Yarn Along

Welcome to Wednesday’s Yarn Along where all participating blogs talk about what they are knitting and reading.  I love both, so I participate.  I’ve met some incredible women in the process.  If you’d like to meet them, you see their blogs listed at the central hub: Ginny’s blog.

The fingerless mitts are done and this morning I’ll be dropping them off at the fair.  I’m a little nervous for a few reasons.  1: While I don’t care if I don’t win the grand prize $2 prize money (although I have a serious chocolate bar picked out if it comes to that) I’m worried that I’ll do poorly.  2: We haven’t been getting the paper for some strange reason, even though I called, and so I don’t know which code for the category it is in that I need to use in filling out my form.  I looked online and I’m able to download the form, but the guide to the form is a broken link.

The form says to bring the entry to the fair on the 20th.  I’m bringing the kids this morning with a blank form and I’m hoping there will be someone there to help me put the proper codes on it, and the kids will all behave well as I do that.  I’m also hoping there’s no time frame that I’m not making.  I’ll probably be there around 9am and I have visions of showing up then and someone saying “Sorry…all entries are closed.  You missed it by 1 hour.”  I know I’m a little ridiculous but this whole concept of turning something in to the county fair for judging is so completely foreign to me (like 4-H) that I have questions that don’t even make sense to people.  Will there be someone there to help me?  Do I just show up and set it on the table? 

I’m already planning on looking back and laughing at my ignorance.  I’m sure it is much more simple than I have it played up in my head.

I keep telling myself that worst case scenario: I foul up entering it and am stuck with enjoying the fingerless mittens all to myself this fall.  That’s not so scary.

I’m reading More Stories From Grandma’s Attic which is part of Silje’s 2nd grade curriculum this next year.  It’s just delightful.  I think she’ll enjoy it a lot, and I think it will be one that she pulls off the bookshelf throughout the school year to read again and again just for fun.

I’ve been spending a little bit of time each day preparing for the upcoming school year.  I think I’m going to have to pick a start date soon, but haven’t settled into that yet.  I was thinking of starting in August again like last year but then I realized that’s just 2 weeks or so away.  Ahhhhh!  Then I rationalized that I started early last year to make up for an extended time off when Solveig was born.  Since there is no new baby this winter, I think I can push off school for a few more weeks yet.

I’m finding too many fun things to do for school next year.  There is so many free resources online for what we will be studying this next year: Vikings, Reformation, Renaissance, Medieval times, etc.  I’m finding so many fun, free things that isn’t even a part of our regular curriculum that it’s coming out my ears.  I’m going to have to resign myself that we simply cannot do it all.  My plan so far is to keep a list of these activities and if the kids need something to do and are bored one day, I’ll print some of it off and let them have at it.  I keep reminding myself that these are just supplements and they don’t need any of them. 

So I’m just organizing my lists of resources, and reading through Silje’s readers.  The read aloud books I plan on reading for the first time with her just like last year.  However the school year gets so hectic that I can’t keep up with her independent reading along with my other jobs, so it’s nice to have her readers under my belt so we can discuss them easily without me doing last-minute-night-before-cramming of what she is supposed to read.

I’m actually getting a bit giddy about school starting soon.  David will be starting kindergarten, and like Ginny, I asked him what he would like to study this next year.  He said he want’s to learn how to fly on a trapeze.  That makes me a little nervous that he’s going to be bitterly disappointed with kindergarten this next year, but we’ll just have to make the most of it.