Edgar Allan Poe for first graders

We're big fans of Halloween in this house. I suppose we simply love holidays in general, and Halloween always feels like the kick off of the holiday season. Dress up is a daily activity here, and Halloween takes it to a new level of awesomeness. In any case, I wanted to do some fun, Halloween-ish things this week in our school. I already had a couple of art project ideas (we made egg carton spiders last week and did glue and glitter spider webs today), but I wanted something more to tie in the upcoming holiday with what we're studying in school.

I came across lots of worksheets and printables online that I could use - lifecycle of a pumpkin, anatomy of a bat, etc. Not bad ideas at all, but they don't really fit in with anything else we're doing. So I thought maybe we'd just read some Halloween inspired poetry. After a few minutes of searching, and not finding anything spectacular, it hit me - I didn't have to fall back on child-like silly poems (which are fun, don't get me wrong, but we have a Wee Sing Halloween CD that is getting lots of playtime this month and it's full of the silly stuff). My mom has been scouring her bookshelves of late, passing on a number of books that she thought we might use in our schooling. One of them was "Edgar Allen Poe for Young People." Oh my goodness. I love Edgar Allan Poe. I didn't know who he was until I was in high school. I have a first grader. But what the heck - "The Raven" it is.

I got out the book first thing and told him we were going to read a poem by a very famous poet who wrote some things that were rather creepy. His eyes lit up immediately. Then I told him that it was long and had old fashioned language that might be hard to understand. His reply? "Cool!"

I read the whole thing, slowly and enunciating each word carefully. I didn't stop to explain things the first go around - there was too much to explain and it would have ruined the rhythm of the piece. He sat and listened quietly and although he didn't understand much of it (I asked when I was done), he immediately said he loved it upon finishing. He told me that the "old fashioned" language sounds cool, even if he doesn't know most of the words :). I can appreciate that.

We went through the poem, verse by verse, and I gave it to him as more of a narrative. "Here, the man is sad because the woman he loves is gone - her name is Lenore. And he's reading books trying not to think about his sorrow." That kind of thing. We talked about some of the language used and what the words mean, and he told me his impressions. He didn't have a lot to say, but he enjoyed the poem and I have to admit, I was tickled.

Afterwards, he wanted to make a raven, so we found a template for a raven art project and he got to coloring and cutting. We happened to have some black craft feathers, so he glued those on for dramatic effect. It needed time to dry, so it is sitting on the bookshelf overnight; but I'm thinking about suggesting that we put it up over a doorway, as if perched above the chamber door :).

Today we read it again, once through, and I asked him to "narrate" it with a picture. We often do "narrations" of things I read aloud, where he tells it back to me in his own words. But this time I thought he could just draw his impression or a scene from the poem. He drew a big raven perched on a statue above a door. He wrote the word "Nevermore" coming from the Raven's mouth. It was a cute touch. Then he wanted to write some of the poem along the side of his picture to tell part of the story. He chose a line and I helped him spell the words he didn't know.

We're tackling another selection tomorrow - a passage from one of Poe's stories (the name is escaping me right now). I'm enjoying sharing this stuff with him so much!

7 Quick Takes - Fall Edition

1. I love fall. Even though I live in the Pacific Northwest, which means it rains a lot (but heck, it rains most of the year anyway, so I'm used to it), fall is so lovely. Crisp, cool air. Vibrant colors. Beautiful sunsets. Scarves and knee high boots. And the food... oh the food.

2. I love fall food! Soups and stews and chili and squash. Mmmmmmm. I have a torrid love affair with my crockpot and it breaks into full swing when the weather cools. Oh how I love me some crockpot soup!

3. And pumpkin pie. Nothing tastes more like fall, and the forthcoming holidays, quite like pumpkin pie. I'm awesome at pies (and by awesome, I mean I rock pie making) but there's a grocery store nearby that makes pumpkin pies that are *almost* as good as mine. My dear husband brought one home tonight, and ooooooooohhhhhhh. Let's just say I ate way too much and enjoyed every last bite. That stuff is like crack to me.

