Great Expectations

I finished my first classic of 2014 in a timely fashion. Great Expectations is finished, almost 30 years after it was assigned in freshman English class.

The story had a slow start and it took some self control to keep reading the book. About 100 pages from the end, the plot picked up and the disparate characters and plots began to intertwine and relate to one another, in the fashion of a Seinfeld episode.

I enjoyed Dickens use of vocabulary ( I am also thankful for the dictionary in my Kindle app) and descriptions of people. He seems to have so many ways to say someone is dead, for instance.  I wonder if Victorian England was filled with eccentric old woman residing full time in dark rooms. Such characters seem to appear often in Dicken's books. Did he have a particular oddly- dressed elderly woman who dwelled in a dark room in his life? Or were they a common part of daily life in England at that time.

I have begun my second classic novel of 2014. I am staying with Dickens a bit more and reading Tale of Two Cities. In 7th grade history class we watched the movie. Amazingly, I still remember many of the character's names from that time. We studied the French Revoltion this fall and Liam found the Reign of Terror intriguing. We spent much time learning about guillotines. Liam designed Lego guillotines and even gave a presentation about them at Classical Conversations. I hope this extra study give ease to my reading. 

Some Reformation Fun

Today we had a field trip to the Portland Art Museum. After our time at the museum, the boys posed for a couple photos at the Lutheran Church across the street and the re-enacted Martin Luther's nailing of the 95 Theses on the Wittenberg door.

Happy New Years. A winter afternoon is more delightful with this sweet guy serving as a reading and knitting companion.

My 2014 reading list

Happy New Year. It is time to make goals and resolutions.  I decided that it is time to catch up on the classics. As a homeschool mom, who uses the classical model, it would be advantageous for me partake of these volumes.

My first book is Great Expectations by Charles Dickens. This book was assigned in Mr. Zetterberg's freshman English class in 1984. I remember bringing the book home and thumbing through it, but I never read it. I even remember the names of the characters from quizzes we took in class. I don't know how I blew off a book with a character as intriguing as Miss Haversham.  I hope to return in a week or so with a review of the novel and to reveal the next book on my list.

Happy Reading!

1/1/11

Lost Teeth

Liam lost two teeth this weekend. They were his first. I wanted to get some photos of the missing teeth, but like most things it involved much drama.

spring comes early to the low-lands

I know that this winter has been provided most of the country with some nasty weather. California has practically washed into the Pacific. The mid-west, east coast even the south have had freezing temps and snow. While El Nino is brutal for most of the country, we here in the Pacific Northwest get the good side. We get a short winter and long spring, which is why so many flowers are already in full bloom. I don't think we saw many of these flowers until mid to late March last year.

this week in rabbit

I have been absent from this blog for a while. David is now on day shift. This is a great change for the family, but now that he is gone all day, all of the house, homeschool and parenting reponsiblities fall on me. (I am aware that this is the set-up most stay at home moms have, I am just not used to it). I am busy during the day, then after a day of being busy, I am often very tired in the evening.
Recent News from our house:
baby bunnies growing and just too cute.
the ducks laid their first eggs today. (just in time to bake my mom's birthday cake on Saturday)
The boys watched Galileo catch a mouse in the backyard today
I am baking all of our bread instead of buying. Good bread, but tired mommy.
Lots of knitting projects in process
I am hoping to join a quilt along. This week I just have to pick out and wash fabric. Pretty easy to start with.
We are learning a lot about Greek Mythology. This is a very boy friendly topic. We are also choosing a character from Greek Mythology to draw during art time. Today Christian drew a Gorgon.

Here is my first week in review layout. I used a kit from The Digi Files Eleven availabe at The Daily Digi.

Galileo poses for a few photos

He likes the balls of Kool Aid dyed yarn. They were removed from him soon after the photo was taken.

We sent him to the bedroom today because he was playing a bit too rough with the bunnies. He always cries for about 2 minutes then takes a nap.

introducing....

our baby bunnies at 7 days old. Five bunnies survived.




This is their mama, Sarah.

two more things I love....

I have a couple of resources we have been using a lot lately that I just love. The first was recently discovered - Pandora Radio. I had seen people mentioning it on Facebook and decided to check it out before Christmas. It was perfect for the holidays. They have several Holiday stations so we can enjoy Christmas music during the season and then we don't have to store cd's or take up space on the iPod the rest of the year. I enjoyed the swinging holiday station the most. It had many of the Christmas songs my dad would play when I was growing up. I hated that music for many years, but now it so much fun to hear. Currently we like the Children's Rock station. Yesterday we heard Alvin and the Chipmunks perform the Time Warp. The kids love to listen and dance.
The other thing I love is Overdrive Media from the library. We go to the library website and find available audiobooks and videos. There is a link that takes us to a central site the the entire state uses and choose the titles we want. There is a seperate program to download, then we get free audiobooks for a week. The boys love this. They get up in the morning, turn the computer on and listen to stories until I am ready to start homeschooling. Christian is listening to a Magic Tree House story right now.

