Thursday 9/13/07

Today feels like a rough day. Lots of whining, pestering, bickering, contrariness. Feeling rather weary, but so far haven't lost my temper!


7:05 woke, was up during the night.

Got tea, Hannah got up and was getting ready to go to mass and take her Spanish test.

Spent a while on pc. Put on a load of laundry.


8:05 got kids up.


8:30 kids down except Becky. We say rosary in family room. Comedy of errors!


9:15 finally finished rosary after many interruptions.


Breakfast - cereal, english muffins. I gave Sean Tapioca pudding just to stave off his grumpies because he refuses to eat breakfast and then in the middle of the morning he goes into complete meltdown mode. During breakfast I read from Book of Marvels on Bay Bridge. Will googled and found out about longest bridge in world now in Japan.


Circle time - so hard to settle Becky down and just get started. Constant distractions and interruptions. Finally do prayer and songs and skip counting/movement. Sean the whole time wants to tell me a funny skit Will made up that I heard about 10 times yesterday. I keep trying to get him to wait until we've done our morning routine. Next we went to VT exercises which for the first time he really resisted. We only did one page out of the reader because we were both getting cranky at this point! Becky in the meantime was playing with pattern blocks.


Becky and I retold the story of Dick Whittington and his Cat. However, I could not get her interested in her Main Lesson. We drew a border and then she did one capital C and one lower case c. Then she wanted to put on skits like Sean had done.



During this time Josh was upstairs rereading Dogs Don't Tell Jokes.


Hannah came home. Her test only lasted 20 minutes. She's nervous about how she did though.


Will read a lot of Book of Marvels and then wrote up 49 flashcards on the elements in prep for his Chem quiz tomorrow.


Working with Josh - he didn't do any assigned work on his own. Turns out he hadn't written up his draft for Classical writing yesterday. So he did that today. I checked the two lessons he's done so far in Saxon. Right now he's working in his Latin workbook. We need to do spelling, editing of retelling and history.


During 'recess' B and S started drawing hats and cakes from a lesson they remember from last Advent from a drawing book we used. Have to dig it out. Mark Kistler's might have been the name. I honestly have no idea where it might be.


Lunch - read about Rosh Hashanah from Jewish Holidays book. We listened to the sound of the Shofar via internet. Made me cry because I remembered hearing it for the first time in the synagogue in Rome.


After lunch - S and B went upstairs. Josh and I answered questions in his FMMA on the Niebelungs. We also looked up various geographical locations in Germany and such. Will has been reading his Chem textbook and typing up notes on the computer in the study. I don't know what Hannah is doing!



5:01 Drove J, S and B over to some friends' house. They had played with them at club events and such but had never gone over to their house before. They were so excited! It just happens that three of the kids in this family of soon to be 6 kids, line up with my younger three. I hope they are having a good time.



I came home via Starbucks. I made a couple phones call that I've need to make, I printed out the contracts with the music teachers and filled them out. We've already paid but I need to mail them in. I never seem to be able to work the fax machine right so I'll do the old fashioned thing and mail. But Rick has the stamps so I'll wait til he gets home.



I also managed to send out an e-mail message or two and spent time puttering around blogs. Will did more Latin and really likes Artes Latinae so far. Now he's playing video games. Hannah wanted to get more index cards but she doesn't like the white ones, so she voluteered to go pick up the kids from their playdate and then stop at a Staples or something.



Right now I'm going to take a shower and then start the meatloaf for dinner. I want to move laundry and clean up the kitchen island (harborer of junk!) so that we can try our hand at making challah. If it fails totally, I'll just go to the bakery tomorrow at some point!

9:47 We actually made the challah! It's rising in the fridge right now. I'm a bit nervous. I don't think the bowl is big enough. I also read a bit to S about sundials because of our fieldtrip tomorrow.

H and W have been studying chem. At least I know W has. W also took out the trash. Thank you Will.

Still need to read to Josh and then it's off to bed.