4. Speaking of crockpots, tonight I made Spinach Chicken Artichoke Dip, posted by Wellness Mama. Oh my stars, was it good! I am married to a man who could make a serious run for the "Pickiest Eater in the World" contest. He is tough to please, and like all picky people, he defends himself with, "I just know what I like!" In any case, he took one look at my crockpot full of cheesey goodness and gave me The Look. I've known him since we were 15 - I know The Look. It was the look that said, "I'll try this if I absolutely have to, but only because I'm hungry and you took the time to make it, but I just know I'm going to hate it." It's quite similar to the look a four year old will give you when you tell him to try "just one bite" of his dinner (and yes, I did just compare my husband to a four year old - don't worry, I'd say it to his face). :) He did take the bite and the look melted into another one I am familiar with, the "This is so good I'm perfectly willing to admit I was wrong because I love it." I get that one a lot too.

So yeah... try it. It's yummy.

5. Speaking of rain (see #1), it didn't rain all week. In fact, we had the most lovely fall weather that really reminds me why I love this season so much. My four-year-old's preschool class had their annual trip to the pumpkin patch today, and all week I kept thinking how lovely it was we were going to have nice weather. Not so much. It rained all day today. On the bright side, it did temper the smell of the pigs and keep more of the bees away. So that's a good thing.

6. On said field trip, my older son (who happily tagged along with the preschoolers) said the turkeys looked like dinner. This is right after the tour guide told the kids these turkeys are pets and won't ever be a Thanksgiving dinner. This is the same kid who raised his hand on our recent salmon watching field trip and said seeing the fish was making him hungry and could he go get his fishing pole. A carnivore to the bone, that one.

7. Also at the field trip, I was the recipient of a wonderful gesture of mommy-kindness. I realized on the way back to the car that my daughter had a poopy diaper. The boys climbed in while I laid her out on the passenger seat to change her. Only after I'd taken off her dirty diaper and wiped her clean did I realize, I didn't have a diaper! Oh the horror! My mind raced with the possibilities - what should I do?!? I tried to think of where I might have an extra one stashed, but alas, I had none. As I was trying to calculate the odds that she wouldn't pee on the carseat after having just had a juice box, and whether I might have any napkins in the glove box to put down to catch some of it, a woman came up to the car next to me. I managed to catch her eye and asked if she happened to have a diaper. I didn't even see if she had diaper-aged kids. Matter of fact, she did have one to spare! (insert Halleluja Chorus here). Oh thank heaven! And thank you for kind-hearted and prepared mommies! She saved my bacon, and my carseat cover.

They turned off the TV... by themselves?

Our normal daily routine is hinged around lunch and naptime. My daughter needs a nap in the afternoon, and I need a break - so my boys are used to this being their TV time. I will freely admit that I have shamefully abused this in the past, letting them watch far too much TV because the little one was still asleep and I was doing something really important messing around on the internet. I have made a concerted effort to keep their TV time more limited, encouraging them to find something else to do (quietly if upstairs). The vast majority of the time, this works out fine. They play or find something else to do, I still get a few things done (because getting up to tell them to turn the TV off has the added benefit of prying my butt from this chair and my eyes from the screen).

I don't know what's up lately, but my boys have been a lot less interested in TV than they once were. Just a few months ago, if I had let them, they probably could have watched TV all afternoon until it was time to cook dinner. And then they'd ask to watch "just one more episode of Spiderman!" (we only have Netflix). Over the last several weeks, they've done two extraordinarily shocking things, and not just once, but on a regular basis.

1. They have turned off the TV with no prompting from me after just one cartoon.

2. They have not asked to watch TV at all and simply found something else to do.

Insert jaw-dropping face here.

Today they are playing outside on the trampoline, even though it's cloudy and cold. Awesome! They've also been furiously making art projects together - we've had a lot of coloring, cutting and pasting going on in this house lately. Aside from the fact that I'm running out of paper and glue, it's been awesome.

I wish I could say I did something magnificent to induce this change, but I really haven't. I do think, however, that homeschooling has had something to do with it. The way we live our life has changed and as we all adjust, the projects and reading and other homeschool-ish things are spilling over into their free time. It isn't as if they're off pursuing things that directly relate to what we did in school, but their free time is beginning to have a different feel to it. They want to draw and do art projects constantly. They want to look up random facts on the internet about bugs and animals. They want to look at their library books and fill up their booklists (of course, they do get a prize for that, but still).

