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Happy Birthday, or 33 Things About Me

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Yes, it’s that time again: My birthday. Sharing 32 things for 32 years was fun last year, so I’m going to the same this year. So without further ado, here are

33 Things About Me That You May Not Be Able to Easily Deduce From Reading my Blog:

  1. I’m very quiet. That’s why blogging is perfect for me. I can get my thoughts out without having to verbally say anything.
  2. Over the past couple of weeks, I’ve had loads of ideas for this post. Now that I’m writing it, I can’t think of a single one.
  3. I never did finish reading the Dragon Tattoo series I was working at the time of last year’s birthday post. I got halfway through the second book and then had some other things come up that I either had to read or was more interested in. Recently I’ve been interested in some of the classics that are free or cheap on Kindle. (Currently The Invisible Man by HG Wells. Up next is The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stephenson.)
  4. Also on my to-read list this summer is The Book Thief. I mentioned wanting to see the movie, and Will saw the book at Goodwill and picked it up for me.
  5. My favorite flowers are carnations and daffodils. Those are my mom’s favorites too, so we always had them around when I was growing up. That’s probably why they’re my favorites!
  6. Will remembered this last year when he was buying perennials to plant in our front yard. I’d forgotten that one of the plants was a carnation. Imagine my pleasure when it started blooming this spring!
  7. I’m ambidextrous. But not in the “I can do everything equally well with either hand” way. In the “I use both hands equally but for different tasks” way.
  8. I hate listening to music in the car. I find it oppressive because you can’t get away.
  9. When I was kid, my dad gave me a big box of fireworks for my birthday. Every. Single. Year.
  10. My church is completely bilingual, English and Spanish.
  11. In addition to sewing and crocheting, I’ve recently rekindled my love of embroidery. That was my first experience with crafty things as a child, but I hadn’t done it in years. Last week, I picked up a new project and have really enjoyed it.
  12. I taught the boys, too. And they love it too. Embroidery has been much better for them than crocheting or cross-stitching was.
  13. For my wedding in 2001, I embroidered and made ring bearer pillows. They were done to match the bedding we had chosen – ferns and pinecones.
  14. We didn’t end up having any ring bearers, but the pillows still graced our bed for years.
  15. We did not live together before we were married.
  16. One of my favorite possessions is the teddy bear that Will gave me for Christmas the first year we were together (1998). It is still on my bed today.
  17. I recently made a fresh batch of cloth diapers for Small Fry. The elastic in the yellow ones had worn out.
  18. This time, I embraced his boy-ness and made them with dinosaurs.
  19. I don’t really like having pets. We have a frog, and that’s about all Will and I are interested in. Nothing that wanders the house getting in the way.
  20. This policy comes from a cat we had about 5 years ago. Its name was Caesar and it was an awful cat.
  21. We don’t have a TV. We watch shows and movies on our Kindle Fire. In the winter, we have fires in the fireplace and talk at night.
  22. Our current house is the first time we’ve had non-white walls. I like the color!
  23. I keep my hair short because I don’t like having my neck covered (unless it’s by a scarf in the winter).
  24. I think ceiling fans are dumb. They don’t cool a room, and running them causes them to gather more dust than not running them in my experience.
  25. My favorite kind of pen is a refillable gel pen. I currently own two.
  26. My boys love art, so I recently made them each an “art bag.” This is a small-ish messenger style bag designed to hold a sketch pad, pencil, and reading book.
  27. Will liked them so well that he wanted one too, so I made him one. He uses his for paper, pens, and his Bible, and uses it mostly when he goes to book signings or church.
  28. I love elephants. They are hands-down my favorite animal.
  29. I got to ride one a couple of years ago, right before I was pregnant with Small Fry. That was one of the neatest experiences I’ve ever had.
  30. We didn’t find out the gender of Seahawk or Munchkin before birth. We did with Small Fry, and if/when we have another baby, I’m definitely going back to the not-finding-out way.
  31. My favorite guilty pleasure shows are Breaking Bad and Dexter. Both have really nasty anti-heroes, but both are really good shows.
  32. Will recently got me into Mad Men too. He’s been watching it for years, and now we’re watching it from the beginning together.
  33. I have dimples. They’re not super noticeable, but they are there. Munchkin and Small Fry have inherited these. Theirs are both deeper than mine, especially Munchkin’s.

So there you have it. I hope you’ve enjoyed reading this list as much as I’ve enjoyed putting it together.

Blessings,

Wendy

Something Crafty for Baby

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I mentioned in yesterday’s post that we have a new nephew. There was a baby shower for the little guy about three weeks ago, and I wasn’t really in the mood to sew something, but I always prefer to give hand-made gifts over store-bought ones. So after a lot of time on the yarn aisle – a lot of time – I finally picked a color that I liked (blue and brown variegated) and found a pattern I thought I could do. Here’s the result:

baby jacket

The pattern comes from Lion Brand, and it was so easy! You just have to crochet five rectangles – one for the back of the jacket, two for the fronts of the jacket, and two for the sleeves – and then stitch them all together. I also made a hat to go with it. The buttons slide between stitches on the opposite side, so you don’t even have to count out where to put buttonholes. It was the perfect project for me at this point – I got the crocheting bug satisfied without having to stress over a complex pattern or a large blanket. And I was able to make the jacket and the hat with only two skeins of yarn, which kept my wallet happy too! (Not that I was trying to be cheap, but when you can give a heartfelt gift without breaking the bank, that’s the best kind of all!)

