Keeping Busy

The main focus of this week is preparing for our annual summer party, which is going to be Sunday evening at 6:00. We generally don't do traditional birthday parties for the kids--we eat a special dinner, and I make whatever cake they can think of, which we take to Bible study some night close to their actual birthday. And then we have one big party in the summer where we can invite all their friends, and no one feels obligated to bring presents. The "problem" with homeschooling is that we tend to be friends with whole families, especially ones whose kids' ages all line up with ours. It would be too tricky to have to decide which family members to invite to individual parties, when really everyone is friends with and plays with everyone else, and it seems a bit overkill to me to have 5 separate big parties during the year, so this is our solution. Last year we had a medieval feast, and this year our theme is "Revolutionary War".

Today we went to Michael's and Walmart to buy supplies for the various crafts we will be doing. I made a nice pattern for tricorn hats out of contruction paper, so we'll make those before everyone arrives. Then we are going to make "Sons of Liberty" medals, which had trees on them, and the Sons of Liberty wore to show everyone who they were (and we'll all be dedicated patriots at this party, that's for sure!). I found some round wooden disks at Michaels that Bob and Nathan will drill holes in beforehand for the string. Then we'll cover them in foil and put a tree sticker on them. Voila! I have a few ideas for games, such as a Paul Revere relay race, where the participants have to race around the house on stick horses shouting, "The British are coming!". No prep work needed for that one! Also, we're going to do some game with tea bags--you know, for the Boston Tea Party. I'm not sure exactly what though. Then after dinner we'll make lovely construction paper flags, the kind with the 13 stars in a circle. I need to cut a lot of red strips and blue squares!

For dinner, we're going to have a sort of colonial tavern type meal--stew, barley, cornbread, and sliced baked apples, like you get at Boston Market. I've been searching the internet for a good recipe, and so we've been experimenting at home. We tried recipe #2 today, and it was a lot closer. I'm going to adjust a few things and try it again tomorrow. Hopefully we'll have a winner! We're doing it with no flour so Ed can have it, which is why it's not perfect. For dessert, we'll have ginger snaps and some butter/nut candies, the recipe for which I found in one of the colonial days project books I checked out of the library.

Tomorrow we're hopefully going to trek to the commissary (depending on Anna's whims and schedule vagarities--if it doesn't work tomorrow, then Thursday for sure). We also have a lot of cleaning to do, as well as much cutting of construction paper. If I don't blog anymore, you'll know what i'm doing, LOL! I hope to be able to post pictures after the party, but I can't guarantee I'll be able to. Something is wrong with our computer or something, in that we are no longer able to upload pictures from our camera. We connect the cable, the computer makes it's little "be-bop" sound to show it's connected, and then . . . nothing. Nothing ever happens. Eventually the camera shuts itself off, and if you turn it back on again, the computer gives a message about how the program is already open, so the startup is aborted. What is going on?!! Grrrr. I will take pictures for sure on my RELIABLE regular camera, the one where I take the film to Sams, and I get back real pictures, NOT annoying error messages! Curse this digital age!