Summer Swiftly Sails on By

I’m going with the ‘just do it’ posting method tonight. I’m tired and I want to go to bed, but if I don’t post now, it will be a while before I get a chance again!

Life, Unedited:

I’ve been thinking a little about school plans. So many people are already back to school. Not here. Our summer feels like it has barely begun! Our year of Classical Conversations doesn’t begin until September 12th. I missed out on the (Not) Back to School blog hop because I’ve got nothin’. Maybe I’ll do my own Back to School blog series in mid-September.

While I was thinking about school plans, Latin was on the docket. I was trying to decide whether to review Prima Latina or go straight on to Latina Christiana. My sister mentioned she had the DVDs for Prima Latina. I thought we’d start there and go through the lessons quickly. I popped in the 1st DVD one evening just to preview. Luke got so excited, you would have thought it was Transformers or something. I promised he could go to bed with the Latin book if only he would get ready for bed quickly and practice his piano cheerfully. He raced off. Halfway through his piano practice he was dragging. Then he started chanting, ‘Latin, Latin, Latin,’ with a smile on his face and finished strong. He then happily snuggled in his bed with both the Prima Latina book and Song School Latin. I think an alien lives here. Or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde at the very least.

The picture on the right, above, is of Lola and the boys watching the 1st Latin lesson on DVD. I guess we’ll start that early…

The boys finished their fourth week of VBS tonight! The evening VBS schedule is really tough on us. We have a hard time getting there at 6 pm without feeling rushed and throwing together something to eat at the last minute, and the boys have a VERY hard time getting ready for bed when they get home and falling asleep. So it has been very late nights for us all.

Lola is into EVERYTHING. And she’s getting very opinionated. And she doesn’t want to sleep much.

I LOVED this season of So You Think You Can Dance (the only season I’ve actually watched). Really amazing choreography and dancing. Phenomenal.

We are headed to the beach tomorrow. It will be Lola’s first time!

Grandpa and Grandma, I’m so sorry I don’t have any pictures of Boys’ Camp to post. I thought the camera battery was charged, but Russ said it went dead after one picture!! I never posted last year’s pictures, so maybe I’ll finally do that and pretend they were taken this year. {sheepish grin}

I’m reading two books at the moment. That it is even worth mentioning should say something, sadly. I’ve done very little reading this year. Thank goodness for book club keeping me accountable for at least one book each month!

I had an awesome visit with a friend today whom I hadn’t seen in twenty years!! She was a wonderful friend during our middle school years. She and her family were visiting from out of state and made the time to come hang out with us for a few hours. Thanks, Sonia!!

Have I mentioned that I love grammar? We’re going to be doing some sentence diagramming this next year. I took a crash course during the teaching conference last week. And then a couple facebook friends posted this link. It is so addicting. Just type in a sentence and the program will diagram it for you. I could play with that all day. Who needs dinner?

Another link for you. I loved Reason Enough to Homeschool by Sarah Small @ Simple Homeschool today:

We started homeschooling for a bunch of reasons, and the list has grown year after year.

But sometimes it is just one reason that stands out above all the others. Forget academics, test scores, long days, busy work, and tedium. What we give them now is this: an August day. A river to wade in. The feel of dry grass beneath our feet, and a sliver of silver moon at night.

Sometimes that whole stack of “reasons why” comes down to a knowing feeling—a conviction that this is the way life should be.

One more thing (if you’ve even read this far), and then I’m going straight to bed. I got the great idea from an online friend to work on a postcard project for our states and capitals study this next year. Would any of you be willing to help us out by sending us a postcard from your state? I think I have the following states already spoken for (though we certainly wouldn’t complain if we got more than one!): AL, CA, CO, DC, GA, IA, KS, LA, MD, MN, MO, MT, OR, TN, TX, VA, and WA (and possibly AK, HI, ID, SD, and UT). But that leaves quite a few that we are missing! Email me at heidi (at) poetsgarden (dot) com if you are interested, so that I can give you our address. And we would be more than happy to reciprocate if anyone would like an Oregon postcard! (I’ll probably post this request a couple more times to see how many states we can cover.)

Good night, all!!