Hoffman Homestead

Melanie - L = Meanie

A lot of you ask how I do it with 4 kids and being military.  I don't.  I just about lost my mind last week and decided we had to get away.  My #1 reason for homeschooling, I can do just that.  Coming home makes me feel so much better.

School at Grandma Mary's!

Our first day here and I put them right to work!  We have a bunch of awesome field trips planned and I told them if they don't get their work done, no field trips.  I'm a meanie.

A#1 made himself right at home.  Can you guess how excited he is to have his iMac hooked up to a new monitor?  He just looks like a future computer programmer.  If you look on his right wrist you can see a blue bracelet.  That's the swim pass from Splash Down Dakota where we had a big birthday bash last month.  He says he's going to wear it until Daddy comes back.  We'll see, it's pretty worn.

Lego break!

A#3 is the lego master.  For an almost 4 yo, he puts together some awesome things.

A#4 now holds himself up pretty well on the potty.  A#1 snuck this shot.  I was laughing because he was grunting so loud.  Pooping is hard work!

 

Getting in touch with my roots.

For lack of anything better to do, the boys and I went to the Scandinavian Park in town today.  I thought we could get some fun photos at least and run off some energy (the crazies are still visiting).

This church is actually a replica of my ancestor's church in Gol, Norway.  When my dad came to visit, he ended up giving the tour guide a history lesson, haha!

And we can't climb a hill without rolling back down it now can we?

Cute baby shot!

I couldn't get A#3 to smile for nuthin today.

I love my Ergo!

A#1 got his iMac fixed yesterday.  He's super happy to have it back.  I don't understand his obsession with Apple.  Oh well.  He saved up his birthday and Christmas money to buy this dinosaur of a computer.  

Park Day!

It's amazing what a little bribery can do.  I told A#1 we'd take his iMac in to get checked out after we got done with school.  He was completely done by 10:30 and with his insistence, A#2 was done shortly after.  We were out of the house by 11:30.  

Like always, I only got about half of what I wanted to get done done.  I don't like running errands by myself let alone with all the kiddos.  After we got the essentials done, we headed to the park with Kelly and Raina.  It's so funny how much the boys love Raina.  They want a little sister as badly as James wants a little daughter.  I could only imagine how spoiled she would be!  Maybe we should adopt a little girl, give some lovin' where it's extra needed.  They had a blast!  Raina was laughing her head off at A#1on the swings.  A#1 would give A#3 a big push and then "accidentally" walk in front of him and get knocked over.  Of course, I really wanted to get some good park pictures and today was a great day for it too but I forgot the camera.  Oh well.

We spent the rest of the afternoon creating.  Kelly gave the boys some party favors from Raina's birthday party.  Best favor bag I've yet seen!  Play Dough, stickers, water colors and just a little bit of candy.  

Of course A#4 has to be right in the middle of it.  Gotta love a Bumbo!

Poor little guy has a tummy ache today.  He's been spitting up like crazy and pooping up a storm.  I hope this passes fast.  

So far our plan for going to Minnesota is to leave on Sunday.  This plan all hinges on whether we can get the couches back to the store tomorrow.  Praying for no rain!

Coffee is my friend.

Gotta love the paradox effect some kids have with Benadryl and caffeine.  I'd be really interested to see a study done on this.  Maybe there is one and I just haven't ran across it yet.  It seems quite a few kids with ADHD or similar autism spectrum disorders have the opposite reaction to Benadryl and caffeine.  Aah, the things you learn by accident as a parent.  So I've got 2 of those (2 that I know of at least).  We've had quite a difficult time getting school done this week.  The maniacal laughter is my first clue that A#1 is out of sorts.  I'm not sure why.  Might be the change of Daddy being gone.  Might be the weather.  Might be combination.  I basically told him he would either drink the coffee (half cream and half coffee) or he might end up with no marbles by the end of the day.

Aah, what a glorious day we ended up having!  My sweet A#1 was back.  He got all of his school work done with absolutely no complaining.  And he did a very good job.  Once school was done, he spent the afternoon building train tracks with Asa and being an all around awesome big brother.  I was blown away.  I have seen before how caffeine affects him but this was night and day.  Beautiful.

A#4 is playing the part of Monster Baby who attacks the train.  Haha!

It's been raining all day and it just feels like the perfect weather for knitting and a movie.  I'm going to browse Netflix now for a good movie.  Salmon for dinner too, one of the boys' favorites.

Well it's 6:30pm and the maniacal laughter is back.  It was good while it lasted.  At least I know how we are going to start tomorrow!

 

Any ol' Wednesday

We had a much better day today than yesterday, thank you Lord!  A#1 was squirrelly at first but calmed down significantly this afternoon.  They got caught up from yesterday and finished before the neighbor kids got home from school.  They even earned extra marbles for good behavior!

If any of you get invites from Big IQ Kids to a Spelling Bee, that is from us and not spam.  Maybe a little competition will encourage A#2 to care about spelling.  I got stuck on pachyderm today (it's age appropriate so he won't be spelling pachyderm yet).  James, you can't do the quiz while on Ambien because you can't spell under the influence.  In fact, you should stay away from the computer completely after taking Ambien whether you feel it's influence or not.  I hear you didn't heed my warning and were on Facebook last night, tsk, tsk, tsk.

A#2 sitting comfortably at the computer doing his spelling.

