Revisiting old Friends.

We've been reading a bunch of picture books this week that we hadn't read in a while, revisiting books we love like old friends, all of Dr. Suess, If You Give A Mouse A Cookie and If You Give a Pig a Pancake, Cricter, Leo The Late Bloomer and others. It's been fun to take a little walk down memory lane. We are also reading the latest Hank Zipzer book from the library, called "Barfing in the Backseat, How I Survived a Family Road Trip". My oldest is revisiting all 54 of the Animorphs series currently. I definitely think our love of books as rubbed off on the kids. The news yesterday was that the youngest, who is 9 but has had some reading difficulties, picked up a book at the library yesterday and read quite a bit of it. He's been able to for a while and now he's starting to believe that he can. How cool is that?

Home!

We get to stay home most of the day and I'm looking forward to it. We'll do our school routines. This is the first day all week that I haven't had something I needed to do during school time. I'm thrilled. I hope no emergencies crop up today. I might actually get to cook some lunch, get the laundry caught up and work on those least common denominators with the younger two kids. Doesn't that sound like fun? Except for the least common denominators, it all sounds good to me.

Home.

Ahh.

At least until 5:30 p.m. Hey, we can't stay home every minute, can we?

I did it.

I spent the whole day away from my responsibilities and worries and it was mostly nice. I got a little tired and I'm not much of a shopper, really, so I did a lot of waiting for others to shop. We ate at the cheesecake factory which I'd never done before. We ordered lunch and by the time I'd eaten half of it, there was no way I could have room for any cheesecake. If I ever get to go again, I'm just ordering cheesecake and nothing else! During the shopping part, I did pick up a gift I need for a gift exchange in a few weeks at Bath and Body Works.

Anyway, it's good to be home today, at least for the morning, which is all we get since someone has a doctor's appointment at 1:00 pm today ...

Oh well. For a homeschooling, work at home mom, I sure don't get to spend much time at home, do I?

(picture from Great Homeschool T-shirts

Call me irresponsible ...

Today, I'm running away from my responsibilities and going shopping with the other homeschool moms. We have a Christmas party each year for the kids and a Christmas party for the moms each year. This is ours. We'll shop, have lunch out and exchange presents. I'm looking forward to it, but there is this sense that I should not leave all my responsibilities even for one day that I struggle with. I'm, of course, working before I go and will work when I come home because I don't get any paid time off from work. I hope my husband does the school work with the kids today, but if he doesn't, it won't be the end of the world. We'll make up the day sometime, even if we have to do a Saturday. Now if I can just relax and enjoy myself ...

The new sport.

The new sport around here is putting on socks and sliding on the new floor. It's funny. Here's a shot of my youngest, pants rolled up and socks on, sliding. They've even made up a new game which has very complicated rules and involves sliding and throwing a ball into a goal.

They did most of their school with their Dad today as I was running errands, tons of them, in 2 different towns, in the rain. It's good to be back home and inside, even if my house is a construction zone!

More flooring!

We've got more flooring, almost half the room is done. I tell you, those HGTV shows where they're just putting that laminate down and it's so, so, easy, are so, so false. It takes a long time and it is a pain. If any flooring manufacturer is reading this and wants to donate their easier flooring so we can use it in our kitchen and then I'll write a good review, okay, but it better actually be easy.

Anyway, I'm happy it's going down.

Flooring!

Today was a pretty good day. We got part of our new laminate flooring put down (yay!). I'm very excited about getting these bare plywood floors covered up, although I think they were an improvement over the ugly carpet we had before. I'm slowly getting into a Christmas mood, although we're waiting on putting the tree up until at least half the floor is down, so we won't have to move it to put in flooring. I think waiting a little bit might be a good thing. It seems like Christmas is coming to quickly! I think it's 32 days?

Another Thanksgiving day for us.