Now that I think about it, perhaps some of this shift is because of me. I'm far more willing to indulge in the art projects and random Googling. Before I might have put them off with a "maybe later," when asked if they could get out more paper or try glitter, or find out the wingspan of a bald eagle. But now I almost always say yes.

Of course, now that I've written this, they will probably swing back to wanting to watch TV all afternoon and won't voluntarily turn it off ever again ;).

Seriously though, it does ease that bit of mommy-guilt I harbor over letting them watch TV, especially because I know my motive for allowing it is rather selfish in nature. Not that I think watching TV is terrible, but I do believe in moderation and I'm not always great about moderating them enough.

Plus, I love their artwork! I have no idea what to do with all of it, but they are both having so much fun being creative, it makes my mommy heart glad.

The NOT best housekeeper and why Pinterest is clearly a good use of time

I am not the best housekeeper on the planet.

In fact, one could argue that I am quite far from such a noble distinction. Sure, I have seen houses in worse states of disarray. Some filled with more clutter, others with genuine dirt and grime. Mine tends to swing from "looks-like-a-tornado-ripped-through" at worst to "mostly acceptable" at best. But most of the time, I feel like I'm barely treading water, trying to get everything done.

This is one aspect of living my vocation that I have struggled with, not only in the doing, but in the valuing. When my first son was born, I fretted about how difficult it was to stay home with a baby and vented more than once to well-meaning friends, "I didn't quit my job to be a housekeeper!" That was when I still had a tough time with my new identity of stay-home-mom and felt like keeping the house was beneath me. I would not have admitted such a thing at the time, mind you. But deep down, that is how I felt.

Over the years, my heart has softened to the realities of my vocation and I've realized there is value and honor in even those simple (and sometimes thankless) tasks of keeping a house. During this phase of my life, my role is to care for my family. This is not only lived out in the kissing of boo-boos, reading of books, and feeding of cookies to my little people. It also has to include the feeding and the cooking and the cleaning; the less glamorous tasks of daily life that simply must get done.

I often let those things go, and the truth is, it isn't because I don't have time. Granted, I don't have time for a perfectly clean house (and who am I kidding, I wouldn't have a perfectly clean house even if I had the time). I don't need a house that is spotless from top to bottom. We live in our house. And still, I could do a much better job of creating a space that is orderly, and by extension, serene.

A neat freak I am not, but I do love a cleaned up room. Things in their places, lined up just so. There is a loveliness in order, in being clean and ready for the next round of living. I am always in a much more peaceful mood when things are reasonably well clean and picked up around here - yet all too often I fail miserably at keeping my house in such a condition.

I ran across something on Pinterest that linked to a blog post on how to have a "fake" immaculate house in 15 minutes a day. I read through it and it was like a light bulb. It is so simple, and I feel silly for not having tried something like this before. I've been at this for almost 7 years now (the stay home mom thing), and I have spent most of that time feeling overwhelmed, like I can't keep up. (Wait, why did I feel that way when I only had one child?) This approach is simple, although does require a level of diligence I'm not accustomed to devoting to keeping my house clean. But I want to give it a try to see if it can ease some of the burden I feel, and keep my house from deteriorating into a state that drives me crazy.

I created a schedule for myself that breaks up the major housecleaning tasks to be done throughout the week. I only have one or two things to do in a given day, and although I think it's going to take me longer than 15 minutes a day, it shouldn't be too much to handle - if I have the self discipline to work at it. Changing habits isn't easy, and I know I'll have the tendency to let things slide out of laziness and procrastination. But I think this has the potential to help me out a bit and keep me on top of things without driving myself nuts in the process.

My schedule looks something like this:

• Monday - vacuum downstairs
• Tuesday - clean master bathroom, take out garbage
• Wednesday - vacuum upstairs (this one is tricky, because I can't do it during naptime)
• Thursday - clean other two bathrooms (one is just a small half bath downstairs)
• Friday - dust and clean kitchen floor

I'm also going to make an effort to clean up the kitchen at the end of the day (still need to do that today... yikes), and do a load of laundry every day - and get it put away. The dishes I tend to stay on top of for the most part. The laundry is the bane of my existence. I'm good at getting it washed and dried, but from there it tends to accumulate into an enormous pile, which I am quite certain has the capability to breed (I just wish it would breed something stylish). Instead of doing a bunch of loads once or twice a week, which I never have time to fold and put away as I go, I'll do a load or two each day. I can find the time to put away one or two loads of laundry, for the most part. I think this will help me keep up and not find ourselves digging through the Great Pile of Clothes each morning to find something to wear.

