Sadly,

My son did not pass his CLEP test, so he, as yet, has no college credit, but he's only 15. We'll try again at some point. He did know the material that he studied pretty well, but it wasn't the same material that was on the test, unfortunately. Next time, I'll be more careful in what I pick out for him to study from. Mom is learning along with him in this whole process.

Come to think of it

I don't think the Humane Society was a really good place to take a field trip, like we did Friday with 4H. We saw this really cute, very big, very furry black dog named Winston. My daughter just thought he was the cutest thing. Now she keeps looking at me and saying Winston and then giving me the sad puppy dog eyes look. Um, no. We don't need another dog. We have 3 dogs and 3 cats! Fortunately, Winston is in the no kill section (?) of the shelter so we don't have to live with that guilt. The lady who gave us the tour said that these were the dogs considered adoptable and that they had a lot invested in these dogs, etc., and that they wouldn't show us the animals who are not so lucky. (sad!) Anyway, if you want a dog, he's available. Look at that face!

Today.

Today my oldest son has his first CLEP test, in American History. I really don't think he has studied enough. I got him some cards a couple of months ago that he was supposed to use to study but he hasn't used them much, instead he's been watching a DVD on the presidents and reading a book called All You Need to Know about American History Homework. I studied with him as much as I could this weekend. Hopefully, he'll retain a lot of the information and get a passing grade. He was a good test taker when he was in elementary school and hopefully he still is.

Our 'blank' week sure didn't feel very relaxed.

We went all kinds of places and then today, I realized I'd kind of overscheduled. We had the social worker meeting at 9:00 a.m., a 4H field trip to the Humane Society at 10:00 and a podiatrist visit at 2:30. I was in the van most of the day, it seems like. Now I'm supposed to be working, but I am tired, tired, tired, so I don't know how much I'll get done. Probably not much.

How the dogs did.

When we went on vacation, we took our dogs to a lady who does not generally do dog-sitting, but she is a friend of my brother and he knew that she had a little kennel in her backyard. After meeting the dogs when we dropped them off, she decided that since they were housetrained and seemed reasonably friendly, she'd keep them in the house with her dog. Apparently though, it didn't work out. She called me to let me know that she wouldn't be home for the pickup time and that the dogs would be out back in the kennel. When I asked her how they did, she said "Freckles is not my friend. She does not like me." Apparently Freckles tried to bite her. I guess we'll be scheduling in advance at a regular dog boarding facility next time because of little miss grouchy. Max, of course, was a gentleman.

What day is this?

We decided to go to Family Swim time at the pool after all. Often there is a line when we go, but tonight, the entry area was deserted. I wondered aloud "It is Wednesday isn't it?" Then I said "If it's Tuesday, we're going to Baskin Robbins!"
(dollar scoop night). But, then the kids informed me that it is Wednesday (darn!) so we went into the pool. While we were walking my daughter discussed ice cream and going to the pool, 2 ways to cool off in summer. She said, "The pool is better because it cools you off all over, but ice cream tastes a lot better than pool water." Yes, I agree. Not that I tasted the pool water in the last few decades!

Nothing.

We have nothing on our calendar for today. Hopefully I didn't forget to write something down. It's nice. We've got some cleaning to do and some work to do. Max decided to wake me up at 5:30 today so that I could get an early start and to let him out so he could bark at NOTHING. I feel like I have recovered from the vacation tiredness, but now I'm just plain sleepy from getting up earlier than I am used to. I should read Max this article on sleep. Actually it's on kids and sleep, but I'm sure it has similar ill effects on adults. I think I'll just wait until he's asleep and make a loud noise!

It is family swim night at the city pool tonight but I don't know if we will go. I doubt the kids will remember and I don't know if I'll remind them. ;-)

Some nice blank days.

I really didn't plan it but we've got almost this entire week blank on our calendar. We've got a social worker visit on Friday for foster care, but other than that, not much of anything. It's nice, especially after our action packed vacation, not to mention the birthday party right before it. I haven't gotten back into my homeschool planning and looking at the Rainbow Resource catalog yet but I will. We are just planning to enjoy summer for the next few weeks. We'll enjoy it more if our A/C unit will stop freezing up and quitting on us. I guess the heat is just too much for it?

This is a picture of the birthday/pool party cupcakes. It's supposed to look like a pool. It was a team effort. My daughter and I baked the cupcakes. I did the basic frosting and put the cookies around the edge of the 'pool' and she and my son put the Teddy Grahams in the pool and put bathing suits and sunglasses/swim goggles on them.

