A Little of What We've Been Up To...

(causing a serious lack of blogging)

{}Celebrating Holy Week and Easter

{}Enjoying the company of my parents (who were visiting from Minnesota for the past week)

{}Working on a ton of house and garden projects (my mom is an avid gardener and my dad loves working on house projects - and we sure needed some work in those areas!) Ria's massive flower garden in front (it was terribly barren there before) is nearly finished. Hope to put a picture or two up soon. I have to admit that I attended Easter Vigil Mass with some traces of wood stain still present on my fingernails, but the new shelving and pot-hangers will be much appreciated for a long time to come.

{}Enjoying the beautiful outdoor weather.

{}Running to the usual commitments and after the completely enchanting toddler-of-the-house. This week, Frank (the ultimate Munchkin Man) learned to open the baby locks on all the kitchen cabinets. I happened to be observing when he first (I think) opened the dishes cabinet. He calmly pulled out a bowl and closed the door. Then opened the door and replaced the bowl, and closed it. And repeated this about ten times as calmly and matter-of-factly as if he'd done it all his life and it was completely normal to do this ten times in a row. It almost seemed like he didn't want to push his luck by making his excitement too obvious. My dad was so impressed with how smart he was. Distressed might be a more appropriate word for me (hehe). By the way, he also unlocks bedroom and bathroom doors upstairs. He takes a Q-tip from the closet, pulls off the fluffy stuff and wiggles it in the doorknob until it clicks. We discovered this when his poor aunt had her shower interrupted a few weeks back. Sigh. We haven't seen this much determination in a toddler since Terri was two or three years old. I'll have to share my favorite Terri-at-three-years-old story sometime soon, but this post is getting too long already.

By the way, Ria's flower garden has been the occasion for some of Frank's most contented moments as of late (particularly during the post-Easter candy-monster blues). It's a big kidney-bean shaped garden, so we got some stepping stones to curve through it (oops, I accidentally typed "curse" the first time through - something about the Fall in THE garden, I guess) and he is completely absorbed in the task of toddling from stone to stone. Gardens are SO good for kids. I guess I'll never be a great gardener because my objective isn't really to succesfully grow beautiful plants and provide fresh tomatoes for our family, but to let the kids get dirty and watch stuff grow. Naturally they'll be happier if we get to eat or decorate with their hard work.

{}Updating the love2learn.net Catholic Colleges page (finally!) Lots of updating to do still on the other teen/college admissions pages, though.

{}Preparing to hand out some awards to my Latin students from our homeschool co-op who participated in the National Latin Exam. My class of five girls in 7th and 8th grade (taking the Latin I exam) had a Summa Cum Laude, a Maxima Cum Laude and a Magna Cum Laude (which amounts to some very fine scores). My previous class (of four students), who are now working with a more knowledgeable teacher, (and took the Latin II exam) had two Maxima Cum Laude and one Magna Cum Laude. Woohoo!!!

The National Latin Exam is really a great program that promotes classical studies in schools (check out the link above). They are very eager and helpful about working with homeschoolers - no need to be in a co-op situation - and it can be nice to get that occasional glimpse of "objective" testing (not a bad thing for transcripts).