Weekly Wrap Up

So life here has been super crazy busy this past week, some of it was my own doing, LOL!  Husband flew out of town for a business trip, back to England and the whole family was jealous that he got to go back:)  We have started attending coop classes and trying to make sense of our schedule this year, in addition to this we are adding in additional therapies we need for one of our children.  ON top of all of these changes, I in my infinite wisdom, along with begging from my children, decided to trial dog ownership for a week to a very energetic but sweet dog!  Due to the crazy hectic schedule I have put us under I have become one of THOSE moms that has canceled attending field trips at the last moment realizing that I have overbooked myself.  YES you heard me right I have turned down attending field trips, has the world stopped spinning:)!!!   I have nearly a dozen half written blog posts in my files that I haven't been able to finish this week due to simply crashing on the couch in exhaustion at the end of the day...hopefully I will catch up a little this weekend.

COOP Classes
So lets start with our new Coop classes.  We are trying two new coops this year, one is more academically structured with its classes; homework, quizzes and tests.  Firedrake is taking Spanish, Art and Drama.  She was quite surprised to learn that there would be tests in a art class!!  MarioFan is taking Computer, Spanish and Drama classes.  Taking tests is a new experience for my kids as I don't normally test at home, except the end of year CAT test.   Both kids took their first quiz in Spanish this week and scored 100%, so off to a good start.  I am really working with Firedrake on time management and teaching her study skills of which she is really resistant:(.   Right now a lot of the spanish is review as we had a really excellent tutor last year so it is easy for the kids.  I expect the lessons to get harder as the year progresses.  If we continue with this coop the kids can earn AP credit for some of the classes which will be excellent on their high school transcript which is just 2 years away for Firedrake, hence the reason we are giving the coop a try this year.

The other coop only meets every other Friday is a more laid back coop with more fun classes and opportunities for social meet ups and field trips.   Firedrake is taking J Bizz, card games, and critical thinking classes.  MarioFan is taking J Bizz, Martial Arts and is on the waiting list to attend board games class, so he will have an hour of free time.  We will see how this works out for him.

Meeting some new people at coop and learning to play Pokemon:)

Dog Ownership trial

My kids have been wanting a dog for so long and honestly I love dogs and have always had a dog as a child.  My husband on the other hand is NOT a dog person and is allergic to them.  However the kids and I have finally wore him down and he has agreed to having a family dog as a pet.  In my over excitement I agreed to trial dog ownership of a Treeing walker coonhound named Junebug.  The kids and I learned some very valuable lesson in this trial ownership which I hope to be able to blog about soon!  Suffice to say the trial did not work out and we are still looking.

Junebug:)

Field trips

We had two field trips that we actually attended this week one on Sunday making Washer boxes, post to come soon, I hope.  And today, Friday we are going to the children's illustrated museum before heading to our Friday coop this afternoon:)  Again I hope to have a blog post up about it soon.

Meeting new people

Whenever you move, at least for me, it always seems to take a year or so to meet people.  I am slowly finding the right kind of women to surround myself with:)  Right before my husband left for his business trip I was able to have a Mom's night out!  We got together for dinner and a painting class.  It was so fun to have some adult time with some amazing and funny women!

Appts

As if the week wasn't busy enough we somehow manage to squeeze in haircuts and Firedrake agreed to try shorter hair!  She was tired of me telling her to brush her hair every hour as she refuses to put clips in her hair so it always looked wild and unkempt!  Thankfully she loves it and so do I.  One less argument per day with my daughter is always a plus:) LOL

However, I did completely forgot about the children's pediatric well visit on Tuesday:(  How I did this after my calendar reminded me and the doctors office gave me a reminder call the day before.  I will just chalk it up to my brain is overfilled with lists of things I have to accomplish.  I have never forgotten a Doctor appt before.  I now have to pay a fee for the 2 missed appt and rescheduled their appts:(.   I need a third way to remind me of scheduled appts since the above two methods obviously did nothing in the way to help me remember the appt.

School

We have begun our new science unit on the Human anatomy learning about the skeletal system.  We have been doing lots of fun activities to help us learn about the skeleton.  I hope to put together a blog on our science activites soon. IN history we have just completed our unit on the Articles of Confederation and are moving on to learning about Constitution and the Bill of Rights.  MarioFan has completed reading the book and making a lap book about Guillivers travels for this month and Firedrake has  completed reading the books Nathan Hale, Debroah Samson and My Brother Sam is dead this month.  She has written 3 book reports on these books and I have been really pleased with the quality of effort she has put into these reports.  Also this month both kids have read Benedict Arnold by Jean Fritz and discuss it with me at great length.  We are plugging along in other school areas as well:)  Our trial of Firedrake taking more responsibility for her own work is proving to be a huge success so far.  I am so proud of her as she is showing great responsibility and her work is of great quality and she is responding to feedback really well (most of the time:))

Both MarioFan and Firedrake had a piano recital at a local restaurant this past Sunday.  Firedrake played a piece she composed herself.  It is the first time they have performed in public since we left England!  I am so pleased that neither of them get stage fright when performing in front of strangers, in fact they actually enjoy it:)!!!!

So that is our week in a nutshell...next week doesn't look any less busy:)  Have a great week!