Romeo! Romeo! Let down thy hair!

Or whatever those lines are....

Wait!  Here lies the slipper of my one true baby who is trying to escape his nap time!  Wherefore art thou, oh sweet Jesse!  If I were but to find the foot that will fit this tiny slipper, I could know whose head it is that must meet yonder pillow! 

Ah!  I see yonder socked foot!  And could it be?  Yes, it is but the dainty velcro shoe that matches the one that I behold here!  Come back, sweet baby!  Thou canst run from thine true destiny!  Thy will be mine to snuggle and tuck into thy wee bed!

One of the Signs...

...of a true man.

On the floor, diapering the baby, ready to tuck him in bed for his after-church nap.

Sigh...

I Have a Proposal for You...

 When Jimmy's boos, John, went to France for 10 or so days, I was asked to help Jimmy hold down the fort at the shop.  I agreed, thinking that it would be a simple task of helping deliver orders and maybe write an e-mail or two.  I mean, why not?  I used to do this all the time.  It's old hat to just take it up again for a few days, right?

I even went so far as to celebrate my ignorance by slipping into a little bakery in town and getting a little taste of France for the family.

But then, I saw the huge stack of papers...34 to be exact...that were stacked on the desk awaiting my attention.

It was a solicitation that we needed to write a proposal for.  It was for a company that we have been doing business for over the last 7 years or so, so John and I both thought that it would be no problem to just put in the basic info and send it off just to keep our company in the door.

But that was not so!  We needed to write a full proposal for a job that we were already doing...and it was due the week after John got back!

Well, neither John nor I have ever written a proposal like this, and the cost of getting one done professionally was was out of our price range, so, with John half a world away, it was up to me to write this proposal!

Of course, the first thing you have to do to be able to respond to a document is to understand what exactly it is that the document is asking for in the first place.  It took me the first 3 days just to read through the thing and cross out what didn't apply to us, mark what did, and highlight what I didn't understand.  Let's just say that there was so much yellow on those pages they probably would have glowed in the dark.

Then, I made a list of my questions and sent to off to the person who posted the solicitation in the first place, and his answer was that basically, we didn't need to do anything with the first 32 pages, but all we needed to do was listed on the last 4 pages, one of which was mostly blank.

With that news, I redid my markings and got on with it.  John was back by now, but since I had already started the whole thing, it was much 'easier' for me to just finish it and let him do the marketing stuff that he needed to be doing.

Anyway, I did the best that I could and turned that bad boy in on time on Friday morning.

Oh, and can I just throw out there that in the middle of this whole thing, we also went through a name change for the company, so all of our numbers, DUNS and CAGE and registrations, had to be switched to reflect our new name.

Anyway, come Monday morning, we got the notice that the solicitation was cancelled and we could resubmit in a few days after they post it again.

What?  Really?  All that just to have the whole thing cancelled?  Can they even DO that?

Well, I guess so.  But at least it's done for when they decide to open it back up!

C'est la vie!

The reason why...

Here is the reason why I have not been posting very often lately:

I can't get my computer to upload pictures.  Not off my card directly, nor if I put my card in a reader with a USB attachment.

And I want to post things like the pictures of Elizabeth at the ball, and other things like that, but since I can't upload pictures, then it makes it hard to say, 'Elizabeth went to a ball.  She was beautiful!'.  I mean, she was, and so was Fifth Child Annie, but you really need pictures to tell the stories!

We are working on it.  Jimmy has promised to look at it.  I hope he is successful.

Til then, I'll just have to put up postings with no pictures!

One a Month

In our family, we have a birthday every month from February-July.  Jesse was in February, and in March it was Gabriel's turn.  Then comes Elizabeth in April, Jimmy in May, me in June and Jo in July.  

Part of the 'resolutions' that I have made concerning our family is that we will be sure to celebrate everyone on their birthday.  Jimmy and I have been trying to reduce the 'gifty-ness' of Christmas, and so to compensate for that, we have decided to do more for each child's birthday.  We figure it means more that way anyway.  Each child can be specially recognized on their special day with a special day and their presents.

We can't always have a party on the actual day of the birthday, so in order to be sure that everyone can gather around and celebrate at least a bit on the actual day, we have started a new tradition of doing a special breakfast.  This worked even better for me since I had given up sweets for lent, and Gabriel's birthday falls right in that time frame.

