Feeling very happy tonight

Today was one of those -- WOW, HOMESCHOOLING IS GREAT days!

Thomas got up early, had his special breakfast, and we set out to work. He worked very hard. He even gave up his usual morning break to continue plugging along. At noon, I looked at my list and aside from reading and physics in the evening with dad, he was done.

Impossible that we had a four-hour school day! I don't know who was more excited, Thomas or I. Well, I do, it was me. After Bob left from lunch, Thomas settled in with his book and I took a hot, long bubble bath. During the day. It was a very overcast day where it tries to rain all day, sometimes managing a little precipitation hitting the ground, but definitely foggy. It was a snuggle in your jammies kind of day.

And that is what I did. After my luxurious soak, I threw on my favorite nightgown, grabbed my favorite Biederlack blanket, and found the couch and remote. Thomas snuggled in. I think he thought we'd have fun with TV for the afternoon, but the mom that I am found a two-hour show on the Dark Ages on the History Channel. I remember the first hour, but after that I was sawing logs. Thomas enjoyed what he saw. I wonder if he changed the channel when he heard me snoring? (Yes, I snore.)

When I woke up Thomas was making a cave with all the blankets in our house. (We have about eight of those lovely Biederlack blankets.) The tv was not on. I got up and felt energized so I vacuumed the entire living room, even moving furniture. I vacuumed the entire upstairs. I did all my daily chores that I never get done during the day. Wow.

Bob and Thomas did physics after supper tonight and that went well. (Sometimes it's a bit rocky because the two are too alike and butt heads.)

So I'm just feeling great, relaxed yet energized and very happy.

I wonder...would it be possible for this life-long nightowl to change her ways and become a morning bird?

Thomas has already told me he wants normal routine back tomorrow. I think I'll surprise him with some banana nut muffins to entice him out of bed instead.

I'm seeing the light -- the early morning sun rays, and they are nice.

book meme from meg

Mark in italics any books that you have read.
Mark in bold any books that your kids have read.
Underline any books that you have on your shelves. *I'm highlighting because I can't find how to underline on blogger!)
Cross out any books that you (or your kids) didn’t like. I don't know how to do this, either. Someone teach me!

red - we own it Of course when I made blue, it messed up my red, so we actually own a lot of books.
blue - Thomas has read it. (bold didn't show when I publised the post.)

What a mess I made here!


