Weekend.

I'm working this weekend and trying to balance that with the fact that my sister is visiting and I'd like to see her. I'd also like to invite her to my house, which she's never seen, but it's going to need a leetle cleaning before anyone sees it. And I'm not sure how I'm going to accomplish that with work and with the fact that I did something to my knee yesterday to aggravate an old injury and now it hurts to walk. Anyway, I'm going to work as hard as I can this morning, try and get pretty much done and see what the afternoon brings.

This is pretty much the last weekend to order from Cafepress with economy shipping for Father's Day. You can still shop up until June 5, but you'll have to pay a lot more for shipping. Cafepress.

Good sale!

It was a great homeschool book sale. I got quite a few things I'll be able to use. I got a good basic grammar book for my daughter, a good American history resource for my oldest, several cool-looking science books, several books on improving reading and writing skills for my youngest, several just for fun books, 5 computer games for 25 cents each and more - so much stuff I could barely tote it around. The weight of it split the first bag I was carrying and I had to get another one. Before I'd made it back to the van, that one had split too. The thing that's cool about these sales is that you get to look at resources all together in one place, find things you've never heard of, open them up and decide if they'll work for you. You can also talk to the other homeschooling moms about how they've used the resources and get the benefit of their experience.

After the sale, we went to one of my favorite restaurants in the world, McAlister's Deli. I love their broccoli soup in a bread bowl and their New York cheesecake. Wonderful. The prices are very reasonable and they donate all tips to charity, how cool is that? (At least in the Louisville location we were in today).

All in all, a good day.

The last day, kind of.

Today's the last day for our regular schedules. For June, we'll still have school, but we'll be mixing it up a bit. Tomorrow we have the book sale and homeschool fair. I'm very excited about going. I like a chance to look at the books, pick them up and look at the inside and think about whether I can use them in our homeschool. I'm also going to be on the lookout for books just to read and computer games that help with basic skills. Since I'm working on decluttering, I'd probably better take a bunch of stuff down there to sell as well! I need to think about that today and maybe pick some books out to take.

Monday, Monday, Monday and the TV schedule.

We're doing the Monday schedule every day this week. The reason is that the Monday schedule has an hour of cleaning instead of an hour of exercise for the kids. Cleaning is kind of exercise-y isn't it? We've been decluttering, sweeping, mopping, carrying decluttered items to the car, etc. That's all physical kind of stuff, so really, it counts. I'm not sure how educational it is, but everyone needs to know how to clean up after themselves, right?

The new TV and video schedule is working pretty well. My oldest son actually LIKES it, can you believe that? He and I had a discussion yesterday about how he tends to want to be 'plugged in' all the time and now he can't and he's enjoying getting outdoors and doing other things, playing his guitar and reading more. They are all following it well without really complaining. It's nice and it is so much easier to keep up with than 3 individual TV/video/computer schedules. All devices can be on at particular times of day and must be off the rest of the time. Period. When I started doing this, I had different hours for different days of the week. Now they're all the same with the exception of Saturday when they get more time for Saturday morning cartoons, which is very important to my youngest.

Finish line.

We can see the finish line for school now and that makes it increasingly difficult to get it done. We got a new pool and once that is installed, it's going to be even more difficult, but we'll get it done. I'll have to set up a summer schedule that lets us get those hours in as painlessly as possible. The Carnival of Homeschooling is about the end of school this week.




I'm reading a book on clutter and we spent yesterday working a little on decluttering with a trip to Goodwill at the end of the day. Starting today, I've got to get work caught up and even ahead because my sister is coming to visit this weekend and I want to spend some time with her.

Yes, it is a holiday, but no, we're not taking the day off.

