Olympic Knit-along

I've decided to participate in a knit-along I believe I can actually finish :)


The Yarn Harlot is hosting an Olympic Knit-Along...you choose your own project, which should be a challenge but which you must be able to complete during the Olympic games. We start the project with the opening ceremonies and finish by the closing ceremonies. I think it sounds like a lot of fun...now to decide on a project. I am planning on socks of some kind, because it normally takes me a long time to finish a pair, I often get distracted by another project halfway through. Plus I can take socks with me onto campus for knitting in-between classes.

I will post more later about other stuff :)

Field Trip!

Yesterday was our first day back with our homeschool co-op since before the holidays. We started the year with a field trip...that's the best way to start. We visited Devil's Millhopper, this is a huge sinkhole here in Gainesville, it is 500 feet wide and 120 feet deep. It was perfect weather, overcast and cool, I think is was in the mid 60s, but a bit humid because of impending storms that finally came through last night.

I got some great pics of the kids...
This is our whole group (minus 1 or 2), we are small with mostly younger kids.

My 2 mid-way down. We were not able to go all the way to the bottom walkway because there was about a half foot of water covering the bridge/walkway.

Visiting the sinkhole is tricky because you go down all the stairs to the bottom, I think there are around 130 steps descending into the sinkhole; then you have to climb back up all those stairs. So the kids go bouncing down the stairs and on the way back up, usually before the first landing they start complaining they are tired. Well, Elisabeth did her usual complaining but Joseph climbed all the stairs and then did the entire 1/2 mile perimeter trail and not once did he say he was tired, I was so proud of him.

Elisabeth told me over and over how much fun she had. I asked her to write a short paragraph about our trip when we got home. This is what she wrote:

"My Trip to Devil's Millhopper (in very big letters across the top of the page)

I went to Devil's Millhopper with homeschool group and saw all my friends. There is a new girl. I had lot's of fun! I saw bones and I found 3 leafs sweet gum and it's pod, swamp chestnut oak and saw palmetto. My favorite thing was the sink hole!"

I thought she did a great job! The only prompt I gave her was to write about what she saw on our trip.

I also finished Joseph's Tiger socks. I have some nice breaks in my day on campus that I am able to do some studying and knitting. He is a proud boy in his new socks. They have some room to grow and will be nice and warm when we go to Michigan in March.

My classes went very well this week. I think this is going to be a great semester. I think I am really going to enjoy my French poetry class and my grammar and composition class is going to be great for me to really practice on my writing in French. Corrective phonics is going to be a really easy class, we sit in the language lab on the computers and practice saying phrases to improve our pronunciation. The Adolescent will be interesting despite the teacher, she is a grad student who is probably younger than I am, not much past adolescence herself. Now I am not against grad students teaching classes, I really enjoyed my Latin teacher last semester who was a grad student and I hope to be such a teacher in a year or so. But teaching languages is much different than teaching the development of adolescents and how to work with them in a classroom. And this teacher teaches straight from the handouts of notes she gives us, boring, give me additional information, I can read the notes myself!

We have had some beautiful weather this week also. I have thoroughly enjoyed finding a bench on campus and sitting in the sun, watching the people walk by, I enjoy people watching, it can be quite amusing at times.

Today we took Maisey to the park with us and she found a pug friend to play with. She was such a good puppy. Maisey is about 40 pounds now and still growing, being German Shephard/Huskey mix I imagine she will gain at least 20 more pounds. But she was great with this little pug which was about the size of our cats. We had a great day.

Monday is a day off of school for me. I will enjoy the time off, but I'm ready to get these classes well underway.

Anyway, enjoy the rest of your weekend! I will :)

First day of classes...2nd semester

Well, I have been a lazy poster these past few weeks. My plans of everything that I was going to get done during my break kinda went out the window. Not to say all I did was sit around and veg...but that was part of it.

We did get the kids' rooms decluttered and organized. I succeeded in not adding any more laundry to the clean clothes pile, thanks to my decluttered laundry room, which has new shelves and a nice workspace on top of the washer and dryer now. We dedecorated last week so the house is not in total disarray.

I made a little progress on Joseph's socks and I pulled out one of my unfinished cross-stitch projects. I have resolved to finish up all my ufos (unfinished objects) before starting on new projects (except gift items), that includes knitting and cross-stitch projects, doll clothes I will start because they can be cut out one evening and sewn the next in a short time, they are almost instant gratification. That said, I did pull out the doll clothes pattern book and cut out several outfits last night, to be sewn when I have the chance this week.

And today my classes start again! I am taking this semester: French Grammar and Composition (this is the class that comes before the French writing course I took last semester), French Corrective Phonics (a 2 credit language lab), Modern French Poetry (this is the same professor as my French writing course last semester, a true French teacher, she expect no less than your best, many students will avoid her classes, but I think she is a wonderful teacher), Man's Food (a nutrition course to fulfill my last biology requirement, online class) and Adolescence (my first class toward my secondary education minor).

My class schedule is not bad, MWF I have class from 12:50 to 3:50, with an hour break between classes and TR I have class from 9:35 to 1:40 with an hour break on Tuesday and a 2 hour break on Thursday. My knitting goes on campus with me, so I should be able to finish Joseph's socks this week and make some progress on the other 2 pairs I have started for myself.

Mitch and I got up early this morning, he has lots of deliveries to make this week, being the first week of class, this is the busiest time of year for the company. After "rush" he will go to only commercial sales, he has found it too difficult to do the on-campus course pack sales and successfully add to his commercial business.

Well, I need to push the kids out of bed, I've been trying to wake them for the last half hour. Joseph got up and climbed into my bed, but he won't move from there. Elisabeth hasn't even rolled over :)

More updates later.

Have a Great Day!