I finally got a new camera battery a few weeks ago, and since then I’ve been taking tons of pictures. Consequently, I have multiple items I wish to blog about. Luckily for you, I plan spread them out over a few posts; however, today I have something too awesome to wait.

The kids’ baseball games on Friday we played in the pouring rain. Being a giant wimp, I spent the first half of Anika’s game in the van yakking with my buddy Lana, whose kiddos also play. About halfway through though I started to feel guilty about not watching, so I grabbed my camera and off I went. Anika had batted before I got there, so I watched the rest of the inning and her on the field and then they were up again. She was the very last kid to bat, and it was the last bat of the entire game. Here’s what she did:

Clever ducky!

Rachel

Happily, today is one of those together days. Georgie got a 96% on his grammar test, and all three of the girls got 100% on their spelling tests. Yay! I teach good. Yeah sure, I suppose they may have had something to do with it.

This is Kyra’s first year of school (she’s five, turns six in July), and I’ve switched curriculum with her. The other kids I taught to read with TATRAS; and while it was okay, it just seemed to take f-o-r-e-v-e-r and the phonics didn’t always translate to the spelling side. Georgie didn’t pick up any reading speed until he was at least eight despite having been through all of TATRAS and several years of school. Trinity read right off the bat but was was an atrocious speller.

This year I switched everyone over to Spell to Write and Read and started Kyra off with it. I also decided to be bold and teach her cursive right from the start instead of printing. Okay, so that’s not bold like jumping from moving aircraft or engaging in hand-to-hand combat with an armed assailant, but it’s educationally bold. For me.

The basic philosophy of SWR is to skip the whole teaching them to read thing (which I loathe doing anyway because it is painfully slow and repetitive and awful) and just teach them to spell. After they hit a certain point, all the stuff that they can spell they will also be able to read and the reading will sort of organically occur.

Kyra and I have been faithfully practicing her 70 phonogram cards all year (which she only forgot two of today and she’ll have completely down by the end of next week), and guess what? It seems to be working. She’s starting to pick words off of things like the Amazon box and wants to read her readers more often. Learning cursive right away hasn’t seemed confusing with reading things in print. Here is today’s spelling test:

Awesome, huh? Go, Kyra! In case you’re trying to figure out the marking system (which I’m sure you all are), the double underlines are silent ‘e’s, and the single underlines are for double letter phonograms.

The other children have all had a marked improvement in both spelling and penmanship except for Georgie whose penmanship remains borderline terrible despite my best efforts, death threats, and blackmail. Hmmm, blackmail. Maybe I should tell him I’ll post his stuff on the blog. He’s almost to the age where parental embarrassment becomes an effective disciplinary tool. Hehe. His spelling isn’t too bad though. I guess in another year or two I should teach him to type.

In other, unrelated news that also falls under the “School” heading, I now know where the Duero River is, which until two weeks ago I had never even heard of. Yay, geography! Oh, I’m supposed to be teaching the kids school? Right. I knew that. Learning all this stuff myself is just a happy byproduct.

Rachel

Good morning, world, I thought to myself as I popped out of bed this morning. It was 8:30 and the whole house was quiet. Even Georgie was still asleep in the top bunk of my bed. I’ll go upstairs and see Mom.

Hmmm, everything was quiet upstairs, too. Maybe I’ll just peek in her bedroom door, I thought. She was in there all alone and smiling at me so I went in to see her. Mmmmm, I love curling up with Mommy.

All week she’s been up super-early and has already had her walk with Daddy and shower before Daddy gets me and the other kids up to go read at 7:00. I hate getting up early. I’m still sleepy and then everyone gets mad at me for crying when I don’t get to sit on Daddy’s lap. Well, I get to sit on Mommy’s lap and that’s almost as nice.

Not today though! Today is Friday and we’re all sleeping in, except for Daddy who isn’t here so must be off at work already. Haha. More Mommy for me. We curled up for half an hour, all lazy-like and then Georgie found me and made me breakfast while Mommy took a shower.

After breakfast the other kids all went downstairs, but not me! I went in to go watch Mommy put on her make-up. Hehe. She wasn’t watching me though. I sneaked into her room and stole some more of her Altoids. Yummy!! I got in trouble yesterday for doing that. Also the day before. Plus the day before that and Monday. But they’re so yummy.

I went back to Mommy before she even got suspicious, but Grandma was in there talking to Mommy. I love Grandma! She picked me and put me on her lap and gave me kisses. Then she told Mommy that I had been in the Altoids again. How did she know? I was sneaky! Mommy glared at me but that was it. Does that mean I can have them?

Grandma put me back down and Mommy started doing her hair. Mommy has lots of hair. I hate it when she picks me up and her hair is on her shoulder right where I want to put my head. I point at it and Mommy moves it for me. I thought maybe I’d go see what was going on in the kitchen. Interesting things are always in there.

Still no brothers or sisters back up from downstairs yet. Darn! I moved a chair over to the counter so I could see what was up there. Hmmm, the coffee cup Mommy brought home yesterday from shopping was sitting right there. Yummy! I love coffee, but Mommy always says I can’t have it. I don’t know why. It tastes great!

