Quick Takes Friday

1-

Well, over a month and no blog posts.  I'll simply blame that on cookie season, which has been keeping my already busy self even more busy recently.  Both girls overshot their goals by about 100 packages, mostly because so many of the girls in the troop were not selling at all or not selling as many as last year.  We had to get those troop cookies sold!  My final paperwork is due on Sunday, so after that I am COOKIE FREE for several months (although I'm sure we'll start getting harassed about next cookie season before I know it.)

2-
Bret and I love "The Office", and while watching it off our DVR last night I had to pause right after this scene to try and share it on facebook, but sadly I couldn't find it last night.  Today, however, is a different story.  So, here's Kevin's cookie season rap:



3-
Monday is the day that enrollment begins for the virtual charter we are looking at for Charlotte.  So, I printed off last year's info packet to start pulling together documentation (birth certificate, immunization records, proof of residency, IEP, etc.) and the hardest thing for me is proving that we live in the state of Colorado.  What's particularly funny about this is that Bret, myself, Eva and Charlotte were all born here, and have never lived in any other state.  BUT we don't have a rental agreement or mortgage or housing bills in our name, since we live in one of the farm's houses.  So, hubby and his dad are hopefully going to sign a notarized letter stating that we live where we live.  The hoops one must jump through to get speech therapy services...

4-
I really need to get moving on my "Catholic book a month" plan if I am going to get through 12 books this year.  I was doing really well in January, reading two of my selections.  I started a third in February, but haven't been able to get motivated to read it at all - I was hopeful, since it was another historical fiction, that I'd get right into it, but no such luck.  I may have to give it up and start something else on my list instead.  February was my homeschool/everything else burnout month, so I'm hoping as the weather warms up, I'll get a little bit more ambitious.

5-
Hubby and I went to the Living the Catholic Faith conference last weekend in Denver.  We had a great time -left home Friday at lunch time, pricelined a nice hotel, and spent Saturday at the conference followed by Mass at the Cathedral.  I really enjoyed all of the talks I went to, and hubby liked most of his, but in the end thought that maybe he should have come with me for Jen Fulwiler's talk instead of to the talk "Engaging in the Public Square" which he thought was too basic and too much of an introduction to activism. (go figure!)  We ran into quite a few people from our rural region, and had an interesting conversation on the way home because of them.  I noticed that none of them showed any interest and in fact, were surprised when I said that I was attending/had attended Jen's talk titled "When Your Loved One is an Atheist."  I mentioned that I had a hard time believing it wasn't a talk that everyone at the conference should have heard - I just can't even envision having a life where you don't have anyone that you care about that is an atheist.  Hubby's point was that definitions like being an atheist or agnostic are a white collar thing.  Since we do live in a farming community, he mentioned that people out here are either Christians or not church attenders, but no one uses the definition of atheism or agnosticism because more blue collar workers don't have the leisure time to contemplate the existence of God or not - it is just not a question they think about, since they are busy working at a physical and physically exhausting level - not to mention that farmers tend to work way more than a typical 40 hour work week.  I had never really thought about it that way, but I guess I'll have to take his word for it, since I still don't really understand rural mentalities.

6-
This week the local public school had Thursday and Friday off (mostly because of state basketball, even though neither the boys or girls made it in this year, but I guess also because the teachers had parent/teacher conferences this week.)  So, we didn't have Catechism classes on Wednesday evening, or Girl Scouts on Thursday - I had a really nice and relaxing week!  Just preschool Monday and Wednesday, Bible Study last night, and a Girl Scout manicure and ice cream party tonight (as our end of cookie season celebration!)

7-
This year for history, we are doing Connecting with History Volume 2.  I haven't been as good this year about keeping up with history.  Last year we did history every day, but with our travel schedule/doing so much school in town, this year hasn't been as good.  However, in all my slacking on history it happened that we read a book and did the Hillside discussion guide on St. Valentine on St. Valentine's Day.  I noticed this week that we are about to start the unit during which we read a book about St. Patrick and do another Hillside discussion guide...and we are very close to St. Patrick's Day!  It's almost as if I planned it!  How serendipitous!