Day 19

Sam worked on Lego stop action videos today, as usual. He's coming up with ideas and story lines all the time. I love the creativity. The girls have made a few videos with him too. Sarah worked on it with him today. We got an app for the iPad that lets him just clap or snap his fingers to take the picture, so he doesn't have camera wiggle like he used to. It also has an onion skin feature that lets you see a shadow of your last picture so you can tell how far you're moving things. So fun!

Sarah's concerned about not having the piano to practice on while we're on our trip. I'm trying to figure out a way to take Wilson and Kamille the electric keyboard so they can teach piano if they need some extra money. Sarah would love that; she hates to go one day without practicing. If we can't fit it in the car, Wilson and Kamille will have to find a way to play a piano regularly too. That's been their whole life (individually and together) for several years. Maybe they can snag a key to a practice room at their new school.

We did some yard work today. Oh, how we wish the grass just went up to the walls of the house. We rent, so we can't remove any of the owner's bushes, flowers, shrubs, tall grasses, trees, and on and on. When we moved here in the winter, it didn't look like this much yard work! I guess it teaches us to do things we hate because it needs done anyway. Well maybe not, I'm still always leaving the dishes because I hate doing them even though they need done anyway. I wish I cared whether they got done, but I really don't. It's just terrible. Jeff does though, so I usually get them done before he comes home from work.

Rachel went out tonight with one of the ladies from our church that leads activities for the teenagers. They went to a pottery place and painted some pieces of pottery. The place puts it in the kiln and you pick it up later. She painted a little bowl. I can't wait to see it. Then we had to figure out which book had kilns in it, The Golden Goblet or A Single Shard. We decided it was A Single Shard. Obviously, because that one's about pottery!

We did some copywork today from And Then There Were None. It had a bunch of quotation punctuation in it. I love copywork. It makes so much sense to use other people's writing to study mechanics. It's so impersonal. You know, it doesn't bother anyone to point out what's going on in writing that the child isn't emotionally connected to.


See you tomorrow!

Day 18

Rachel decided we should travel around to different places and write books about it. She figured we'd start with the Americas. I guess we'd go around to places where people hang out and talk to them; get their stories. Everyone has a story. Isn't it funny how conversations go. I think it was Sam that mentioned something about sometimes being in dangerous places. And I was saying everyone wants to be in a book, so everyone would talk to us and tell us their story. Then we decided that even if we were being mugged, we'd be okay if we just told the mugger we're writing a book and asked him to tell us his story. Haha!

Actually I would love to just go around together having adventures and writing books about it. Rachel has a whole series planned in her head. We might have to work on some more languages though!

We also planned to have our next writing project be making book covers for Rachel's novel. We're going to write a hook of some kind, but not quite a summary. Then an opinion, but not quite a review to go on the back. Maybe more than one. We'll also need to come up with some cover art. I'm hoping we'll take ideas from everyone's covers when we do the cover for actually publishing it. We talked over what the title should be. I think the consensus is that she should call it Becoming Sencra's Queen. We talked about "Becoming Queen" and "Becoming Queen of Sencra", but Becoming Sencra's Queen sounds more interesting or mysterious or something. Now you want to read it, don't you?

Sarah gave Sam his science test orally today. She did the book he's doing last year. She remembers every chapter when she hears us talking about it. He's not too excited about the tests, but I think it's just because of the writing. That's why I like to do them orally for now. He usually gets 100%. Today he got 97%. I don't really keep track of the grades, but for some reason they like to have them.

Here we are standing on the coast of Spain looking at Morocco.

We were looking at maps today and we were saying how we never think of Spain being right next to Africa. It seems strange that they're almost touching. We wondered if you could see one from the other, because it looks like they're barely 10 miles apart. So we looked at street view, and you can! You can see the coast of Spain from Morocco! Are you amazed by that? Did you know?

We're getting ready to take a giant field trip. We're going to see our son and his family (Wilson and his wife Kamille and baby Eliza). I finally get to meet my little granddaughter in person. She was born last month. It's over 2000 miles, and we're driving. I know, we're crazy. Jeff's got something like 18 or 19 days off, so we'll be there about 11 of those days. We can't even believe how excited we are! I'll try to blog every day while we're traveling. I'm sure there'll be plenty of learning along the way!

