Goodbye October 2020

So many snuggles

The Scooter Pies have named all their marbles after Pokemon.

My big Mom Win for this week was on Tuesday.  I had announced that “technology time” was over (as all the littles had been watching YouTube for at least 2 hours while I taught piano lessons) and was making dinner.  The Scooter Pies came downstairs howling to play with Blueberry Pie’s Nintendo Switch.  I said, “No,” but they continued to howl and repeat themselves.  Have you ever had twins howling at you in stereo?  I was about maxed out and ready to start yelling.  But I stopped making dinner and sat down, taking one twin in each arm. My counselor says to get kids to calm down by having them take deep loud breaths,”dragon breaths.”  I have never been able to get the twins to do this, but I tried again, doing the loud deep breaths myself, and saying, “It looks like you’ve turned into dragons.  Better breathe out all that fire.”  They didn’t do it, but they did stop howling, and I started calming down.  Then I remembered how much we all like The Three Little Pigs, so I said maybe they were the big bad wolf, huffing and puffing.  They started smiling, but still no breathing.  I was really calmed down by now and realized that I could let them help with dinner.  Here they are cutting up the summer sausage with butter knives for our Sausage and Cabbage over Rice.  They were so excited to get to help.  I read somewhere that when a child asks for technology, what they are asking for is connection.

We begin school every morning at 8:00 am with CNN10 Student News.  Then we sing and do our weather journals.  Nature Walk was next, but now that it’s dark and cold outside, I’ve moved Nature Walk to the afternoon.  So the big girls do piano and violin practice, and the littles and I do math.

We have calendar math all together.

Then Banana Cream Pie does a third grade worksheet, and Apple Pie and the Scooter Pies do a first grade worksheet.  On Thursday, Banana Cream Pie’s math was too fun to keep to herself, so everyone got to try it. 

After math, we have stories from the Old Testament (or New Testament, depending on the day) and then Beginning Reading lessons.  Despite my efforts to put books and supplies away as we use them, somehow the kitchen table looks like this every morning by 10:30 (Snack Time)

I’ve been telling my kids that Halloween was canceled because of COVID-19 for a month.  I said we would just get some candy and watch a movie for Halloween.  But Thursday night, I found out our town was doing a Chamber of Commerce Trick-or-Treat at 3pm Friday.  I gave in and pulled out the tub of costumes, telling the kiddie pies that we could go trick-or-treating if they picked a costume from the tub and wore a mask.  Of course, none of them picked the good costumes.  They just tied themselves up in our raggedy silk scarves that have seen better days and announced what animal they were.  Skeeter, who wanted to be a “Snuggle Bunny” was the exception.  He actually looked cute.  I drove them around town for about an hour, and they each got enough candy to be satisfied.

Saturday we all worked together for about 2 hours to wash the walls downstairs and the kitchen cabinets.  I cleaned out the fridge.  I am very happy about the shiny, clean walls.  Next week: upstairs!

Random fact of the week: I have 7 different chili powders in my spice cupboard, and I use them all regularly.  Yum!

Blueberry Pie bought these very spicy ramen recently.  They are super hot, even for us chili loving people.  After morning chores, the big kids had a hot noodle eating contest.  They only ate about 2/3 a package each, but they had fun.

Also they had pain. You can see it in their faces.

Halloween night, we roasted hot dogs at Uncle Peter’s house.  This little pink vampire is the cutest, yes? This is the only picture I thought to take all night.