Trial Run with the younger set

I affectionately call my younger two "the littles" and my older two "the bigs".  Poor Ian is the middle child and can be lumped into either category given the event.  This school year he will be part of "the littles".  This in no way indicates he is doing "little" work.  He will be doing grade level work if not above.  This year I have the littles using My Father's World 1850-Modern times (portions of it).  We took a break from Sonlight as a whole and are trying something new, not because Sonlight wasn't working for us but because I was burnt out on Core 3 and juggling more than one core.  With MFW I can instruct all three in the area of history.  I am using a different Bible curriculum than MFW but again all three will be using it.  Apologia Who Is GOd?  is what we will be using.  I did a review on it for TOS last year and liked it enough to pull into our school year.  I ordered the notebooking journals as well.  I am also using Apologia Exploring Creation with Anatomy for science.

Today I am doing a trial run of the first day.  My bigs are away at church bootcamp so I have my littles undistracted.  I gave them the option of which subject to start with and they chose math.  We started with our Classical Conversation math facts.  This is how it went down
Avery skip counted by 2's to 24 and skip counted by 3's to 36
Neil did the 3's times tables
Ian did the 4's times tables.
They all listened in while the others recited, gotta love the one room school house set up.
I then set the timer for 30 minutes and had Avery work in some old workbooks I found while cleaning out the school room.  Mostly addition and other simple stuff to keep her brain working.  Neil corrected and rewrote some tests from the end of last year that I couldn't read :/  Ian wrote out the times tables 1-4.  The timer rang and they voted for History next.
I printed out 3 US maps and gave them a pretest.
Avery got 5/50
Neil got 12/50
Ian got 28/50

Being a pretest I was glad to see lots of room for improvement.  It means they won't be bored as we learn some states this year.  So with those results in hand we move on in our history lesson to the Northern States Song and some history review.  A little later we will hit the store for some colonial cooking supplies and eat something from the past.

This post is mostly for me to look back on as we tackle this new journey with a new curriculum and some piecing together of some other subjects all while doing Classical Conversations.

School room changes

I'm in the middle of cleaning out and rearranging my schoolroom.  My idea was to pull everything into the hall and only put back in what I wanted.  The result of that brilliant plan was what my husband lovingly refers to as "hoarders hall"

It only looks slightly better at this moment.  However you no longer need to hurdle to go watch tv ( I am too old to hurdle). 

The rest of the room is coming together.  I moved the furniture around with the help of my dashing husband.  Good thing he works from home as my pec muscles just aren't what they used to be before surgery.The other half of the room I haven't photographed.  But it is set up.  This week I am purging hoarder hall and moving books onto all those empty shelves.  The coffee table will hold manipulatives and science supplies, the shelf behind will hold school books and manuals.  Most of what you see furniturewise is IKEA  I LOVE IKEA!  

 I will post final pics when it is all done and when hoarders hall is cleaned up.  Coming up soon will be a list of what we are using this year too.

Update

After trying to get information last night from the office it closed without a return call.  Friends of ours called us up and treated us to a movie for John's birthday and brain distraction for me.  The movie ended at 11 which left me exhausted.  I gratefully slept hard all night and woke just after 8.  I called the office and got voicemail again.  I called the automated number, it must still be down because the receptionist answered....I cried she tracked down the nurse.  Turns out she was calling to say all results were good!  UGH!   I am ecstatic over the good news but don't hand me a slip of paper saying call the automated results line in 10 days and then call me in 4.  I cried to the nurse too and begged her to flag my chart to allow release of all information to my husband if he answers the phone.  I had signed the release to leave a message on a machine  but he picked up both lines.  So now my chart is flagged.  God willing I won't see another doctor until September when I return to my onc for a check up and blood draw.
Thank you all for your prayers.  I truly felt them as  I was able to sleep all night with out anxiety.

Confession......I'm scared

I came home from a perfectly enjoyable afternoon at a friends pool to the news that my doctors office had called not 10 minutes before.  I had failed to grab my phone when I left earlier, an unusual event for me.  So with that news I quickly hit call on my cell and was greeted with the nurses voice mail.  I grabbed the little form they had sent home with me asking me to call back in 10 business days (still 6 days away) and dialed that number.....it rang.....and rang.......and rang while my blood pressure climbed.  The third time I attempted the number the nurse picks up and says the line is down and transfers me to the nurse whose voicemail I get again.  My heart races and I try to repeat I Peter 5:7 to myself and I.just.can't.
Why?  Why am I panicking over a missed call?  Two years ago a simple doctors visit sent my life into a tail spin.  That simple little fibroid adenoma my surgeon removed "just to be cautious" turned out to have Stage 0 LCIS attached to it.  Even typing that out my throat is thickening and tears are welling like it was yesterday.  Even then a simple visit to the oncologist leads me to a decision I had rebelled again over cheesecake with a dear friend who was walking me through my diagnosis.  Even after I was cleared my oncologist dropped another bomb of my iron being very low and needing infusions twice.  I had let my guard down last week when I stepped into the office of my GYN for an annual appointment.  I was overdue by a year and figured I needed to get in there again.  I say a NP, my doctor was out on maternity leave, who was very understanding and supportive of my decisions.  So a simple doctors visit just isn't even in my vocabulary anymore.  Now 6 days before I am supposed to call in for results of blood work and other female tests they are calling me...and I'm scared.  I missed the 4pm cutoff so I won't hear back until tomorrow.
Dinner has gone unplanned so hubby is cooking.....he shouldn't have to.
I'm crying and paralyzed......I shouldn't be.
I'm creeping towards the edge of a pit I promised I would never go back to.....I shouldn't be.

The only good I see in this is that my hallway full of stuff kicked out of the schoolroom might get cleaned up tonight with all my nervous energy.

Summer is here

Summer is here and we have spent it being lazy, swimming in friends pools and working over 40 hours at Cub Scout Day Camp.  This week has been the first one that we are mellowed out.  So mellowed out I decided to make doctors appointments now rather than later in the summer.  Avery was first up with her orthopedic.  Everything looks good on her, so good that she doesn't want to do surgery or see her for a year!  Fabulous news.  The other appointment was for me.  I dragged my sorry self to the GYN.  Haven't been since I was diagnosed so it was time.  I had to laugh when she went to warm her hands before doing a breast exam :)  For the record they are no longer looking for lumps but just examining the scars and implants.  Next up is chiro appointments for John and Ian.  The rest of us are looking forward to more water days and lots of ice cream.  If I don't blog you can find me at the nearest pool.