Our Day in a Nut Shell

I don't know what it is about this week but I have felt dragged down for the past few days.  I can't blame it on the weather because the weather has been awesome.  I think it is not feeling prepared for each day like I should be and to be honest, the situation with our house in NC is weighing us down.  It is one of those things that you have to hand over to God on a daily basis and leave it with Him.

Yesterday, we started something new.  You see last year we got into a really bad habit.  Todd started going to school at 5am to workout, that meant I was off the hook for making him breakfast in the morning.  In fact, the night before I would make his lunches so that I could stay in bed.  With no, "ahem," responsibilities in the morning I would stay in bed until 7 when I heard the boys rustling around and then get our day started.  Since our move to WA, I have been getting up with Todd at 6 to make him breakfast and get him out the door but I haven't been overly concerned about the children.  However, yesterday Todd decided that we needed to get back on a more strict schedule.  Everyone's alarms were set for 6:45 so that the we could all eat breakfast together at 7.  This way the family starts off spending time together.  By 7:30 Todd is out the door and we are supposed to be finishing up getting ready and start school around 8, in theory.  We haven't worked out all the bugs.

In our Bible lesson, we are working are way through Exodus.  We made it too Exodus 35 today, so that leaves five more chapters tomorrow.  If you are familiar with Exodus you know that means we are at the foot of Mt. Sinai and God is giving Moses not only the commandments but the guidelines for feasts, special days, and the tabernacle.  When we studied this section three years ago, I really wanted to build our own tabernacle to help us visualize it and study it better.  Last year,  a group from Oklahoma came through and erected a life-size tabernacle that we could walk through and they explained all the parts and their meanings.  It was really cool, but here we are again studying the tabernacle and I still want a replica.  Imagine my excitement when I walked into my mother-in-law's office to see a tabernacle kit.  She bought it for the church for anyone who wanted to use it.  Naturally, I scooped that baby up and the kids built it this week.  It was really cool to read Exodus and then pick up the pieces that God is telling Moses how to build and why.  My plan is to labels and info. sheets for each part of  the tabernacle and put it on display in the church.

In math, Bonnie is studying algebra this year.  For the most part, she is doing fine on her own but this week we hit a wall.  There was a lot of work dealing with how formulas are formed and why.  Bonnie is like me in that you give her a formula and she can work it but don't bog her down with the how and why.  We have had to wade through a lot of jargon this week and hopefully she understands it better.  Brian is dealing with percents and decimals while Bryce is working with fractions and three-digit multiplication. 

I have concluded I don't like Spell to Write and Read.  I just can't make it work.  I am using the spelling lists for my kids but when I get the money I will be buying Sequential Spelling again and I am looking into Saxon Phonics, as well. 

Both Bonnie and Brian are studying for their Science test on module 2.  I think they will both do well on it.  Bryce on the other hand is studying plants and we dissected several flowers yesterday so that we can identify all of their parts.  Science is the subject he likes to do first every day.

Well, that is it.  It is after three and we are done for the day.  Time to head outside and mow the lawn and then prepare for dinner. Our missionaries are coming in to town today for our missionary conference.  We are looking forward to a busy weekend with them.