What’s your favorite baby gift to give?

Blessings,

Wendy

Please note: The pattern is free, but you have to sign up for a free account with the Lion Brand website to access it.

1999: A Reflection

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Today marks exactly 15 years since I graduated from high school. (I was a public school student.) For such a momentous occasion, I thought it would be fun to take a trip down memory lane and share it here.

First, here’s a picture of me way back then:

me in hs

How much about the news stories from back do you remember? What about the impeachment of then-President Clinton? Or the war in Kosovo? Those were what I wrote down as the most memorable of that year (national and international, respectively).

Here’s something that should be fun: prices. Back then, you could two loaves of bread for$1.39. These days, my husband will pay $5.19 without batting an eye. That’s for organic, chock-full-of-seeds bread, but still. I’m a little more reasonable; I pretty much max out at $2.50, or I make it at home. Milk was $2.79, which is pretty close to the $2.89-3.19 I pay now. The only difference is that back then, we were always told, “Be glad your car doesn’t run on milk,” because gas back then was in the $1.29-$1.39 range. Now of course, we’d be grateful if it dropped to$2.89! My, how times have changed. Eggs were 59 cents for a half-dozen. Now it’s around $1.19 for that size package. (Clearly I didn’t buy the eggs for our family back then or I would have recorded the price for a dozen instead of a half-dozen.) CDs and tapes – remember those? They ranged from $5.99-$15.99.

Okay, now a few personal things. In 1999, I was named Outstanding French Student. No wonder I love the language now, eh? The theme for my senior prom was “Light Up the Night,” and I attended with my now-husband. I got straight As and earned 28.5 credits; 24were required to graduate. My classes were Band (I played/play the flute), Government, British Lit, Yearbook (I was an assistant editor), and French 3. One of my best friends that year was a foreign exchange student from Germany. Unfortunately, I haven’t been in touch with her since then. (I wonder if the email address she left in my memory book is still accurate. And if so, would she even remember me?)

hs announcement collage

My high school graduation announcement

What year did you graduate? Tell me something memorable about that year in the comments!

Blessings,

Wendy

Book Review: A Life in Balance

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Learning Breakthrough Program Review

I enjoy reading, but I often find it difficult to find (ahem, make) time for it. When I was asked to review A Life in Balance, I happily accepted. The book is the autobiography of Frank Belgau, founder of the Learning Breakthrough Program, and chronicles his life as it led to the development of his program. I received this book as a PDF which I put on my Kindle to read, but it is only available for purchase as a print copy for $18.95 (currently on sale through Amazon for $16.94, but I don’t know how long it will be that price). The book is geared toward adults, but would also be good for older teens who were interested in studying mild learning disabilities.

The book opens in the 1960s, when Mr. Belgau is first beginning to make strides in his research and teaching of “unteachable students.” It quickly goes back in time, however, to the 1940s, when Mr. Belgau was a junior high school student. He tells us how he came to love science; it was all thanks to his teacher, Mr. Royer. I found it amusing how he entered the classroom for the first time and his heart sunk. You see, Mr. Royer was an old man. Young Mr. Belgau had been hoping to be taught by a “real” scientist – a young-ish guy in a lab coat. But in the 40s, all the young men were fighting in World War II. That left this old man to teach the children. Dismayed as he was upon seeing his science teacher for the first time, that all went away the minute Mr. Royer opened his mouth. You see, Mr. Royer had known Thomas Edison. The Thomas Edison. You can imagine how that one little tidbit would instantly make this old man more credible in the eyes of a pre-teen boy who hopes to be a scientist (after a career as a military pilot, of course!). At the end of that first class, Mr. Royer presented a scientific question to the class: “To what rule is the motion of  {this} pendulum calibrated?”

He never gave them the answer. Instead, he simply told them, ““It [science] isn’’t about having the right answer. It’’s about looking for the right answer.””

It’s clear from the way Mr. Belgau speaks about Mr. Royer – with near reverence – that the old scientist had a huge impact on the then 12-year-old.

The book moves on from there in a series of biographical type chapters. Mr. Belgau is telling his story of how the Learning Breakthrough Program was developed through his relationships with others. These people include students, parents, and fellow scientists and teachers. As early as the 1960s, he was having success teaching students that all the other teachers had written off. And the way he started was by going back to his days with Mr. Royer and his pendulum. What Mr. Belgau was slowly discovering was that “mental disabilities” (namely ADD, dyslexia, and other reading-based brain issues) are able to be overcome. He developed a series of exercises – starting with having students follow a pendulum suspended from the ceiling with their eyes – that somehow allowed their brains to bypass their disabilities. He continued to develop more and more exercises that further increased these students’ abilities. He found that after 15 minutes of his exercises, the students showed a marked improvement in their ability to read aloud and in their comprehension of what they had read. Reading about that was quite remarkable, especially as a mama with a (slightly) struggling student.

