Week in Review: Beginnings and Endings

Despite the fact that I haven't published a post since May, I'm going to push past that and get back to blogging!

Here are my blogging goals:

1. Publish a week in review each week.
2. Publish at least two Two for Tuesday recipe posts each month. So, every other week.
3. Publish one Making Memories or Cincinnati Dayscape each month.

I think that's doable!

And, without further ado, our week in review!

(That's even cooler, cause it rhymes!)

First of our "beginnings".

We started back to school this week (note "this week was actually July 21st).

We do this because

• A--we are all want to finish by early May. 
• B--we take every Friday in November and December off in addition to a two to three week Christmas vacation.
• C--it is too unbearably hot and humid outside to go anywhere or do anything
• D--when it does get nice in September, no one wants to be inside doing school, we all want to be outside doing something...so we have lots of field trips in September and October. 

Our first day of school started with me making personal omelets in one of my new cast iron skillets. They stuck a little and fell apart as I was getting them out of the pan, but no one minded. Schoolwork consisted of devotions with Sweetling, literature with Sweetling, and history with Sweetling and Toa of Boy. (Here's the curriculum and resources we are using this year if someone is interested.)

Then we made a list of the basic school supplies we would need for the year and went on a scavenger hunt through the house to round up what we already had. After a quick trip to the store to get the rest of the items, Mama treated us all to lunch at Sebastian's. (Neither she nor Sweetling had eaten a gyro before).

It was a great, easy, fun, first day!

Here's our tentative daily schedule, for now at least. We don't follow it to the letter, but it helps to have everything blocked out to make sure it's possible. Sweetling's day is on the left; Toa of Boy on the right.

Sweetling looks like she has a lot of open time in her schedule. That isn't actually the case.

It actually brings us to our second "beginning" of the week.

I'm not sure how much info I'm allowed to post on my blog, but Sweetling is participating in a large fandom writing project. (I'll omit the specifics, in case this supposed to not be public info yet.) She submitted a story summary to the organizers of the event. All the summaries were then posted anonymously, and certain artists were invited to select a summary they would like to work with and represent. Sweetling's summary was the fourth summary selected, and it was chosen by an artist Sweetling really admires. Sweetling has been in touch with the artist, and is working hard on the writing. By Wednesday she had already topped seven thousand words.  Thursday night she did a lot of revising. She still has a long way to go. This will be a novella by the time she is finished!

(no photo of the Sweetling hard at work. boo hoo, boo hoo).

When I first put the schedule up on the fridge, the Jedi looked it over and asked why Toa of Boy had Pokemon as part of his school schedule.

Behold, our third beginning...

Last April, Toa of Boy decided he wanted to embark on a two year project to draw all 718 Pokemon. He did some research on-line, and decided he wanted to use copic markers in this project. Then we priced copic markers, and he despaired. I told him that if it was that important to him, he could ask for marker sets for his upcoming birthday. He did that. (How many other boys want art supplies for their eleventh birthday?) The Jedi and I got him one set and Mama and Tia went together to get him a second set. We got my old drawing/drafting table out of the garage and cleaned it up. We got rid of the large computer desk in his bedroom and replaced it with the large drawing table and a small computer cart. 

He has decided, that for now, he wants to work at the kitchen table, in a more guided drawing lesson. I sit beside him with my sketchbook and he sits with his bristol board. Then I draw, pausing to discuss how I'm looking for the shapes, the negative spaces, etc. He draws as I draw. Bit by bit we get a Pokemon drawn. Then he inks over the lines he wants to keep, erases all the rest of the sketch lines, and uses copic markers to complete the Pokemon.

I have pictures of Toa of Boy working, but I don't have pictures of his finished pieces. Even though I think they are quite good, Toa of Boy is dissatisfied with them and doesn't want them photographed. I can respect that, even if I disagree.

And, our fourth beginning...

We started work on our doodle devotions this week. Each week, we are going to focus on memorizing and reflecting on a Scripture verse. 

 The daily doodles help us focus on the meaning of select portions of the verse. I proposed this idea as a family devotional time each day, and it was well received by Toa and Sweetling. Eventually, I plan to put together and sell pdf ebooks, each containing 9 to 10 weeks of devotions. I just about have a sample week's worth of pages to distribute....which are the pages Sweetling, Toa, and I worked on this week.

Now for our endings...

We ended our summer with a week of VBS. Sweetling did a great job in the drama as a special agent on the Truth Force.

She also wrote a follow up drama skit that was presented during our Sunday morning worship time. Several adults expressed to me how impressed they were when they learned she had written it.

And, finally, we need to begin a new timeline for this year's history study. Which means, last year's timeline must come down. Before that happened, Sweetling and I worked at making a short video of the timeline. We played Peer Gynt's "In the Hall of the Mountain King" for background music. (Sweetling offered to edit in the music after the filming, but I just wanted the project finished. So I took the amateur route rather than the more polished after-filming editing option.) Sweetling used my phone flashlight as our camera lighting, while I rolled the video camera over our timeline from start to finish.