Three-ish days off!

Ahhh, nothing like three days with almost nothing to do to make the days feel like they're 24 hours long again. Tuesday was that Unschooler's Park Day. We did not do any schoolwork that day, lol. I had the kids do their morning chores, but somehow it just felt wrong for me to say, "You have to do schoolwork before we can go to the park." LOL. We did listen to d'Aulaires Book of Greek Myths on the way there and I decided that Greyson should've been named Hermes. In case you didn't know, Hermes snuck out of his cradle and caused all sorts of trouble, including stealing his brother Apollo's herd of cattle and slaughtering one to make the first lyre. Yeah, that's something Grey would do. Luckily, after a small talking-to by Zeus, he mended his wicked ways and became the golden child, loved by gods and humans alike. Again, that pretty much sounds like him.

Wednesday we had nothing to do at all and that's what we did. I gave Cameron a haircut in the morning and then we didn't even get started with schoolwork until late in the afternoon. Cameron did AMAZING during phonics (while Cassia waited in her room because she couldn't stop bugging him while he was trying to read) and then we all did a grammar lesson on pronouns. We were chanting the different pronouns, "I, me, my, mine, him, her, it, his, hers, its" and Greyson just kept saying, "Mine! Mine! Mine!" LOL. I think he's gotten the concept of the personal pronoun. ;) For math, Cameron played Timez Attack and ended up getting all the way through the 7s! For history we read The Librarian Who Measured the Earth. Really good book. (Oh, G, I forgot that you asked about You Wouldn't Want to be a Greek Slave... it was ok. The one on Sumerian Slaves was a lot better. The Greek one focused on household slaves and for the majority of it I was thinking, Yeah, so what? That's what I do. LOL, I think the kids were thinking that too.) Other than that, Cameron played his new Lego Star Wars, Episodes I - III game on the Game Cube and then they followed that up by watching Episode I on DVD.

Today, Thursday, Cameron woke up with a nasty cough! I have NO idea where that came from. He was fine yesterday. But we took Cassia to ballet anyway (and scared a mom and her two year old out of the waiting room with Cameron's germs - ooops!). Then we went to Trader Joe's where the children went typically insane. I don't know what it is about that store that makes them crazy. Cameron got a little cup of water from the sample bar and dropped the entire thing after one sip. We cleaned it up and had them set up a Wet Floor sign and he went to get more water. Then he splashed it. I sent him for a napkin and he cleaned that up. He was asking me whether or not he should ask for another Wet Floor sign when he dropped the entire cup AGAIN! *sigh* He got his Wet Floor sign that time. You'd think water would be a safe thing to have in the store. Then we went to our local organic farm and got a bounty for a song. We got seven small artichokes, a dozen carrots with their tops, a huge bag of different lettuces, two celery tops, a decent size sugar pumpkin, and two baskets of strawberries for only $12. All organic. All grown right down the street. Most picked this morning. I really love that place. I can't believe I had been driving past it for over a year without ever stopping in. Oh and I was finally able to compare prices - the organic strawberries at TJ's were $3.49 and the farm's are only $2 a basket. They taste better too. They're so sweet they taste like strawberry jam.

Once we were home and lunched, Cameron insisted that we do school. Since he was coughing so much still, we decided that for phonics he could just read an easy reader to us. He read Ride Otto Ride and we all enjoyed it very much. The book was way below his level and I think he really, really enjoyed the sense of accomplishment there. Next he did math which was a page on making change from a dollar. If he had been feeling better, I would have whipped out the actual cash - maybe we'll do that tomorrow or this weekend. Next was grammar and we learned about verbs that express a state of being. The copywork associated with that lesson was just copying them all down: am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been. I just mentioned in passing that we would skip that but Cassia piped up with, "No, I want to do that!" So she did. Her writing is getting much better. Finally for history I read the Step into Reading book, The Trojan Horse: How the Greeks Won the War which was an excellent book. We've read several versions of the Trojan War so far and this has been the best yet. It was exciting reading and yet simple to understand. It also had a lot of historical facts and told of Homer writing the Iliad and how Heinrich Schliemann unearthed the ruins of Troy in 1870.

Now Cameron is once again battling Droids in Lego Star Wars land and it is time for me to figure out what is for dinner. I just made chicken stock in the pressure cooker while I was typing this up. I could only make about 6 cups in the size cooker I have, but it was easy and fast enough that I could do that as needed without storing gallons of it in the freezer. Now what can I pressure cook for dinner? I have some bulk Italian sausage in the fridge that needs to be used up... maybe that and white beans over spinach? Sounds good to me! Dinner planned. ;)

Oh, I almost forgot! The most exciting part of Wednesday was that Greyson decided that he is ready for the potty! He wandered around naked or half-naked all day and ran to the potty about thirty times, in all. LOL. He was so excited and did a really great job. He's even got the "point the wee-wee down" thing down too. It's handy having a big brother to look up to and show you these things. He went once this morning too, but once I put clothes on him to leave the house, that was it. It would be nice if I could have him out of diapers by the time New Baby gets here. I wasn't really looking forward to having to wash diapers every single day. Speaking of which, laundry calls...