Taking a day off...

After running late everywhere today (seriously late), we decided to take a day off from lessons - we'll make it up Saturday. Altogether it was not a great day. I have one whiny coworker (older woman) who drives me crazy, and today was one of her prime days for making me nuts ("Could you clean out the coffee pots today? I would, but my hand hurts."... "Can you fill the paper in the copier?"... "While you were filling the paper the phone rang and now I think there's a message." [why couldn't she pick it up?!?]) AAARRRGGGHHHH! Anyhow, then I got M to work 10 minutes late, because said co-worker needed to ask me about bladder infections; went to the gas station where all the debit machines were down for 10 minutes, and finally picked up C.O. from his enrichment class half an hour late, finding out when I got there that a bigger boy had pushed him into a puddle during free play time, and he was soaking from the waist down. Went home, changed C.O. into something a bit drier, missed a rental showing, picked up my mom for her dr's appointment, and so on, and on, and on. I am honestly really glad the day is over, and I'm heading off to bed in a few minutes.

In other news, my baby will be FOUR in just a few days. Suddenly she's hit that stage where they do a lot of growing up (emotionally/mentally) overnight. She can cook, run a VCR and DVD player, use the computer, do some basic math, etc. She's just growing up so quickly. Luckily she's still a bit shy, and very cuddly, so she is still my baby. Tomorrow she's helping me make cupcakes for a park gathering, then we'll have her birthday party for family on Sunday. Saturday, I'm taking her out for a girls-only lunch, and to maybe get her ears pierced. She's also decided that it's high time she that she "does homeschool" just like C.O., so she sits down, very seriously, at the kitchen table/living room/wherever, and demands more schoolwork. She's developing beautiful handwriting, which I was a bit nervous about since I am not familiar with left-handedness.

Okay, enough rambling for one long day.

One day down...

4 to go, on my homeschool lesson plan chart, that is. Yesterday, it went pretty well. Instead of saying "we'll do some of this, some of this, and maybe that", I just looked at my lesson plan, got everything together, and then we did it! Is that what lesson plans are for? LOL. Anyhow, we started with math - C.J. did a printout on coloring and then counting from Enchanted Learning, while C.O. worked on a page of mixed math (Saxon) and a page of addition/subtraction drills (also Saxon). The mixed page included counting by 2's to 20, and then by 10's to 100, which he nailed on the first try! We are officially 1 lesson away from moving into workbook 2 for Saxon 1, so I think that will help motivate C.O. today. Then they did some jumping jacks to get their blood flowing (good idea I stole from one of Jenny's posts), and we moved into language arts. C.O. did 3 pages from his HM Phonics/Vocab/Spelling book, including a maze to review the entire alphabet, while C.J. worked on a printout for letter 'A' sounds. A few minutes of magnetix and we moved right into social studies. Both kids colored American flags and U.S. maps (again thanks to Enchanted Learning). Then we were done! After each lesson, the kids were very eager to check it off on the chart, then they each got a star for finishing. C.J. did take frequent breaks, but she has less work than C.O. so that went well, and C.O. did drag his feet with the language arts, but got through it.

We'll see how it goes today! BTW, for anyone curious, I aced my midterm!