Role reversal.

The other day, youngest son had a headache and was trying to watch some TV. His Dad was in the mood to play with the toy plane, however. Youngest son asked Dad to quit flying the plane and be quiet, but Dad disobeyed and flew the plane again. It hit youngest son in the head (it doesn't hurt) and he turned around and gave his Dad a look that looked exactly like a parent would give a disobedient child. Dad's face took on the expression of a disobedient child who has been caught. It was a complete role reversal, just for a few seconds, but it was so hilarious.

Missing the Routine?!

This is weird and I can't believe it, but I miss our routine. I haven't been doing my morning list because the kids are off from school this week and the tempation to take this week off is too great, but at the same time, I miss it. I miss having everything done early in the day and exercising. It's crazy that I don't just do it today anyway, but there is something about the fact that I don't have to, that makes me resist doing it. I looked up when I started my morning routine and it was November 12, so I successfully did it for 6 weeks before Christmas break. I am very proud of that. I can see that my upper arms are becoming more toned from exercising with weights. I think the fact that I have tied my routine to my kids school routine will help us get started as soon as January gets here because I want to get started again. Why don't I just start today? I don't know. I told you it was weird.

One of our favorites this year.

Every year, there are present selections that bomb and ones that do very well. This is something we got for our youngest son. It is a remote control foam airplane that is supposed to be flown indoors. Everyone, especially Dad, is having a lot of fun with this plane. (Except Max! He hates it, poor guy. He hides in our bedroom!) Here it is flying past our entryway.

A Better Day.

So far, today is a better day at work. I am still trying to deal with the new computer system and feeling that everything has changed. It's hard to change after being on the same system for 8 years but I am hanging in there. I'll have my nose to the grindstone for the next couple of days, trying to get my work done so I can take Sunday off. We have some family gatherings on Saturday and Sunday - the last 2 Christmas parties and I want to be able to go and enjoy them and not worry about work. (for once!)

Back to Work.

Today the kids have "play all day day" as my youngest calls it. We don't have to go anywhere and they can finally enjoy their Christmas presents without interuption. Their Dad and I have to go back to work. Joy.

Here are some messages I've gotten from my computer this morning, which will indicate how this morning is going so far.

Welcome. Enter password.
Start downloading information. Please wait ....
.........................................................................
Updates failed. Abort? Retry?
Abort.
Stand by. Turn off. Restart.
Restart. (wait while rebooting)
USB human interface device not recognized.
bong. bong. bong. bong. bong.
(unplug and replug USB human interface device about 5 times with no response)
(sigh)
Stand by. Turn off. Restart.
Restart. (wait while rebooting.)
This time the human interface USB device is recognized.
Welcome. Enter password.
swwooshhshhwwooshhhwoooshhh (sound of dial-up dialing up)
The connection to the server has failed.
Please wait ................................................................................
.............................

One hour and 21 minutes later, I start typing my first report of the day.
Then I get a phone call.
Then my 8-year-old walks in the room and orders a triple decker peanut butter sandwich. Apparently peanut butter is one of your more difficult sandwiches to make and he can't yet do it without tearing the bread.

Sigh.

Merry Christmas.

I hope your Christmas was truly happy. We are taking a little break between events right now and I'm hoping for a nap. I did not get much sleep last night. I didn't get to bed until 2:00 a.m. and my youngest popped out of bed at 3:30 saying that Santa had come. I had to be the meanie and make him go back to bed. This mama is too old to get by on 1 1/2 hours of sleep. Oldest son got up at 5:30 and was going to rouse the house, but thankfully, his Dad stopped him. Finally, at 8:00 a.m. I was ready to get up!

The middle-of-the-night thing is one of the things I don't like about Santa. How are parents supposed to get any sleep? The fact that we do all the work and he gets all the credit really bugs me too. This year, old Santa had a more limited role than he has in years past. This year, all the really cool stuff came from Mom and Dad and Dad finally got the credit he deserved for waiting in the Best Buy parking lot for 12 1/2 hours on the day after Thanksgiving!

Our house looks like it was attacked by a toy-throwing angry mob and I am not going to clean it up. Not today. I'm going to take a nap.

Happy Holidays!

Merry Christmas from our house to yours ... This is Max, wearing his new Christmas jacket and wishing you a happy holiday. (I'm sure that's what he's thinking.)

Here's a report on how our holiday has gone so far. Yesterday, we went to see the movie "Night at the Museum" which is excellent and I highly recommend it. It is rated PG because of 1 bad word, but it is very cute and funny.

This morning, we watched the weather report and it said that there might be snow on the day after Christmas. The 8-year-old said "Finally, we're going to get the snow we deserve."

Yesterday, same son couldn't find his shoes when we were ready to go to the movies. I tried to talk him into wearing his sister's old shoes are only a size too big, light blue and white athletic shoes. He said they were "girlie". I said that they were blue and white and nobody would think they looked girlie. He said "If they've ever been worn by a girl, they are girlie." I guess it has girl cooties on it from then on. Who knew?

I hope you all have a wonderful holiday!

The Carnival of Homeschooling, Christmas Eve, Eve, Eve and the last day!

The Carnival of Homeschooling is at Principaled Discovery. Take a look.

My kids are counting down to Christmas and now it has gotten so close that they are saying it is Christmas Eve, Eve, Eve. It is so funny when they do this. They are finishing their last day of school before the break today and the undercurrent of excitement is running high.

I'm working and trying to get used to the new computer program and only going at about half my usual speed. I hope it gets better. The lack of progress is frustrating!

That's it for today, our last day of our normal routine for a while. I hope it won't be too difficult to get started back in January.

One last thing; can anyone recommend a good independent study high school program? Please!

Still schooling.

This is my "motivating mama" list, with all my Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday things marked off with a big purple marker.
It feels good to have it all done early in the morning and I have more energy from the exercise too. Of course the kids want me to not get it done, but so far, I have, every day.

We are hanging in there and finishing this week of school. Two more days. When I got up this morning, there was a tiny little moment when I thought 'let's just not do it today' but I drank some coffee and got my resolve back. I think keeping to our regular routine for the last few days before Christmas is actually helpful to them and to me, to help keep them constructively occupied. Otherwise, I think they'd just be so excited and not know what to do with themselves. So for these last 2 days before the weekend, we're doing our routine. I'll probably print out some Christmas-y worksheets for them today, to help it not seem quite so bad, LoL.

Can you believe it's the 19th?

The excitement is building. I sometimes enjoy it and sometimes wish to avoid it, you know what I mean? I'd kind of like to take at least 1 Christmas and go somewhere warm with a beach. No shopping. No crowds. No cold. Ahh. Maybe someday.

Anyway, back to reality. I was going to share a picture of the gingerbread house, but I tried about 6 times and couldn't. I don't particularly like the new blogger. Anyway, the gingerbread house has now been halfway eaten and no longer looks like it did, but at least they took a quick picture before attacking it. I wish I could show it to you. Apparently, it was pretty tasty; the gingerbread house, not the picture.

Uh Oh.

Everyone in the house got up feeling pretty bad today, except youngest son and I. He was sick earlier this week and my back started hurting about an hour ago. Apparently, that's the first sign. Great. At least, hopefully, we'll get done with it before the festivities begin again this weekend. We are proceeding with school, though, despite it all. We are making a book of Christmas traditions around the world and we also made a gingerbread house from a kit that I got on clearance at Walmart, so it hasn't been a totally wasted day. I'm taking Cold-Eeze and hoping for the best!

Need a little Christmas, right this very minute.

I can't seem to get in the Christmas spirit this year. It may be because I had to work today. I got to see 2 wonderful Christmas performances at church today, the first by the choir and the second by the pagent committee. (I worked in between.) Both were very nice. I just don't feel it. I guess I will eventually. It'll happen whether I'm in the spirit or not, won't it? LoL. I have one more gift to buy and then I'll get ready, somehow. I'm going to try and find some Christmas printables on line for the kids. We're doing school until Friday, so I guess I'd better get ready.

Not very many days left until Christmas!

It's coming next weekend! I still don't have all my shopping done, none of the wrapping is done and my house is kind of a wreck. As a Christmas present to myself, I'd like to have the house clean! I'm going to add more housecleaning chores to my list this week. I'm going to make the kids do a lot of the wrapping, except their stuff, of course! I've been making a lot of lists in the last couple of weeks, just trying to keep up with everything.

I haven't been posting as much lately because we've been busy, busy, busy. One day this week, for art, the 2 younger kids decorated the glass doors with Window FX markers. It looks cute, I think. It takes about 3 washings to get that stuff of the windows, but it's a small sacrifice to make for great art.

Yesterday, for school, we took a field trip with our homeschool group. This time, we went to the Kentucky Center for the Arts for a Stage One production of The Chronicles of Narnia. It was very well done. I want to see the movie now. Our field trip also included a trip to the Krispy Kreme donut store and on the way home, we stopped at KFC for some snackers. My youngest son pronounced this field trip as "delicious".

A few things.

Last night, my daughter asked what we were going to do today and I mentioned that we had a dentist appointment. Youngest son yelled "Field Trip!" LoL. I guess he doesn't mind going to the dentist?

