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Mah Birf Day!!!!!!


Maia Stone
 IS MAH BIRF DAY!!!!!!! =P no, it was on sunday!! ! okay?
ok, i am learning hoe how 5o tp to type fast, so, ya.
okay, i a am a weirdo. you ba believe me? cuz u i do.
okie.............. here are some pictures-and a video- of some of
the action........... so......... yah. I AM AWESOME!!!!
('i am awesome' is in my crazy voice.) im just about
to leave to eat chips and cheese.-"i bet you think im one now!-
a weirdo."-XD
 this is the video of every one ribbon dancing!!
 this is Mackenzie with a mustache, silly Kenzie
 these are my, AWESOME mustache cupcakes!!!!
 this is my very very AWESOME friend, Kate
 this is my other AWESOME friend, Izzabelle(or Izzie
 this is my other, AWESOME friend Lily
 this is my OTHER... AWESOME friend, i have a bunch of awesome friends, don't I?
 this is Mackenzie again, with me.

and, finally, Audrey-i don't know her last name- with me.
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bah-humbugggg!!!!!!!!!!

whatevah.....

I'm bored sorry if its sloppy...........

Ok, i want to write emoticons for a while...................................


:)  
;)
:(
;.;
0w0
O.o
^w^
^///^
:p
=3)
o[]o
ioi
i[]i
=D
D=
=3
*0*
*////*
$0$
:}
{:

so on to school,
so first up, we went to tamy's and we dided some, um... we did...... the 3rd thingie......
then sight-singing!
then we played weef mavy!!! [de kitteh!!!!] 
sooooooooo.............. yah.......... i'm done

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Halloween! According to the Bird

Happy Halloween everyone!

Here's the costumes for this year! Me first.



I (Birdie) was Alphonse Elric! From Fullmetal Alchemist.



Pearl was a Supercute Dragon/Dinosaur/Ribbon Dancer



Henry was a Skeleton (for the fourth year in a row!). He is showing you his rock.



Yahyah was Dark Manga/Anime fighter or something (With a real sword of her Mama's!)


This is Dadguy. He isn't anything in particular. . . I don't think. . .


It's pretty awesome. I love Fullmetal Alchemist, Yahyah loves Manga, Pearl loves Dragons and anything cute, and frankly Henry won't be anything other than a skeleton, so it all worked out!

We carved our pumpkins on Tuesday, and we decorated the first day of October. Tonight's going to be a blast!

I will explain to you each of our costumes.

My costume was the toughest. Realistically, we started a month ago (put together the helmet) a month or two ago, but it was only for the past two weeks that we were really scrambling and working to get it done. The shoulders/body armor was the hardest thing to work on, made out of cardboard and posterboard, and paper spikes paper mache-ed on to it. The collar is a long sturdy strip of cardboard duct-taped on to the original two pieces, which were both pieces of super-strong cardboard that we got from the packaging for Henry's new chest of drawers. The sides of the armor is fabric/foam from a Beer Keg costume of all things. (We spray-painted over the Beer Keg label.) The shoulder pads are a giant foam sphere that we got from Hobby Lobby and cut in half, then put elastic on that is held on with screws and duct tape. The Mama had gray boots that we just put silver fabric/foam (also from the Beer Keg) over to make it look better. The gauntlets are two two-liter soda bottles cut to fit my arms with duct-tape sleeves and paper mache spikes. The helmet is completely paper mache, one of those little construction flag thingies (used to propel the ponytail into the air) and a load of white ribbon. The loincloth is just two panels of light-blue fabric that we tucked into my pants. My Grandpa got me fuzzy black gloves from the dollar store! They were perfect. I had a toy cat that I used as an accessory because Alphonse loves cats. I wore black leggings and a black sweater underneath the whole thing. It came together so nicely and I love it soooo much! I can't wait to go trick-or-treating with my cousin, who is going to be Alphonse's older brother, Edward Elric. Alphonse is one of my favorite characters. 

Pearl's costume was fairly easy. We went to the Thrift store looking for bits we could use for my costume and we found a jacket that someone had glued cardboard spikes to, and Pearl loved it. She wore a green dress and orange leggings underneath that, and the boot covers were of Mama's design.

Yahyah wore a hat that she loves, white leggings, her "Manga" boots, an "I love New York" shirt, a cut up sock (her arm thingie to go with her cast) and a little black Halloween skirt we've had for years. Mama had a sword that she loved, so she gets to tote that around and be a Dark Fighter Girl or something. I don't think even Yahyah knows what she is.

Henry's costume is store-bought, but the gloves are ours. Who doesn't like those old glow-in-the-dark skeleton gloves? No one, as of yet.

I think my Dad's costume is pretty much self-explanatory.

The Mama was a witch/crazy woman, but we don't have any pictures.

