A Good Day

It's late and I should be in bed, but I figured I'd take advantage of the quiet house and blog really quickly! Nothing red-letter is happening, but today was a good day, so I thought I'd write about it.

1. A friend of ours from way back stopped by with 4 garbage bags of hand-me-downs this morning! It's been like Christmas here, as the girls especially have excitedly pulled out dresses and other clothes to try on! Mark and Lori have 6 kids, and their youngest is a girl a year older than Anna. So the sizes are perfect, the clothes are cute, and the girls were in heaven! There were shoes too . . . too much excitement! There were boys' clothes too, but somehow the boys just weren't as excited, LOL. I am always so thankful for clothes we can use! What a huge savings!

2. Nathan just missed one on his first life science test! He's got this really great teacher, you see . . . LOL! No, the material is not that difficult so far. But I'm glad he is remembering it!

3. Caleb drew this really great map of the the world (well, technically it was yesterday), with all the continents and everything labeled. I know that was a result of the time last year in Classical Conversations, so I am glad to see fruit from that! Then he made up his own continent, divided it up into countries, made a flag for one country, and stationed armies in various places in it, LOL.

4. I got my maps laminated today! I spent a good deal of time drawing 2 maps for the memory work/mapwork part of Rivendell. One covered the Mediterranean area all the way over to India. On the back of it, I drew a close-up of Israel. I put all the cities, mountains, and rivers that we'll be learning on the maps. I also already had a map I drew of Greece (for the Greece unit in the other co-op several years ago, when I was pregnant with Grace), and on the other side of that is a slightly closer view of the Mediterranean area. I added cities and features to both those maps, and then I started asking around for places to laminate them. I made a big map of Africa and the Mediterranean last year for CC, and I never laminated it, and by the end of the year, that poor map was looking a bit wilted! People on my homeschool email loop recommended Staples, Office Depot, and a teacher store about 20 minutes away. Staples quoted me $20 EACH, Office Depot said $1.99/sq. foot (each sheet of poster board was less than 2'x3'), and the teacher store said $1.oo per sq. ft. Clear winner there, so I drove out there this afternoon. The girl at the counter told me she couldn't work the laminator, so they'd have to take my maps and call me when they were done. Ack! I need one Tuesday, and I really hadn't planned on driving back out to the store to pick up the things! But what could I do, so I left them. I went outside and called Bob to relate my tale of misery. As we were talking, he told me the store was calling our home phone, which for some reason was the number I had given them. I ran back inside, since I had never left the parking lot, and there were my maps, all done! I'm so glad I took my time leaving! And the grand total was only $5.25! I'm not sure exactly how they calculate the square footage, but I'll take it! They look great! (Well, as great as hand-drawn maps can look, LOL.)

5. Tonight Nathan's team got their jerseys. Well, they aren't really the permanent jerseys. Because his team is an expansion team, they get new jerseys, and apparently the jerseys are journeying here from the factory by mule train, because the coach thought we'd have them by last Monday. The first game is Saturday, so they are using some other team's old jerseys (Steeler colors, woo hoo!). Nathan got to pick his number first because he had the most "leadership points". These came from times when he led exercises and what not. Sometimes the coaches picked him to lead, and sometimes the other team members picked him. That was really cool! He picked #7, which is Ben Rothlisberger's number, LOL.

6. I got to talk to Amy tonight! It's been several weeks, but that always makes a nice end to a day! It was great catching up with her!

So that's where we are. Still no job for Bob, so keep praying! And now I really must get to bed, or I will REALLY be sorry in the morning!