The One Where Mackenzie Says No to France...

So far we've survived the morning with no drama or attitude.  Yay!!!  Thank you God!!!

We finished reading The Family Under the Bridge this morning.  She wouldn't let me stop reading until we were done.  We both really enjoyed it.

Our next read aloud is going to be Twenty and Ten.  I'm excited about reading it, although I hear it's a tear jerker.  But given the topic, how could it not be.

It's also been made into a movie, which we've ordered from netflix.  We'll watch it after we read the book.  It stars "Hot Lips Hulahan" from M.A.S.H. as a nun. LOL  That should be interesting.

This week in math we've been working on solving for unknowns.  She's really into it.  I didn't think she'd catch on quickly but, once again, she surprised me. 

We are studying clothing from different historical periods in history.  Specifically from reading Living Long Ago.  Today we were learning about French court fashions.  I can't believe how much I've learned from this book.  And I have a history minor. (confirms my living books over text books views though LOL)

Anyway, Mackenzie was horrified by the French and they're lack of hygiene back then.  We learned how they bathed in frequently. (Interesting fact, King Louis XIV only bathed about once a year.)  Then we read how the ladies wore the "big hair" and used wires and fake hair and didn't touch it for weeks at a time. And how this lead to them having lice and fleas in their hair.

After we finished, I asked Mackenzie what she thought.  "I think I don't want to visit France because it's probably stinky."   Why?  "Because the king stinks and Armand didn't take but one bath either. Everybody's dirty." 

Armand was a character in The Family Under the Bridge.  It takes place in Paris. ROFL  I explained that you can't judge an entire country by one character in a book but at least I know she's listening and making connections.  And then we looked at some photos of France and she's ready to hop on a plane for a visit. lol

The One With a Tantrum

The last couple of days have been crazy here.  Crazy in the form of Mackenzie acting out.

Monday I took her to the "mall" for lunch and to go to the little amusement park.  Should have been a good time.  A nice treat.  Well, when she couldn't get ice cream, she lost it.  She got the "attitude" that makes me insane.  Her tone of voice gets nasty.  I get angry and disappointed.  Sometimes she acts like she's entitled to the world.  So the rest of the afternoon was a bust.

That night she wets the bed (in the early am actually) so I clean her up and bring her into my bed.  Where she fails to fall back to sleep.  Doesn't bode well for the rest of the day.

She did alright for school but then she starts getting that attitude again. She's out in the livingroom, mumbling under her breath, because she didn't want to pick up something.  On and on she goes.  Getting more and more disrespectful.

So I ground her to her room.  No dance, no contact with anyone but me. I even skipped my bowling.  (I'm really bad so it was probably to my team's advantage. LOL)  She went up there around 11:30 am and stayed until after my last dance class at 6.  ( I fed her and let her out to use the bathroom.  Although she took the liberty of peeing on her bedroom floor at one point, thinking that would reduce her sentence.  Didn't work, but she did kill time giving herself a bath and cleaning the floor.)

When she came out, she was remorseful but aren't they always.  I'm hoping I made enough of an impact for her to watch her words and tone.

I'm sure some of her attitude has to do with dh being deployed but I swear there's something in the air that effects her this time of year.

Last year, around this time, I had the worst week of mothering in my life.  She was horribly out of control!  Screaming, yelling, hitting, spitting, saying "stupid."  I was waiting for her head to spin around "Exorcist style." Nothing I did (removing every single thing out her room, giving her vinager for a smart mouth for starters) worked.  I was in tears the whole week.  When we went to church at the end of that week, she came out a different child.  I have no idea what she talked about with her teacher but it was clear that God touched her. 

I still shudder when I think about that week.

Hopefully, we won't get to that point this year!    She seems to be in a much better mood today.

A tour of Guam

In case anyone is interested, I thought I'd share some of our exeriences on Guam with you.  I have billion more but this should do for now. LOL

Our first day on Guam.  We arrived at night so we had to wait til morning to look out and see what was out there.  The view from our hotel balcony was impressive.

Mackenzie's first time in the Phillipine Sea

Mackenzie at a local park during Guam Liberation Month

Enjoying one of the beaches on the base

One of Guam's Motto's: Guam, it rains a lot, even during dry season.

Thanksgiving in Guam

Christmas in the tropics

Sunsets

A rough life, no? 

If I could turn back time...