A couple of days ago the youngest 2 decided to open a hotel in their room. It was called the Icey Inn and it cost something like 14 cents to stay there. My youngest son told me later that he was the butler/bellhop, also know as the "but-hop".

It's been a pretty good week around here. For the most part, school and work are getting done, preparations for Christmas are proceeding. I still have about 3 gifts to get and then we'll be ready. We are going to do school right up until the 22nd and get in as many days as we can. At the current time, I'm not planning on actually doing school on Christmas day, but we'll see how much whining there is around here before then ...
just kidding.

Lost Links.

With the new template for my blog, I've lost the links to the blogs I read. Please comment so I can get them back. Hopefully when I add them, I won't lose my whole blog again!

Now that I'm back ...

I guess I should blog! We are in the midst of preparations for Christmas, doing school and I'm adjusting to a new computer system at my job, so it's been pretty busy around here. As the excitement builds for Christmas, it seems to get more and more difficult for the kids to get their schoolwork done, but we keep trying because we want to get done some time this year, LoL. We are still working from the same checklists I made back in October and I am still doing my morning routine every day. It's been how long now? Almost a month I think? Maybe only 3 weeks, but that is still a record for me. I'm thinking of making the kids lists and my list a litttle more stringent in January when we come back, adding at least 1 new chore to everyone's list. I'm sure that will be popular!

That same old Monday dilemma.

School or no school today? I'm supposed to go with my mom to get her shopping done, but I'm debating whether to make the kids do at least some schoolwork before we go. If we do Mondays, we finish school on May 18. If no Mondays, June 15. It wouldn't actually be the end of the world if we had to "do school" most of the summer, really, at least for me. I'm not sure what to do.

I'm so glad to have my blog back though. I think probably it was my fault. I've been blaming blogger all weekend, but I think maybe, when I was trying to add something else, I accidently deleted half of the blog template. Whoops!

Back!

I think I've finally got my blog back! It had disappeared and I couldn't log in all weekend. Finally, I changed templates and that appears to have fixed the problem. Thank goodness.

Friday, December 8, 2006.

I never know what to put as a title on my posts, so often I just want to put the day of the week or the date. Usually, I think and think and try to come up with an appropriate title, but today, I'm just putting the date. It's Friday. There's not a whole lot going on. I'm going to do some online Christmas shopping before the kids get up and then I am going to work and then possibly go to the grocery. Exciting, huh? One of my children is grounded at the present time for excessive whining during school hours. Youngest son, of course. I think he just can't believe that being cute won't get him out of doing school. He's grounded until he gets through today's school work. If he doesn't do today's school work by 3:00 p.m., he's grounded for the whole weekend. I was proud of him last night. We went to my mom and dad's house and they have cable TV (we don't) and youngest son went into the playroom to play where he wouldn't be tempted to watch TV, since he was grounded. I thought he was pretty mature about it.

I guess I'll get started now. Have a good day, ya'll.

It's snowing!

My youngest has been hoping and praying for a snow day and this may be it. It looks like we are in a snow globe, big snowflakes and lots of them. When the kids wake up, I'm going to take them outside and take a picture. I hope that it snows enough to do at least a little sledding. We got a new sled last year and it hasn't been tried out yet.

School today? I don't know yet. It may be a snow day!

The Song.

They made me listen to it again last night. I took the kids to the library for that party and the youngest 2 made me listen to Alvin and the Chipmunks. Now it is going around and around in my head: "squeak, SQUEAK, squeak, squeak, squeak squeak, squeak, squeak, squeak, SQUEAK, squeak, squeak, squeak (something about a hula hoop) .... Christmas don't be late".

If you hear of me going completely crazy, you'll know why.

A couple of things.

The Carnival of Homeschooling is up. I always enjoy reading these. Here it is.

I've been enjoying getting downloads from The Homeschool E-Store. Right now they are giving away free Christmas notebooking pages to download and print.

I'm hoping to actually do some of the Christmas unit today. My motivation for doing that part of school has been nonexistant. Sigh. At least the basics are getting done, right? Last night our library had a trim the tree party, so fortunately, other people are helping me deal with my lack of creativity and enthusiasm this year. The kids had fun anyway, and we came home with about 10 new ornaments.

Back to Work and School.

Yesterday I went shopping and the kids and Dad put up the Christmas tree so no one did any work or school. Today, I printed out a list for each child and the mama list and I've already done all of the things on my list. I love that I'm staying motivated. I hope I'll be able to continue. I don't have much of a track record with exercising or cleaning my house, but with this list and the promise that if I don't do it, the kids don't have to do anything, I'm motivated. It's a good feeling to get that all done in the morning, first thing, and not have to worry about it later. It's done.

Christmas Shopping.

I went Christmas shopping today. All by myself. I went to a bunch of stores and came out with most of what I had planned to buy today, but whew, I don't think I want to do that again for a long time. I'm very much in favor of on-line shopping. It is so much easier, quicker and less tiring for the feet. I did enjoy getting to play whatever music I wanted to on my new CD player in the van and not having to listen to the chipmunks Christmas song, not even once! I'm going to turn on some nice music here in my office tomorrow, sip some hot chocolate and get on-line and finish my shopping. No more fighting the crowds for me.

Staying Motivated.

I am still using my morning list to stay motivated. I've lost count of how many days it has been now, but, other than weekends and holidays, I've been exercising and doing light cleaning in the mornings, getting the dishwasher and laundry going every day. I normally might get to all of this stuff throughout the day (except exercising!) but I'm trying to establish a habit of getting up and getting it all done first thing so that I don't have to worry about it all day long and won't procrastinate about it. I'm encouraged about how it is going. I've noticed that I feel better when I exercise and that makes me feel motivated to keep it up.

Shopping.

I can't believe it, but I'm thinking of shopping around for a new curriculum. I've been a big KONOS fan and I know it works, but there is so much work to it for the teacher and with my job, my cafepress store and my general lack of enthusiasm lately, I've found it very hard to make the herculean effort of planning that it takes. I have to read through the material, make a shopping list, make a list of books at the library to get (which they frequently don't have) and plan all the crafts, experiments and activities and sometimes I don't know the information and then have to find a reference book so that I can learn about it first. When I feel up to it and excited about it, it's a wonderful curriculum and I know the kids learn a lot. We went to see Happy Feet last night and thhey were discussing the emperor penguins, rockhopper penguins and leopard seal from the movie very knowledgeably last night, because we studied Antartica last year. I don't know whether to get a kit or something to help with KONOS and still use it, or to try and find something easier or maybe just do a Christmas unit this month and then get back into KONOS next month. I won't make any rash decisions but I think I'm going to start selling some of my extra books on ebay to start raising money to do some shopping.

December is here!

Can you believe it? I can't. We're going to a Christmas party with the homeschool group today and the kids are very excited about that. I'm glad because I don't have to do any school with them. Isn't that shameful? I have not been able to get motivated to do any of the Konos activities and we have been just doing the basics for a couple of months. I'm thinking of doing a Christmas around the world study this month to incorporate the holidays and the geography that we are supposed to be studying.

Part of the reason I have not been motivated is that our China adoption fell through. We are not going to be able to adopt from China because they changed the requirements for adoptive families between the time we applied in March and now, so I've been pretty depressed over that. It's hard to get enthusiastic about school when you're depressed about something else. Its as simple as that. I'm sure I'll pull out of it and I am getting excited about Christmas so that's a good sign.

Now if I can get over the backache from picking up trash on the highway and stop walking like that old lady character on laugh-in ... I'll be just fine.

Maybe today.

Yesterday we did school in a slightly different way. I gave the kids a list that included a couple of school items and a list of other things that needed to get done, like finding all the libary books, instead of their usual list. Of course, youngest son had to complain. He claims that he doesn't like the regular list, but then complains when I change it. Today we are doing the regular list with no changes and no negotiating for less work. Hopefully it will go okay.

The kids are counting down the days until December the first and then they can use our little advent calendar to count down until Christmas. I think my 8 year old is about to pop with excitement about Christmas! I think I need to get an angel tree angel or something to help them learn more about helping others at Christmas time.

What do you all do?

Not an ordinary day after all.

When I typed that last night, I had forgotten that our homeschool group had agreed to pick up trash on the side of the highway today. So at 2:00 today, oldest son and I headed out to do that. We had a particularly bad stretch of highway, I thought, very steep and uneven, with briars and stickers and we had to climb over a guardrail and slide down the hillside and lean against a fence to even pick up the trash. If the fence hadn't been there, we wouldn't have been able to stand upright on part of it, it was so steep. It was not something this old body is used to and I am sore and tired tonight.

Hopefully, they'll do a different fundraiser next year. Anyone want to buy magazines, candles or World's Finest Chocolate? Just kidding.

Field Trip.

Today was our field trip with the homeschool group we're in. We went to the Coca Cola history museum, saw a play about a pioneer Christmas and went to an assisted living center and sang some songs and gave out some treats. It was okay. I guess it's good for the kids to get together with their little friends, but I must confess to not being that interested in the museum (having visited it once before) and a tiny bit bored during the play. Going to the assisted living center was probably my favorite part of the day. I guess I was just kind of tired and kind of wishing to be home.

I'm actually glad for the holiday to be over and want to stay home tomorrow and do school and work. A normal day will actually be nice for a change.

A conversation at our house.

