Your guess is as good as mine. Yesterday was kind of a dud of a day. I've been having a really hard time staying motivated this week. That's a really bad thing. If I'm not careful I'm going to fall behind on all of those things I've been so good to stay on top of lately!

Katie picked up my Every Day a Holiday book on Tuesday and began to flip through it. She informed me with great delight, "Mom!!! July is National Ice Cream Month! Some guy named Ronald Reagan said so! We should eat lots and lots of ice cream all month long!!!" I informed her that she was probably out of luck since her discovery of this national celebration wasn't made until the very last day of the month. Katie decided that, since it was the last day of the month and our only chance to celebrate it, we should eat as much ice cream as possible that very night! Can't fight logic like that, so we took a family trip to Thriftway and picked up a tub of Caramel Turtle Fudge (Bluebell) for me and Neapolitan (cheap-o) for the kids. James also splurged and bought some waffle bowls and some Reese's Shell syrup! We came home and fixed great ice cream bowls all the way around, topped with Hershey's syrup for the kids and Reese's for me--and a cherry on top, of course. What a great night! Oh, that we had known we were supposed to be celebrating the glories of ice cream throughout the entire month! Ha!

Yesterday... I can't even remember yesterday. I know we did school, but that's about it. Oh, I made a great dinner! Smothered steaks (although they were just beef, not elk ~sniffle~) and potatoes and that terrific mushroom gravy and corn and buttered carrots. It must've been the highlight of our day 'cause it's all I can remember!

Today I went to the shed and dug out a bunch of Katie's old clothes to take to Abigail at the Assembly. It's a nasty job (as are all jobs associated with the shed), but I got a nice big bag of stuff for Emilee to root through. There are some to-die-for dresses in there that my Mom made for Katie. They will look sooooooooo cute on Abbie!!!

It was a bittersweet day in school today. Joe just hates school. He has moments of excitement, but for the most part he searches high and low for things to distract himself with and then it takes him sooooooooooo looooooooong to finish a page and the whole thing becomes even more of a drudgery. And he has this little knack for getting me all riled up, too. I told him a dozen times today to finish that page--look at the picture, then write two statements and one question about it. It took him forever to get the two statements completed and then he was off in la-la land again. I reminded him to get back to work and he asked for the umpteenth time, "What am I supposed to do?" "ASK A QUESTION!!!" I screamed. "What's for dinner???" was his immediate and sincere replay. Ggrrrr. That kid.

Then there's Sam. He's going through an alphabet book. Each page will feature one letter of the alphabet surrounded by pictures. He is supposed to color only the pictures that begin with that letter, but he just can't handle it. He, of course, still knows very few of his letters and he still hasn't figured out the sounds that they make, but he has figured out what people do when they're trying to sound them out. He was on the "W" page today and looked at the picture of the ball. "Hey, Mom. Does b-b-ball start with 'w'???" "Nope. B-b-ball starts with 'B' because 'B' says 'buh.'" "But...I wanna color it!!!" He can't stand to leave a picture on the page uncolored, so he always asks if he can go ahead and color it anyway, then just draw an X on it to show that it's wrong. Whatever. It keeps him occupied while I'm trying to do school with the others anyway. Of course, it adds constant racket. "Mom, does c-c-cat start with 'p'??? Mom! Mom!!! Does C-C-CAT start with 'P'?!?!?! MOM!!!" It usually reaches this point before I have realized that he's talking to me and then I find myself screaming back, "NO!!!! Just color the thing and draw an 'X' on it!!!" Homeschooling is not for the faint of heart, I tell you.

Then there's Katie. Today was a red letter day for her. She's been working really hard and decided that today was the day she would finish up the math section in her 2nd grade book. She's learned all of the in's and outs of adding, subtracting, and carrying numbers (although she still gets confused on occasion on what she's carrying where!) and some simple multiplication and fractions, she's getting better at telling time and she's doing really good at counting money. She's doing good with all of it, but at the end of her book it "reviewed" everything she's learned so far. She was determined to finish it all today, but that meant switching from one method of math to another and then another and another... And then on the last page they threw a bunch of word problems at her that were far more complex than anything she's seen yet. (Don't know how they fit into a "review," but no matter.) She tried and tried, but kept adding when she should have been subtracting and had totally forgotten how to multiply altogether, and so on. I could tell by the strained expression on her face that her brain had shut down on her (I know it well--it still happens to me when I do too much math at once!), but she just had to finish the page. When she was all done I checked it and found that she had gotten every single problem wrong. Oh, brother. For the next several minutes I had a heaving, sobbing bundle of girl collapsed into my lap, just shaking and bawling and crying, "I can't do it, Mom! I--just--can't--do--it!!! What is wrong with me?!?!?" ~sigh~ Sanguine-Melancholy. What can be done with them? I'm still trying to figure out the proper way to respond to such a personality, but in the meantime I responded as my own Phlegmatic self. I laughed and laughed and laughed. She, of course, was offended by this and cried even harder which, of course, made me laugh all the more which, of course, made her cry all the more... It's a vicious cycle. I was not trying to be cruel to her, but if you could have seen her you would have laughed, too. I took her to the other room and made her sit and talk to me for a few minutes. I told her that she needs to learn to laugh at herself and to not be offended when others laugh at her--laughter is good for us and if you never learn to laugh at yourself and your mistakes you're in for a long and miserable life. I informed her that, despite what she thought, the scene was absolutely hilarious--a 6 year old girl at her wit's end, sobbing as if it's the end of the world... over a few math problems!!! Things that don't even matter! So what if she doesn't "get" them right now?! There's always tomorrow! She's got the rest of her life to work on it and improve and learn more and more--there's nothing tragic about having one bad day and messing up. She has a hard time accepting such things and would much rather wallow in the depths of despair than be reasonable and say, "You're right, Mom. This is crazy! It's just a few little ole' math problems--what do I care?! I'm 6 years old! I did my best and I'll try again tomorrow, but for now I think I'll go have a tea party!" Nope, not Katie. She did eventually laugh (because I was still laughing at her and she couldn't help it!), but she did so with tears streaming from her puffy eyes and trickling down her red splotchy face. Goofy kid.

Speaking of crying, I told Sam to do something earlier and he was tired and crabby and didn't want to do it. He came to me all choked up and said, "Mom, my face is just... My face is just starting to cry." As if his face works separately from the rest of him! Ha!

James and I had our joint CPMA-WMB service tonight. He talked about Jesus being the Rock, and I spoke on Faith. I think it went well. Now we've got to get our thoughts and prayers turned toward Albuquerque since that's where we'll be this weekend! Some CoGoP folks have been in touch with James and we're going to go have church and visit with them on Sunday. PRAY!!! We're very excited about the open doors and are praying for God's wisdom in all things.

Well, that's enough for one night. Until next time...

~Becki~