Foster Kittens and Face Masks

I've been keeping track of my mask production in a composition book, and I did some counting yesterday and discovered I've made 363 masks, with more cut out, and I've given at least 60 away. 

(Sam and Annaliese's masks were made by me.  Eli's mask was not made by me, but I have sent him a couple, now that he has a new address.)

I love the horrified look on Grumman's face in this picture. 

This is Tobias/Toby.

And this is Murphy. 

They're staying with us for a couple weeks until they can get altered and adopted. 

It has been a sweet and welcome distraction to have baby kitties in the house again.

Although, when my lap is the nap location, I'm obligated to sit still until they're done napping, so I'm not getting all that much accomplished. 

I'm more or less okay with that.  These guys have had their issues.  We're doing eye drops twice a day, and they just finished a round of antibiotics, but surprisingly Grumman has come around to the idea of them being here.  He was totally freaked out by the kitten we fostered last year, so this is good progress.  He's been sparring with them, and I even noticed a little social grooming.  I don't think we'll see them napping in a pile by the time they leave this week, but it gives me hope that Grumman may not have to be an only child forever. 

So, now that we're no longer matching lipstick and nail polish (not that I ever was, really), how about matching your face mask to your shoes?  Grumman had to get in the shot to see/sniff what I was up to.  Notice the kitten scratches on my foot?  My legs pretty much look like that from the knee down. 

We're getting really close to the end of the school year.  Katie's math assignments this week were "play a math game."  So I had her do online drills (xtramath.com) and use geometry and spacial reasoning skills to fit the pattern blocks into the hexagon tray one day...

...and the triangle tray another day.

Photo from Zach.  They're settling in to their new place, and the boys went fishing and Brayden caught a fish!

Eli made it through a weird COVID version of boot camp.  He's now an Airman!  Proud of my boy, but missing him, as well.  Very disappointed that we weren't allowed the graduation experience that we had with Zach when he became an Airman.  But he's healthy, and waiting to start tech school, and I hear from him more often now that he has his phone back. 

Remember our twin visitors from a couple years back?  Well, times are hard for their family, so I cleaned out the girls' closet and took them over 3 bags of clothes to replace a load of mildewed laundry.  On a slightly related note, I took 2 loads of baby/kid clothing/supplies to our crisis pregnancy center, since they're one of the only organizations in the area accepting donations right now.  Most of this was stuff I'd been hanging on to since the twins left, "just in case" Paul changed his mind about fostering.  I let it go because 1) that doesn't seem to be happening, and 2) I'd rather have someone be able to use those things than have them sit here and make me sad. 

With all the crazy guidelines being floated about school for the fall, we're still contemplating what The Plan will be for our students.  I'm open to homeschooling, as I know it would be far easier than the "distance learning" nonsense we've done the last couple months.  We'll see! 

Our Very Busy Week

I still have one more vacation post, but it just hasn't happened yet. 

I recently received some Color Garden food coloring to try out, so I thought birthday cupcakes would be a fun use for some of it.

They looked nice and sunny.  Unfortunately, we had a little disaster with them in the van, and I ended up buying store bought cupcakes and driving them out to the school for Katie's class after I dropped the kids off.  Not sure where that falls on the mothering scale.  On the one hand, I made cupcakes for her class.  On the other hand, the cupcakes she actually passed out where store bought.  Good intentions, lousy execution.

The rest of the batch met with approval, though.

Paul made Katie's birthday cake.

Seven!  Can you believe it?  She was still 2 when she joined our family.

It took her several tries to blow out the candle.

But she got it eventually!

Last year's Hello Kitty birthday shirt still fit her, so she wore that to school.

She got new books, including a couple Hello Kitty ones and a Grace Lin chapter book that Hannah immediately offered to pre-read for her.  Such a helpful sister.  Hannah loves to read, and usually plows through whatever we bring home from the library in just a couple days.

She also got her very own box of almond cookies, which she very sweetly has been sharing with Jack and Hannah, parceling them out into the lunch boxes every day.

Pictures are back!  The tie is just as cringey as I feared, but at least Jack's expression is okay.  I really ought to have scanned them all before Eli put them up on the wall, but that didn't happen.

Homecoming shopping, round 1.  He's lingering in the "no pictures" phase longer than I would like.

Our little friends were here with us for several days.  We played on the school playground while waiting for the kids to get out.

Eli wanted a more detailed haircut than the "buzz it all off" that I provide, so Brianna gave it a go, and it turned out well.

This was appointment week.  It just sort of worked out that way.  Fortunately, the younger kids had "home study days" for 3 days this week, while the teachers were at a conference in Ventura.

The first appointment was Hannah seeing the eye doctor.

It had been over a year, and we'd noticed her squinting more, so I called in July, thinking I'd get her in before school started.  No such luck, they book out so far in advance.  She will be getting new glasses with a significant change in prescription.

The next appointment was Hannah and Katie's regular dental check up.  Jack and I took these guys next door to Hobby Lobby, and the candy corn shirt idea was born while we were there and the girls were having their teeth cleaned.