Home at Last.

The fourth day of the vacation consisted, basically, of coming home. We made it. Unfortunately, on Monday, several of our group members became ill. We don't know if it was food poisoning or a virus, but it was not pleasant. Hopefully, they'll feel better today. The only member in my household who was sick yesterday is still in bed, so we'll see how he feels when he gets up.

Today, I'm starting back to work, so it's back to real life. I don't mind. Taking a vacation lets you step out of your life for a short time and when you come back, you appreciate the good things in your life more. A comfy chair. Being barefoot. Home.

Now I'm off to read blogs and then start working.

Day three,

Day 3 began with the quest for the mythical IHOP. We had a GPS system that directed us to the middle of nowhere. Anyway, we drove around for a while, consulting the GPS and Google and finally ended up eating at Denny's. Across the street from our hotel.

The food at Dennys was excellent and this was the only place on our trip that had paper towels in the bathroom. I hate those hand blow dryers so I spend a lot of time walking around letting my hands drip dry, but not at Dennys! I was having a biscuits and gravy craving this vacation so I ordered that every single morning. I was also having a Krispy Kreme craving, but was not able to indulge that one. It’s probably a good thing.



Then we went to Cahokia Mounds. Apparently the St Louis area was once the site of an ancient civilization called the Mississippian culture and they were mound builders. This is the huge Monk’s Mound. We climbed up it. I think it was 156 steps? I lost count but that is what my daughter said. A little later, we passed the St Louis landfill. Apparently we come from a mound building society too.

After the Cahokia mounds we went to the City Museum. This museum is essentially a huge playground and is unlike anything else we’ve ever seen. Pictures cannot do this giant 4 story play structure justice. There are 2 airplane fuselages, a castle turret, giant slinkies to climb in and tubes and slides everywhere. It’s fun, but a bit stressful for the parents who’d like to keep their kids in sight, because there are nooks and crannies all over the place that a lot of parents cannot fit in and the kids will be out of sight at times. It was totally wild. The kids absolutely loved it, every one of them, from 21 months to 16. I even climbed through a few tubes and slid down a few slides myself which may be why one of my knees feels a little stiff this morning . . .


Before we went, I packed some games and things to amuse us during the down times and the driving and we enjoyed all of these. We played Taboo, Mad Libs and Zeus on the Loose. We listened to Hank the Cowdog and Ray Stevens on CD. We also learned to play a game I’ve had for about 6 months but hadn’t played. It’s called Fluxx and the rules are very, very weird and change constantly. There are 23 different ways to win. The kids and I couldn’t figure it out on our own, so I took it along on this trip hoping my brothers-in-law, sister-in-law and husband could figure it out and they did. We had a lot of fun with it. Our other fun things were getting in the hotel pool each night, and watching my adorable 21 month old nephew just being his cute self.

Day two.

On day 2 we went to the St. Louis zoo and the Arch. I've only really been to the Louisville zoo, so I got to see some animals I hadn't seen in captivity before, like the grizzly bears and the chimpanzees. The chimps were pretty fun to watch. My kids also got to fulfill a lifelong (almost) dream of going to Build a Bear Workshop and making an animal.

After the zoo, but we headed to the arch. There was a line so I asked the guard there how long it would be and he said about 30-40 minutes. I was concerned because some of our party didn't want to go up to the top and would be waiting for us, so I was relieved to hear it would only be 30-40 minutes. Unfortunately, the guard was wrong and it was about 2 hours total. After we were searched and went through metal detectors, we had to go stand here and then there and then stand here and then there and then don't line up but stand close to the podium because we can't have a line (I have no idea what that was about), then more stand here and stand there, and now here and now there until we were very tired of waiting but finally we got to go to the top. It was pretty cool. We rode in very small pod-like trams to get up there. They were about 4 1/2 feet tall and about the same in width. The view was pretty amazing, but it was hot and crowded. We only stayed about 10 minutes but I do think it was worth it, kind of a once in a lifetime thing. The picture above is of people standing below us by the edge of the river.

Day one.

The first day was mostly driving. I had taken a bunch of things to amuse us during the drive. The first was Mad Libs. They are a lot of fun on trips. They got us through about an hour and a half of the drive with 5 kids. Then we started playing Taboo. It's a game where you have to try and make your team say something with out saying certain words, like trying to get them to guess the word pizza without saying crust, tomato sauce, cheese, eat, or pepperoni. So you end up giving clues like, "Its this thing that you might ingest, you order it and it's delivered and it tastes good". You can basically say anything but those 6 words. This can get hilarious.

