OMG! Don why?!?!

So our day started out awesome. Papa Bear and I got the kids up early to head out the door for a surprise trip to Richmond. We can get in free to museums on the ASTC Passport Program list....

First stop on the itinerary was the Virginia Aviation Museum.....

                                          there were planes and stuff there.....

The kids and Papa had a wonderful time!

I discovered that I could care less about aviation and anyone who knows my terrible fear of heights will understand why.....
However we discovered something pretty darn cool in the far back corner....

                                           A tribute to the pilots and all who lost their lives on
                                                               September 11th.....
There was a slideshow of pictures from the moments after the attack and also a tribute to the pilots who lost their lives.....

                                           very moving and unexpected.....

Kung Fu had so much fun playing with all the flight simulators and there were a few to try...this one lets you fly the model plane.....

Maybe we have an aspiring pilot on our hands???

After the Aviation Museum we headed over to the Virginia Science Museum......

                                        having a blast before they even walked through the door...

It's an old railroad station that's been converted into a museum....it was fantastic!

                                                                      yay it's me!

everything is extremely child friendly and hands on....I don't recall having to tell them not to touch anything...total win!

                                                there was an astronomy section....

                                           a traveling exhibit.....

 And an entire floor devoted just to kids.....we spent 2 hours there following the kids around and playing at all the family friendly stations....

                                          Kung Fu and Papa....buds forever.

Of course no trip is complete until they commit petty larceny in the museum shop. Kung Fu got a really awesome wind up toy that I'll pry out of his grimy fingers tomorrow and photograph....Stuffie got a stuffie.

                                                             papa helped her pick it out....

I got a super duper solar system that we're going to hang up tomorrow in lieu of making the ballon solar system that was scheduled in for science this week...I just felt like the plastic one will last longer and I HATE, LOATHE, DESPISE balloons....a lot.
I also got taken out for supper......

                                            come to Mama......

So sounds like the perfect day....right? Except look at what was in my mailbox when we got home tonight....

                                            I want to kick Don in the soft spot! HARD!

Why he added delivery conformation to my Early American Trades and Crafts Kit is a mystery. Only Don knows why he does the moronic crap he does but I really despise him for it! You can't imagine what it's like for me to have to go to the post office and pick a package up. There's like 3 post offices in our city and the line is always out the door. Just the thought of waiting on line for an hour to pick up these boxes that I've been waiting 3 weeks for is making my eye twitch.  Don has sent me $1000 worth of school books in several shipments these past 5 months and NOT ONE OF THEM had delivery conformation...CURSE YOU DON!!! I despise you......

I made it through the week with out committing murder...yay me!

We managed to check every box this week. That little fact makes my obsessive compulsive self very happy :)
Winter promise doesn't schedule a 5 day school week so you can use the extra time on Friday to finish anything you didn't get to during the week. For example if you didn't get your Early American Trades and Crafts Kit in time to do it on the scheduled day then you could make it up on Friday unless you NEVER GOT THE KIT!
anyway........because we went to lunch with our buds this week and Stuffie had the art class at the library we had a good bit of work to get done today...

Our chapter book started off with a bang.....the very first sentence of chapter 4 was about how the women and children around camp were aroused....as in woken up....weird wording right? Not after I found out that this is also a Sonlight book....then it made perfect sense that the author would use aroused instead of awoken....I'd like to type the exact sentence here but the kids have misplaced the book for the 2nd time this week. How they can lose a book on the walk from the living room to the bookshelf 2 times in one week is beyond me but there you have it.
They also had their 1st spelling tests....Kung Fu  did OK

Stuffie did pretty good too......

......she spelled Mommy wrong the little stinker!
Papa Bear took Kung Fu to lunch today with the guys....

 And Stuffie and I went to Subway where she got her regular which is a bacon sub....just bacon...hold the everything....except the cookie.

After school they pretty much disappeared until supper time.....guess after all the extra face time they needed a break from Mom. HA! 

Tonight was the last night of VBS. Stuffie was totally in her element. That kid loves to be on stage! Kung Fu  was slightly more reserved opting to view the stage rather than be on it.

                                                      Here's Stuffie 'acting ' crazy

                                          here's my man child...head's too big for the sunglasses

I think the Catholic church is really missing out by not doing VBS. It's a really good opportunity to teach kids about Jesus in a more relaxed setting then CCD. Which any adult Catholic can tell you isn't all too great.....but that's a rant for another time.

I'm not a Negative Nancy....no, seriously.