It's been a loooong day.  Started out okay, then Mackenzie started with her attitude and complaining.  I lost it and behaved like a monster, yelling and doing everything that I know is wrong when dealing with her. Definately a bad mommy moment!

I hate days like this.  I'm grateful for the correction I received from my Father (Your own soul is nourished when you are kind, but you destroy yourself when you are cruel. Proverbs 11: 17) and we ended the day on a positive note.

We ended the evening with a random tea party even though I was exhausted after teaching dance for 3 hours.  

On the bright side, it's Thursday evening and we're right on track for school.  Haven't fallen behind in anything so far.  Not even science!!!

And we got Wednesday evening off, AWANA was cancelled.  I was thrilled.  I like AWANA  but I have no week nights to myself so it was a real treat for me.  A friend invited us on an outing with his family but I declined.  I stayed home, put on my jammies, and did nothing.

Sheesh, you'd think that having the night off would've put me in a better mood for today. LOL

I guess I'll end this with something cute my daughter said today.  I love how little kids mess up words and pronounce things.  My dd wanted a snack and asked for a "CRANBERRY Cream Egg."  I get a thrill everytime she says that. LOL 

Another favorite saying, "ear muscles" for head phones. I have no idea where she came up with that one. DH tried to correct her once but I put a stop to that immediately.  LOL

Fresh From the Memory Card (flash back)

Uploaded some pictures that have been on my camera for a while.  So here they are...

Here she is working on her My Father's Dragon book last month.

Our bean experiment.

We managed to get the beans to sprout (and grow leaves) quite nicely.  We planted 3 of them for the next part of the experiment and killed them all.  I guess that second part didn't work out so well. LOL

As I look as these photos, and past photos, I'm beginning to wonder if we ever get out of our pajamas for school.  Rarely it seems. LOL

Today, however, we were showered and dressed before school.  The air conditioner guys were coming over early.   

Creative Little Mack (flash back)

What have we been up to?

DH just deployed so we've been dealing with Mackenzie being sad.  Always fun as she has a flair for drama.  Trying to keep her busy.

Mackenzie finished a weeks worth of math in one sitting.  She really loves MUS.   So for the rest of the week we'll break out our Singapore books and work in them.

We started 3 new books; The Family Under the Bridge, Come Look With Me: Animals in Art, and Usborne's Living Long Ago.

She's really enjoying the Living Long Ago.  It has hands-on suggestions so we've been adding in some of those.  Yesterday we "wove cloth" out of construction paper.  She really liked that.

She's also been really creative this week.  She made the cutest things out of playdough.  I had to take a picture.

She said it was "lunch for you mommy." Can you tell what I "ate" ?

A Peek at Our Week

Well we finished reading The Light at Tern Rock this week.

Great book.  A bit of a tear jerker at the end.  It was a great reminder on forgiveness and what's important in life.  And it's pretty short, only 5 (kind of longish) chapters. Mackenzie seemed to like it.  She asked some pretty good questions so I'm sure she was listening. LOL

I think we're reading The Family Under the Bridge next.  I've been dying to read that one.

Must have been the week for tear jerkers.  We were reading about Moses for Bible.  And we were both sad when we got to the story where he died.  Mackenzie doesn't seem to be as "attached" to Joshua. 

We read the first story in Five True Dog Stories.  That Dox was one smart puppy!  Still don't want a dog though.

For history/social studies, we studied the different continents.  Nothing in depth just a look at some maps.  I was quite surprised at how into that Mackenzie was.  She liked the maps so much that we finished a weeks worth of "lessons" in two days.

Same thing with math this week.  She was really into and finished a few days early.  She was mad that there weren't anymore pages.  She got over it by teaching me how to add by ten's.  LOL  She's says I'm pretty good now.  She was really cute as my "teacher."

We are behind on science this week, as always.   We'll finish that up today after church.  We're studying trees and it's kind of hard when living in a place that doesn't have much more than palm trees. 

Now when we study frogs, we'll be good to go.  Tons and tons of frogs roaming around here. One night, on a walk, we stopped counting them when we hit one hundred.  We only walked a couple of streets.

Don't pick them up though, at least not without gloves.  Got some kind of poisonous thing going on with their skin.  Probably wouldn't kill ya, but if it some how gets in your mouth you aren't going to be feeling very good.

We totally skipped spelling this week.  Man we were really slackers. LOL