The Best Christmas Pageant Ever (Robinson, Barbara)
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Dahl, Roald)
Charlotte’s Web (White, E.B.)
Freckle Juice (Blume, Judy)
From the Mixed-Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler I hated this, Thomas loved it(Konigsburg, E. L.)
Misty of Chincoteague (Henry, Marguerite)
Pippi Longstocking (Lindgren, Astrid)
Ramona (Cleary, Beverly)
Shiloh (Naylor, Phyllis Reynolds)
Sounder (Armstrong, William)
Velveteen Rabbit (Williams, Margery)
The Whipping Boy (Fleischman, Sid)
Little House series (Wilder, Laura Ingalls)
Sadako and the 1000 Paper Cranes (Coerr, Eleanor)
Sarah, Plain and Tall (MacLachlan, Patricia) Thomas read the whole series and enjoyed very them much.
20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (Verne, Jules)
Alice in Wonderland (Carroll, Lewis)
The Cricket in Times Square (Seldon, George)
The Secret Garden (Burnett, Frances) Childhood favorite of mine
Wizard of Oz (Baum, L. Frank)
The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (Pyle, Howard)
Tales of Uncle Remus (Lester, Julian)
The New Kid on the Block (Prelutsky, Jack)
The Magic School Bus series (Cole, Joanna)
The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (Twain, Mark)
Anne of Green Gables (Montgomery, Lucy Maud) on our to-read list
A Christmas Carol (Dickens, Charles)
Flowers for Algernon (Keyes, Daniel)
Holes (Sacher, Louis)
Island of the Blue Dolphins (O’Dell, Scott) We loved this.
The Little Prince (De Saint-Exupery, Antoine)
Little Women (Alcott, Louisa May)
My Side of the Mountain (George, Jean Craighead) Thomas LOVED this
The Pearl (Steinbeck, John)
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry (Taylor, Mildred D.)
Summer of My German Soldier (Greene, Bette) Childhood favorite of mine.
The True Confessions of Charlotte Doyle (Avi)
The Yearling (Rawlings, Marjorie Kinnan)
Across Five Aprils (Hunt, Irene)
Catherine, Called Birdy (Cushman, Karen)
Johnny Tremain (Forbes, Ester)
Out of the Dust (Hesse, Karen)
The Watsons Go to Birmingham (Curtis, Christopher Paul)
The Witch of Blackbird Pond (Speare, Elizabeth George)
The Hobbit (Tolkien, J.R.R.) I saw the cartoon movie in the 70s and HATED -- double hated it. Not my thing. I think Thomas would love it, though.
I, Robot (Asimov, Isaac)
, the The LionWitch, and the Wardrobe (Lewis, C.S.) Thomas and I each read a couple -- found them dull
Phantom Tollbooth (Juster, Norton) just bought this
Swifly Tilting Planet (L’Engle, Madeleine)
The Time Machine (Wells, H.G.)
A Wizard of Earthsea (Le Guin, Ursula)
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Doyle, Arthur Conan)
And Then There Were None (Christie, Agatha)
Call of the Wild (London, Jack)
Hatchet (Paulsen, Gary)
Motel of the Mysteries (Macauley, David)
Treasure Island (Stevenson, Robert Louis)
Aesop’s Fables (Aesop)
The Midnight Ride of Paul Revere (Longfellow, Henry Wadsworth)
Song of Myself (Whitman, Walt)
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow (Irving, Washington)
The Night the Bed Fell (Thurber, James)
The Tell-Tale Heart (Poe, Edgar Allan)
Thank You Ma’am (Hughes, Langston)
Hiroshima (Hersey, John)
The Diary of a Young Girl (Frank, Anne)
All Creatures Great and Small (Herriot, James) on my to-read list forever
Animal Farm (Orwell, George)
Catcher in the Rye (Salinger, J.D.)
Crime and Punishment (Dostoyevsky, Fyodor)
Frankenstein (Shelley, Mary)
A Girl fo the Limberlost (Stratton-Porter, Gene)
The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald, F. Scott)
Heart of Darkness (Conrad, Joseph)
House on Mango Street (Cisneros, Sandra)
Jane Eyre (Bronte, Charlotte)
The Joy Luck Club (Tan, Amy)
The Metamorphosis (Kafka, Franz)
Of Mice and Men (Steinbeck, John)
The Old Man and the Sea (Hemingway, Ernest) I started reading this years ago and just could not get into it. Why was Hemingway so great? Maybe I need to revisit.
Pride and Prejudice (Austen, Jane)
The Scarlet Letter (Hawthorne, Nathaniel)
To Kill a Mockingbird (Lee, Harper)
All Quiet of the Western Front (Remarque, Erich Maria)
The Jungle (Sinclair, Upton)
The Red Badge of Courage (Crane, Stephan)
2001: A Space Odyssey (Clarke, Arthur C.)
Brave New World (Huxley, Aldus)
Fahrenheit 451 (Bradbury, Ray)
Iliad (Homer)
The Once and Future King (White, T.H.)
The Canterbury Tales (Chaucer, Geoffrey)
“I Hear America Singing” (Whitman, Walt)
“The Tiger” (Blake, William)
“The Lottery” (Jackson, Shirley)
“Gift of the Magi” (Henry, O.)
The Crucible (Miller, Arthur) saw the movie, does that count? Our library doesn't have this, I wanted to read it.
Death of a Salesman (Miller, Arthur)
A Doll’s House (Ibsen, Henrik)
The Glass Menagerie (Williams, Tennessee)
“Declaration of Independence” (Jefferson, Thomas)
“The Gettysburg Address” (Lincoln, Abraham)
“I Have a Dream” (King, Martin Luther, Jr.)
“I Will Fight No More Forever” (Chief Joseph)
A Brief History of Time (Hawking, Stephen)
Democracy in America (de Tocqueville, Alexis)
Roots (Haley, Alex)
Walden (Thoreau, Henry David)
Night (Wiesel, Elie)