Here are some of the clues I heard on our trip:
It's something soft to lay your cranium on"

"It's like a screw, but it's not."

"It's a fake girly thing with 4 legs with something on it's head"

and the brilliant "It's a, it's like a, it's a, well, uh, I don't know."

I've got to say that all the kids were extremely well behaved considering how long the trip was and how tired they had to be. There were some very minor spats and one small temper flare, but overall, they were absolutely great and I was very proud of all of them.

We're back!

It was fun, but it was exhausting. We are resting today and not doing much of anything.

Tonight.

Yes, I realize that I have been very unimaginative with the titles but it has been a busy week and I'm tired. That's my excuse. We had the birthday party tonight at the pool and it went well, I guess. I was so tired at that point, from working and going to the doctor, getting a prescription filled, making the party trays, decorating the cupcakes, cleaning the house, etc. that I just kind of sat there while the kids swam. Then after the party we took our inside dogs to the dog-sitter's house. We're missing them terribly tonight. It's funny to think that we never even had an inside dog until we got Max, what, a year and a half ago? Those little guys get into your heart, don't they? I hope Freckles is behaving herself.

Tomorrow we are hitting the road for our vacation. I hope the sleep I get tonight is very restorative and I feel positively perky in the a.m.

Another day, another bazillion things to do.

Today I'm going to be cleaning some more, doing more laundry, calling the lady who is hopefully going to babysit the dogs, baking the birthday cake, (what idiot thought the night before vacation would be a good night for a birthday party? Oh yeah, that was me!), starting to pack and I don't know what else --- oh, I remember now, working at my job (can't forget that!).

In the back of my mind, I'll be thinking a bit about Sherry and her family. She's going to be buried today. I still can't wrap my brain around it, even though I've known it was coming for months.

Also, the other back corner of my mind is planning out next year's homeschool curriculum, thanks to the big old catalog I've been looking at in all my spare time. I'm making a list of all the things I'd like to buy and in about a month, I'll have it narrowed down to the 3 or 4 things I might actually buy. ;-)

This evening.

I did get some laundry done, some work done and some housecleaning done. I went to the grocery and unfortunately, I also had to go to the funeral home for my friend Sherry. She died at age 40, leaving behind a husband and 2 sons, ages 5 and 6. I had a conversation with the youngest of her sons that just broke my heart tonight. After I got back home, I took it easy on myself, played the Sims, watched a little bit of The Princess Bride and enjoyed my children.

This morning.

I've got a list of about a bazillion things to do today. I haven't started yet. I am procrastinating as I always do when cleaning or making phone calls is involved. And both of those are. Sigh. I really need to write out a plan for when to do each thing, but honestly, I don't know where to start. I guess getting a load of laundry going would be the best first choice. The kids can't understand why we'd want to clean the house before we go, but I can't stand the thought of coming home to a dirty house, coming home and being behind on work and housework. That would ruin vacation for me, so I'm going to get as much of both done as I can before we go. Then after we get back, I can relax and recover from the vacation. Hey, that's how it works, right?

At least school is done for most of us. Finally.

I'm on page 1048 of the Rainbow Resource Homeschool Catalog. I've been carrying it almost everywhere with me and going through a few pages at a time. Fun.

I don't know.

I'm not sure why I haven't felt like blogging lately. I refuse to feel guilty about it. This week is going to be very busy and I don't know if I'll have much time to blog this week either so don't expect much! Tomorrow, I've got to get this house cleaned up, then I'll be going to the funeral home. Then, Tuesday, we've got a homeschool group meeting. Then Wednesday, the birthday party. Then, Thursday, we're going on vacation. The excitement in this house is something to see - for the kids. The parents are thinking about how much they still have to do! Arrange for dog care, arrange for auto feeding for the cats, clean the house, clean out the van, get the van's rear air conditioning fixed ... the list goes on and on. Hopefully, we can relax once we get there.

Wow, I can't believe I haven't posted anything since Tuesday!

We're not on vacation or anything! I've just been on one of my frequent trips to La La Land, I suppose, kind of out of it. I've been working and taking the younger kids back and forth to VBS, planning the birthday party next week (and by the way, if you know us in real life you are welcome to come and join us!) and worrying about the fact that we don't have anyone to take care of our dogs while we're on vacation. I'm also about 1/3 of the way through the Rainbow Resource catalog, which is 1367 pages of homeschool supplies, fun! I've been writing my first copy of my wish list, which I will narrow down gradually over the summer while making my curriculum choices for each child.

