Children and Cousins and Nephews oh my!

I just noticed that I haven't posted in about a week. Things have been kind of busy lately and I thought it would be nice to tell you a little about what I've been up to.

Yesterday Charlie was in what is called Sparksorama. It is a competition between different Churches AWANA clubs in the same kind of games they play at AWANA. Charlie and his team of other K-2nd graders had been practicing for over a month for the games. We drove over to a community college near our church in the snow to get to the games.

3 0r 4 teams (called a circle) squared off against each other at a time in different events like this one.



Charlie's team came in first place in their circle. We all had a fantastic time cheering him on.



After the games we went home for a few hours and then we drove to Oak Park to seem Amy's cousins who are near Emma and Charlie's age in a play. The play was Seusical the Musical. One of the cousins had a really good role as a trouble making Ape. The other played a who and a seusslike circus animal. The play was put on by Christian Youth Theatre (CYT) and it was very enjoyable. Amy's aunt caught me crying at the end of the play. But hey I'm a sensitive guy!



Today we were going to just relax and enjoy Sunday after church at home relaxing. However when Amy's sister invited us to visit her new baby Connor, we jumped at the chance.


I got to hold Connor for quite a while. I gave him up for a little while so the kids could get a photo op with him . . .












Amy's mom made some fantastic Chicken and everybody had a good visit. This week is going to be another busy one but I promise I'll post again before next Sunday!

Next Time: Looking for Calvin and Hobbes

A School by Any Other Name

The Carnival of Homeschooling is up at About Homeschooling with the theme Celebrating Life. I am celebrating our home school by telling you a little about the genesis of it's name.

I am not sure if I ever told you people out there in blog world why our home school is named the Izola Becker Home School.


My Grandma's name was Izola Roller. Her maiden name was Becker. Now, no one called her Izola. She was "Mom" to her kids, "Grandma" to her grandkids and great grand kids and "Babe" to everyone else. My grandma was a wonderful woman and when she died a few years ago we decided to honor her by naming the homeschool after her. Even though she had 30 grandchildren, and over 40 great grandchildren, she remembered everything! A few weeks before she died, she told Amy to make sure that even though Emma is homeschooled, that she's involved in some type of art class because that was her major area of interest. How did she KNOW that, with all of those kids in the family? Even on her deathbed at 97, she was trying to remember a poem, and I called home and had Amy read me the lines after she googled it, and Grandma said, "I need to memorize that poem." I am not sure we would have named it at all, otherwise.

I got to wondering the other day what else we might call this school.


Here are some ideas:


Izola Becker Home School & Grill.

The Izola Becker Institute for Conduct Unbecoming an Officer.

The "Please settle down, I'm trying to blog about home schooling, Home School."

The "Your Mileage may Vary" School of Cartography.

Hansel and Gretel's Edible Home School.

International Home School of Pancakes.

The Socialization, Smotialization Academy.

McHome School: Over 2 Taught.

Roller Coasters Home School Theme Park.


I also thought of a few slogans for our school:



Need a home schooler, take a home schooler. Have a home schooler, leave a home schooler.


Students may look closer than they appear.


Everything I ever needed to know, I learned from Star Trek.


Look where your tax dollars aren't going.



Well that's enough craziness for one day. If you have any home school name or slogan ideas let me know.



Next Time: C&H

Baker's Half Dozen

Six Word Saturday time again. Here are mine:

Baked my first cake from scratch.

I am teaching a class in our home school co-op this semester called "Let's go to the store." It is a pre-school class featuring stories and crafts about groceries and grocery shopping.

Last week I took my students and their families on a field trip to Meijer. Why Meijer? They give out cookies to children 11 and under. Some call it bribery, I call it incentive to behave.

This coming Monday we will be talking about deserts. I decided that I would bake a cake for the class, and since the class is about shopping, I thought it would be good to talk about all the ingredients needed for a cake. I have been baking cakes using box mixes since I was in the single digits. I had never made a cake from scratch before.

So today at our test kitchen/house Lulu and I baked a cake from scratch. On Sunday we will bake one for the class. I used a recipe for chocolate cake I found at Suite 101.com.

I had hoped to include a full tutorial on how to make the cake but preparing a cake , shepherding a 4 year old and photographing each segment turned out to be too much for me.

Here are the few pictures I did take . . .

The ingredients.

Mixing.


























The cake turned out pretty well. Yes, I forgot to preheat the oven. Yes I accidentally turned the oven off when I was checking to see if it was done. I also had a few other kinks that I think we can work out on Sunday.

Here are a few reasons why baking a cake from scratch works for me:

1. Baking a cake from scratch is not difficult at all. I had to melt chocolate for ours, which I had never done. A lot of cakes take far less preparation than that.