My youngest son and I just had this conversation. We need to get these school days done, so we're going to do it now and get it overwith. I'm printing the lists and we're going for it this week. Next week we'll be switching the way we do things a little. My oldest son is going to take the American History CLEP in June or July (they won't let us know the exact date yet, which is annoying!) and so he's going to put away his other subjects for a bit and study American History and the other 2 will be working most on the areas they need the most help in. Over the summer, we are going to do some geography read-alouds as soon as I figure out which ones and that will help us get some hours in to finish out this year and get a start on next years hours.

Some homeschoolers count things like church, 4H etc. as school but I don't. I count the all-day field trips that we do with the homeschool group as school days, but the 4H and everything that's after school is just extracurricular. If I counted those hours, we'd probably be way over, but since I don't, we are still doing school. We'll just go to our modified schedule next week and play it by ear from there, depending on when the CLEP test gets scheduled.

Got to get a better schedule/Questions.

We've got to get into the habit of going to bed earlier. We've gotten worse and worse and now we start going to bed around 11:00ish. It starts with putting the dogs out and finishing whatever we're doing. We congregate in my bedroom. Then we listen to whatever book we're reading (we've been doing audio books lately) and then when it's done and it's actually time to sleep, the kids start procrastinating about it. My daughter will start a beading project while listening to the book and want to finish it, or my son will start playing a game of some sort or start reading something else and we'll usually actually get to sleep around 12:00, 12:30 or even 1:00 a.m. Then the next morning, I'll let them sleep in a little bit because they need sleep, right? Every week new studies come out about how not sleeping causes obesity and heart disease and everything else. Today, we're going to church so I'm going to wake them at 8:30. Then tonight maybe we'll get to bed earlier!

We went to drop some things off at a consignment store the other day and I guess the workers in there were bored because they started asking my kids tons of questions about school. It started with "I bet you can't wait to get out of school, can you?" Then "When do you get out?" and "What school do you go to?". At this point, I admitted that we homeschool. Then, after a stunned silence the questions began again. "So is your teacher hard to get along with?", "Do you get up early?" and then to me "What kind of testing to you have to do?" "Do you have to have a teaching degree?" etc. Whew.

Plans.

My plans for today including working until about noon, then taking a break and hitting some area yard sales, then coming back and working some more. This is the best way to do a Saturday work schedule in my opinion. I'm a little uncomfortable today because of the poison ivy I've got on both arms and both legs from all that weed-trimming I did the other day. I saw the poison ivy and thought I had avoided it, but sadly, I did not. Fortunately for me, I'm no where near as allergic as my oldest son. When he gets it, he gets it really, really bad. I'll probably just itch for a couple of days and then be over it. Hopefully.

I forgot.

I totally forgot afternoon school this afternoon. We had decided previously to go see our friend's cat's kittens and we just ran off and saw them. Very cute. They are about 3 weeks old. It's funny, but they though it was a boy cat until about 3 weeks ago!

Then, since we were kind of near a town, we decided to go shopping. We were looking for swim shirts for the younger 2 kids. We found one my youngest son in the first store. Finally, after going to about 100 more stores (not really), we finally found something my daughter liked. We got a bathing suit at K-mart and a swim shirt at Old Navy to go over it. It's complicated. Anyway, we got it done, but now she's not sure if she likes it.

I guess we'll do our afternoon school tomorrow afternoon!

Another pretty day here in Kentucky. Definitely a good day for a walk. It's been cool and pleasant all week. Someone said that we are going to have a mild summer this year. That will be so nice. I don't enjoy when it gets so terribly hot. We've been working on getting our summer planned, putting VBS and a small vacation on the calendar, park days, field trips and pool time. I want to go camping at least one time this summer. I've wanted to go for years, but never have made it. Maybe this year is our year. My sister is coming here for another visit so it will be good to see her again. The kids can't wait until the city pool opens so we can go there, but if it doesn't warm up, they'll freeze! Right now I'm going to simultaneously work, look for good hotel deals in St. Louis and look for resources on Oceania. :-)

Another picture of our house from the road. Doesn't it look better now that we mowed and did all that weed-trimming? :-P

Here it is, finally.

