A large family, homeschooling, adoption, special needs, whatever strikes my fancy, sort of blog.

A large family, homeschooling, adoption, special needs, whatever strikes my fancy, sort of blog.

Saturday, July 31, 2021

Our Week With a Terrarium Project


I feel like all I ever do any more is talk about the library.  Sorry about that!  But I am so very excited about it.  I promise, I'll have something cool to share next week.  


Another box of new books for the library.  Jack promptly walked off with all the airplane ones.  


And Grumman attacked the shrink wrap.  


This is a Hannah project that I finally got around to photographing.  I think the craft book it came from has already gone back to the library.  I requested a couple new craft/project books this morning, though.  


Speaking of crafting!  I did some more paint pouring this week!  I have some smaller letters to do, too, but I need more white, red, and silver paints.  


Oh Grumman.


Such a weird cat.  


So, our first "theme" in the library is Wild About Books.  I got the letters as a freebie from Twinkl.  Hannah cut them out for me, and I rubber cemented them onto construction paper to use as shelf labels.  


I had several "bits" of leftover construction paper, so I turned them into a poster.  Remember those National Geographic magazines?  I set Hannah to work cutting out some "wild" animals, and voila!  I should have made Wild About Books a little larger, but it's not too bad for a quick scrap project.  


And there it is, on the wall.


For the Fiona fans.  


Miss Fifi continues to settle in well.  Although, she's in heat.  :sigh:  I've got her on the waiting list for 2 local clinics, but it may be a couple of months before they can get her in for surgery.  

MONDAY

This helps me see the progress.  It's so small on a day to day basis.  I'm starting to feel the clock ticking, since school starts in just a couple weeks.  

FRIDAY

MONDAY

FRIDAY

MONDAY

FRIDAY


Miss Fiona is feeling comfortable enough to do more exploring.  


I mentioned enjoying letting the girls have a semi-feral summer.  *This* is the kind of experience I meant.  


They told me about the lizards, and I said, "Next time you catch one, bring it to me so I can see it."


They caught 3 baby ones.  (This is Hannah's hand.  Not sure who the other two lil urchins were, but it was such fun to have them all run in to show me.)  


Baby Kasen in the Nai Nai loves me sleeper I sent them when they announced the pregnancy.  


Baby Kasen pukes on Daddy.  


This week's ancient library find:  Benjie from 1952.  


Blarg.  Went to Kaiser for an actual physical, since the last visit was literally just "girlie stuff."  


The highlight of the visit was spotting a dime.  "Find a dime, your airman's fine."  


I knew I was due for my tetanus shot, since I had the last one in 2010, before we traveled to adopt Hannah.  Zach asked us to update our pertussis vaccines before they bring Kasen out, or I would have skipped it now.  (The DTAP combo is diphtheria, tetanus, and pertussis.)  My arm is sore.  


Hannah has been bringing books home from the school library, and Katie has been mostly playing with Legos during quiet time lately, but we did bring home one pile from the city library this week.  


It was time to purchase a second barcode scanner, so I can have one at home and one at school.  I like this one much better than the cue cat scanner I did surgery on.  This one beeps.  There's something satisfying about that.  


A carpet was found for a story time rug.  Oh, and the ottomans (ottomen??) are "new," too.  They were rescued from the upcoming school rummage sale.  One is holding duplicate books, and one is holding prizes.  


Hooray!  Last week I still had more books without barcodes.  Now I have more books with barcodes!  It's actually even a little higher than this, as I added a dozen or so barcodes this morning.  

Once I plow through the 800 scanned books at the school and give them barcodes, they can go on the shelves instead of in Piles and Buckets and Boxes, oh my.  I don't even have a picture of the mound this week, but it's still quite daunting:  3 tables covered, plus containers amok underneath and beside them.  


Our public library had a summer science at home program for kids.  I signed Katie up, and we got a box of supplies to make a terrarium.  


First the rocks go in.


