Today we start school.  Already we are behind, because, well, it’s amazing what we all can find to do when it’s school time. 

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You have to understand that although we frequently see storm clouds forming in the mountains around us, it rarely rains or thunders  right over our house.  This one storm made up for all the years of boring weather we have been subject to.  We had flash flooding, hail, high winds, big crashes of thunder — it was wonderful.  One can have enough sun, you know. 

(Emily didn’t think it was that great.)

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FOR SALE:  Sonya Shafer’s (CM) Your Business math series –  Bookstore kit, for ages 8-12.

Includes used student workbook and teacher’s guide, in good condition.

The Chance cards and Additional In-Store Sales cards have been cut apart, and they are stored in envelopes inside the front cover of the teacher’s guide.

This workbook was written in January-March and has been erased.  Answers are slightly visible, but many of them will change depending on how your student stocks his/her store, chance cards, etc.

$15 + $3 Media Mail shipping. Retails for $24.95 + s/h.

From SimplyCharlotteMason.com:

Your Business Math Series is a fun and “living math” kit that reinforces math skills for ages 8–12! Your student uses his math knowledge to keep his very own store running and, hopefully, make a profit. But there are also some surprises along the way!

• Fun—Choose from a pet store full of fur and fish, a book store that carries the classic living books, or a sports store that caters to family fun.
• “Living” Math—Learn to write checks, figure sales tax, pay bills, and keep a bank account ledger current, all while practicing basic skills like addition, subtraction, and multiplication.
• Easy to Use—Conversational step-by-step instructions that lead the student through his various tasks for each business “month.” Additional Teaching Tips and answers in the FREE 56-page teacher book.
• Exciting—Unexpected surprises from Chance cards that students select at random!
• Flexible—Complete the kit in just a few weeks or use it all school year. You choose your own pace.
• Effective—Students don’t mind doing the math when they’re working on their very own store’s success in a fun game-like approach.
• Comprehensive—An additional practice section in case your student needs more help on any skill used in Your Business Math Series.
• Recommended—Listed as a suggested resource in the SCM Curriculum Guide.

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Six weeks and counting ’til this child’s birthday.  Yesterday she told me she can’t think of anything she wants for her birthday, that she is satisfied and content with what she has.  (I know better.)  Today she has a growing list of birthday suggestions.   They include dried apricots and mangoes,  Tiny Dreams, paint and stuff, clay, canned peaches, the Moody series, Hot Wheels, and brussel sprouts.

BRUSSEL SPROUTS.

I’ve heard of “birthday blues”.  But greens?  Only my kid would ask for brussel sprouts for her birthday.

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Day two we rushed off to Bryce Canyon, Capitol Reef and Arches National Parks, all of which are beautiful (sorry, overused word regarding scenery, but necessary). We got out of the car all three places and hiked around a bit — nothing strenuous — just enough to snap some amateur photos and be on our way. But there’s lots to do — camping, mountain biking, hiking, etc. Both the landscapes and skyscapes were incredible! Of course, the pamphlets they give you at the park entrances are full of “science falsely so called”, with their claims of billions and billions of years… looking at this stuff it is so obvious that water designed it fast and furiously. If you’ve ever built a complicated sand castle and then watched the tide come in on it, you’ve seen this on a comparatively microscopic scale. God’s artistry is beyond anything we can imagine, and yet here he shows us his handiwork plainly! Anyone know how to do one of those collages, where, when you mouse over a photo, you can see the larger version of it? I’d love for you to see some of the detail! (It would help if I took better photos!)

We did the world’s fastest tour though these parks and enjoyed the entire drive to our next motel, which was in Moab, Utah, the mountain biking Mecca of the USA.  My husband cried, as we had no bicycle along.   The motels even have bike washes for your mountain biking convenience.  That area is another playground, with 4x rentals, kayaking, hiking, cycling, river fun, just everything.  And all gorgeous, too!

Here’s Bryce Canyon. We were there early in the morning, and it was surprising how many other people were, too. There are lots and lots of neat hiking trails through the hoodoos. (Those are those orange spire-looking things.) I imagine they are rather spooky-looking at night, in the light of a full moon. Doesn’t “hoodoo” sound kind of spooky? See the teeny tiny crowd at the lookout?

Just above center in the photo below, there are three hikers waaaaay down there on the trail. It’s really hard to get a good perspective of how high up this is!

The rest of these photos were taken at Capitol Reef and Arches NP’s.

Balancing Rock, at Capitol Reef.  See the size of this thing?  Look for the people on the lower right.

My family at Arches.

The famous Delicate Arch, waaay out there.  Lots of people made the hike (they are too small to see), but we weren’t equipped for it.  Too bad.

And I just like this one because Amy appears to be Photoshopped in.

He putteth forth his hand upon the rock;

he overturneth the mountains by the roots.

He cutteth out rivers among the rocks;

and his eye seeth every precious thing.

Job 28:9,10

To be cont’d.

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Something I should have done, but stubbornly refused to do for myself, was keep a journal of our vacation.  I thought I would capture it all on “film”…. but alas, only the visible things can be captured that way.  Here’s Installment #1 of my attempt to reconstruct the highlights of our trip.