I guess we need to be doubly thankful! We are having dinner at my mom and dad's today. Yesterday, we had dinner at my husband's mom and dad's. I also have to work this morning, but that's okay. At least I don't have to go out into the cold and work. I can do it right here at home. That's something to be thankful for, right there.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I've got the day off and I'm so thankful for that. I don't have to cook today, or clean and that's just wonderful. We're going to my mother-in-laws house for some of the best home cooking in the world, then tomorrow, we'll go to my mom's for some more!

Here's the turkeys I had the kids make this year. It's just not Thanksgiving season in school if you don't have to make a turkey, is it?

Frustrated.

I just haven't felt like blogging. It's been kind of crazy around here and in my juggling act of work, school and housework, I thought I was doing pretty good with housework and school but my knew my work was't going all that well, (but still passable.) Now my high schooler says that he's not learning anything with this workbook approach we're using for him so I feel like I've dropped the school ball. (Did ya'll hear a loud thunk?) He didn't want to do Konos (which is very hands-on), he didn't like the computer based program that we tried and now he doesn't like workbooks. I'm not sure where else to go from here? Just make him do it? (We've been trying that approach for over a year) or try something else? It's frustrating. We may all just have to follow along with his studies. He's learning about geology in Science, so I guess we'll all have to do geology ...

Maybe the last of the appointments for a while?

We did not do school today. We had dentist appointments for everyone in the family then we had some shopping to do and errands to run. We had to buy a new Christmas tree because last year I just got disgusted with the old one and took it to Goodwill. It was very difficult to put together and branches would just fall off. Hopefully, this new one will be better. I can't believe how quickly the holiday season is getting here. Thanksgiving is this week!

The rest of the day, I spent cleaning, working on my store on Cafepress and watching Dancing With The Stars. I really wonder who is going to go home tomorrow night. They all seem good.

Anyway, we'll get back to school tomorrow, do some Thanksgiving activities and try to have a good time. Sometimes in my crazy rush to just get it all done, I forget to stop and enjoy it.

Thanks for all the great comments on my blog. I've tried to comment on everyone's blogs this week as well as commenting on my own blog to answer questions, but blogger has been shutting me out sometimes, randomly, so sometimes I can comment and sometimes I can't.

Saturday.

I gotta say, I'm glad to have this week behind me. It's been a little crazy trying to get things done. Hopefully, next week will be better. It's Thanksgiving week. I can't believe how quickly it's come this year! I love Thanksgiving though. It's a nice holiday. Sometimes it's a little hard to be thankful, when you feel that life is getting you down, but that's when you should do it. It helps to count those blessings.

We are going to do all 3 days of school next week and hopefully we'll get a lot done. I've started my youngest on Time4Learning and so far, he likes it. I have yet to see if he's really learning anything though. We've kind of been trying to find the proper level for him so far. Yesterday he had already done everything and asked to do Time4Learning anyway. That's a good sign. I haven't had much time to navigate the site and figure things out but I'm going to try and tweak it to the right educational levels for him. He's behind in reading and writing and way ahead in science and math. With him doing that, hopefully I'll have more time for the other 2 kids.

Homemade pumkin pie.

I can't say the pie was from scratch, because we bought the pie crust, but we actually gutted and cut up a pumpkin and made pumpkin puree and then pumpkin pie from it. It was fun. We felt like pioneers. We actually made 2 but one of them was no good. I thought the recipe called for evaporated milk, but it was sweetened condensed milk. We used sweetened condensed in the second pie and it turned out to be very good. Today, I think I might try a sweet potato pie.

It's funny because I was using a receipe, which I don't usually do and my daughter was helping me. She can't stand it if I don't measure exactly. I was putting the pumpkin pie spice in and it spilled into the bowl and I said 'close enough'. She was scandalized! When she measures a teaspoon, it is exactly a teaspoon. Exactly.
She sure didn't get that from me!

I'm back, hopefully.