Our weeks are often very busy, so we planned ahead and Elizabeth made a huge stack of pancakes on Tuesday.  She did a wonderful job on them!  They were perfectly formed and evenly sized with just the right amount of brown on them.  Beautiful!  We took those and wrapped them up with wax paper between them and put them in the fridge.  Then, Wednesday night, I whipped up a batch of whipping cream and put that in the fridge, too.

Thursday morning, I got up early and heated a stack of pancakes in the oven, leaving one cold to put on the top.  I cut a hole in the top one to put the number '3' candle in, and then stacked it on top of the warm pancakes, stuck the candle in and decorated the whole thing with the whipped cream.

Then everyone came downstairs and in their pj's we sang happy birthday, Gabriel blew out the candles and we had cake!  Pancakes, to be exact.  It was so much fun!

Next, we opened presents.  Well, actually, we opened present, singular because what I ordered for him online had not gotten here yet.

He was very particular about not ripping the paper, and finally he had to get some help from his big sister.

Yay!  A train puzzle!  He and Jo wasted no time in putting it together on the floor while I dropped Jimmy off at work.  It was a great start to a special day!

Then, when his other present FINALLY got here about 5 days late, he got to open that one, too!  I have a picture of it, but I can't upload it for some reason, but it's the cutest little guitar.  It's actually a musical instrument and not a toy, really.  It has metal strings and a very nice body that is white with different colored and sized polka dots all over it.  He absolutely LOVES it.  Elizabeth has a ukulele that we brought back with us from Hawaii, but that was more of a toy with the plastic strings that broke quickly and wouldn't stay in tune and he wore that one completely out, so we decided to go ahead and get him one of a little better quality.  He carries it everywhere and likes to take it in the car and strum it while he listens to and sings his favorite songs on the radio.  So cute!

So, we have not yet had an actual birthday party for him with a traditional cake and friends over and whatnot, but we did celebrate, and hopefully we can pull something together soon...before Elizabeth's birthday!

Around the Homework Table

It has also been awhile since I have filled you in on what we have been doing in school.  Things have actually been going pretty well now that we have gotten into the new rhythm of having Baby B in the house.

Here's what we are working on:

Jo is improving her reading skills daily!  She can sound out words and pick out a number of sight words.  She has an uncanny ability to memorize, so she is doing great on her AWANA verses and we have taken the challenge together to memorize Psalm 62.  So far, I have verse 1 down, and she fills me in on the following verses!  Pretty much the only thing that we are pretty consistent in doing every day is her copy work, which is to copy her AWANA memorization for the week on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, and then she can copy an old verse on Thursday and Friday or she can work on Psalm 62.  Her handwriting is very nice, and writing out the words she can't spell or read herself but then memorizes helps her to remember longer words and really builds on her vocabulary.

In math, she is working on money and counting by 5's, 2's and 10's while reviewing addition.  She will also tell you she can tell time, but that's just on digital clocks, so I'm not sure that counts!

For geography, we read an article about a missionary and found where she lives, where she goes and who she helps.  We also did a brief lesson on Afghanistan, but I didn't get nearly into it as much as I had wanted, and I think that we will revisit it, hopefully soon.  She can identify where we live, where Afghanistan is, where El Salvador is, where Rwanda is and, of course, where France is.  Elizabeth is doing a report on Egypt, so Jo is interested in that, so I think that's where we'll go next.

Science at this point consists of trips to Huntley Meadows and watching what the beavers and geese are up to over there.  The beavers have now added a pair of jeans to their den.  Who knows where they got them from, but they are there incorporated into the outer wall of the den!

Social studies consists of talking to the mailman every day as he comes by.  Gabriel and Jo love him!  He addresses them by name and always has a piece of mail to give each of them to bring into the house.  Oh, that and watching the trash and recycling trucks come by on Tuesday morning.

We decided to keep Jo in the gymnastics class for a while longer to see how things go, and she seems to be settling in a bit better now.  She really likes it, and it is nice because we also get a chance to go to open gym once a week and Gabriel can go, too, and play on the equipment.  I figure that's fair.  I don't want to get him into gymnastics because I really want Jo to be able to have her own thing, but open gym is different since it is not a class, and Jo gets to show Gabriel how to use all the equipment, so it works out.

