Homeschool Happenings

Matthew finally reached the point where he was ready to take a couple of his final exams. Yay! That's always a happy day when we finish a class. So, anyway, I was surprised when we went online to request the exams to find out that the BYU London Centre was not on the list of proctors. Weird! That doesn't make sense that a BYU centre would not be a proctor for BYU exams. And there is another family in our ward who did the BYU high school program last year. Just strange. I knew about the centre because some of the girls in the study abroad program attend our ward, and there is a man in our ward who is a professor. So I asked him about it. As it turns out, he is the director of the centre. Ha! He said he would be happy to proctor Matthew's exams, so we went online and filled out the form. We ran into a little bit of a problem, but I emailed the Independent Study director who contacted the testing center, and it was done in a day. Voila! It's amazing what you can do if you just take the initiative to get it done!

The most wonderful thing is that the BYU London Centre is just 0.5 miles away. We can walk there! Just beautiful. I love the street it is on. What a great looking building.

Even the door is cute :)

We were almost turned away for lack of a #2 pencil,

but our proctor's wife had one handy. Thank goodness!

We go back tomorrow for his 2nd exam. With a pencil.

In other homeschool happenings, Michael has been busy with his studies as he just finished a science unit on viruses and bacteria. His big science project is on chickenpox! Fun, right? He put together a most excellent survey, and we emailed it off to all of our family. After about a day I told him that I could post it on Facebook and see if we could get a few more responses. And much more than few responses is what we got - within just a few hours, we went from 22 responses to 88! Michael was quickly getting overwhelmed, so we had to shut it down. Haha. We've just started going through the data which has turned out to be very interesting. If you ever need to do a survey, Google forms is the way to go. It even does these little pie charts for you. So cool!

So, he will be working on that the next week or so.

Today Michael was learning about the Spanish and Portuguese coming

to America, and their "Battle for Gold" with Cortes and the Aztecs.  

We did what any sensible person would do, and 

watched "El Dorado" immediately after school. Hahaha.

The only problem was that it was sunny today, so we couldn't see anything

on the darn screen. Major drawback of that screen! So we waited until it got 

dark and watched it in full color. I love that movie! Now I'll be singing for days.

This is a picture we got from Mike and Michael's Kendo class:

Mike just got his kendo outfit, and Michael is getting his next week. :)

Those two are really enjoying taking that class together!

And Mike is so proud when they don't pull him aside for special help. LOL.

Michael and I made our visit to the cat cafe this week. We've been going

every 2-3 weeks for Michael's Cat Therapy. He seriously needs it!

Mue put on quite a show this time all stretched out. So funny!

This is from their website:

She was definitely the queen of the day.

One of the girls brought out some treats which woke up all 

the kitties. Haha. They love their little treats! So, yeah, that was fun.

Michael decided that we should play a game while we ate, so we

picked up some Old Maid cards off the shelf and played a few rounds.

FUNNY CARDS!!! The "Bonnie Scotland" guy looks like he might

murder you in your sleep. Yikes! Anyway, Michael won every time. Ugh.

These two pictures are random, but they make me happy.

The first is this candle Mike got me for Christmas.

I never lit it until now. Look what I was missing out on! Lovely!

This is the same stop where the mouse was. Mouse aside, I like this station. :)

Oh, poor Collin. It just keeps snowing. And it is beyond cold. He told me that he has been getting calls from the church almost every Sunday to notify us of cancellations or delays. The caller id says "Call from Jesus Christ" every time. So funny! Collin gets a real kick out of it.

Some pictures from snowy Connecticut:

We are not missing any of it!!!

BAM!

Let's just start out with the good news:

BAM! That's how you do it, people! 1.7 pounds isn't the most I've lost in a week, but it's a good number that I am very proud of. I've been having such a difficult time getting back into the groove of losing weight. It has not been so easy for me here! It's not only the tempting food (breads, desserts, etc.), but it's also the stress of certain aspects that aren't going away. And I am an emotional eater. Always have been! But I did it this week. This number tells me that I CAN DO THIS.

I am also super excited to see that I have now lost a total of 35 pounds. That alone just blows me away. Seriously? I did that? Before we left for London, I was at 28lbs. Getting up to 35 with the extenuating circumstances of our crazy move is something to be celebrated. (so i had buttered banana bread and popcorn today. lol.)

