End of the week, end of the month.

It's been a week.  I can't think of an adjective of it.  Work got done.  Homeschool got done.  Apologies were accepted.  The new dog is settling in.  He hasn't come up with a favorite sleeping spot yet and here he is sleeping by the window.  which my daughter thought was cute, so she took the picture.  He also had to go to the vet this week due to an ear infection, but hopefully he's okay now.

Most of the week the weather has looked like this.  We live in a beautiful place and these pictures were taken from the front porch.  I do not spend enough time outside!

Wow, right?  

On Thursday, I went to see Mom and on the way home, it stormed producing this glorious double rainbow.  In typical homeschooler (or maybe just mom) fashion, I came home, realized that we couldn't see the rainbow from our yard, so I got the kids to jump in the car with me and we drove 1/2 a mile down the road where the view of it looked like this.  

Our mailbox is in this picture.  :-)

Last night, since I didn't do any real menu planning at the grocery last week, I had to be creative and I did good for once, making gluten free steak enchiladas that tasted like something you'd get in a restaurant.  (I'm going to share the "recipe" on my gluten free blog, http://www.glutenfree-whatcanieat.blogspot.com) later today.  

I have been in contact with my boss this week, trying to make things go a little better at my job (because it's pretty awful) and we changed the order of my work pool and changed up my schedule a little bit, so I work a little earlier in the morning most days, but on Saturday, I am going to work in the evening.  Today's the first day of that and I am not sure how I am going to like it.  So far, it feels very weird.  I did it for a while a few years back so that I could homeschool in the morning and it was fine.  We'll see, I guess.  

My youngest son, my only current homeschooler, had writing to do yesterday and he has trouble with it, so he struggled until late in the evening with it, the Friday night rush that he does sometimes but had been doing a lot better with lately ... oh well.  He's been an exemplary young man lately, helping me with some of the household chores and taking care of the pets that I won't complain about this one little slip.   I procrastinated with my medical transcription work for a long time, so I know what it is like.  

Art!

When I am stressed, nothing helps me cope as much as my art journaling does so when I am extremely stressed as I have been this week, with the disagreements among the members of my beloved homeschool group, I art journal like crazy.  Crocheting is a nice hobby and it is somewhat relaxing, but it is nothing like art for helping with my stress.   My family is so glad that I didn't obsessively take up a more annoying hobby, like playing the bagpipe, that they just deal with my art obsession and the mess it brings.  Here are some things I've been working on this week.  I have also been working, going to see mom, minimally keeping our house going and cooking so it's not totally a case of "Nero fiddled while Rome burned."  I'm not totally abandoning my responsibilities to art journal.

I would like to see the results of art on a functional MRI to see what effect it has on the brain.  Some of it is good, some of it is not, but as long as I get engrossed in what I am doing and feel less stressful, it's worth it to me to keep doing it.  

As to what happened with my homeschool group?  Two mama bears, defending their cubs and the subsequent emotional fallout.  :-(    

Decisions.

Lots of stuff going on, lots of decisions being made, not really by me because I don't know what to do, but around me and involving me.  It's weird, but it's life.  I'm hanging in here.  I took a mental health day yesterday and did a lot of art journaling and processing and thinking and today I am somewhat better.  Sometime in the day yesterday I decided to just let the youngest son's violin lessons wait until the fall.  It's not a big thing, but it makes me feel a little more relaxed.  I will ask him later if he's okay with it.  There are just a few more weeks of school this year anyway so I don't think that he will mind.

I saw this cute quote on pinterest.  It's actually very wise.

Stress, stress, stress.

It just keeps on coming, folks.  I feel like typing, I need a break, I need a break, I need a break, I need a break.

I was supposed to have a break yesterday and it started out nice.  I took the day off work.  The kids and I and some other people from the homeschool group went to see a production of 7 Brides for 7 Brothers.  It was cute and fun but my day ended up with more stress and I feel that I may need to take a break from all social media, all social appointments, my boss, my job, all people of any kind except the people who live in my house and my mom and brother and I may have to narrow it even further.

  

My Birthday.

This is me a few weeks ago on Mom's birthday.  

Today's my birthday.  I've been thinking about what I want.  It's been a rough year and I feel like that song they play on Christian radio "I'm alive, even though a part of me has died."  Some birthdays you can only celebrate just making it and being alive.

That's said, I'm putting my want list here on my blog because my husband reads my blog and he's really the only one who has any chance of getting me any of the things I want, because the kids don't have money.  :-P

1. That thing I mention every day that I want.  You know what it is.  
2. The pool up and going.

   

   Doesn't it look wonderful?

3. A break from medical transcription.  A good, long one.
4. The outside of the house, especially the porch made over, with pictures, so I can put it on my blog.  :-P 

   

   Front Porch.

5. A rocking chair or one of these porch swings.    

6.  Raspberry plants.  

7.  A vacation.  

8.  Cake.

9.  Art canvases.

10. Picture frames.  

My wants are simple and expensive.

Family Trees.

My youngest son and I were talking yesterday after church.  We've been going to the same church for both of our whole lives.  His ancestors on both sides were among the founders of the church.   As we were leaving, he said that he wondered how many of the church members he was related to.  Of the ones that were there yesterday, I could only think of maybe 5 people?  He said that he doesn't know everyone when we go to family parties, so I am going to try and remedy that with a family tree exercise and maybe looking at a bunch of different pictures on Facebook, to help connect him to his roots a little bit.  While looking for a family tree printable I found this one that looks like a house and is suitable for coloring, though it looks nothing like a tree.  It's cute as can be.

This is a homeschool method that works out well for us, just we as a family, following up on his curiosity.  I could let it go and forget about it and unless he brings it up again, he'll never know who his great grandparents are, but he mentioned it and I'm going to follow up on it.  So for this, we'll be doing some collaborative schooling. :-)

One thing that isn't working.

Okay, we're going to have to re-think the violin lessons via Youtube and actually get him some lessons to get him started.  The violin seems to be a bit more difficult than the guitar.  My oldest son, a few years ago, taught himself to play the guitar with a DVD and then we paid for some lessons for my daughter in guitar and then piano, but those were only 5 dollars per half hour.  That lady doesn't play the violin, unfortunately, so we're probably going to have to pay quite a bit more for these.  :-(  Really, we homeschool for cheap so we shouldn't complain.  The only thing we've paid for the last couple of years are a few field trips and the math curriculum and, of course, the violin.

Another thing I have done to get some music instruction for my daughter, is have her join our church choir.  She did it for about a year and learned a lot about music during that time.  There are also community choirs, community theaters and all kinds of resources out there.  Our library does knitting classes, craft classes, exercise classes and write your lifestory classes.  Homeschooling opens your family up to the world.  :-)

Better Now.

My connectivity issues cost me an extra hour of work and a lot of annoyance but I got through it.   Now I am preparing to teach a 4H class on crocheting, which will be the first time that I ever teach it myself.  I'm a little bit nervous, but I'll be okay, I guess.  My daughter usually teaches it, but she's going through a mildly rebellious phase and doesn't want to.   It's always been outside of her comfort zone to teach a class but she's doing it without complaining for several years.  Teaching is okay with me, but I am not all that good at crocheting.  We'll see how it goes, I guess.  The regular needleworking teacher can crochet a little bit too, so maybe between us, we can do it.

This is an interesting article about the mental benefits of needleworking.  You should check it out.  :-)  https://www.yahoo.com/makers/happiness-is-a-needle-and-thread-away-the-mental-113527012940.html

And if you haven't checked out your local 4H groups, you should definitely do that.  It is a wonderful resource for homeschoolers.

Here are some 4H pictures from the past few years.