No time to blog

Look at that. My little girl reading An Ordinary Princess. If you have a little princess, find this book and read it to/with her. Or let her read it herself. It is one of my very favorites. Miriam loved it too. I tell you what, this picture warms the cockles of my heart (name the predecessor).
This is Miriam reading to Emeline. We were having a hard time one afternoon so they had their choice--read or nap. This is the result. Lovely peace in the valley and the living room.

Cowen loves to work. I kid you not. The boy was outside with his dad for hours Saturday morning (some Saturday ago--I can't be expected to remember which one). They were taking down the defunct sandbox---stupid random cats and weeds---to be moved to its new location. That involved a whole lot of sticker weed removal. Nasty work.

Unfortunately, things got a little grim when Cowen fell over backwards in the thick of the weeds. Extremely unpleasant.

Tim ended up cutting his shirt off. There was no way of getting it over his head.

In pictures, it doesn't look that bad. But I've stepped on those puppies and they kill. They have hooks on the end that make pulling them out way worse than pulling out our other native sticker weed.

Cowen was pretty tough, though. Mostly he was mad about his shirt.

While my sister Amy was here visiting, she had a bunch of us go on a date with her and this guy she'd met briefly once. Safety in numbers and all that. Here she is getting glammed up. If you're thinking to yourself that that looks an awful lot like an ironing board . . .

you're right! I've never seen someone get her hair ironed before. Very interesting. Notice my sis-in-law Amelia on the orange chair. She agreed to babysit the mob. Very generous.

Homeschool has been going well lately. We've read several coyote trickster stories and made various Native American type thingees. Below is Julie's new built-in-bookshelf homeschool mecca. I'm a little jealous.

We made teepees.

Cowen with the teepee covers. I thought they all turned out pretty stellar.

We've also been finishing up insects in preparation for the Ugly Bug Ball and singing at the rest home. I found almost all the music we're using on this website. Nancy, as I affectionately call her, is awesome and has a TON of free music you can download plus activity ideas and what not. Love it for music time.

Miriam just finished her end-of-the-year math test for . . . kindergarten. Okay, okay, I don't really care that much about math and periodically during the crazy last year we didn't get to school. I had a baby, okay. And it was KINDERGARTEN for heaven's sake, not college prep. So, she finished the last four chapters of her kindergarten math book this year.

The point, all you Critical Carrie's, is that she knew how to do everything on the test! That means, dear friends, that she managed to learn something last year. Yee haw!