Not pretty today.

It's storming, absolutely POURING.  I used to love storms, but now I just find them depressing.  I hope the storm is over soon because I need to take a shower and take my mom to the pain clinic for her appointment and I don't want to go out in that or take a shower during a thunderstorm.  At least our electricity is still on, so I can work.  I'm thrilled about that, don't you know.  Youngest son thinks the storm is really cool and wants to go out in it, but we have stopped him due to lightning safety issues.  Later on, when the storm passes, we'll let him go 'puddle jumping' which is what he wants to do.   

Just too pretty.

It is just too pretty outside for kids to have to do school.  Nobody's said it, but my daughter just sat down, wrote all her math problems on a piece of paper (she usually does them on the computer) and went outside to do them.  My youngest is already outside, but unfortunately, I don't think he's doing school.  I think he's doing boy stuff like walking around with a stick. He'll have to do school later, when it's dark and supposed to be screen time, but he feels like the tradeoff is worth it, I guess, to get out in that beautiful sunshine.  I wish there was a way I could drag my desktop computer out there for just a little while.  I'm doing the old get-it-done-in-a-hurry method so I can go out later.  To each his own, I guess.

While I sit out there, I'm going to work on a list of all the things I want our family to accomplish in March.  :-)  They'll be so thrilled!   Spring cleaning is what spring break is for, right?

Maybe not. Who knows?

I got up this morning feeling okay.  Maybe yesterday was a fluke?  Maybe I ingested some gluten I don't know about?  That always makes me feel like I'm getting the flu --- not like I have the flu, but the early stages; headache, body aching all over, brain fog.  Sometimes I wonder how I managed, feeling like that for all those years.  Anyway, today I feel okay.  I don't know if I successfully managed to head it off with the Cold Eeze, I took yesterday or what, but I am not going to question it too much.  I'm just going to enjoy not feeling bad.  It is a beautiful day.  I hope the kids and I get a chance to get out and enjoy it today.

Uh oh.

I started feeling kind of bad about halfway through my workday today.  After a while, I decided to take a little break and sit in my chair, which led to me falling asleep for almost 3 hours.  When I got up, I felt worse with a rattling in my chest and chills.  I'm afraid I've got the cold syndrome that my oldest son has been battling all week.

I don't want it.

:-(

Not much.

That's what we're doing today.  Oldest son is sick again and he's watching a McGyver marathon and the younger 2 are being supportive and watching it with him, because basically it's free screen time.  I loved McGyver when I was a kid, but now, it doesn't really hold my interest, so I'm not really watching it with them.  I'm doing other things.  Just to say we accomplished something, even though we didn't have much in the way of motivation, my daughter and I cleaned out half my closet and put in a shelving unit for it that I bought back in January.  Tomorrow, we'll try and get the other half, I guess.  We might need to take some time off from school and get some spring cleaning done.  I wish I could take off work too, but I can't.  I can, however, get up earlier and hit my work a little harder each morning, so that I'll have the afternoons to do the spring cleaning.  Doesn't that sound like loads of fun?  Yeah, I thought so.  That's how I did last years spring cleaning in the afternoons after work, but last year I wasn't working as many hours as I am now.  :-/

Our late valentine's party cupcakes.

Pictured at top is the picture my daughter took of our Valentine's cupcakes on Monday night.  At the bottom is the picture that I took (not realizing she'd already took a picture) on Tuesday morning.  Do you notice the difference?  Yes.  Someone stole one!  Thought we wouldn't notice, hmm?

Game Night.

Game night was fun.  We kind of brought every game we could think of and waited to see who would show up. Turns out the ages of people ranged from 2 to 75, so we had quite a variety.  We set up the Wii and we played Win, Lose or Draw and then we played Reverse Charades.  It was fun for all.   Here's the cake my daughter and I made.  We only had black and orange icing and we didn't want it to look Halloween-y (though that's what the icing was from) so we made a checkerboard.  :-)  The orange checkers are Mentos and the black checkers are Junior Mints. 

Making deals.

My youngest and I are bargaining today for screen time.  He's doing some of the things I need to do but can't do because I'm not done with work.  He has baked the cake and now he is doing the dishes.  He is doing this for extra screen time because he got a new game today and wants to play it.  I think it's working out pretty well.  He got up early and finished school for the week, so he's doing way better than last week and I think he deserves a reward.  I could just him or one of the other kids do these things for me, but he wants the screen time and doesn't mind working for it, so to me, this is a win/win.

