Green and Growing

Winter came and went. Spring is here in full force. The days have been full of sunshine and gentle breezes. I hope that the already 85°  highs is not a sign that Summer is knocking on our door. But since the weather is accommodating, we took the opportunity to go ahead and start our little garden.

Orry and I made a class lesson out of it. We chose some seeds that we would like to plant. Cucumbers, tomatoes, parsley, basil, sunflowers, beans, and radishes. We examined all the seeds and drew pictures of them. When Troy came home he happily dug out a little spot for us. He and Orry got right to planting. (At this time I was really starting to feel ill from the flu that I didn't suspect I had.) That was March 23. 

We are following up on their progress as the weeks go by. We have many a sprout in our little garden.  It's funny that the plant that is growing best is one that was basically composted in our garden because it finally started to decompose.  That would be the pumpkin.  Also, our avocado pit finally sprouted!  (We planted it a year ago.)

I hope you are all enjoying your springtime.  And if you are growing something, tell us about it!  I also hope that the weather is treating you kindly and that you have a chance to enjoy these beautiful days!

President's Day

Sorry about the lack of posts recently.  I've been dealing with some mysterious pain in the nerves of my mouth.  But on with the stories.

On Monday we celebrated President's Day.  Well, celebrated is an over-exaggeration.  We did, however, take advantage of the long weekend and made a trip over to Houma to celebrate the soon-to-be wedding of my little sister.

This weekend was Lizzie's bridal shower.  We had a Mad Hatter's tea party.  All the baking and cleaning, and cleaning and baking was fun and exciting as we geared up to host the party.  We ladies had a great time.  The kids had a good time too.  Since we no longer have cable at our house, they sure do like watching a little bit of TV, undisturbed and on a big screen television no less.  But some of the them mananged to get out of the house for a while.

Isaac watching his Daddy and Poppa work in the wood shop

But this President's Day was more special than any other so far.  For this year, at this time, we are learning about the Presidents of the United States of America.  If you love history, then you'll understand how exciting this sort of thing is.  We are working on memorizing the first 30 presidents.  So far we know the first 10 with no problem.  We might actually work on making a catchy tune to help us out with the other 20.  But in the meantime, we are learning some great facts about some of the lesser known presidents, like Franklin "Handsome Frank" Pierce and Martin "Little Magician" Van Buren.  A batch of cookies to the first person who correctly identifies the president whose nickname was "Uncle Jumbo".

So Happy Belated President's Day and Happy Mardi Gras/Shrove Tuesday!

*Congrats to MamaT, winner selected at random to receive something lovely from moi.

Lately and Recently

Lately we've been...

"Are you talking to me?"

• driving a rental car more than our "new" van.
• learning about the presidents of the USA.
• dealing with temper tantrums from hell.  
• watching some of the best movies of all time.
• listening to birds, day and night.
• reading The Story.
• drinking too much coffee.
• keeping up with our New Year's resolutions.

Recently we've...

• gone to the dollar theater to see Happy Feet 2.
• celebrated Troy's 34th birthday!
• added reactive airway disease to Isaac's list.
• scheduled a wisdom tooth extraction for my almost birthday.
• sorted all our LEGOs.
• started noticing new leaves growing on the trees. 

I hope you've all been busy in a good way.  More to come later!

The Official Ruling

It has been a great weekend.  We managed to make some good headway on the clutter in our home.  It had gotten pretty bad after we came back from vacation with tons of new things.  We also got to watch the boys perform as farm animals in the church's annual Epiphany Pageant.  And we spent some time at a new park.   The weather has been incredible.  Incredibly warm and incredibly humid.  But it's a great reason to get outside and get some wood chips in your shoes.

Now that the weekend has passed, we have our sights set on the week to come.

One exciting thing to look forward to is the BCS Championship game between LSU and Alabama.  I know that many people don't care.  They either don't care about college ball or they don't like the BCS system.   Some people don't like the idea of watching a rematch between the teams.  Me?  I'm excited.  I love college football.  I love LSU football.  And I'm going to watch this game and whoop and holler as if it were the first time in history that these teams played each other.   My kids will probably tell me to quiet down.  My husband will probably hang his head in shame when he sees my victory dance for the millionth time.  And if not for that, he will definitely hang his head in shame when I point and laugh at all the crying Bama fans as the Tigers hand their you-know-whats back to them.  Yeah, I'm excited.  But as excited as I am, it pales in comparison to another event that is officially starting.  Homeschooling.

We've made the switch.  We've taken the plunge.  And there's no going back.  Well, not this school year, anyway.  Long story short, we weren't 100% happy with the school district we are in.  The class was overcrowded.  He spent too much time waiting around.  He came home acting like a zombie who didn't want to talk about school and didn't want to do homework.  So we're changing all that.  And so far, the results have been good.  The first day I asked him to tell me what he would like to learn as far as math and science go.  He's interested in multiplication and learning about space.  After doing a lesson on the Sun, he was so talkative that Troy and I were just shocked that we were looking at the same boy who, for 78 days, wouldn't tell us anything about what he learned at school.  And after a couple of days of multiplication, he wants to move on to division.  A new boy, I tell you.

We are still looking for a curriculum to get and follow to help make things more manageable for me.  It's a lot of work putting all that stuff together!  But it's loads of fun.  And it's great spending so much time with him again.  He's a really helpful boy and a lot of fun to be with.  It's an exciting time in the TX Becker household.  

Geaux Tigers!
Geaux Orry!

Exciting times, that's for sure...