My kids will get in on the action as appropriate, and I'm hoping this will help me integrate them into the housekeeping chores more naturally. I haven't been great about getting them to help with things, but it's so much more work to get things done with little hands "helping." My boys are finally old enough that they can be of real help, at least some of the time. And I need to make a better effort to get them to help around the house so I'm not kicking myself down the road for not requiring it of them.

We shall see how it goes. I'll be honest, I'm already behind. I didn't vacuum the upstairs today. But like I said, that one is tricky, since my optimum chores time is when my daughter is napping, and I can't vacuum upstairs when she's asleep. But the beauty of this routine, is that if I miss something one week, I can just do it the next and it shouldn't be too big of a deal. I'll be cleaning things way more often than I usually do this way, so missing a week should be fine.

And see, Pinterest is clearly a worthy use of my time!

Friday Quick Takes

It's Friiiiiiday.....

1. Thank goodness.

2. Today's workout is a testament to the power a goal has over my willingness to get up early and go to the gym. I didn't get to bed until late and the only reason my annoying alarm finally woke me up is because my husband elbowed me. I don't usually sleep that soundly (thanks to babies), and under typical circumstances I would have turned it off and gone right back to bed. But I kept thinking about how I want to see what this workout experiment will do, and I don't want to have to preface it with, "Well, I didn't really do all the workouts...." So I got up.

3. And now my legs feel something akin to jello.

4. Tomorrow is week three of fall sports - flag football for my 6-year-old and soccer for my four-year-old. I'm not enjoying this sports season very much and I'll be pretty glad when it's over. My husband is coaching flag football, but he's also rolling out some sort of upgrade at work (I pretend to understand what he's talking about, but he's way smarter with all that technical junk than I am), and looking for a new job, so he's not exactly focused on it. And Grayson, well my Grayson is just... Grayson. Soccer games are really frustrating. And yet the kid still says he loves playing and is excited about his practice tonight. I guess that's good - and I'll still be glad when the season is over.

5. Flag football this year has reminded me of one of my biggest pet peeves as a parent - other people's kids. Some kids are great, mind you. I like kids, generally speaking. But we have some kids on our team that are... difficult, to say the least. There are two brothers on the team, in particular, who cause a lot of trouble. They weren't at practice this week and my husband (and my brother and our other friend, who are helping coach), kept going on and on about how great practice went. When I pointed out that those two kids weren't there, they were all, "Ohhhhhhh....." I feel bad for thinking this way, but it would be a lot more pleasant if those kids decided to stop showing up... Isn't that terrible?


6. Fall is probably my favorite season of the year. The colors, the crisp, cool air. I like fall clothing too - layers, and coats, scarves and hats. I am so not a fashionista, but I do appreciate cute fall clothes. And boots - oh the boots! I think if my husband gets a job that pays well, I may have to treat myself to a fabulous pair of boots.

7. I think I deserve 'em. ... and maybe a pair in brown too ;)

Happy Friday and see Jennifer for more Quick Takes!

Life changes - job hunting

My husband is losing his job at the end of the year.

How's that for a dramatic statement? It isn't so dismal as all that. For one thing, it's largely voluntary. For the past 6-ish years, he's been a partner in an IT consulting company that works in the medical industry. He and our good friend used to be internal IT staff for a group of medical clinics, but spun off to create their own company under the umbrella of the medical campus where they work. At the time, it seemed like a great opportunity and it had potential. I won't go into all the gory details as to why things are coming to a close. Let's just say, there are reasons - plenty of them. Everyone has agreed to go their separate ways once their contracts are fulfilled.

Fortunately, no relationships are being damaged in the process (part of why they chose to end things now, rather than drawing it out longer). But it does leave us in the odd position of.... needing a job.

The good news is, my husband activated his resume on Monster.com last week and he's had numerous emails and calls - without having actually applied for any jobs yet. It appears his skill set is in high demand at the moment, and that is great. He's also in talks with their largest client about the possibility of being hired as an employee, or somehow continuing the relationship as an independent contractor. I'm not sure what to expect there, since we'd kind of assumed that option wasn't going to be on the table.