I love coupons

I have been following the blog Frugal Living NW since last spring. The blog posts promotions, sales, free events and shows how you can use store sales and coupons to get great deals. My friend Cheri is also a skilled coupon user and has shared some of the deals she gets.
I decided to give coupon clipping a shot. I have been following the store adds, cutting coupons and going shopping for a few weeks. I have been getting good deals, but nothing huge.
Today, I finally broke through the glass ceiling of coupon cutting. I found some double coupons for Albertsons that double for up to a dollar. I combined these with coupons and bought...
3 dannon yogurt = total .40 cents
3 for a dollar + a .60 3 coupon
3 Luna Bars = total 2.00 (the most expensive thing)
10 for 10 dollars and I had a buy two get one free coupon
Act Cavity Rinse 2.24
$1.00 coupon = $1.00 double coupon = .24 cents
2 Aquafresh Coupons on clearance for $1.59
$1.00 coupon =.59 cents
Crest Toothpaste on sale for $1.89
$1.00 coupon + $1.00 double coupon = free
Total money saved coupons + sales $13.97

creative movement class

Christmas break is over and today the boys in welcomed the New Year with dance classes. I had ballet this morning. Liam took creative dance in the early afternoon and Christian had a hip hop class in the late afternoon.
David starts day shift with Sunday/Monday off starting next week, so I will move my class to Tuesday nights and I will be able to take each child to his class alone.
I will get pictures of Christian's class later. I will be in my first dance performance in late March. My goal, other then dancing well and not getting humilated in front of an audience is to bring my camera to a couple rehersals and get some dance photos.
Stay tuned for more dance updates.

1/2/2010

I heard on the radio today's date is a perfect paladrome. This was discovered by someone who thinks playing with numbers is "fun". I am not one of those people.
Today has not been a fun day. I need a carder to prepare my wool to spin. I decided to drive out to Newberg (two counties away) to buy one. I checked the website and they said they were open 9-4 on Saturday's. I dropped David and the boys at OMSI and drove out. The drive was fine. When I get there, the shop is closed. I assume that since it is a holiday weekend and a small business, they took the weekend off. Lesson learned: when traveling 2 counties away to go to a shop, make a quick call to shop to confirm they are opened no matter what the web site says. I drove back to OMSI and by this time it was packed. I was about to drive over to over flow parking when I saw three empty spots next to each other. I chose the middle spot for ease of parking. When I went in it was super crowded. We stayed a bit more then chose to leave. When we got to the parking lot two cars had parked on both sides of me. One car backed in. I drive a mini-van and it is not easy to get out of small spots. David and I both tried to get the van out without crashing in to other cars. David finally saw that a woman was sitting in a car behind us and one over. I went over and asked if she would mind pulling out so we could get our van out without crashing into other cars. She was gracious and pulled out. With David directing from outside, I got the van out.
When we got home, David tried to turn on the portable DVD player that we just spent 17.50 for a new ac cord on, and the screen is on the fritz. It would be so bad if this problem came up the same time as the ac cord broke and we did not spend extra money on it.
This all brings me to my photo of the day. A margarita. Don't worry the thing that is making it big enough to fill a big glass is ice. No need to call 9-1-1 about alcohol poisening. making this was even frustrating since we are not using our ice much and it was partially evoporated.
I now raise my glass and toast to a quiet evening and a better day tommorow.

little abraham and project 365

A fluffy new addition came to our home before Christmas, Little Abraham. He is to join our other new rabbit, Sarah to breed meat rabbits for us in the new year. Sarah was given to us by Christian's 4-H leader. She came to us pregnant and delivered 9 babies last night. They were all alive at birth and we will have to wait a week or two to see if they make it. This is her first litter and the mortality rate is high for first litters. She carried the babies to term and delivered them alive and those are both good signs for future pregnancies. Little Abraham should be old enough to mate about a week or two after Sarah would be done nursing her babies. If her babies live I hope to sell them to cover the cost of cages. After that we will sell a couple of babies from each litter to cover overhead costs and the rest will go to the butcher.
Sarah is a New Zealand, Abraham is a New Zealand California mix. They are both sweet, friendly bunnies.
I am in the process of arranging a couple dates for Phina so she too can have babies in the spring. I will use studs until we can find a male angora.
On a different note, I am going to try project 365, where you take a photo a day again this year. I did great last year unil summer then I lost steam. This is surpising since summer has such great photo opps and I got a new camera.

This morning I was listening to the weather forcast and they said it would rain this afternoon. It has been cold and windy for the last several days and I thought that it would have to warm up quite a bit this morning to get rain. I also saw frozen water on the sides of roads.
We reserved a three day pass to the Children's Museum and it came in today. I picked it up and we headed up there for some fun. The Children's museum is at one of the higher points in the city. They boys wanted a snack and we walked out to the lobby, we were surpised to see snow coming down. At the same moment, David called me to tell me it was snowing at home.
We did not stay at the museum much longer since it was at a high elevation and the Sunset Highway, that we use to get home often has problems in the snow. The roads were clear until we got back on our street.
When we got home, we all put on proper snow clothes and went outside. It is getting dark now and the snow is coming down hard. It is also accumulating. The magic question is...will it still be here in the morning.

a new tradition

After we decorated the tree, the boys ran to the back room where they keep their art supplies and got busy making presents. Christian made one for Santa. It has two parts. I am not sure what one part is, but he did tell me he wrapped up his map of the world to give to Santa, so Santa would know how to get back to the North Pole. I bet that will earn him a check-mark on the "Nice" list.

Another Christmas Tradition

Baking Sugar Cookies

Traditions

I bought this little Nativity Scene at The Dollar Tree several years ago. In our family, we don't wrap and place presents under the tree until Christmas Eve after the kids go to bed. We do this for two reasons. The first is practical. Little hands can really shake up or even open presents before Christmas morning and it removes the tempation by not even having the presents there. The other reason is that Jesus and his gift of salvation is the tree purpose of Christmas, so we keep the little Nativity Scene under the tree to remember this.