A Little Bit of This and a Little Bit of That

Well, things have certainly gone more like I like them to go. :-) I believe it was in my first post that I said I reserved the right to change things up. I made the hypothesis that a schedule like I'd made would not work too well for either William or me. Neither of us work very well with such. Both of us are the types where if we want to do or learn "A" one day, we will not get much out of anything else, and if we want to do "B" the next day, but "A" is scheduled, we're liable to pull our hair out.

That is one of the reasons public school is SUCH a turn off.

Okay, well, to update:

Last Tuesday an ice storm came through, and we were soon without electricity. We had to stay in a hotel Tuesday and Wednesday night. It had been a long time since we'd stayed in a hotel (we haven't traveled where a hotel is required, except for feast of tabernacles, and we always camp or rent a cabin), and the last time was too long ago for Will to remember. SO, he got to learn about hotels. We stayed at a nice one--the Embassy. Nathan talked them down to almost half price. He's very good at talking people down and negotiating. He's awesome. So, we got to stay somewhere nice and clean without having to pay what one normally would. Will loved the glass elevators. It was interesting, b/c it'd been just a few days prior that he was talking about elevators and asking me how they went up and down, and I had told him about the cables and all. SO, here I had the perfect opportunity to SHOW him. Oh, yeah, because on these elevators, you could SEE the cables. Great!!! So, he got to see it for himself. And one time when Nathan went to get the truck, we waited inside, and we walked over, and I pointed out to Will the cables and explained it all again. He said, "Ooh, that's kind of scary." (Meaning how the elevators are supported by the cables.)

We talked some about ice, since we were having an ice storm. We talked about glaciers and the Titanic.

We went with Nathan to one of his service calls on Wednesday. Then, later, the woman of the house for the OTHER service call (we didn't go on) said they wanted to pay Nathan more money, and they drove what would normally be probably 20 minutes or so, but through the ice it took probably twice that, all the way to the hotel to deliver more money. They were so thankful that he'd gone out in the weather to restore their heat. Nathan was about to get in the shower when she arrived, so I went down to meet her, and she told me what a nice man Nathan was. :-) People have paid Nathan more than what he's invoiced on several occasions, but never yet had anyone driven through ice to deliver it. What a blessing to hear good things about my husband. And it was good for William to see and hear Nathan and me talking about it.

Thursday the boys and I went farther south to stay with my parents for a few days. The electricity came back on that day, but I wanted to go down there, anyway, and Nathan needed more time to get caught up on his work. We got to see my dad and my uncle both sing karaoke that night. I think William enjoyed it. I went Friday with my dad to the horse races. My sister and bil and his parents were there, too. That was the first time I'd ever been. I almost took William, but I decided that it could wait until another time. I needed a break. My mom took William with her that morning to work. She is the tax assessor for that White County, Arkansas. It would have been great if she'd have explained some to him about what they did there, but I don't think she did. Anyway, we later dropped Trusten off there, and everyone in her office got to see him for the first time, and then they went to the park.

The only "book" work we've done every day over the past several days is our bible reading. Will did read a few Rocket Readers books to me over the past few days, and he's read some out of the RR Learn to Read bible. He's done some lessons in the Grade 1 Complete Curriculum book for Reading and Math. He's getting better at his upper digit numbers, and he's wanting to learn how to add and subtract, b/c he keeps asking what is such and such plus or minus such and such. So, we'll be moving on to that soon. On our trip there and back, he'd read some signs. And other things he'd spell and ask what they spelled.

We're back up through chapter 8 of Proverbs. We're almost finished with 2 Chronicles. We read more about righteous King Hezekiah, and we read about evil Manasseh, who at least humbly repented after being carried away to punishment, and then Manasseh's son Amon, who was very evil and was killed by his servants. I personally love whenever I read about the righteous God-fearing kings of Israel and Judah. I get upset when I read about the evil ones, and I ALWAYS end up thinking about modern Israel (specifically the United States but also the other nations of Israel) and modern Judah. I can't help but think of this and long for a humble repentance of our leaders and a nationwide repentance of our peoples. Wouldn't that be awesome if we as a nation would decide to return to God's sabbath day and feasts and leave Sunday-keeping, Christmas, Easter, Halloween, etc. in the dust? Wouldn't it be wonderful if we abolished abortion and punished adultery and homosexuality? Wouldn't it be grand if we tore down all the idolatrous images and statues throughout our land (like church obelisks, "statue of liberty," "Washington monument" [big obelisk], "virgin Mary" and "Jesus" statues? Wouldn't it be super if we reinstated prayer and bible reading in schools? Wouldn't it be fantastic if we banned wicked movies, tv shows, and music? Who else is deeply grieved by our nations' current state? (Yes, plural, as Britain, Israel, Canada, and the other Israelite nations have the same and similar sins.) I discuss this over and over with William, too. I want him to know that if we all lived God's way, the world wouldn't be as sad as he perceives it. It would be SO GOOD if we established TRUE FREEDOM, TRUE LIBERTY in this nation. "One nation under God" and "In God We Trust" are simply not understood by the masses. This nation, as a whole, does NOT trust God, and it is NOT a nation that is willingly putting itself "under God's" authority--under HIS law, the perfect "law of liberty" (James 1:25).

The bible is the earthling's instruction manual. Any person who does not have the knowledge of what is contained in the instruction manual is missing out on the perfect way to live in PEACE and CONTENTMENT and in good HEALTH and PROSPERITY.

We went over more social skills today: Following directions

Also, we read some out of the Christian Heritage book. We're in the geography section, on which he should do well, b/c he mostly knows already what is covered, so this will be a good review, if nothing else. He did learn the difference between a map and a globe. We then went back over the seven continents. That was pretty much it.

This morning, before we'd even eaten anything, he said something like, "Do you know that everybody has a sun? Like we have a sun, and Colorado has a sun. Everybody has a sun shining on them." I said something like, "Well, it's true that everybody has the sun shining on them every day, but we only have ONE sun." He: "No, there a lot of them." Gotta love kids. :-) SO, I refreshed him on how it's actually the earth that rotates around the sun daily and went over the sunrise/sunset stuff. We've talked about this a few times before. BUT, neither Nathan nor I have ever demonstrated this in a way where he could actually SEE. SO, I got an idea. I went to Will's closet and got out a golf ball and a soccer ball. The golf ball resembled the earth, and the soccer ball resembled the sun. I then held both and explained to him what happened. There was some sort of face on this particular golf ball, so I pretended that was the United States, and then I explained again (like we have before w/o the balls) how one side of the earth is always dark and the other is light, and how when we're dark, the other side is light and vice versa. I then showed him the pretend California, the pretend Colorado, the pretend Missouri, and the pretend Florida (he already knows where all the 50 states are, so this was easy for him to understand), and I explained how the Californians would get up at sunrise, then the Colorado people, etc. (Okay, so not all of us get up right at sunrise, but he didn't call me out on that! LOL) He was asking about time zones the other day. So, since we discussed the earth and sun this morning, I think I'll go more over the time zones tomorrow with him.

Well, that's pretty much it for now. I have to go finish dinner. I'll update this again at my choosing.