The tough part is that we moved out of the major metropolitan area because hubby's job was down here. But there aren't many other jobs where we live - so it was sort of, this job works out or Daddy has to commute. The commute is a big bummer. Traffic is awful. Like, really awful. We used to make fun of our friends for living down here and commuting to the city, but now the hubs might be facing that very scenario. There are possibilities that make it less of a burden (taking the train if it's downtown, partial telecommuting maybe), but it's going to change our lifestyle quite a bit. We're very used to having Daddy 5 minutes away most of the time. Losing that is going to be a bummer.

Mostly we're just trying to not stress (hard) and leave it in God's hands (hard). I believe that God will guide us and help us make the right call for our family. And I have to remind myself often to stop, pray, and listen, rather than getting caught up in the stress of a job change. Whenever we've really trusted in God to guide us, we've never come out wrong, so I have a lot of faith that He will help.

And it's still hard.

It is also a good reminder to be really, really grateful for what we have though. It isn't likely we'll be facing a lengthy unemployment. It's very likely he'll find a good job. It's likely we'll do better financially. All in all, this situation has a lot of potential to be great for my husband's career. It could be so much worse, so much scarier.

So we'll see what happens in the coming weeks and months. I'm not sure what to expect, and I am doing my best to remain open to the possibilities.

Our honeymoon adventure... remembered

Ah, love. I am in love with love. So when dear Betty Beguiles asked for honeymoon stories, how could I not venture down memory lane to that wonderful time when my husband and I were just married, and off on our first adventure as man and wife.

An adventure it was! Since high school, I had been chomping at the bit to travel in Europe. I'd toyed with the idea of studying abroad, but decided against it, so my goal was to travel after I graduated college. I read up on how to travel solo, and how to travel cheap. I researched my brains out, trying to find a way to make my dream trip happen.

Then we got engaged. He loved the idea of traveling too, so we decided to make my dream trip our honeymoon.

I won't go into all the details of where we went, the things we saw or places we stayed. I will say that the funniest thing about our trip is how differently my husband and I remember it. I can tell you all about the churches we visited, the castles we explored, the museums, the monuments, the sights. My husband will tell you about the food. He remembers the name of the restaurants we loved, the food we ordered and exactly what it tasted like. He remembers a lot of experiences through food, but it always cracks people up to hear him talk about a vacation, especially when I've warned them beforehand that they're about to go on a culinary journey. "So how was your honeymoon?" you might ask. "Oh man, we ate at this amazing place..." I love that man.

What I remember most is the sense of utter freedom we had. We created an itinerary before we left, and pretty much scrapped it a couple of days in. We had railpasses and the question was always, "Where do you want to go today?"

We explored the countryside of England, by train and by bus. We decided we just *had* to see this little town in Wales that had a castle built by King Edward I, and it took 3 trains and a bus to get there. But it was glorious. We had no fear, no inhibition. Public transportation on that scale had once been intimidating, but in England (and a bit of France), it gave us wings. We decided where to go as we went along and we loved every minute of it.

We did see castles and majestic gothic churches (oh the churches!). I stood on stairs worn so much with age that they were curved in the middle. We saw 700 year old houses with the original stone roofs, and people still living in them. We saw cemetaries with gravestones so old, you couldn't read them. We saw Roman ruins and artifacts, Viking helmets and enough swords and armor to send a couple of uber geeks like us into a coma.

We were free.

It was a grand adventure and I look forward to the day when we can go back and show our kids the things we enjoyed - and discover new things along the way. My husband and I both love history and being in the places where amazing things took place was just.. breathtaking. Here in the US, especially on the west coast, nothing is old. You see a building from the 1930s and it's impressive. There, you can walk streets that were built hundreds of years ago. See the site where Constantine was proclaimed Roman Emperor. Visit a medieval gothic cathedral that was built on the site of a Viking church, that was built on top of a Roman temple. History lives there.

I will always cherish that time we had. We were young, in love and on such an exciting journey. We tasted a freedom we'd never known and we learned a lot along the way. We were very glad to return home when it was over, but it was the experience of a lifetime. For us, it was the perfect way to celebrate the beginning of our new life together.