This Halloween was AWESOME!
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Alice




A great big welcome to the newest member of Chaos!  I think you need a new name!  I am campaigning for "Sugar Cookie!"
-The Mama
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Wednesday

Today is the day that the girls go to piano lessons... Henry cannot start lessons till he is a better reader, but rest assured he's all about getting his chance!  The piano teacher is the sweetest lady, and she is very free with the treats.   Henry can't wait for his chance to score the goodies!

All three girls been assigned Christmas songs to work on.  Brings me HUGE amounts of joy, and makes me feel touch wistful for the upcoming holidays to listen to them practice.

Makes me feel like making and looking at Christmas ornaments.

My Birdie is pining for Christmas too.  Or rather, she has been drooping and sighing about how far away Christmas is, since August.  I ask if she really would wish away all the fun that comes before then, including Halloween, which is a Big Deal in Chaos.  She says  yes.

I don't believe her.  Not really.  This year Halloween is an even bigger deal since she is putting together a most epic costume of a suit of armor.  Alphonse Elric.


We will, no doubt, post pics of it when she is done.

Yiyah is putting together a Cosplay-type Cat Girl.  She has a few bits that we've picked up from the 2nd hand store that we plan to tweak.

Pearl found a darling hoodie at the thrift store that someone had added dragon details to, so we are gonna use that as a base for some tweaks as well.

Henry is a skeleton.  Always a skeleton.  For a few days this year he was leaning toward maybe a grim reaper... till he was confronted with skeleton costumes.  Then it was skelly.  I think his first, ever Halloween I dressed him as a pirate using a costume that a friend gave us.... but from the moment he could express a preference it has been Bones, all the way down the line.

Let's just say that Henry is NOT dying for Christmas.  He is mightily disgusted with all the Christmas decorations at the store, when all he wants to see are frights, ghouls and especially a rattling full sized skelly that lights up.  Lowes had one yesterday and it was love at first sight.  Too bad for the $90 price tag, and the fact that, oh yeah!  We aren't buying any more Halloween anything this year!

Last night Dadguy and I went and picked up a couch from KSL.com, a lovely nine year old couch for the basement.  When he found out how much we had paid for it, Henry was deeply perturbed that we would go and spend a hundred bucks on some stupid couch when we could have had that skeleton.

He was still talking about it today.

Homeschool?  Oh.  Yeah.  We did get math and reading and the Bird Reports all turned in... but we did not manage to do our read aloud.  I just started reading them The Hobbit yesterday.... tomorrow, I guess.  Tomorrow after we get back from their Aunt T'Amy's house.  They have music theory on Thursday mornings.

And chores.  And practicing.  And getting all the seeds from the sunflower heads removed and boiled in salt water.  And harvesting the last of the tomatoes. And more math.  And reading.  and, and, and...

As crazy-packed as our days are, and as challenging as it sometimes is to do our learning at home... I think the most nerve wracking part is trusting that everyone will end up with what they need to succeed and be happy.  

Praying like crazy.

-The Mama



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The Lowes Adventure


    It all started when we were going out on a walk, 
 The Mama heard that Henry accidentally chucked the
top to his scythe but, theres a problem, we had to go
thru the big, BIG, plants(by plants i mean: weeds.)
that were BIG and bushy, and... mostly pokey.
there was roses too, and they had, BIG POKEY,
THORNS!!!!! and there was a problem, Henry
was wearing SHORTS!!!! which totally tic'ed me off!!!
here are some photos of the trail we took. But, there is
a VERY LONG DROP on one side, so we had to be careful.

                                                        this is Henry walking the trail.



                                                         I think this tree is pretty.


                                       this is my awesome sister Burdi.


Post written by Pearl
(age eight)
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poetry parts

so... Yayah here...

um... yah...

so first up I'm going to tell you this, i has a broken wrist so..yah... on with de writing!!!
ima randomly write poetry.

leaves falling from the trees.
its Autumn.
wrappers littering the streets,
mingling with the leaves and fog.
ghosts roaming the roads.
cats yowling in alleys.
i dare you.
bones on the floor...
and... BOO!
happy Halloween!

so at the moment i am playing aj  (animal jam) if you don't know what it is play it and find out!!
its super cool!!
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The Bird Speaks

Woohoo! The Bird herself is writing the second post.

I'm here by request to explain to you how our homeschooling thing works, from my point of view.

On the normal day, I drag myself out of bed at 8:30-9:00 in the morning (usually with the aid of my little bro Henry) to show up for family scriptures and prayer. After that we kiss our Dad goodbye until 5:30 tonight, and eat breakfast.

Sometimes we'll go on a walk to the park that's less than a mile away for P.E. Other times, in the summer, we'll walk down to the snow cone shack called Lucky's, which is super close to us. And sometimes we'll just walk around the block or something. We'll water the garden in the spring, summer, and early fall, and pick the fruits of our labors. This was the first year of our new garden and we got almost thirty jars of pickles! It was amazing. We also got a load of huge pumpkins.






