Revisiting old Friends.

We've been reading a bunch of picture books this week that we hadn't read in a while, revisiting books we love like old friends, all of Dr. Suess, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie and If You Give a Pig a Pancake, Cricter, Leo The Late Bloomer and others. It's been fun to take a little walk down memory lane. We are also reading the latest Hank Zipzer book from the library, called "Barfing in the Backseat, How I Survived a Family Road Trip". My oldest is revisiting all 54 of the Animorphs series currently. I definitely think our love of books as rubbed off on the kids. The news yesterday was that the youngest, who is 9 but has had some reading difficulties, picked up a book at the library yesterday and read quite a bit of it. He's been able to for a while and now he's starting to believe that he can. How cool is that?

Home!

We get to stay home most of the day and I'm looking forward to it. We'll do our school routines. This is the first day all week that I haven't had something I needed to do during school time. I'm thrilled. I hope no emergencies crop up today. I might actually get to cook some lunch, get the laundry caught up and work on those least common denominators with the younger two kids. Doesn't that sound like fun? Except for the least common denominators, it all sounds good to me.

Home.

Ahh.

At least until 5:30 p.m. Hey, we can't stay home every minute, can we?

I did it.

I spent the whole day away from my responsibilities and worries and it was mostly nice. I got a little tired and I'm not much of a shopper, really, so I did a lot of waiting for others to shop. We ate at the cheesecake factory which I'd never done before. We ordered lunch and by the time I'd eaten half of it, there was no way I could have room for any cheesecake. If I ever get to go again, I'm just ordering cheesecake and nothing else! During the shopping part, I did pick up a gift I need for a gift exchange in a few weeks at Bath and Body Works.

Anyway, it's good to be home today, at least for the morning, which is all we get since someone has a doctor's appointment at 1:00 pm today ...

Oh well. For a homeschooling, work at home mom, I sure don't get to spend much time at home, do I?

(picture from Great Homeschool T-shirts

Call me irresponsible ...

Today, I'm running away from my responsibilities and going shopping with the other homeschool moms. We have a Christmas party each year for the kids and a Christmas party for the moms each year. This is ours. We'll shop, have lunch out and exchange presents. I'm looking forward to it, but there is this sense that I should not leave all my responsibilities even for one day that I struggle with. I'm, of course, working before I go and will work when I come home because I don't get any paid time off from work. I hope my husband does the school work with the kids today, but if he doesn't, it won't be the end of the world. We'll make up the day sometime, even if we have to do a Saturday. Now if I can just relax and enjoy myself ...

The new sport.

The new sport around here is putting on socks and sliding on the new floor. It's funny. Here's a shot of my youngest, pants rolled up and socks on, sliding. They've even made up a new game which has very complicated rules and involves sliding and throwing a ball into a goal.

They did most of their school with their Dad today as I was running errands, tons of them, in 2 different towns, in the rain. It's good to be back home and inside, even if my house is a construction zone!

More flooring!

We've got more flooring, almost half the room is done. I tell you, those HGTV shows where they're just putting that laminate down and it's so, so, easy, are so, so false. It takes a long time and it is a pain. If any flooring manufacturer is reading this and wants to donate their easier flooring so we can use it in our kitchen and then I'll write a good review, okay, but it better actually be easy.

Anyway, I'm happy it's going down.

Flooring!

Today was a pretty good day. We got part of our new laminate flooring put down (yay!). I'm very excited about getting these bare plywood floors covered up, although I think they were an improvement over the ugly carpet we had before. I'm slowly getting into a Christmas mood, although we're waiting on putting the tree up until at least half the floor is down, so we won't have to move it to put in flooring. I think waiting a little bit might be a good thing. It seems like Christmas is coming to quickly! I think it's 32 days?

Another Thanksgiving day for us.

I guess we need to be doubly thankful! We are having dinner at my mom and dad's today. Yesterday, we had dinner at my husband's mom and dad's. I also have to work this morning, but that's okay. At least I don't have to go out into the cold and work. I can do it right here at home. That's something to be thankful for, right there.