Youngest son: Why are we fighting?
Daughter: Because it's fun.
Youngest son: That's because you'll win.
Daughter (with evil chuckle) I know.

I wonder if he'll ever win an argument with her?

We're off to our field trip. Have a good day everyone!

A Day Off.

I have a day off from work today. I really should clean the house, but sometimes I think there is value in just taking a day off. If you don't stop every now and again and recharge those batteries, they are going to run out on you, probably at a very bad time. I may not do too much today, take it easy and get ready for my week. We've got a field trip tomorrow which I'm happy about. We'll enjoy that. Then we have 3 days of school and then on Friday, a homeschool co-op Christmas craft party. It's not even December yet, but already holiday activities are getting started. I bet it is going to be difficult to concentrate on school between now and Christmas, for mom and the kids.

Holiday Mode.

We're having our second Thanksgiving dinner today. (We divided them up so my DH could spend the night in the Best Buy parking lot on Thanksgiving night!) We are officially in holiday mode around here. The kids couldn't get the big Christmas tree up so they put up a tiny one we have and hung the stockings in the window with care, LoL. We don't have a fireplace so they hang on the window locks. It works. ;-) Of course it's quite a few days before the big guy fills those up, but meanwhile, they make nice window decorations.

I hope you all had a happy Thanksgiving.

Ours was pretty good. We only had one of our family dinners yesterday so the other one is still awaiting us. Mmm. It's fun to see family and friends, eat good food and play some games. I got to hold our family's new baby, my nephew, Zachary yesterday. He's a cutie!

I've been having trouble viewing and accessing my blog for the last couple of days so hopefully, this will publish okay. I'm not going to write much, just in case it doesn't!

Anyway, I hope it was happy!

Last day before the holiday weekend.

The public school kids are out tomorrow so we are going to be too. The younger 2 kids are going to a holiday craft party for about 3 hours and that will probably be enough 'school' for them. That's probably about what the public schoolers would do if they were in tomorrow, make crafts and watch a Thanksgiving movie. I talked to a public school teacher lsdy night and she said that they were going to watch Rugrat's Thanksgiving today. So educational, LoL.

I did make the kids do a turkey craft. Yesterday I told them to and my oldest son made one out of atollo blocks, my daughter drew a handprint turkey and youngest son also made a handprint turkey. I told them that those were kind of weak efforts and they should try again, so today my oldest made one of wooden blocks, my youngest son made one of legos and my daughter made one of playdough. I got nothing to decorate the center of the Thanksgiving table with, but they had fun with it anyway.

6 Whole Days.

I have managed to do 6 whole days of my morning routine which includes cleaning the house and exercising. 6 Days. I didn't do it over the weekend so that is Monday through Friday of last week and then today. That is a record for me. I almost never stick to these things for long, so I am thrilled. Starting my day with exercise makes me feel better all day long.

We are doing school at least today and tomorrow even though it is a holiday week. We probably should do at least 1 turkey craft, don't you think? Isn't that mandatory?

Tis The Season

It's that time of year when even disorganized people like me have to pull out calendars and actually use them. It seems like there are so many events planned already this month! I love the holidays and yet, it is kind of a strain, getting it all done and being every place you need to be. I got tagged this morning to be in our church's Christmas Pagent, so there goes my Sunday afternoon naps for the next few weeks, LoL. Hopefully it won't be too bad. I also got asked to sing in the Chrismas Cantata with the choir, but I don't think I could handle that too. That would mean practice every Wednesday night as well. I've been using the calendar feature of Yahoo to help me manage it all. Hopefully, I won't miss anything.

At the time I'm typing this, it is 35 days, 11 hours and 37 minutes until Christmas.

Remotes and Temper Fits.

Why do they make TVs that can only be operated with the remote control? Do the manufacturers assume (wrongly) that we will never lose the remote? Last night, when my favorite show came on (Grey's Anatomy), my DH had the TV in the living room set to record and it could not be changed off the channel he was recording no matter what we tried, and we tried everything. So, I went into my oldest son's room where he has a TV. Of course it was on video mode. Someone had changed it to video mode and lost the remote. So mama had a little temper fit and threatened to ground everyone in the house including Dad if they couldn't find the darn remote. They did find it so no one is grounded. Maybe mom should be for having a temper fit in front of the kids!

Still, it is the television manufacturers that are to blame here. Why would they make a TV that could not be switched from video mode to TV mode without the remote? Every function that is on the remote needs to be on the TV as well. I might just have to write them a letter ....

Sorry, now back to our regularly scheduled work and school. I need to get started on my morning exercise routine right away!

Four Days!

Can you believe it? Four whole days of doing my morning routine and exercising! I don't think I've ever stuck with anything this long.

Some of us in this household are not doing so well with our routines. One of the kids has to do twice the math and twice the spelling today because he didn't do it yesterday. He was still dawdling over his math at 10:00 last night. Sigh.

I guess everyone can't be motivated at the same time?

Motivating Mama.

Since we've been homeschooling, I've made out a variety of schedules and lists for the kids. We've probably tried just about everything, to get the day to go smoothly. Right now, they have a checklist of about 11 things that they have to do each day. As I mentioned last week, they've been getting better at getting these done, now that they've recovered from the fall break blues (just in time for Thanksgiving!). One day they even decided to race and see if they could get done before noon and have the rest of the day free. They got done at about 12:30 that day.

Some people might be concerned that they aren't getting in 6 hours of school time like the public school kids, but if you count the bathroom breaks, waiting in line, waiting for other kids to behave, etc. that the public school kids have to sit through, I think getting done at noon is acceptable. They start about 9:30 so that's 3 hours. I think I remember reading somewhere that in the average day, the average school kid got about 15 minutes of instructional time, so compared to that, we're doing great and the kids are thriving.

However, I have not been doing all that well with my own lists. I usually make up a list of things that I want to get accomplished each day too, then get wrapped up in school and work and ignore it. I think that I may have come up with a solution to this problem though. I've found a way to motivate myself and so far, it has worked for 3 days. You may laugh, but that's a record for me! This is what I've done. I made myself a morning routine of 11 things I want to get done before the kids start school, start a load of laundry, run the dishwasher, straighten up the house, exercise, etc. and I've told the kids that if I don't do my list, they don't have to do theirs. My deadline is 10:00 a.m. If I haven't exercised and done all the other things by 10:00 a.m., they don't have to school or chores all day and the 'no TV until the sun sets' rule is suspended as well, so they can sit on their bums all day, basically. Of course, I don't want that, so I've been doing my list faithfully for 3 days and my youngest goes to check every day at 10:00 to see if I'm done! LoL. I hope I can keep up the good work.

Singular and Plural

Today's grammar lesson for our 3rd grade student was regarding singular and plural nouns. I read the introduction on the page to him and he said "Singular? Isn't that a phone company?"

LoL.

Half a day.

School around here is optional on Mondays, depending on the teacher's discretion. I don't work on Mondays and sometimes I give the kids the day off as well. A lot of the time, we schedule field trips or doctor's visits on Mondays. Today, my daughter wasn't feeling well, so she took a sick day and the boys had what they call in the public schools, early release day. They did half a day of school. We had a harvest party with the homeschool group tonight and it was pretty nice. I think the craft, story, game and socialization probably took care of the other half of school too, come to think of it. Hey, what do you know, a full day of school for the boys and half for the girl, who played sick this morning and watched some TV but then magically felt well enough to go to the party. I also ended up getting about half a day of work in because my boss called midday and asked me to pitch in because they were behind. It was kind of a weird day, but I guess really, there is no typical Monday around here, they're always different. I kind of wish I was one of those people who had my days all planned out, but I'm so not.

Things that went right this week.

Someone else was doing this on their blog and I forgot who it was, but whoever you are, thanks for the idea. I guess it's kind of like a gratitude journal. Here goes.

I got a lot of work done on my Cafepress store and put a new Christmas background on there. It looks good.

I got to visit a homeschool curriculum consignment store that I've always wanted to visit AND I found the teacher's guide to my 9th grade son's math. (Somehow, we got the student texts without the teacher book so DH and I had been having to work the math problems to see if they were correct. Yay, now we can be lazy!) AND, it was only 6.00 because the store was having a clearance sale. Good times.

I got half of my closet cleaned out this week. That's a bigger job than it sounds because it is a big closet and it was very, very, very messy.

My daughter read several books in the series The Animorphs. Last year, she wouldn't read a chapter book, now she's devouring them. (not literally, LoL).

My youngest son's reading has been getting better by leaps and bounds.

We figured out what to do with oldest son's language arts and that is going much better.

I have today and tomorrow off from work! I made a pot of chili yesterday and so I don't have to cook today either.

Thats all for my list. I challenge you to make one of your own and give me a comment with a link.

Smooth.

I think yesterday was one of the smoother days that we've had homeschooling. I did not get inspired to do the Konos activities yesterday afternoon, but instead got inspired to clean out my closet and got it halfway done. I hope to get the rest of it done over the weekend. Its a big closet and our main storage since we don't have an attached garage or a basement. But anyway, back to homeschooling, the 2 youngest decided that they wanted to have all of their work done by noon. They almost made it too, they got done at 12:25 and did not require any nagging or prodding. Oldest son took longer but he didn't require any either, but then, he doesn't usually. It turned out to be a pretty good day. Now, I guess we'll see how Monday goes.