We were trying to figure out how to listen to library books on the long, long, long drive, but I think you need the internet to do it. We don't have any smart phones or anything, so I'm not sure if we can. I may just have to read aloud. That usually doesn't work out because we never have air conditioning that works and the wind is loud. But we're getting that fixed this weekend, so we won't expire with all those days of driving in the heat. So I guess I'll be able to be heard when I read.


The kids are out back playing badminton right now. When Jeff plays Sam, they keep that birdie in the air forever! They have this incredible rhythm. Bubby is lying in front of the sliding door watching the birdie go back and forth and crying for the kids.

See you tomorrow!

Day 17

We did our freewrites about Bubby today. They were cute. I was surprised at how many different things each of us said about him. Here's a little sample from each of them.

Sam likes statistics: "Bubbarito is in the feline species of the Domesticated Short Hair breed and stands about 19" tall (including tail) has darker and lighter gray stripes and has a white chest."

(Bubbarito is one of the many nicknames they have for him.)

Sarah: "Sometimes when I'm sitting in the blue recliner, he comes up to the arm, his eyes getting bigger by the minute, he jumps up in my face and meows long and loud, as if I hadn't already noticed him!"

Rachel: "Scratching, purring, meowing, sleeping, and bird watching are Bubby's favorite hobbies. His eyes get huge whenever there is something on the floor for him to attack. He crouches low, wiggles his hips, and darts at the thing he wants."

Me: "He sits by the glass door watching birds. He squishes his body against the wall by the door so the birds can't see him. He's very sneaky."

I love how each of the kids let their writing sound just like them. And reading them aloud has an amazing affect. You really can hear what you would want to change if you were revising.

We saw an old church tonight on our way somewhere that said it was built in 1853. So I asked Sam to figure out how old it was--he's the fastest at it. After he said it was 163 years old, I asked him what steps he took to get that. He had a TON of them. I try to take fewer steps, but I took longer to figure it out. Rachel told me the steps she took figuring it out. I didn't understand hers right away, but it was right. So I asked Sarah how she would figure it out, and she said, "I don't want to." She's the one that insists on paper and pencil!

The kids ended the evening with a Lego video game lesson from Sam. I can't play them. I get too tensed up. Sam doesn't seem to though. He's way less tense than I am in general anyway.


See you tomorrow!

Day 16

More cousins were added today. I'm cooking up a scheme to get every member of the family here at Christmas, but for today we had 11 cousins. Well, one of them is the mother of two of the others, and not their cousin. Is that confusing? She is the oldest cousin and her two kids are some of the youngest ones. Still unclear?   4 of the 11 were second cousins. (I know, this picture is missing one.) My parents have 5 children, 11 grandchildren, and 7 great-grandchildren. Some of us are spread out across the country farther than we want to be. But days like this are so fun!

There was a lot of hide and seek today, teens hiding with younger ones or hiding together. Wait, maybe they were playing Sardines. If you don't know what that is, read Day 10. They finally counted the fish tank marbles too. Grandma told them they hadn't been in the tank, but I think some of them were still skeptical. There were over 500, I think. And they wore out the batteries on the "chasing the light" game. More music and more eating too!

My mom even got to have cousin time today! She and her cousin's wife went out and got lost looking for a different post office than the one Mom uses. They were gone a very long time, but they had fun together. Her cousin and his wife are in town cleaning out their father's (my mom's uncle's) house that just got sold. Here's a picture of their father's family when he was a baby (he's the youngest). My grandpa is the one in the middle with all the hair! I'd recognize that hair anywhere! I don't know how old he was, but I'm guessing about 8.


My brother and his family are leaving tomorrow. It's so hard to see them go. It was such a nice week. Sometimes I wish time would slow down and let me enjoy it a little longer.

I guess we'll be back to school tomorrow too. We need to start on the description of Bubby. I think a little freewriting is in order. All my writing is free. I hope the kids can catch the vision of that. Just say it, then go back and clean it up. Easy!

If you need help evaluating your kids' writing check out our critique service, MyWritingCheck.com
And if you want some writing tips and ideas for encouraging powerful writing in your kids, read my other blog at MyWritingCheck.blogspot.com


See you tomorrow!

Day 15

Cutting the grass at our empty house that's for sale and playing with cousins was all that was on the schedule today. We didn't like the grass part, but we loved the cousin part! My brother and his family are in town this week, and we haven't seen some of them for two long years! So we were at my parents' house all day visiting. We played games, giggled, told stories, talked about food, made food, and ate food.

