Throwing Marshmallows

A couple of years back when the boys were arguing over something extremely stupid, I told them that I was going to start keeping a list of all the really stupid things that they had argued about (like who was going to go through a door first). They thought it was hilarious (and it distracted them from the arguing) so I threaten to add things to the list from time to time. Since I have since lost track of the original list, I thought that it might be a good thing to keep track of on my blog.

Today’s RSTTEBAA entry came when they were eating lollipops. They got down towards the end of the lollipop and started arguing about whose lollipop was “more finished”. Kyle insisted that his was the “most done” and Jason swore that his was so done that you would have to “cut the outside off to get it any cleaner”. The argument escalated from there…until I broke in and reminded them about the RSTTEBAA list…which still worked thank goodness!

Gotta love kids…at least that is what they tell me…
~Stephanie

Well, they were calling for ice and freezing rain, but we wound up with a couple of inches of snow. The boys (and Ellie!) were thrilled.  Kyle and I took Ellie out first thing this morning and it looked basically like white slush, but then over the morning it turned into a great layer of snow.

Brotherly Love

A winter wonderland

Ellie joins in the fun.

Ellie gets Jason who gets Kyle…

We shoveled and the boys got buried.

How wonderful to be a kid…

Snowball fights with Dad.

Jason attacks.

Dad fires back.

Quick puppy update: Ellie has settled in quite nicely. She slept all night in her crate last night with no problems (yea!) and we have had no accidents today (double yea!). The boys are having so much fun playing with her. She is definitely fitting in very well. And she absolutely LOVES the snow. She is so funny to watch…she almost hops and is just ecstatic any time she gets to run.

~Stephanie

Get a dog! Yes, after a month of searching we finally have found a new puppy to add to our family. Her name is currently Ellie (we might change it, but are not sure). She is a 10 month old Cockapoo and is about 12 pounds and such a sweetie!

Her family was building a new house and the home owner’s association changed the rules so that they are only allowed to have 2 dogs, so they needed to find another home for her. They had posted a “classified ad” on petfinder.org and luckily choose us. Ellie came from a family with 4 kids under 7 years old so she is used to an active household with kids.

Ellie loves to run (and we luckily have a great backyard) but is also fairly calm indoors. So far she has been really good at coming when called and has not tried to run off. She is definitely still a puppy (she is partially housebroken so we are working a bit on that).

Both Jason and Kyle have really been enjoying getting to know her…especially Kyle. We had actually started looking for a dog as a present for his 7th birthday (February 18th) and I was starting to think that we were not going to find a one or would have to go out of state (we were looking for a miniature poodle mix, around 1-3 years old). But Ellie was nearby in Vienna so we could not have asked for a better match.

So now I get to have flashbacks to what it was like having a newborn…Ellie was up until about 3am last night and then up again around 5am (but I can’t really blame her…her owner wound up not getting here until 9:30pm, so I am sure that affected her being able to fall asleep). Hoping that she sleeps a bit better tonight!

She seems to be adjusting well and likes to follow me around from room to room. She is very social. She is basically a little fuzz ball and her black makes her a bit hard to take good photos of, but here is the photo that her owner sent us:

Jason says that she looks a lot cuter in person then in this picture!

She supposedly loves the water and is good in the car (we actually took her with us to PetSmart this evening and she did great). She is also extremely friendly. The cats are not thrilled with her, but right now are just laying low. I am sure that they will just come around to ignoring her. She hasn’t paid much attention to the guineas in their cage.

I will say that cats are much easier! (I am very much a cat person, but how can I stay in the way of a boy and his dog? Kyle has wanted a dog for many, many years). And I did know that she would be more work before agreeing to get a dog. Now just to get used to the trips outside…in the cold! But the walks are fun and you have never seen Kyle so motivated! The day before we got her, he insisted on writing out the pet store shopping list and also kept pestering me to help him clean up his room (her crate is currently in his room). He could not wait until this morning to walk her and we had a really nice time with the 3 of us.

Well, off to hopefully get some sleep. Luckily she is looking tired tonight (we ran her around quite a bit!) so wish me luck!