Just now starting to recover.

Our routine is just now starting to recover from fall break. Not to say that DH and I don't have to remind the kids to do their schoolwork, but now they are cooperating a bit better. It's subtle, but it's there. They are reminding each other. One of them will propose watching TV or going outside and the other will ask if they're done with their schoolwork yet. It's kind of funny, but I'm thankful for it. We'll keep going as long as we can into the holiday season, until the excitement just overwhelms us, LoL.

We're getting into our earth science unit a little bit, maybe not as much as we should. I put this picture of the earth on here to inspire me to actually do something on the unit study today!

A Closer Look.

I was looking on the internet to check into possibly buying another language arts program for my ninth grader when I ran across a listing of the one we already have. It's a package of 10 little booklets/ workbooks. He's on book one and it is very, very, intensive grammar which has been difficult to wade through. I noticed though, that the listing said that it also had literature studies and I went and looked carefully at the rest of his books. After he finishes this intensive grammar, the rest of the books look okay, even interesting. He's spent the first 50 days of school getting about 20 pages of language arts done, so I think I'll have him move into the second book and do maybe 2 pages in it and half a page in the grammar book each day, that way the course will get done this year and we won't be pulling our hair out from now until Christmas! Whew. I feel better.

Homeschooling Curriculum.

It seems like we homeschool moms are always on the lookout for a better curriculum, something wonderful that works for everyone with no problems, is probably what we want. Real kids aren't that easy though. They're all different and things that worked for your first might not work for the subsequent kids.

When we first started homeschool, we got Switched on Schoolhouse for our oldest, but he really didn't like it. It wasn't a good fit for him. I supplemented his world history study with a lot of hands on unit studies and that was fun and memorable, but a lot of work for me.

I found Konos that first year and it is a good curriculum, with a lot of hands-on stuff to do, but it does take a lot of prep work. That's my problem lately, is I don't want to do very much prep work. That's why we've been doing the basics lately without much else. Konos is still what I use for the younger two kids, as our main curriculum. I also use Scholastic Success with Grammar, Sequential Spelling and Homeschool Math E-books with them. All of these are working pretty well, I think.

For my older son, I ordered a workbook based curriculum because that is what he wanted, but let me tell you, it's awful. The explanations are difficult to understand, the questions are difficult to understand and both of us were ready to pull our hair out yesterday.

So now I am on the lookout for something to make 9th grade do-able and tolerable if not fun, at least not too frustrating. I'm still making him do the workbooks, but I don't want to do this curriculum for the next 4 years! So I'm looking again. It's frustrating. Any suggestions?

50 Days of School.

I finally updated my attendance records today and we've got 50 days of school in so far this year. Only 130 to go. To the kids, it seems like a lot but to me ... well, I wish I only had 130 more days of work and then could take an extended 2 month break. I haven't had a break from work more than 3 days long since giving birth to my youngest 8 years ago. Even after having surgery, I was back to work in 3 days. Whoops, sorry, kind of whiny this morning, aren't I? I really don't mind my job that much, I guess and speaking of work ... I guess I'd better go back to it.

Home Alone.

Youngest son and I are home alone today. Of necessity, I'm working, so I told him that he can do whatever he wants (within reason) and watch what he wants on TV without having to negotiate with anybody. He thought that was cool, just like the movie Home Alone. (He is 8 years old like Kevin.) He then commented thoughtfully that if he was left home alone for a week, he'd eat junk food and have every light in the house on, but he wouldn't watch junk on TV. Now he's watching Home Alone by himself in the living room and he just came running in to report that he has now moved into Christmas mode. I'm not sure exactly what that means, but I think he's working on his Christmas list now.

Very cool web site.

Someone sent this to me by email today and it is a really great web site, tons of lesson plans and tools. Here's the main page. Read, Write, Think!

Here's a link to a very neat comic creator that they have on this site, good for notebooking or writing skills.

Here's a link I also got from that site. Journal Ideas.

Here's another link to an interactive printable timeline tool. Timeline.

Here's a whole list of student resources.

Konos.

Finally, this week we got back to doing a little bit of our Konos Unit. The plan is for the kids to do the basics in the morning and then we do the Konos activities together, but lately, I've been slacking on that part and they've just been doing the basics. This week, though, we did get a little bit of the Konos material done. The unit we're doing right now is under the character trait of Inquisitiveness and it is the unit on the earth. So, this week we made clay models showing the inner layers of the earth. This one is my daughters.

Yesterday.

Well, the two younger kids finally got finished with their math yesterday, about a minute before sunset, but it was done. My husband had a class to do for for work yesterday, during the day and took my van so we were without transportation all day. It forced us to stay home. Sometimes I think that is a good thing. I have a tendency to want to go somewhere every day and we couldn't so we just enjoyed staying home. We took 2 walks, first to mail some letters and put the garbage out (me) and to climb a tree (the kids). It's a long way to our mailbox and then we walked a ways down the road to get to the climbing tree. Later on, after the mail was delivered, we took a moonlit walk with flashlights to go get it. That was kind of fun and different too. On days like this, I'm so glad we're homeschooling. If the kids had been in school, we would've missed walking, tree climbing, catching the first leaf ever and the miracle of garbage pickup (I love that!). So many things you miss when your kids are gone all day long.

Back and Forth.

We go back and forth. I want the kids to do their schoolwork. They don't, or they say they don't. (They did get bored this summer with no plans.) A typical day includes math, spelling, reading, grammar, art, exercise, KONOS and a game. They think that art, exercise, reading and game are the fun things and consider the others to not be fun. Consequently, they procrastinate about math, spelling and grammar as long as possible every day. Every day my husband and I say things like "do your work" and no matter what they are doing, they say, this is our work, it's our game or it's exercise, etc. I don't know if they have too much free choice in this or if we should applaud their creativity. When I first wrote the schedule out, I told them that I wanted them to play a game from our game collection. Pretty much all of them are at least somewhat educational. They are not allowed to choose a video game as there is no screen time until sunset. They've been very creative lately in coming up with games. Sometimes it is hide and seek. Today, it was catching leaves. My official position is that I don't care what game they play as long as it involves cooperative play and doesn't take up the entire day. I think that on a day like today, with the clear blue sky and the November wind blowing the leaves from the trees, catching leaves is a good game choice. My 8-year-old caught the first leaf he's ever caught today. That's something, right?

It's November the First!

Can you believe it? How many shopping days until Christmas? I like November. I like Thanksgiving and I like the weather this time of year, usually. Another thing that is hard to believe is that blogger finally let me post some pictures. These are from the halloween party on Saturday night.

With halloween being over, I have hopes that we will settle in and get some school done today. We did a bit yesterday, but there was just too much excitement in the air to get a lot done.

Trying to get back to routine.

We are struggling to get back into the routine this morning but the kids are excited about trick or treat tonight. They also got a new game table yesterday and have been wanting to play games, instead of work. Someone in this family tried to convince me that the game of pool is a study in geometry and physics but I'm not going for it.

I think I also have a touch of writer's block. I've tried to post to my blog 3 times this morning with little success in writing anything worth reading. This is my 4th try and well, you can see how it is going. I would use the old blogger standby for writer's block, pictures, but blogger is not cooperating today. Grr.

The Monday Dilemma.

I happened to mention a few weeks ago that we might not do school on Mondays, that it wouldn't matter if we did them or not, we'd still finish school in June. The kids have latched onto that and now feel that they should never have to do school on Mondays. I, on the other hand, feel guilty for taking a long fall break and feel like we should be doing a lot of school now to make up for it. I also tend to make doctor's appointments and other appointments on Mondays, so they are frequently disrupted. Today, for example, I had to go to an appointment so Dad was home with the kids who were telling him that we don't do school on Mondays ... he made them do it anyway and I'm glad. That helps me feel less bad about that long fall break.

The Time Change.

I have kind of been looking forward to the time change from daylight savings time to whatever it is usually called, standard time? The kids and I have been staying up really late and sleeping late too, so this is our opportunity to get up an hour earlier without it feeling like it is an hour earlier. I'm not crazy about the fact that it will be getting dark at 5:00 in the afternoon now, but youngest son, at least, is happy because of the no screen time until after the sun sets rule!
I'm hoping we can get school and work done earlier in the day and have more free time.

Halloween Costumes and Blog Notes.

We are going to a halloween party tomorrow night so we need to have costumes done by then. Youngest son wants to be a character he invented called Ninja Kid, daughter wants to be a witch and oldest isn't sure if he will dress up for the party but might want to be an android (he really needs to decide!). I went on a supply gathering mission today and I guess DH will be putting together the costumes tomorrow. He's really good at it. I hope it isn't raining tomorrow like it is today!

I had to take the fall pictures post down because for some reason, it was messing up the blog's sidebar. I'm going to try and share pictures 1 at a time to see if I can avoid problems with format.

My blog has now passed 20,000 page views. I think that's pretty cool, considering that I figured out a long time ago how to get it to not count me, so I think most of those must be other people, LoL. Thanks readers!

A few thoughts.

Just a few unrelated things that have happened around here this week, in no particular order.

