Besides survival...

We actually do other things besdies hang out in the teepee. Especially when the windchills are -45. Gotta love MN.

Since the new year started, we've went back to reading before bedtime every night. We start about 7:30ish and bedtime is 8:00. We're doing Magic Treehouse right now. The boys like the books, and I like to read, and reading a not-alot-of-pictures chapter book seems to get the boys using their brains...and calms them down at the same time. (Another cool thing, at the Magic Tree house website, they have a passport that you can download and print off. After you finish each stories there are questions to answer, and if you get them all right, you get a "badge" to add to your passport. There is one badge for each story. The boys are lovin' filling up their passport.)

Note to self: Do not read Clone Wars/Star Wars "Decide Your Destiny" books right before bedtime. Imagining light saber battles does NOT calm the boys down. 'Nuff said.

Something else that we did was get a family membership at a local community center. Why? They offer a lot of classes for homeschoolers (which was one of the reasons we started going there in the first place) and come to find out, the family membership is only $35 a month. I figure for all the things we can do there, plus the discounts we get for classes, it was worth it. So we are enjoying swimming, gymtime, and some other neat classes there during the day.

We also introduced the boys to tools and woodworking. I'm one of those possibly off-kilter people who believes with the proper amount of supervision, children can cook, sew and use wood tools. (Ok, it actually comes from the knowledge that a long time ago, kids much younger were expected to do way more. Meaning, you didn't wait until 7th grade home ec to learn how to make brownies or 8th grade woodshop to make a shelf. I read somewhere that Amish kids can be in charge of buggies at age 9? Wow. What's the difference....kids are kids are kids, right? Its the environment in which they live that's different.) Anyhow, so we have been working on nailing, drilling and just a wee bit of sawing. The boys are pretty sure their first real project will be the Taj Mahal of all treehouses or something. I was thinking something a bit (ok, a lot!) smaller. Start simple kids, and work your way up!

Man, WHERE do they get that from???