Jo's Boys

Ha!

From this interesting blog:

"The French government recently announced a raise in its terror alert level from Run to Hide.

The normal level is General Arrogance, and the only two higher levels in France are Surrender and Collaborate. The rise was precipitated by a recent fire that destroyed France’s white flag factory, effectively paralysing the country’s military capability.

It’s not only the French that are on a heightened level of alert:

Italy has increased the alert level from Shout Loudly and Excitedly to Elaborate Military Posturing.

Two more levels remain, Ineffective Combat Operations and Change Sides.

The Germans also increased their alert state from Disdain to Dress In Uniform and Sing Marching Songs.

They have two higher levels: Invade a Neighbour and Lose.

The British are also feeling the pinch in relation to recent bombings and have raised their security level from Miffed to Peeved. Soon though, security levels may be raised yet again to Irritated or even A Bit Cross. Londoners have not been “A Bit Cross” since the Blitz in 1940 when tea supplies all but ran out. Terrorists have been re-categorized from Tiresome to Bloody Nuisance.

The last time the British issued a Bloody Nuisance warning level was during the Great Fire of London in 1666."

Cool!!

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

In Which... Jeni Gives Me WAY Too Much Credit

Jeni posted a comment after one of my recent blog entries asking me what Latin I was using with my boys.  I read that and then laughed so hard I was nearly nonfunctional for a nice little bit of time. 

BWA HAHAHAhahahahahah!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Me? Now?  Latin?  BWA HAHAHAhahahahah!!!

I've told my close girlfriends that at this point in time, when I'm all by myself with the children, that my only goal is that we are all alive at the end of the day.  If we are, in fact, all alive at the end of the day, the day was a raging success. 

If, in fact, at the end of the day they have done math and language and I have read aloud to them, the day was magnificent indeed and we can all feel a huge sense of pride about our wonderfully productive day. 

Yes, I pretty much own every single Latin program known to man.  Really.  I have Henle, Wheelock's, Prima Latina, Latin Road to English Grammar, Latina Christiana I & II... oh, yes, I have them all.  I was tutored for a while by a graduate school guy from the local seminary out of Wheelock's which was horrid and painful and just truly awful.  Wheelock's sucks big time.

Henle, I have found, matches my learning style more in that it is the ONLY Latin program that seems to use any kind of sentence diagramming.  This helps me tremendously because I am very visual.  Latin Road to English Grammar bugs the hell out of me because she uses the grammar method where you take a sentence and then label each word above with what part of grammar it is and then you translate from there.  Drives. Me. INSANE.  Can't we all just diagram, please?

Thank you, Jeni, for thinking that I had it together enough to actually do Latin with the children right now. Maybe later.  Some other... month?  Year?  Decade?  Lifetime? 

Um

It's actually really interesting to see how people get to my blog, especially when they use Google.

_____________________________________________

Dear Person,

I know that you used Google to try to find "cute Latin boys" and that this search led you to my blog. 

Somehow I think that this blog wasn't what you were looking for (call me crazy).  I'm sorry for what I'm certain was your disappointment.    I do, indeed, blog about Latin in homeschooling and how my boys are cute, but  I'm thinking that's not why you came.  :)

Sincerely,
Jo's Boys

Weights and Waits

Well, just to catch you up, my house has been on the market now here in Florida for eight months.  And my husband has been in Portland, Oregon for six months. 

Just thought I'd keep ya current on the ol' situation.  :)

He got to come home and visit us earlier this month, which was great, but it looks like the wait from that time to the next time he visits might end up being a good seven weeks.  :(  So, in the meantime, I'm a homeschooling stay-at-home-all-by-myself-except-with-children (do they count?) Mom. 

I'm lonely.

(Insert whining here).

_________________________________________

In other news, I have lost 46 pounds in the last two years. 

Isnt' that kewl?

And I've actually lost 22 of those 46 pounds in the last six months... the months my husband has been gone.  It's actually interesting:  it's far easier for me to lose weight when he's not home.  This is because when he's home:

1.) I fix meals

and

2.) We eat them.

At this point, I don't fix meals.  At all.  The children have never really ever even EATEN the meals that I fixed (we all know the whole mealtime forcing our children to eat what we've cooked thing.  It isn't fun) and who wants to cook for herself and two picky kids?  I'd rather keep my sanity, thanks.  It was different when James was living at home but now that he's not there's just no point.

So I can eat nothing but raw fruit and salad without staring at a meal that I just took four hours to cook and it's a lot easier this way to eat well and lose weight.

Losing weight, as a woman, sucks royal. It especially seems to be truly horrid after you've had a baby.  Each successive baby makes weight loss even more impossible. I don't know why this is, but each sucessive pregnancy reset my "total fatso" weight limit higher and higher and higher.  Like, as in, prior to pregnancy my "total fatso" weight limit ~ that weight after which my body didn't gain, no matter WHAT I ate ~ was much MUCH smaller than it is now, and it's increased with each pregnancy. 

C'est la vie. 

But back to how much losing weight sucks.

In order to lose weight, I pretty much (no lie) can only eat raw fruit, raw vegetables (including salads) and cooked non-starchy vegetables.

That's IT.  No bread. No pasta.  Truly, no dessert at all.  Ever.  No rice.  Nothing that is fun to eat.  And I even try not to eat bananas... so I guess I'll narrow my list of foods down to raw fruit that is not bananas, raw veggies and cooked veggies that are not starchy (such as potatoes).

This is pretty much just like what's outlined in the book Eat to Live by Dr. Joel Fuhrman.

It sucks big time, but it works.  Slowly.  As in, you would think that if all you ate was bunny food (granted, I eat a WHOLE LOT of bunny food, so I am not hungry) that you would weigh bunny weight after a short while, but NO.  Weight is hard to lose and comes off much much MUCH slower than it goes on. Which makes me think that my body hates me.