Weekly Happenings: Cathedrals, Cupcakes, and Other New Things

This was my fire on Sunday night. Himself laid it for me before he left for his hockey game -- with the girls! -- and I lit it when I was ready to settle down with Downton Abbey. Perfection.

I began working in earnest this week. NEW! It's part-time but still required a schedule revamp. My best bet is to work before the girls rise in the early morning, so that's what I did. The house was quiet, no one called my name, and there were no other distractions (e.g., the telephone). When we began our lessons, I was able to focus entirely on those since I'd already worked that morning.

In our lessons this week:

Augustus Caesar's World: Antony and Octavian triumph over Brutus and Cassius
The Story of the Greeks: the Greco-Persian wars and Pericles banishes Cimon
Explore the Holy Land: Saudi Arabia
The Riddle of the Rosetta Stone: Key to Ancient Egypt: finished up
Archimedes and the Door of Science: his love of mathematics
Animal Farm: "Four legs good, two legs better!"
Plutarch's Lives: Pericles, part five

 In composition this week, the girls added descriptions of places in their historical narratives. They wrote about Ivan IV (AKA, "the Terrible") and St. Basil's Cathedral. This led to research on the cathedral, which is absolutely astounding. I'd love to go to Moscow someday and see it with my own eyes.

On Monday, Tiny Girl entered our bird counts on the GBBC website. We finished up our study of adjectives in grammar; and Tiny Girl learned about estimating with percentages in math. In science, we learned about the four states of matter and how they can change. We added information into our NEW physical science notebooks. We also made notations in our NEW books of centuries. Piano practice continued, with recital pieces in the mix.

For pleasure reading, Tiny Girl read A Good Horse by Jane Smiley; Through the Looking-Glass, by Lewis Carroll; and The White Giraffe, by Lauren St. John. Miss Priss read  Rainbow Valley, by L. M. Montgomery. I am reading Beyond the Spring, a biography of Maine naturalist Cordelia Stanwood, by Chandler S. W. Richmond.

We did other stuff, too.

Miss Priss worked on her LEGO White House.

I tried my hand at papercutting. NEW!

Tiny Girl and I spent a lot of time at the barn. Here she is doing groundwork with the ponies. Tuli is on the left, and Patrick is on the right. They are both flea-bitten greys!

I made cupcakes to take to the barn for Tiny Girl's twelfth birthday tomorrow. I ate so much of that fabulous chocolate buttercream that I feel slightly sick. It was worth it, though.

Here's one Carl Sandburg poem the girls and I enjoyed this week:

Good Night
Many ways to say good night.

Fireworks at a pier on the Fourth of July
      spell it with red wheels and yellow spokes.
They fizz in the air, touch the water and quit.
Rockets make a trajectory of gold-and-blue
      and then go out.

Railroad trains at night spell with a smokestack mushrooming a white pillar.

Steamboats turn a curve in the Mississippi crying a baritone that crosses lowland cottonfields to razorback hill.

It is easy to spell good night.
            Many ways to spell good night.


How was your week?

I'm linking up with some wonderful hostesses. Pop over for a blog-reading bonanza this weekend!

HammockTracks
Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers
Collage Friday
No Ordinary Blog Hop
The Homeschool Mother's Journal

A New Gig: Back to Work

Yes, I'm back to work. Although it's not like I've been sitting around eating bon-bons or anything. I'm a homeschooling mother and wife with two active adolescents. We have two ponies, for Pete's sake.

And yes, I've wanted to pursue work that will add to the family coffers. (Did you get the part about the TWO ponies above? Not to mention the two adolescents? The college-bound part was implied.)

In the past several months, I've had the privilege of editing three historical novels for older children; and I'd love to continue these types of projects, particularly in the homeschool arena. I've written articles, one for The Old Schoolhouse magazine, and the other for Impart magazine. I don't do this type of work for the income. Although I earn money for some projects, many of these I consider a lay ministry.

And then this opportunity landed in my lap: ghostwriter. Some friends of mine have a company that provides all types of marketing services for businesses, and I'm now one of their content writers. Basically, I write content for email newsletters, websites, and blogs.

I'm excited about it. I'm also aware that I need to carve out and maintain distinct boundaries between work and school. Before now, I was able to wing it, since I only wrote for two clients. But we just added two new clients to my list, and the heat is on. My first priority is the girls' education. However, close behind is the necessity to turn out quality work for our clients. To do both and do them well, I need to make some changes:

• Plan, plan, plan. I'm fairly good and making a plan and sticking with it for our lessons. However, I've left my writing pursuits to chance, meaning I have them all up here in my brain. Scary! So I'm developing a calendar for blogging AND professional work.

• Schedule. I must be diligent about boundaries and not let work cross over into lessons. A schedule will help me do just that. Which leads me to. . . 

• Get up early. In order to be and feel productive, I need to get up earlier. I can attend to work duties in the early morning before the girls arise. That way, I can avoid feeling conflicted, stressed, anxious, and/or pressured.

Those are my ideas. If you have any to share, I'd love to hear them.

Wish me luck!


Photo credit: zen / Foter.com / CC BY-NC-SA

New Bird Sighting! Hermit Thrush

Photo courtesy Wikimedia Commons

Last week, the girls and I noticed a new feathered visitor to our tray feeder. It looked a little similar to a brown thrasher, except the eyes, tail, and size were different. We researched the bird in our bird books, hoping for a firm identification, but the closest we could surmise was the fox sparrow. Too bad our friend didn't sport the grey areas on its head, like a fox sparrow does. So our mystery guest remained a mystery.

So I was delighted when I opened an email from Audubon about the Great Backyard Bird Count, and there it was! A photo of our bird AND a positive i.d. It's a hermit thrush!

The photo above really doesn't do Catharus guttatus justice. Its back feathers are a lovely reddish brown (think auburn), and the white ring around its round, dark eye is particularly vivid. Smaller than a robin and larger that most of the songbirds that dine here, hermit thrushes are in our area in the winter only, like dark-eyed juncos.

We are always excited to identify a new bird variety!

Don't let this year's GBBC (Great Backyard Bird Count) slip by without joining in! Today's the last day. And you can count for as little as 15 minutes. Yesterday, I counted for that length of time while I worked at my computer in the study. I face a picture window that overlooks my back yard -- and feeders!

My Article in Impart Magazine: Releasing the Dream of a Normal Life

If you're like me, the idea of a normal life is a teasing, tempting one -- and always just out of reach. Perhaps, though, chasing this particular dream keeps us from living the life we're really meant to live.

I have an article about this very thing in this month's Impart magazine, a particularly lovely digital publication. I hope you'll pop over and have a read. And I'd love to hear your thoughts afterward!