It's been weird.

Having my husband on first shift.  He now only has a 4 day work week, working 10 hours per day and he did get some stuff done this week on his 3 days off that I was happy about.  One of our shutters had fallen off and he put it back on and secured all the rest of them more firmly, so maybe they won't fall off as well.  I was not as productive on my one day off this week, yesterday, but did take the girl to Hobby Lobby and visit my friend's daughter in the hospital as well as going to my doctor, so it wasn't a total loss.  Last night though, instead of cleaning, I sat down and watched CSI that I had gotten from Netflix.   At my office visit yesterday,  I talked to the nurse practitioner about not being able to handle the medications that the prescribed and being so dopey last week when I took them so she said one night to take one and one night to take the other and cut one of them in half.  So last night I took 1 of them and I am pretty darn dopey this morning.  I think the pain is better than the dopiness.  :-P

Youngest son is up early and doing school work, everything that he puts off until Friday.  It's kind of crazy, but it seems to work for him.  Tonight we have a board game night, so that should be fun.  Sometime today, I need to come out of my dopey fog long enough to make cupcakes for that.  I hope this medication wears off soon!

So far today

I have not really accomplished anything.  I did help my son a little with his resume.  I did load the dishwasher.  My son and I looked at colleges online and tried to make some decisions for him, but really haven't come up with anything yet.  That's pretty much the sum total of my accomplishments so far today.  In a little while, I'm going to the doctor and then my daughter and I are going to go to Hobby Lobby since my doctor's office is right across the street and then we are going to visit a friend's daughter who is in the hospital.  After that, if we are not too tired, we need to clean up this house.  I intended to get up today and clean the house before the doctor's appointment, but sometimes I just don't do what I plan to do.  :-P  I really don't like cleaning so I will use any excuse.

Motivation.  I need it.

Zombie raisins.

My youngest is still going through the Big Book of Boy Stuff.  One of the experiments says that you can rehydrate raisins in water and they will turn back into grapes.  The infamous box of raisins from the fair the other day are now soaking in water.  They've been in there since yesterday.  They have plumped up but apparently they don't taste anything like grapes, hence, my oldest son called them Zombie Raisins.

The Valentine Party.

We had our homeschool Valentine's party today.   By having it a week late, we saved money on valentines which were half price, and candy.  It was a fun time.  We combined it with our monthly 4H meeting.  At our meeting today we made fake spilled drinks and real copies of some restaurant drinks.  The fake spills are made from tacky glue and will be dry in a couple of weeks and will be great fun in time for April fool's day. Family Fun  The real drinks were copies of a famous restaurant's cherry lime-aid and ocean water.  Everyone pretty much loved the lime-aid but the ocean water must be an acquired taste.  To me, it tasted like suntan lotion.   Afterwards we went for a snack at Taco Bell.  It was a fun day.

Vindicated.

I have been having this problem at work.  The company I work for said that I was sending reports through with the wrong dates on them.  Now I'm not perfect, but I'm pretty good at checking the date.  I'll park my cursor there and wait until the doctor says the date and then I'll type it in.  Last week, I was fined 10 dollars by my company for putting the wrong dates on 5 reports.  The funny thing is though, the dates were correct on my end. The files that my computer keeps had all the correct dates on them.  No mistakes at all.  I send an email to my boss explaining that I didn't think that I had made these mistakes, but she dismissed it.  Then today I got an email again saying that I had messed up a date.  My husband was here and is very techy and we started discussing it.  He said that I could send them my file and a log/record from my computer to prove that I had not modified the file and I could prove I hadn't messed up.  So I sent another email explaining this, this time to the boss of my boss (who was the one who emailed me this time).  A few minutes later, someone called me and said they had a "glitch" and they'd pay me back my 10 bucks.  Yay!  It's not the 10 bucks so much as being believed.  You know?   Well, that and all the future 10 bucks.  It could have gotten expensive. 

Also while we were looking at this, I got a call and I won a 25 dollar gift card at the 4H fair yesterday.  Cool! 

No school.

We didn't do school today because it was President's day and the girl talked me into it.  She was still tired from her busy weekend.  After I finished work, we went to a 4H Health and Safety Fair which was kind of fun.  We got all kinds of freebies and got to take a look at a fire truck and meet our county's K-9 unit.   Amongst the free things, my youngest son was given a box of raisins, which he doesn't like.  He carried them around politely at the fair, then when we got home, he wrote "eat these raisins please" on the box and put them on his brother's desk.  We also had plain yogurt with fruit which I kind of liked and my daughter really liked, but youngest son most definitely did not. 

