Already almost the middle of July!

(Excuse the following--it's a random jumble of thoughts!)

It's July 11. In a few more days, we'll be halfway through July. Where does the time go??? I'm sooo glad I've got August off this year!

We had a great trip out to the lake. The weather was great one day then so-so the others, but we still had a great time. Ds spent lots and lots of time outside playing soccer and other games, as did dd, but not quite as much. Ds learned to play SkipBo and we played a few games together. I'll have to see if we have a deck so that we can play here.

Other than that, we've been working on dd's room. The paint was finished yesterday--she chose yellow--and if the smell is calmed down today, we will move in her basic furniture and she can sleep in it tonight. :) She's VERY excited. Ds wants her out and his room cleaned up so that we can start stamping some fish and shells onto his walls. lol. He's sooooo eager to decorate the walls since we refuse to repaint them (we did it just 2 years ago) but I told him that his sister's stuff has to be out first AND things have to be clean--we can't be messing around with paint when there's stuff all over. That will be our big project today.

Let's see, what else? Ds is making progress with his reading and writing. I'm just pointing out little things or asking him little things here and there like, "So, where's the a sound in that word? How do you know that word is such-and-such? How do you think that word would be spelled?" He's getting better and better at analzying things and coming up with the correct letters and sounds. And he enjoys it, which is great. I've got plans to prepare different games so that we can play more with letters, sounds and words. Bingo is the first I'd like to play. We have a set of letter bingo cards that came from a Sing, Spell, Read and Write kit a former student left us, but it doesn't have all the basic French sounds, like è or é. I'd like to make something that is better suited to French.

Oh, and ds got his cast off yesterday. We were going to keep it, but it stank so badly and the nurse just tossed it into the garbage without even asking us if we wanted to keep it. It's kind of sad--he had all kinds of signatures and stuff on it. But he's not sad about it at all, so I guess I'm just being a sentimental mom. lol.

Dd is almost done reading The Fellowship of the Ring. It's taken her quite a while--in part because she's read other books since first starting the novel--but she quite enjoys it. I don't know if she plans on reading the second book or not just yet. Haven't dared to ask.

Hm... It's 7:35 as I type this and my kids are still asleep. I guess that's good--they didn't get to sleep until close to 10 last night. I don't know if ds will manage to get his 10 hours in and sleep until 8, but it would be good if he did!!


I have a little project I'm going to get started on: comparing predicted temperatures/weather to actual temperatures and weather. I check the forecast often and it's CONSTANTLY changing. I'd like to see just how accurate their predictions are and how far in advance. Yetserday, they had no rain predicted for the coming week. Now they're predicting rain for Monday and Tuesday. Will it change again? Undoubtedly. I'm not sure how long I'll check the predictions, but if they're as unreliable as I believe they are, I'm not even going to bother looking at the week-to-come predictions again. What's the point? And why do the weather people bother? I can understand THEM working on predictions and trying to fine tune things and learn how to predict better, but why share it with the world? lol