Letters From the Homefront

Give me a 'L'! Give me an 'E'! Give me a 'G'! Give me an 'O'! What does that spell? LEGO Education! It was unanimous in my home that Legos were the 'in' thing to do with everyone, so we have used them a good deal here recently. I made the kids personalized Lego cards - what I could probably call Lego Command Cards - that cover a variety of areas. I will be sharing them soon, along with a little bit more about how we use them. In this post, I just thought I'd share some pictures of what inspired me the most and what they've been doing with them.  Hoss has a hard time telling  writing a story. One day, though, he and LM made this (pictured below) and he orally gave me an amazing story about what was going on, who was good, who was bad, what they were all doing, why they were doing it, etc. You get the point. I realized that he was able to think through what was in his brain with them. Add that to the aforementioned lo...

There is a story about the famous portrait painter, Sir Peter Lely, and Oliver Cromwell. At the time, Cromwell was Lord Protector of England. Lely had already done royal portraits before Oliver Cromwell commissioned his work personally.  Lely's painting style was fitting with the custom of the time - paint your subject to flatter them whenever possible, and necessary. Royalty especially expected them to be painted in the best possible light.  Enter Oliver Cromwell.  Cromwell preferred to be portrayed as a gentlemen of military bearing, but was known to be opposed to all forms of personal vanity. When Lely came for Cromwell's painting, he supposed he should paint him in the same manner. However, I'm sure he was surprised when he heard Cromwell reply: " Mr. Lely, I desire you would use all your skill to paint your picture truly like me, and not flatter me at all; but remark all these roughness, pimples, warts, and everything as you see me. Otherwise, I will neve...

Well, I didn't expect it to be almost the middle of January before I got back to blogging. Life wouldn't have been possible without this break, though. Things got so hectic, and probably will continue to be a little busy for the next couple of weeks as we try to enjoy as much time as possible with our family all together, and also try to prepare my husband to leave us for a 5 month stretch, then do a turnaround and leave again for 2 months. That's five months of  3 seasons worth of clothing, two types of uniforms, and so much more to get ready! Anyway, that has nothing to do with school and everything to do with life right now. A little update on the things we've been doing since the beginning of December. First of all - we moved, temporarily. If you didn't read the last post, the kids and I are staying with family (my mother) while my husband goes to an intensive, 5 month long school this year for his job, then follows it up with 2 months of OJT (on the job ...