It was fun to be together after so long. The teenagers were kind of quiet last time they were together. Their personalities are all that way; but this time, they weren't at all. They were competing with some little light game that you chase around the board. You hit a circle every time it lights up red, but not green. You get a point every time you hit one. We couldn't believe it when their cousin Jake got 535, until Sarah got 537!

I had to laugh when all four of them filed into the kitchen talking about how "that was disgusting, wash your hands." They didn't say what it was until we were in the car on the way home. Apparently, they were playing with marbles that had been in the fish tank and they didn't realize it right away. I think they were guessing how many there were and then they were going to count them. Don't you love teenagers? They're so much fun!

We also talked about Jake and marching band. He plays percussion. I called all over town to see if I could find a marimba at a music store, because I'm dying to see him play it with 4 mallets. Well, actually I made Jeff call all over town. No luck though.


Another cousin day tomorrow! See you then!

Day 14

Today we giggled through a writing exercise from the Writer's Jungle from Brave Writer. It's a "Keen Observation" exercise. You pick an object and observe it in detail using all your senses, and there are questions listed to get you thinking. The giggling came in when we chose Bubby the cat as our object. Some of the questions just cracked us up. Like, "Can you cut it open with a knife?" or "Can you remove the parts?" Of course we couldn't answer the questions about the sense of taste! We made a list of descriptive words on the board. Maybe we'll write about him Monday.

I like the idea of using the cat, because we can tell stories about his personality as well as what we can take in with our senses. Should be fun. I'll try to remember to post their descriptions next week.

Rachel finished The Scarlet Letter again today, and I saw her looking up words in the dictionary afterward. The last sentence or two had to be clarified. I haven't read it for 30 years, so I was no help. I did help her understand some of the words she looked up though. Sarah's still reading it. She just told her dad, "You struggle to understand every sentence, but that's ok. I like it." She likes words like me. She says it's not one of those books where your mind can wander! Rachel wants to explain it to Dad, so she's making Sarah leave the room so as not to spoil the ending.

Grandma called today and asked Sarah to play some songs for her on the piano. She loves when the kids play instruments or sing. My husband plays the piano and she's always loved listening to him play, and she has CD's of Wilson playing, that he's always recorded for her. Now she calls Sarah and wants to listen to her on the phone. She also likes it when Rachel sings with Sarah playing. Sam and I are good at listening to the others. We've started on drums, but haven't gotten far. If it was a steel drum, I might get further. I just love to listen to the steel drum. Maybe some day!

We read a little more of Matilda today. I still don't know about it, but she did go to school and her teacher Miss Honey is very nice. We'll see. I may have to donate it to the library.

See you next week!

Day 13

Today I took Rachel in to get her driver's permit renewed. She's had it for a while, but it expired because we're lazy. I'm not ready for her to get her license yet, so we got her a new permit. She hasn't driven for three or four months since it was expired. She said, "I wonder if I'll remember how to turn the car on!" She did.

Sam and Sarah stayed home while Rachel and I were doing that, and it took forever! It was actually the first time they had stayed without Rachel being with them too. They were supposed to do their science while I was gone, but they both ended up needing help so they waited.

I had someone tell me recently that they thought my kids were old enough to stay home and do their schoolwork while I went out and did something this person wanted me to do. I told her that they still need me to be available the whole time. I said that I'd get in trouble if I were a public school teacher and left in the middle of the day. I wondered why high schools have teachers if it was just about how old the kids are. I guess I was feeling a little defensive. It's hard for people to see what you're doing as anything more than just staying at home. I have to defend school time fiercely sometimes. I'm bad at it, but I'm practicing.

After lunch today, we went to my parents' house to help get a couple rooms ready for my brother and his family to come spend the week next week. I can't wait to see them!

When we got home, we made vegetable stir fry for dinner. We didn't have any meat to put in it, and I am starving now! I guess I need to get to the store soon. After dinner, we watched a couple episodes of That Girl online instead of doing dishes. We like to watch old shows. We don't have a tv to watch anything new, and I'm fairly sure we wouldn't be interested anyway. We'll just stick to our old shows. Dick Van Dyke, That Girl, Doris Day, Gomer Pyle, Andy Griffith, etc. We think they're fun. Although the kids don't like Ozzie and Harriet as much as I do. They like to tell me that Ozzie lies and gets himself in trouble all the time. Pretty funny.


Here's a picture of Rachel, Sarah and me line dancing at the retreat.


See you tomorrow!