I want to close my review of A Life in Balance with just a few quotes from the book.

“I began to wonder how much of the lack of interest and resistance children have to reading comes from the simple fact that what they’re given to read when they are young is a waste of time.”

This is a great thought. I’m sure Dick and Jane served their purpose (or did they?), but why would we use such uninteresting books to teach our children? Give them easy readers from topics they’re interested in from the beginning, and we’re more likely to foster a love of reading.

“I learned to reserve praise for the moments when it was really due, not to dole it out liberally, over-affirming bad work to make the student feel good.”

This may not be “politically correct” in today’s world of everyone-is-equal-and-deserves-to-win, but I must say, I agree with Mr. Belgau. You need to walk the line between being mean and giving false praise. Constructive criticism is more beneficial than false praise any day of the week.

“Far too often, we set the bar just below just below the perceived ability of the children in our charge, and by so doing – whether as parents or teachers – we rob those children of an important motivation to push themselves toward success.”

I’m guilty of this. Big time. Fortunately, Will is not, so we balance each other out. Reading this, first in the book and now again as I review my notes to write this review, I’m committing to pushing my kids this summer. Not beyond what they can do, but not below, either. I need to give the motivation to succeed on their own.

If you’re interested in finding out more about Mr. Belgau and his work, make sure to head over to the Learning Breakthrough Program‘s website. There’s all kinds of good stuff there.

Blessings,

Wendy

more reviews click through copy
review crew disclaimer copy

Poppins Book Nook Update

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I wasn’t able to do the Book Nook this month, but I wanted to give you guys the opportunity to read the other awesome bloggers who did!

Enchanted Homeschooling Mom ~ 3 Dinosaurs ~ To the Moon and Back ~ Planet Smarty Pants ~ Farm Fresh Adventures ~ Growing in God’s Grace ~ Chestnut Grove Academy ~ Faith and Good Works ~ Learning and Growing the Piwi Way ~ The Usual Mayhem~ Preschool Powol Packets ~ Monsters Ed Homeschool Academy ~ Adventures in Mommydom ~ Teach Beside Me ~ Life with Moore Babies ~ Kathy’s Cluttered Mind ~ Are We There Yet? ~ Our Crafts N Things ~ Hopkins Homeschool ~ ABC Creative Learning ~ Joy Focused Learning ~ P is for Preschooler ~ Laugh and Learn ~ A Mommy’s Adventures ~ Inspiring 2 New Hampshire Children ~ World for Learning ~ The Kennedy Adventures ~ Ever After in the Woods ~ Golden Grasses ~ Our Simple Kinda Life ~ A glimpse of our life ~ Journey to Excellence ~ Happy Little Homemaker ~ Little Homeschool Blessings ~  Raventhreads ~ Water on the Floor ~ Learning Fundamentals ~ Tots and Me ~ As We Walk Along The Road ~ Stir the Wonder ~ For This Season ~ Where Imagination Grows ~ Lextin Academy ~ The Canadian Homeschooler ~ School Time Snippets ~ Peakle Pie ~ Mom’s Heart ~ A Moment in our World ~ Every Bed of Roses ~ Finchnwren ~ At Home Where Life Happens ~ Suncoast Momma ~ The Library Adventure ~ Embracing Destiny ~ Day by Day in our World ~ Our Homeschool Studio ~ A “Peace” of Mind ~ Thou Shall Not Whine ~ SAHM I am ~ eLeMeNo-P Kids ~ Simple Living Mama

Picture of the Week: Brushing My Teeth

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I know I already made a post today, but it’s been a couple of weeks since I did a picture of the week, and I wanted to do one today. This is just too cute not to share!

brushing teeth

Small Fry loves having his teeth brushed. But  he loves doing it himself even more!

Have a great weekend everyone :).

Blessings,

Wendy

Picture of the Week: Walking the Dog

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walking the dog

There’s a lady in our church who brings her dog on Sundays. We were in the Fellowship Hall with Small Fry after church, and Romeo (the dog) was just minding his business, sitting underneath a table.

Well …

A certain little boy couldn’t have that! He found the dog’s leash and promptly started leading him all around the room. And it’s a big room!

Fortunately, the dog’s owner didn’t mind – she insisted I take pictures!

Blessings,

Wendy

Picture of the Week: Sing Your Heart Out

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image

We were cooling our heels after church last week while hubby talked to his dad, and Small Fry found the wireless mic hiding in the pulpit. When Grandpa’s the pastor, you get a little more leniency in where you can go as a kid in the church ;). Of course we had to take the microphone away almost immediately, but I couldn’t resist snapping a picture first.

Blessings,

Wendy