Looking at this graph from my Withings Scale app, it is thrilling to see how far I've come. Look how I have consistently come down and down and down... And, by the way, I really don't care that you can see my weight on there. Whatever. It is what it is. I'd rather own it than hide it. SO, the top of my "normal" weight range is 132lbs (if i remember correctly). That should be my desired weight. And hopefully someday soon I will get there. But for now I would be thrilled if I could get to 140. That probably won't happen just yet since I only have four or five more weeks to go. How much can I lose in that time? I'd say ten pounds tops. That would bring me pretty close. Seriously, anything I lose beyond this is pure bonus to me. I am so happy with what I've done so far. I haven't weighed this much in over ten years! Crazy.

Enough about me... Ya wanna see something REALLY DISTURBING? Michael and I were on our way home from his church activity on Tuesday night (where he learned about stamp collecting from an awesome guy), and just missed our train that takes us directly to our station in Bayswater. This happens to us all the time! And that train only comes every 10 minutes. So frustrating. We decided last week that if we miss our Circle Line train, we should just hop on the next District Line train and switch at Earl's Court. It's not ideal, but it's better than sitting there waiting. Sorry, all that back story was completely unnecessary. I just wanted to tell you anyway. LOL! Yeah... So, on Tuesday night we got off the train at Earl's Court, walked up the steps and over to the other side, walked down the steps to the track we needed, AND SAW THIS:

Can you see it?? DO YOU SEE IT?? There was a mouse scurrying around the platform. A mouse! What the heck? I was so grossed out. I have no idea where that thing came from and what it was doing on the platform. But then we watched it for about a minute and saw that it was totally confused. I almost felt sorry for it. And then we almost missed our train because we were staring at the dumb mouse. So, yeah, that was fun. But it's not making it into my "Things I Love About London" photo album on Facebook. :)

Something else totally fun happened this week - our heat stopped working. Usually it is too warm in our flat. We really don't need to turn on the heat because the heat from the stores below us keep our place very warm. But Matthew and Michael's rooms are on the back side of the flat and do not have the double pane windows, so their rooms get cold. I turn on the heat for them, and then I am usually too warm. Oh, the sacrifices I make...

ANYWAY, this one morning I was feeling a little cold. Weird! So I turned on the heat for an extra hour (there is a button that actually says "extra hour"). A couple of hours later I noticed that my fingers and my nose were cold. Huh. Once again I turned on the heat an extra hour. I think it took me four "extra hours" to finally realize that it was only getting colder. DUH. The heat was not working! I went into the utility room and remembered that the landlady once said that sometimes you have to add water to the boiler. I had asked the service guy (the chatty Scot) how to do that, but I didn't follow what he said at all. The instructions in the manual (pictured below) didn't help either! All I can say is thank goodness for the internet! I googled my problem and found a YouTube video right away.

Sometimes I am such a dork. The chatty Scot DID tell me how to do it. I just didn't catch on to how simple it was. See the two valves under the boiler?

Yeah, you just turn each of those valves and the water starts pouring in. I watched the level rise on the digital display, and turned the valves back off. Voila!

Hey! Michael went to the London Temple

with the youth from our area last weekend!

They went on Friday night and spent the night

in the dorms. So much fun! Mike and I really

need to schedule in a day to go. They say it takes

two hours to get there on the train. Yay...

This is kind of cool - I went to book club the other night at someone's flat around the corner from where the church is. And walked by the front of the V&A for the first time. Impressive!

Michael and I felt like getting out today to see a movie. Don't ask me why, but we thought Jupiter Ascending looked like it might be good (it wasn't bad, but it was a little silly. and it wasn't supposed to be silly.) The movie wasn't playing at our theatre, so we ventured out westbound on the Central Line to Shepherd's Bush.

Hey, Hey! SHEPHERD'S BUSH!!!

