Weekly Wrap-Up - August 5

How in the WORLD is it August already? Didn't this year just start? Sigh . . .

We had an uneventful week this week (I LIKE uneventful weeks)!! My house is slowly getting cleaner. We're reviewing a chore chart system and one option is to do extra chores to earn "stars" toward rewards. Little Bit is loving the candy and bubbles that are in her reward box, and since she doesn't do well with delayed gratification, she chose candy, ate it, then said she'd "changed her mind" and wanted the bubbles LOL. (yes, she's definitely a creative thinker), so her sisters helped her find extra chores she could do to earn enough points to get the bubbles too.  Meanwhile the big girls are earning points to  get Adventures in Odyssey episodes. What I first said, was that for every 50 points, they could download one mp3 episode. But then as we looked at the site, we discovered that we could save quite abit by buying a set of actual CDs, so now they're seeing how quickly they can earn 300 points, each, to get the set of 30 CDs that they want LOL.

Not surprisingly, we have been enjoying the Olympics. I had good intentions to do a unit study of some sort, but decided not to try to add something else in right now. But we've enjoyed watching it together most evenings.

We're FINALLY getting closer to the actual Civil War in history. This week we were reading about Lincoln's life, there are sooo many books, not enough time, sigh . . .

Last week I found an awesome deal on organic apple juice, so I thought it would be fun to make some apple juice popsicles, the girls loved them! I need to make another round. Awhile back, I got these popsicle makers and I am LOVING them! Even Little Bit can eat popsicles out of these without making a mess. I'd like to also make smoothie type things to take in lunches sometimes, it would keep the lunch cool, and others have said that it melts about right by lunchtime.  I've also had a dab of applesauce left one time and rather than put it in the fridge, I put it into one of these popsicle molds, Little Bit LOVED her frozen applesauce treat, and the big girls were disappointed to hear that I didn't have more, so I'm thinking we'll have some applesauce pops when it's apple season, and then if we don't eat all the applesauce over the winter, it will be a good early summer snack next summer :)

Oh, and I remembered to take pictures of our Sabbath School room, decorated as a farm. I took the pictures standing inside the door at the back of the room. Usually I shift everything so that the awesome mural (you can see the rainbow & duck of the mural in this picture, but the rest of the wall is even more impressive) is the front of the classroom. BUT since our room is essentially in the attic, and the only a/c is a window unit (you can see it in the second picture), I decided to turn the room so that I could be near the a/c unit some of the time. So, as you can see, we have a pond, with ducks, along the right wall, then a barn in the corner, you probably can't see our chicken sitting on her next in front of the barn. Then we have our sheep pasture, with the sheep dog keeping watch.

The brown "patch" is our garden. At the beginning of class it's just the plain brown blanket, then throughout the program we "rake" the garden, add worms. Put seed packets in the wheelbarrow "for the farmer to plant", then later, we add flowers and vegetables. To the right of the garden, is a beehive on the wall, and then our cow and horse pasture.

So it's not super fancy, but I was happy with how it turned out. And the kids seem to be enjoying the program.

While I was taking pictures of the room, I figured I'd snap a picture of the Bible Story time. Miss Penny is our wonderful Bible Story Teller, you can see Little Bit, and Penny's son, J listening to the story, and helping to put up felts.

I was being sneaky to snap the picture without being distracting, so you can see another little girl, A's arm in the picture. She has latched on to MiniMe, so is sitting on her lap instead of on the floor with the others.

Speaking of children latching on to MiniMe, we now have 2 semi-regular visitors, little girls, who seem to have taken a real liking to MiniMe. MiniMe is doing great with it, sitting with them, when needed, making sure they know what to do, and encouraging them to participate. It's been a wonderful experience for her, and she loves it, calling them "my girls" :)  Sassy has stepped up and does most of the passing out & collecting of props. She's also taken over the taking of attendance. So all in all, I'm happy to see the growth in both girls as they learn to serve others by helping in our 0-4 class.

And finally, we have a new sofa!!! Woo-hoo!! I may have mentioned that our neighbors who are moving had an extra sofa they were selling. I told them we wanted it, but then we were having a hard time getting our old sofa out (our house has narrow, low doorways and weird corners because it's such an old house, love the "character" of it, but makes moving furniture around a total pain). So finally today we figured out and shifted things around to take the old sofa out and then, with a LOT of help from our neighbors, managed to get the new sofa in. Not looking forward to figuring out how to get it back OUT whenever we end up moving, but in the meantime, it's a huge improvement. The big girls are loving having the recliners in the sofa, and have pretty much claimed it as their own.