2. Teaching my children how to make a cake from scratch is a useful educational tool. I would have never envisioned myself as a Home Ec. teacher. But as long as I wear the home school pants int he family, I guess that's what I'll be.


3. My 4 year old is an excellent helper. She often helps my wife mix biscuits and other things. She has been wanting to bake this cake for two weeks since I announced the idea to the class. She really did most of the work: beating the eggs, pouring the butter milk, measuring and sifting the dry ingredients, and decorating the cake.



So those are my six words and why baking a cake from scratch works for me.


For more Six Word Saturday head on over to Show my Face dot com. To see what works for others head over to We are That Family for more WFMW.


Next Time: A School by any other name.

An Open Letter to Michelle of Psalm 104:24

Dear Michelle,

A year or so ago I discovered your excellent blog. I am not quite sure how exactly, probably through WFMW but maybe by some other means. You had a nifty little thing going called Three Things This Thursday. You would tell 3 things going on with your life including a Lost update and then give others in the Blogoverse the opportunity to share. 3TTT had me at hello. I became a frequent contributor and this Fall, due to a series of circumstances, you handed over the torch of your great little idea to me.

And It just tanked! Well, that's not quite true. But I feel like under my watch, it did not blossom in the way, I hoped it would. So, this winter, I did some tweaking.


At the beginning of 2010 I changed the name from 3 Things This Thursday to Some Things This Thursday so people would not be limited to 3 things. That name didn't stick in my mind, So I have been calling it Things This Thursday. Over the past few months this feature, which was a great joy when you were doing it, has become increasingly burdensome to me. It seems each week I am up against a time constraint and it gets in the way of other blogging I want to do.

So, Michelle, I know you think you know what's coming that I'm saying goodbye to good old 3TTT. In a way, I am. I have decided to make a change that will allow me to continue giving random tidbits but not be tied into it on a weekly basis. I will be publishing my "things" on a biweekly basis. I am also making one more (hopefully final) name change. The new name? Things Fortnightly. Catchy, huh?

If you ever decide that you want 3TTT back you can have it and I will gladly continue TF on a day other than Thursday. In that case, I would probably link my things to yours as that was always my favorite part.

I hope you are doing well. I have a meme to continue so I will bring this fake letter to a close.

A Fellow Blogger in Christ,

Home School Dad.

And now here is the first edition of Things Fortnightly . . .

1. I love the word fortnightly.

Maybe it's the Jane Austen fan in me, but for whatever reason I love the concept of a fortnight. I used to be hyper vigilant on it's use (or in this case misuse). My SIL who is from a part of the world that fortnight is still in the vernacular once used fortnight to refer to something other than an exact 14 day period. I was quick to correct (incorrect) her and I don't think her Irish eyes were smiling when she informed me that a fortnight is generally used as a period of approximately two weeks not exactly a 336 hour event. Yes I know how many hours are in a two week period by rote. They don't call me, scary math guy for nothing.

So when I decided to do things every other week I jumped at the chance to use fortnightly in the title.

2. Lucyism

The other night Amy asked Lucy, What do you want to be when you grow up?
Lucy says: I don' t know, maybe a ballerina, or a teacher? I know, I want to be everything! Wait, I don't have the clothes for that...

3. Chuck Update

It is great when a television program hits it's stride. The action, direction and story telling all come together until it seems that each week the show is the best it's ever been. I have been watching Star Trek the Next Generation season 3 with my kids and season 3&4 is when that show hit it's stride. The British T.V. program Robin Hood hit it's stride for me in season 2. I remember watching episode after episode on d.v.d. and I would just shout out to the t.v. "This show is great!"

This past Monday night, Chuck hit it's stride. The Star of Chuck, Zach Levi, made his directorial debut in the episode Chuck Versus the Beard. If you have not seen it you can watch it free on Hulu. This episode has it all hilarity, secrets revealed, suspense, and action, action, and more action. It is easily the best Chuck episode I've ever scene and the ending gives me every reason to believe that the best can be improved on.

4. D.C. Talk -

Our trip to Washington D.C is inching closer and closer. We are getting excited. One thing we will be doing on the way there is making a side trip to the "Walton's Mountain" area where the writer of the book that inspired the Walton's grew up.

Today we are heading over to visit where our bunny will stay when we go on our trip. He will have another homeschooled boy bunny to hang out with, so that place will be hopping.

Those are all the thing's I've got going for this edition. Se you in 2 weeks for the next fun filled episode of Things Fortnightly.

Feel free to share some things of your own by linking your post below.

Next Time: Get thee to a Bakery