~Stephanie

I have a post over at Life Without School called “The Right Way“:

Learning does not have to be an either/or thing. There is no “right” or “wrong” way to learn. Homeschooling gives me the flexibility to find the “right for my child” approach.

Enjoy!

~Stephanie

“I try to take one day at a time, but sometimes several days attack me at once.”– Ashleigh Brilliant

I saw this quote over at Brave Writer and what can I say, it spoke to me. On a couple of different levels.

My days have been attacking me all at once lately (which explains the sporadic blogging). Hope I can get control of them soon…

~Stephanie

I knew that I liked Virginia Governor Tim Kaine for a reason (ok, many reasons). He just threw his support behind Barack Obama (the first governor other then Illinois to do so).

~Stephanie

January 18th

January 21st

January 22

~Stephanie

What are the Cybils?

Like all revolutions, this one started small, with a single post on a blog devoted to children’s literature. The Newbery Medals seemed too elitist and the Quills, well, not enough so.

Was there a middle ground, an annual award that would recognize both a book’s merits and popularity?

The answer: invent one! Within hours, this meme had circulated among some of the biggest bloggers in the burgeoning kidlitosphere, the cozy corner of the Web where children’s books are given the same regard as their grown-up counterparts.

Within days, the new awards had a name and a website: The Cybils, a loose acronym for Children’s and YA Bloggers’ Literary Awards. Nominations quickly opened in eight categories, from picture books up to Young Adult fiction and even graphic novels.

Well after many, many months of waiting, they have published the list. Check out the best in the following categories:

• Fantasy and Science Fiction
• Fiction Picture Books
• Graphic Novels
• Middle Grade Fiction
• Non-fiction (Middle Grade and YA)
• Non-fiction Picture Books
• Poetry
• Young Adult Fiction

Great way to find great recommendations for your kids (and your own!) reading enjoyment.

Have fun!

~Stephanie

January 15th

Saw this idea on another blog and thought that it was kinda cool. What can you tell about a person from their keys?

January 17th - Gotta love that face!

~Stephanie

then to shop for winter boots in February. Went to two stores today and all we could find was sandals.

This is one of the drawbacks of living in Virginia…we have occasional bouts of heavy snow, but most of the time do not get much. So you buy boots and maybe wear them once or twice. Up until the last couple of weeks it had been a really warm winter. Of course the last couple of weeks have been really cold but we have only had maybe half an inch of snow.

We are supposed to be hit tomorrow so I figured that I should get Jason a pair of boots (Kyle’s from last year still fit). Should have known better. Let’s hope that it is not as bad as they are saying.

Oh, and that noise you are hearing? That is all my Canadian friends laughing like crazy…

~Stephanie

A little bit ago I talked about how I was enjoying using Picasa. At the time (ok, so it was only about a month ago!) it seemed to be what I needed…nothing fancy, easy to use. I had tried other more complicated photo software but I just did not have the time to figure out how to use it.

Well, that was then. This is now!

Not June over at These Go To Eleven told me about Photoshop Elements. Under $100 and at the time, Amazon was also running a $30 rebate and it sounded great. More editing options and Not June just raved about the photo organization features.

All I can say is wow! I will admit that I am a bit intimidated by the full-blown Photoshop but Elements is just perfect and Not June was so right about the organizational features. Actually I haven’t even used the editing features yet because I have been having so much fun organizing. From what I have seen it has a fair number of advanced editing features (you can do layers and masking and tons of advanced editing and special effects) but so far seems very easy to use.

The fun part for me so far has been going through all my photos (all 5000+ of them) and categorizing them. I had previously tried to do a little bit of this with folders but mostly I just saved by date. As I needed them, I would pull pictures out into separate folders…which meant a lot of duplication and having to remember where photos were saved. Now I can use tags and set up collections (for events etc). The flexibility is incredible. So cool.

I especially like being able to view the photos by date rather then by file location. And I have realized how many of the dates on my pictures are off! At one point I must have had my camera set wrong because I had tons of pictures for May, June and July 2007 yet none for 2006! So it is taking me a little while to clean things up, but it is going to be incredible.

The only thing that I am having to really get used to is moving files around…it can be hard to remember if I am moving the actual files on my computer or just in Photoshop. It can be a bit confusing, but I am getting more used to it the more that I use it.

