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!

Intentional

I was going to post something completely different this morning, but after reading Rachel's post this morning I changed my mind.


As I was reading her post Keeping It Real or Why I Make Things Myself I was nodding along and feeling yet another push down the path to our more intentional life.


It seems like all around us (in real life and online) people are making serious life transitions to work in a way that allows them to truly provide but still be more available to family. One of the great things about my studio is that I've been able to choose great families to work with and they have been more than understanding when lessons must be canceled because one of my children gets sick or when we have a  family emergency. It is a business and we don't cancel often, but when it has been necessary everyone has been more than gracious.


And while we have been very blessed with this business, there is still the fact that our boys are away from us for several hours each day and the fact that my brain is often taken up with work things in the evenings instead of really being able to spend time with my husband and taking care of our home. We've made our first big steps forward.


:: Brian finished school in 2010 and finally found a great job a few months ago.


:: We've gone on a bit of a food journey, now making a lot of things ourselves and not buying pre-made meals. (This is still a work in progress, somewhat contingent on my working fewer set hours)


:: We've made changes to the studio structure that will help with downsizing it in the next two years.


:: I'm looking at some other business options that will let me work from home without such permanently set hours.


But of course the next big thing is to actually jump- to work really hard to get another business off the ground so that we can really live the way we want to live.


It's kind of scary to be standing at the edge like this and knowing we have to either turn around and go back the way we came or carve a path all our own. And at the same time this might be the potential of my 30th year.

Yarn Along

Yarning Along with Ginny....

I am still at work on Omelet, but now done with the C chart. I promise that I really am enjoying this knit and that it's not actually going slowly- I'm just having a lot less time to knit lately because June is really kicking my tail!


The evening hours I generally use for knitting are being eaten up this month by an odd work schedule, teeball games (sometimes 3 a week- isn't that crazy???), and lesson planning for the upcoming school year.


Actually, that should probably read "being wishy-washy about the lesson plans for the upcoming school year." I feel solid about what exactly we are planning to do, just trying to figure out the best way to communicate it without making myself crazy. I'm not a huge fan of the daily checklist, but I'm worried that I'll forget something if I don't do that kind of thing. So I'm trying out different lesson plan formats for the month of July and seeing how it goes before we really get going full time in August.


I finished reading another Artemis Fowl book last night but decided to launch directly into Catching Fire now that I finally have it from the library. I'm enjoying the Hunger Games series so much!

{In case you haven't already, be sure to check out my birthday giveaway for a chance at some free yarn!}