The picture that I tried to post so many times yesterday.

What a gorgeous day today.

I took this photo while we were on our walk today. We're trying to get mom back in better shape so I can keep up this summer at the state fair, the zoo, etc. I have slacked off on my exercise, although I've been making the kids exercise more. Not fair and not good for me either, so I'm trying to reform myself so we've been trying to go walking most days.

The kids and I had a meeting today to see how to finish the school year. I wanted to see if they wanted to abandon our unit studies and start again next year or keep going. We've finished Europe and they decided to do one more continent. We decided on Oceania which is Australia, New Zealand and some of the South Pacific Islands. We'll do Asia and Africa next school year.

I'm thinking quite a bit about the science day I'm teaching in a couple of weeks. I'm thinking of doing some chemistry, maybe making models of atoms, doing alka-seltzer rockets and mentos and coke explosions and then I'd like to throw in some kind of science art. Does anyone have any suggestions for that?

Well, dang it, just imagine a pretty blue sky because I can't upload the photo, no matter what I do.

I voted.

But not happily. I don't like any of the candidates much.

Overheard at our house tonight.

"For my birthday, I'm going to get a Nintendo DS. I want either blue or white.

I think I'll get blue.


Or white.


(insert squeally kind of tween sound here)


I don't know!"

Starting out slowly.

I was so tired last night that I couldn't go to sleep and consequently slept in this morning to almost 9:00. It's after 11:00 a.m. right now and I haven't even started work. I'm having to do an update which I should have remembered to do yesterday and with our slow internet, it's probably going to take a while. While it's doing whatever it needs to do, I'm trying to plan the science day I agreed to do for the homeschool group on June 2. The main problem with it is deciding what to do. I want to out-do Mad Science. Remember when they came to our homeschool group meeting and I was completely underwhelmed. I want my science day to be more fun and more educational, actually, come to think of it, that shouldn't be all that hard. Even twice as fun and twice as educational isn't much to aim for. (Can you tell I was really, really not impressed by Mad Science?)

Getting it done.

I had a good day today, getting a bunch of things done. I love when I can just check things off and that's what I got to do today. I'm tired, but it's a good tired. I got a couple of hours of cleaning in this morning, some laundry, some decluttering with some things going to Goodwill. Then we did school, the quick version, then I got to sit down and watch Ugly Betty that we'd recorded last Thursday. (really good episode!) Then we were off to town to get an ID card for my oldest so that he can take the CLEP tests, to Lowes to get concrete to finish our sidewalk we started last summer, to Game Stop (not my idea), to Walmart. I got back home just in time to use the weed eater for an hour before Dancing with the Stars. I'm pulling for Christy to win at this point. I think it's time a girl won again.

*I wrote this last night and accidently saved it as a draft, instead of publishing it, so I published it this morning. Oh well.

Lots to do.

I've got lots to do today. I love when I have a 'blank' day on my calendar. Of course it always fills up with a ton of things to do, but after a couple of days of sitting here at my computer typing, I'm ready for a change of pace. I'm toying with the idea of changing my day off from Monday to another day because there's always a ton of work in the queue on Mondays and not so much on Wednesdays and Thursdays or even working longer some days and going to a 4 day work week. I'm not sure how that would impact everything else. One of the women in my homeschool group works on Tuesday and Thursday and is off Monday, Wednesday and Friday so I don't want to work the opposite schedule from her because that would affect field trip scheduling. We'd never be able to go as a group. I guess it requires a little bit more thought and maybe I should email my boss? Technically, since I'm an independent contractor with their company, they can't dictate my schedule, but that doesn't keep them from trying!

SATURDAY, the week in review.

S - Sadness. I spent some time this week feeling sad for an old friend of mine who is fighting a battle with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma and is not winning. She has been given about 2 weeks. She has 2 little boys.

A - Anticipating the end of the school year, thinking about what to do this summer and what to do next year.