We're still doing school. Today is the last day for the younger 2 though. The oldest has got to continue studying for his American History CLEP test until he takes it. He slacked off a bit during the winter, so he deserves to study this summer anyway. Besides, it's good preparation for life. How many jobs let you off for the summer? Not many.

I have some good photos on my camera to share, including ones of my horrible haircut, but I can't find the camera cord, so you're just going to have to use your imagination for now I guess.

My secrets.

I try to get the library to buy books I want to read. Sometimes they will and then they'll call me and let me read it before anyone else, very nice service. I went to the library today to pick up a book they'd called to tell me they had bought at my request. I went to pick it up not knowing which one of the several I'd requested it was. I told the man at the library that I'd come to pick up a book but didn't know which one it was. He said that they couldn't tell the name of the book over the phone to anyone besides me to protect my confidentiality. Isn't that thoughtful of them? It's really good in my case, so no one will find out I checked out Hank the Cowdog and the Quest for the Great White Quail. :-)

Toe Surgery.

My oldest son had to have surgery on his ingrown toenail today. We had to get up at 4:30 a.m. and leave at 5:30 for the surgery center in order to get there at 6:30. The actual surgery was at 7:30. I couldn't go to sleep last night so I ended up sleeping about 4 hours. The worst part of the surgery for everyone involved was trying to get an IV in my son. None of his veins are visible and he hates needles and that is a terrible combination. The first nurse called a second nurse to do it. She couldn't, so she called the anesthesiologist. The anesthesiologist couldn't find a vein either, so they called in someone else. The last one didn't identify herself but she got the job done, thank goodness. It was very traumatic.
Anyway, he got through the surgery okay. He has a huge bandage and some kind of medical shoe on his foot. I have to go to the pharmacy to fill a prescription for some silvadene cream and some ear drops for his toe. ;-) When the doctor handed me the prescription I gave him a funny look, I'm sure and he said "They're good for toes too." Anyway, that's done and hopefully will be healed for vacation. Said son has been playing video games all day and I've been sleeping every chance I get.

Possible Party Compromise Plan

We think we're going to have his birthday party at the city pool, a week after his actual birthday. I think that will work out well. We'll eat cake and ice cream and then go swimming. I'm pretty sure that 'no swimming after eating' thing is a myth. Anyway, there will be lifeguards on duty! I'm glad he's been willing to compromise and I hope he has a lot of fun.

(Insert clever title here.)

Time is marching on. It's VBS week and it's maybe our last week for this modified schedule. I may see if I can carry it into next week too. We're counting the days till our vacation, looking for a dog-sitter, doing VBS starting tonight and planning for oldest son's (very minor) surgery tomorrow. When I print out the directions to the surgery center, I'm going to look at several different map systems and compare them to see if there are any loop-de-loops. Hopefully not. I'm going to work today because I probably won't get much work done tomorrow.

Evolution of a homeschooling family.

Distant past - I read an article in a magazine about how a family had kept each one of their daughters home to homeschool for 1 year during their middle school years. They felt that this helped the parent/daughter relationships. I thought this was a cool idea and filed it away in my brain.

1998 - I sent my oldest son to Kindergarten. He was fine. I cried though. I had 2 babies at home, aged 2 years and 2 months. It was very difficult getting the kindergartner to bed on time with the 2 little ones and my husband worked in the evenings at that time, so I was alone at night with the kids. It was a struggle.

Go forward a couple of years and the 2 year old now is 4. She decided that she'd like to go to school too and so we sent her to preschool. It only lasted a couple of months and she decided she wanted to stay home. I wasn't all that sold on preschool anyway so I let her become a preschool dropout.

Now 2 more years forward and my youngest son also drops out of preschool. Now 2 preschool dropouts!

My daughter did well in kindergarten and first grade. The year she was in second grade, she seemed to be getting more and more shy. She wouldn't go with her teacher until I would take her directly to the teacher and put her hand in the teacher's hand. She also started being friends with a little girl who would be friendly one minute and the next minute, would not be friendly at all, which my daughter could not understand. It would hurt her feelings and she would cry.

My youngest was in a kindergarten class taught by a very nice young lady from our church. He was doing well, but still didn't want to go. I had to take him to class and sometimes he'd run down the hall trying to escape. He just wanted to be home.

Oldest son was doing okay, mostly, but hated homework and seemed kind of depressed at the end of fifth grade.

