Wednesday Mornings

With the arrival of fall came the start of the women's study at church. There are over 100 women registered for the morning sessions, which had given me around 72 children to care for. It's a bit crowded in places, but I managed to fit everyone in.

My older boys are unsupervised this year; they have been told that if they behave properly, I will not need to find an adult to watch them. If there is trouble, they will have an adult in the room with them. We're two weeks in and they're doing okay!

The rest of the groups are running normally. The older girls (a group that suddenly includes the older 10 and 11 year old girls with the junior high -- high school girls attend the study) are on their own as always and doing well. I may need to find a little more time to spend with them as they are a slightly younger group. The other three groups have some older teens supervising them, and I spend some time with them as well. The oldest ones get trivia games; the littles get story time; and the middles get a story and then trivia. It's a lot of fun.

Next week is a fellowship week. The ladies bring food and spend the first hour or so in fellowship and brunch and the second hour with a guest speaker or in a special prayer time. My kids spend an hour working and then have game, craft, and play time. It's a lot of fun (even though it leaves me extra tired!).

I really, really love spending this time with my homeschool groups. There's always a lot of laughter and it's just fun for everyone.

Sunday School

A new year of Sunday School started last week. Things seemed to have gone well for the first two weeks; there were a couple changes to be made (some of the 4-year-olds weren't quite ready for Sunday School after all, so I moved some people around and fit in everyone on the wait list), but overall it went smoothly.

I'm teaching my children The Pilgrim's Progress this year. Someone gave me a curriculum that breaks it up nicely into sections to read to them with worksheets already prepared. Each chapter also includes vocabulary, very useful since it's in the original 17th Century English. The children have enjoyed learning about having a surly carriage and deriding people. 

It's a bit of a change. For the past several years I've written my own curriculum. Even when I reused material, I was always updating, changing, and trying to improve it. Having it all here in front of me is nice. To prepare, I just have to read it over, go over the Scripture verses, and go through the worksheet pages. There's still work, but much less of it.

Also, I love The Pilgrim's Progress and I'm delighted to be sharing it with the kids.

As You Wish

I was first introduced to the movie The Princess Bride at a World Vision 30-Hour Famine gathering. A rather large group of high schoolers from various churches would gather every year at two churches (they were side-by-side) to do the famine and have fun together. One year, around 1990, The Princess Bride was our late-night movie. I loved it from the start and have watched it many, many times since then. As such, I was pleased to stumble upon As You Wish: Inconceivable Tales From the Making of The Princess Bride by Cary Elwes (aka Westley, the farm boy who became the Dread Pirate Roberts).

The book was an interesting and entertaining look into the making of the movie, starting with the day Elwes first heard he was being considered for the role of Westly. As he is the author, most of the story is his experiences, but Elwes also provides the backgrounds of many of the major (and minor) players in the making of the movie. I particularly enjoyed learning about Andre the Giant's life. There are also text boxes throughout giving the perspectives of various actors, Rob Reiner (the director) and William Goldman (the author) on different aspects of the making of the movie.

The book almost ends sadly because the movie was not marketed well and did not have great box office success. People who watched it loved it, but it was hard to get people to watch it. Then everything changed when the movie came out on video. Suddenly everyone was watching it and quoting from it, including strangers on the street, waitresses, Pope John Paul II, and President Clinton and his daughter. From box office disappointment to cult classic that is still loved today, 37 years later.

If you enjoyed The Princess Bride, I definitely recommend As You Wish as a companion to the movie. Learning about how it was made in no way detracts from the movie; in fact, I found that it adds to it as I read about the work that went into preparing for the sword fight, the challenges along the way, and the absolute fun they had making it.

Fall is Here!

Yes, okay, not technically for a couple more weeks, but I am tentatively rejoicing in the coming of fall. Tentatively because it was around 31 degrees on Sunday and that is just too hot for September (or for any season). I am not a fan of summer and heat, so I've been waiting for fall since June.

(Which is not to say that I didn't enjoy summer. There were some very nice parts: vacation, rest, reading, catching up on stuff, more rest and reading; it's just that I don't like the heat.)