We went

and picked our girl up today.  She had a good time but is really tired.  She's used to sleeping late and I don't think she did much sleeping, period, the whole weekend.  :-)   I was a little worried about today's weather when I dropped her off Friday, because they were predicting snow for this morning but nothing happened.  Now the forecast is for snow and rain mixed this afternoon.  I guess we'll see if we get any snow.   I feel kind of doubtful about it. 

In other news, my husband started his new work schedule today.  Day shift.  This is the only the second time that he's been on day shift the whole time we've been married so this is going to be interesting having him home in the evenings.  I hope we adjust well   The kids and I will have to change when we sleep as well, so as not to disturb him (juggling teens at 1:00 a.m. will probably be really frowned on by someone who has to get up at 5:00 a.m.) and consequently we will probably get up earlier.   We'll be able to finally get the bedroom painted and the closet reorganized, because he won't be sleeping in there during the day.  I'm going to move my office in there since now I won't have to worry about sneezing and waking him up.  It's just going to be so weird.

Can you imagine?

What would we have thought, back in the past, if someone had come to visit us from 2012 and told us that every day we'd have to prove we are not a robot?  We would have thought they were crazy.  Yet, here we are.

Type these words to prove you're not a robot.

And Today

also seems to be kind of whooshing by.  My daughter has guitar lessons today at 4:00 and then has to be at an overnight youth thing tonight at 6:30.   It's always weird when one of the kids is gone.  I guess I should get used to it because they are growing up and will be moving out on their own.  :-(  I have always teased them that they can live next door.  We have 12 acres and when we're out walking I'll say, hey don't you think this would be a good place to build your house when you grow up?  :-)   Hey, a mom can hope.  My husband and I both live with 3 miles of our parents. 

Anyway, the girl has been working on school trying to get it done before she leaves, but youngest son is goofing off and listening to an audio book so he'll be doing the Friday night rush alone this week.

Yesterday, just kind of

whooshed by me.  It went quickly.  I got up and while I was making my coffee, a friend called and she needed to talk, so instead of working, I talked for an hour to her.  Some things are just more important.  One thing led to another and I didn't get started with work until 10:30.  So, 6 hours later, I finished work, at 4:30 and then we had 45 minutes before I needed to leave to take the kids to youth group.   So I dropped youngest off at grandmas, took the older two to youth group, went to the library to return 2 overdue books and look on the shelves for one we thought we had already returned.  No such luck.  Then, I went to mom's and played a game of UPWords with her while waiting for the older 2.  Then youngest and I headed back into town, picked up the older 2 kids, came home, dropped the boys off at home and then daughter and I headed to choir practice.  It is from 8-9 pm.  All this and we would have also had 4H needleworking class at 4 if we'd remembered it.  I don't know if we could have made it ...   Anyway back to the choir practice - we've joined the a choir temporarily to do an Easter concert.  This is good for my daughter because she's learning to read music in her guitar lessons and now she's trying to learn to follow along with singing.  I'm going to sit down with her and give her a small crash course in 'where do I go from here" in complicated choral music, because she's never dealt with anything like that before.  It's hard for me too because I haven't sung in a choir in many years but it is slowly coming back.  I've also been trying to sing soprano because my daughter is a soprano and she wants to sit by me and sing what I'm singing.  My voice is not that high and its kind of a strain, so if you were outside last night and heard some awful squeaking noises, I'm sorry!  :-P

I did it again.

I said a silly thing to my kids and now they won't let me live it down.  Last week when I took my daughter to her guitar lesson, I realized when we left there that I hadn't mailed the Netflix.  So I was going to say, "Everyone look for a mailbox" but instead I said "Everyone listen for a mailbox."

Now we'll be driving down the road and one of the kids will say,  "Shh, I think I heard a mailbox!"  or "Did you hear that?"  and I'll say "What?" and they'll say "I heard a mailbox."

:-P

Happy Valentines Day!

