September 2020 month in review

I fell off the wagon and am not getting this written week by week. It’s September 17, and I’m just now starting this post. I’m veering between trying to get stuff planned for a vacation, leading a Bible study, and updating my Christmas lessons. Busy time for sure.

 

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Week 1

We started off September with a bang and had our monthly game club with our homeschool co-op. It was a blast to have them all there, but it was a tricky part where I had to keep reminding the giant horde Jeff is working from home.

Leezard thoroughly enjoys disemboweling her toys, so I gather up all the stuffing and bring it upstairs to stuff a giant pillow I’m making with various scraps. you can see all that’s left of her stuffed emu in that bigger picture.

The first week of September was primarily raining off and on, and I ensured it didn’t rain by taking my brand new unicorn umbrella with me. Of course, that only worked for a few hours that day, because it was quite wet by the end of the week.

We’re learning about Austria in geography, and it was kind of amazing how many of the classical composers come from Austria.

Continuing on, we watched Tale of Two Cities after reading the book, the kids truly despised this version because it was boring. None of them particularly liked the book, but they’d rather read the book again than watch that movie. It had all the right details, but none of the heart. It was a great lesson for them to learn you can have all the right details, but none of what is really happening. That crazy picture on the side is the kids posing so I can have a picture of someone reading Tale of Two Cities.

Our co-op had our annual Not Back to School party and there were SO MANY new families. Unsurprisingly many people have chosen to homeschool rather than deal with virtual learning, which means lots of new homeschoolers.

Someone pranked our neighborhood and filled it with bubble bath. I sent the kids down with the dog, but she was not as amused by it as I was.

And finally, I remade a very old recipe, chicken teriyaki, in my continued attempts to update old blog posts.

 

Week 2

This is the first of a couple of games I’m putting together for the Christmas story. This game is going to be gathering all the people in Jesus’ family tree, and there are a couple of different ways to play the game. Now I’m planning how to make a birth of John the Baptist game.

Batman is wearing my mask I made for when I’m wearing it for long periods of time, it’s an infinity scarf with ear loops, but he refused to wear it correctly, because boys.

We played Camel Up, the boys finally got to play it, because previously we’d only played it with friends, and they found it just as amusing as we do, but Princess wasn’t convinced she should join us in playing.

I lost my notebook for our government class, and finally gave up and reprinted it. Of course, as soon as I’d reprinted it, I found the earlier version. SIGH.

The kids as part of our American Revolution unit wrote a timed essay on the Boston Tea Party, it’s interesting to find out how the people from that time reacted to the events. There are parallels to be drawn to the protests/riots going on today.

Leezard graduated from her first puppy training class, and was somewhat patient enough to actually let me take that picture. It did take about 20 attempts.

And finally, our youth group started back up for the school year meeting inside.

Week 3

It probably says something about the last week or two, that I hadn’t even realized I didn’t type up this week until I came in to type up week 4.

We take Leezard to Puppy Preschool each week to get her time to socialize, and it greatly amuses us to get her report card. Every week we hear she’s energetic and friendly and it always makes us laugh to hear it.

That top meme is 100% life with Leezard, the dog has happily eaten the how to train your puppy book. I like the meme next to it, which is a giant pile of puppies watching a little dragon toy.

I made a batch of cookies, and the kids devoured them, it rather amazed me because I left for Bible study and the plate was full, got back and there were two cookies left. I was quite sad.

Leezard is quite fond of climbing up into people’s laps sneakily. Which is quite impressive since she’s 50 pounds. Both of those far-right pictures are the sneaky Leezard getting onto someone’s lap.

The boys are playing Tak, a fun game inspired The Name of the Wind, it’s supposed to be that world’s version of Chess, and the boys enjoy playing it from time to time.

That super small square in the middle is a map I’m working on for a game I’m planning to run next week while we’re on vacation.

Week 4

I was going to do a sleepover with the girls, but we changed it to a movie night (Into the Woods) and painting pet rocks. Afterward, Princess and I went round and left the rocks out for someone to adopt.

The boys and I continued our semi-weekly game of Seafall, and I got a new advisor, that of course had to be called Bob the Master Builder.

I’m remaking my Murder Mystery quilt because I lost the first half dozen blocks, so this is one of those remade blocks.

This past week we rocketed through three different countries, I’m trying to finish off Europe so we can start on another continent and maybe get them done, so we ate a Hungarian Austrian meal, which had Jeff and I enjoying it, but the kids were rather blah.

We studied Klimt, and I made Princess let me borrow her watercolors so I could get a fun picture.

Leezard found butter, and that is the white specks all over her face. We’re learning you have to not leave any food on the counter, especially not where the dog can get to it when she is bad and puts her feet up on the counter.

Sigh, it’s a long learning process.

Next, you can see the pictures from our visit to Austria. The kids were very amused by the William Tell version I found.

Underneath is yet another meal we had, and I’m trying to remember exactly which country it was because I can tell it’s got lots of paprika, but what paprika prone country? I think this one is actually Hungary, and the earlier one was Austria. I better go fix that… The problem of way too many countries in too short a time.

And finally Battle Ground came out on Tuesday, and it came out earlier than we expected. We thought it was midnight on Tuesday night, but it was Monday night. So, we ended up trying to get stuff done during the day and actually talk to people between desperately racing through reading the book to see what was going to happen. It was so many changes in such a short time. I’m not eagerly waiting for the next book.