09/06/2012

1.  We have a lot of stuff going on around here.  The past couple of days we've had painters here painting the outside of the house.  We are having wood flooring put in the school room at our new house (tomorrow, hopefully!).  A guy came today to give us an estimate for new carpet upstairs in this house (it needs it, believe me).  We're going to have the inside of the garage at our new house painted.  It's original 1974, and looks it.  :-)  That should happen tomorrow, too.  I ordered ramps for the front and back doors of the new house, which arrived yesterday.  We took them over to make sure they'll work (they will).  I'm so excited to be in this new house where I will be able to go almost anywhere in our yard.

2.  We are also trying to have some semblance of school around here.  We're doing pretty OK in that arena, although we still haven't cracked the math books yet.  Today we had our homeschool group over in the afternoon and we made 3-D cells.  It was a great project!  I made a big bowl of lime jello, and let it set just a little before the kids came over.  Then each kid got a zip lock sandwich bag (the plasma membrane) which we about half-filled with jello (cytoplasm).  We talked about all the different organelles in the cell, and added each to our cell, one by one.  A cherry (with the pit still inside) was our nucleus and nucleolus.  Raisins were our mitochondria.  Carrot shreds were the golgi apparatus, coconut shreds were the microtubules, grapes were lysozomes, blueberries were peroxisomes, sprinkles were endoplasmic reticulum, and little colored nonpareils were the ribosomes.  Did I forget anything?  It was lots of fun, and shockingly not too messy!  I thought we'd have at least one spilled bag of jello on the floor, but all the kids were careful and they did a great job.  Yay for successful activities!

3.  My no-sugar resolution is going pretty well.  I was perfect the past couple of days, and only slipped up with one small cookie today.  Let me rephrase that-- I didn't slip up, I allowed myself a cookie.  :-)  My friend Stephanie brought us dinner (which was the reason we were eating dinner at 7:15 tonight instead of 8:30 like it's been the past several days), and a plate of cookies that I just couldn't resist.  But one is OK.  It feels good to be disciplined.

4.  Brigham and Mosey got into the respective orchestras that they auditioned for on Monday.  They were both happy about that.  Rehearsals start on Monday night.  Thankfully they are both at the same time and same location.  So we are going to have to reschedule family home evening to Tuesdays, I think.  I hope my boys love orchestra as much as I did.  Although, I remember that at first I hated orchestra.  HATED it.  But that was because it was our little elementary school orchestra and we were terrible and it was painful to listen to us.  And for some reason a kid named Mark drove me crazy.  I wrote a journal during the year I was in 5th grade (so hilarious!), and mentioned how much I hated orchestra and how annoying Mark was nearly every week.  But, it was a character-building experience, right?  And I ended up totally loving orchestra when I was older and in some more advanced ensembles.  I never really loved public school orchestra, although our high school was fairly decent, I think.  Anyway, another activity to add to the schedule.  Still to add-- Joseph's flute lessons and Mosey's speech class.  We'll figure it all out.