T - Transcription. All weekend, that's what I'll be doing.

U - Underwater. My son has wanted to be underwater all week, because he got a new snorkle.

R - Reading. I'm reading a children's book called Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry. Weird, but interesting.

D - Dial up. This is the kind of internet we have. I hate it and it makes my work so much longer and such a pain.

A - Anticipating Monday when I am off work! (Yes I used anticipating for both "A"s. I couldn't think of anything else.)

Y - Yay! The TV/video game schedule is working pretty well. It is easier for me to keep up with, they are doing other things like playing outside, board games and art. I honestly think they kind of like it.

Friday.

Today we went to see Prince Caspian with the homeschool group. Our theater does field trips for local schools, opening earlier than usual and having a special price. They'll let our group tag along on these as well, so we get admission, popcorn and a drink for 6.00 each. Not too bad. We heard people talking on the radio last night about whether this movie would be scary for young kids and no one seemed to know, so I looked it up this morning before we went. I have a couple of kids who don't like anything scary at all in a movie. The review I read said there were a lot of nonbloody battle scenes and that was all. Unfortunately, there was a time when the white witch was trying to lure Prince Caspian over to the 'dark side' for lack of a better term, which did scare my youngest. He and I had to spend about 5 minutes standing in the hall of the theater. So my advice is to skip it if you have very sensitive young kids. Other than that, we enjoyed it. I need to read the book though because I feel like I'm missing some background material, like I didn't get the whole story.

Would you?

We go to Baskin Robbins on their annual 31 cents scoop night and occasionally we go on dollar scoop night on Tuesdays, but I am way too cheap to pay their regular price. Tonight, we drove by there on the way to the skating rink. Youngest son asked me this question. "If you found a lottery ticket and it wasn't used and you won a bunch of money, would you take us to Baskin Robbins tonight?"

Yes.

A few things.

Today we're doing school and work as usual. My mind is going forward to see how we are going to end this school year, what kind of summer routine we'll have, if any, what we may start with next year, etc. I'm still holding off buying anything until the May 30 local homeschool book sale. I've made a wish list which I currently can't find in this mess on my desk. I'll need to find that before we go to the sale!

I'm considering joining an educational co-op in a neighboring town next fall. I think it would be cool for the kids to meet some more homeschoolers and take art, cooking, science and karate classes, but I'll have to teach or help in some way and I'm not sure what I could do or how well my youngest will do in a group setting. He gets a little self conscious sometimes about his slow reading. I might either put him in a class with his sister or be the teacher's assistant in all his classes. I'll have to give that some thought.

Finally, a couple of conversations we've had around here, with the youngest, of course. That boy is just interesting. He's one of those creative, right-brained learners who is slow in some types of left brain dominant activities like reading and quick in everything else. Anyway this morning he was telling me that he's invented a super hero named Stan who uses toys in unusual ways, as in the 'soccer ball of death' and once used dominos to build stairs to climb out of a volcano.
Last night, he was wondering what if someone ate an egg that they thought was a chicken egg but it was really a phoenix egg and from then on, their stomach would catch on fire and explode and then a new stomach would rise from their old stomach's ashes ... I told you the boy was interesting.

I've also been trying to get work done and update my Cafepress store for Father's Day.

I can't believe how quickly this week has zipped by!

"Quit snorkeling in the sink and brush your teeth."

Just another one of the really interesting things I have to say sometimes. My mom got my youngest a snorkel and mask set at a yardsale last week and he's been trying to stick his head into every body of water he can find, to test it out, all week. Well, not the bathtub of course. He seems to be allergic to getting in the bathtub, but the creek/gully near our house and the sink, those are okay.

Not Much.

