Happy Birthday, Grandpa!

Apple pie for birthday dessert. New shirt from my sister. One candle instead of 77.

The Lambs read in their Botany book that God designed hummingbirds to be able to recognize and prefer the color red. They learned that a good way to get hummingbirds to notice your feeder is to direct them to the feeder with artificial red flowers. They immediately remembered that Grandpa gets excited when hummingbirds visit his feeder. So they thought he needed some artificial red flowers for his birthday present. I'm sure he didn't expect that for a present, but he will enjoy it when the hummingbirds come.

We are thankful to be in town with my parents to celebrate birthdays with them. This kicks off birthday boy season at our house!

Not my best moment of 2017!

A few weeks ago, right before we all got sick, I had a difficult time with one of Lamb 2's math lessons. I was upset with myself for not being able to handle 4th grade math. I thought I had bought his math book used and figured I could handle doing grade school  math and did not need to spend extra to buy a teacher's edition with answer key. I planned to set aside some time to look at it again without Lamb 2 and then sit down with Lamb 2 and redo the lesson. I wondered what my problem was since I didn't remember having trouble with this lesson when Lamb 1 did this book a few years ago. Then we got sick and after we were well I never found time to work on that lesson. My hope was that since it was before we got sick, maybe my brain just wasn't functioning well that day.

Lamb 2 is almost finished with this math book, so I went to get out his next math book today. What a surprise that right by his next math book was the answer key for his current math book! No wonder why I didn't have a problem with this lesson with Lamb 1, if I did, I checked my work in the answer key! When Lamb 2 did this book I forgot that we owned the answer key and I worked all the problems out in my head as he did each lesson. Instead of being upset with myself, I'll give myself a pat on the back that I did 118 4th grade math lessons by myself.

I could blame misplacing the answer key on moving, but unfortunately he began this book last spring and I didn't use the answer key then either. Hopefully I can remember that I own this answer key when Lamb 3 does this math book! Since I own several levels of math books, in the future I am always going to check if we own the answer key before one of the Lambs begins a new math book!

Quick Family Update

1. I think we are finally all healthy. We missed a week of homeschool while the Lambs and I were sick with a cold/cough/fever. It was a rough week where nothing got done. This week is very busy making up doctor checkups etc. It was so ridiculous that I was too sick to go to the doctor for a thyroid checkup and appointments like that. We are finally scheduled to make some of that up. I am so thankful that we never had stomach flu at our house, just the colds.
2. Our church had a wedding on Feb. 5 during the regular Sunday morning service. I do plan to blog more about the wedding soon. The wedding reminded me of our wedding with the same version of the Te Deum that we used. Ram was happy to have a copy of the music in front of him because he did not have a copy during our wedding and he did not have it memorized like I did!
3. Our church has a fish fry fundraiser for medical expenses for one of our members coming up on Friday. We are happy to be going to help on the fundraiser day. I am so impressed with all the behind the scenes work people from our congregation are doing to get ready for this fundraiser. We are praying for a very successful fundraiser to help this family.
4. The ladies at my mom's church are having an apron party this spring. I have dug out some of my books and aprons to help my mom with her planning. It has been fun to get all that out and look at it again.
5. I volunteered to present at a teacher's conference this fall. I don't know if I will be asked to speak or if they will have enough speakers, but I am hoping for a chance to do a little back in the teaching world again.
6. Ram is working hard on his schooling. Reading, writing papers, and doing interviews are all going well.
7. The Lambs are continuing with homeschooling and piano lessons and confirmation class at church. We just keep plugging along and when we finish one book we go on to the next.
8. Because I was sick I have not gotten everything together for our tax lady yet. Hopefully I can finish that by early next week.
9. The dishwasher is fixed. There was some food stuck in it and when that was removed it worked fine. It motivates me to scrape/rinse the dishes a little more. If I owned this house I would invest in a better dishwasher, but I don't so it means scraping and rinsing better.
10. We are studying what activities and day camps this area offers for this summer. So far Lamb 1 and 2 want to do several camps and Lamb 3 hasn't found any that he is interested in. I think it will be a very busy couple of months being chauffeur for what each Lamb is interested in. I am going to look into what the Science Museum offers because I think that is more what Lamb 3 would like to do instead of sports like his brothers. I am happy to let them do different activities in the summer for a week or two instead of committing to an entire fall or entire spring of chauffeuring. Plus I like that they can try out a wide variety of activities and see what interests they would like to pursue more.

11 days

We are renting an old house. Since we moved in on Labor Day it has seemed something was always broken. I have been very thankful that the landlord is responsible for paying the repair bills, not us. I am also thankful that the landlord takes care of repairs, but it does take a little while because our landlord does not live in our city, so he asks his mom that does live locally to schedule the repairs.

We waited several months to get a pipe repaired in the basement that our kitchen sink was draining into. Everything in our house was working properly for 11 days after that was repaired. Then the dishwasher broke. We have been doing dishes by hand for two days. I will be thankful when the repair man gets here on Friday.

Frugal mom win today: We did not go out to eat tonight, we cooked at home and then I did all the dishes. My Aunt Agnes used to always say to do the dishes after every meal. She said if you don't get behind then it doesn't seem so bad to do one meal worth of dishes. That is so true! When we first moved to the house we bought in ID we had dishwasher problems but we continued to use it, we just had to mop up water afterwards until it was repaired. I have not been without a dishwasher since I was pregnant with Lamb 1 and he will turn 13 in a few weeks. I hope the repairman can fix it on Friday!

The Lambs have had some practice drying dishes, but our kitchen is small so I haven't asked them to do dishes yet. They will be glad when the dishwasher is fixed and they can get out of drying duty.