We are learning how to play chess.  Sam is a whiz at it and plays online.  Lily was disappointed that there wasn’t room in Chess Club at co-op this session.  Ollie just likes to be in on the action.  Sam found a great beginners game; No Stress Chess.  Lily has really taken to it and she is a good coach if she does’t happen to be the one playing at the moment.  It comes with a two-sided board.  One side is labeled and the other is not.  Along with that help is a deck of cards from which you draw to see what piece you can move.  The card also outlines what that particular piece can do like the pawn can go forward one {or two} spaces and can only knock out another player on the diagonal.  It is really fun to learn right along side them.  I haven’t played since 4th grade 🙂

No big plans this weekend.  Still trying to survive the winter and being cooped up together in an unending cold snap.  Someone told me that today was the coldest day in the next 10 days…so there’s that!  Ollie is recovered but now Sam is going down.  And how did it get to be March?  We deserve a few more days that hint at spring.  Happy weekend!

No, no, not again.  But today was the day after a night of coughing and awakenings.  Too tired to write in any detail about anything.  {yawn}

The big kids and I went to the theatre tonight.  A middle school production of  The Sound of Music which was a whole bunch of fun and laughs. I couldn’t help but miss those middle schoolers; fabulous ackward age of grown up and child. We double dated with Seth and Miss Arla for an exciting night on the town.  Em  was thrilled to have Dada all to herself.  It was an abbreviated version with 150 kids involved.  No one who tried out was cut.  The whole cast did a great job!  

No getting around it; winter is sticking around for a bit longer.  The deer that circle our neighborhood are back around our side.  Their hoof prints scuff through the snow, drawing funny mazes leading around our yards.  A few mornings ago I woke in the dark and came upon two eating our holly and rhododendron bushes right outside the door.  Things are getting desperate.  One girl keeps snuffling at a tree in the woods.  Either the trunk is soft and rotten or else she can get to the leaves surrounding it on the ground.  Every so often I am at the sink and look up to see her working on it.  Many tracks lead to our deck under which the birdseed falls, gathering for doves and deer alike.

We have been kinder to the birds this winter and made a great effort to keep their feeders full.  A great number of them visit.  Occasionally a song will come through from outside and it makes spring seem closer.  Sub-zero temps and sickness next door have kept everyone inside since last week.  This afternoon we needed a project to occupy us.  Since we have noted some new visitors like winter-dull golden finch, a purple finch (or 3) and a song sparrow, and we noticed that a bread-seed heart L made to hang outside was getting bare, we thought some peanut butter feeders were called for.

Take 4 tubes, a wire hanger, some reduced fat peanut butter, and loose seed, add in 3 wacky crafters and try not to mind the mess!

Who buys reduced fat peanut butter anyway??  It looked so alike it’s regular fat goodness, I didn’t even notice at the store.  Reduced fat peanut butter is for the birds!

Up with E in early AM
Coffee before the sun and kids
Math and reading after breakfast
Run and play by 9
Back for dance party and lunch
Cleaning
Haircuts
Sundaes
Grocery shop
Library returns
Dance party take 2
Marble explosion in girl bedroom
Potty training continuing
Arthur
Dinner
Bath time
Pjs
Reading
Snugs
Good night

I’ve gotten sucked into a new book and have quelled the voices telling me to get up and clean or fold laundry or get something done, instead, I’ve gotten up early and stayed up late, grabbing my iPad at every spare chance to keep reading! 📚📖📚📖📚📖

The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield 👍

We couldn’t decide at dinner if our precious Emmy looks more like Jeff Daniels in Dumb and Dumber or a scarecrow. A disaster of a haircut a few weeks ago has us struggling to get her hair under control. Truth be told, her hair is matching her personal energy these days.

Why, just today, she wanted to dance and shake. Something wasn’t quite right until…naked! She needed to be naked to bust a move. Hana, Hana {this is something she says a lot but we have yet to decipher it}. We have the hair, we have the moves, we have the look. Now we just need a baby agent because I’m sure we could monetize this somehow.

Artsy Friday! Do you know there are kits that give a pattern to trace and step by step instructions so in a couple of hours, you can walk out of an art studio with a beautiful flowering branch or beach sunset? I had no idea. Tonight I chose a different route while I was out at a girls’ night because I know a little sweetsie that needs something up in her bedroom. And none of the kits struck my fancy. Miss Em: proud owner of a silly freestyle giraffe painting. I’ll post a pic tomorrow…😍😍😍

Or How Katy Perry helped me teach phonics today…

No doubt about it, some days go more smoothly than others.  Some mornings we breeze out the door having completed our math work and read a little bit out loud.  Other times tears occur before brushing our teeth.  It is a matter of determining everyone’s temperature while we get ready for the day.  Although I had on my list to get through stuff before leaving the house, that was not going to happen.  Lily had complaints that I was trying to make her do baby-ish stuff.  I heard her and so we got on our way, deciding to tackle academics after lunch.

While I circled the track, I hatched a plan.  How was I going to convince her to get on board with either sorting or seeking out examples of words that have the Bossy R “vowel teams” of -er, -ar, -ir, -ur, and -or?  That’s where Miss Perry came in.  She loves Roar and asks to listen to it daily.  I printed the lyrics to start her on a word hunt and then asked her to put her findings down on our sorting sheet.  We couldn’t find all the teams in abundance in the lyrics, so I handed her a book to look through and she read the whole thing, pausing to have me write down the words she came across.  Finally, we still were without any -ur and -ir examples.  Sam’s lemonade came to rescue.  I set a glass down for her and gave her the container.  Virgin {lemonade} and Natural both fit our phonetical needs today!

In other spectacular news, Emmy is choosing to sit on the potty pretty often!  Yay, Miss Em!!  And Ollie was a bang-up Cyclops today.  He made some sheep to go with our life-size monster, too, so he would have some little friends.  {The Cyclops lives in a cave with his sheep and lambs…}