I can never think of a title. I can't say that we did anything of all that much importance today. We did a little school, a little work. I had a doctor's appointment in Louisville and was gone about 2 hours and 20 minutes - one hour to drive there, one hour to drive back and 20 minutes total office, parking garage and elevator time. It went well. We did school when I came back. Right in the middle of the unit on Eastern Europe, the publisher of the study has thrown in some chemistry, so we went out back on the deck and blew a few things up. ;-) We mixed vinegar and baking soda and blew the lid off of a bowl. It didn't work as well as it does in a film canister, but we didn't have any of those since all our cameras are digital now. I need to find some before our science day at the park on June 2, so we can do alka-seltzer rockets - always fun. Here are our water molecule models from yesterday.

Buggy.

This is buggy, a rare life form.

And this is its only known predator.


(This was youngest son's idea.)

Counting the Days.

I'm trying to decide how to do our last days of school. Some people do half days all summer, some do one or two subjects. In the past, I've done some reading of fiction books that go along with our studies in the summer but not much else. My oldest son has a CLEP test on either June 16, June 30 or July 14. They won't let us know until probably the Saturday before the test on Monday, so that's hard to plan around. I don't really want to end school for the rest of us and have the oldest continuing to study but I might. I may drop most of our studies and go to a modified schedule through June, which includes him studying his American History every day and the others brushing up on the skills they need the most work on.

PS: My daughter looks at my calendar every day and frequently circles everything that looks fun, sometimes multiple times. :-)

Today.

I had a very nice Mother's day complete with cake, chocolate, presents, a lunch I didn't have to cook, family and thoughtful cards. I hope yours was at least as good.

Now that it's evening and the festivities are over, I'm at my desk to do a little blogging, a little reading and a little work.

Happy Mother's Day.

We're going to see my mom and my husband's mom today. I hope everyone has a great day!

Husband Tag. I was tagged by Amy.

What is his name? Deron
How long have you been married? 19 years
How long did you date? 4 years.
How old is he? 42
Who eats more? Him.
Who said I love you first? He did
Who is taller? He is
Who sings better? Me.
Who's temper is worse? Hard to say.
Who does the laundry? Both.
Who does the dishes? Both but mostly me.
Who sleeps on the right side of the bed (when you are facing it)? Me
Who pays the bills? Him.
Who cooks dinner? Both, but usually me.
Who mows the lawn? Him.
Who drives when you are together? He does. My driving scares him.
Who has more friends? No clue.
Who has more siblings? We both have the same now that I've found my long lost sister.
Who wears the pants in the family? Him, but I definitely make my opinion known.

Friends.

I've been blessed with a wonderful homeschool group. Good kids, nice dads and especially a very nice group of moms. We get to go for mom's nights out, where we play trivia games and eat wonderful snacks, we go to the movies, we go out to eat, we take the kids to the park, the skating rink and field trips. I'm so glad I've found this group! We can also sit around and brainstorm ideas on how to get our kids to pay attention in school, get their chores done and all those other things we need help and advice for. It's just a wonderful group, as I said.

This picture was taken by one of the moms who is an artist and a really good photographer. You've seen what my photography looks like on this blog, now you can see a really beautiful photo. This was taken Monday on our letterboxing trip.

Blah.

I'm feeling kind of blah today. Maybe it's the weather. It's gloomy out. It's been raining for a couple of days. I'm having a little trouble with my 15-year-old and his motivation. He doesn't want to do any of the schoolwork that I assign him. He does it, mostly, reluctantly, but I've never been able to really engage his interests. Maybe if I actually turned into a video game?

Anyway, I'm just going to plod ahead today and get school done.

I forgot something.

When I was excitedly looking forward to staying home, I forgot game night at the library. It's on Thursdays, every week. From 3:30 to 5:30 it is preteen time and from 6:00 to 8:00 it's teen time. I don't feel comfortable leaving my younger two at the library and running off to do errands, so here I sit, right now, blogging from the library's computer. The chairs here are awful. They have something to adjust the height (which is currently too high) but I can't figure out how it works, so I'm sitting here with my feet not touching the ground and my legs going to sleep thinking how I wish the next 40 minutes will pass quickly. I'll go to the grocery while my oldest is in here, then it's home at last, around 8:15.

