On the homeschool schedule for Wednesday: Home Economics

This is one of the great things about homeschooling – when my visiting teacher calls up and says she has rows and rows of beans ready to pick, I have built in slave labor! No! No. I mean, I can lighten up on the history for one day, and teach the kiddles a skill I never learned myself: canning.

We went and picked beans Tuesday afternoon during a light rain. We only got one row picked before it became a heavy thunderstorm, but given that I'd never done beans in my life one row seemed like enough. Wednesday morning we rinsed, rinsed, rinsed, snapped, and packed jars. (I used every quart jar I had and then called two older sisters in our ward who don't can anymore and got jars from them, too.) We ended up with seventeen quarts, after a good two hours' work.



Then I went to my visiting teacher's house and watched the pressure gauges while we processed the beans, and six hours later, voila! Sixteen quarts of beans for the food storage! (One quart broke in the pressure cooker.)



Yes, this is not a complete year supply. But I'm ridiculously proud of it anyway.

Simply Gorgeous

I'm trying to hold on to today, even while it slips minute by minute past me. Today is our last official day of summer vacation: school starts next Tuesday, and I go back to juggling household chores, personal endeavors, running-about errands, and five students' progression. I love summer and am always sorry to see it go. All of my ambitious plans of last May have not been executed like I planned and hoped, and now I'll need to try to fit them in with everything else that crowds our busy school day schedule.

The weather is so beautiful right now, too. It isn't as unbearably hot as the end of July, and yet not so cool that we have to shut the windows at night. Last night Blaine and I were walking home from several blocks away at 10:00 p.m., and the temperature couldn't have been more pleasant. Autumn isn't in the air yet, but it is nice to have those oven-like days behind us.

Tomorrow we'll drain and clean the pool, and leave it to dry in the sunshine. We'll try to paint the front door frame, which really should be done while we can comfortably leave the door open twenty-four hours a day. We'll mow the lawn and organize the bikes in the shed. And while there are still plenty of warm, sunshine-filled days ahead of us before winter sets in, it still feels like the end of something golden and lovely.

Candles on the cake

Happy birthday to my sweetheart. I hope you have a wonderful day, Blaine, and that you know we all love and appreciate you.

Chemistry is...funny?

Just delivered by UPS for the upcoming school year:

My favorite part, from the user manual that came with it:

Introduction: A Word to the "Chemist"

LOL! Yes, "chemist" is in quote marks like that! I know that one microchem set does not a chemist make and I'm in total agreement, I just love the distinction.

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Now playing: Boston - Foreplay/Long Time
via FoxyTunes

The green monster rears its head

I don't mean jealousy, I mean money. Monstrous stuff!

Thursday I put together my homeschool book list for this year. I don't know why I put it off for so long. Wait, yes I do: because I knew I wouldn't be able to buy it yet, and I really hate browsing stores without money because it feels purposeless. So here I am, staring $568 of books and supplies in the face (so to speak, really staring them in the spreadsheet but that doesn't sound as poetic does it?) and wondering how on earth I'll pull that off.

Thank heavens I'm not starting from zero! I already have, for example, grammar supplies for Ethan, Jackson, and Christian, so I only have to buy for Libby and Emma. And one recommended giant science reference book I already have, yay! Some supplies are consumables so I need to buy new for each child, but of course by now I've gathered quite a lot that will do for everyone the whole way along. Unless something drastic happens, like deciding Pluto isn't a planet anymore, which sort of renders my stuff obsolete. *glare*

I made a calendar to put on my schoolroom wall. A big one that can easily be seen across the room, with plenty of space to write a whole family's activities. Just covers the school year, Sep 2007 to Aug 2008. For years I've had a laminated posterboard with a calendar grid on it that I can personalize each month, writing the days in the right places and decorating it for the month and season and filling up with our various events in wet-erase pen. It's my little homeschool teachery version of the bulletin board. But it bothers me that I can't write down things that are coming up in future months, so I decided to go with a paper calendar this year. I was going to buy FlyLady's, but it just wasn't ... cute enough for me. (Argh, it's true. I love fancying up my calendar.) So I constructed a cuter calendar in Word and had Blaine, who by a piece of great luck works at a print shop, print and spiral bind it for me.

It is always so satisfying beginning preparations for the school year. :)