I did it.

I cleaned out the closet at last. It took less than an hour. Really all I had to do was get in there and move things around a bit. I bought a new shelving unit a few weeks ago and I got that in and made room for the Christmas tree and all the decorations. I'm glad it's finally done. The rest of the day Sunday, I spent resting and relaxing, watching TV, reading, etc. I always feel guilty when I do that, take a complete day and not do much of anything. I only do it once every now and then.

Today, I think we're going to take the day off for MLK day. We watched the DVD The 1940s house over the weekend and didn't count the hours we spent listening to The Night Flyers last week (because we listened to it at bedtime) so we might count it as a school day anyway. The DVD and the audio book together were about 6 hours. The Night Flyers is about WW1 and the 1940s house is very educational about the sacrifices made during WW2, so a lot of learning was going on.

I don't know. We may do an art day today. The younger 2 kids have been begging for that. I'll think about it.

Cold!

It's cold for our area today, 7 degrees Fahrenheit. As Hank the Cowdog would say, "It's not fit for man nor beets." We're going to try to venture out to church and then we'll go to my mom's to celebrate my husbands birthday. Maybe later I'll get ambitious and clean out the closet so I can get the Christmas Tree shoved in there. Can you believe it is still in the living room? In a box, yes, but still in the living room. My husband and kids put it in the box and my job is to straighten up my closet and find room for it. Last year, we threw out our old tree and this year we bought a new one. So my closet has had all this time to get that empty Christmas tree space filled in with other junk and the Christmas tree doesn't have room anymore. Did I mention I don't like cleaning? (Only about a million times!) Is there a closet cleaning service you can call? Not that I would. I wouldn't want them to see it!

Exercise.

Since we've been homeschooling, I've tried various things to get the kids to exercise. At first, I just told them to go out and play. They whined. We don't want to go outside and play. There's nothing to do. It's boring. Okay, then I came up with an exercise routine that they had to do inside the house. They also whined about this, somewhat but they did it. We all did the same one, pushups, situps, leg lifts, etc. After a while, it got boring. This semester, I added weight lifting, biking, running around the house 5 times, jumping rope 200 times and some other options to their exercise routine. My oldest has been lifting weights. My daughter has been jumping rope. I've still been doing the same pushups, leg lifts, etc., most days, because I don't mind that it's boring. But the youngest has been going outside and running around and around the house. Yesterday, I looked out and he was walking because it was kind of icy and he was talking to himself. He came in and said that he'd done 6 laps instead of 5 because what he was talking to himself about was so interesting. ;-)

Still feeling rebellious.

I did everything I was supposed to do yesterday. I only rebelled on the inside. Today, hopefully, I will get some motivation going, but it's 11:00 a.m. and I haven't gotten it yet. I'm switching from transcription mode to housework routine mode right now and that seems to be where the difficulty is. I've added so much cleaning to my schedule that it seems kind of overwhelming to me. Housework has always been my worst thing. I've always hated it. Maybe the kids won't notice if I don't do any today?

Bad.

Remember the deal I made with them last year? If I don't do my morning routine they don't have to do any school work. If I don't do my routine they get the whole day off. This motivates me because I know that they need to get their 185 days of school in.

I'm going to do it now, honest. I just feel like grumbling about it a bit.

Rebellion.

We have a rebel in the house. One person who does not want to do school, chores or basically anything. The problem is, it's me. I just want a break. I want to watch TV and laze around and not do anything. I've been pretty good since the Christmas break, getting my routines done, getting school done, getting work done (mostly) but the last couple of days, I've lost my momentum. I just don't want to. I want all of this to be done, but I don't want to do it.

Hopefully, I'll get motivated soon.

Jewelry.

Here is a selection of the jewelry my daughter has been working on since Christmas. She asked for and got a lot of beading supplies and cords to make friendship bracelets. She's been working on them a lot since. These are just the necklaces from the past few days.

WW 1 Notebooking Folders.

These are some of the WW1 pages the kids did, in no particular order.

Hoopla.

I saw this on Simply April's blog. You use the first letter of your first name and try to think of something in all of these categories. Try it!

1. Famous Singer: Dianna Ross
2. Four Letter Word: Diva
3. Street: Delancey Street.
4. Color: Denim (I couldn't think of one and looked at a list of crayola crayon colors!)
5. Gifts/Present: Digital Camera.
6. Vehicle: Delorian.
7. Things in a Souvenir Shop: Donuts
8. Boy Name: Drake
9. Girl Name: Dena
10. Movie title: Daredevil.
11. Drink: Daquri
12. Occupation: Doctor.
13. Celebrity: Dempsey, Patrick
14. Magazine: Dog Fancy.
15. City: Dallas
16. Sport: Dodgeball
17. Fruit: Durian
18. Reason for Being Late to work: Didn't want to go.
19. Something you throw away: Dead food from the fridge.
20. Something you shout: Dang it!