Three Plus Two

We're Here!

There should be a lovely picture of us standing in front of our new home inserted here, but the USB cable for my camera was somehow (somehow) crushed in the van on the way down, and so I cannot yet download pictures.  But Katydid has been busy taking them,  so... soon.

We arrived not quite two weeks ago after a long, 3-day drive in a thoroughly stuffed van.   Packing up the house on the New York end did not quite go as planned, since the movers we had hired to help canceled two weeks before our move date but never called to let us know.   Andy found out the morning they were supposed to arrive when no one showed up.  This could have been a disaster, but fortunately nearly all the men from Andy's office came by that afternoon to help load furniture into our two shipping containers.   The second day of packing we were mostly on our own (with my mom and dad's help), but somehow, after an almost day-long, drenching rain, we stuffed the last "miscellaneous" items in our two vans and headed to the hotel for the night.

Happily, the Mississippi side of things has been easier.  We were afraid to expect it, but honestly?  Life in New York is difficult if people don't know you.  Within a week of our arrival, we already had met more neighbors than we ever knew in New York.  In fact, within a week, we'd already been gifted with several pounds of okra from a neighbor's garden, a gigantic box of pears from a neighbor's tree, a box of chocolate chip cookies, an invitation to a parish youth group attended by several homeschoolers, and the acquaintance of at least two Catholic homeschooling families who live within five minutes of us.  And the movers didn't cancel either.

God is good.

Now we are involved in the long process of attempting to bring order from the chaos of a house filled with boxes, getting to know our 5 acres, and figuring out which lane we need to get into if we want to go to the grocery store... or to pick up a new USB cable for the camera!

 

To-do lists?

I'm a little non-sequential.  I'm sure that comes as a surprise.

Curious about the writing that shows through the back?

Jen may be just a *wee* bit more organized than me ;-).

Month in Review: July into August

July was, to put it mildly, a mess.  A few bright spots, though: the baby is very sweet and good-natured and mostly sleeps MUCH better than his siblings did at this age (I have decided to call him Leo for blog purposes, since his blond hair, complexion, and place in the mob of little boys reminded me a little of a lion cub); my birthday was nice; we celebrated our 16th anniversary; and the kids have mainly kept themselves busy.  Before I forget, I wanted to write down some of the more schooly stuff, in a place where I won't forget it, lose it, or inadvertently pack it in a box.  (Actually, I've just put my record book in a tote bag which I will bring with me in the van, but it's set up in weekly fashion and I am just making a big ole lumped together list right now.)

Let me be quick to note that nothing on this list was formally planned or executed by me.  Some of it was informally executed by me, meaning that when I sat down to nurse and turned on the TV, I found something interesting for the kids to watch, or when Chipmunk asked me to read Thomas the Tank Engine ABC's I complied, or when one of the twins asked me what 3+2 was, I helped him figure it out.  But none of this happened because I had it written down on paper.  After 9 years of "official" homeschooling (more or less), this is just sort of our lifestyle.

Didn't want anyone to picture me cheerfully hustling kids through novels and physics whilst nursing a newborn, packing boxes, and recovering from childbirth, an infected incision, and wicked allergies.

Anyway...

What I know the kids were reading

Gareth: (lots of science fiction and fantasy)

• Foundation, Isaac Asimov (finished)
• Wizard of Earthsea and The Tombs of Atuan, Ursula LeGuin (finished)
• Serpent's Reach, CJ Cherryh (finished)
• The Dark is Rising, Susan Cooper
• Ballad of the White Horse, GK Chesteron (still reading)
• Njall's Saga, (Icelandic saga, still reading)
• Just in Case (emergency preparedness, because I was reading it and it was sitting on the couch)
• a book about Robert the Bruce (still reading)
• the Iliad and Companion to the Iliad, keyed to the Lattimore translation... I think the one we have is by Fitzgerald, though (still reading)
• Patriot Witch, CC Finlay... otherwise known as my friend Charlie :-).  Not a YA book, this is written for adults, but appropriate for teens if they can handle a bit of gross zombie description. (Gareth didn't think it was too bad.)  Proctor Brown is a "witch" and an American patriot fighting in the Revolutionary War.  Magic here is based on faith in God and prayer (the good side), fighting against sorcery (the bad side), which is being used by the British (ahem) against the Americans.  I won't tell you who fired the first shot at Lexington, but it's a fun, fast read. 
• The Silmarillion, JRR Tolkein (still reading)
• "For the first time ever, scientists watch electrons moving in real time"