Our first day on the road we had planned to see Bryce Canyon National Park in Utah.   We traveled a good part of the day with happy kids, the entire family looking forward to all the fun days ahead.  We had to drive through Las Vegas (what a pit), and I couldn’t help noticing the inordinate number of billboards advertising drunkenness, immodesty, and licentiousness, and the services for help getting out of the holes people dig for themselves when their love of money exceeds their love of God:  cheap divorce, bail bonds, criminal attorneys, cash advances.  It all comes back to the love of money, for the love of money is the root of all evil. God forbid my dependence on it would lead me to a life of sorrows, and may he draw my heart ever closer to himself in its place!

As we entered southern Utah (and as was confirmed to me the longer we were there), I realized why God moved me to western Arizona.  It is so that I will continue to look forward to heaven!  If he had moved me to one of the many GORGEOUS locales in southern Utah (after all, stuff grows there), I might have thought I was already in heaven.    Western Arizona is definitely NOT heaven.

Sorry, I digressed again.  After checking into our motel in Panguich, UT, we attempted to get to Bryce Canyon.  This is what we found:

We took our chances on driving through this flash flood (foolish we were, but the other guy made it okay…) and proceeded towards the park, only to be stopped in a loooong line of traffic.  Boulders had fallen across the road somewhere way up ahead, and it would be hours before they could be cleared.  My newscaster companion explains:

As the camera ran, the rain fell harder and harder until we were in a deluge.    We turned around and whipped together a Plan B.  Emily picked up this very temporal souvenir of the storm.  Fun stuff for a desert kid!

Plan B was to go in the opposite direction, to Cedar Breaks National Monument, sort of a miniature Bryce Canyon.   It appears in the middle of nowhere.  You turn a bend and there it is, like so many other remarkable sights in Utah. The drive was just beautiful.  (All the drives on this trip were beautiful!)

We ate our picnic supper in this verdant, flowery meadow:

And, on the road home (home to our motel), as we came around a bend in the road, we encountered a large flock of sheep!   We stopped to watch the trusty sheepdog doing his job.  Doesn’t he look like a good dog?  He was watching us carefully, since the kids had dared to escape their confining vehicle and photograph his charges.

More rain and a cool night made for a fresh start on Day 2.  More to come!

In his hand are the deep places of the earth:

the strength of the hills is his also.

The sea is his, and he made it:

and his hands formed the dry land.

Psalm 95:4,5

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The vacation laundry is done, we are all unpacked, and I have frantically reconstructed my LOST curriculum order for the coming year, so now I get to play at HSB.  So much to tell, but the feeble brain is overloaded.  (It doesn’t take much these days!)

Do you know about the new free curriculum site at CurriculumShare.com?   What a blessing.  I have been able to get some really nice things for the coming school year, for only the cost of shipping!  Now I’m just trying to beg, borrow, or steal the rest.  (Okay, not steal.  That would be wrong.)  I’m not sure how new members get into that site, now that it has gone public, so if you find that you need an invitation, let me know.

The report on our wonderful vacation is going to be posted piece-meal.  I stopped taking photos about half-way though, because Amy was just going wild with her camera (she snapped nearly 1500 photos), and who needs all those photo files clogging up their already slow and crippled computer??  Not me.  For now I will just share two ways for young travelers to keep busy and happy:

bop your neighbor with a headrest:

sing a happy tune:

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First thing:  Thank you, Kristen, for choosing me for HSB Blogger of the Week!  I do hope my techie-wannabe posts are helpful; I don’t do the greatest job at explaining things.   Hey, maybe that should be a new category here… Techie Gems.  Make that Techie Wannabe Gems. 

Next thing:  While many of you are hitting the books again, I have yet to order curriculum for the coming year!  As much as I try to ignore the public school schedule, I find that I can’t ignore it completely.  School starts here on August 9th, and we will still be on summer vacation.  We have been on summer vacation since April, I think.  (May?  I don’t remember when we called it quits with the 2009-2010 school year.)  Oh yeah, and this was the year we were not going to break for the whole summer, but carry on with math and Bedell curriculum.  Hahahahaha!

Thing three:  Before we start the new school year we must learn some real life stuff, like calculating mileage, reading a map, being a good guest, how to love on newborn babies, climbing a lighthouse,  how to tell if a motel has bedbugs, and how to pack six people and all their belongings into a minivan for …a vacation.  I was going to say how long we’ll be gone, but there might be someone out there looking in blogland for a place to rob, and I don’t want them to know much time they have to empty the house out.  (Now that I think about it, maybe I should say how long we’ll be gone…)   Not that we have anything worth stealing.  The big dilemma here is which stuffed animals to leave behind.  While wise mothers would set the limit at ONE doll or furry fake, we have agreed on two per child, and I have a feeling there will be a few stowaways.  “Kitty” and “Matthew” will certainly have their feelings hurt if they are not included!

Today is my packing day.  The clothes are all washed, floors are swept and mopped, and my lists are made.  I am working really hard to have most everything done by tonight, so that on the Lord’s day we can all sit here quietly anticipating the thrills of the next x number of days.    We leave Monday bright and early.  Here’s what we look forward to:

meeting the PlainJanes! Yippee!

riding an alpine slide

visiting some national parks

seeing family, including a brand new cousin

visiting some like-minded churches along our route

camping in a real live tent and  sleeping in a real live barn

Minnesota History Museum

being with old friends and making new ones

miles and miles of gorgeous GREEN scenery

riding a horse

seeing the presidents’ faces at Mt. Rushmore

playing in an orchestra

hiking

visiting a harbor and seeing all the BIG ships!

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School can wait!  This IS school.

I don’t want to hear, “Are we there yet?” more than a dozen times.

Where there’s a computer, there’s a way to keep in touch.  I’ll maybe leave an update or two.

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