I'm feeling better. We don't have any doctor, dentist or optometrist appointments today and we are going to get some work done! Hopefully. As I mentioned, we've been squeezing school in here and there. Today, maybe we'll get a full day in. If not, we'll just keep plugging right along. I know that the public schools do things some days like cleaning the classroom (right before summer break), watching movies, field days and all kinds of things that aren't strictly educational and count them as school days. I haven't been counting the hours we watch educational TV (Mythbusters IS science) even though I could. I don't count expeditions into the woods as nature hikes, but really, I could. The trips to the post office, bank, grocery, and especially the library, are very educational, but we just count those as part of family life although the kids do learn things from these trips. Public school kids do these things too and they don't count them, so we don't. We only count the days we go on educational field trips with the homeschool group or the days we stay home and 'do school'.

My youngest son right now is waging a campain for us to by a Wii, which would, of course, count as PE!

Squeezing school into life.

I've had doctor's appointments again this week. i went in for my anemia and then for my back and it just seems like everything's out of whack. My hemoglobin is too low but my cholesterol is too high. Hopefully, I can get things back in whack with better food choices. Middle age so fun. Anyway, we've had or will have somewhere to go all 5 of the school days this week so we're just trying to squeeze in school wherever we can. We've had to be flexible with our times. Yesterday, we were still doing school at 5:30 p.m., but I guess that's just the way it goes sometimes. For American History yesterday we read the book "Follow the Drinking Gourd" and the younger 2 kids made these pictures. I thought they turned out really good. I love notebooking. These are made from construction paper cutouts.

Not better.

I've still got that muscle spasm in my back. As a matter of fact, after sleeping in the bed last night, it's worse. Very much worse. I may have to go to the doctor for it today, if I can get in the car. I haven't made any decisions about school or work today. I'm off to search the internet for muscle spasm home remedies!

Bargaining and other things.

My youngest and I just had a conversation. He said "what time is it?" and I said "10:14." He said "what time are we going to bed?" I said 10:30. He said "11:00." I said "10:30." He said "10:45." I said "10:30." He said "10:35." Finally, he said "10:31!" and I said "okay". So now the kids get to stay up later tonight.

Earlier tonight we were watching Dancing with the Stars. Mel B. was trying to get in character for the tango by being angry. Youngest son said "He could hit her in the face. That would make her angry." I bet it would. (For the record, this child is not violent or anything. He doesn't really go around hitting people in the face!)

The kids did half a day of school with their dad this morning while I was gone to the doctor again. I had a muscle spasm in my back and didn't feel like doing school this afternoon. Hopefully tomorrow I'll feel better.

What I did today.

We picked up a old Scrabble game from Goodwill and played that and had pizza. I also did some work for my job, some work for my cafepress store and went to my parent's house for a while. I haven't played Scrabble for a long time, since we abandoned it in favor of UpWords about 10 years ago, but it was fun and the kids like it better than UpWords because they have a hard time thinking in 3 diminisions. With everything flat, they find it easier. They really caught on quickly to the double word score and triple word score concepts and enjoyed those. I lost the game, but I still had fun.

Invisible.

Yesterday, my daughter came to me and announced that my youngest son was invisible to her for the day. She was going to totally ignore him all day. I wondered how that would go, since they hang out together pretty much all the time. About 5 minutes later, I heard her yelling his name. She couldn't stand not having someone to boss around, LoL.

Moving right along.

It's a school day and a work day, so I'm working at my computer, but every now and then I make the announcement, "remember, it's a school day!" They tend to forget, you see. Conveniently. Just about every day. So this is important that I remind them otherwise they will goof off all morning and end up grounded because their morning lists aren't done. They'll claim, very seriously, that they had no idea this was a school day (even though 5 days out of every week are school days. They do this even when we haven't just come off of a break, so it's not just this week, although, since we didn't have school yesterday I can see that they'd get confused today. Anyway, we're back at it today. I've exercised. I've done almost everything on my list. It feels actualy good to be doing the routine today. Comforting or something.

Harvest Party.