Then comes the charcoal, which has to be sniffed.  Methinks they hang out with Grumman too much.  He's big on sniffing.  


Katie sniffs while Hannah tries to place that scent.  "Like something happy!"  Katie said it was like burnt wood.  I think Hannah associates it with summer camp.  


Dirt.  Lots of dirt.  Too much dirt, actually.  


The poor (slightly decaying from transit) plant barely fit with the amount of dirt used.  One of the most challenging parts of the project was identifying a sunny, Grumman proof location to put the finished terrarium.  


The bulletin boards in the library should be hung next week, so I thought it was time to give my animals some eyes so I can take them in and get them hung up.  

August is going to be so busy!  I have a dentist appointment, the girls have a visit to Shriners, and SCHOOL starts, among other things.  

Friday, July 23, 2021

Our Week With A New Furry Friend


It's a little calico cutie, Fiona!  


Jack Jack had some friends over after church Sunday, and I surreptitiously snapped this as they were walking to the park to play ball.  It's good to connect with humans again.  


We received a 3rd shipment from Library & Educational Services.  I like to shop their sales and pay under $3 bucks per book.  Full boxes are running about $80 something/box.  


Hannah's latest weapon drawings.


I'm not a crazy cat lady.  Really, I'm not.  But I did make a bonsai drive to another state & back to pick up a cat in need of a home.


Took a picture of this monument at a rest stop to show the girls and forgot all about it when I got home.  


And there she is.  Miss Fiona enjoyed having a sniff while we lunched outdoors before the drive home.  


It was a long ride home, as a fire slowed traffic to a trickle.  


Fiona is currently set up in the guest room while she acclimates to us and our house.  This may change abruptly as Eli is trying to get leave to come home next month.  


I thought her peek a mew face was too cute.


She's very tiny, but she's curious and she's vocal and friendly if you take it slow.  


So far, she and Grumman haven't gotten close to each other.  When they see one another, she growls and he hisses.  When I let him sniff my hands after I've been petting her, he hisses at them.  


But we're taking things slow and giving them both time to adjust.  


She is a cutie.  


 I picked up a box of donated books, and Grumman had to have a sniff.  


Speaking of books, this week was library move in day!  So, here's the library from inside, facing the door out.  I'm hoping to put my circulation desk by the door.  


You may recognize the blue biography bookcase we worked on before the official move.  Piles of books on the tables and underneath in buckets.  Those all need at least barcodes before they can be shelved, and some of them haven't even been entered yet.  


From near the door, looking toward the back wall.  The filing cabinets may disappear.  The large bookcase on the back wall has our "number books" (Dewey decimal numbers)  The smaller bookcase on the back wall is currently picture books:  biography on the top shelf, number books on the second shelf, and fiction on the bottom shelf.  As I want to display most of our picture books forward facing, I'm thinking they'll probably expand into the bookcase on the right, too.  


That's Jack's knee.  I brought him with me one day to schlep the totes from the house.  We filled Matilda and used the wagon to get them from the parking lot to the room.  Table and desk filled with more books that need processing.  

This is going to be our fiction wall.  All the books in the right bookcase need to be removed, processed, and dispersed to correct locations.  


Panoramic wildly distorted shot.  Pictures are from Thursday.

On Thursday, we took the lions share of the fully processed books from the house in and got them onto the shelves.  On Friday, we made a second load of processed books in and got those on the shelves, and I took a roll of barcodes and a scanner in and started adding barcodes to school books.  


This made a huge jump in the proportion of finished to unfinished books in the system.  This makes me very happy.  Of the entered books, I now have more books totally done and shelved than ones that still need work.  --This doesn't count all the books that haven't been entered at all yet, but one bite at a time (how you eat an elephant).  

Our school secretary comes back from vacation next week, so I hope to get class lists and start setting up my command binder.  My plan is to have each class be a 2 page spread with student name, photo, and barcode, so that I can open to whatever class is in the library and have the whole class' barcodes at my fingertips for easy checkout.