Mother's Day, 2011

The card envelope from Dan and Sam

Flowers from Bill

Flowers from Dan and Sam

Drawings of my kids as anthropomorphics, by Sam. his caption says, "Well its mothers day and this is your mothers day gift... here you go" He is currently coloring it for me.

My Mom also came up and spent Mother's day with me. She is working with her cousin Ruth at The Sugar Shack in Russellville. All of my kids who were able to gave me a call on Mother's Day. (A couple were kind of late, but hey, at least I did hear from them!)

Whoo Hoot! * Edited to include Dan's riddle)

The boys new curriculum (Alpha Omega) just arrived.

Trying to get it installed and the assignments figured out was challenging, but I think we are good to go now.
Except we have to come up with a good deal of Science equipment. Microscope,

slides,
specialized papers, astrolabe.. At least we don't need to order disecting stuff this year.










Sam had been working on the math from his old curriculum as I was walking on the treadmill. He approached and says (in essence, since he is a stickler for exact quotes!) "I really dislike when math is referred to as "magic"! There isn't anything magical about it! With math, you always know what you are getting. It is like an element! Unchanging.
Now the Language Arts, on the other hand... you can say THAT is magic."

I love the way the boys reason. Especially Sam.

Daniel came up with an excellent and complicated riddle for one of his older brothers. I am impressed with it.
I will try to post it once he is done tweaking it.
Here is Dan's riddle:
He who sows of me, reaps of me.


and though I will be used to knight, I can be used in the day.

 If you do not have me, sell your garment to get me.

They shall flee as if fleeing from me.

Both long and great I can be,

but make me small and my name will change.


What am I?



Have a blessed day, Thanks for reading.

Heading Home this afternoon...

Chris and Seneca

Magnified Cute
Jade

VERY Christopher

His Royal Cuteness, The Gavin

Samuel and Dan ... about 3 years old


(Is it me... or do these two always stand with Sam on the left and Dan on the right?)

I have had a great visit... and gained lots of pictures. Sad to say bye to the high speed net- but oh well- gotta go home!

More Pictures

Chris and Seneca's kidsBill- around 2002
Sam and Dan... with Becky's lost hat
Me and Connor Around 2002
My brother Ricky, REALLY!!!!
Granny and I, at her 90th birthday

Birthday

Today, my twin babies are 12 years old. The last year before they reach their teens.
They are going to have 'Lego Bricks' as birthday cakes. Tommy has been busy baking all morning. I hope to be able to post pictures... but to do that I have to have them put on disk first. So it won't be today!

They will be getting many of the items- MOST of the items- on their list. Tommy got them each a very nice pocket knife. (The knives were NOT cheap!) It was his own idea- he said their pocket knives were 'junk'. I got them a 'boombox'. Not exactly what I wanted, but the shelves were virtually bare of CD players as we shopped yesterday. They are getting a very very cheap clock radio. I found ONE portable, personal cd player in my budget range, but got it anyway (in addition to the boombox). I found a K'Nex set that will work with Lego's, since the Lego shelves were also rather bare.
Grandma got them Hank T shirts and the Hank Tornado board game. Becky got them Hank backpacks. They received several other gifts as well. Maybe we will let them open presents while Dad is home for lunch. (The cakes aren't yet ready).

I just can't believe how much they have grown up.

What Do Daniel and Sam want for their Birthday? (Updated)

I had the twins each make me a list of what they would like for their 12th birthday- coming in just under 2 weeks.
It is pretty interesting to me that without 'peer pressure', my kids have all stayed KIDS longer than other children their age. They gave me their lists- I have added some translation.

Daniel's List:
"The Quest for The Great White Quail" (A Hank the Cowdog book)
"Tornado" (Hank the Cowdog Game)
Hank the Cowdogs Greatest Hits Volume 3 and/or Volume 4 (CD's)
Hank the Cowdog Drawstring Back Pack
Hank the Cowdog "Warning" T-shirt (size 12)
A Multi-tool

an Alarm clock
An MP3 Player

Star Fox Command (Game for a Nintendo DS)

Sam's list:

A Hank, or Drover "Plush" (stuffed animal)
"The Case of the Kidnapped Collie" (A Hank the Cowdog Audio CD)
Lego Set
"Kirby Squeak Squad" (Game for Nintendo DS)
"The Legend of Zelda Phantom Hourglass" (game for nintendo DS)
Almost everything they would like can be found athttp://www.hankthecowdog.com/ and http://shop.lego.com/

They didn't put it on their list, but they would also enjoy a subscription to "Brickmaster" (Lego) Magazine

I thought of other things they would like but didn't put down: Street Hockey sticks,
Lego T-Shirts, a radio/cd player, Six Flags tickets, Paintball equipment, air-soft guns

Tall- and other stuff

In Daniel and Sam's math today, they are learning to use charts. The particular chart the book started with is the height and weight chart. So we carefully measured... Daniel is 59 1/4" tall, Sam is 58 3/8 inches. Sam is 96 lbs., Dan 92.