I would have had to go to the grocery anyway, since we're out of milk, cereal, bread and a few other things. That reminds me, I need to make a list before I go.

Good but different day.

Today turned out to be a little bit different than usual. We did our morning walk, our new habit and we did morning school. Then, we went over to mow my parents yard, then went to our 4H small pets group. (This is where we saw the homing pigeons last month). This time it was someone teaching about reptiles. It was very cool. I think the man thought that my daughter would not touch the snakes or chameleon but she was right there with the boys. The pictures are of my kids holding the chameleon, a male chameleon named Barbara. They want one, but I'm avoiding the subject. That's the last planned activity we have for FIVE DAYS!!! Woohoo! Breaktime. I hope.

TV/Video War Update.

This is what our house looks like from our street. Do you see it? I could see the van beside the house when I took the picture, but I can't see it now.



This is a turtle my youngest found.

It's going okay. There has not been as much whining as I expected. I have modified the schedule a little bit. It still seems a bit too lenient to me and a bit too strict to them, but I think we're all okay with it really. It's easier for me to keep up with than 3 kids individual schedules and makes it easier for me to know if someone has gone over the time limits. They've done much more playing outside in the past few days; they've gotten out games and toys and beads and art supplies that they haven't played with in a while. I didn't mean to let the games take over, but we've been so busy lately that for the last 3-4 weeks before this schedule was implemented, we had been going places and when we came home, I would try desperately to try and catch up with work and they'd turn on the TV and the games.

Now our schedule is lightening up somewhat. Awana is done. I told the homeschool group that as much as I love field trips, I'm getting kind of tired of them right now. It turns out they were kind of feeling the same way, so we postponed a couple of things until fall. We have the last 4H meeting (I think) on Wednesday and then we'll be done with that too. We will have some park days with the homeschool group this summer, going to the pool and skating but hopefully the pace will be a little bit easier.

I realized how much I've been sitting this winter yesterday when we were out walking. I'm out of shape, even for me, so we've decided to add a daily walk to our routine. We went out and walked a mile or so this morning and we're going to try to do it all the time. If blogger lets me upload, there will be pictures of this mornings walk at the top of this post. If not, well, you know what happened.

Letterboxing Yesterday.

The letterboxing went well yesterday. It was a lot of walking, but fortunately it's not very hot yet. We found it and put our stamp and signatures in it. That's 2 we've found. I feel pretty sure we'll do some more in the future. It's fun, kind of like a treasure hunt. The kids are looking at the notebook from the letterbox in this picture.

Lots to do today.

We have a letterboxing excursion this afternoon, at a local park with the homeschool group. I'll try and take pictures this time so I can do a photo post about it later. It should be fun. It looks like its a nice day out there. Before we go, we need to clean the house and we've got a call in to the pediatrician regarding oldest son's toe, which is not better. Hopefully, she won't need to see him again and can call something in. I'm the one who organized the letterboxing and am bringing the clues, the compass and the rubber stamp, so I need to be there.

I'd better get started on this house!

Video and Tv Wars Continued.

As I've mentioned before, my kids want to watch too much TV and play too many video games. They've gotten really bad lately and wanted to do pretty much nothing else if we were home. I finally put my foot down today and made a schedule stating at what times the TV and computers can be on. I hung it up on the wall. Youngest has been complaining some because he's been the worst. The new schedule seems rather overly generous to me, but it seems tough to them. I had tried all kinds of other methods, trying to get them to just do a couple of hours a day, just telling them to turn it off about 3 times a day, etc. I even bought one of those TV timers but my husband didn't hook it up for me and I didn't feel like trying to move the giant TV.

