A World without walls
everyday life while homeschooling overseas
Little Claire was such a trooper today as she went in to get 7 teeth pulled! whew! Lots of meds later, she's finally speaking coherently... ;-)
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Devin and the boys are gone camping! Claire and I are home hanging out... :) We ended up going downtown for the whole day with our Arabic tutor--we went to the fruit market and the gold market and the best market: the second hand market! :) Sadly, I bought 2 kg of lovely cherries, took them home, poured them into the water to wash them, and they are ALL ROTTEN! What??!?!? Who does that? I'm annoyed. Live and learn, though. Everyone touts how all the fruits and veggies are better from downtown. I disagree. Lately, I've been ordering my fruit and veg from a local place that delivers. I order it in the morning, and they bring it to my house by early afternoon!! Free delivery! Can't beat that. Plus, EVERYTHING I've gotten from them is good. I haven't gotten any rotten/nasty fruit or veg. I feel pampered having professionals pick out all my food for me. :) The strawberries we've been getting from them are the BEST I think I've ever had. They rival Finland berries, and that's saying something! So, I'll just stick with Khodarji, thank you very much. Funny things my kids have said today:
"That's a neat trick!" Claire says to Devin when he uses the KEY to open the car door instead of the button remote! "Just pop the DVD into the VCR!" says Josh... VCR?? "I'm old! I'm old! I'm old!" says Peter as he uses two tennis racquets as a 'walker'... Andrew: "I hope we get to get yellow fever shots for our next post, because they make you really sick for a couple of days, so we can just lie around and eat ice cream and watch movies!" Love these little people! On Monday and Tuesday, for four hours each day, I had Josh shut up here in my room taking a National Standardized Test. Now, normally, I'm not a big tester. I don't teach to the tests. I don't feel like it's a real indicator of intelligence or learning. However, I thought it was a good opportunity to see where Josh stands as far as 'national standards', and see if there were any holes that I needed to take care of in the near future.
I admit that during the testing, I became a little concerned. For most of the tests, he was allotted about 1 hour. Usually, though, he'd pop out after about 10 minutes saying he was done! What? I kept asking him if he was sure he had answered all the questions... :/ Today, I got the results back. Wow. He was in the 80-90 percentile in everything (except one, which I knew about already, but even that one wasn't so bad)! The test said his total test average put him roughly on par with a first semester 11th grader! WOOT! I can't even begin to tell you how VINDICATED I feel!! Ha! I know, I know, I just finished ranting about how tests don't really tell you anything and blah, blah, blah--the kid did AWESOME! A few of his test scores said the grade equivalent was post high school (Math problem solving and science)! Talk about mom pride! No, not pride in what a good teacher I am (*shine my badge here*--but I didn't even GO INTO the room when he was testing. I was tempted to, but I ), but pride in my son who did such an outstanding job. See? Homeschooling doesn't ruin kids. Look what he's learning! Look at the leaps-and-bounds progress he's made in the past 2 years! Way to go Josh! See? You CAN do anything!! :) This is not the best picture ever, but this is a representation of the first of many. We just had our first adventure at the orthodontist. The first of what will probably end up being a life-long "love" affair. Unfortunately, it wasn't the happiest visit ever. As soon as we walked through the doors, Claire started to whimper. She sobbed through the whole visit which made all those molds, x-rays, and pictures rather trying for everyone. Hopefully it won't be a sob-fest every time we go. That would sure make the next few years of visits pretty fun. Hooray for fun with teeth.
Meet 'LDS Panda'. My boys are SO silly! Today is the Sabbath--and this is what they did in their room. They dressed up their stuffed animals as if they were going to church, and took pictures. And in other silly news--the kids are getting ready for bed. That's not silly in and of itself, but as I'm sitting here typing, Devin is 'helping' them brush their teeth: He's humming "If I Were a Rich Man" (Fiddler on the Roof) and chasing the kids around the back room. These things do a mom's heart good. "It's lovely Bobbing Along! Bobbing along at the bottom of the Beautiful Briny Sea!" For the past few weeks, Devin, Josh and I have been taking our classes for scuba certification. This weekend, we DID IT! Woohoo! We went down to Aqaba (the Red Sea) and completed our open water certification and even got to do a couple of 'fun dives'. What an amazing experience! I was flying! I flew over the top of corals and fishes, a shipwreck and a tank! I saw Nemo and Dory--the whole cast of Finding Nemo, actually--angel fish, flute fish, puffer fish, stone fish, LOTS of lion fish, glass fish, sea horses, scorpion fish, moray eels, ETC... Plus all the different kinds and colors of corals. Wow. It was so pretty! We saw about 10 lion fish living inside of an old abandoned tank under the water (along with everything else that lived on that thing)! We explored an old shipwreck of 'The Cedar Pride'. By the mast there were lion fish hanging around and a huge school of glass fish--and I swam right through the middle of the glass fish! It made me laugh! They were so cute--they just sat there in front of my mask and looked at me! (It's a weird sensation to giggle underwater. Just thought I'd throw that in.) Josh is currently working on his KidVid (basically it's a documentary of Jordan from his perspective for an FS competition next year), so we bought an underwater video camera! He took lots of very short videos. Maybe I'll be able to post a couple. It's pretty amazing! Even with a video documenting the fact that we were all there UNDER the water, it's still hard to believe! :) I LOVED it and can't wait to go back and do it again! The hardest part: Walking into the water with 4 million pounds of stuff strapped to your back, and walking back out of the water with 4 million pounds of stuff strapped onto your back--especially after being weightless for 30+ minutes. Amazing. How cool is it that we went scuba diving in the Red Sea? Yah, we're pretty blessed. |
Who Am I?
As a Stay At Home Mom of 4 wonderful children, I have the amazing opportunity not only to home school them, but to do so in many different places! I am married to the most amazingly wonderful (and handsome) man in the whole world! Together, we seek out, every day, that Joy in the Journey that makes life exciting! Archives
November 2020
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Emily's books
by Dan Brown
I like that the plot twists and turns a lot...and it makes you think. However, I don't appreciate Dan Brown's endings in his books. I find the endings incongruent with the rest of his stories--why make it a romance for the last chapter...
by Shannon Hale
I loved this book. I'm a sucker for fairy tales/fantasy. This was so well written! I can't wait to read all the rest of her books!
by Shannon Hale
I'm reading this one again. I liked it the first time I read it. I'm still liking it for the second time around. I like all of Shannon Hales' books.
**Still lots of fun the second time around! I do like this book for a comfortable...
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