  Today was a busy school day. We had some catching up to do from yesterday. It's way harder to double up days now that Kung Fu's not using the computer for Math and Language Arts. It's going to be really hard to catch up if we get behind. That being said I'm still standing by our decision to go back to all books. We need the interaction and the face time other wise it's the computer that's homeschooling him and not me.
I was blown away again today by his positive attitude particularly when he was faced with this.....

  He had to look up the words in the dictionary and copy the definition.....never said a word about it he just did it. I really thought all the writing was going to bum him out but so far there has been no resistance at all.

I'm still confused with WP's history....why are we studying Explorers and Native Homes at the same time? I just don't get it. The Native Homes info was useful during our read -aloud -Naya Nuki because it's about Native Americans. I'm still wondering about the decision to teach these two topics together. We had a Sonlight moment during Naya Nuki today when she reminisced about her mother burning her baby brother's cradle and gashing her legs open with a rock after her baby brother died.....crazy.

Anyway we made a 3D Map today depicting how the 1st Nations may have traveled into North America.

the maps in the book are on 2 pages that you have to copy, this worked well for me because each kid got to do their own page and then we put them together.

Once you get them together then you add the 3D parts....

How cool is that?! They really liked doing it which is a good thing because we've got a book full of them to do this year.

We didn't get to Science today because Stuffie was signed up to take an art lesson at the library. Here's what she made....

Here's what Kung Fu did while we waited.....because 5th grade has a lot more work than 2nd grade....

Do you love his camo outfit? He tried to wear it to VBS tonight but I wouldn't let him. Tomorrow's the last day. Stuffie's going to miss going. She said she's going every year until she's too old, then she's going to volunteer until she's too old, then she's going to be a teacher and when she's too old for that she's going to a Retiring Home. I love her.

Holy Moly!

Look at what was in my email when I got home this afternoon.....

This message was sent to you at the request of WinterPromise, to notify you that they have shipped a package to you. For details about your shipment or to track your package, please refer to the information below.


I am BLOWN away!  Seriously it almost makes up for this....

This absolutely stunning piece of crap is my replacement book for Winter Promise. It was another 'Really Don?' moment. To give you an idea of the crappy content here's the ONE PAGE on Virginia....

I really don't even know what to say. Luckily Stef loaned me a pretty awesome States book and I'm going to use that along with the WP stuff and some other stuff about the US I've been picking up here and there. I don't know why I expected more....but I did.

 Otherwise our day was fantastic.....They  did their Bible over breakfast since they got a late start this morning....apparently all this dancing (or not in Kung Fu's case) at VBS is wearing them clean out. Here they are doing their Horizon's Math...which never lets me down.....

I got the nifty lap desks at Barnes and Noble and they are awesome! They have a place for pencils and a clip on the side to hold papers.....

Stuffie decorated her's with stickers....in the background is her 'cube' it holds all her stuff so we don't have anymore delays looking for pencils or markers. They can only be open during school. That's the idea at least, we'll see how it works out through the year......

I continue to be amazed at how much Kung Fu is enjoying WP's Time Traveler stuff.....we colored a Ptolemaic Map to compare with the map of the world we did on Monday....He was all about doing it and doing it well...I finally had to tell him to move things along or finish it after school....he got moving....nothing like the threat of homework to make the colored pencil fly faster....here are the finished maps....

They also learned about the different flags ships would sail and what they meant...then they had their choice out of 3 flags and they both chose the St.Georges Flag.....Kung Fu was again told to hurry things along...lol...here's his masterpiece.....

After that we cut our day short so we could go out to lunch and then to the library with our friends....we hadn't seen them in 2 weeks so we were ready to play!

                                                                     Together again!

                                                        Gummy worm's have multiple uses.

                                                                  enormous glasses

Don't you just love summer?

I'm still mad at Don......

Day two....I've been waiting over 2 weeks for the Early American Trades and Crafts Kit....we need it tomorrow and I'm pretty bummed it's not here. Don said I'd get a shipping conformation today but I didn't....Don's a dirty lying dog! If Don we're here I'd let the cat do this to him......

Today was another good day. We're off to a great start. Stuffie read her first Catechism lesson....I can't believe she's making her First Holy Communion is less than a year....

Kung Fu is enjoying the WP Language Arts. He says it MUCH better than last year. I hope this positive attitude continues! I also hope he gives up growing his hair out and allows me to cut it...he's looking WILD!

