Core (history, bible, literature): Sonlight Core E. I expect that with taking time away from schooling both before and after our move, we’ll probably finish Core D somewhere around the end of 2012. I’m going to order Core E (the second half of Intro to American History) before we go so we have it when we need it. My big question, though, is whether to order the current version or the new version which will come out after April 2. There are a lot of nice features in the new version, but I’m not sure whether it will ship in time for us to get it before we move. I’m waiting to hear back from Sonlight about that. Core E should take us through late 2013 at least.

Language Arts: my nemesis. Sonlight’s LA just hasn’t worked for us in the past. For writing, I’ve decided to go with Institute for Excellence in Writing’s Student Intensive, which I can use with all three girls. For spelling I’ll keep going with Sequential Spelling for Ellie and Micah. It’s working pretty well, and since we take it at half-speed it will be quite a while before we’re through it. For Bethany I’ll keep going with her current book as well (Zaner-Bloser), then decide what to do next after she finishes it. She may or may not need a formal spelling program after that, we’ll see. I’m still trying to figure out what I’ll do for grammar. Sonlight says they have really changed up their LA for 2012-2013 with a stronger grammar emphasis. It will also be completely integrated into the new Core programs, so if I order the new Core E, I will automatically have the Sonlight LA that goes with it. In that case, I will probably give it a try for just the grammar portion while using IEW for writing. I’ll just have to wait and see both what it looks like and what Sonlight says about availability and shipping. I might also consider going back to First Language Lessons, at least for Ellie and Micah.

Science: we’re using Sonlight Science D now and will go with Sonlight Science E for next year.

Bible: I’m loving Apologia’s “What We Believe” series. We’re about 2/3 through the first one, “Who is God?” and I will order the next one (or two) before we go.

Math: Tim says that CLP is still working well so he’ll continue with that.

I think that’s everything. Any thoughts or ideas for me?

There wasn’t much to it, really. A cake mix, a can of dark chocolate frosting, and a can of coconut-pecan frosting (like you’d use on a German chocolate cake). Yes, I cheated. But I’m solo parenting this week so I gave myself a break. I have a couple of fluted tube pans, which are kind of like small Bundt pans. I baked the cake in those two pans. Turned them out and after they cooled, cut the rounded top off one of them. That cake became the bottom half of the cauldron, sitting on the cut part. I stacked the other cake on top of it (frosting in between of course), then put the cut-out circle on top for the rim of the pot. Frosting that was a pain; it just wanted to crumble. If I’d planned ahead I would have frozen the cakes which might have made it a little easier.

Dark chocolate frosting on the whole mess, then spooned the can of coconut-pecan into the hole in the middle for the potion. A few sour gummy worms for effect, and done. It’s nothing fancy, kind of a mess if you look closely, but she’s really happy with it. And that’s all that matters to me.

(Note: Tim has our camera in Thailand, so this was taken with my phone. Sorry for the poor quality.)

I will be travelling to Chiang Mai the first week in March with a stop to do some work in Eastern Europe on the way. I can't detail everything at this point so I'll fill in what I can when it's done.

I don’t do much crafting, but once in a while the need arises. A couple of days in early January found me hunched over my sewing machine busily creating.

We all received Kindles for Christmas. They should help cut down on the number of books we have to move overseas, so we’re really happy to have them. To help guard against catastrophic accidents, I wanted some way to protect the girls’ when they weren’t in use. I did a lot of looking but couldn’t find exactly what I was looking for: a padded storage case or sleeve at a reasonable price. Since that doesn’t seem to exist, I decided to make some.

Let me interject here: a seamstress, I am not. I know how to work a sewing machine and I can follow a pattern, but it’s not something I’ve ever really worked at enough to be good at it. But I was given a bunch of fabric scraps a couple of years ago, so I went through those and pulled out some pieces that I thought might suit the purpose. I dug around some more and found an old mattress pad that we weren’t using and really didn’t need. It took quite a bit of playing around, but I eventually came up with a design and pattern and made three cute padded drawstring bags. The girls love them, and I’m really happy with how they turned out. I wouldn’t want to do any serious gravity testing on the Kindles with them, but I think there’s adequate protection from everyday bumps and knocks. They should also be good protection if they’re in a backpack with other stuff. Best of all, my total cost was exactly zero since I was able to find everything I needed around the house.

I liked the bags I made for the girls so much that today I decided to make one for myself. But since I can never keep things simple, I decided to make mine slightly smaller and out of some difficult-to-work-with material, a silky synthetic that I cut from a shirt I got in China on our first trip there. (The shirt didn’t fit me anymore and was falling apart.) This did make it a bit more difficult. The silky cloth kept slipping and the smaller size made for smaller tolerances on my seams, less room for error. It also frayed LIKE CRAZY. If you decide to try this for yourself, I’d recommend sticking to a non-silky cloth and a longer length unless you’re a more skilled seamstress than I am.

Just in case anyone cares to know how to make one, here you go. These instructions are for how I made the girls’ bags, but the pictures were taken while making mine.

Supplies:

• fabric for the outside (I recommend cotton blend)
• fabric for the lining (I used something silky on two, fleece on one, a smooth cotton on another. You could also use the same fabric for outside and inside.)
• something to use for the padding in between. (I used an old mattress pad but you could also use quilter’s batting, a old blanket, or anything else soft and squishy.)
• something to use for drawstrings. (I cannibalized the strings from a couple of drawstring backpacks we had lying around. You could use ribbon, shoelaces, whatever.)