Katydid:

• The Gift of Music: Great Composers and their Influence, Jane Stuart Smith, Betty Carlson (thanks, Jen!)
• Rascal, Sterling North
• The Trojan War, Olivia Coolidge
• various issues of Birds and Blooms, Nature's Garden

I know this child has read more books than this!!!  Or maybe she's just been knitting when she would normally have been reading. Hmmm...

Farmerboy (RA and audio):

We actually got some interesting news about Farmerboy's reading this week.  Turns out that he can't focus and he sees double.  You'd think a child would tell you about this when he was trying to learn to read, wouldn't you?  At least he told our eye doctor!!

• Mattimeo, Brian Jacques (RA by Daddy)
• Mossflower, audio
• Otto of the Silver Hand, Howard Pyle (audio) -- Farmerboy and I had an interesting discussion about this book.

Little Boys (picture books):

• The Pirate Cruncher, multiple times (cute and funny book, which everyone has enjoyed)
• Richard Scarry's First Word Book
• The Lion Bedtime Storyteller Book (special favorites are the Tiger and Rabbit stories)
• What's Bigger than a Blue Whale?
• assorted DK books about robots
• a Marvel create-your-own-story book with cardboard flaps that allow you to give different superheroes and villains different heads, bodies, etc.  I have no idea how we came to own this book as it contains grammatical errors that make me cringe, but the boys, of course, love it.  I believe their latest adventure involved a discussion of Magneto's underwear (not pictured, of course).

What we were watching

• NOVA: Who Killed the Red Baron? 
• NOVA: Missing in MiG Alley
• Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman (episodes on how the universe began and what the universe is made of, including particle physics, mainly me and G)
• The Universe: Seven Wonders of the Solar System
• History Channel episode on Lord of the Rings (me, G, and K -- this one was pretty good and prompted G to work on revising his epic poem and K to begin a story where all the characters have "meaningful" names... lots of excitement from G as he recognized the parallels to Beowulf and the Norse sagas)
• In Search of Ancient Ireland (PBS) (G)

What the kids have been doing:

• Katydid: knitting and weaving and taking wildlife photos.  She also learned to fry eggs.
• Farmerboy helped Andy fix the toilet and figured out how it worked on his own
• Lots of Lego building
• G worked on his epic poem
• Lots of adding by the twins
• Chipmunk and the twins learning that there is such a thing as *too much love* give to a baby.

Some Good News

The open part of my incision is about half to three-quarters of the way closed now (thank God).  The doctor cauterized it and the other part of my incision which was closed, but badly.  That seemed to help, but not entirely.  So I still have a small gap which is in the process of close-ing, but isn't closed yet.  The part that's still open isn't as deep, though, and in general I feel a lot better.  I'm still packing it with manuka honey a few times of day, though, which seems to help oh so much more than neosporin or nothing.  In fact, manuka honey is now going into my general medicine cabinet... though perhaps not in the super-duper super-expensive version I've been using to combat surgical infection. So -- not entirely okay yet, but -- better.

Also, my mom flew up again to spend a week helping us pack, which was a godsend, and the big kids have been doing a phenomenal job, packing their own rooms, painting most of the deck, watching little ones... etc., etc.  Movers arrive August 11 to help us load our shipping containers.  ETA in Mississippi -- August 15, the Feast of the Assumption.

St. Therese keeps sending me roses, so I think everything is going to be okay. 

And thanks to everyone who left such kind words on my last post or who said a prayer for me.  I'd wanted to respond to everyone by e-mail, but things have just been so busy, I've been going days without even looking at my email at all.  So then I wanted to write a quick takes post, but as you see, today is Monday.  So finally I am just going to post a few notes.