Biscuits and Gravy

Awhile ago I blogged about our Hardee's closing and how upset it made us. Thomas loves his biscuits and gravy, so we always went the first morning of school, then throughout the year as a special treat. (Or as a great incentive for him to get up early.)

Earlier this week as we were driving around, we noticed a sign at Burger King: Try our new biscuits and gravy.

And so we did.

For some unknown reason, Thomas actually awoke early and was up and dressed by 7 am. That is an amazing feat, believe it or not. So I thought a special Burger King run was in order.

I drove up to the microphone and placed our order: One biscuits and gravy and one large diet pop, please. (The pop was for me.) As we pulled around the side of the building, we saw this advertisement:

I know, I know, you can't read it. The first sign said: This burger is stocked full of good stuff. The second sign says: Just like our 10,000 lakes.

Now I don't know who came up with that advertising campaign, but it immediately made me nauseous. I know they were talking about good fish, but I was thinking of fish byproducts. Come summer, our lakes (we have several lakes in our small town) smell. They're full of algae. They're an ugly green. And that is what came to my mind immediately, not lovely fish. I don't like fish anyway. So I had my laugh of the morning.

Thomas was in heaven: Fast, easy, cheap biscuits and gravy. (I know, I could make them -- Bob does every once in awhile.)

He ate every last drop. He also said they're not quite as good as Hardee's. He was happy nonetheless.

A busy day

We don't typically have busy days outside the home. I do that for my benefit. Today, though, we had a field trip and a play date at a friend's house.

The local homeschool group went to a pizza place and the kids got a tour of the kitchen and got to make their own pizzas. They had fun. I was wishing I had their kitchen -- the dishwasher that washed and dried dishes in two minutes really excited me! And the pizza oven. That would be fun.

Thomas and all the kids had fun. After eating the kids went outside and played in the yard and the moms talked shop. I used to think I didn't fit in because I had nothing in common, but in reality we have a big thing in common: love of our kids and homeschooling. Whoops, that's two big things.

A lovely outing, during school hours, in a public place -- wow. What a day.

It got better because we went to a friend's new house. I was a little envious because I absolutely loved her house -- it was huge, designed nicely and on the lake -- gorgeous. Then I come home to my little home that has many unfinished projects...sigh. We had a good time, though.

After supper, Thomas and his dad were getting ready for train club. I was so glad I didn't have to go because I was tired. As they were heading out the door, the phone rang. I answered and it was Bob's boss. He never calls here so it raised the hair on my neck. Bob took the phone and was very serious, giving uh-huh's, yeses, mmmm's for the longest time. I was thinking the worst -- maybe he'll have to fly out of town tomorrow unexpectedly to attend to one of the projects. I was dreading that only because I'm not caught up with his laundry. Well, this phone call had nothing to do with work. All of a sudden Bob said, "Well, the key is in the axles."

I bust out laughing so hard that I'm sure his boss heard me. The light bulb went on and I figured out that phone call. It is Pinewood Derby time. His boss's son is new to scouting and this is his first pinewood derby. His boss called him to ask for help/info/pointers in designing their pinewood derby car.

Bob walked out of the room when I was laughing but came back when I shut my mouth. He then told his boss how Thomas's cars did very well, having won districts three years in a row.

Guess who is going to take Thomas's pinewood derby cars to work tomorrow to show to the boss? I just think this is so funny.

The clincher, though, is this. When Bob hung up the phone, he laughed and said: "I would hope that the boss could help his son build a better car than we did. After all, he is a mechanical engineer."

And so it goes. Never a dull moment, but lots of laughs.