I first made two pattern pieces out of paper. When I made the girls, I used one that was 8 1/2″ x 9 1/2″ and another that was 8 1/2″ x 13 1/2″. After making mine today with a too-small pattern, I can say that 8″ x 8 1/2″ and 8″ x 12 1/2″ would probably be just about perfect. If you’re better at cutting than I am you can just cut the fabric without the pattern pieces, but as I said: I am no seamstress.

Lay out your outside fabric, folded in half with right sides in. Pin the bigger pattern piece on top and cut so you end up with two identical pieces for the outside. Do the same with the lining fabric and the smaller pattern piece, then use the smaller pattern piece again to cut out two pieces of padding.

Stack the outside pieces right sides together. Put one of the padding pieces on top of the fabric sandwich and line up the bottom edges. Put a piece of the lining on top of that, right side up, and pin it together with just a few pins. Turn it all over and repeat the process on the other side: padding then lining, right side up. Pin all six layers together securely, removing the extra pins as you go along. You might have to fiddle around a bit to keep everything lined up. Big quilter’s pins are helpful.

Once you’ve got everything pinned, sew the long sides and the bottom. Begin at the top where it’s just the two outside pieces. Carefully help the needle along where it transitions to all the thick layers. Oh, and you should probably have a heavy-duty needle in your sewing machine.

Sew the long side, then the bottom, then back up the other long side. Trim your seams with pinking shears and cut away the corners so you won’t have big lumps when you turn it right side out. (Don’t turn it right side out yet, though.)

Then you just need to make a channel for the drawstring. Turn over about 5/8″ around the opening and press.Then, turn it down again until it overlaps the padding and lining.

(This is where it got rough on the one pictured–I made the outside pieces too short so getting those two folds was a real pain.) Press and pin, then sew all the way around so that the drawstring channel/hem covers and closes the lining and padding across the top.

(With the one pictured, I ended up adding a zigzag stitch over the edges because I was afraid they would come apart.) Press again if necessary, then sew a seam maybe 1/2″ down from the top of the bag so that the drawstring isn’t right up against the top. Just be sure you leave a big enough channel for the string. Turn the bag right side out. Use a seam ripper to carefully open up both side seams between the hem you just made and where you sealed off the lining and padding. Thread one drawstring through from one side and back out the same hole, then do the same with another drawstring and the other hole. Trim and finish off the ends of the drawstrings if needed (mine were nylon so I melted them with a match), tie them together at each side and you’re done!

Pictured are my bag (the red one), Ellie’s (striped) and Micah’s (flowered). Bethany’s isn’t pictured because I used a completely different method making hers. It turned out fine but the way I did these ones was simpler. As an added bonus, the girls can fit their iPods in the bags with their Kindles and I can fit my reading glasses in with with mine.

The stuff that has to be done before we move is getting shorter but there is still so much more! We’re heading up to Michigan this week for a conference and we’ll stop off in St Louis on the way to drop of some furniture and other things with Lisa’s sister.

I really hope that Detroit get’s back to the mild weather that they have had until the last few days. I have a race a few days after we get back so I really don’t want to interrupt my running in any way, certainly not be sidelined by snow!

My training has been pretty awesome even with all of the move stuff happening. Just a couple more months and three more races till we leave and at that point who knows. There isn’t really a running culture in Thailand and next to no races. Perhaps I’ll transition to focusing more on the bike.

So preparations are going well. I painted a bathroom which just leaves one more bathroom and a bedroom to go. I can't believe those rooms have sat unpainted for over five years! Nothing like needing to rent your house to focus you on getting all the odd jobs done.

Lisa has been photographing everything so that we can post everything that is for sale, and since it really is just about everything, it's a lot of photos! Not to mention a lot of cleaning and cataloging.

We have pretty much decided that we will not do any cross cultural training here in the States before we go, but we will try to get in a program there. Right now we are inquiring into a program run by SIL/Wycliffe that happens twice a year in Chiang Mai. This means that we will be able to move in June. Working back from that we will need to go to Detroit one last time before we leave, so we should be in Michigan the end of May. Working back from that it means we only have about 18 weeks or so to go! Yikes!

One last thing. I'm hoping that I'll get to go to Chiang Mai for 7-10 days in early March to tag along on some meetings. This will help me meet some people and get acclimated to some of the work I will be doing. It will also be nice to just look around although there won't be much time for that. It would still make the move just a tad less scary having actually visited first.

I’ve been using Sonlight’s Language Arts D with all three girls. I chose this with some fear and trepidation, knowing that I was going to have to do a lot of adapting to make it work for everyone. For the first 6-8 weeks it was fine. Then things got more demanding, and I eventually realized that it was just too much for my 3rd graders. I started reflecting on what I did with Bethany when she was in 3rd grade and decided to go back to the writing portion of that. So as of this week, I’m using Writing With Ease 3 with Ellie and Micah and dropping Sonlight. For grammar for them, I found a free online program called English Grammar 101. So far (three days in), it’s perfect. I have them each do one exercise each day. I’ve made a schedule so that they’ll go back and review concepts as they go along. When each girl finishes the day’s work, I print it to a PDF and put it in a folder on my desktop.  I think once we get through a solid review of the basics with this, I’ll go on to First Language Lessons Level 4, which I already have.

For right now, Bethany’s still using Sonlight LA D. But I’ve downloaded a 10-week sample of  Writing With Skill to check out. I’ll see what she thinks of it and who knows, I may end up returning all of the Sonlight LA materials and going with that.

Our American history studies have been going really well so far. We’ve read some great books and have just started another, Johnny Tremain. Two days in and everyone’s hooked.