Which made us wonder where the Shepherds are from (that's my maiden name, in case you didn't know). I just looked on Family Search tonight and saw that the Shepherds go way back in the United States until you find Edward Shepherd who was born in Scotland in 1694. Scotland? Huh! His father Walter Shepherd was also born in Scotland. But then Walter's father Major Robert Shepherd was born in 1605 in Kent, England. There you go! All of the Shepherds listed before that were also born in England. I would really like to know more about Major Robert Shepherd though. His wife Elizabeth Spencer was born in Jamestown, Virginia about 1607. Wow! So I looked further and found this whole paragraph about her father William Spencer who came on the Sarah, on the first expedition to Jamestown and was among the first settlers and farmers of Jamestown. Holy cow! Was Elizabeth born on the ship? Was she born after they arrived? I want to know! There was a bit in the write up about how he testified of something about John Rolfe (husband of Pocahontas)... Fascinating stuff! And I found all of this out because I went to Shepherd's Bush today. LOL. I wonder why the Shepherds only got a bush...

Anyway, this was the area around the station.

Big and busy :)

And that's all I have for now. Have a great weekend! Mike just came home from Krakow, so I know we will have a WONDERFUL weekend. :)

Happy Pancake Day!

We've all heard of Mardi Gras, Fat Tuesday, Carnival ... But what about Shrove Tuesday?? I stumbled on this last month when I told Mike that the boys and I needed to find things to do other than visiting museums. Don't get me wrong - I LOVE museums. But it can get a little old after a while. Smart man that he is, Mike suggested looking into local events. Which I did, and found Pancake Day. Well, that's new!

Shrove Tuesday is the last day before Lent when you want to eat richer, fatty foods before the ritual fasting of the Lent season. This next part is so interesting! From Wikipedia:

Like many other European holidays, the pancake day was originally a pagan holiday. Before the Christian era, the Slavs believed that the change of seasons was a struggle between Jarilo, the god of vegetation, fertility and springtime, and the evil spirits of cold and darkness. People believed that they had to help Jarilo fight against winter and bring in the spring. The most important part of Shrovetide week was making and eating pancakes. The hot, round pancakes symbolized the sun. The Slavs believed that by eating pancakes, they got the power, light and warmth of the sun. The first pancake was usually put on a window for the spirits of the ancestors.

There were even reminders in Tube stations. Hahaha. Ok, it's an ad... Anyway, I think I used a different cooking spray than Fry Light, but we did have our pancakes!


It was funny last night when I told the boys that I would be making french pancakes in the morning (i know they are crepes, but we've always called them french pancakes in my family). Michael asked, "Do you even know how to make french pancakes?" LOL. Mission accomplished! I hate making them, so I never do. And my goal was to make the kids believe that I couldn't if I tried. Too funny. Mike makes them all the time for the boys, so it's kind of their thing. But I couldn't help myself and replied, "I was making french pancakes way before Dad even knew what they were!" Ha.

The funny thing about Pancake Day is that they have all these Pancake races going on around the city. We were too lazy to go find one. But here are some pics on the internet from past years:

While we're on the subject of food... I decided to make banana bread the other day (because Matthew didn't eat his requested non-nutrient fiber bananas). It was funny when I got all of the ingredients out and turned on the oven only to find that I didn't have a loaf pan. No problem! I just walked two doors down to the £1 Store and bought a couple of pans. I seriously LOVE that about living here. An errand like that would have taken 45 minutes in Connecticut. Here it takes 5-10 minutes. I do not miss driving at all.

But I do kind of miss having a mixer! While I was creaming the butter and sugar by hand, I thought this is a real labor of love! Here I was slaving away, making this special bread that I can't even eat. What a sacrifice. YEAH, RIGHT. Once that bread cooled and I sliced it for the boys, I just couldn't resist. I decided to eat one of the heels. Just a little one. But then I thought if I'm going to do that, I should go all out and put butter on it. OH MY GOSH, it was so good! So good that I ate a full sized piece with butter after that. When Mike got home from work (very late), I had a full-on meltdown. "Why did I think it was such a good idea to continue this diet here? I don't want to do it anymore! I'm missing out on everything! I've had this hanging over my head the whole time we've been here, and I've only lost 3 pounds! ... ok, maybe more like 6 pounds ... But I don't want to do this anymore!" And you know what that lousy husband of mine said? "You can do it, honey." That is not what I wanted to hear. UGH. SO, I ate another buttered slice of bread. The thickest one I could find.

Oh, boy. I was seriously ready to throw in the towel. So I weighed myself this morning thinking that I've probably gained weight, and that would be proof enough that I shouldn't even try anymore. LOL, I've lost 1.2 pounds since Friday. Ha! I guess I'll just have to stick with it after all. I only have enough food for something like five more weeks, so I just have to go strong, and then I can transition back into normal life. (of course that normal life will include moderation and good choices. don't worry, i'm not going to go crazy and gain it all back. i lost a pound the first month we were here when i was off plan and eating whatever i wanted.)

