February update

We eat a lot of pancakes at our house. It's our go-to last minute dinner, and one of our favorite breakfasts. The kids are all (still) fascinated by the wheat grinder. I love this picture. Who knew that wheat grinders could be as captivating as a big screen?

Scott loves to help in the kitchen. Here is his first attempt at flipping the pancakes. He comes up with ideas every single day of what to do for cooking class in homeschool.

Speaking of homeschool, we have officially begun. Scott came home from school last Thursday and insisted that he was done. The last straw for him was losing 6 minutes of his recess time (which is significant, since recess is only 15 minutes long) because other kids in his class wouldn't settle down.

I was delighted to hear that he had made up his mind. I had been thinking it was such a waste for him to sit at school all day when he was capable of, and wanting to do, so much more. Scott is really a homeschool kind of kid, forever coming up with his own projects. He planned and organized a book fair last weekend, which involved writing and illustrating a bunch of books (about Harvey and Snortey, of course!), creating a money system (pig dollars), and a series of games and contests which would provide his cousins (who were to be the main book fair participants) with currency. Alas, one of the cousins scorned his efforts, turning her younger siblings against the book fair. Only his oldest cousin wanted to participate, but how can you have a contest or a game with just one person?  He was quite upset about it and determined never to plan anything fun for the cousins again.

 Ethan, on the other hand, LOVES his class and his teacher at school. He loves to be "in the system".  He has just joined the Junior Math Pentathlon, which will be meeting once a week after school. I'm grateful that both homeschool and public school are available as options.

We aren't really celebrating Valentine's Day tonight, but we did have a special table ready for the kids when they came down today. Love Crunch was our breakfast, a chocolate granola studded with chunks of dark chocolate and freeze-dried strawberries and raspberries. There was also a Valentine from Harvey and Snortey to the boys and a bag of treats from us, the parents. Those bags say "Hogs and Kisses" - here is a link to the website that gave us free printables for the bags and also to attach to the Hershey Kisses inside. It was so fun to watch Scott's face as he opened his bag.

Wishing you all a happy V-day, a happy Tuesday, and a great week!