A Fresh Week...

...Today...

I am in monthly meetings at work all day... fun!

The Boy is getting his first completed art project critiqued by his fellow classmates and instructor. He has mastered the bus ride to the junior college on Mondays! And he has Machine Tool Technology all afternoon. He is getting somewhat better at managing the homework load, but like me, tends to put off some of it until the last minute.

I finished a four page thesis exploration for my English lit class.

M has work, so I get an evening with the kids by myself. This happens three evenings a week now. It's a good time to catch up on reading aloud, or documentaries. Or play a game, like Apples to Apples (The Girl's request for tonight).

...Plans This Week...

The Boy will continue with Teaching Textbooks Algebra. So far he is doing well with it. I plan to have him start The Lively Art of Writing this week too.

The Girl will wrap up her time telling unit this week (she's gotten SO much better so quickly!), and then we will move into a review of multiplication and division. Hopefully, her language arts book will be here this week!

We watched, yesterday, another episode of Big History, this one on flight. As The Boy is going to the local air show in two weeks, and we found the documentary episode quite intriguing, we decided to go ahead and read through The Wright Brothers: Pioneers of American Aviation. We really like the way Big History links events across time and space through science--for example, if not for the process discovered to refine aluminum, the early airplane engine and struts would have been too heavy. And father back in time, the development of spruce trees in reaction to environmental changes allowed for the Wright brothers to use strong and lightweight wood.

And as we have a plethora of caterpillars and butterflies, we are reading All About Moths and Butterflies for our nature studies. We've gathered a few more caterpillars, to watch and draw/chart their metamorphosis.

The Boy is reading The Dark Side of the Universe, The Girl and I are reading Quest for the Tree Kangaroo, and I have a book written by a sky watcher/astronomer that I would like to start reading aloud (if we have time!). Maybe this week, we can go to the junior college's Planetarium, and watch the current show on the Hubble Space Telescope! We're still reading The Shakespeare Stealer too, definitely a very good book.

I've been chosen as a beta tester for the Great Courses Plus! We plan to spend a good chunk of time checking out what is available.

And we have fencing, roller derby, junior college office hours -- at least we never have time to get bored!

...Around the House, Outdoors, Etc...

There's another massive fire just north of us. This one is far worse -- it has taken out most of three towns already, and has just encroached into our county, still 45 miles north. The air quality is horrendous, and there's ash everywhere.

It is cooler this week though, so I made some simple roasted carrot ginger soup for a couple of lunches. Of course it's supposed to heat back up by the week's end.

I need to gather about a million apples this week from our backyard and turn them into applesauce and apple butter, both of which I plan to freeze... much easier than canning!

We're on the hunt for two more body/boogie boards, as we've been having tremendous fun with this sport over the summer. Both kids, M, and I all love it!

I've found a new tea to be passionate about: Good Earth's Cocoa Tango. I love the cocoa/chili pepper combination!

Have a good week!