One of THOSE days.

I should have went back to bed as soon as I dropped my vitamin pill wrapper thingy in the toilet this morning.  That should have been my first clue.  I guess that could've been worse, because it could've been something I wanted to keep, rather than something I was trying to throw away and the toilet didn't have any contents, so to speak, so that's a good thing too.  But still, in the toilet.  :-(  My morning, since then has been a series of things like that, culminating in the Suburban having an engine light on, which has made us miss our planned field trip this afternoon and now we can't get in touch with anyone to let them know we're not coming.  :-(.

Oh well.  It's a beautiful day.  I guess we'll try and enjoy it at home.  

Boom, Splat, Kablooey.

This afternoon my youngest son pulled out his Klutz book, called Boom, Splat, Kablooey and did one of the experiments in it, which was to put a fourth of a bar of Ivory soap in the microwave to watch it expand.  It was very entertaining.

Notes:  Since I've been asked some questions about this in comments and some of you might try it, I'll give some directions.  Cut the bar of ivory soap into fourths.  Put 1/4 on a paper plate and put in microwave for 1 minute.  It turns into this foamy stuff that breaks easily into little bits, so you may end up sweeping some of it up but it's not terribly messy.   By foam, I mean a dry foam, more like styrofoam than anything else I can think of.

Great Article

There's a great article over at the Parent at The Helm blog about the health benefits of homeschooling, including more sleep, healthier food, more exercise, less stress, etc.  Here's the link.

Thursday.

October is marching right along here, I tell you.  It's already what, the 6th?  Today's the day I had my echocardiogram and Holter monitor for the heart palpitations that are going on with my anemia.  It was interesting having the echo.  I type those things all the time, so it was kind of cool being on the other side of it.  I'm still wearing the monitor because that's a 24 hour thing and I have to turn it back in before work tomorrow morning.  

School's going fine.  The kids work very well on their own now.  My youngest sat last night and re-watched a bunch of biology videos from last year's biology study, because he just wanted to.  I love when they just decide to study something like that on their own.  My daughter has decided to do some quilting and make a quilt so she's been working on that and my oldest is working very hard on learning to play his new acoustic guitar that he got for his birthday.  He's been playing an electric guitar and this acoustic one is really giving his left arm a workout.

This month was supposed to be a month of cleaning, painting, weeding and other work on the house, but I haven't felt good and so we haven't started on any of it.  Maybe next week? 

I keep blogging, but blogger keeps deleting my posts ... !

This photo is not related to the blog post below it in any way.

Let's see how this one goes.  Yesterday, we took my daughter to the spine center for her recheck.  Her scoliosis does not appear to be getting worse and may, in fact, be better.  We originally had an appointment on the Friday before our vacation and I had thought that it would be nice to go to the science center since we'd be so close.  Then I got so busy with vacation preparation that I decided to postpone the appointment, not realizing that the science center is only open past 5 on weekends, not on Tuesdays.  I noticed it yesterday before we left, but figured we'd get to go to the science center for an hour or so, since the appointment was at 2:30.  Well I figured wrong, let me tell you.  We didn't leave the doctor's office until almost 5 o'clock, so we made it up to ourselves by going to Hobby Lobby and Krispy Kreme.  I scheduled the next spine center appointment on a Friday! 

October the third.

I can't believe it's October.  If you read my blog, you'll find that I often marvel at how quickly time passes.  It's 82 days until Christmas.  This year has passed quickly.  It's been so much better than last year in many ways though and for that I am thankful.  Speaking of being thankful, I've already started craving thanksgiving-y type foods and have already made a chicken in the crock pot and made gluten free stuffing to go with it.  It was very good and I may do something like that again later this week, although if I make it over and over, by Thanksgiving, I'll be kind of tired of it.

Just a little bit of trivia about our family .. we were all born in even years and so in odd numbered years, all our ages are odd numbers.  My kids are now 13, 15 and 19.  I won't even say how old my husband and I are, just be assured that we're old and we're odd.  Numbered that is.

I just got a call from the nurse at my doctor's office.  My hemoglobin is 8.1 with the normal range supposed to be 12-16 and my iron is "quite low" so I'm going to have to go back on iron pills.  :-( 

Update.

After 2 days of use, my daughter likes this writing book very much.  It's nice for her not to ask me what to do for writing and nice for me not to have to try and figure something out every day.  It says on the web site that it is Christian based.  I haven't looked at enough to know how much so, so if you are looking to use it in a secular homeschool, I don't know how well it would work.  We like it though and I am relieved. 

I guess maybe.

I feel better today.  It will take a while for my blood counts to go up.  I need to eat more fortified cereal, which I was planning to do for breakfast today, but didn't.  I ate some grapes and a fun sized Snickers.  I have no idea if grapes contain iron or not and I'm pretty sure that Snickers don't.  I think maybe my whole nutritional plan/outlook thingy needs some work.  I eat too much junk and not enough fruit and veggies and that's probably my entire problem.  I am going to work on it.    :-(

We had a little bit of excitement yesterday.  My oldest son went outside and then came back in complaining that he couldn't see, he had huge spots before his eyes.  I called the doctor's office and the nurse told me that my son needed to see an eye doctor immediately.  I called the eye doctor and they worked us in (at 4:30 on a Friday, no less) but by the time we got to the eye doctor, the vision problems had cleared up and a horrible headache had started.  That's when I realized that it was probably a migraine.  The eye doctor confirmed my diagnosis and my son got to spend several hours last evening in a darkened room with a cool cloth on his forehead.  I hope that's the last one he gets.  It did not look like much fun at all.