{Insert clever title}

As I have stated before, it is difficult to come up with a blog title when you aren't entirely sure what brilliant, fascinating things you're going to blog about.  And, add to that, if you've been blogging for 6 or so years, and you don't want to repeat titles exactly, it makes it even more difficult.  Still, I  perservere.  keep trying.  I am off work today and that is just a wonderful thing.  We do have a couple of things we need to do in town later, but right now, I'm free; free to take down the garbage, free to clean the house, free to cook.  That's life though.   Freckles is very, very happy because she loves garbage day so much.  She gets to ride in the van, go down to the road and smell things.  And today, I forgot one bag and had to go back down so she got to go twice.  Such joy for a little dog.  She could hardly contain it.  Actually, she didn't contain it.  She ran around in circles with happiness.

School seems to be working okay this week.  I changed it up on the grammar a little to make it easier for them to do it without me, knowing I was going to have to be in and out.  The youngest has been having some trouble passing his Life of Fred end of chapter tests called Bridges and so he's been doing a lot of work on that.  I also put him on some copywork that's  called Boy Scribe that i got from CurrClick.  He has to write one page a day.  Today I checked his work from yesterday and found that all his 6s were reversed.  I'm not sure what to do about it.  We've tried everything it seems.  I secretly think that his occupational therapist had him graduate from therapy because really she had no idea how to address this either.

My haul of books from the library last night was large and contained the sequel to My Side of the Mountain and also a recipe book written by the same author which included things like acorn pancakes and hickory nut pie.  We may have to try one of those.  We sure do have a lot of acorns.   At the library, I also got several cookbooks and I intend to start working on my book again soon.  I haven't worked on it since Sunday.  Please remember to nag  encourage me to work on it in comments throughout this month.  :-D

Long day.

I worked today and then took Mom to the pain clinic to get a steroid shot in her back.  We arrived at 12:50 and got to leave a little before 5.   The procedure itself takes about half a minute.  It drives me crazy to see a place so disorganized and so uncaring that their patients are in pain and waiting for hours to be seen but they are the only one around here and so we go.  The shots do help her.  Now I am at the library all by myself, looking for good read-alouds and blogging.  I can't wait to be able to pick the kids up and go home!

The report.

I had a great time on the field trip and I think most everyone else did too.  We read My Side of the Mountain which is about a young boy surviving in the wilderness alone and then we went to the forest and a couple of park rangers led us in learning how to build a fire with flint and steel, build a shelter out of deadfall and find wild edibles.   We picked up acorns, hickory nuts and black walnuts, chestnuts, persimmons, apples and crab apples.   I didn't know you could build a fire using a cotton ball as tinder so I learned something today.  It was 65 degrees and sunny, the perfect day to be out in the forest!

F I E L D T R I P ! ! !

Today we get to take a field trip.  I'm excited about it.  I'll post the details later.  Yesterday went pretty well.  The small changes to the lists were noted and I think they'll work.  We also dug up our sweet potato crop.  We had about 20 potatoes from one half of one I planted that had grown eyes in the pantry.  They were small, but it was a lot of fun to dig them up.  Our garden did remarkably well for our garden.  We only planted 1 pumpkin, 1 potato, 3 peppers and 3 tomato plants (I think) and we harvested quite a few veggies.  A lot of years we have had plants and vines but few were pollenated.  I think the fact that we had purple coneflowers this year and they attract TONS of butterflies, also helped our veggie crop this year.  There was also the fact that we moved the entire garden closer to the deck so that it got more attention from us and was further away from the morning glories.  That helped too.  Next year, of course, I will have to plant more.  Spring always brings hope of a new bountiful crop.

Nice weekend.

We had a very nice weekend with parties and celebrating.  It was very fun.   Now it's back to reality a little bit because I've got to work and the kids have got to do school today, but we'll live.  I finally, just now, made some changes to the schedules.  Since I seem to be running to appointments and things all the time, I've made more of their subjects self taught.  They are pretty good at following the routines now even when I'm not here.   I do have to nag them about school a little bit most days, but they are strict on themselves to the minute on screen time, not even turning the TV on 30 seconds early.  It tickles me.  I can just picture them as adults, two of them talking on the phone and suddenly one of them says "Hey, look at that, it's screen time, I've gotta go, talk to you later!"

Anyway, we'll see if these changes help things get done. 

What's the opposite of low key?

High key?  We had a very busy but good day today.   First I had to work this morning.  Right in the middle of my shift, I had to go and get my blood pressure checked because it was high the last time I went to the doctor.  Then I came by the house, ate lunch and made pudding for the dessert I was taking to a party this evening, went back to work, then came home and made the taco soup, finished the dessert, blew up 30 balloons and tied loops onto them, opened 45 glow bracelets and attached them and then decorated the trunk of the van and then we went to 2 parties in quick succession. Actually they were both scheduled at the exact same time but we went to one and then the other.  It was fun, but now we are just a leetle bit tired.  We had a good time though. 

Low key kind of day.

We don't have all that much to do today.  If I could've gotten done with work early enough we could have went to a nice lunch, but it didn't work out.  I didn't get finished with work until nearly 2:00 pm.  So, after school today, I'm going to try and get some more work done on my book and go to the grocery and just enjoy a kind of a low-key day.  I need to pick up some things for the weekend.  We're having a homeschool party this weekend and a party at church so I need to get some things to take to those.  

Oops, I just realized that I posted that nothing much was happening today.  I hope it doesn't end up like one of those novels that starts out "Nothing ever happens to me" and then all kinds of strange things happen to that person!

Thursday.

It was my day off and I had a dentist appointment today to replace a filling.  So the kids and I cleaned and did school this morning (mostly) and then I went to the dentist.  If it weren't for the shots in my gums and the drill, I wouldn't mind the dentist all that much.  I like lying there in the massage chair watching HGTV and having my back rubbed by the chair.  I mentioned to the dentist that I had been difficult to numb in the past so he shot me so full of novocaine that my eyeballs felt numb.  I told him if he wanted to do a little Lasik on me, he could because my eyes were already prepared.   Anyway, that finished, I came home to find a good surprise, my brother had come for a visit.  He and the kids and I played some board games and talked for the rest of the afternoon.  Now I'm going to watch a little NCIS that came from Netflix and do some more work on my book. I'm enjoying writing it and I think I'm making good progress.