For our State Study today we had to look at a map of the US. I got ours in Target a couple of weeks ago. They really enjoyed looking at the map. It's always the things I think they're going to roll their eyes at that they enjoy the most.....even the devil cat got in on the map studying....

I'm still loving the science notebook. Also I'm so glad that I combined them for science and history this year because we can actually sit and share conversation with each other on what we're reading. Super cool!

Stuffie says math is still just as boring as last year....she did have fun coloring the dot to dot she had today....

After school we went to the pool....because it's still summer and because we need the exercise!

I'm getting me a Don voodoo doll!

I have to start out with an apology.... Stef, from the bottom of my heart I'm sorry for not understanding until today just how unbelievably ridiculous WP is. Truly.....
I'm so disgusted with them right now I feel it's only fair to warn you that I'm going to wield the profanity paint brush today.
So we are up and ready to go this morning. Everyone's looking forward to checking out the new stuff and attitudes are good. First up is Bible Study.....nothing scheduled for today. I found that a bit odd. It's the 1st school day of a new year and we're not going to begin by studying God's word?? I knew in advance that they don't schedule Bible everyday so I used my back up stuff and that went very well.
Next up was the Time Traveler- which is the spine of their History. Stuffie found it a bit boring but she's not expected to sit in on that everyday. Kung Fu thought it was just OK. They both enjoyed making the mini book to add to the lap book at the end of the unit and they also marked a map with the continents and oceans. As I was getting the books out I discovered this.....

I would have found that amusing, probably had a good laugh and added it to my stack of stuff to mail back to WP one day but.....
I couldn't find a book called "WILD WEST" . I have several books about the west in this years book shelf so at 1st I didn't think any thing of it. I  figured it was the abbreviation for a longer title. As I got looking more and more I realized that I didn't have anything titled Wild West that would go along with this morning's lesson. So I call WP...it's 9:15 am and I am PISSED. I manage to leave a polite message and go on with my morning. They have office hours from 9-5 but they're probably afraid to answer their phone.
You may be asking yourself why they would be afraid to answer the phone...it might have something to do with irate customers......for example ME when I found out that YET ANOTHER BOOK is missing from History.....it's called Time For Kids: Our 50 United States......it's a nifty little book that teaches State history from the time the state was accepted into the Union......
I don't have it.
 I call WP back. It's 9:46am still no answer I leave another message. Not quite as polite and cheerful as the 1st.....we continue on with our day.
Kung Fu thought that the LA was ok. and he liked the spelling. I don't expect him to like LA, it's nice to know some things never change. The Writing With Ease he liked....probably because he didn't have to actually write anything.
Stuffie happily continued along with her First Language Lessons and A Reason for Handwriting. She also did Writing With Ease and I can see we're going to have a time getting her to summarize stories in 3 sentences...lol. We started Horizon's Spelling and it's more work than we're used to so I'm reserving judgement till we get into it a bit more.

We're using Exploring Creation with Astronomy this year and they really enjoyed it......the notebooks are going to be really neat....here's their 1st pages

Stuffie's is the top one. Kung Fu was forced to use color but then liked the out come so I think once he gets used to the idea he'll enjoy having the notebook....I LOVE them!
They just finished Math and it's 2:17....not to shabby. Also...note to self....let Papa Bear teach the math to avoid arguments with Kung Fu.
.....at 1:04 my phone rings....it's Don....my old nemesis.
According to Don the "Wild West' book has been phased out. They will learn the things in that book when they read other books this year. I'm not sure what these 'things' are so I guess I have to take his word for it. I'm still unsure as to why the book is scheduled if it's been phased out unless they are selling all of their old teacher guides before they update? He's getting ready to say his goodbyes when I interrupt with "What about the 50 United States Book"?
According to Don that book has been on back order for several moths and they have been calling Scholastic trying to find out if and when they will be printing some more. He proceeds to ask me if they have it in my library or at my local bookstore....seriously?? No Don you jackass they don't! So I'm all "Well Don what do you expect me to do? This book is scheduled into every week for state study?!" He says he'll get back to me with an alternative. I barely stop myself from telling him what I really think....I save that for my blog.
I miss Don's second call...my phone never rang and then suddenly I had a voice mail...I call this 'DIVINE INTERVENTION' Don should be thanking God tonight. According to the voice mail Don has sent me an different book to use in place of the 50 State Book. He's going to call me later with more info but I should get it in the next couple of days.....in the mean time I guess I'll just wing it....and by wing it of course I mean I'll go look at Barnes and Noble...I think I deserve a  mocha frap!