious...
The step and the legos underneath :)...

Book shelves, games, arts and crafts hiding in the drawers...
The REAL book cases!
A wall collage of their art work. I'll be adding to this- The frames are pre cut stiff posterboard from samsclub.com. There are around 80 frames in a package.
Gabriel's little corner. Notice his abscence...

I really liked this explanation of the economic crisis :)

Unsophisticated people like me really need it broken down this way!

Life and the pox

The new week is starting, and today- YEAH!- we have desks and chairs in the playroom. As soon as we get it clean long enough for me to snap a picture, I will. I'm excited to see how our first day will go in the new room. I hope this week to get some fun posters laminated and put up on the wall. This week our schedule looks like this. Tuesday we'll be working with some of our friends and studying Sukhot. Friday Micaela has ballet and then we're supposed to be heading to Gatlinberg with my family. But our Friday plans may not workout because we seem to have the pox. At least Asher has the pox. While he has all the symptoms, he has about 12 hours left for the rash to blister and crust over. After that, I'm tempted to think it's not chicken pox, and then I'll have to go to the doctor to find out what it really is.

Sooooo- a pox on the phony king of England! That line just keeps running through my head, and I had to use it :)

Anyway, please pray that the pox is limited, that we can go on the trip, and that Ian and I have some time alone. We haven't been out since the Friday after my birthday (in July). It's been a while, and we're feeling it.

An Art Class

I signed Micaela and Nathaniel up for an art class today with a local librarian. She taught a basic class on drawing faces. They did a simple sketch looking for shapes in faces. These are their drawings, before and after...
These are Micaela's


And these are Nathaniel's



I must say, Nathaniel's scarecrow face is drastically different than his next drawing. Micaela's little girl has some serious hair issues, but then she is really much better than the stick-man head that preceded her.

Yes, since I sat next to them to make sure Nathaniel followed directions (instead of hiding under a table or screaming like a monkey), I drew too. Here's my before and after which are both pretty funny in their own way ;) I ran out of time on my after.




Anyway, we didn't finish school today. We did four hours, just not everything I had written down. We didn't finish yesterday because some friends and I were planning a weekly 'co-op' we'll be getting together for Tuesdays. Sooo, we're a little behind. I need to learn to schedule less on days when I know we'll be out or swamped- 14 kids (8,7,7,6,6,5,4,3,3,2,18m,1,6m,2m) and 3 moms in a 3 bedroom house is definately swamped. My grandma says on those days, I should take an aspirin and hide in the corner. Hehe, care to join me?