Saturday, August 04, 2007

Vyne Family Update

My 11-year-old Tater returned home from his Children's International Summer Village Thursday night. When asked about his favorite part of the trip, he answered in a dream-like trance, "Josefin." Yep, he has a crush on an 11-year-old girl from Sweden. Who wouldn't? In addition to several photos of Josefin, he has pictures of friends he made from India, Thailand, Canada, France, Romania, and more I can't think of just now. Tater also has photos from a sight-seeing around France. He continues to share story after story about his experience.

I began homeschool with my other three children on Tuesday, but I gave Tater permission to crash yesterday if he was too exhausted to study. Instead, he jumped right into his assignments and sorting through all the trinkets he brought home.

BTW, he loves his room makeover, but I can't post pictures with blogger again.

This week I took 6-year-old Pooh Bear to my humming dentist, who only serves polite non-squirming children, for a pulpectomy. Yikes! She'd had an abscessed tooth. Stuff like this makes me feel like a bad mommy.

Pooh Bear likes the part of school which involves cutting out orange construction paper pumpkins and having Cinderella read to her. The work of homeschooling, she could do without. She is the only first grade homeschooler on earth who has a terrible time with reading, so we are hitting auditory processing hard again this year. She did not have the benefit of Montessori preschool which her three brothers did, and it really shows. This also make me feel like a terrible mom.

Peace, my new teenager, has begun school with a positive attitude for the first time in a long time. He's not a delighted about academics. To make my life easier, I've given him assignments to read A Child's History of the World aloud to everyone and make up Friday test questions from the reading. Science is his strength, so Peace also must come up with science experiments for the gang once a week. Of course, he started by making a volcano with vinegar and baking soda.

Wise One, the 10-year-old motivated student, whole-heartedly embraces school. He sets his alarm, goes right to his farm chores, eats breakfasts, walks into the homeschool room, picks up his books, and begins working. Every mother of four needs one child like this to asuage the guilt of cavities and educational oversights.

Buck continues to work a mandatory 6 day work week. He and others are training new air traffic controllers at his facility, so in about three years- no joke, the new guys will be certified. Insert eye roll here in honor of our government's lack of preparation.

As for me, luscious red tomatoes flood my kitchen counter and dangle ripening on the vine. Besides eating as many as humanly possible, I've begun making and freezing red sauce with my super duper simple recipe. Yesterday while collecting oregano from my spice garden for the sauce, my legs became covered with an entire ant colony I'd interrupted. Fortunately, they didn't bite, and I was able to simply brush them off. I'm also pulling myself together for a course I begin teaching near the end of the month.

So, what are you up to?

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Welcome home, Tater!

I have a possible work-around that *might* work for you so you can use pictures again. Can you insert code in your blog? I've been putting all my blog photos (uploading them) onto Flickr.com, which is so easy! No need to mess with the pics first w/ photoshop or optimize or resize, and you can upload several at once.

This sounds more complicated that it is, but to use your uploaded Flickr.com photos:

1. In your Flickr.com account, click the photo you want to use to open it.

2. Right-click on your photo and choose "properties" to display the URL, (looks like "http://yourphoto.jpg") Highlight and copy that bit(omit the stuff after ".jpg"). Paste it right into your blog if you've got the editor open already, or paste it into "notepad" or something to save it for a minute.

3. In your blog posting window, click where you want the image to go and EITHER use the "insert image" button (does blogger have one?) or, by hand, insert the following code, changing the [ and ] to < and >, respectively (I can't do it here or the web will think it's code!) Substitute your own photo's URL and title in place of http://yourphoto.jpg (and keeping all the other quote marks in place)
[img src="http://yourphoto.jpg" alt="Name of your photo"/]

For what it's worth!

truevyne said...

Dear E,
Thanks for the tutorial. I've printed the instructions and will follow through another day. The first time through something like this is a harrowing, dial-up dinosaur experience for. It will have to be a time when I don't feel like I have time to mess around (which isn't so very often). Nevertheless, I appreciate
your simple and good explanation.

Anonymous said...

...on the other hand, some of the world's most fabulous blogs have no photos at all! And if you have a dial-up connection (is that what you meant?) than I wouldn't bother wasting the time. GOOD WRITING (like yours!) is what really matters!!!

Anonymous said...

pulpectomy?

oh, that sounds horrible...poor, dear baby! (dentists have a way of making us ALL feel like horrible mothers.)

~smiling about your boy and his crush...how cute is that?

truevyne said...

Dear Almost,
Yes, dial up is what is available in the middle of nowhere...and thanks for the compliment on my writing. I'll take it.

Dear Tonia,
Yes, pulpectomy. The decay was so deep it needed to be scraped to the pulp. Fortunately, Pooh Bear doesn't even know she had needles and drills in her mouth. I think she believes when he says, "Scrape out the decay" she thinks he means with a rubber spatula or something. My dentist is a pro!

coneymama said...

Love reading your blog. Busy lady with goats, gardens and home-schooling. We are still pool-bums until school starts on 28th.