Anyway, since none of my previous efforts worked and trying to get them to limit themselves didn't work, I needed something that would be very easy to keep up with and, even if I'm working, I can hear the TV come on and I can check to see if it is an approved time. Today, they could watch before noon, but nothing after that. Consequently, they've played outside, had a contest/tournament, made up superheroes and named them, played board games, read books and all kinds of things like that. Hopefully, we'll all be able to stick with this one, because it puts limits on the machines, and they are all the same hours and I won't have to try and keep up with all the kids different limits and schedules, and there is no arguing or trying to get more time.

If I can only withstand the whining ... daughter just realized she can't get her email until tomorrow morning!

AOADD

This is what I have, adult onset attention deficit disorder. According to a web site I found on attention deficit disorder in children, some of the characteristics are:

difficulty organizing tasks
difficulty staying on task (quick loss of interest) and maintaining effort
problems with misplacing things needed for tasks
becoming easily distracted by extraneous stimuli
difficulty remembering daily activities

Is this the story of my life, or what? I don't remember being like this as a child. I was a good student in school. I think maybe as a working, homeschooling mom, I've just gone into overload. My brain jumps from one thing to another. Oh well, most of the time I get things done. It would help to be able to focus though.

A better day?

I hope today is a better day than yesterday, which was kind of a pain for several reasons. We did get the car so now we are a 2 car family again. It's an older station wagon so we'll be able to haul everyone in it plus it was inexpensive, so that's good. The kids are hopeful that we'll get to take it on field trips and maybe let their friends ride with us.

Part of the reason that yesterday was a pain was that there was no work in the queue, which is the case again today. There were about 20 jobs last night, right before we had to go pick up the car, so I could have worked last night after taking the kids skating and to game night. If we don't have work today, it will be exhausting trying to get it all done on Saturday and Sunday. I don't even want to think about what will happen if we don't have work those 2 days! I really am going to have to look for another job, I think, but with our unbelieveably slow internet service, it's hard to find one in my field. Most of the job openings require high speed.

Another reason is that we had to go to the grocery and they are remodeling it. Everything is all mixed up and we can't find what we usually buy and also we end up buying things we haven't seen before and spending more money than we should. We had a coupon to get a free fabric softener if we bought detergent, so we got both and then when my daughter was putting the fabric softener in the van, she accidently closed the back door on it and the fabric softener top got crushed in the door and split open. We managed to get it picked up with about 80% of the fabric softener still in it and brought it home. I guess I should be thankful it didn't spill on any groceries or in the van.

My day was more annoying than this for so many reasons but I'll just spare my poor reader/s the details. We did get school done yesterday morning and we will get it done again today. I was able to get to the library last night and find some good books to make it more interesting and fun.

Untitled/Random Thoughts.

I can't think of a title today. Maybe when I'm finished spilling out my random thoughts, something will come to me. Hey, maybe Random Thoughts. There we go.

Anyway, it's been a busy week, as usual. Fortunately, we finished Awana yesterday, so maybe our weeks will be less busy for a while. Right at the moment, next week is looking pretty good. We've got a Letterboxing field trip for a couple of hours on Monday and that might be 4H day too. That will be good to combine those 2 trips. One will be at 1 and the other around 4:30, so that will work out well, if it is 4H day. I'll email my fellow 4H mom and ask her. She keeps up with the once a month meetings much better than I do. So next week we might be able to get the majority of our spring cleaning/chore lists done. Hey, it could happen! Then we just have game night at the library on Thursday.

Today, our big event is driving to Nicholasville to possibly buy a car. My husband has been looking and looking and has finally found something he likes, so maybe no more sharing the van! It will be nice to go back to 2 cars again. After the crazy last few weeks we've had, with a blur of field trips, doctors appointments and eating out a lot, we need to go on 2 kinds of diets, a low calorie diet and a money diet!

Here are some of my youngest son's notebooking pages. If they're sideways, I apologize. My computer is running so slowly this morning, I'm surprised it even let me post them without timing out. He has writing issues so he dictates the information to me for these pages. These are messy and it looks like I have writing issues too, but he talks so fast when he's dictating!