Some of the many results of our garden this year. That's barely half the pickles we got.



Also, our Grandma getting her snow cone at Lucky's.

After the walk comes Read Aloud! Today we read six chapters of Charlie and the Great Glass Elevator. Sometimes we will take turns reading aloud (I always have the longest!), but a lot of the time Mama does the reading, because it's fun to listen to her act out the characters. She screams and yells and whoops and hollers. It's quite entertaining, but a lot of the time it provokes laughter and the running around of little tiny persons.

Right after Read Aloud is when we'll do our chores and Practicing. We have condensed all the numerous house chores into four major chores -- Public Rooms, Bath/Laundry, Dishes, and Kitchen. I start out with Dishes, Yayah with Kitchen, Pearl with Bath/Laundry, and Henry with Public Rooms. The chores rotate every day. Today I happened to be assigned to Kitchen.

Practicing isn't nearly as complicated. All three of us girls (Me, Yayah and Pearl) take piano lessons from an amazing teacher about a 10 minute's drive from us, so we all have piano practice to do, which we take in turns. We're all getting pretty good! For Henry's practice, he reads to The Mama. He's getting really good!

My sisters are always complaining that I take too long on the piano. I'm here to say, it's not my fault that I have so many songs to practice! What's wrong with writing my own stuff and loving music? Writing music takes time! Ugg!

Math. Grr. Algebra, Pre-Algebra, Negative Numbers, Geometry, grr. Great grinding of teeth. It's not that bad, actually. It's just a pain. We'll have separate times to do it, and we'll usually do it with Mama -- we call it one on one time, or LOL, because that's what it looks like when you write it like this: 1O1. And lately we've taken to an idea that Yayah invented -- the MATH BATH, a way to memorize your multiplication tables. All you have to do is hop in the tub and practice. Hot water works miracles.

Lately, we've been studying birds, so after Math we'll sometimes watch what we call the Bird Show. It's actually a bird documentary called "The Life Of Birds" by David Attenborough. And we're also working on Bird Reports to earn another trip to Tracy Aviary in Salt Lake. I did mine on ravens. They're so cool! I think Yayah did hers on mockingbirds, and I don't know what Pearl did. If we have all of the reports turned in by Tuesday next week, we can feed the Conures at Tracy Aviary! I'm so excited!

The school day normally comes to a close after this. This was the normal Homeschool day! Hooray. Things are different when we earn a party or go on a field trip. Last week we finished Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, so we stuffed ourselves silly with marshmallows and chocolate and watched both the new and the old Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movies. That's awesome.

After the school day is over, we're allowed nearly free reign on the electronics. Me, personally, I'll check FanFiction.net, my gmail, look up songs on Youtube, watch some of my current obsession (FULLMETAL ALCHEMIST!!!), and work on my novel and the numerous other side stories I'm writing. Sometimes I'll play Minecraft, too. But that's just me.


An example of Henry using his electronic time to play Animal Jam.


It's dinnertime when Dadguy comes home. We'll eat, Dadguy will catch up with us, and then he'll run off to his PS4 to play Destiny on our NEW 60-INCH FLATSCREEN TV! Love it. If I'm lucky, then I'll have a chance to review my favorite fan fictions on FanFiction.net and write a little bit after dinner. And then if I'm really lucky, mama will watch FullMetal Alchemist with me!

Up until a little bit ago, we used to have Art class with a bunch of other kids, but we stopped.

That is what my day normally consists of. Throw in a few visits from my cousin, who lives only 4 miles away, toss some codfish into the mix, and sprinkle it with sarcasm, and that's my life. I do other things at bedtime, too, like read my scriptures, write in my "inspiration spot" smack dab in the middle of the floor, look at some of my art, and play with my parakeets.


The unnaturally tidy "inspiration spot" in my room.

But that's basically it! Each day is a little different, of course, but this is the typical day in the School Of Chaos. From my point of view.


Because this picture has to be shown. Silly Henry.


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El Post-o Numero Uno

Allo.

Testing one two three.

Meet the Stone Army and our marvelous School of Chaos.  We homeschool.  Shall we introduce you to the main players?

The Mama- age none-a-ya beeswax
Dadguy- ditto
Birdie- age 12.... seventh grade-ish
Yayah- age 10... fifth grade-ish
Pearl- age 8 (for the next few weeks)...third grade-ish
Henry- age 5 (for the time beans) ... Kindergartenish

The purpose of our homeschool blog? A glimpse into the workings of a homeschooling/unschooling/ish/type family... thingie.

This is what we do and how we do it.  It is a little nerdy, a touch non-sequitor, artsy, crunchy....

Boy!  Is it chaotic!

This year's back-to-school photos:


 Henry


 Pearl


 Birdie


Yayah


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