I forgot even to take my camera to the harvest party. I did remember to take my chicken noodle soup but forgot the crackers. I also remembered to take the craft stuff, since I was the one in charge of the craft this time. I'm in one of my moods today. I didn't feel like the soup was good, even though people said it was and I didn't feel that the craft was any good. It was too messy and all of the kids wanted to do it at once instead of just doing it a few at a time as I had pictured it. The moms and dad pitched in and helped and we got it done but it was very, very messy. Hopefully the kids had fun. I'll try something that does not involve paint next time. I gotta realize that things that go well with only my 3 kids at home won't necessarily go well in a group. Oh well. Tomorrow is a wonderfully blank day on my calendar. I probably won't be able to stand staying home and will go somewhere, but at least I'll have a choice about it.

Nothing too facinating today.

Dad is taking the girl to the eye doctor. The boys and I are hanging out, not doing school. I'm working and making chicken soup for the harvest party tonight. They're playing. I would like to get some school related stuff going on but there's just no time. I've got to work sometime, youngest has a doctor's appointment this afternoon and the harvest party is at 5:00. I did count the days of school we've gotten done this year so far and it is 47 1/2. It's looking good for us to have almost 80 by Christmas and then get done sometime around the first week of June, if we keep a pretty easy pace, like we've been doing, taking a day off here and there when we need to. Even if we didn't get done in early June and had to go to late June, it wouldn't be the end of the world, now would it? Still, we like to be off for the summer so we'll try and get done late May or early June. That will motivate us more towards the end of the year, I'm sure!

Okay, today was better.

We did get our morning lists done and our afternoon lists done. It's a miracle! And that's probably the only time we'll get them all done this week. We have 2 doctor appointments tomorrow, plus a harvest party with the homeschool group tomorrow night. (That probably doesn't count as school, does it?) Friday, we've got nothing so far, but the way the month has been filling up with dentist appointments, eye doctor appointments and the like, I'm not going to count on a free day.

Today was nice though. We talked about the American civil war and the kids did some really good notebook pages, then did math, writing and reading. We haven't added spelling and grammar back in yet, but we will. I've also got some good books on hold at the library, so we'll read those. (Thanks for all the good suggestions!)

Thats our report for our second day back from fall break. There was not as much whining this year as last year and that's good.

Starting back to school.

We started back to school yesterday from fall break. It's never easy with that long of a break, to get started back. We all did our morning routines, but I didn't feel well and went to the doctor in the afternoon. Dad took over their lessons while I was gone. There was definitely some whining from our youngest going on but we survived. Hopefully, today will go better. I feel okay this morning so far. I just need to get them started on their work.

Upgrading our technology on this blog.

As you can see, we've installed Bluetooth.

Monday, November 5, 2007.

Can you all believe it's November 5 already? I can't. There are 49 days until Christmas. We have a co-op class today for school and after that, we're probably going to do absolutely nothing. This past month of having all my Saturdays tied up with foster care and all of my Mondays tied up with co-ops and field trips has really been tough. After today, I get my Mondays and my Saturdays back. For the rest of this month I have 9 things written on my calender. Of course, I haven't written in a bunch of stuff I need to do, eye exams for me and one of the kids, physicals for me and my husband, vet trips for the dogs and 1 of the cats, etc. but still, the month is looking pretty good and I hope it stays that way. I want some time to garden, get the flooring done and things like that. I just need some down time.

Warning: This post is a Shameless Plug for My Store.

I have a store on Cafepress that I'm very proud of. I design gifts for grandparents. It all started when my oldest child was born and my mom chose to be called Grandma and my dad chose to be called Granddad. There are products all over the place for Grandmas. Things that say Grandma's house and I heart Grandma, but very little for Granddad. My husband's parents are called Popaw and Memaw. They are even more difficult to find things for. I figured I couldn't be the only one who had that problem, so I made a store on Cafepress for every grandparent name I ever heard of, just about. I do know a family that calls the grandma Gongi and I don't have that one yet, but I might one of these days! Here is a link to the store.