The summer after fifth grade came and the article I'd read on homeschooling kept coming to mind. I discussed with my husband keeping my son home for the 6th grade year instead of sending him to middle school. I was concerned that my husband would be against it, but he said "I don't have one good memory from middle school." So it was decided. We kept the oldest home instead of sending him to 6th grade at the local middle school.

I started reading everything I could on homeschooling, researching Kentucky's laws and started making a plan. I looked at the 6th grade general course of study on the World Book website and went from there. We started having fun and my son seemed much happier.

Meanwhile, my daughter had been placed in a split class of 3rd and 4th graders because they said she was advanced. (At the end of second grade, she'd been 'average' and 'holding her own' but not advanced, so I'm not sure how she 'advanced' over the summer. I do know she's quiet and well behaved.)
Anyway, she was struggling in the split class. She said the teacher didn't have time to teach her and the aide would not teach her because "that's the teacher's job" and consequently, I had to spend hours in the evening teaching her the concepts so she could do the homework and all the work she hadn't done during class time.
My youngest meanwhile, was crying every single day on the way to school.

Homeschooling all 3 started to seem like a no-brainer. We made a plan to pull them out too, deciding to do 1 year and then see how it went.

I researched curriculum choices and found a homeschool support group. I joined homeschooling email groups and started a blog. The kids have thrived with homeschooling and I'm so glad we are doing it. I wish we had started from the beginning, but the way we did it, the kids definitely know what they are missing and don't want to go back. They definitely don't miss public school.

Now I'm planning our FIFTH year. It's become a way of life. I was just counting the years and I commented to my daughter that I couldn't believe it's been 4 years already and she said, "Homeschooling is fun!" Of course it's not always fun, we have our whiney days and our days when we're struggling to figure out a difficult math concept but we enjoy that we get to spend so much time as a family and we really enjoy our freedom and flexibility.

Saturday, June 7.

Today, we've got work but no school. I'll be doing transcription. The rest of the family is going to be working on getting the pool area ready for the pool. It seems like it's going to take a long time. It's a lot of work and it's really hot out.

We made it to the podiatrist's appointment yesterday, despite the lack of a street sign on most of the streets and the completely insane directions from Google maps. (They actually have a loop in the route on the map. A loop!) I finally had to stop somewhere to ask and fortunately for us, a woman named Anne at the Dollar General Store was kind enough to interupt her work and give good directions and to write it all down for us. Bless her. We actually got there only a couple of minutes after our appointment time. The doctor advised cutting out the ingrown toenail right then and there in the office, but my son has a fear of needles, so we ended up scheduling it for next week when it can be done under anesthesia. Just when I thought my calendar could not be more full ... we have to get up at 4:30 a.m. and drive an hour to Louisville to get it done. At least maybe it can be healed before vacation.

We're still in negotiations for youngest son's birthday. I realize that I'm a terrible mom but I don't want to have a party here at the house. I just don't want to deal with cleaning and organizing for a party when I have to work next weekend. I'll already be a day behind because of the toe surgery. I've tried to get him to agree to do it somewhere else to make it easier for me; pizza hut, the pool, the park, the library - everywhere I can think of, but he wants it here. We may have to have a meeting to discuss it later today. Meanwhile, I'm going to type to try and get ahead because you never know how things are going to go. There's work today so I'd better type as much as I can.

Probably not going to walk today/ Various unrelated thoughts.

Don't you think we should take a break after yesterday's walking? I do. I slept in this morning. It was a late night last night for us. After work, walking and school, we went to tween game night, then to grab a bite to eat, then to drop off oldest at teen game night, then to Walmart to get band-aids for one of the many toe injuries we have around here this week, then to skate night, then back to pick up the oldest at teen night (fortunately only a few blocks away), then to the grocery, then finally home where I did some more transcription work before falling into bed at midnight.

Today, we've got work, school and then we're going to a podiatrist's office to see about my oldest son's ingrown toenail. I bet you all are all jealous! Doesn't that just sound like so much fun? Anyway, I just hope he can get it fixed before vacation so he can feel like walking around with us there.

This is unrelated to my post but this woman left a comment on my blog. Look at the jewelry she makes from kid's drawings, it's really a cool idea.

Note to Janet: It is interesting that we are now leading parallel lives! I wonder if you've gotten a bad haircut this week or stubbed your toe?

Hot, tired, miserable and ticky.