I originally made these Hello Kitty nightgowns for Katie, and not only has she outgrown them, I think this will be the last time our little guests use them, too.  At least without shorts underneath.  They've gotten pretty short.  We enjoy a little Dora on the computer after bath time while I'm combing out their wet hair.  I didn't think it was affecting me until Sunday's sermon when the pastor said, "Believe, repent, baptized," and I leaned over and whispered to Paul, "Dora format!"

Hannah and Katie were casted at Shriners this week for their new legs.  We go back in 2 weeks to do a socket test fit.


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Our Week - With Pumpkin Art

The bunnies were sitting on a laundry room shelf, drying after I washed all the bedding from the Little Ones' stay with us.  The pack & plays have been taken down, the diapers have all gone to Luke's room.

I think all their laundry has cycled through, although I wouldn't be surprised to find a piece later on.  The feeding chairs are gone, the carseats are gone.

Our house and are family are getting back to "normal," whatever that is.  Although it's not the normal we had before they arrived, because Luke is back.  Even though this was a challenging hosting, I'm still glad we were able to be a Safe Family again one more time.  I know we wouldn't have been able to take them on if Luke had been here when the hosting started.

Confession?  This pumpkin artwork was finished last week, but I was too lazy to download the pictures for last week's post.

These lovely pumpkins were a project from the Home Art Studio DVD we're doing this year.  They were drawn on black paper with soft pastels, then cut out and glued to the green paper.

And I mentioned a couple weeks ago that I was working on glittering my pumpkin from the pumpkin patch.  I thought about doing a How Not to Glitter Your Pumpkin post, but in the end decided to just show it and pretend that it was as easy as it looks.  If you're planning on trying it, do the bottom first.  I love the way it turned out, but one of my boys loathes glitter and hates it.

A little bit more cutting practice for Miss Katie.  She's doing much better at straight lines again now.

Last weekend was homecoming.  Brianna looked beautiful.

This is Hannah's first year homeschooling, and she's adjusted to it beautifully, as she does to everything.  I've had some surprises along the way, but she takes it all in stride.  She's a good worker, too.  She almost always finishes her nap time work on her own without issues.

Our homeschool mascot.  I feel sorry for poor Wheelie.  First the toddlers, and the baby gates.  Then his bed used to be in Paul's office.  But Paul's office got turned into Luke's bedroom, and there's a gate across the door now.  And since Luke scoots now, Wheelie's food bowl had to go outside because Luke was scooting over and eating cat food all the time.  After we moved the food outside, Luke started digging in Wheelie's sandbox, so that had to go, too.  Poor kitty.  He's old and sneezy and not thrilled with the changes.

I'm pretty excited about the Bible program we're reviewing!  I like that Katie gets to participate with us on her level.

It's challenging my artistic abilities, as well!

Our art project from the DVD for this week was root vegetables!

We used oil pastels for the carrots and watercolors for the sky and dirt.

I love that these projects require no prep work.  Watch the DVD, pull out the supplies, do the project.  Easy peasy.

Katie is working on numbers and is counting to 10 now!  Working on identifying and writing numbers 0-10 next.  Freebie dot marker page I printed for her.

In science, we're learning about birds and fish (which dovetails nicely with the Days of Creation study we did in Bible, no pun intended!).  So we made mixed media aquarium art projects.

Jack used silver origami paper for the sides of his aquarium.  He wanted me to mention that there are clown fish hidden in the anemone on the left.

The passage that Jack and Hannah have been working on in Spelling You See this week was about the Liberty Bell.  Since we're in colonial times in history right now, it seemed like a good idea to take it a little further, so I found a Liberty Bell page for them on Super Teacher Worksheets, which they did and added to their history notebooks.

This impressive creation was Brianna's history homework.  She was required to bring in an artifact from Ancient Greece or Rome.  She made this helmet out of clay, and painted it bronze after baking.  Then she added a green wash to make it look rusty/oxidized.

I was trying to get a shot of my students writing for an upcoming review, but I got Jack in a deeply contemplative pose instead.

I sometimes let the kids doodle on their sketch pads while I read aloud.  This was Jack's depiction of the 30 Years War in Europe.

I've given myself permission to skip a few things in order to get us back on track.  If you've used My Father's World curriculum, you know that there's a LOT of stuff assigned in a week.  I have no problem skipping one or two things from time to time, but this week, we skipped several.  This allowed us to finish Weeks 5 and 6.  I feel okay with that, since we add plenty of other things with review items and other extras.  For instance, we're using the Bible curriculum we're reviewing instead of the one that came with MFW.  In a similar way, I decided we could skip God & The History of Art this week, since we were doing Home Art Studio and our fish scene and free drawing.

So, in summary, 8 weeks into the school year, we're done with 6.5 weeks of curriculum.  And I have 2 weeks to catch up before I leave for a week in China.  Which seems kind of irresponsible of me as a homeschooler, but I'm so incredibly excited about the trip that I'd happily homeschool on Christmas Eve if that's what it takes.  I doubt it will come to that, though.  We're close to catching up.


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