Tonight, we were driving to my mom's and youngest son looked out the window of the car and saw some halloween decorations in someones yard. He said "Look, they've got the Grim Reaker in their yard." Lol.

Last night, also in the car, I asked my daughter how her afternoon playdate had gone. She thought I asked about the church meeting she had gone to. She said "We made paper dolls and then she talked for a long time." She meant the teacher of the group. I thought she meant her little 10 year old friend. I said "She talked for a long time? What did she talk about?" She said "Bosnia." I know I was getting kind of a confused look on my face. I said "Is she learning about Bosnia in school?" She said "She doesn't go to school." I said "I mean homeschool, is she learning about Bosnia in homeschool?" and my daughter said "What? Ms. Becky's not homeschooled!" We got a good laugh over her 10 year old friend talking at length about Bosnia, Lol. I just couldn't picture it.

I have noticed recently something interesting about my constant struggles to get the kids to exercise and be active. A couple of months ago I was telling them to go outside for an hour and they were resisting it. They didn't want to go outside. So I made them do 30 sit ups, 30 jumping jacks, 30 leg lifts etc., about half an hour worth of exercise. They did that for about a month and now all I hear is "Can we go outside instead?" Of course I say yes. *wink*

I've also limited all screen time to after the sun sets. That has made them do a lot more active play. Hopefully, this time I'll stick to it better. I'm very good at making a new rule like that and buckling when they complain to much, so wish me luck or determination or whatever it takes. My youngest son has 1 educational DVD that I do let him watch during the day and he's been watching that more, which is something I want so I'm happy about that.

Returning from fall break.

There was a lot of whining and complaining yesterday when we started back to school after fall break, which is exactly why I didn't want to take a fall break in the first place. I told the kids that we aren't taking a Christmas break at all this year. They can open their presents after they get their math done.
;-)

Sigh.

Younger kids bunk.

Older son's loft bed.

I promised a picture, so here's my son's loft bed.

Wake up and smell the coffee.

As I mentioned, youngest son wanted to get up at 7:00 a.m. this morning to watch cartoons. We don't have cable TV or satellite, so this is his only opportunity, really. Anyway, I agreed to wake him up. As a homeschooling, work at home mom, I usually just get up whenever I wake up which is usually about 8:00 to 8:30, so I needed an alarm clock. I don't have one; mine stopped working several months ago and I haven't replaced it. I could use DH's but it is really, really, really, heart attack loud, totally on the other side of the bed and I don't like to mess up his settings, because he might forget to reset it and end up late for work. So I had the idea to bring my tiny little coffee maker into the bedroom and set it to start brewing coffee at 7:00 a.m. Oh, it was wonderful to wake up to a gentle sound and the smell of coffee. I might do that from now on.

Car memory.

While we were driving home from Wal-mart tonight, youngest son reminded me that tomorrow is Saturday and he wants to get up at 7:00 to catch Saturday morning cartoons. I told him that he had to remind me when I was home, because reminding me in the car doesn't seem to help. I seem to forget everything I thought of in the car as soon as I get out of the it. When I'm at home, I can remember things I need at the store, but when I'm at the store, I have no idea. If I'm at the doctor's office I can think of everything I need to do as soon as I get home, but again, when I'm home ... I think the car is erasing my memory. That's the only explanation. It's not that I'm getting old or that I have too much on my mind, right?

The last day of fall break.

Today is the last official day of fall break. We have the weekend coming up and then Monday, we begin again. Hopefully, we'll feel renewed and invigorated by our break. Probably, we'll feel kind of sluggish and whiney, but at least we won't have to get up at 6:30 a.m. like the public schoolers will on Monday. Often, we take Mondays off but this week, I think we won't. I'm feeling kind of anxious to get started back. I'm not sure if it is guilt or some sense of responsibility or because I started reading through my KONOS book last night and got some good ideas. Maybe the break was a good idea?

Today, I'm reading the Carnival of Homeschooling.

It always takes me a couple of days to get these things read, as there are so many blog entries. Here is this weeks. Carnival Week 42. I'm working this morning and reading during the downloads. We're on dial-up so it can take a while!

The plan for today is to work on the fall cleaning, take pictures of the kids rooms, make sure to take the garbage out (better do that soon!) and go see how my parents are doing today. I might also check in on my aunt as I haven't seen her since last weekend. Sometime this weekend, I need to get the next few weeks of school planned. I really had better get busy!

The Lost Posts.

About 5 times this week, when we've been in the middle of doing something, something funny or cool has happened and I have thought that I'd put it on my blog, but by the time I actually have time to sit down here, it's gone - not only from my mind but from the minds of my children as well. I can't blame this on old age if the kids are forgetting it too, can I? I'm going to have to start walking around with a pen and paper in my pocket. (I don't have a PDA.)

Meanwhile, we're still organizing and cleaning and working at medical transcription and not doing school, although youngest son has voluntarily been working on his reading all week and doing well we won't mention that so as not to jinx it. Shhh.

Anyway, sorry about the lost posts. I'm sure you would have enjoyed reading them, but they are lost somewhere in the vastness of our great minds, LoL.

Yesterday, I did get some wonderful news, the library found the 7 books that they said that I had not returned and I was going to have to pay for. Turns out it was their error and not mine and I am overjoyed. Now I can check out books again!

Laundry.

I hardly ever have to do laundry anymore. As I type this, my washer and dryer are both running and I did not turn them on. My oldest son is doing laundry without being asked. It's a miracle! Actually, my 2 oldest kids have been doing a lot of laundry lately. I am not complaining. I just wish that there were a few other chores that they did without being told and without whining when they are told!

Fall break continues.

The problem with taking a fall break is getting back into school mode. We've been in fall cleaning mode today. We've finally gotten some time to clean and organize the kids rooms. At least we had today, I should say, with no crises. I'm not counting on getting to work on it tomorrow too, but I hope so. We've been searching the local classifieds and Craig's list and found a cool bunk for the younger kids room and a loft bed for older son's room. We've temporarily got the younger two together in a room and they are enjoying it. We finally got their bunk set up today and we will try to get older son's loft up tomorrow. We've been decluttering and trying to get all their toys organized, which is a really big job. It kind of looks like we may be doing a full 2 week fall break, other than that one day of school we did last week. We might do a couple this week too, just to prepare for next week, when we get started back at school, hopefully.

The search for jeans that fit.

My daughter has outgrown and worn out just about all her jeans and was down to 1 pair. The ones that she outgrew were 10 regular. Fortunately, she's had shorts and capris to wear all summer, but now that it's getting cold, she needs jeans. So, I took her to Wal-mart last week thinking she'd probably wear a girls size 12, but all the 12's were too small and all the 14s were too big. Today, I made a 30 minute drive to the next town over to get her some jeans at JC Penney, thinking since she was between a 12 and a 14, maybe either the 12 plus or the 14 slim would fit, but no, guess what size she got after trying on many, many pairs of pants? 10 regular. Weird. The good news is that Penney's is having a great sale today and the jeans were buy one pair, get the second pair for 88 cents!

Pumpkin Patch.

We went to a pumpkin patch today. It was pretty cold, but sunny and we had a pretty good time. There was a petting zoo, a hay maze, a corn maze, a hay mountain to climb, games for prizes, a concession stand, a playground, hayrides, pumpkins and best of all, homemade fudge. ;-) We came home with 3 pumpkins which we will carve in a couple of weeks.

A Drawing.

Everyone in this family is a better artist than me! This is a drawing my oldest son did of my youngest son. It was just a very quick, 1-2 minute sketch. I think it's pretty good.

Scheduling and structure.

We decided to do school today in a slightly different way. We have been very structured and working very hard on the basics so far this year and we toyed with the idea of taking a fall break. Because of doctor's appointments and errands we had this week, it seemed natural to take the last 3 days off but everything seems to go downhill if we don't have any structure at all. The youngest wants to play video games all the time, there is more fighting and it drives me crazy. We may just have to do modified "school" year round because that provides some kind of structure and we seem to need it.

Today, I required them to do the first 4 things on their regular lists, which include brushing their teeth, exercising, picking up in the living room and reading and we did 2 activities out of the Konos book. For their exercise today, instead of doing the usual sit ups, push ups, jumping jacks, etc., they asked to go outside. I okayed it and I haven't seen them since, except when they occasionally run by the window. One reason we started homeschooling was so that the kids could have more time to be kids and they are getting that today.

One of our activities today was to do observation and experiments to see what we could find out about gummy bears. It turns out that they do not float, don't bounce well, however, it is a lot of fun to melt them in the oven. We made charts and observation sheets. While the kids were exploring the differences between gummy bears and pecans (pecans don't melt and do float, for example) I decided to take a quick shower. When I came out, the kids informed me that there was a gummy bear stuck in the toaster. I guess I asked for that one, eh?

Anyway, we talked a bit about the scientific method, making hypotheses, recording observations, comparing, making charts, melting points, floating and sinking, transparent, translucent and opaque and how to open the bottom of the toaster to get things out. Who knew you could learn so much from a 50 cent bag of Gummy Bears?

Crabby.

Okay, we decided not to do traditional school again today. I've been working and the kids are supposed to be cleaning and filling up boxes with things we can take to Goodwill. This always makes them cranky. My older son decided to do a Mad-Lib to lighten the mood. He got the book and a pencil, sat down and said "I need an adjective" and my daughter snapped "Get it yourself!" LoL.

