Well, we start tomorrow. Mary and Lil'Nathan are so excited. I've been talking all week to Mary about starting her reading lessons on Monday and asking Lil'Nathan what he'd like to learn while Mary is in school. He said he'd like to use the time "invent stuff". OK. This morning on the way to church, he told me that he'd like to be homeschooled, too, and not go back to public school. When I asked why, he said, "to save gas." OK. So, now he knows and he thinks it was all his idea.

We did our school supplies shopping yesterday. Notebooks, extra paper, paints, binders and sleeves (for the portfolios) and stuff like that. I'd still like to get some pattern blocks and tanograms and a few other "gadgets". Lil'Nathan especially wants a microscope. I also ordered the Core Knowledge Sequence book, for our curriculum basis. I've got the "What your Kindergartener/ 2nd Grader Needs to Know" from the library. I'll use them until I can't renew them anymore and then decide if I want to buy them.

I'm alternately very excited and slightly terrified. I guess that's normal. I've done enough reading to know that however we start we will very likely make changes. We will learn as we go and we'll do the best we can. It's going to be good.

Oh! And yesterday we got a surprise phone call from some friends in our old ward in Lebanon. They are going to the Temple on Saturday and wondered if we'd like to go and swap babysitting. We were planning to go Saturday, too, and I was praying for a way for Nathan and I to be able to go in together! I love it when things work out like that. Tender mercies of the Lord.

On Friday night, I crocheted some octopuses (though I like to call them "octopii") while Nathan did his homework. (I also watched parts of Pride and Prejudice again.) I made 3 1/2, patterned, yellow, and orange. They are baby teething toys. I came up with the pattern while in FL. They are all cotton, sewn in one continuous piece and can be stuffed with either wool or polyfil. Here is the first one I made. Most of them are braided legs, but some are twisted instead.