Mmm, Peanut Butter

It's been a blow slog week. Things have been either too mundane or too salacious to write about, but I'll give it go.

A friend called the other day to ask me two things: (1) if I wanted to go to an informational meeting about a co-op and (2) since it was near my house, could she leave her son here during the meeting. Yes, to both counts. Really, whether I went to the meeting or not her son was welcome. Are you kidding me? An impromptu visit from a friend? To play? I can just hear it now, "Mom! You're the greatest! We love you! What can we do for you, oh, Beloved Mother?"

I was still basking in Fun Mom Status from last week. FM#1 planned a patrol meeting and in order for one of the guys to make it we brought him home from a birthday party the day before to spend the night. I had seven Boy Scouts in my house on Friday. They were good kids. Worked hard. Produced a good looking patrol flag. Anyhoooo, the look on FM#1's face was most excellent when I told him Adam was coming over.

Now, I wasn't looking for a co-op, mind you, but thought I'd go anyway to check it out. I hadn't seen the hostess in forever and at the very least I'd get to spend time conversing with other women. While we were gone CeanBounter and the boys taught our guest how to play poker, quarters, dominoes.

So I went and the co-op looked good, oh so good. In attendance were four women I knew and liked plus others I had met here or there. Good crowd. The cooperative effort would be to teach ToG Year 2, but they were starting in Unit 3. This sounded pretty good because we're in Year 2 although Week 8. No prob. We could work around that. The classes are grouped according to Lower Grammar, Upper Grammar, etc. which means my little FM#2 would have his own little Lower Grammar class complete with age appropriate material and projects. They primarily concentrate on history, literature, and timeline. They add in some geography and vocabulary every now and then. The hands-on is done there. And the best part is they do NOT generate writing assignments every week - maybe a report here or there or an oral presentation. And they do not grade anything. And the first semester ends before Thanksgiving. Oh, and did I mention they have a nursery? See? Good!

Now the bad news. It's almost 45 minutes away. Yuck. Ick. Boo hiss. I joined a local homeschool support group in order to be able to have groups like this close to me. I am tired of driving to that side of town. I did it for three years for scouts. ShelledPeas and I have been doing our own little co-op and if she wanted to join this one it would be over an hour drive for her from Tornado Alley! I even put out an email on my local group's email loop asking if there were any co-ops out here. Wouldn't it be great to find another one like this and close to home? It's been two days. No takers. Absolutely none. Crap. What to do.....

So, today we're having lunch with Grandpop. Hoping to bring over rice krispie treats. We're trying them with peanut butter.

The House That GLOG Built

It's been a few days since we last spoke and I was starting to feel bad about it. I thought I'd give you a little glimpse of the festivities going on around here. I've been doing lesson plans. (Confetti, streamers.) Remember? I told you I was going to do them this year. I guess I really meant it. I even laid out the next two weeks which are dedicated to finishing Math and Grammar for FM#1 and Phonics for FM#2. Yes, I do realize we should've finished already, but we got sidetracked on Cub Scout problems, swim team, VBS, vacation.....hey, wait a minute.....don't even try to tell me you haven't had the same sort of stuff happen around your place. Shame!

In fact, today was Day 1 of Finishing Math and I was met with a little resistance. Can you believe it? The Big One ran from me! Into my bedroom! He thought he could lock me out, but I chased him, blocked the door open with my foot, and reached around the door trying to grab his arm, his shirt, his face, anything. This was really a lot of fun and we all got a great chuckle out of it, but then I finally had to put my proverbial "foot down" and crack ye olde whip. The first words out of his mouth were, "Hey, Mom, you said I didn't have to do this one, but I love this kind with the chart." Methinks the little stinker doth protest too much.

As for next year's lesson plans, it's taken me three nights to get the first writing lesson sorted out. I'm pitiful that way.

The Sweet Life

My phone rang the morning of July the 4th. It was EuroMom wanting to know if I wanted to go out for coffee. I did, of course. A couple of hours later we were sitting in a local coffee shop talking non-stop about a myriad of things. Kids, vacations, school, relationships, our current phase of life. We were there close to three hours and could've stayed a couple more. I love that she called at the last minute for an impromptu get-together. I'm already looking forward to the next time.

I love having friends who are so comfortable with us that they invite themselves over. That's what our dear friends, the Willi, did a couple of Sundays ago. They rightly suspected we weren't doing anything on the 4th and suggested we get together for food, fellowship, and fireworks. What a great time we had. It rained on and off, mostly on, but that didn't stop the kids from playing outside. We moms didn't care. We were enjoying appetizers and Soco and lemonade inside.

Grandpop came over and even he, being the loner that he is, had a really good time talking about his pre-retirement days here, former church members, and reminiscing about Nana. Now she would've had a grand time that day.

After stuffing ourselves on brisket, sausage, garlic potatoes, baked beans, cobb salad, and cookies we went outside for the pyrotechnic extravaganza. It's been rainy before on the 4th, but this year broke the record. There's nothing like rain, heat, and mosquitoes all at the same time. The kids played in the rain, ran through the smoke, oohed and aahed at the show all around us. The older kids even got to light a couple of fireworks which further fed FM#1's love of fire. Every year CeanBounter fine tunes his fireworks purchases and vows to "buy more of those next year".
I think it was our latest night yet with these friends. At the end of the evening we were stuffed, tired, hot, sweaty, but what sweet fellowship we enjoyed.

Looking back on the whole day, what jewels God has given us in friends like these.

To the Shire!

We're watching Lord of the Rings trilogy over here for the first time. Fantastic! Can't believe we haven't watched it before now. Having a hard time remembering all of those names.