A break?

We haven't done any schoolwork this week. Of course, as I type this, it is only Tuesday, but still, we should have at least 1 day down. We got a late start this morning, took my daughter to get her cast off (yay!)and haven't done too much of anything else since. I'm thinking we may take tomorrow to get some things organized around here and heck, we might even go ahead and take fall break this week. I guess I need to decide that sometime before tomorrow afternoon ...

Okay now.

I'm better now from my fall. My daughter rubbed my back and I took some tylenol. I'm a little stiff but nothing serious. We're back to the usual homeschooling and questioning every item on the list, as in "Do I have to do grammar today?"

We are going to go to the orthopedist later today and hopefully my daughter will get her cast off. I need to take a picture of the way she's personalized it, had people sign it and written all over it with Sharpie markers before it gets sawed off today.

For now, though, back to work.

Not a typical Monday.

My Mom and Dad had a section of their house that they needed painted and we went over to help with it today. We got it done within a couple of hours but then when I was going to get some water to wash the brushes, I twisted my ankle and fell. Now I'm sore all over and definitely feeling my age. I don't bounce as well as I used to, apparently.

I'm going to figure out how to get one of the kids to rub my back and take some tylenol and hopefully I'll be as good as new again.

A good day.

The kids and I spent yesterday afternoon with my brother who doesn't have children of his own, so he helps me spoil mine. First we saw a movie, Open Season, then grabbed pizza and the boys went back to my brother's house to play x-box while the girl and I went shoe shopping. We finished the day with a trip to Baskins Robbins. Aah. It felt like a mini vacation.

We saw a sign at the movies mentioning matinees during fall break and realized that the public school kids are on fall break next week. Uh oh. I usually don't like the kids to find out about fall break until the second week, so we can get by with a one week break without excessive begging and whining, but now they know. I'm not sure whether we'll do regular school all week, just Konos, or nothing. Probably not nothing, because we started later than usual and I don't want to still be doing school in July. We'll see.

My movie review of Open Season - Grade C. It just wasn't entertaining. It wasn't objectionable, but it wasn't funny either.

A different B word.

My daughter has lately been using a very bad 'B word' lately, not the one you would usually think of but the word "bored." She comes to me quite frequently saying that she's bored, as if I am supposed to do something about it. I have tried assigning more school work or more chores. Last night, she was just chanting 'bored, bored, bored'. I got so tired of it that I completely banned the B word. If anyone says it, they are grounded for the rest of the day. She has a playdate this afternoon, so it's really working so far today. I haven't heard her say that word even once.

I feel better now.

I had my bubble bath last night, lit a candle and read in the tub for half an hour and that made me feel much better. I'm ready to tackle today, I think, though the first thing I did this morning was spill coffee, followed by spilling the creamer ... Anyway, I plan to get my work done, get school done and do some serious decluttering, all before 8:00 p.m. Thursday night TV is one of my indulgences and I want to get everything done before any of it comes on, so I can be ready to watch my shows.

Youngest son and I are still having some disagreements about our schedules and checklists for school. When I had a strict schedule, he didn't like it because he had to have everything done by a certain time. Now that I just have a checklist, he's been doing his math at 11:00 p.m. I think the teacher and the principal are going to have to have another conference about this.

Calgon???

I've been working hard at my job and at decluttering for the last couple of days. Today we worked hard on homeschooling. The trouble is, when I'm working on one thing, I feel like I'm slacking on something else. I've been slacking on the adoption dossier and my Cafepress store this week. I guess I just need to accept the ebb and flow of how things go and try to relax about it. I could be a lot more relaxed about everything if my house would stay clean though. I really need a housekeeper! The flylady is wonderful but I think I am too ADD/spacey to establish routines. I've been a member of her email group for a couple of years and have only established a couple of morning routines. Maybe if I stick with the program for another 10 years?

We still haven't gotten back to the KONOS curriculum book and have been working hard on the basics. I think maybe we should set aside 1 day a week for just KONOS? I don't know. I've struggled with trying to schedule it all in the entire time we've been homeschooling. The entire time. I still haven't come up with a way to get everything done. The housework slides. The library books are overdue. I find myself work, work, working and not taking any time to enjoy my life at all. I need to stop and smell the roses and play a game with the kids or something. Last night, we did do some Mad-Libs which are a lot of fun. Today, I haven't done anything remotely fun all day and I'm starting to feel sorry for myself and whine (sorry readers!). I think I may take a nice bubble bath and read a book as soon as I finish this 8 minute internal medicine consult I was just assigned. (It's 10:00 at night and I'm still working!)

Remember that old commercial where the lady said "Calgon, take me away?" Calgon, are you still there?

Tuesday.

I'm getting really creative at these blog post titles, aren't I? I seem to always want to name them after the day of the week. That might be a bit confusing though when looking through my archives, LoL.

Anyway, today was a pretty good day. We started out with the kids doing their checklists and me doing my work. They got about halfway done and I got about halfway done, then I decided that I wanted to go ahead and do some errands and go see my aunt at her new place, so we did.

It was a gorgeous day and a good day to be out and about. I took some things to the consignnment store (so that counts as housework, um, home ec.), went to see my aunt (socialization) and went and fed some goldfish in a pond (field trip!) and then we went dumpster diving (economics). Really, we were just getting some boxes from the dollar store dumpster which is always filled with nice, clean cardboard boxes. I'm going to use those in the fall cleaning/decluttering that we are doing around here.

Now I need to do the other half of my workday. Thank goodness my job is flexible so if the afternoon is nice, I can go out then and work later and thank goodness our school is flexible, for the same reason.

Okay.

I know you guys were wondering all day if I did my cleaning today. The answer is yes and no. I started cleaning this morning and then my boss called and asked me if I'd make an exception and work on my day off and help them get caught up. I did work a while and then did some more cleaning, so some cleaning got done and some work got done. It worked out okay I guess. I took some time this evening and picked out 5 Konos activities out of the book that I want to try and do tomorrow. I've made new checklist type schedules for the kids and we'll start with those tomorrow too. I'll let you know how that goes.

Today.

We did not accomplish much today, but had a pretty good day. I had planned to do some fall cleaning, but if I get any kind of chance at all to postpone something like that, I do. My aunt is moving to an apartment after 70 ish years of living in the same house and we gave her a kind of a send-off today. We all brought dinner to her house and had a little celebration. Needless to say, we didn't get any cleaning done.

I hope I will not think of a reason not to do the cleaning tomorrow. It really needs to be done. Knowing me, though, I'll think of something.

Saturday!

Even though they have school at home, the kids get Saturdays off. Youngest son is very much into Saturday morning cartoons and wants me to wake him up early on Saturday so he won't miss anything. Even though I have to work at my job, I'm usually glad to not have to be answering math, science and english questions while I work. Today though, youngest son is doing yesterday's math during the commercials, a compromise we finally agreed up after he was still working on his math late last night. As you can tell, he didn't follow the schedule and get his work done on time yesterday. He did lose all screen time yesterday because there is no screen time if the work isn't done, but I may have to think of worse consequences, because, let's face it, he's doing math on Saturday morning during the commercials. Sigh.

Bugs.

Last night, my youngest son was playing outside on the swingset at grandma's house when he got stung a couple of times on the finger. Later on, talking about it, he said "Those bugs have a bad attitude." I'm not sure where he got that one!

Fun?

It seems like the basics are all we are getting done lately, math, spelling and reading. We haven't been having any fun with our homeschool since the Medieval Feast. We haven't been doing much of anything from the Konos units. Maybe we need to work hard on the basics every other day? I'm just not sure how to work it all in. Anyone have any advice?

Today is my oldest son's 14th birthday. Where has the time gone? Happy birthday!

Busy.

I'm back to work today and the kids are back to school. We got a lot done yesterday. Besides spending the whole morning with the tech support guy from work, we took a bunch of things to Goodwill and the consignment store, returned books to the library, washed and waxed my Dad's car to thank him for letting us borrow it for a couple of weeks, picked up garbage where some animal had ripped open our garbage bags, cleaned the house a little (we never get completely done around here) and I worked a while on adding sweatshirts to my Cafepress store. I also worked on one of the adoption grant applications that we are applying for. Some of them are very long and detailed. I always feel good the day after a day when I get a lot done like that. A ton of things crossed off my list, a feeling of accomplishment. Now back to trying to balance work and homeschool. Sigh.

I would like to take this opportunity to show off my Cafepress Store. I'm quite proud of it. (Any money we get from sales in the store goes for our adoption agency fees.) Here is one of the sweatshirts I've recently added.
I'll add any design that anyone requests, just let me know.

The Lesson of the Day.

We don't always do school on Monday. It's my day off from work and sometimes it is the only day I get for a while. I worked yesterday, I'm off today (mostly) and I have to work tomorrow. Until next Sunday, that's it. So a lot of times on Monday we don't do school because we have so much other stuff to do. (As I've mentioned before, I calculated the schedule with and without Mondays and either way, we finish in June, so I'm not too concerned about it.)