We have our homeschool Valentine's party next week, because we like to buy our candy and treats after the prices have been reduced.  :-)  We also had our Halloween party a week after Halloween.  It was a scheduling difficulty at first, and then we realized the advantages.  Today, there's quite a bit of celebrating going on in our house and I'm pretty sure that we're all getting fatter by the minute.  Next week, we'd really better start on those New Year's Resolutions.  My husband went to the grocery on the way home from work and got everyone their favorite stuff, fruit pot pies, chocolate covered strawberries, Dove chocolate and Cheetos.  Better than flowers, if you ask me.  :-)

So many adorable valentines printables all over the web, so if you haven't gotten anything for your honeys, here are some from Pinterest. 

So much fun.

One of my homeschool mom friends and I decided to go to the salvage grocery store today and oh, boy did we have a good time.  I bought 10 boxes of cereal at about 1.60 each, which are usually 3.65 to 4.85 each.  So that's a savings of, let's see, even counting them all as the cheapest 3.65 that's more than 2 dollars per box for a savings of 20 bucks.  Then, I got 6 of the kind of gluten free cake mix that they sell in my grocery store for 5.99 for 75 cents each.  That's  another 31 bucks I saved right there.  Of course, I didn't NEED cake mixes, but we are having a valentine party next week and I can bring cupcakes my son and I can eat.  :-)  Plus, every time there is a special occasion this year, pretty much.  (We need to eat them all before the expiration date in September 2012, but we'll manage.)  That's just 2 categories of stuff that I got.  I got a bunch of canned goods, gluten free cookies and crackers, candy, frosting (for the cupcakes ;-) and more.   Then, my friend took us out to eat, with coupons (She's exceptionally smart at couponing) and we all 5 ate at Chik-Fil-la for 2.54 cents.  And we're still full 2 hours later.  FULL.

The most fun part was being around another mom and talking, laughing, talking and laughing while we saved the money. :-) 

A quiet Sunday afternoon.

I have these really silly sounding hiccups.  I get them quite frequently, but fortunately, they don't last long.  A few minutes ago, I had a bout and I had this funny thought.  Some day my kids will look back on this quiet Sunday afternoon, an audio book playing, the dishwasher humming, the low sound of my oldest son practicing guitar in the other room, my daughter crocheting, the crazy chiming clock announcing that it 5 till some hour (always wrong), my youngest son playing with his Yugioh cards and mom, sitting in the corner, clucking like a chicken.   :-P

Saturday, what a day.

This is what my youngest son thinks.  No school!  TV cartoons.  We basically only get 2 channels but one of them does show Yugioh and Sonic and things like that.  He enjoys watching them on Saturdays.  He and the girl are also building forts in the living room with the sofa cushions and some exercise mats.  I kind of thought my days of having kids building forts in the living room were over, but if they aren't, I'm okay with it.  I, of course, have to work.  I did not take the medications last night that knocked me on my hiney yesterday and consequently I feel much better, physically today, though I am pretty darn crabby..  I'm feeling kind of sad about a chain of events that happened around here this week, which has left me meditating about changes I might want to make.  Call it a mid life crisis if you like.  It probably is.  

Now the kids are playing hop scotch (which I had to look the rules up for) in the living room.

So dopey.

I was so dopey, I ended up having to take the day off work.  I worked for 3 hours, got about 1/2 an hours actual work done and finally decided to call in and give up.  I will not be taking those pills again tonight.  I might try them sometime when I don't have to work the next day or I might just give up.   I finally felt okay this afternoon and was able to take my daughter to her guitar lesson and then we went to the grocery.  We might get snow tonight and I kind of hope that we do. My youngest son wants it to snow so badly.  :-)

Sleep!?

My youngest son has been trying to burn the candle at both ends, staying up late at night as usual and then setting his alarm for 6:00 a.m. to get up and do his school work before his sister.  Yesterday, he did it, got up, did some of his school work and then played with Yugioh cards and listened to an audio book and procrastinated about his math all day and then finally fell asleep at 8:00 p.m. and didn't get his math done.  He's got to get his math finished today or else, no privileges this weekend.  I have no doubt that he will do it when he gets through sleeping off his sleep deprivation today.  I've told him that teens need their sleep and he should just sleep and not mess with his sleep schedule but he does not listen to me because he is male. :-P

I have a different sleep issue going on.  I went to a pain clinic to try and see if they could help me figure out the left lower quandrant abdominal pain that I've had since last May.  They have diagnosed interstitial cystitis and wrote me 5 prescriptions.   Two of the prescriptions I did not get filled because together they would have cost approximately 500 dollars per month and the other 3, totaling 30 dollars I did fill.  The only problem is one is a muscle relaxer and 1 is an antihistamine and they both cause drowsiness and I have had a very, very difficult time getting out of bed in the morning.  I just want to sleep and I feel kind of dopey.

