Last week and this week.

This weekend is beautiful,  70 degrees. .. last weekend we had 9 inches of snow.   Here is a video of me driving up our driveway last Sunday.  

A uniquely homeschooling issue.

I think it is, at least.  We have this problem here, since the kids don't need to get up with an alarm clock to go to school, that they want to stay up all night and sleep all day.  My son does (minimally) keep up with his homeschooling, but he does it in the late afternoon.   They also do help with chores when they are awake.  But this sleeping all day most of the time means that when I want help putting the garbage out, feeding the pets (heavy bags that need to be carried in from the car, for example) or when I want company going to church or the grocery, I don't have it because my kids sleep all day.  I realize that in a very short time, they are going to be moving out of the house and I will have these issues anyway, but when they leave, I won't have so much garbage or so many pets (5).  Maybe.  I may become a crazy cat lady when I'm done raising kids.  I have not ruled that out.

My daughter is 19 and is supposed to be taking this year to work on her novel.  If she is working on it, I don't see evidence of it, because I go to bed around 11:00 p.m.  I am giving her the benefit of the doubt and assuming that she works on it in the middle of the night.  I'd like to be that supportive parent that gets the book dedicated to her some day, but at the same time I am annoyed.  I feel like stamping my foot and saying "get up!"  No, wait, I think I did that yesterday.  :-(

Very frustrated.  Any suggestions?

As of right now, this is my plan - - I'm going to ask for a job application for my daughter when we are at the library today and I want  to enroll both of them in community college next fall.

In other news around here, I've already fallen off the small bowl diet bandwagon and need to get back on, I saw a lawyer yesterday about a bunch of issues with mom's finances and we have our last (sigh) 4H January-June enrollment class tonight.  Despite my whining, I am not looking forward to being done with homeschooling.

On Sunday morning, both of our cats decided to hang out in the same tree, first one, then the other.  Zelda is up top, Zoey is at the bottom.  

Changing some things.

I've been blogging here for 11 years and we are at the very, very end of homeschooling.  I am not sure what I am going to do regarding blogging after that.  We have really enjoyed my blog, as a family, going back to read about our adventures and funny events after we have forgotten them.  The reason I brought this up, is to say that if you've been reading for very long, you know that sometime in January, every year, I start to make some new years resolutions and start trying to declutter, get organized and lose weight and I am not sure what happens, but then the next January, I have to do it all over again.  :-P.

Whatever.

I don't want to think what everything around here would look like if I didn't even try each January.

This year I'm doing what I call a Tiny Bowl Diet and eating everything out of a tiny bowl I got at Walmart.  It's actually a ramekin.  I had a tiny serving of cocoa pebbles out of this bowl this morning. I started doing this 2 weeks ago and it's serving me well.  It might not work for everyone because I also have a lap band and so small servings are my goal anyway.

I have been doing some decluttering each day.  The most important thing that we have done around here is this.

Everyone in the household is doing their own dishes and trying to leave no trace in the kitchen, so that when I am off work and not doing something for mom, I don't have to deal with piles of dishes before I can start on other housework, so I can spend my limited cleaning time on other things.  this has helped me keep the rest of the house cleaner.  It's awesome!

Test scores.

I'm not a huge fan of testing, it can't show how creative someone is, or how much of an out of the box thinker they are, but we did make our kids take the ACT.  Our oldest got what is an apparently average score and is doing fine in college, our middle child got also an average score but does not know if she wants to go to college.  She wants to be a writer and has already started her first book, so she's not sure it is necessary.  I'm not either.  I have a bachelor's degree I don't use and a medical transcription diploma from a trade school that I do use, so I am not the best judge.  I have applied for a couple of jobs that require my bachelor's degree in the past year, but I have not even made it to the interview on either of them.  I think that the fact that the degree is nearly 30 years old has something to do with it.   My youngest son is thinking about being an engineer, I think primarily because that's where he thinks the money is.  He is also thinking about becoming a land baron and making money in real estate.  His interests, however, are in reading and literature.  My little late bloomer who did not read until he was 10, got a 33 in reading on his ACT.  I am so proud!  He also scored high enough to get into his top 2 college choices, but not enough to win automatic scholarships or anything, so he will probably take it again.

In other news around here, I have been having a kind of a worry crisis since last week about something to do with mom's VA application and medicaid eligibility and I haven't been able to enjoy anything much or think about anything else and I won't know how this is going to turn out for a while, so I'd appreciate prayers, prayers, prayers if you all don't mind.

Going back to normal.

It snowed today.  

My son and his girlfriend drove back to Mississippi the day before yesterday.  We miss them and now we are trying to get back to our normal routine.  Also, since it's January, which is a time of new beginnings, I'm looking at dieting and exercising and decluttering ... the usual.  The youngest will be starting back with his school work on Monday and we'll need to file the FAFSA for him and work on his transcript a little a lot and we'll just get on with life.

Mom's in a new place and that seems to be going okay.  She's having a little trouble because we had a little trouble getting her medicines transferred and she had to be without some of them for a few days.  Once she gets back on track, it will be better.  She has not seemed to have any emotional issues with moving.  She seems to be taking that part of it in stride.   I hope that it works out.  It's scary making a move like that with an Alzheimer's patient.  

My mom's new assisted living served maple bacon cookies the other day.  :-)

So anyway, this is life, teenagers getting ready to launch and young adults launching and taking care of our elderly family members.  It's not for wimps, yet there is enjoyment along the way.

Going to Ikea!

We went to the Ikea in Westchester, Ohio yesterday.  It was the first time my son's girlfriend has been to Ikea and the first time she had been that far north, also, it was my son's first trip as an adult with his own apartment.  His roommate is moving out next month and he's going to need some things and he got some great things, a set of silverware for 8 dollars, a set of pans for 10 dollars and a frying pan for 4.97, plus many others.  My daughter got what she dubbed a "dream desk!".  She's been using a card table for a desk because her childhood desk is too small, so she was very excited.  It was quite a squeeze getting that into my tiny Toyota, so we didn't get the new shelf I was going to get for the games.  I'm going to declutter around here this year, so maybe I can re-purpose a shelf I'm using someplace else for the games.    I'm having that urge to redo my whole house.  I'm tired of it the way it is.  One thing that gives me hope for that, is that I put up a sign in the kitchen that says "Leave no trace" and everyone has been pitching in with the dishes, doing their own and leaving no trace in the kitchen.  It mostly works and that frees up a lot of my time to be working on this decluttering.  I recently read "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up" and I think it could be life changing.  I probably won't do it exactly the say she says.  I can't imagine thanking my clothing for it's service to me every day, but I can imagine what a less cluttered house would look like and that is my goal.  It's so much fun going to Ikea.  That helped fuel my desire to make my house more livable when I see the setups of how to live comfortably in 400 square feet.

I'm not going to make it my New Years resolution though.  Those almost always make me feel like a failure.  I'm going to try and be positive about it.

Still celebrating.

My son and his girlfriend are still here and we are having a nice visit.  We had holiday parties both days of the weekend, so we were very busy.  Also on Friday, we all packed up and moved my mom from one assisted living facility to another.   It was emotionally hard, but with all 7 of us doing the moving, it was not as physically hard as last time.  I was working on my mom's closet, trying to consolidate her wardrobe into half the space she'd had previously and trying to weed out the smaller clothes, which have been too tight lately and when I finished and turned around, my kids and my husband had set up mom's room and arranged everything perfectly, in about 15 minutes.  When mom looked in, she said, "This looks like my place."  It was awesome.   Today is our last day of busy-busy-business and then for the next few days of their visit, we'll probably just lie around watching TV.  :-P