Elizabeth is, as I mentioned before, working on a project about Egypt.  She must present Egypt in 8 minutes in a fun and interesting way.  This is part of her literature class that she takes at the library once a month.  She has been procrastinating on getting this done, but since I told her that I would not take her to Kung Fu classes on Thursdays if her school work is not caught up, she has suddenly turned into quite the scholar.

She is taking on quite a few baby sitting jobs during the day, but I told her that jobs or no jobs, she must have her work up to date or no Kung Fu Thursdays!

She is really doing well in her Kung Fu.  She took the belt test on Saturday and passed!  Now she is a gold belt.  This is the first test that she has taken and didn't really know what to expect, but it turned out that it had much more pomp and circumstance than what she thought!  She had to show that she knew the drills and forms, and then she had to fend off repeated circle attacks.  Once she did that and did well, she was asked to kneel in front of her teacher and an oath kind of thing was recited.  I didn't know it was going to be like that, so I wasn't there, but I would like to see the next one!

The next book for her reading group is The Iliad, but we are looking into finding another reading group.  I am not sure that this group that she is in right now is meeting what we are looking for.  It is part of the African American Homeschool Support Group, which Elizabeth still participates in on Thursdays, but I'm just not sure if the book discussions are what she needs right now.  I told her that if she found another suitable group, then she would not have to read The Iliad.  We'll see what she comes up with.  If she comes up with  nothing, then I guess she really does want to read The Iliad.

Her spelling is still horrible, which I wouldn't usually say online here for all to see, but she admits it, and it was my claim to fame, too, so we're in this boat together.  But she is still slogging through her tests and actually getting some of them right sometimes.  Well, it's not that bad.  Usually.

Right now, she is upstairs working on her biology and Algebra 2.  Biology will be done by the end of the year, but since we started Algebra 2 late, (in February) I don't think that she is going to get through it by the end, whenever that is anyway.

Gabriel is funny because after we read a book before nap or bedtime, he wants to sleep with the book standing up on his bed so he can see the title.  I heard him sounding out the words of the title of the book we read yesterday, and then his little finger poked out from under the blankets to point out the letters of the words.  We don't do any formal schooling with him at all, but it seems that he is already working things out on his own!

Jesse, however, at the ripe old age of 13 months, still shows very little interest in walking.  I would say that it is nice because then he stays put more, but really he is a very fast crawler and climbs and and cruises everywhere, so it's not really too much different other than when he is upright there is more chance of tumbling over and off things.

And that's pretty much what's been going on in our schoolhouse!

What's going on here...

Wow!  It's been a week since I've written!  A lot has actually happened, which is one reason why I have not written.  It has been pretty busy around here.

Jimmy's mom and dad had left to go home to El Salvador in November to live there permanently.  They are residents of the US, and in order to keep their residency, and therefore their ability to travel back and forth from the US and El Salvador, they need to come to the US to visit once every 5 months.

Well, the five months is now up, and so we called them to see if they wanted to set up a time to get the plane tickets to come and visit or if they didn't want to come back and just wanted to let their residency expire.  Much to our surprise, Jimmy's sister answered the phone and told us that Jimmy's dad was planning on 'surprising' us by appearing on our doorstep and announcing that he was going to move back to the US and stay here 'permanently'.

My!  Well, then.  That would have been quite a surprise!  I am glad that we called.

So, in the end, it turned out that we found out on Sunday that both of them decided to come back to live in the US permanently, and their flight was coming in a 2AM on Friday.  That didn't leave us much time to prepare.

We had already talked with them about how when the left in November, we were going to take over the room that they were leaving and that we would not be able to empty it again since in reality we really needed that space anyway.  We are, after all, a family of 6 in only 2 bedrooms, and we sorely needed that extra space.

But then we come to the problem of where do they stay?  With no job and no money, exactly where could they go?  At first, they slept in Elizabeth's bed and she slept on the couch downstairs, then Jimmy's dad went to stay with a friend and his mom slept on Jo's bed and Jo and Elizabeth slept together in her bed, and finally,  after much prayer and obvious intervention from God, his mom moved down to stay with his dad at the friend's house.  It turns out that the family has 3 kids and their live-in nanny/housekeeper is leaving on vacation for a month, so Jimmy's mom is going to take her place while she is gone, and there is a possibility that she will not come back!  That means that Jimmy's mom could have a permanent job with them which includes room and board for both of them plus cash every week!  And they live right down Rt 1, so it is not too far, and there is easy bus access when they need it.

What a blessing!