That's how we feel right now after attempting a 2 mile walk in the 92 degree heat. We should've went earlier. We shouldn't have taken the dog because I ended up carrying her and we should've hauled some water and the cell phone so we could've called Grandma to rescue us when we just got too hot. Anyway, we're home now and we won't go again without all of the above precautionary measures in place. We'll go no later than 9:30 a.m. and we'll take the phone and the water and NOT the dog. Also, I won't eat taco salad for lunch right before going. Ugh. Oh yeah, and we'll spray ourselves with insect repellent.

The only good thing is that my new shoes (cheap from Walmart) are working out great and my legs and feet don't hurt at all.

What's going on with us.

We're still here. We're doing our modified summer school schedule which includes individualized studies for each child on what they most need to work on, an hour of exercise and 1/2 hour of chores/cleaning. It's going okay. I'm trying to get into shape for the summer, for 6-Flags and the zoo and vacation, all of which require a lot of walking, so me and the younger 2 kids are walking a little bit further each day. The first day we walked a mile. Today we are up to 1.6 miles. We go one mailbox further each time. Once we get to 2 miles a day, that will probably be it. I think that's a pretty good walk. Since we've started, my old knee injury has started hurting again. I'm not sure how that's going to work out with all the summer plans we have. Usually it will flare up occasionally and then goes away. I hope it goes away before any of our planned events this summer. Anyway, on our walks we've been seeing interesting things, cicadas, smashed lizards and frogs, a live snapping turtle (we think that's what kind it was because it was big) and today we saw a wild turkey and heard what we think was a deer running away from us, although we didn't see it.

We're in the thinking stages of planning a birthday celebration for our youngest who will turn 10! I can't believe it. They'll all be in double digits now. They are growing up WAY too fast. Anyway, I told him that if he wanted to party to be here for his birthday that he had to not only clean his room (which he shares for now with his sister) but also had to somehow get his older brother to clean HIS room. Should be interesting. I wish the kids wouldn't choose to have parties. I hate asking people to bring presents all the time. A few years ago we set a birthday budget and told the kids they could either spend it on themselves or have a party and for a long time, they did what we wanted and chose to spend it on themselves, but last year, both of the younger 2 chose a party and this year it looks like we're going to have at least one more.

Free!

Today, for the first time in many days, we don't have anything written on our calendar. It's nice. We can just do whatever we want today. It will include getting our work and school done this morning and then we can pretty much be free. It's a nice feeling. We may go and get mine and my daughter's hair cut. (The boys all got buzzed this weekend.) We may go get a few more gardening supplies and maybe some vacation-walking-shoes because we're going to need some comfortable shoes or, we just might laze around and not do much of anything. We've earned it. I wish our pool was up. We'd do that.

Science Day.

Science day went pretty well even though it was really hot - our first real summer weather this year. We blew balloons up with the reaction of baking soda and vinegar, then made film canister rockets and did the Mentos and Coke fountains. About 3/4 of the way through it, a bus pulled into the park and about 60 preschoolers from the city school system joined us under the picnic pavilion, so we wrapped it up quickly. The preschoolers were impressed with the Mentos and Coke fountains we were still doing when they got there. I had my cameras in my purse but forgot to take any pictures!

Still working (part 2).

I hope to be done soon. I did take a break today and go to my brother and sister-in-law's house for a while. It was nice to relax a little. I left my husband and kids there to play in the pool and I came back home to work. I stopped at the grocery store on the way back because I needed to get the Mentos and Coke for tomorrow's science day at the park. The lady who checked out the groceries must not have seen Mythbusters because she didn't even notice I was buying Mentos and Coke. These 2 substances explode in a fountain when mixed together, something we're going to do tomorrow at the park. We're also going to do some Alka-Seltzer Rockets and a couple of other things which I can't even remember. I did the planning last Sunday because I knew this week was going to get crazy. (And it did!) I'll have to take time in the morning to refresh my mind about it, sometime between the 5 dentist appointments we have at 11:00 and the park day which starts at 1:00.

Still working.

I'm trying to get my work done this weekend in between visiting with family. It's been a good week, but I am worn out. Yesterday started with working as much as I could, then going to Mom and Dad's for dinner, then to our house for a little while (we had to take a few minutes and clean it!), then back to Mom and Dad's for dessert and coffee. My sister and her husband had to head back home today, so the visit is over. I realize when I talk with her how much I've missed. I can't wrap my head around the fact that I have 4 nieces and a nephew and a bunch of great-nieces and nephews, none of whom I've met yet. I wonder what it would have been like to have been in touch with her while I was growing up. I think I really missed out. :-(