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Well, that beautiful weather we had on Wednesday gave way to more rain. It's been so bizarre today: sunny one minute and pouring rain the next. Even though Cassia is begging me to go to Favorite Park Day today, I just don't want to risk it. Both Cassia and Greyson have had the sniffles the last couple days and getting stuck in the wind and rain would not help that at all. Of course, it's been sunny here for the last two hours but who knows what it looks like half an hour northwest at the park. So I made them an alternate deal... do your chores, do your schoolwork, get the house tidied up for Daddy's return tonight and we can make cookies and hot chocolate. They readily agreed to my deal, making beds without a fuss, etc.

Cassia was the first one done with her morning chores so I took her into the schoolroom for a little bit of long neglected personalized schooling. We learned the "N" line for The Consonant Rhyme, sang Old MacDonald Had a Vowel, A-E-I-O-U, and then moved on to a couple pages in Earlybird Math. (Darcy, if you're reading, I always think of you when I pull that book out, lol.) It has been way too long since I really sat down with her and did concentrated schoolwork rather than just pointing a workbook in her direction while trying to do something else with Cameron. It felt good and she did great. I also finally had a chance to sit down in the schoolroom and clean up the mountain of foamie letters and crayons that somebody poured all over the ground a few days ago. That feels like a giant colorful weight lifted off my shoulders. Remind me never to buy little foamie pieces ever again. They suck in every possible way. Too bad the kids love them.

Next was Cameron's turn for school and we started with phonics. There was a section where they were saying something about certain "or" words having the /är/ in car sound instead of the normal /ôr/ in door sound... but 3 of the 5 we pronounce as /ôr/ in door! LOL! There was a note that said there were great regional differences in some of the words - I guess so! The words were forest, foreign, orange, borrow, and sorrow. Borrow and sorrow were the only ones that we use the disobedient /är/ in car sound for. How about you? Next was Grammar and a review of titles of respect. I guess our school outside day wasn't as productive as it was fun because Cameron barely remembered them at all. Good thing FLL really beats stuff into you until it is forever ingrained. ;) Spelling was next and we finished up a review section. Cameron did really well with that, especially at recognizing misspelled words in a list. Next was Math and a delightfully (for Cameron) short exercise on mental math and breaking a number into parts to add it (as in 63 + 26 = 63 + 20 + 6). He rocked. We finished up with reading a section on the Israelites in the Kingfisher History Encyclopedia.

Next on our list was supposed to be tidying up the house, mainly the floor, so that I can vacuum but certain children... like ALL of them... suddenly disappeared into the bedroom. I should go hunt them down but they're all playing so nicely together (and with phonics toys to boot) that I hate to disturb them. Besides, it gives me a few quiet minutes to blog. ;)

Yesterday was a busy, busy, busy day but unlike the busy, busy, busy day we had on Tuesday, this one left me feeling good and productive instead of exhausted and cranky. We started by dropping Cassia off at ballet and then running to the drug store to grab a couple of things that we still needed for our 4-H Cooking Project. By the time we got back it was pouring rain and Cameron decided that there was no way he was getting out of the car to go wait in the boring ballet waiting room. So we just hung out in the car for the remaining 15 minutes which wasn't too bad since I wasn't too keen on dragging a million kids through the pouring rain either. Greyson only set off the car alarm once. ;) Next we were off to 4-H to lead our Cooking for Primaries (kids 5 - 8 yrs old) project. We made fruit and nut granola (yum) and raspberry-swirl yogurt (double yum). The only hitch was that the oven wouldn't heat!! We finally found out that it was because the pilot light was out but since we were already running over schedule we decided to just cook the granola on the stovetop instead. It worked surprisingly well and most of the kids really liked what we made. In fact, many of the boys from the adjoining project popped over and asked if they could have some too because it smelled so good! I'd say that was a success.

From there we headed off to baseball practice. This time we actually found the rest of the team, thank goodness. One of the families had donated their barn for us to practice in on rainy days so that was really fun. They even had a 3-yr old girl that was showing Cassia all the ins and outs of the barn and farm. I was pretty impressed with the practice and how they really strove to teach proper technique. Cameron wasn't the best on the team, by far, but it is a mixed team of 6 and 7 year olds and this was the second year of Little League for many of them. One thing that Cameron did excel at though was behavior! Can you believe it? My little Hellion was one of the best behaved boys there. Phew! Of course, he did insist on telling the coaches that his way was better than theirs, lol, but he wasn't kicking up dust and hay from the floor or climbing the hay bales and he was paying complete attention to what the coaches were saying. Yes, you read right, Cameron was paying complete attention without fidgeting! Woo-freakin-Hoo!!

And now you're caught up on our lives. Oh, in case you didn't figure it out, we did not find the time for bookwork yesterday. Not by a long shot! We were only home for about an hour between 10am and 6:30pm. But I'd say that we did P.E. and Home Ec at the very least. Actually, the cooking involved math and reading too and I don't think that I'd be stretching it too much to say that baseball also involved Social Studies and the ever popular "socialization." ;) I also got to practice my Homeschool Speech at baseball, lol. "Oh, you homeschool? How does that work?" LOL, I think I was enthusiastic enough about it without sounding too condescending or freakish but you never know. ;) OK, time to whip the monkeys into shape and get this house clean so we can dirty it up again with cookies. Mmmmm, cookies.