Weekly Wrap Up

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In our life this week…

It is cold and we’re going through our firewood at a great rate.  But that’s a whole lot better than going through heating oil.

As I mentioned before, my son has been getting regular messages from Web Hosting Hub about how Tea Time with Annie Kate is using up too much server space.  We’ve tried many things involving plug ins, captcha, and more.  I cleaned up my sidebars and reduced the number of posts that show up on a page.  But finally my son asked the hosting provider to block access from China, where 2/3 of the spam problem was coming from…and they were able to do that!  Since I have no legitimate readers from China, this made sense— a whole lot more sense than the other two options: paying huge fees to keep this blog running or shutting it down.

This was a week full of running around:  another trip to Canadian Tire for the van, a doctor’s visit about a swollen knee, taking that child to the physiotherapist for the knee, shopping for clothes, and renewing a health card, as well as the usual catechism, library, judo, and soccer.

I’m still thinking about my New Years’ goals and trying things out to see what I can realistically commit to.

In our homeschool …

Miss 11 needed to write a business letter for her Intermediate Language Lessons course so she wrote a letter to the authors of the Lily books, asking them to write a fifth book.  She was so excited to get a response!

I’m thrilled to be working on the next 6-week and 12-week assignment lists for the girls.  That means we are actually moving ahead!  In fact, we’re in the middle of our winter push.  In the fall we were busy with our bumper harvest, and in the spring we’ll be in the garden again, so this is the best time of year for us to study and we’re taking full advantage of it.  The girls are working hard, focusing well, and moving through their courses at a wonderful rate.  We were quite behind, due to the bumper harvest as well as a lack of organized motivation, but it seems as though we may catch up after all.

We’re all enjoying Miss 13’s Grammar of Poetry.  It is so full of enjoyable poems and other fun that we laugh a lot while studying it.  I’ve also decided on Covenantal Catechism for her Bible studies, now that she has dropped Omnibus 1.  It’s such a blessing to have enough resources available, after all these years of homeschooling, to be able to switch curriculum without extra expense.  I think that these ‘new’ resources will work much better for her.  This whole experience confirms my opinion that Omnibus, though one of my favorite curricula, is not ideal for younger teens.

In our gluten free kitchen… Apple pancakes.  Onion soup.  Tuna patties.  Spaghetti squash.  Applesauce bread. Pumpkin soup.  Tomato soup.  Beef roast.  Elderberry lemon bread.  Oat bread.  Garlic toast. Sausages.  Banana muffins. Butternut squash.  Sauerkraut, chard, leeks, soup stocks, and tomatoes from the freezer.  Chocolate.  Oranges.  Cheesecake.  Build-your-own taco salad.  Homemade (!) soda pop.

Some of my favorite things were…

• Grammar of Poetry  lessons with the girls
• Reading aloud
• Warm fire, warm tea, warm soup
• Watching the physiotherapist assess Miss 13’s knee.  She is so thorough and so knowledgeable!  There are so many things to know about in this great world that God has created!
• Reading more about the history of science
• Beautiful gifts from my family, including a horse embroidery, supper-making coupons, beautiful luncheon napkins, a bird calendar, chocolate, and, of all things,  a soda pop maker.

Questions/thoughts I have…  Have you had behind-the-scenes blog issues?  If so, how did you resolve them?

Fitness…

We’re still going through a lot of Kleenexes and sneezing a lot, but we’re all feeling better and no one else got the tummy flu.  My average daily steps are still below 10,000 even though I spend time on the treadmill almost every day.  However, I have been doing my physio exercises fairly regularly and that has been good.

Some of the things I’ve been working on…

• Schoolwork, doing it and planning the next weeks
• Making soup—three pots so far this week, and one more planned for today
• Reading about the history of science
• Still planning 2014 projects and goals
• Clearing my desk; each piece of paper or book means a project, so this takes a lot of time!  Most of the projects just need to be outlined so I can get back to them later.

I’m reading… Ezekiel. I finished  Enrico Fermi and Shadowed by Grace. Currently I’m reading Total Truth (with Mr. 18), More Things in Heaven and Earth, Quantum Generations, Niels Bohr, Ten Days Without,  Balanced, and The 40 Most Influential Christians.

Reading Aloud… We’re reading Proverbs and Volume 4 of In de Zoete Suikerbol. So often, I find that the book of Proverbs illuminates something we just read in the other book.  It is fascinating!  We’re also reading And Tomorrow the Stars, a well-written book for children that is packed with information and allusions that children will miss.  I don’t quite trust the author and am glad I did not just give it to my girls to read on their own.

When my husband is home for meals we read Ephesians.

I’m grateful for …. Family and friends.

Quote or link to share….  Here’s a website full of video links related to The Story of the World series.

This post is linked to Kris’s Weekly Wrap Up .