Ladybugs & Stinkbugs

Get 9 free audiobook MP3s from Barnes & Noble (ends May 16th) | Gizmo's Freeware

Follow this link to download 9 free audiobooks. I tried it, and it really is free. Downsides: you do have to enter a credit card number (even though they don't actually charge you anything), and you have to set up a Barnes & Noble account. Still, they don't charge you anything, and there are nine actual books:

"The Babysitter's Code" (short stories)
by Laura Lippman
Well known for her popular series of mysteries starring the fearless Tess Monoghan, Laura Lippman has won every major mystery award, from the Anthony to the Agatha.


"Super Goat Man" (short stories)
by Jonathon Lethem
Jonathan Lethem has a talent for bending literary genres. He has been entertaining readers since 1994's Gun, with Occasional Music, a debut novel that contained all the ingredients of his future career as a writer: science fiction, pulp detective noir, westerns, and award-winning coming-of-age stories.


"Best New Horror" (short stories)
by Joe Hill
Joe Hill is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Heart-Shaped Box, the award-winning collection, 20th Century Ghosts, and a critically acclaimed comic book series, Locke & Key.


"Great Day: An Unabridged Short Story from Armageddon in Retrospect"
by Kurt Vonnegut
The first and only collection of unpublished works by Kurt Vonnegut since his death-a fitting tribute to the author, and an essential contribution to the discussion of war, peace, and humanity's tendency toward violence.


"Fathers: An Unabridged Story from The View from Castle Rock"
author?
Alice Munro is hardly the typical writer of love stories. Throughout her more than fifty-year career, she has never pandered to an audience used to happy endings and perfect relationships. Instead, she writes with a maturity and honesty that reveals the true nature of love in all its heartbreaking complexity.


"Truth or Dare"
by Elizabeth Berg
Elizabeth Berg is the New York Times bestselling author of many novels, including Dream When You're Feeling Blue, We Are All Welcome Here, The Year of Pleasures, The Art of Mending, Say When, True to Form, Never Change, and Open House, which was an Oprah’s Book Club selection in 2000. Durable Goods and Joy School were selected as ALA Best Books of the Year, and Talk Before Sleep was short-listed for the ABBY Award in 1996. The winner of the 1997 New England Booksellers Award for her body of work, Berg is also the author of a nonfiction work, Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True. She lives in Chicago.


"Ysrael"
by Junot Diaz
Dominican-American writer Junot D�az has spun the heartbreak and loneliness of the immigrant experience into literary gold with memorable stories of marginalized outsiders caught between two cultures.

"Merrano of the Dry Country"
by Louis L'Amour
When Miguel Merrano first came to Mirror Valley, the land was green and lush . . . and off limits to Mexicans. Ranchers such as Tom Drake and Joe Stangle tried to drive Merrano out, to fence him out; and when we warned them that greed and overgrazing would ruin their land, they refused to listen.

Now Merrano's predictions have come true. Mirror Valley is so dry it's about to blow away. The cattle are hollow-ribbed and dying. And the ranchers are broke . . . flat broke. Only Merrano's ranch is still thriving. As the ranchers watch him pay for goods in gold and sell his cattle at a mighty profit, their hatred grows and festers . . . until they draw their guns in a desperate act that will pit daughter against father, friend against friend – an act that could tear the valley apart forever.


"The Adventures of Tom Sawyer"
by Mark Twain

Tom Sawyer is the classic adventure story of a boy growing up in a fictional Missouri river town.

Drawing from his own experience, Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clements) violates the rules of the times and creates a novel of boyhood without the preaching common in other boy's novels of this time.

First published in 1876, Tom Sawyer introduced to everyone those memorable characters: Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Injun Joe, and Becky Thacher. Tom Sawyer, as a character, went on to appear in two more books and in Huckleberry Finn.

During the day, the kids often beg to "take a break" - and a 5 minute break can quickly turn into 15...20...45 minutes. That's okay with me cuz it means I get to finish folding clothes. =)

This is one of the things that they enjoying doing outside. They were clamoring for me to record them yesterday, so here's what we got:

Matthew is practicing climbing the rope, you know, like they do in gym class. He's very gangly, and can make it up about halfway, but then he gets distracted trying to do "tricks" and never makes it up to the top.





This is Annie's turn to climb. She does pretty good! Also, Andrew has taught himself how to swing! I'm very impressed with him; he just picks up all of this stuff like it's nothing!

I have been trying to decide between two options: an allowance that the kids receive because they're "my kids", and a wage that they receive for work they have done.  I finally came down on the side of wage-earning.  I want my kids to understand where money comes from, and I don't want them getting the idea that all they have to do is hold out their hand, and money will fall in it.  Not that we've ever given that idea, but you know what I mean.

I have absolutely no artistic ability whatsoever. All of my "fine arts" skills went into music, and I guess there weren't enough left over to draw a straight line - with a ruler!

That's why I'm so impressed at Annie's creativity and skill when she colors, draws, or paints. She LOVES doing creative things like this, and is always finding fun things to do. She got a balloon at HEB today, and tied onto it was a little plastic bear (you know, to keep the balloon from flying away and sparking Major Meltdown). So she glues little pieces of paper on the bear for eyes, mouth, decoration, and spends 20 minutes getting it "just right". The other day, she had a brown paper bag, and a box of elbow macaroni. Before I even knew what she was doing, she had a puppet - it was adorable!

I love watching her take random things around the house and have so much fun with them! We received some books via UPS, and in the package was an extra piece of cardboard. Annie took the cardboard, decorated it, punched holes in either side, and tied string onto both sides. Ta da!! A shield to make any brave warrior proud! Of course, the boys were VERY jealous, so we had to hunt down MORE cardboard, MORE string, and Annie had to show them how to do it.

I'm thinking...why did I just spend $200 on a Wii??? I could have bought $200 worth of cardboard! lol

Unfortunately, I don't have any pictures of the cardboard shields; I do have a picture of a scene she created on her mini-dry-erase board that she uses for school practice. Since this one won't last forever, I took a picture!

Matthew is learning the catechism right along with Annie. Here he is reciting, with Annie asking the questions:

Annie's Bible curriculum this year has a catechism that she is learning. You ask her the question, and she responds with the answer about God. She is learning a lot about Him and His truth, and they will be ingrained in her heart as she is memorizing them. Here is her reciting questions 1-5:

I'll be taking "School Pictures" later this week, but in the meantime I wanted to give you an update on our new school year.

"New School Year?" you're saying. "Isn't the school year ending?"

Well, for normal people, that is the truth. But we just can't seem to keep a "normal" schedule. (Not that we try very hard, but that's a story for a different post.) What with two months off when Little Bit was born, and two weeks off in January, and three weeks off in late April-early May, we ended up surprised that we finished the school year at all!!

Honestly, half-way through the year, when Annie could read, and Matthew knew addition facts through 10 and subtraction facts almost that far, I was done for all intents and purposes. We had accomplished everything I could have hoped for in Kindergarten and 1st grade.

So the kids were excited about starting their new grades. Matthew's in second and he will be learning studying sentences, multiplication, more "complicated" rules of reading, Government, and Science, along with a few other things. Annie's first grade year will go over phonics rules, addition and subtraction, history, a Bible catechism, Science, and Art. ("Stay tuned" for a post about their most recent art project!)

I'm looking forward to a good summer. Since all of our other activities slow down, we can actually accomplish more in less time during the summer, and then we can slow down a little bit during the fall months. It equalizes our schedules throughout the year, and it's one of the things that I love about homeschooling.