It reminds me of the time when my son had his tonsils out and the nurse told him that when he woke up he would feel like 3 of the 7 dwarves at the same time, sleepy, grumpy and dopey.

The Carnival of Homeschooling is up!

Here's the link.

I haven't read the whole thing yet, but throughout the day when I'm waiting for work to download, etc., I'll be reading it all.   Beware though, one of the blogs has music and so if you plan to open them all up while you're working and then read and close them one at a time throughout the day, the music might scare you half to death, like it did me!  It's on the post called "Reminders" for further reference.  I do not care for sites that open music and ads because of my habit of opening them and reading them later.

Fun Valentines Stuff

I was looking at Amanda Bennett's post on her Unit Studies page on Facebook and she listed this site, Technology Rocks which has all kinds of fun Valentine activities to do with your kids.  I love the heart shaped paragraph and I think I might write some personalized paragraphs to my family with it.  :-)

How cute is that?!

An experiment from the Big Book Of Boy Stuff.

We did this earlier.  It's called Grape Lightening.


Take a seedless grape.  Cut it in half, but not all the way.  Leave a skin attachment between the two halves. Remove the stem. Put the grape on a plate facing up.  Put it in the center of the microwave.  Put the microwave on high power and set it for 10-40 (we did 10) seconds.  Now turn it on and watch.  You should see sparks and maybe even electric arcs between the grape halves.  At some point, the grapes will split all the way apart.  When that happens, stop the  microwave, because nothing else will happen after that. 

It's pretty neat.  You should try it.  Luckily, grapes were on sale this week at the grocery store so we had some.

Big  Book of Boy Stuff 

Book recommendation.

Big Book of Boy Stuff 

My oldest son enjoyed this book and checked it out of the library at least 5 times a few years ago.  I was browsing at the library the other day and happened to see it and brought it home for my youngest.  He's loving this book.  He stayed up half the night the first night reading it and he has plans to do a bunch of experiments that it has in it.  He has also been asking us a ton of riddles and silly questions like "If vegetarians are people who eat vegetables, what exactly are humanitarians?".  He's already made plans to either purchase the book or check it out of the library a bunch more times like his brother did.  I need to check and see if there is a Big Book of Girl Stuff for the girl.

Sometimes I just don't want to.

One of my kids kind of got after me recently for not doing something that he thought I should do.  I might should do it but I don't want to and you know, sometimes when you get up and work 5 days a week,  take care of a house, get groceries, take everyone everywhere they need to go and generally all around be responsible, you just don't want to do anything else that requires getting dressed and getting somewhere.  I think every now and then I should get to play hookey with no good reason.   :-P

Saturday.

Last night the roving teenagers that go through this house after midnight, were rapping.  Saturday.  No School.  Saturday.  No School.  Saturday.  No School.  Word.

Friday.

Youngest son set his alarm at 6:00 a.m. so he could get up and finish school today.  When I got up at 9:00 a.m., he was almost finished, working on handwriting while listening to an audiobook.  I kind of wish I'd gotten up early and did the same, but I really enjoy my sleep so I didn't.  One advantage of my writing my own schedule and working at home is that I get to sleep until I wake up.  Now the girl and I will be working most of the day and youngest can gloat that he's done.

Murphy's Law?

It's not been the best day.  Not terrible, just kind of annoying.  I got up feeling all dizzy and went to the doctor thinking I probably had an inner ear infection.  I had one maybe 6 months ago with the same symptoms and she treated it with an antibiotic and I got better.  This time, she only gave me an anti-dizziness pill.  Since my dizzy episodes only last about 5 minutes or less and this pill is for the symptom, not the underlying cause, I don't know that it's gonna help.  Then I came back home and had to finish work.  I had a particularly irritating, really, really long report ended up being 7 pages, single spaced typed and at the end, he said that he wasn't sure why he'd been consulted because this patient's problems were outside his specialty.  I still get paid for it, but otherwise, what a waste of time.  Then I took the kids to youth group, ran a bunch of errands, came home and spilled an entire gallon of tea when I was trying to get it out of the fridge.   The towels we used to clean it up are in the washing machine right now and I am going to relax quietly for 1 hour before bed.  Sigh.