Weekly Report: Surprises

Surprise!
Do you like to be surprised? I adore happy surprises. For unhappy surprises, I'm not mentally equipped to think fast enough. Usually it takes me a while to recover.
This week was full of surprises.

Surprise #1. On Monday, the car Jeremy takes to work doesn't start. So he takes the van. That's okay. I wasn't really planning on going anywhere that day. Except to the the store to get a few things. We all bundled up and walked to the store. I really like taking winter walks with the kids.

Surprise #2. But not when my stroller wheel is flat. Which is what I realized as we pulled into the store with our lop-sided stroller. I prayed the whole way home that the rims would not get bent out of shape. I really love my stroller. It seems to be okay.

Surprise #3. Jeremy and Mika fix the car. This really isn't a surprise. I thought they could. But I was so relieved that we only needed to replace the battery.

Surprise #4. The mail lady left a bag of candy in the mail box for the kids. This was a genuinely nice surprise. My kids really like her. And you know...we could ALWAYS use more candy, especially this time of year.

Surprise #5. A good friend of mine came by with some yummy treats! Another pleasant surprise. We used the treats for our Santa Lucia "celebration".

Surprise #6. We got a rebate from our Auto Insurance. This was good.

Surprise #7. The Activity Day girls in our ward did some babysitting at the church. I wasn't expecting the 2 hours of alone time I got on Thursday. It was....sublime.

Surprise #8. There are a lot of really great homeschoolers in the area. We went to a fun Christmas party that our local homeschool group put on this week. My kids were in the choir and they sang some fun songs. Our family sang "What Child is This?". Jeremy accompanied us on guitar. We love to meet new friends!

Surprise # 9. Elise's tooth came out! A good thing too. Her permanent tooth had started growing behind it. I made an appointment with the dentist to have it pulled. They said to wiggle and wiggle it so they wouldn't have to pull it. Jeremy finally spent a whole evening helping Elise wiggle that tooth. (I couldn't do it! Too squeamish.) Elise was so patient. She just laid on dad's lap while he wiggled that tooth! It paid off and Elise was SO happy!

Surprise #10. Okay, this one was bad. I'm still recovering from it. On Friday morning as I was combing one of my daughter's hair a found a surprise. Not a good one. My heart sank. I started to panic, then got a hold of myself. Bundled up the kids. Drove to the store. Bought some special shampoo. Went home. Put in "A Muppet's Christmas Carol" and proceeded to check all of my kids for ...... lice. Luckily, thankfully, only one of my kids had it. We thoroughly cleaned and combed through her hair. Then ALL the bed linen, jackets, hats, scarves, and clothes went into the wash. We put all the stuffed animals into bags and put them outside in the freezing air. We scrubbed and cleaned and vacuumed. By the end of the day I felt like Linguine in Ratatouille when he goes into the freezer and freaks out after having Remy bite and walk all over his body. AUGHH! Needless to say, we did not get much academic work done. We know more about parasites now. We looked them up. It was...not our favorite. My wonderful girl is doing just fine. She wasn't too upset, I tried not to make a big deal out of it. It really isn't. Only my ego took a hit as I called all the parents of the kids who have had contact with us last week. I've been checking everyone religiously and we seemed to have conquered and vanquished the unwelcome guests. Pheww...

Surprise #11. We did have a REALLY wonderful surprise last week. Probably one of the best surprises ever and it REALLY was a surprise. One of our extended family members is going to be baptized on Christmas Day! We are thrilled and wish we could be there. Just wanted to put this up for my family so they know how happy we are about this.

Are you surprised that we got school work done this week? I am. It is sparse though.

Scripture Study: Through 3 Nephi 6.
When the going gets tough, the tough finally repent. Sheesh...It really is too bad that the Nephites waited until the last minute to repent. It took a terrifying army of Gadianton robbers to finally convince them that they needed the Lord's help. When they had secured peace in the land again, they praised the Lord. One of our favorite verses-

And their hearts were swollen with joy, unto the gushing out of many tears, because of the great goodness of God in delivering them out of the hands of their enemies; and they knew it was because of their repentance and their humility that they had been delivered from an everlasting destruction. (3 Nephi 4:33)

prompted this discussion:
Claire (3 yrs.) : What does "swollen heart and gushing out tears" mean?
Sam (8 yrs.): Oh, you know, like how mom cries when she tells us how much she loves us or when she bears her testimony.
Claire: Oh. I'm not going to gush my tears.

Samuel (8):

• Saxon 5/4 lesson 41-43. Facts test.
  
• Language Arts: Report on "United Kingdom"
  
• Spelling: believe, baptize, guess, their, special, pocket, Japanese, information, relatives
  
• Memorization:."What Child is This"
  
• Reading: Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, Midnight Magic by Avi
  
• Journal writing:
  
• Science: parasites
  
• Piano: "Lightly Row"
  
• Art: painted Christmas sleighs
• Composer: Handel
  
• SOTW: Chapter 16: The Return of Assyria (We really liked our Usborne book of Ancient History)
  
• Geography: Europe
  
• Cub Scouts: Staining Christmas Cookie Trays
  

Elise (6):

• Saxon 2 lessons 39-41. Facts tests. Assessment test.
  
• Language Arts: We learned about Santa Lucia. Read stories about her and portrayed her.
  
• Spelling: bell, tree, Christmas, present, family, Jesus, happy, star, manger, merry
  
• Reading: Maurice Sendak's "Little Bear" books, plus various Holiday books from the library.
  
• Journal writing: good
• memorization: What Child is This?
  
• Science: parasites
  
• SOTW: see above
• Piano: "My Invention" "March on D-E-F"
  
• Composer: Handel
  
• Art: painted Christmas sleighs
  
• 50 States Book: Hawaii
  

Claire (3): Letter K activities. Claire is really into clothes right now. She changes outfits 5 or 6 times. She notices other people's outfits. She notices a lot about other people. My pimples for instance or my messy hair. She is so incredibly excited for Christmas!

Anna (1): It's amazing. She seems like a different girl. She is happy all day. She finds things to do and play with. She doesn't have to be in my arms or right by my side. She is eating like crazy. She sleeps 10 hours at night. AND she continues to build her vocabulary. Now if we could only get her potty trained....

Our homeschool choir.
"I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas!"

It's fun to wear Christmas dresses.