I'm drowning!  In laundry, packing, school, dishes, errands, lists.....YIKES!  Yes, the adorable conversations and achievements have been piling up.  And No, I don't have any time to post them.    I'm just going to make a short list here to remind myself of what I wanted to blog about.  And maybe if I'm lucky....when we get back from Thanksgiving I might write more details.

1.  Anna is flying through her K books.  She's determined to keep reading more and more words that she hasn't covered in her books yet.  She just does it.  She also has been writing words...trying to sound them out herself.  The other day, she drew a picture of a dragon for Johnny and wrote "Dragun".  I was impressed since we haven't done any of the special consonant blends like dr, gr, fl, gl....stuff like that.  Only short vowel words with one syllable!  Not bad considering she has no idea of "o in shovel" yet.  In Math, we are finally approaching something remotely challenging for her.....learning numbers 20-50, understanding place value and she actually gets to start some addition/subtraction.  (she's been waiting FOREVER to do flashcards like the boys)

2.  We had an exciting encounter with a deer on the way to town the other evening.  This coupled with a recent and apallingly random fatality due to a deer made for some very interesting conversation with the kids the rest of the way. 

3.  The boys and I started with Peter Marshall's "The Light and the Glory for Kids" in History.  They love it!  We unroll our world map on the floor, and they find every country or city mentioned.  They had pretzel sticks (I know...pretzel sticks?) for ships and plotted Columbus' journey with the Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria across the ocean.  I was happy with how much they retained fact-wise.  And, they didn't want me to stop reading!

4.  Dinner theater, Dinner Theater, Dinner Theater.  Not even going to go into all the snafu's Matt has had to deal with.  But suffice it to say, we have not seen him this week....not at all.  OK, maybe briefly around 10pm before bed.  He left this morning to lead worship at a men's conference.  I have the baton now, and am supposed to do the following before Sunday at noon:

A.  Make chex party mix to take to Madison and Thanksgiving in Chicago.

B.  Put a recognizable "Maisy" on Leah's birthday cake...and find a safe place in the van to transport it to Madison, where we are celebrating her 2nd birthday.

C.  Run to town to pick up various important things we need for our trip.

D.  Finish all laundry, Pack 5 of us for 5 days, and find missing items that have been gone for weeks.....the boys belts and a cardigan belt of mine that I can't live without. 

E.  Get Betty to friend's house with all her paraphernalia.

F.  Load car

G.  Try not to forget anything.....make a running list....the camera, the cell phone, the tickets to the Star Wars exhibition at the museum of S & I, Johnny's script for the dinner theater, "The Grinch" book so Matt can make sure he still knows it for the dinner theater.....and a million other miscellaneous things! 

I don't know if I can do this.