Sick

We've had bits of "run down" and "under the weather" popping up around here the last few days and last night it all came together in a big way- all four of us are down with something. Ezra and I have been hit with the worst of it, Ender is okay, but happily enjoying time on the couch, and Brian is well enough to work, but really tired by the end of the day.... fortunately he works at a company with a great "work from home" sick policy.


So, movie day anyone? In between providing plenty to drink and munch I think movies, card games and knitting are the order of the day.

Yarn Along

Yarning along with Ginny...

I knit a little sleep sack for yet another nephew-or-niece-to-be last night. I used the basic idea and measurements from Button-up Baby Wrap and worked it to a few more reasonable numbers, mostly length.


The yarn is a mystery worsted weight I was given awhile ago- it is mostly a foamy blue but also has little flecks of pink in it. I'm waiting to add buttons until we know if the new little one is a boy or girl when the baby makes an appearance later this year, because I think that will make all the difference in whether or not it looks more boyish or girlish.

I think the pink shows up a lot more in the pictures than it does in real life- I did give it the ultimate test of "does it look like a boy item or a girl item?" by asking my almost almost 6 year old son what he thought. He thought it looked like a baby thing and it didn't matter, so I trust that.


Or maybe he's just used to his mom asking him weird questions about her knitting and he was trying to appease me so he could go back to building his latest lego creation.


I'm on to another new read- another Artemis Fowl novel: The Eternity Code. I know, I know, last week I was so excited because I'd finally gotten my hands on Catching Fire so it looked like you might see it or Mockingjay in my pictures this week. Not so. I started Catching Fire on Tuesday night, finished it Wednesday and started into Mockingjay and finished Mockingjay Thursday night. I still worked my regular schedule and I promise that I remembered to pay attention to my children in the midst of the reading frenzy.


I stayed up waaaaaay too late doing it and I did not really bounce back from those three really late nights in a row until yesterday. I did cheat and break my caffeine fast on Thursday morning- day three of that madness. I just can't stay up til 3 a.m. any more, and certainly not for three nights in a row!


I'm also investigating mittens in preparation for winter already. I need to do them in the summer I've decided, otherwise mittens sit on my craft table waiting for woven in ends until January, and by then we've needed to have the mittens on actual hands for three months. So I'm moving the mitten knitting timeline forward to June in an effort to prevent all that.


I've checked Anna Zilboorg's Magnificent Mittens and Socks out from the library so often in the last year that I've had it in my posession for a grand total of 8 months. If you refer to a book that often you should probably own it, you know?

5 Ways to Encourage Summer Learning

I'm writing at Simple Homeschool again today, this time about some ways to encourage learning over the summer months.


From my post:

Summer months are spent differently in every homeschooling family, from a full stop to schooling all the way through- and all kinds of variations in between.

No matter where you fall on that spectrum, the summer months can be a great time to try on a different education style or go for a project you might not try during the regular school year.

These are a few ideas designed to bring learning into your summer, no matter what type of summer schooling family you might be.

Please join us and let us know how you keep the learning rolling over the summer!