In which I learn that my kids are actually pretty quiet.

They've been making me actually WORK at work, so no posting. ;)

Homeschooling hasn't been a very serious effort yet. In preparation for building a seige machine, The Boy is learning about warfare: Infantry, Cavalry, Artillery. He did a which-is-which quiz yesterday (Clone Trooper? Infantry. Wizard throwing bolts of electricity from the castle ramparts? Artillery. Tie Fighter? Cavalry.) and drew me a sample of all three today, with mixed metaphors. (Evil skeleton army? Infantry.) Can't complain. Tomorrow we move on to chapter 2 -- Vikings!

Went to the schooling store today and got him some reading comprehension stuff and then to Michaels Crafts for some nice starting-to-tie-shoes stuff for The Girl. The Boy seemed interested. Maybe peer pressure will pay off after all.

Other than that, we've been hanging out, re-establishing our pecking order, learning about volume levels in an open-floor-plan house.

The Boy had a sleepover on Wednesday night. Apparently, The Friend's parents have a higher tolerance for crying, screaming, and tattling than I do, as witness their behavior when The Friend came over to play today. Man-0-man it that boy loud. The Friend's parents have a really huge house, so we all had a nice discussion of small houses and the need to keep it down a bit.

In other domestic news, the lock on the kitchen door stuck itself in the "locked" position and refused to let me close the door -- the latch refused to retract into the door. Can't close the door, can't open the door. Reminds me of the song -- can't go over it, can't go under it, gotta go in through the door. I disassembled the door knob, found that I STILL couldn't make the latch retract, and hence couldn't remove the old door knob. So I broke it off. Felt like a real man. I loaded up The Girl (screaming), The Boy and The Friend (both yelling) into the car and went off to Lowe's in search of door latches. Hoo boy. I actually handed the old latch to the sales clerk and told him, "If you can give me one of these, I promise to leave!" He did. We did.

I'm going to enjoy the quiet for a few days. I thought my kids were noisy, but apparently not. I guess that's a good thing? ;)

I've been doing a lot more research on hens this week. For some reason, I'm obsessed with getting three hens as pets. I know the town will shut me down if the neighbors complain, but I still like them. Suburban mom in search of an authentic life. Strange that the town will let me keep (up to four) rabbits for slaughter, but not three laying hens. Hm. Maybe I'll have to talk to the Town Fathers about this.

Nothing more to report. I was late for dinner twice this week, and work's getting a little crazier. The Husband is complaining of stomach problems. It seems to be a virus, and I think The Boy is suffering a bit from it. Whatevah. The Girl was just frantic with The Friend in the house, and is just plain loud lately. (See a trend?) If something displeases her, she just lets out a loud, whining, gutteral yell. The first thing we're going to have to do is to cut down on the yelling. That may play in the public schools, but it's not going to play here in Momland. ;)

Just to keep my panic level up, I looked up the curriculum goals for 3rd grade. Did you know that learning "Froggy Went a Courtin'" is a part of our curriculum goals. And the Phys Ed goals include "chasing, fleeing, and dodging"? Pardon? Hm. Maybe the chickens could be used for phys ed. Hmmm. Must work that angle...