Uh oh. Grandma came in looking for me. It’s like she knew I was doing something I shouldn’t be doing. Oh no! She took me back to Mommy and told her I was drinking her coffee. How does Grandma know everyhing??

Next was time for a diaper change and getting dressed. Mommy did it today. Usually Georgie does it. He gets really annoyed when he doesn’t get to do it, but I like it much better when Mommy does it. She’s not so rough. I get to wear my new clothes today. Plus she actually put on my shoes. I loooove shoes!

Grandma came in and we looked at some pictures on her camera. Some were of Brown Bear and me. Some were of my sisters and Georgie. Mommy went to go make herself some breakfast. Smells yummy. When she brought it over to the table, her plate had sausage and biscuits and eggs and gravy. Oooh, I really wanted some. I asked her for a bite, Kyra asked her for a bite, Faithy asked her for a bite, and Anika asked her for a bite. She told us all no and said to shoo. I don’t get it. I thought we were supposed to share.

The big kids were busy doing their Math and Mommy was helping them. Faith was playing a really fun game with some puzzles. I wanted to help, but when I moved the pieces Faith started yelling at me. Then Mommy yelled at me. I went to the school shelf and started looking at the books. Then I thought I’d just check to see what was in the black filing cabinet. Apparently, I’m not supposed to mess with that either.

I thought about going to find some more of Mommy’s Altoids, but when I went to go look they weren’t where I left them and I couldn’t efind them anywhere. So instead I just wandered around her bedroom until I found the phone. It doesn’t look like the other ones at home. It has a cord thing and you can’t walk away with in and put it behind the couch. I tried but it would only go as far as the end of the bed.

After awhile Mommy went downstairs to do something on her computer for a bit. Some of the other kids were upstairs and some were downstairs with her, but I looked through the window by the front door and saw some really interesting people across the street. I thought I’d just go see what they were doing so I headed on out.

I only made it about three steps before Georgie caught me. He’s really big! He was not happy. Then Mommy showed up and she was even more unhappy. Going outside without someone else, it turns out, is a really bad idea. Mommy and I had a little trip down the hall. When she got to her bedroom, she found the phone.

Now we’re back downstairs and I’m sitting right beside her on the couch. It’s kind of nice curling up with her, but I’m starting to get bored. I wonder what’s in the kitchen.

Henry

I must say though, that this has been a productive morning. It is that time of year again when I realize that summer and/or Family Camp are merely weeks away and my children may not or may have nothing whatsoever to wear. Yesterday’s quick perusal of their under-the-bed boxes of clothing-to-grow-into confirmed that at their current clothing levels, several of my children would indeed be wearing naked this summer if some serious shopping were not done.

Huzzah for consignment sale season! Okay, maybe not “huzzah” because that word irritates me. It always looks like it should be a palindrome (which, of course, is the nickname of Sarah Palin’s pet dromedary), but never is which I have decided to take as a personal affront. Anyway, today I got out of bed at the crack of 7am (hey, it’s a Saturday. Seven is a crack for Saturday.) and dragged my sorry self all the way down to the Expo Center with a wad of money and high hopes. Also coffee.

And… mission: success! Here’s what I bought:

Henry:

• 4 pr shorts
• 9 short sleeve shirts (5 tees, 4 church)
• 2 swimsuits and a rashguard
• 2 long sleeve shirts (maybe 3, I forgot already)
• 2 pr long pants
• 1 pr jammies
• 1 hat
• 1 pr brown tennies (soooo cute!)

Faith:

3 pr pants ‘cause she outgrew all her long pants in the last month

3 short sleeve shirts

1 shrug sweater

1 pr church sandals

Kyra:

4 short sleeve shirts

3 pr shorts

1 skirt

1 dress

1 pr brand new water sandals

1 pr brand new church shoes

Anika:

1 pr shorts

1 tank top

1 dress

1 pr pajamas

1 pr water shoes

1 pr church sandals

Trinity:

1 purple dress that she’s going to flip out about

1 swimsuit

1 pr church sandals

2 pr ballet shoes

Georgie:

2 pr shorts

2 pr swim shorts

1 very nice pair of water sandals

So, what does all that make? I have no idea. Kinda curious though. Let’s see: 1 hat, 2 pr ballet shoes, 2 pr pajamas, 4 skirts or dresses, 5 pr pants, 5 swimsuits plus a rashguard, 8 pr shoes, 10 pr shorts, and 19 shirts plus a shrug.

And how much was all that? $235. Henry is completely dressed for the summer and I’m mostly done with most of the others. Yay! The whole shebang in three hours and only a little over half my summer clothing budget. Yay! Wanna see how nerdy I am? Here’s my shopping list I took with me:

Yes, me = giant nerd, I know. But how else will I remember what I’m supposed to be getting for which member of the nerd herd?

Well, it is now 3:30 and I guess I should probably head home since I finished shopping three hours ago. Me and my laptop have been sharing some quality time at Panera. Mmmmm, French onion soup and solitude. What could be better? Actually, going home after consignment shopping is always pretty fun. It’s kind of like being Santa Claus for the day. Ciao!

Rachel