According to my friend Dori…

Iron Man May 3rd. Superman June 14th. Wolverine July 26th. Thor November 8th.
Then in 2014 comes another Captain America.  My kids will be stoked.

Whew!  BIG morning… it was the neighborhood sales in Brian’s hometown.  Well, one half of them, anyhow – there are TWO big neighborhood/developments, and this morning was one of them.  FORTY garage sales later… !! … I have water skis, Lincoln Logs, a bookshelf, pants/shirts for Isaac, yarn for Lydia, and LOTS of other things.  But excuse me while I collapse for a little while – that was a LOT of walking!!!  But I only do three big neighborhood sales a year.  One down… two to go!

uPDaTe:  Whew!  BIG afternoon… it was the neighborhood sales in Wayland.  Which I wouldn’t have known, except that everyday for three months I’ve gone to the library site waiting for ‘Warm Bodies’ (the book, not the movie) to be returned, and TODAY it was down in Dorr… so we jumped in the car and drove out to Dorr to go and get it, and there were a few sales that wound us down to Wayland (where we stopped for lunch), and then proceeded to garage sale like CR-azy.  I got a computer chair, a casserole/lid set, renaissance dresses for Lydia and I (when we go to Clio for the festival at the castle), a Transformer puzzle for Isaac, a Bumblebee for Ethan, a Batmobile for Aaron, a grunkle for Owen… I’m DONE!!!

Nobody told me it was May… I almost missed May Day!  Almost – but then I remembered in time… and called the Dentist.  May Day is Dentist-appointment-making day, you know! 

Count with Me!

This year, we added… a lot of stuff to our schooling.  One of the things we are doing is learning to count to ten in a different language, every month.  It’s one of my New Year’s resolutions, if you remember: to be able to count to ten in ten languages.  But then I thought that if we did one a month, I’d meet AND exceed my goal, AND the kids would learn too!

So I made a flip-book of the different languages.  We’re not learning to read the words in their own languages, or to write the numbers the way they do… we’re JUST learning to count in that language.  The flipbook is done phonetically, to that end.  And honestly, that in itself is a challenge.  How many can you count to ten in?

So far, we’ve done:

(English) – Spanish – French – German – Sign –
Hebrew – Roman Numeral - Japanese – Russian

  We say the numbers everyday over lunch, and review every few days the other numbers… I’ll call out ‘Hebrew!’ and they’ll give me the numbers.  Or I’ll shout out ‘Uno!’ and they’ll take off with the other numbers.  And we watch a few YouTubes, the first and last weeks of the month, to be sure we’re pronouncing it correctly.

Yet to go in our flipbook are:

Chinese – Norwegian – Italian – Arabic

Dutch – Greek – Hellenistic

So far?  The kids are LOVING it.  Today being May first, I think we’re going to start on Dutch, since it’s Tulip Time here in Michigan.  It seems to fit, don’t you think?  I was thinking of adding the flipbook to ‘Keep and Share’… putting it up here.  We shall see…

It hit 80 degrees, yesterday.  It was 75 when we recorded temps this morning at 10am… so I think it’s going to be even HOTTER today.  Yikes.