The long day and soon, the long week.

Last Saturday, we were triple booked.   And it rained all day.  We had the Easter Egg hunt at church, which we were in charge of, then a lunchtime family reunion with a bunch of relatives.  My aunt from Seattle had flown in and a lot of people had come to see her.  Most of the people there, I had to be introduced to because I hadn't seen them since I was about 10 years old.  It was interesting.  Then, later that night, we had my brother-in-law and sister-in-law's wedding reception.  They got married back in the fall, but had their reception this past weekend, so that her relatives from another state could be here.  It was fun and very elegant and pretty.  By the end of the day though, I was so tired as to be giggly on the way home.  I'm glad those kind of days don't hit very often. 

Hunting eggs inside because of rain, rain, rain.  

We do have my brother's wedding to look forward to though, in hopefully, the near future.  :-P  They haven't set a date yet. 

This is an altogether busy week.   We've got Easter this weekend and then I'm going to work a 40 hour week.  Normally, I work 12 hours a week, so this is really going to be a stretch for me.  I'll have to figure out time management and I'll have to deal with exhaustion and pain.  My back and legs will HURT.  I know that going in.  I'm already on Mobic for my osteoarthritis so the only thing I can take to augment it is Tylenol.  I'm not looking forward to it.  This time last year, I was not looking forward to working a week of day camp at the Montessori  school.  I survived that and I will, likely, survive this.

At the wedding we had dancing.  I danced the cupid shuffle, but that's it.  I'm not in this picture.  :-) 

This week in pictures.

I saw 2 deer lying down in the back yard last week.  This is taken from inside the kitchen, through the glass doors.  It was pretty and warm for a few days and then, snow happened again.  See below.  

It snowed such a beautiful snow today with lots of snow on the branches and none on the road - just the way I like it.  I like to go out and take pictures in the early morning when everything looks blue.  

My daughter and I built a snowman at home.  Youngest son built a snowman at school.  The roads were clear all day though.  It was great.  

Our 2 big bags of game at the game store where we play.  We had 2 game nights last week to celebrate spring break.

My green desserts at the St. Patrick's day potluck at work.

Great article.

This is a great article about some of the things that are wrong with our school system.
9 Elephants in the Classroom.

More March.

Remus (my grand-dog) before his recent hair cut.

March is marching right on and we're halfway through.  Youngest son is on spring break and I'm hoping that he will get some things done around the house that need to get done.  Our garbage service will pick up bulky items this month so I'm hoping that he will get the bulky items from the last year to the end of the driveway so that they can be taken away.  Have I ever mentioned how much I love the work of the trash collectors?  When we were first married, the system was that we had to take our trash to the dump ourselves.  We had no garbage collection here and now that we have it, I am so, so, grateful for it.  Also, we didn't have city water or phone service when we moved here.  We're not as old as this sounds, but we moved to a very rural area and it took a while to get everything here.  We still can't get cable TV, but we really don't want it.  

Anyway, I digress, back to March.  I'm hanging in there at work.  It's less stressful since one of the people left the office for another location.   I'm still getting used to the pathology specific terminology and the computer system but I'm starting to not feel completely stupid all the time, which is a good thing.  :-)  

A recent game of Hero-scape after Monday Night Dinner.  

Our daughter is supposed to work at her old job for a couple of weeks in April, but they actually called her to come in this week and be a sub for someone who is out with the flu so she's working this week as well.  I'm hoping that old flu is over soon. It's been a bad flu season this year.  The youngest 2 of our kids went to Comicon last weekend.  I enjoyed hearing about it and living vicariously through them a little bit, but as much as their feet were hurting that night and the next day, I'm glad I didn't go.  

Kentucky castle on the way to Comicon.  Click on the picture to enlarge it so you can actually see it.  

Oldest son and his wife were thinking they'd have to move out of their house-sitting situation pretty soon, but they got that worked out and they are staying near us.  I'm happy about that.  They come over on Monday nights so we get to see them often.  It's wonderful.  

We've had several small snows this winter including a couple this week.  These were the kind that did not obstruct driving, but just looked pretty --- exactly the kind of snow I like.  We've been playing a lot of board games at home and with friends.  We had our homeschool board game group last night.  Somehow along the way, we've picked up a few that aren't homeschooled, but they fit right in and contrary to popular belief, homeschoolers are good at socializing, so we've been having a good time.  We had a nice sized group of 8 last night which was perfect for dividing into 2 teams and playing some of the smaller player number games.  Good times.

Snow!

Cosmo and Remus in the snow.

March.

We're already a week into March.  I can't believe it.  I've got some kind of lag going on, I think because we didn't finish celebrating Christmas until halfway through January.  It doesn't seem like it should be springtime yet and indeed, we did have a little snow this morning, but the daffodils are up and blooming and some of the trees are budding.  It's here.   When I got this job, to celebrate, I bought myself some flower seeds and planted them this fall.  I'm so hopeful that some of them will come up this year.  :-)   I hope it doesn't frost late and kill everything.

As to what we're doing, we went to youngest son's college choral performance the other day.  It was good.  This one was a variety show and they let everyone do a song if they want to.  My son didn't do one, so I didn't enjoy this one as much as I do the concerts where the whole chorus sings because then he's singing every one.  I did hear some good songs though and then some I didn't care for as much.  After today, he'll be on spring break.  I have some projects for him to do around the house, which I hope he will get done without too much trouble.  We're also going to try and get an extra board game event in the week he's on spring break.    Also, he and his sister are going to ComiCon.  Hopefully, that will be fun.  Then soon, it's going to be Easter and then my birthday.  Spring is definitely here! 

Kentucky Homeschooling Bill Alert

HB574, an act relating to homeschool, was submitted to the House on February 27 by Representative Chris Harris, and is currently awaiting discussion in the House Education Committee. We have not seen a bill that so aggressively attacks our freedom to home educate in more than eight years. If this bill became law, it would drastically transform the face of private home education in Kentucky. It is CHEK’s stance that bills, such as these, are unnecessary and ultimately harmful to homeschoolers as they further increase the state's control of the education and upbringing of our children. CHEK is actively communicating our concerns to the House Education Committee. We encourage you to contact your legislators to let them know your concerns for HB 574.

If this proposed bill became law, it would:

1. Create a legal definition of homeschool in Kentucky.
2. Require parents to submit and affidavit to the Kentucky Department of Education, on an annual basis, verifying each child completed 1,062 hours of academic instruction.
3. Require parents to submit, on an annual basis, a portfolio of sample work completed by each child.
4. Empower the Department of Education to evaluate every portfolio to determine if students have achieved adequate academic growth throughout the year. The standard to demonstrate academic progress is subjective and would be completely up to the Department.
5. Require the Department of Education to create a plan for all students that have not met the academic growth standard, therefore, parents would be required to follow the remediation plan of the Department of Education, if they wish to continue teaching each child at home.
6. Require the establishment of an administrative procedure to terminate the student enrollment in a private homeschool, if a child has not obtained adequate academic growth in 24 months.
7. Require parents to be supervised by a certified teacher until adequate academic growth is established.
8. Give full authority to the Department of Education to promulgate these regulations.

We know you value your freedom to home educate your children in this Commonwealth.  Take a few minutes to communicate this to your Representative. 

You can call the legislative message line: 1-800-372-7181, and ask that your message be given to your Representative as well as Representative Chris Harris.  The TTY message line is 1-800-896-0305. If you have questions, please, direct them to CHEK at info@chek.org.