Thanksgiving weekend and other matters...

Well, now.  Wasn't last weekend beautiful?  I'm so glad we had some opportunities to get out and enjoy it.  We had lots going on  here because, not only were we celebrating Thanksgiving, we also celebrated Gerald's 40th birthday (!) -  three times - Friday night with family, Saturday night with friends and Monday, the actual day.  (Yes, we ate way too much cake.)  And we had my sister and her family here.  They've been blessed with five boys, close in age to ours.  Fun!

We did some hiking in an effort to work off some of that cake!

My sister Ingrid spent a number of summers with us in her teen years.  At that time we were still an all-girl family, and our older girls have lots of good memories of having Aunt Ingrid living with us.  Now when she comes to visit she brings along a whole crew of men, and the girls are outnumbered.

This log made a great place to get all the kids lined up for a group picuture, according to age.  I *love* all those girls and then all those boys in a row!  And Miss Nads right in there with the boys doing her best to keep her baby cousin in place.  We've put an order in with Aunt Ingrid for a little girl cousin next time! :)

On Sunday we enjoyed what will likely be our last picnic of the year at the park. 

I don't think of our height difference until I see a picture of the two of us together. :)

Emily, being Emily...

Thomas, being Thomas...

And now onto other things...

Thank you to Susan who posted about MyFitnessPal, a free online tool that makes it simple to keep a food and exercise diary.  I've joined up and even have a few friends on board with me for some mutual accountability and encouragement.  Once you join you can set your weight loss (or gain or maintenance) goals as well as your activity level.  It sets out a guideline for you to follow to achieve your goal in a specified time.  Each day as you enter your data, you can see how you are doing and where you might need to improve.  I've chosen to include, along with calories and carbs,  keeping track of sugar and iron.  I need to be on a low sugar diet to feel my best, but it is so easy to take in too much.  I like to snack on fruit and that puts me past my limit pretty fast.  I'm going to try choosing fresh veggies more often.  I'm finding it particularly hard to get enough iron, so that is another area I need to improve in.  Since early September when we got back into school work I've been a lot less active, and I was starting to have that 'winter feeling' again - not enough exercise and fresh air, and the pounds that were shed over the summer were coming back.  So now I'm feeling more motivated to fit in something every day.  It helps that the more you exercise, the more room you have to add some extras in the diet. Yesterday we needed to make a trip to town to do a number of errands, and the girls and I decided that biking would be a better choice than taking our gas guzzling van.  It's only about 4 km to get there, plus some biking around from the bank to the township office, to the post office and then to the library.  Did I say it's only 4 km?  It felt like 10.  There was a day where I could easily bike 20 km with pleasure.  That was 20 years ago, and my, how things have changed!  My legs felt like jelly when we got home and I needed to rest for a while to let my heart rate come down before I started to prepare dinner.  But I DID it! 

And it's about time I shared my thoughts about Life of Fred math.  I should tell you that I'm not an expert on math.  I haven't read all the way through the series, although I'd very much like to ~ someday. What I have read I like a lot.  It's so different from traditional math texts. If you want to get a real sense of what they are like, use the link above to look at the sample lessons.  I'm working through the junior books with the boys.  They love it, and I love doing it with them.  We look forward to doing it together.  Funny.  I think that, at least for my guys, this program isn't quite enough on its own.  It's excellent for review and to help them think mathematically and 'out of the box.'  I'm not sure it would work so well (at least at the junior level) for learning new material, unless accompanied by another program.  For that we use Mastering Mathematics, a very plainly laid out, undistracting and no-fluff program that aims at mastery.  It starts with addition and works up to decimals and fractions, teaching one concept at a time and not moving on until the child knows their stuff.  I'm finding that the two programs compliment each other very nicely.  The girls are using Life of Fred on its own, each at their own level.  They all work independently, so I'm not reading along with them. I really wish I was, but there are only so many hours in a day.  They all seem to like it.  The story is funny and it makes you want to keep going just to find out what crazy things will happen next.  The lessons are a good length - no more spending over an hour on math every day.  And I really think that they are learning, amongst a lot of other things, to think mathematically.  Overall I'm very pleased with this series and think that it is helping to make this school year much more relaxed and enjoyable.

Until next time,