Monday Musings...

Outside my Window...
The mornings are gorgeously misty, with all the colors of an opal. I love watching the black shapes of trees emerging from the fog on my way into work, and the geese flying overhead. It looks like we might get some rain by the weekend -- I certainly hope so! While I am very much enjoying the hazy starts to my day, followed by sunshine, the drought is always there in the back of my mind.

In My Home and Kitchen...
On to week two of the 52 Weeks to an Organized Home Challenge! My countertops are clean, and better organized already thanks to last week's challenge, so this week I am on to cupboards and kitchen drawers. This might be a bit harder, as we have not one but two junk drawers in the kitchen (hanging head in shame).

This week's lunch soup (for me) is butternut squash-orange soup. I spice it up with smoked paprika, ginger, cumin, and a little chili powder. The kids requested I make my version of cream of broccoli soup (cook broccoli and cubed, peeled potatoes in chicken stock until soft. Puree and season to taste) for them this week, as a lunchtime treat. We're having my sister's variation on this Portuguese stew tonight (sweet potatoes instead of regular). Tomorrow, we'll be pulling out the homemade meatloaf from the freezer.

In Our Homeschooling...

The Boy's work

And The Girl's compass rose

 We had a good day yesterday. I have a Thursday afternoon class starting next week, so am trying to get us in the swing of Sunday through Wednesday learning, although I may very well leave simple assignments for them on Thursdays. We did an "easy" day yesterday, with geography (compass roses in the driveway from The Geography Book, maps of Mesopotamia from Mapping the World with Art); a fairy tale from The Crimson Fairy Book; some reading about Franz Schubert; and of course, another chapter of The Hobbit! We also worked in a lesson on grammar, returning to an oldie-but-goodie for simplicity's sake (printables for this book can be found here). Today, and the rest of the week, will be more standard, with math, writing lessons, a little history, etc. I re-ordered King Arthur & His Knights, so while we are waiting for that, we'll read the chapters on medieval Africa and Europe in the early Middle Ages in K12's Human Odyssey. I am also waiting on a couple of library holds for mathematical reading, etc.

Reading, Watching, and Playing...
The Girl seems to really be enjoying The Hunger Games! I cannot tell you what it means to me to see her reading for pleasure. The Boy is making good progress on his second go-through of The Maze Runner. I read Mindless Eating over the weekend, and really recommend it... entertaining, and definitely eye-opening! We've been making use of attic finds from my mother-in-law's, and have been enjoying board games like Clue and Score Four. I think, as we've been playing a lot of Clue lately, that might be our next family movie night selection (this weekend it was I, Frankenstein). Cassia also taught me how to play Garbage (a.k.a. Trash), and I'd love to work in a game of You've Been Sentenced this week!

On the Agenda...
My online class, in juvenile justice, started today. The Boy has fencing twice this week, and an in-house tournament on Saturday. We'll be doing some cat toy work. I also have my first tutoring session since December set up for tomorrow. I've started having all my library holds go to the library where I do the tutoring, as that makes pick-up very easy! It will be interesting to see what the next week brings, as M's immediate supervisor, who wrote all the work schedules, was fired suddenly last week, and another employee was promoted to take his place. We're hoping he'll give M more hours!

We went for a walk around a local lake on Saturday, just in time for sunset...

And we stopped at a favorite rock for picture taking...

The kids both commented on remembering this particular rock as much bigger!

Hope you all have a great week!