Tax time. Deadline is April 30th in Canada, and we’re self-employed, which means the yearly scramble to gather receipts for the accountant, figure out what portion of expenses we can write off (home office, mileage, etc.), and get things submitted. Every year we swear we’ll stay more on top of it each month, so it doesn’t pile up at the end, and well…let’s just say I’m confessing one of my personal weak spots.

Exercise. I’ve been following a gentle workout program for a few months now, and in the last month or so it has ramped up in time and intensity. Has been a great for me—I am stronger, fitter, etc (and yes, with still a journey of a thousand miles to go in weight loss, but I’m at least traveling that road now!). My workout, which I do in the morning before everyone else is up, takes about 45 minutes (I started at 10 minutes, THAT’S how out of shape I was!), and I am working out 5-6 days per week. So you wonder where my blogging time went?

It’s finally spring here, after the LONGEST winter I ever remember in Calgary. We had snow on the ground for TWICE as long as we should have; yes, it was two winters for the price of one! So now that the weather has turned I am outside as much as possible, taking the boys to parks and playgrounds, throwing/kicking a ball around, working on bike riding skills. And for me, going birding. It’s developed into a full-blown obsession. I’ve been out every Saturday morning (EARLY!!!) most often hitting the bird sanctuary in town, but this past weekend I headed to the sloughs and ponds / lakes / wetlands east of Calgary to look for ducks and shorebirds. I’ve taken over 1500 picture this month alone—and an embarrassing number are of our feathered friends. Still, it’s passion and curiosity that keeps one young right? (I’m telling myself this while I continue to ignore the housework).

With all the snow melting, and sometimes heavy rain falling, we’ve learned of some more repairs and maintenance that need doing around the house, including roof, plumbing, and a leaking window. It’s going to be a busy summer.

Daegan did his first standardized test, which I administered. We opted for the CAT-3, a Canadian test with several different sections (reading, writing conventions, vocabulary and language, math concepts, math computation, spelling). He did very well on the test, and it was a positive experience for us in many ways (and I am NOT a fan of standardized tests!); I’ll write more about this in another post soon.

Finally, I’ve spent a bit of time reflecting on our year, what worked well, what didn’t, and thinking ahead to the next. As a family we also spent time getting our homeschooling room set up—such a difference to have a kitchen table for eating only, and a large table on which the boys can leave various projects (art, lego, etc.) and their homeschool work out in the other room (what is meant to be the ‘formal dining room’ of this house). Here’s a few pics of our new space, which is still a work in progress.

More tomorrow…

It’s only looking back at this sheet now that I can see how Gareth’s printing is sorting itself out. He wrote ‘net’ (with backward n), ‘Gareth’, ‘T rex’, ‘meglusoris’ (i.e., megalosaurus) and ‘at’, while Daegan wrote ‘Daegan’, ‘Meg’, ‘eat’, ‘lanoleom’ (i.e., linoleum), ‘soda’ and ‘tricicle’ (tricycle). There’s not a whole lot of difference between their printing anymore.

This game is a great way to pass a few minutes while waiting for a meal (at home or in a restaurant), a dentist appointment, your sibling to finish their karate lesson, etc. You don’t even need pen and paper to play; it can be purely oral. It can also be adapted in a number of ways, like limiting the words to certain categories, like animals: zebra, antelope, penguin, nuthatch, cheetah, etc. People’s names, places (cities, countries, provinces, states), and foods are other good categories. You can put additional restrictions on: after Daegan said his name, Gareth wanted the opportunity to say his, so I told Daegan his next word had to end with a ‘G’ sound. Note too that when playing it as a writing game, the difference between ending sound and ending letter becomes clear. ‘Gareth’ ends with the “TH’ sound, not “H”, so my next word was ‘three’, not ‘hippopotamus’. You could make it more competitive by assigning points, such as one point per letter in the word (to encourage more complex vocabulary), with bonus points for correct spelling. As I was playing the game mainly to get a sense of whether or not the boys were HEARING all the sounds in various words, I chose not to correct their spelling. I doubt they would have offered ‘megalosaurus’, ‘linoleum’, or ‘tricycle’ if I had made spelling the issue, and quite frankly, having the boys attempt to spell what they hear in those words tells me a lot more than them spelling ‘mop’. ‘leg’ and ‘tip’ correctly.

As always, if your family plays a fun variant of this game, drop me a line.  

The kids acted out various poems of Shel Silverstein, including “The Missing Piece” and “The Giving Tree”. Many of the skits led to big belly laughs from Daegan, who greatly enjoys absurdist humour. In fact, he and I read several of the poems from Silverstein’s Where the Sidewalk Ends the night before, with him giggling away. He even sang one of the poems at young friend we had over today, while playing with a large stuffy toy snake: “I’m being eaten by a boa constrictor, a boa constrictor…” (in case you were wondering where that was from, Valerie). Here’s some pics from “The Missing Piece”:

From “The Giving Tree":

The boys were completely engrossed:

so much so that after the show they both asked questions of the cast during the Q&A session, and went up on stage to check out the props and “behind the scenes” set-up. And they both said to me on the way to the car, “Please sign us up for that. I want to be one of the kids on stage!”

Gareth later asked me how kids end up getting on TV shows, but I think we’ll work on Calgary Young People’s Theatre first, eh?

- bought a new house

- moved

- done renos on our old house (paint, new carpet, yardwork, fixing the front concrete step, etc.) This involved having to fire the first contractor, and educating ourselves with tons of Holmes on Homes episodes. Not the most fun way to spend a summer.

- put our old house up for sale

- signed the boys up for tons of homeschool classes for fall and started them. This is Gareth’s first “official” year of homeschooling—i.e., we registered him, and get $750 from the government to spend on classes / materials. Yippee!

- dealt with a sewer back-up in the basement a mere 2 weeks after moving in to the new house. Repairs to drywall, bathroom, and all new basement carpet are underway

- Risa and the boys took a week-long trip to Nebraska to attend the second annual APHS Jamboree, the boys first time outside Canada

– Jim has started a new phase in his career, with a new company that focuses on teaching technologies, and he’s working FT from home

I think that about covers it. Busy. eh? Tune in again Monday when I get back to homeschooling and family life.

And this:

And especially this:

The ice cream maker has been in almost constant use, actually:

So tonight the boys had lots of energy to do this:

We were all so grateful to get out on a sunny evening, after both sessions of soccer were cancelled last week due weather like this:

Expect lots of ice cream recipes over the next little while as I customize and perfect some flavours. The boys sure are enjoying helping me. Gotta love these “math” and “science” lessons of homeschool, eh?

I will be keeping my old blog for my editorial and personal musings on various things; it’ll be a bit more broody, dense, and possibly controversial. I will be blogging there on an irregular schedule, based on my interests and passions at any given time. I have renamed that blog “Risa’s Ramblings”.

More tomorrow…