I finally got a picture of A#3 in his flight suit.  For some reason he gets embarrassed by attention so while he likes the suit, he won't wear it because everyone goes crazy over how cute he is.  So with a completely straight face (hard to hold because he was so darn cute) I just told him that Daddy would like to see a picture of him wearing it.  Phew, it worked.

Ridiculously cute!

We've got Royal Rangers tonight, I'll hit up Walmart for more noodles and we'll call it a day.

Also, I finally found someone to help me return the couches!  I really wish I had sat in them on the showroom floor more before making the decision.  It might be just how I'm shaped but they are so uncomfortable.  After this weekend, we'll be without any furniture until the new stuff comes.  But that should be no problem because we'll be in Minnesota then, hopefully.  Thank you Josh!!!

Killing Willy the Wart

Today started off with a run to the doctor for another installation of wart freezing.  Willy the wart will die.  I'm not a big fan of 8am appointments.  Luckily A#4 started singing around 6:30 so me getting moving wasn't too hard.  Plus I had the coffee pot programmed so I just needed to stumble downstairs to a warm cup of coffee.  Getting the boys up was another matter entirely.  They've been sleeping in until 9am a lot recently (A#2 slept until 10am yesterday).  A#3 kept trying to sneak back into bed, haha!  "But the sun is not up, Mom!"

At first today I thought, "Awesome, we'll get done with school early today."  Ya right.  Someone doped my kids with crazy pills again and we're getting a whole lot of nuthin' done.  I got through about 5 minutes of Geography when they decided to start licking each other.  Not kicking, licking.  Good grief!  I shooed them out the door for a 30 min recess to hopefully run out the crazies.  

It's now almost 3pm, 5 hrs later, and they are still crazy.  Looks like we'll be doing school this evening, groan.  They've been outside all day today.  Beating each other with plastic bottles, digging up rocks, climbing hay bales and even  picking flowers.  I can't say today has been unsuccessful because I love that they are playing so well together outside.  We only have a precious short time before the weather turns.  We'll get the basics done this afternoon and call it a good day.

I don't think my sunflowers will ever bloom!  What's the deal?

As for me, I've been having lots of fun with the camera.  I'm tempted to take a photography class or maybe I'll just pick up a book at the library so I can learn more about my camera and how to take better photos (you just be quiet James, I know what you're thinking and I'm not that bad).  Flickr is my favorite photo storage website, so I'll be uploading the mother load there and try to put the best ones on Facebook.  

http://www.flickr.com/photos/adorabubbleknits/

A#2 lost a tooth today!

Until tomorrow...

We love you Daddy!  Have fun snorkeling!  We know that's actually all you guys do over there.  You're just pretending to work.

ETA:  Today was definitely not a complete bust.  The boys built a home for grasshoppers and researched what they needed to survive.

I've lost my marbles.

Losing your marbles has a whole new meaning in this house!  I have to say I am quite impressed with myself with this idea.  I was getting so tired of having to tell the boys multiple times to do their chores, tired of them not listening to me, tired of the hitting and name calling and tired of bad attitudes period.  In the past I would tape a piece of paper on the cabinet and start subtracting $ from their allowance for various infractions.  It just wasn't working.  I think it was because they didn't really see their allowance going away in a tangible form.  Plus I got tired of doing the math, lazy bones.

Enter the marbles.  I got 3 different types/colors of marbles so each of the boys have their own,  3 glass candle holders, plus 1 mason jar to hold the extra marbles.

Marbles are worth $.25 each.  Every time I have to tell them to do something beyond the first time, they get a marble taken away.  Ouch.  For misbehaviors, they usually get a warning and then marbles get taken away.  To really make my point, if the misbehavior involves harming a brother with words or with hands, the marble goes to the injured party.  Muwahahaha!

Marbles are also for trade.  If one of the boys doesn't want to take the trash out, he can pay his brother to do it for him.

Marbles can also be earned back.  Extra chores earn marbles.  Doing a chore without me having to ask earns a marble.   Above and beyond good behavior earns a marble.   For instance this morning while nursing A#4, I asked A#2 if he would make A#3's breakfast.  He did so without any complaints.  He earned a marble.  Go A#2!

We are on week 2 of the marbles and it's been working magically.  As you can see from the picture, the marble count is quite low.  Today hasn't been one of their best days.  But it would be worse if it weren't for the marbles.  Plus, I can put them to work earning back their lost marbles.

Rainy Day Fun

For some reason a rainy day equals crazy kids.  I suspect it has something to do with barometric pressure so to keep the kiddos busy today, we made a barometer!

Armed with a mason jar, balloon, stick, tape and paper, the boys helped create this super simple device.  They look excited don't they.

My idea is to have the boys mark where the stick is on the paper everyday and compare it to the weather outside.  I'll make a mental note of the craziness factor and see how it relates to the barometric pressure.

As if making a barometer isn't fun enough, we decided to make butter also.  I remember doing this when I was little and really wanted the boys to experience that fun too.

Another mason jar only this time filled with 2 cups of whipping cream.  A#2, A#3 and I sat on the floor and rolled the jar between us (with the lid of super tight of course).  It took a long time but we were persistent and eventually opened it up to see whipped cream.  That gave the boys new energy and a short time later it separated into butter.  We drained off the buttermilk (saving it for a future project), mixed in salt, squeezed into shape and then rinsed it off with cold water.

Of course we had to try it out so we had toast with lots of butter for an afternoon snack.

Now I'm going to knit for a bit and let the boys play some video games.  It's been a good day today.