Here are some of the grandparent nicknames I have:
Abba, Ajji, Abuela, Abuelo, Abuelita, Abuelito, Baba, Babcia, Babci, Babka, Babushka, Bamma, Bestemor, Bompa, Bop Bop, Bubbe, Bubby, Bunia, Da, Dziadzia, Dziadzio, Gram, Granddad, Great Nana, New Grandparent 2007, Great Papa, Gaga, Gammy, Gamps, Gampy, G-Dad, G.G., G-Ma, Geegee, Gigi, Glam-ma, Glamma, G-Mom, G-Pa, G-Paw, Granny, Gramma, Grampa, Gramp, Grampster, Grampy, Gran, Granddaddy, Grand-Dad, Grand-Dude, Grandpap, Grandpop, Grandmama, Granna, Grandpere, Great Grandma, Great Grandpa, Grumpa, Gramps, Grammie, Grampie, Nana, Memere, Nona, Kapuna, Lita, Lito, Mami, Mamaw, Mamie, Me-Maw, Mayme, Meema, Meemaw, Mema, Memaw, Meme, Memere, Mimi, Mom-Mom, Momaw, Nan, Nanny, Nonna, Nonnie, Pappy, Oma, Opa, Papi, Pepe, Popaw, Papa, Pop, Poppa, Popi, Pop-Paw, Pap-Paw, Paps, Pap, Papaw, Pawpaw, Peepaw, Pepere, Pop Pop, Pops, Poppo, Poppy, Poppie, Vovo, Yaya, Zayde, Zaydeh.

Okay, I'm done now. Back to our regularly scheduled blogging.

PS: Amy, I now have a few products with "Maw" on them.

Now, back to our regularly scheduled blogging.

Notes for the Babysitter.

At the foster care class, they gave us a dry erase board with babysitter notes on it. It says:
We are at:
We will be home at:
You can reach us at:
If you can't reach us call:
Mealtime is:
Snacks are:
In case of Emergency:

One of my kids who shall remain nameless filled it all out for us. Ours says:
We are at: Home.
We will be home at: Now.
You can reach us at: Our home phone number. (Our child actually put the number, but I don't think that's a good idea on my blog!)
If you can't reach us call: The same phone number.
Mealtime is: 5:00
Snacks are: Fine.
In case of emergency: CALL GRANDMA.

;-)

One more thing crossed off the list!

We're done with our foster care classes. Yay, we get our Saturdays back! It's going to be so nice next weekend, to just sleep in. I love this fall weather we're having.

Monday we've got co-op and then I guess Tuesday, we'll go back to school. The next break will be Thanksgiving and then Christmas. Can you believe how close they are getting? The stores are already putting out Christmas decorations!

Still on fall break ....

This is the last day though. We have a co-op thing on Monday and this character actor who does Abraham Lincoln is going to come speak to our group. Very appropriate since we start studying the Civil War next week. I have a book called Dear Mr. President Abraham Lincoln, Letters from a Slave Girl that we're going to read. I'd love to be able to go to the Underground Railroad museum in Cincinnati, but that's kind of far with gas prices the way they are. There is a civil war museum in our home town and we'll probably have to content ourselves with going there or Lincoln's birthplace in Hodgenville. I guess we could watch Gone with the Wind, but I never did like that movie, sad to say.

We have our homestudy initial visit today with a safety walkthrough of the entire house. We're ready for it, thanks to our war on clutter last week. Hopefully, she won't open my closet though, because it is a disaster area. Our floors in the living room are still bare plywood, but I've told her about that and she's expecting it. Hopefully, we'll get that flooring done this weekend. (crossing fingers!)

I guess I'd better get some breakfast in before she gets here.

Have a good day everyone!

Our TV started working again.

We have old-fashioned TV reception from an antenna. No cable. No satellite. Just 3 channels of broadcast TV. Well, last May, our TV reception went out completely. We decided not to fix it, just let it go. We had adjusted to life without TV, although I must admit missing watching "Dancing with the Stars". Suddenly, yesterday, it just came back on. My daughter was turning on the TV to watch something on DVD or tape and there it was. Now I don't know how to react. I did miss TV somewhat, but it was getting to be less and less. We were all adjusting to life without it and now it's back. Weird.