Just one more thing about cooking... I solved my oven timer mystery! The temperature is in celsius which is fun in and of itself. I really have no interest in learning what the different temps are, so I keep a cheat sheet in a drawer. :)

So, the mystery involves the timer. Weirdest thing. Whenever I set the timer, like for 50 minutes for banana bread, it would flash a time on the display. The time is always close to the current time, but never the correct time. I'm so stupid. I just couldn't figure out what was going on! Until I was about to set the timer for the 50 minutes and looked at the clock on the wall figuring out that it would be finished cooking at 5:11pm. I set the timer to 50 minutes, and then the time flashed 17:11. Hahaha! Why did it take me so long to figure out that the time it was telling me was the time my food would be ready??

So sorry, I LIED. I have lots of food-related things for this post. Matthew finished his Foods class! I'm a little sad. He only had to choose one thing from each lesson to make when I wanted him to make everything. Oh well. It was fun while it lasted.

Matthew is not loving living here. I've been trying to figure out how to make it better for him, so this last week I went on the search for taquitos. Kind of a funny thing to search for, right? Well, Matthew eats those frozen taquitos from Costco for lunch all the time, and it's one of the things he misses. I googled "Taquitos in London" the other day, hoping to find something. A restaurant called Taquitos popped up! But they don't serve taquitos... Figures. Thankfully I remembered this Mexican restaurant Mike and I have been wanting to go to called Wahaca's. Sure enough, they have 'em! I met Mike after work for a night-before-Valentine's-Day dinner, and we brought some taquitos home for Matthew. And he really liked them! We will have to go again for dinner sometime and get takeaway afterward.

That brings us to Valentine's Day (no food!). In my church we do this thing called visiting teaching where we go to visit ladies in sets of two. I really love it. We talk about spiritual things, and just really support each other. So, I was just assigned a visiting teaching partner in our ward here. In her email about times when she would be available to go this month, she said she would have to wait until her show is over. Her show? I love shows! So, Mike and I went to see my new friend in The Grand Tour at the Finborough Theatre. It's a super small theatre above a pub. So cool!

These guys in the picture were in the first row, and we were behind them on the second row. I think there were only 4 or 5 rows. The stage was right in our faces! I really loved it. It's fun seeing all of the actors' expressions up close. And the actual stage was really cool with all sorts of flaps and doors they moved and opened and closed to change scenes throughout the show. One of the funniest parts in the show was when the two main characters sat down in the "car" to drive, and the one guy handed the other guy the steering wheel. Ha! I don't know if it was supposed to happen that way, but I loved it! 

My friend was in the ensemble for most of the first act, but then she played the owner of this traveling circus. She was perfect for that role! Her scenes in that role were by far my favorite part of the show. She was so good! (these pictures of the show are from the internet)

In other news... Back on the home front - Not only has Collin been shoveling snow non-stop since he returned to Connecticut, but now he is freezing! We are not missing New England's crazy winter AT ALL.

Our dumb house doesn't have insulation in the family room or Collin's room as they are both above the garage, so they are always very hot in the summer and very cold in the winter. Collin said it was 50 degrees in the family room the other day. The heater just can't keep up! And it was probably colder than that because I think the thermostat in there only goes down to 50. I hope this extreme cold doesn't last too much longer for Collin's sake.

HEY! Who's the man?!

Mike got his new business cards (numbers edited out) with his official titles. It's funny how his predecessor in GTA couldn't handle that role alone, but Mike was so bored and over-qualified that they gave him another role that is more than ten times bigger. Yep, he's the man.

My LAST bit of news is something of a surprise - My mom texted me the other day and said that they want to come visit us! Wow! I wasn't expecting that. They want to come when Collin and Lauren are here, so that will be at the end of May. More planning to do! I'm so excited. :) We have so much going on starting with our trip to Rome next month. The last three months here are going to be the best! We've already started preparing for Rome:

The Lizzie McGuire Movie. LOL. The boys just about died,

but we had so much fun watching it. We don't really need to

prepare to go there, so this was just silly. Right up my alley!

How do my posts always end up being so long?