Today I had to talk to the tech support guy at work off and on for several hours because something was wrong with my computer and he had to fix it. I had to stay in my office/bedroom to answer the phone and follow the instructions he gave me, so I assigned the kids a couple of chores to do while I was stuck in here.

They had to gather the library books (23!) and clean the living room. They are almost done now. They're taking a little longer because my daughter decided that the boys did not do a good job vacuuming and gave them both a vacuuming lesson. It was fun to listen to. According to the latest report, oldest son got an A- and youngest son got an A. Unfortunately, they'll both "forget" next time the vacuuming needs to be done and need to be shown again. Boys.

Rainy weather.

It's been raining, raining, raining here. Our county got 6 inches of rain this weekend according to 1 report. Everything here is wet. Isn't that crazy? It makes me want to stay inside and cook warm comfort food. We're having chili today.

Overheard in the Kitchen.

I heard my youngest son, this morning, saying "I can bend metal. I can bend metal." and then I heard oldest son say "Get out of the aluminum foil."

LoL.

A poem.

A child in my home, who wishes to remain nameless, wrote this poem yesterday while doing math problems. I thought it was cute.

I wrote another nine.
I forgot to draw the line.
I was trying to write an I.
I wrote a D instead.
I think I'm going crazy.
You better check my head.

Routine.

Things seem to be getting in somewhat of a routine around here lately. The basics are going reasonably well; much better than last year. I think the kids are making progress in what they are learning. I can see that my youngest is reading better every day and feeling more confident. We're not doing as much in the Konos book as we were when we were doing the Kings and Queens unit and I guess I need to work on that a bit, if we are going to get this big old unit done this year.

We started a Spanish class on Tuesday. We missed what we thought was the first class meeting the day we took my daughter to get her cast on, but it turns out that it was the second meeting, so we showed up thinking we'd be a little bit behind at the second class and it was the third class and we were way, way behind. I'm not sure if we can study enough to catch up or not! We'll definitely take a look at the vocabulary list today. This is a really good opportunity, too good, I think, for us to drop out. It's a free Spanish class taught by a high school Spanish teacher. Hmmm. We'd better study.

Yesterday and Today.

Yesterday I couldn't get into blogger to post for some reason so today I just have all kinds of things to write about. I kept thinking of things yesterday and couldn't put any of them into writing and now the moment is kind of gone, but I'll still give it a try.

Bread - About 6 months or so ago, we decided to switch our family to whole grain bread because it is healthier. The younger 2 kids just couldn't stand it for a while, then they started eating it, but when I accidently picked up white bread about 2 months ago, they were so excited and ate it happily. Then this week I picked up a loaf of white bread to make sandwiches for a picnic, there were 1 or 2 slices left in the bag when I was done and yesterday my daughter referred to it as that 'yucky white bread'. Now she prefers the wheat bread. Weird how that works, isn't it? I remember when I made my husband switch to skim milk. Every few weeks I'd buy a lesser percent, 2% then 1%, then skim. One day he looked sadly at his cereal bowl and said "There's less milk in my milk every week." Funny how we adjust and even prefer the healthier choice after a while. We've also switched to whole wheat tortillas and spaghetti.

Bank of Dad - My husband has started a 'virtual' account for the kids allowances and birthday money to go into. Then when they are out with me, if they see something they want to spend their money on, I'll buy it and the money comes out of their virtual account. This has lead to some funny looks we've gotten in stores from people who hear the kids ask "How much money do I have in my virtual account?" We also have been teaching them to write checks although we haven't been making them write one for every withdrawal, I think we might start. It'll be good practice.

Questions - The night before last, I was pretty much asleep in my bed when my youngest son appeared beside my bed and said "What would you do if you were stranded on a deserted island with a cup, a bowl and a roll of Glad Press and Seal wrap?" Huh? Appparently he's been watching Zoom on PBS again. They did an experiment having to do with getting drinking water using plastic wrap and collecting condensation or something like that. I'm not sure what the bowl is for. I think he came up with the Glad Press and Seal wrap part on his own. Apparently, he thinks that will work better. Still, when I was sleeping peacefully and then awakened suddenly, this seemed like kind of a weird question. Maybe it's just me?

We did it.

We did proceed with school as usual. The way I've got things set up right now, there is not a lot of prep work for me so I can kind of wing it. The kids have their math, spelling, reading, PE and chores detailed on the daily schedule and the only thing I really have to do any preparation for is the Konos activities that we do in the afternoon. We've barely started the unit on inquisitiveness and I've just picked a few activities for each day that were easy. We've been learning about how to find out information, which is basically a review for the older two and the youngest is learning about the Dewey Decimal System and how to alphabetize and look things up in the dictionary. It's really been a piece of cake so far. Later on in the unit, there probably will be more prep work but right now, it's kind of nice.

Monday.

Sometimes we do school on Mondays and sometimes we don't. I figured out a schedule both ways and either way we end up at a reasonable time, late May to mid June. I count the attendance days as we go and when we get to 180, we'll be done. For today, I still haven't decided. We may just work on cleaning the house today. Maybe after my second cup of coffee I'll be able to decide. To school or not to school, that is the question.

Cute book and CD.

We discovered this at the library the other day. It's cute. I think it's probably meant for littler kids than mine, but we've gotten a kick out of it. I especially love the song by Allison Kraus. If we do get to adopt a baby, that'll be her song.

The News.

My youngest son decided to watch the news this morning. I was working and he kept running in to tell me updates. "A guy was in a car accident." and "It's not going to rain today!". It was very cute. Then, this afternoon, he decided to watch the news again. After a few minutes, he said "That girl is telling the same stories she told this morning, and showing the EXACT same pictures! Why doesn't she tell something new?" LoL.

The Carnival of Homeschooling.

There is a lot to the carnival this time. It has taken me a couple of days to read through it, in little snatches of time here and there, but it's worth the effort. Here it is.

My Iced Tea Habit.

I'm trying to lose weight and part of that includes trying to give up my iced tea habit. I have been drinking 4-5 glasses of sweet, wonderful iced tea each day. As of yesterday, I cut that down to 1 with the intent of going down to 0. It has been very hard on me. I'm starting to drink water instead which, of course, is very healthy and very tasteless. Still, I need to do it. Sigh.

The Choice. (ta da!)

By popular vote the kids chose Inquisitiveness for our next KONOS unit study. There are 43 weeks of studies under this unit. It is a whopper. If we do the whole thing, we won't need another unit for the rest of the year. It has a complete earth science curriculum in it, instructions on how to write a research paper, geography, mapping, way too much to name (especially since I carried the book to the orthopedist's office to work on while waiting and left it in the car!) It's really something. I've been enjoying just reading through the activities. I'm going to try something a little different this time. I'm making notebooking pages for the kids to use to notebook the unit, with the vocabulary words and things like that to use as a guide, to make sure we've studied everything we want to out of this huge unit. I'm excited to get started on it. We may go ahead and do a quick look at the military unit which is under Obedience, right after the Kings and Queens/medieval unit we just did, because the boys are interested in that.

For those dear readers who don't know, KONOS is a complete curriculum for K-8 grade and it will cover all the basics when supplemented with language arts and math, for those of you who are wondering how I'm going to teach everything the kids need to know. I'm aware of scope and sequence and the KONOS book has the same scope, but maybe a difference sequence or order than what the public schools are teaching. Just to be on the safe side, I plan to buy The Checklist and check things off that we have studied. We'll get there and we're having a good time on the trip too. I really like this curriculum.

My older son is doing the Alpha Omega Lifepak curriculum for 9th grade, but he also participates in the hands-on, fun stuff we do for KONOS and he will be writing a research paper this year. ;-)

Just a quick update.

HEALTH NEWS:
My daughter broke her left arm, again. It's only been a few months since the last time. Technically, that time, it was her hand and this time, it is her forearm, both bones. The kids were playing a game involving jumping over a string and she jumped, tripped and fell. Consequently, I did not get to work as much as I wanted to last night, because we were in the ER. Tomorrow she gets a cast on and I guess we'll just go from there. We need to do school tomorrow, so I guess she'll be doing it one-handed.

SCHOOL NEWS:
I'm going to let the kids pick our next Konos unit and depending on what it is, we may start it tomorrow. If I need to gather a lot of books and materials, we'll wait a couple of days. We could use extra work on the 3Rs anyway.

WEIRD NEWS:
One of our lizards (green anoles) shed it's skin today and it was pretty creepy looking. We've recently acquired the lizards and the two of them and the live crickets that the eat have taken up residence in oldest son's bedroom.

Other than that, things are going along here in the usual crazy way.

Back to work.

It's been a very slow week at my job. The hospitals have not been sending as much work as usual, so I've had more free time this week, which is good from the standpoint of free time, but bad for the old paycheck. Today, they've sent tons, so guess where I will be all weekend long ... working. Oh joy.

Morning Glories.

I wasn't kidding when I said that now that my camera cord was found, I was going to show you all the pictures I took this summer! Okay, maybe not every single one, but here's one of my morning glories. I really have enjoyed them this year.

Sunflowers.

Okay, now that my camera cord is found, you all will have to look at every picture I've taken this summer ... so here are some pictures of our sunflowers that got taller than the roof this year.

Linc's Bad Day, episode III.

