On the Twelfth Day of Christmas

The Christmas tree is out at the curb.

The house has been pretty much de-Christmased, except for the manger scene. I've noticed that the Wise Men are crouched behind the stable; I keep imagining them jumping out tomorrow yelling "SURPRISE!"

Knitwise:

Much post-holiday knitting has been going on, but the most significant has been work on a Chickami in black Bamboo. I started this on New Year's Eve, sort of (mostly I was busy being exhausted from the trip home from Indiana, the unloading of the van -- in addition to all of the Christmas presents we had also gained a complete set of the works of Sir Walter Scott, and also the Harvard Classics Five-Foot Shelf of Books, not to mention some multi-volume history set, all of which have been in the family nearly a hundred years ... my brother took the complete sets of Kipling and Stevenson, which somewhat bothered MrV, although I haven't a clue what the heck we're going to do with all of these boxes of book anyway [other than start reading Ivanhoe sometime soon, since that's why Kid1 wanted to get the Scott books -- she likes the bit in the Charlotte-years Little House books where they read Ivanhoe in the evenings] so why we needed even more is beyond me -- and a quick trip to the grocery; we barely stayed awake for our New Year's toast taken at the appropriate moment for some time zone east of here). I have been plugging along all week, and have about reached the point where I split for the front and back (it's worked in the round up to the armholes). I had fleeting fantasies about wearing this Saturday night, but those dreams are fading before my eyes. It's easy, mindless knitting, the sort you can do while reading a book or walking around, but even the easiest knitting is impossible while packing up the Christmas dishes or mopping the floor. Plus, Im not sure how accurate my guage swatch was, what with being goony with exhaustion, so I really need to go try it on before I get much further.

Homeschoolwise

We started gearing down back at Thanksgiving, and went into total sloth-mode during the past couple of weeks. Dance class started back up this week, as did our read alouds (we've made it up to the Caroline years in Little House; although Kid1 commented yesterday that she doesn't like the writing as well as Melissa Wiley's in the Martha years and the Charlotte years; I replied that maybe we should give it more that 4 chapters before we make such judgments) (although, really, I had been thinking that myself). We're also reading Understood Betsy, and MrV is reading In the Year of the Boar and Jackie Robinson for bedtime reading, the latter being the current selection for Bravewriter's Arrow, which I am So Glad I subscribed to this year (more on that in a future post).

And Thank You cards, which I count as educational. Kid2's involve copywork (we discuss what to say, and I write it out for her to copy), they draw pictures on the front (we use blank cards -- not for us those printed Thank You cards from the store, oh no! we're after the total thank-you-experience here!).

Kid1 even did a lesson of math, which is truly amazing when you consider that she received a copy of Eldest for Christmas which is sucking up most of her time.

We discussed what new things they might want to do, things that we hadn't done in the fall. Kid1 wants to head into biology, or maybe zoology, or maybe life science ... "what would I need to study if I wanted to become a veterinarian?" So I've ordered various and sundry books on the topic. And Kid2 wants to do spelling, although now she's decided she wants to complete her phonics book first (Ordinary Parent's Guide to Teaching Reading; honestly, she can read everything in it, including the scripts for the teacher, but she craves the sense of completion, I guess). During our old-book bonanza she found an ancient, tattered McCall's Speller which she snatched up as her prize, and dragged around the house for several days reading.

Resolutions

No resolutions to report, although perhaps a resolution to not use quite so many parentheses in my writing would've been appropriate. I have vague ideas of things I want to accomplish over the next few months (clear out a bunch of junk in the basement, get more bookshelves, sew a bunch of stuff) but nothing that seems very resolutionish. I had meant to think about joining in on the Project 365 , but forgot to think about it (mostly I wanted to think about what the heck I would do with all of those photos since I don't scrapbook or otherwise organize all of the photos we currently take anyway), and now I'm already 5 days behind. Which means it was a New Year's resolution that was broken before it was even made, depending on what you consider the deadline for New Year's resolutions. Is there a deadline?