The boys are within 3" of me! No doubt by MY next birthday, they will be taller than I am.
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Matthew has been on a tear today. He whined and cried from the moment he arrived- the first time he has done that since the first day he stayed here after his last summer at Grandma's house.
He finally fell back to sleep, but was awake earlier than usual- on the go from 7:30 am. I have had to tell him "NO!" dozens of times today- various infractions of rules we have had since he began staying here. I gave him a swat after his third incursion into the laundry room- forbidden turf.
He got a second swat after locking himself in Ben and Tommy's room. (He is not forbidden to go in there, but cannot be in there unsupervised- and they were out here watching a science lesson. The swat was for locking himself in when I called him.)
He has pestered the dogs frantic- pinching, choking, kicking. He keeps trying to talk over the school lessons, and squeezing behind the boys on the couch and trying to push them off. I finally turned on the TV for him to watch, so that we can get our lessons accomplished.
I usually save TV for the last hour he is here- or during lunch if I am trying to cook and he is underfoot. I think he knows his daddy is leaving for out of town today- and he only has seen him one day in the last week.
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We need to go to the library this afternoon. Tommy has read his way through most- if not all- of the Ann Coulter books in the library. Daniel and Sam have both read three of the four new Hank The Cowdog books we bought, plus the three they checked out from the library last time we were there. I have been out of books since Friday.

Two more units + three pages left in our Social Studies book. Seven more lessons in Science. We have passed the halfway point in the two year Math curriculum. Whoo Hoo! Sixth grade is drawing to a close!
I think I will talk to Mr C about a celebration- a small party for Ben and Tommy's 'graduation', and Dan and Sam's promotion out of elementary school.
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"Stupid Spelling Words Make Stupid Poetry"

Here are Daniel and Sam's Spelling Word Poems... plus one of my own I did in college:

He Drove Home With A Broken Arm

by Sam

He smoked the stone

til he broke his bone

Then drove home.

The Stupid Poem

by Dan

He drove home

with a stove

that smoked

and his dog

had a bone

of stone.

Stone

by Tammy (1979)

Stone Dead

Stone Cold

Stone Dawn

We're Alone

Stone Sober.

Hey, my college teacher gave me an "A" on my poem. It was a five minute 'exercise' using an assigned word. So I told the twins they each get an "A" on their poems... PLUS get them published on the internet!

Come to think of it- the teacher who gave me the "A" was the one who told me I had better to look at some other profession- I couldn't write worth $***

Schuyler Etheridge... she killed many people's hopes of becoming writers. As a college teacher, she was more critic than mentor. After her course, I didn't write for ten years.

Klingon

Have you ever speculated on whether other life-forms have poetry? Today, the twins were assigned to write a poem. Daniel asked if he could write his in Klingon. (Klingon are a race of people from the TV series Star Trek)

I told him I was not accepting poetry written in Klingon- as I don't have a Universal Translator handy.

Maybe I should have just allowed him to write it in Klingon, and sent it to Becky to grade. When we needed to learn a foreign language when she was homeschooling- she wanted to learn Klingon. As much as she wanted to learn Klingon, we never did find lessons available.... we settled for Spanish.

Not that we completely learned Spanish- but that is a sad tale for another day.

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Now this is interesting! I just did a spellcheck before posting. Of all the words I have had highlight as misspelled, many were names that just aren't in the lexicon of the spell check. It did not highlight "Klingon"... so Klingon is not only spelled correctly, it is in the Blogspot spellcheck lexicon!

New Word

We went to the library today, and the Twins were pointing out roadkill along the way. (It's a country kid thing) Daniel asks Sam: "Did you just see that disenheaded rabbit?"
While I ponder over just which word- or words- Dan has just butchered, he sees another roadkill, and exclaims: "There is another skunk... it was disenheaded too!"

I suppose I could just say he has coined a new word. We can add it to our family language.
One of the first words I can remember the twins coining was: "Turkey Leaf", said when they first found a turkey feather on the ground. They were barely three at the time, and knew what leaves were. And they realized the feather had fallen off the turkey in the same manner a leaf falls off of a tree.

Chris and Bill coined words too. They had liquid measurements in in "Gows" and "Gounces". They would ask for some of your drink, just a little "gow". You would think a "gow" equalled a sip... but sometimes they would chug the drink and hand you back an empty glass. Usually, a "gounce" was a large amount of something liquid- but sometimes it was smaller than a "gow".

I will have to remember some of the other words the kids have come up with over the years.

Dan and Sam's Loom

I decided to give the boy's loom its own post. Daniel and Sam got their start weaving this school year. In studying the ancient Sumerians for Social studies, we learned that they wove their own cloth. I got a small lap loom, and Dan and Sam had a blast weaving tiny little mats. These were too small even to use for placemats, but the boy's did make Jade (their step-niece) a handbag for her birthday.
The lap loom is great for in the car. We ordered ours through Rainbow Resource Center. When we went to Texas during the first part of March, I suggested that maybe Grandpa Bill could help the boys build a larger loom in his workshop. Grandpa suggested maybe the boys should build their OWN loom, "like the Indians did". He sent the boys out into the woods, where they used their ever present Multi-Tools to hack down a small dead tree. Grandpa took the tree into the shop, and used his fauncy machinery to put together a more or less square frame. Then we had to head for home.
At home, the loom frame languished several weeks, until Mom and Dad remembered to buy some dowel rods to use for pegs. Dad and the older brothers helped cut the dowels to length, drill peg holes, and pound the pegs into the frames. Ta-Da!

Yes, they DO need haircuts. Dan is wearing the blue shirt, Sam is in the red shirt.