Our cat Linc leads a wildly exciting life. He has gotten his entire head stuck in a ziplock bag and got stuck in a tree before and I have blogged about him. This time, he got a hematoma in his ear, which means that his ear blew up like a balloon and he had to go to the vet for surgery. Now he has a permanently droopy ear. He's still very handsome, I think.

Middle Ages Helmets.

These pictures were actually taken at the Kentucky State Fair. The Frasier Historical Arms Museum brought these replicas for people to try on. We had a lot of fun with it.

Coat of Arms/ Crowns.

Medieval Feast - The table.

Pictures from the Medieval Feast.

Organizing.

Now that our feast is over, we've mostly concluded our Kings/Queens/Medieval Unit and we will take a few days to get reorganized before proceeding. I'm thinking of moving our school work area into my daughter's bedroom for a couple of reasons. First, my DH is home in the morning and would like to watch TV after work, but the TV is only a few feet from the kitchen table and there's no door between the living room and kitchen (small house!). Second, if we want to eat at the kitchen table, we have to clear off all the homeschool stuff. We got a new bunk/loft bed for my daughter's room (cheap, through a homeschool loop!) and we will be setting that up in there and then we will see if there's enough room for a small table we can use to do our work on.

I'm also not sure what unit we will do next. The medieval study was kind of a review and I just let my daughter choose what she wanted to learn about, from the book. I don't know if I'll continue with the obedience unit or if we'll do a chronological study or if we'll let one of my sons choose a unit next. We're still doing math and language arts and PE in the mornings and organizing in the afternoons. I didn't want to stop school altoghter to get organized. We've got some good momentum going on our basic studies in the morning and I don't want to loose it!

The Feast Went Well.

I think everyone enjoyed most of it. I think I must've done something wrong on the bubble and squeak, because it wasn't good, but everything else turned out okay. Our family usually doesn't do anything much for labor day, so this gave us a reason to get together and celebrate something, I guess in a way we were celebrating homeschooling. The kids decorated and set the table while I finished the cooking and DH went to the store for the rotisserie chicken, so it was really a team effort. I'll post some pictures when I can.

Medieval Feast and Other Things.

We're in the midst of preparations for our medieval feast, which is tomorrow. The menu is going to be rotisserie chicken (from the store), bubble and squeak, toad in a hole, lentils and pie (which is supposed to be mincemeat, but an emergency substitution for pecan was made) along with baked apples. All of this will be served on trenchers and we will be drinking apple cider from goblets. Costumes are optional, but the kids will be dressing up. We've made tapestries to decorate the room and we will have a jester (youngest son) performing between courses. It should be interesting to try and eat these dishes without forks as we understand that forks were not used in the middle ages, only spoons, knives and hands.

Regarding my posting times, below, I see they are being set back 3 hours and I may try to figure out how to fix it one day when I'm not printing out recipes and trying to get ready for a feast. (I am the queen you know!)

Update on the X-Box 360 that my son won, he has a few games now. A kind friend has loaned us a few. I tried to talk him into selling it and buying toys, but no luck. He wants to keep it.

Schedule note - Of course I made a few changes to the schedule. I can't leave it alone, now can I? Since the kids never seemed to be sure what to do when I listed "exercise" I put a list of exercises down at the bottom for them to refer to. I'm adding more writing in for my daughter and more reading for youngest son. For oldest son, I'm going to start assigning books for him to read. I've been letting him choose his own books and he's been reading Star Wars as we study medieval times. I tried not to mess with the actual times because my oldest son does not like it when I change the times or the schedules.

My Posting Times.

One of my dear readers pointed out that my posting times make it look like I am always up and about at 5:00 - 6:00 in the morning. I looked back at the posts and it does look like I never sleep! I assure you, I do. Except for occasional episodes of reflux that keep me up at night sometimes, I sleep from about midnight to about 8:00 a.m. Just to experiment, I'm posting this one. It is 1:33 p.m Eastern Standard Time according to my computer clock. I wonder what time blogger will say I posted it?

Medieval Studies/Kings and Queens.

We're getting ready to do a medieval feast for our kings/queens middle ages unit and the preparations are under way. The kids are making tapestries and crowns and we'll get with my mom this weekend to make costumes. We are trying to plan a menu of foods that people really ate in the middle ages. The kids are going to hand write invitations on paper that we've tried to make look aged by dying it with coffee. We found a CD of medieval music at the library. I hope it turns out to be an event that they remember for a long time and enjoy. I'll try to post pictures if the person who took my camera cord from my computer ever brings it back. (Hint. Hint.)

Today.

Today we got quite a bit accomplished in school. We are working in KONOS in the kings and queens/middle ages section under the obedience unit. We've been learning quite a bit. I went ahead and started my 3rd grader in Sequential Spelling which I hope will help his reading. It's funny how the youngest is the opposite of my 2 older kids. His reading is a bit behind and his math reasoning is out of this world. The other two kids are good readers but struggle a little bit with math. I'm getting a lot of good stuff for notebooking the middle ages unit here at Highland Heritage Forms. This is a great web site!

For lunch, I made beans and brown rice, which I haven't made for a long time and apparently it was quite interesting to the younger two kids. My youngest kept running into where his 13-year-old brother was reading and reporting things like "The rice is brown when it comes out of the package. You don't have to cook it for it to be brown." and "The beans are white." (They were great northern beans.) My older son takes this all in stride and makes remarks like "That's cool." and "That's interesting." He's going to be a great Dad some day. ;-)

The Winner?

My youngest son entered a contest run by a TV network to win an XBox. He actually won and it arrived today. An XBox 360 with 3 games. Unfortunately, only one of the games would play on the XBox 360 and it was one he does not like, some kind of basketball game. The other 2 were compatible only with the old XBox. We've had a very frustrated 8 year old around here this afternoon.

Day Off.

The kids get a day off school today. DH and I are off work today and have some errands to run. (One of them is picking up our completed homestudy!) Mondays are like that though. It's my day off work and sometimes we get twice as much schoolwork done, it seems like, and sometimes we get nothing done, like today. Homeschool life is just like that, I guess. As long as we get our 180 days of school done this year, it will be fine. That's one thing I really like about homeschooling, the flexibility. So far, this year, we've done 11 days of school.

Purple Toes.

Friday, I was moving my younger son's bed and dropped a large part of it on my right big toe. The previous day my older son had been playing badminton and decided to move the big pole that held the net and dropped that on his right pinky toe (We don't use the dinky little net poles that come with it). Now each of us has a purple and very painful toe. We've been limping around and feeling sorry for ourselves. I don't think either of our toes are broken, just bruised. We decided in a very silly moment the other night that we would form a purple toe club and all you had to do to join it was drop a heavy object on your foot. So far, we've had no takers.

New schedule, day one.

It went pretty well, actually. There was a tiny bit of whining, but they did it. By 3:30, school was completely done. It was much, much better than the day before, when school was dragging on into the evening hours. I've also found a threat that works well, 10 extra chores. I told my youngest that he could whine about his work if he wanted to, but I was going to be making a list of the 10 extra chores I wanted done. He decided to quit whining and get it done.

We'll see how it goes next week.

A solution, maybe?

I decided that the kids needed a schedule, rather than just a list of things to do, to help them have an order to do them in and a time limit to have them done by, with consequences if they don't have them done in time. They have a scheduled time for breakfast and lunch, a scheduled time for PE, math, reading and KONOS and the consequences for not doing them on time will be either extra chores or loss of privileges. I just don't want my 8 year old doing his math at 9:00 p.m. again like he was last night. I want it done during the daylight hours!

Of course if you've been reading this blog, you know I'm always scheduling and listing and so far, we haven't been too good about getting things done on time. This schedule is simple and hopefully, that will help. I'll give you all an update in a week or two.

Is it too soon?

Okay, it'll be 2 weeks tomorrow and I'm starting to get a case of burnout. Can that be possible? I'm already getting irritated at the kids for not doing what they need to do when I need for them to do it. I seem to be getting a lot of "I'll do that later." and while a lot of the things that they are doing are not bad things, they are just not the things that I need them to do so I can check them off as done. I'm getting frustrated with everyone Grrr. Actually, this sounds like just plain old frustration instead of burnout. I'm frustrated at the kids, at DH and at myself for procrastinating. We all need that procrastination book I procrastinated about getting last week.

Field Trip!!!

Here in Kentucky, going to the state fair is an excused absence from school, since school starts at least a week before the fair starts, these days, and school groups can get reduced price fair tickets. We got some from our homeschool group and made a trek to the fair yesterday. I hadn't been since I was a teenager. It is really something. We had a good time and at least the 2 younger kids want to go back today. My official position on that is "not unless your Dad takes you."

Here's a partial list of the things we did and saw: a rock climbing wall, an obstacle course, tropical fish (Nemo!), a giant kalidoscope, a giant world map, a giant globe hanging from the ceiling, a demonstration of extreme biking, several bands including 1 big name free concert, rides, fishing pond (for a prize), up close and personal to a police car, a helicopter, a city bus, army trucks and tanks and a tractor, pigs, goats, sheep, hatching baby chicks, pedal car racing and toured a portable history museum. We also saw a display of armor, swords and chain mail and the kids got to try them all on. The swords are surprisingly heavy.

Overall, it was very educational and very fun. I think we saw maybe 1/20 of the available things to see.