It is officially summer!

Last week we finished our school year. The kids will have school during the summer, but it will be greatly reduced due to baseball, swimming and piano lessons, and just plain having fun in the sun :) I have been working on our summer schedule and today was our first day trying it out.

We will be working through the following books:

Ann Voskamp's- A Child's Geography Explore His Earth

Apologia Zoology 1- Flying Creatures (We won't finish this book during the summer, but will continue it during the coming school year.)

Story of Orchestra

They will also be working on Spanish, French, grammar, paragraph editing, spelling, and map work.

We have also started a new reading program for the summer. The boys are being challenged to read for 5 hours each week. Monday through Thursday are designated as "no screen" days, which means no TV, computer, wii or Nintendo ds.

But if they read for one hour than can earn thirty minutes of screen time (up to one hour per day) on those days. For example, Asher read for two hours today so he earned 1 hour of screen time. While Joshua only read for one hour and has earned thirty minutes of screen time (he has baseball tonight and would not have more than thirty minutes to play).

In the past the kids would watch cartoons in the morning (30 minutes or so) and then play wii or watch cartoons at 3:30pm (we do not allow the TV on during the day). So they were watching more than an hour of screens per day, which I hated. Now they are watching less and reading more, which I love :)

Thin Whole Wheat Pizza Crust :)

I found an awesome, healthy pizza crust recipe :)

My entire family LOVED this pizza crust (except for Elliana, who does not eat pizza). The bread sticks were good as well. But the pizza crust was just amazing!

Thin Whole Wheat Pizza Crust

Ingredients

· 1 teaspoon white sugar (or honey)

· 1 1/2 cups warm water (110 degrees F/45 degrees C)

· 1 tablespoon active dry yeast

· 1 tablespoon olive oil

· 1 teaspoon salt

· 1 tablespoon basil

· ½ tablespoon oregano

· 3 1/4 cups whole wheat flour

Directions

1. In a large bowl, dissolve sugar in warm water. Sprinkle yeast over the top and let stand for about 10 minutes, until foamy.

2. Place all ingredients into bread machine and start the dough cycle.

3. Divide dough in half.

4. Roll out half of dough into a thin pizza crust; bake at 500 degrees for 4 minutes.

5. Remove pizza from oven, add toppings, and then bake until cheese is melted.

6. To make breadsticks with remaining dough: form into breadsticks and bake at 450 degrees for 3 minutes. Remove from oven. Brush breadsticks with melted butter, sprinkle with parmesan cheese and kosher salt. Bake an additional 4 minutes.

Tough Week!

I took the first three days of the week off. I have not taken more than one day off of training in a very long time. I headed back to the doctor and was told that I had laryngitis, pink eye, a sinus infection, and bronchitis. All at the same time! I have never felt so weak, tired and just plain awful, ever, in my entire life!

I decided to slowly work my way back into my normal routine. I attempted to run the day after I was told I was sicker than was originally thought, not a good idea. It's a bad sign when you feel like you're drowning while running. I ran the next day and felt great, gotta love antibiotics!

My totals for the week are actually pretty good considering the time I took off-

Swim- 1.25 miles

Bike- 96.6 miles

Run- 10.48 miles

I was not able to bike 60 miles on my birthday. I was not completely healthy and the weather man predicted thunderstorms (which never came!). I did have a great birthday and did my own triathlon at the gym (1400yd swim, 25 mile bike, and a 3 mile run) and I even got the road bike out later in the day :) All this activity allowed me to eat a huge piece of chocolate cake with chocolate frosting!

My Heart Broke A Little

Elliana was invited to her first princess dress up party. She was so excited to get all dressed up in her princess dress and see her friends. As I was getting her dressed in her pink (of course) dress and adding all her needed accessories she said some things that surprised me and almost made me cry.

She kept saying over and over "I am going to look so pretty!" I of course agreed with her. But I hesitated and my heart ached when she was looking at her dress and said "I hope they like it."

She is only four years old and she is already worried about what others will think of how she looks. I knew that this day would come. But honestly I thought I had about 5 years to prepare myself and her for these issues. I took this time to tell her yet again that she is the most beautiful girl in the world and it doesn't matter what anyone else thinks, we know she is wonderful.

Later that night I stumbled across a song that is my message to my beauty. I wish every mom would express these things to their daughters. It is a harsh world and they need to know that they are amazing, just the way they are.

(disclaimer- I dislike the lyric her laugh "is sexy", so I sing it her laugh "is silly")

Great Read!

Why Would Anyone Be Crazy Enough to Homeschool?

Training Summary

I am currently a very sick women. I have laryngitis, a sinus infection, pink eye, and a cough.

Not good...at...all.

I don't remember ever feeling this awful. Luckily all this came about at the end of the week and I only missed one workout.

This coming week will be a different story. I am not sure when I will feel well enough to get anything done. I am hoping to hit the gym tomorrow morning, maybe.

My totals for this week:

Swim- 4.43 miles

Bike- 123.2 miles

Run-5.32 miles (the workout I missed was a long run)

Weights- 50 minutes

My plans of a sixty mile ride on my birthday are starting to dwindle. I hope I can be well enough, but I am not going to attempt a four hour bike ride unless I feel close to 100%.

Great Math Resource

It is difficult to find a good math program. It takes some time to discover if it is actually working for your child. And what works during one school year may not be the best option for the next school year.

And sometimes, like what happened to me this year, you buy a program that is useless. Apparently the fourth grade level of Teaching Textbooks is actually for 3rd graders. After each lesson I was becoming suspicious that the work was way to easy. I ended up stopping all other subjects and spending a week getting him caught up. I found a few great resources to help me during this time.

I bought some 4th grade Kumon math books. Each books contains hundreds of practice problems.

I also found some math books by Sylvan that are just amazing. In fact I purchased the next set for both boys to use throughout this coming school year. They contain regular practice problems, word problems, and much more.

Finally I like the DK math book. It has lots of practice problems and good instruction.

I think the key to math success is practice, practice, practice. I can remember making math problems for myself in high school. During car rides I would work on Pythagorean theorem. Not sure why I found this entertaining, but I loved it! In the last several months we have adopted a new math schedule. We work on our normal math lesson each day and every other day we also spend about an hour practicing old concepts and working on new ones.

Blessings

It's May! Great Training Week :)

Had a great week! I have three weeks left to train for my first triathlon of the year. After those three weeks I will taper for a one week to ensure that I am well rested and injury free.

My totals for this week are (drum roll...)

Swim- 3.81 miles

Bike- 106.83 miles

Run- 16.48 miles

It was a fun week and I am so excited to tackle the Tri-Shark triathlon in June!

I am contemplating a 60 mile ride on my birthday. This would be a good training distance for my century in July and a great birthday present to myself :)