Valentine's Day

It has always made me laugh that my oldest daughter calls Mother's Day 'Saint Mother's Day' but has never inserted the Saint for Valentine. Personally, I think all mothers are saints, especially after helping to fill out x number of cards, bake a scrumptious meal, and remember to pick up the dollar store box of chocolates for the kiddos and the slightly more expensive one for the hubby. Still, although we learned today that Valentine was in fact several martyrs and that the card company did in fact promote Valentine's Day as early as the Victorian Era, I still think the day is fun.

This morning I happened to wake up very tired. I had made the mistake of staying up late to finish reading a Julie Klassen book (totally worth it). I think one of my biggest dangers in homeschooling is thinking too often 'oh well, we can catch up tomorrow.' I don't mind being flexible but I have to think of teaching my kids as a job, albeit one I greatly enjoy, and if I was late to work I would get fired. So, I dragged myself out of bed and we got the day going.

After a walk with our beagle, Sushi, we went over multiplication tables, some out loud reading, and a review of our last Language Arts lesson we headed to the store in order to get ready for our rendezvous with Ben.

 We met at a park near Ben's work and had a lovely meal of baguettes, raspberry cheese, salami, chocolates, little bottles of marinellis, and girl scout cookies (cause it's that time of year).  Hannah got bits of bread and cheerios.

Then is was a few quick slides on the playground and back home for a lot math work. Poor kids. I have them not only doing their regular Saxon lessons but we also downloaded the last years TAKS tests and we are going through them question by question to make sure Eliora can pass for her grade at the end of the year. One of the things I actually love about homeschooling is really knowing your kids strengths and weaknesses. Poor Eliora has my brain for math. She knows it but tends to get mixed up on those pesky word problems and fractions. Meanwhile Audrey is sitting in the back rolling her eyes at us. Audrey is a bit dyslexic though and needs the help in reading.Put my oldest two together though and you could solve about any problem thrown at 'em.

And since we didn't buy the super fancy strawberries at the store we ended the day with dipping our own. We also went around the table a few times and let everyone tell one person they truly loved and why. Sadie really loves Daddy....A LOT....every time. Abbey meanwhile really loves Little Einsteins, her dolly, and Hannah when she doesn't have chicken pox.