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On the road and hanging by a song

Today is the day we find out if I can write a blog post from my phone. I was trying to write it in the browser, and it wasn’t working so well and I thought “hey maybe there’s an app for that,” and it turns out there is and it works pretty well.

 
We just wrapped up our annual summer visit to Michigan. The kids swam a lot, Rockford and my dad golfed a lot, and I read a lot. We went to a baseball game, and we ate a lot of Sizzling Rice Soup.

Today we’re on the road, on the way to Maryland, where Rockford has a few days of meetings. (We have housesitters and nothing to steal but elderly cats so take your business elsewhere, Thieves of the Internet.)

We saw a brand-new Tesla on the back of a Tesla-hauler. We saw the Weinermobile. We saw a man named Dino and his family approach the counter and one by one order every last slice of “cheese and pepperoni” at the travel-plaza Sbarro’s.

We have discussed the duties of the British monarchy, the bland appeal of Nicholas Sparks tales and the merits of the Mallowcup. We are listening to Soul Coughing and James Taylor and Eve feat. Gwen Stefani. We will be on the road for at least three more hours.

We can blog from our phones. What a world.

Other Novembers

On November 23, 2005, I celebrated Poppy’s 100th day and she wore a very cute sweater. (On November 22, 2005, I wrote something about a disparaging article about Wilco. But BabyPoppy is too cute not to share.)

On November 22, 2006, I wrote my 50,000th word for NaNoWriMo. “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” played a major role in the story, though, and I’m pretty sure that’s cheating.

On November 22, 2007, I talked about our plans for Thanksgiving. I had a weeks-old baby, and we were days away from eating some turkey.

On November 22, 2008, I had nothing to say. Much like today.

On November 22, 2009, I had a cold.

On November 22, 2010, I talked about food again.

On November 22, 2011, I linked to a bunch of things my brother had written here about baseball.

On November 22, 2012, I was full of food.

On November 22, 2013, I was not having a very optimistic day.

This week in homeschooling: Getting back to work

Homeschooling at ButterscotchSundae.comWe are steadily creeping up on the end of this school year.

In past years we’ve been finished by now, but we had a lot of sick days this yea, and we took last week off entirely to go to Disney World, and we took Monday off because it was Memorial Day. And so we still have a couple of weeks to go. I’m aiming to be finished with our 180 days by June 13th.

Here’s a bit of what we did this week:

Language Arts
  • Pete finished Step 11 of “All About Spelling,” which is working very well for him.
  • Poppy is working independently on “Growing with Grammar: Level Three” and the “Wordly Wise 3000” vocabulary program. She isn’t going to finish either by June 13, but we’re going to do a little bit of schoolwork throughout the summer. She might finish “GWG” by August.
  • Math

    The kids are both still plugging away at their McRuffy Math, and Poppy is still working through “Teaching Textbooks: Math 4.” I’m still on the fence about switching Poppy to Right Start math next year. It’s so expensive! Any insight you have on it would be appreciated.

    Reading
  • Still. Reading. “The Mysterious Benedict Society.” A.K.A. The book that wouldn’t end.
  • Poppy has been working on a reading comprehension workbook, and she’s doing mostly well on it. There is a writing exercise at the end of each assignment, and she’s very reluctant to do that part.
  • Wanna read more about homeschooling? Check out the Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers weekly linky thing!