There are some out there who think that if you complain about the heat in summer, you can't complain about the cold in winter. That, of course, in nonsense. It is perfectly possible to dislike -30 as much as you dislike +30.

And I know that both summer and winter are necessary parts of life. I accept that. I just don't love them (but winter is still better because it's possible to keep adding layers to stay warm, but you can remove all the layers in summer and still be hot).

Spring is nice. I like the new green everywhere and flowers blooming and no more heavy clothing. The only drawback (for me) is that spring can be muddy and messy. And short: spring always seems too short to enjoy properly.

But fall...now that 's a lovely season. It's cooler and the leaves change colour and it feels good outside. It's time for my favourite sweater-jacket (the blue one with the bluebirds) and it's getting to be soup time. It's a lovely time of year and I'm so glad it's here.

Trying New Recipes

In my quest to be more healthy, I've been trying new recipes. Happily, the internet is full of recipes that claim to be some combination of healthy, cheap, and easy. Although sometimes we have differing definitions of "easy" and anything that requires fish is not going to be cheap! At any rate, it's been fun trying new foods with various degrees of success.

The Stuffed Peppers were pretty good, but next time I'm either going to use fresh chopped tomatoes with some Italian seasoning instead of the canned ones or I'll get the canned ones that are seasoned. And rather than order peppers in my regular online grocery order, I'll go to the store and buy them so I can make sure they are big enough!

The Modern Tuna Casserole was a bust. It wasn't terrible and I didn't mind eating it, but lacked flavour. I guess I could fix it by adding more spices of some sort.

Caramelized Beef with Rice was good, but I think if I make it again, I'll cut back on some of the seasoning.

Saucy Tomato Pork Chops were good and I'd make them again, but I have two other pork chop recipes that I still want to try!

This week was a very "chicken" week because chicken breasts were on sale. I had Chicken Strawberry Spinach Salad (very good); Chicken Stir-Fry (also good, although I changed up the veggies a bit); and Pineapple BBQ Baked Chicken Foil Packets (such perfectly moist chicken; it was amazing).

This week's meals were very good, but I think I'm going to take a little break from chicken next week and try some other sources of proteins! 

Favourite Insults

They story I'm currently reading has some nice insults:

"I envy the people who haven't met you."

"Somewhere, a tree is crying because it worked so hard to make that oxygen you're wasting.”

"You remind me of someone I’d like to forget."

"You’re so dense, light bends around you."

“As an outsider, what's your perspective on intelligence?"

But my favourite comes from the movie Billy Madison:

"Mr. Madison, what you've just said is one of the most insanely idiotic things I have ever heard. At no point in your rambling, incoherent response were you even close to anything that could be considered a rational thought. Everyone in this room is now dumber for having listened to it. I award you no points, and may God have mercy on your soul."

Yes, they're all a little (or more) mean, and no, I'm not likely to use them (although there are times as a teacher when the Billy Madison quote comes to mind). I still think they're funny.

Scheduling Woes

I thought, when I left my last job, I'd be done with scheduling issues. Back then it was parents who did not send in their summer and/or fall registrations on time and then were upset if I couldn't get them in on their preferred days and times. Or who set up times but then changed them. And changed them again. And again. Oh, and this one more thing came up. And then there were teachers who were definitely available on certain days until suddenly, with little or no notice, were not.

At my current job, for the most part, the scheduling is easy. Most of the parents at my current job are flexible enough and my schedule is flexible enough that we can set up meetings. They're pretty good at responding to emails and the only glitches comes when someone gets sick. It's much easier.

Sunday School has given me new scheduling issues. These ones aren't related to time but to classes. After registration day I sorted and organized and figured out how to make the classes work and to fit in all the students.

The next day, I had 3 more requests to register students. One I could accommodate; the others went on the wait list. Then this week there were two families who suddenly can't attend Sunday School. The kids are the wrong age, though, so I was only able to get one of the wait list families into the classes (and that by putting their older child in the class a year below his age group). And again I wanted to point out to parents that they should figure out if Sunday School will work for them before they register their children! On the other hand, at least they let me know rather than just not showing up.

I think that there will forever be scheduling woes to deal with; it's just a part of my life now!