I seriously doubt that I will grow out of Elements any time soon. Thanks so much Not June for the recommendation!

Of course, this is yet something that will have to compete with my blogging time…has anyone out there figured out how to add more hours in the day? Or reduce the amount of sleep I need? Anyone? Please?

~Stephanie

January 11th - Making Lava for Jason’s birthday cake

January 13th - Sammie

~Stephanie

Making Books for Children has a really cute Valentine Heart book as well as some other neat ideas for Valentine’s Day.  And fun links including the History of Candy Hearts.
Of course that means that I really should do something about Valentine’s day. Am I the only homeschool mom out there who is not really very crafty? It seems like these kind of holidays sneak up on me all the time…

~Stephanie

Yesterday, I joined in on Wisteria’s fun blue challenge and promised you an answer today.

Drumroll please…..

Yes, a chair. Exciting isn’t it.

And actually the chair has a bit of history…it was my mother’s as a child and mine as a child. it has seen many, many coats of paint. We actually have two of them along with a small child’s size square table. We have them in the kitchen and the boys often have breakfast or lunch there or do crafts or it collects lots of papers and other miscellaneous stuff that we have floating around. And the chairs work as excellent step stools as well.

Thanks for playing!

~Stephanie

Over at Twice Bloomed Wisteria, she had a fun idea to combat midwinter boredom:

 Take a close up picture of some ordinary blue household object. Post it and let people guess what it is.

I’m game!

I’ll post what it is tomorrow…

Thanks to JoVe for the heads up!

~Stephanie

Check out all the great posts from folks who actually remembered (unlike me!) to submit something to Unschooling Voices #7.

And now I am off to bed…yes before midnight! I must be getting old…I find that I actually need sleep lately…

~Stephanie

It looks like someone has stolen our credit card number (we both still have our actual cards). I came home yesterday to 3 phone calls wanting to verify application information for things that we never applied for. And today we received 4 packages for things that we never bought (including a 45 pound box from Nutrisystem!) We have also identified at least 4 Amazon purchases that we never made.

The weird thing is that whoever stole our card is buying things and having them shipped to us. All the contact information given is our real information. So companies are calling us to verify missing information.The items that he/she bought with our stolen credit card are being sent to us.

What gives? This makes no sense. If you go through the trouble of stealing a credit card it seems as if you would want to keep the things that you buy with it. Right?

We canceled our card yesterday and are going through the statement with a fine tooth comb. The charges are not huge but they are numerous. It looks like this will be more of a pain then anything else. We have to return the packages that we have received and get the charges removed. We also have a lot of charges (mostly donations) set up to automatically hit our credit card each month which we will have to move to our new card.*

So that has been the excitement for the day. Could be worse!

~Stephanie

* The one silver lining is that my Starbucks card was just automatically reloaded…whew! Gotta make sure that the important things are taken care of…

Looks like I have been tagged twice (by Eclectic Homeschool  and Circle the World) for this meme so I should probably do it…Seems like fun, so here goes:

Each person who gets tagged needs to write a blog post of their own 6 weird things as well as clearly state this rule. After you state your 6 weird things, you need to choose 6 people to be tagged and list their names. Don’t forget to leave a comment that says “you’re tagged” in their comments and tell them to read your blog for information as to what it means.

1. I love to eat jelly beans and pretzels together. Something about the salty and sweetness combination. Fritoes and M&Ms work too. And chocolate covered pretzels (but they sell those, so that is not so weird).

2. I collect and trade smashed pennies.

3. I look forward to long car rids by myself so that I can listen to audio books on my iPod (I actually chose to drive to Fredericksburg during rush hour to see David Albert)

4. I used to only eat steak if I could dip it in mayonaise (like catsup). This used to drive my Dad crazy. I have since grown up and prefer horseradish an/or steak sauce.
5.  While I love teaching/learning with my own kids, I do not like teaching other people’s kids.

6. I was a band geek throughout high school and college (a proud member of the Marching Virginians at Virginia Tech, where I met my husband).

I have no idea who has been tagged/not tagged for this, so if you want to play, go for it!

~Stephanie