Feeling Better, Learning, and Dissecting a Frog

Saturday's report really started with Friday night when Joseph, who already was dealing with pneumonia, joined the ranks of kids who threw up with the stomach virus. Oh yes, I'm serious. By morning the vomiting was over but he still had a headache and pneumonia to deal with.

Daddy is home on Saturdays so I got the week's grocery shopping done. I spent $150, leaving us $50 for this week in case we need more fruit, milk, or want to get pizza one day. The kids played their weekly video game time (30 minutes on Saturday morning). Much Lego playing filled the afternoon when Daddy brought down a different bin of Legos from the attic. We have many Legos so they are stored in more than one bin. When we change bins the kids love seeing what pieces are now available.

Sunday was a quiet at home day to continue healing. It was a low-key day with the unusual fun of a mail delivery. We got several packages including an Instant Pot, cookbook, Adventures in Lettering book, my planner for 2017, and two Kumon cutting workbooks for some of our little boys. I decided to make Tikki Masala for dinner in the instant pot. It turned out pretty good, could have used more spices though.

The kids asked us to dig our Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman dvds out of the attic this evening so we did. We haven't finished the series with them and they were ready to pick up where we left off, midway through season 3. It's always interesting the conversations that come up.

Monday morning was the first appointment of the week. Mommy and Mason went to pick up a new walker and have some old equipment checked out at the wheelchair vendor. I did new math lessons with each child before leaving. Daddy and the rest of the kids handled the morning routine at home while I was gone. I introduced a new writing project idea to the kids. We're going to spend December focusing on journal keeping. We will be writing both personal journals and family stories we want to remember. Makayla will finish her goal of writing 50,000 words on a single story for NaNoWriMo tomorrow, one day ahead of schedule. She's excited.

Tuesday - I love having a day at home with no appointments. Today was so relaxed from start to finish. School work included flash cards with Caleb to see which letter sounds he knows, math with individual children, a fish dissection in biology, reading with Oliver, listening to Little Women during snack time, and preschool fun. I made sweet potatoes in my Instant Pot at lunch. They were easy and delicious! Our Instant Pot has only been here a couple days and so I've got a lot to learn. I decided to just try using it every other day for something.

Wednesday the kids were moving and grooving early. I don't know what got into them, but we went with it. All were doing school before 8am. Crazy and awesome. Caleb started learning to skip count by 2s. One unexpected thing today - the roofers showed up to fix our slate roof. Finally. We went on with our usual morning school work, followed by an early lunch so Mason and I could get out to his physical therapy evaluation. He'll be doing PT weekly again while he learns to use his walker and we build strength and good habits with it.

After therapy I needed to make dinner and it was time to try another meal in the Instant Pot. I wanted to do a recipe I already know we love, so I found similar recipes to get an idea of times and then made the rest up as I went along. It was beef stew and turned out yummy.

Thursday started off with chores, math, and leaving the house. We had homeschool book club today and it was so fun to get together with the other 3 families. We did a jeopardy style game about our book, Prince Caspian, that I put together in Powerpoint. The kids also played a more active game, played, visited, and ate snacks. Our next book, which we're taking December and January to read, is Little Women.

Once we got home from book club it was afternoon medical care for Mason, weekly speech therapy for Samuel, then dinner. After dinner I went to a Relief Society activity at church (for women 18 yrs and up) and made it home in time to get my littlest ones to bed.

Friday morning a friend came over to observe while Makayla did her final dissection for biology - a frog. The audience was quite large as most of my kids wanted to watch. We learned interesting things like how to make a solid gender prediction by looking at a frog's eardrums and eyes. Our frog was female. Nobody named her. Poor frog!

Daniel was working on a drawing of a squid today. He had some interesting questions and along the way we learned that almost all cephalopods squirt ink, and that each species tends to have a specific ink color.

Octopus ink is black, squid ink is blue-black, and cuttlefish ink is brown.

Grandma came to visit at lunch time. We ate together and did another Christmas ornament with her. This time we took clear ornaments, popped off the top, and then curled ribbon and put it inside. The kids had never used curling ribbon before and some loved it while others couldn't figure it out and had help with the curling part.

Daddy is home and it's Friday afternoon so I'm pushing publish on this post and heading off to enjoy the weekend with my family.

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