Well…it’s Monday again.  That means back to the books and all that goes with it.  Home schooling 5 special needs children isn’t always fun, easy, but always rewarding to see growth.    With my children, their needs aren’t easy to spot.  Their needs are not readily seen upon first (or second) glance.  Due to the abuse and neglect (not to mention drugs and alcohol exposure) they all received in their birth home they are still very far behind their peers in both both maturity and school studies.  They are easily (and I mean easily) overwhelmed and we have daily meltdowns.  But….we hit a milestone on Friday.  My older 3 children ASKED for more work.  Wooo hooo.  Currently there is weeping and knashing of teeth..but that’s just me.  The kids are doing great.

On the project front, I cast on this morning a quick pair of fingerless mittens.  Am working up the pattern myself using a cute little Baby Cable pattern.  These will be a present for a secret pal, so I can’t say who they are for, but will show a picture later.  They are being done with another of the kids dyeing experiments.  Last summer we dyed a bunch of yarns using koolaid thanks to our Summer Secret Pal over at Crochetville.  I am finally getting a chance to use the left overs for some other projects.  You can see some of the yarns we came up with here. (You’ll need to scroll down past the camper pictures).

Laundry is calling and while I am trying really hard to ignore it, I must go answer the call of the washer.  ARGH

We don’t get many of those around here.  We got up early this morning and visited a new church.  Worship service is at 8:30 followed by Sunday school.  If you read an earlier post, you will know we are an early to bed, early to rise kind of family, so going to an earlier service makes sense to us.  So, a vistin’ we went.  It was nice.  I think we will be going back next week.  The kids loved their Sunday school classes and I liked the one we went to as well.  We also got to spend a great weekend of just family time.

Yesterday was to be a girl shopping day, but all the boys decided to tag along.  We ended up going to the consignment shop and spent $50.00 on several complete outfits for everyone.  I love days where I can save a ton of money and still end up with brand new items.  After that, hubby needed a hair cut, so the kids and I sat in the food court with a drink and people watched.  Ok, I whipped out my socks and knit but was people watching too.  Came home and just chilled out.  The girls and I decided to watch a “chick flick” (Love Comes Softly) and headed for the other room.  So we did end up with some girl time after all.

Last week I cast on a new pair of socks using Josh’s dyed yarn. He decided to call it “Tropical Punch”.  The name really fit.  Here’s a picture of the yarn:

and here’s a not so great picture of the finished socks (sorry…I can’t seem to get a decent picture these days.)

Kiki…..let me know if you like these.  We were all really pleased with how three colors turned into so many different ones.  A great lesson on colors for sure.

I need to get some spinning done for my Master Spinner’s course and figure out what I am going to cast on next.  I did decide to change my Olympic Knitting project from the Clapotis Scarf to a sweater instead.  I mean really, would I use the scarf????  Probably not, but a sweater…YUP!  So, I am going to start out small and make a doll sweater first.  The girls have several dolls that I can use for practice.  So, during the Olympics, I will be working on Doll Sweater.  Thanks Kelly and Carol for your nudge in that direction.

Rain!  It was actually rain.  It was such a strange sound it woke me up.  I had to wake hubby up so he could hear it, too.  Of course, after getting home from work around 11:00pm, the last thing he wanted to do was have me wake him up to hear the rain.  So I heard a grunt of acknowledgement and back to the land of nod he went.  It’s been so dry here and with no rain in the last 4 months the ground is loving it’s taste of water.  Our poor little doggie had to have his paws wiped and didn’t like that too much.

I am having a “girl” day with my daughters.  Oldest needs some new unmentionables and youngest has sprouted so quickly that pants we got her in December no longer fit.  I am sure I can find something along the way for me too. Perhaps a trip to Hobby Lobby is in order.  Now the boys….not sure what they are going to do, but I imagine hubby will be working on work stuff and let the boys watch TV or something along those lines.  

Wow…an offical post?  Ok…here’s my morning in a nutshell….alarm goes off at 3-ish….I roll over….I hate life….I roll out of bed…make the coffee…drink some coffee while checking email…make hubby lunch…go iron his uniform….drink more coffee…play on the computer…..drink more coffee….pray with hubby before he leaves for work…drink more coffee and a little more play on the computer or by now I might be awake enough to knit….take a shower….by now I am switching to tea so I drink a cup of tea….enjoy some very quiet time and perhaps listen to the roosters start their wake up calls….watch a little news…knit (or play on the computer) a little more…start some laundry, do some chores…drink another cup of tea…..by now it’s about 6:30 ish and I hear the faint stirrings of my youngest daughter…..send her back to bed a few minutes later…enjoy a little more quiet time and prayer time…7:00 girlie #2 is up an there is no sending her back to bed….#3 son wakes and is out….and the whole house rouses themselves and we start our day….so how do you start YOUR day?

This is a test to see how the blog works.  How’s it going?