Ramblings

May-May left today.  The boys sure enjoyed having her, and so did I. 
Joseph spent yesterday and today sitting next to her doing his schoolwork.  Just like old times.

I'm really enjoying the history we are studying this year-- American History.  The curriculum we are using is pretty good with history-- a few workbooks, a pretty good textbook-type-book, and lots of good historical fiction and non-fiction.  We're supplementing with Joy Hakim's "A History of US" which is fantastic.  Anyway, we have just finished with the Revolutionary War, and the ratification of the Constitution.  When I was at home over the summer going through my things, I found this old rolled-up copy of the Declaration of Independence that I must have gotten in 5th grade-- maybe on our class trip to Valley Forge?  Anyway, at the bottom of course it has the list of signatures (I never really thought about how cool it is to look and see what these men's actual signatures looked like!), and right next to it is my name-- signed with my cute little 10-year-old signature.  I thought it would be fun for my boys, exactly the same age I was (well, Mosey's pretty close!), to sign it too.  They took it very seriously and now I'm really wishing I had a homeschool room so I could frame it and put it up on the wall.

This week started out pretty iffy, but it's going well now.  Yesterday was a busy day.  Well, every day is busy, but yesterday was busier than our normal Mondays because Brigham had his London College of Music exam in the afternoon, before Joseph's flute lesson.  So we all had to leave the house at 3:15, which meant that all of our schoolwork and practicing needed to be done by then.  And we had Tae Kwon Do at noon, so there went another hour.  So I was very stressed out and managed to have Brigham in tears twice before noon.  Awesome.  Anyway, I had a good talk with myself during Tae Kwon Do, and when I got home I apologized to the boys and told them that I don't have any school planned for next week at all.  So they can get all their schoolwork for this week done by Friday, and have all of next week off, or they can take it easy and do schoolwork for a couple of days next week.  Well, of course they want all of next week off, so now they are motivated to get their schoolwork done and I don't have to nag them.  I don't know why it took me all morning to figure that out.  I have to remind myself frequently to relax.  It's not the end of the world if every single one of their assignments doesn't get done every single day.  One day of less-than-stellar practicing will not appreciably impact their future.  :-)
So, the rest of the day yesterday went much better.  Brigham did well on his exam.  We won't know any results for a couple of days.  Honestly, I don't even know how the scoring works.  We did this purely on a whim.  I think Brigham was nervous until I reassured him that this was entirely for fun, and that his score doesn't count for anything, and it was really nothing but an opportunity to learn some things and get a taste of the audition process.  Then I think he was fine. 
After flute lessons, we stopped at Target to pick up the new Harry Potter movie on DVD, which we then watched for FHE.  I've listened to the soundtrack for that movie about 100 times since it came out, and it was fun to watch the movie again, being so familiar with the soundtrack.

Today was a good day as well.  I think I was pretty successful in remaining relaxed.  In fact, maybe a bit too much so.  I didn't sleep too well the last couple of nights, and I was dragging by around 1:00.  It's that whole right-after-lunch-time that I start feeling drowsy.  Anyway, I was reading aloud to the boys, and finding myself losing my place on the page, and saying the wrong words.  Finally I finished the chapter and the boys commented on something in the book.  I started to reply in a coherent manner, but suddenly heard the boys ask, "What did you just say mom?"  And I couldn't remember what I had just said!  "Did you say something about Cake Wrecks?"  It came back to me then.  My sentence started out just fine, and then something slipped in my brain and I finished the sentence, entirely logically from my perspective, by saying, "But you never know if it might end up like a cake on Cake Wrecks."  Make sense?  No, not to me, either.  (By the way, Cake Wrecks is a blog the boys and I think is hilarious-- take a look at it sometime!)  The boys and I had a good laugh over that, and they've been teasing me the rest of the day.
Mosey had speech in the afternoon, and then Brigham and Joseph had Scouts.  Every-other-Tuesday is pretty busy for me-- I leave at 3:50 to go to speech, come home and pick up Joseph and Brigham and leave immediately for Scouts.  It's not worth it to go all the way back home, so I've been going to Walmart for groceries while they're at Scouts, and then picking them up before getting back home by around 7:45.  Brigham and Joseph are really liking Scouts.  Tonight they learned how to change a tire and check the oil.  Pretty soon I will be able to cancel my AAA membership!
OK, time to go to bed before I start spouting nonsense again.