Name Change

Hi, my name is... guess what? Take a guess. Any guess will do. But you probably won't guess THIS name!!

Er... huh? What? How did you get THAT from Carody???

Apparently this is what they heard when I went through the drive-through at Starbucks and they asked me for my name. Which has never happened before. Not the going through the drive-through part, obviously (I could happily live in the Starbucks drive-through... yes, Bonnie, I went there today, after we just went there yesterday... it's been a happy weekend!), but the asking for my name part. I thought they only did that when you went inside.

So I didn't spell out my name for him, because I wanted to just see what he came up with. Well, I didn't even notice the name on my cup until we were halfway through the card class I went to this morning with my friend Jaymee. We went to Roni's house (Roni is an awesome Stampin' Up! demonstrator who has a make-10-different-cards-for-12-dollars class at her house once a month) to make our ten cards, and I was so excited about the class (and a bit confused because I hadn't turned on the right street to get to her house, so we had to backtrack just a bit) that I forgot to check out my cup after we left Starbucks.

Then during the class, Jaymee asked me what my cup said. And we all had quite the laugh.

I'm still giggling, actually. Who in their right minds would name their child Tyranny?

In other news (or could it be related?) I found a FUN website just for redheads (I hear we can be a bit tyrannical), at www.realmofredheads.com. It is too fun, and I ordered a couple of shirts from there. I'll show them to you when they arrive.

I went to Mardel -- my new favorite place -- on Thursday night (Mike gave me the night off! Yay!!) and bought two huge maps, one USA and one world map, for the wall of our school room. Griffin is always really interested in where places are, and where we are going, and I thought it would be fun to get him started with geography early. I loved geography, and {shameless bragging about to happen, brace yourself} my junior college World Geography professor wrote a letter to a well-known university and recommended me for a geography scholarship, all without my knowledge. I got a letter from the university praising me for my accomplishment in the area of geography, which came as a huge surprise to me, because I thought my geography professor didn't like any of us.

Anyway, I am preparing for our homeschool year to officially start on Tuesday. It won't be anything earth-shattering, but we will be trying out a new schedule, which we'll need to adjust often, I'm sure. I'd like for Griffin to stop taking naps, and for us have school time during Sammy's nap. We'll see if that happens or not. Griffin sleeps really well at naptime, so his little energetic body might need the rest that a nap provides, even if he is 4 years old.

I have been studying all of the different methods of homeschooling, so that I can tailor the boys' education to their learning styles. There are so many choices!

*Classical

*Principle Approach

*Traditional Textbook

*Charlotte Mason

*Unit Study

*Special Needs

*Carschooling

*Eclectic

*Unschooling/Delight Directed

*Whole-Heart Learning

Just to name a few!

The choices are many, and it will be nice to be able to have the flexibility to teach the boys in the way that they can learn best. I think that right now, our best bets are going to be reading, educational games, and learning by experiencing. I'm also going to use Teach Your Child to Read in 100 Easy Lessons by Engelmann, Haddox and Bruner. It is supposed to take about 20 minutes a day, and if we do it every weekday we'll be done with the program in 20 weeks. I have the full curriculum from Sonlight for Pre-K, too, so we have a lot ot look forward to this year!

Well, I think I'll go watch a movie with Mike before bed. He was off of work on Friday, and will be off again on Monday, so this has been a nice break!