_____?

I can't think of a title so while I'm typing my random thoughts for today, I'll just leave it blank. We've got a lot going on today. We'll be celebrating my Dad's birthday this evening. I've got things to mail to my sister and things to mail to the caseworker, both of which will probably need to be mailed from the post office. I'm going to enroll the younger 2 kids in 4H classes today too. We're still working on gradually remodeling the house and working and homeschooling. We just do a bit here and a bit there, constantly working on everything at once.

One of my latest inspirations is called a "Yes Ma'am" list. We've been keeping up with how nicely the kids do as they are asked and they've been getting points for it. When they get 100, they'll get $5.00. The girl is in the lead. The only problem is, I think it may be because I ask her to do more things. She's usually the most willing worker and I ask her to do a lot. Younger son frequently whines when asked to do something and is the inspiration for making the list. Oldest son stays in his room a lot and consequently, doesn't get asked to do as much. Really, the kids have been doing pretty well lately. You should see them jump up when someone brings groceries home, knowing they have to help bring them in and put them away. I've threatened them that he who does not work does not eat. Of course I wouldn't starve them, but I might make them eat only nutritous foods for a week. (No junk food!?) They've been getting their lists done mostly without whining lately too. It's pretty amazing and probably won't last long! I guess it's my season to be rebellious, not theirs!

Still rebellious.

I'm still feeling rebellious about everything except our unit study. I'm interested in American History and notebooking and so I enjoy that part of our day. The rest of it, I don't want to do. I'm still doing it but I'm really having to push myself. Especially with math. I've never been that much of a fan of math. I've managed to do enough of it to get by but that's it. Now as a homeschooling mom, I find myself having to immerse myself in fractions on a daily basis. I don't enjoy it.

I found out from one of our homeschool leaders that starting between the time my oldest son and my daughter graduate, Kentucky is raising the requirements to graduate to 4 years of math, starting with Algebra 1, so the youngest 2 will have to take calculus and geometry in addition to Algebra 1 and 2. I think it was 2 years of math when I was in school. How much of it do I use on a daily basis? Not much.

I've been tagged!

Thanks for tagging me, you know who you are!

The rules for this meme are:

(1) Link to the person that tagged you.

(2) List the rules on your blog.

(3) Share six non-important things/habits/quirks about yourself.

(4) Tag six random people at the end of your post by linking to their blogs.

(5) Let each random person know they have been tagged.

Here are mine!

1. I have a hard time following routines. (I'll bet my regular readers already knew that.)

2. I love to read.

3. I'm a retired wedding singer.

4. I always wear black.

5. Except for college, I've lived in the same town all my life.

6. My favorite day of the week is Monday.

I'm not gonna do the link thingy, so if you want to do this, consider yourself tagged!

Reading the Carnival of Homeschooling.

It's here this week.

So much for routines ...

We kind of threw ours out the window this afternoon. We started out okay. We all did our morning school lists which consist of chores, personal hygeine and exercise. So you could say we had PE and Health classes this morning. There was a short lecture on how a family is a team and even if you didn't make this particular mess, there are plenty of messes that you make that other people clean up. I guess that's a bit on citizenship/social studies right there. Then we started working on American History. I read one chapter in the text we're using and the kids made a notebook page. We're working on the war year by year and we are at 1941, so it was about mostly Pearl Harbor. We did a mini-biography of the Japanese leader at that time, Tojo. (I can't spell his first name without looking it up.) Sometime during history, I developed a splitting headache. Youngest son has been wanting to play Risk the game of world domination and strategy for weeks, thinking we should do it and count it as school since we're learning about wars. Today, I said okay and they played it with their Dad while I took a headache-relieving wonderful nap. The younger kids also invented 2 games, their own kind of bowling and a nerf shooting gallery game during the breaks from Risk because sometimes it's a long time between your turns. (Yes, I can sleep right on through nerf shooting and water bottle bowling.) Now they are watching Fetch with Ruff Ruffman on PBS and learning about the structure of the human brain.

Let's see, PE, Health, Citizenship, Social Studies, History, Geography, inventing a game, which goes along with our game/baseball mini-unit (I just made that up!) and Anatomy. Got a lot covered today, didn't we?

Back to work and school.

We were just off over the weekend and yesterday, but it seems like a long, long time since we've done school. I've got our lists printed and we are just brimming with enthusiasm to get started.

Not really.

Anyway, the field trip to the baseball museum went okay. I was not all that impressed with it, for the price, if you know what I mean. It was just okay. We can say we've done it now. For a long time it's been on a list of local museums we haven't visited, so now we can say we have. The kids all got the miniature baseball bats, and my youngest has hardly put his down. He's invented a game with the little bat and a little foam nerf ball called "mouse ball" for some reason. He and the girl played it quite a bit last night. It's similar to baseball but there's only 1 base. We learned from the Homeschool Physical Education book how to adapt baseball for fewer players was to remove some of the bases and it does work. That way you don't have players stuck on base with no one to bat them in.

The good news around here is our flooring and other home improvement projects are finally getting done. While we were gone to the museum, Dad got some quality at home time in and got some things done. Yay!

Now back to our usual routine.

Getting up at the crack of dawn.

We've gotten spoiled, as homeschoolers, especially since right before Christmas. We have been pushing our bedtime further and further back and sleeping in. I've quit getting up at 7:00 and now get up around 8:00 or even 9:00. I get the kids up anywhere from 9:30 to 10:30. So getting up on Sunday mornings has become a struggle even though they only need to get up at 8:30. Tomorrow, we have a field trip to the Louisville Slugger museum and we have to meet the homeschool group at 8:45! We'll have to leave at 8:15. The kids are already antipating getting up at the crack of dawn and not with joy. I guess we need to go to bed earlier tonight?

Occasionally I talk about homeschooling ..

Sorry about the work post yesterday. I just needed to whine a little. Since this is primarily a homeschooling blog I'll tell you what we've been doing in school this week. Today, everyone did their morning list without any complaining, whining or bargaining, which has been happening a lot lately. After finishing his morning list, my youngest went to his reading corner to read. (It's a corner of my bedroom that he's equiped with a blanket, pillow, light and fan.) He read for probably 45 minutes this morning on his own. In the afternoons, he and I are working on word attack skills, so he can not panic when he sees a big word and guess, he knows how to break it down. It's taking a while, but he's getting better at it each day.

My daughter has also been reading a lot lately. She did something that got her grounded from her favorite thing, beading, and so had to spend a couple of days doing other things. She made about 10 pot holders and read a couple of books during that time. ;-) She's been a good reader for a long time, but is still a reluctant writer. I've been making her write paragraphs each day and also added a grammar workbook to her daily list.

Oldest son is doing better with his history since he's been doing the notebooking with us as well as the reading. He's an artist and so his notebooking pages have been really good. I brought home a bunch of books on spying and codes and ciphers from the library and he's been reading those and then showing them to the other 2 kids and this morning they were all making secret ciphers and trying to get their siblings to decode them. That's the tricle down theory of education being put to use - just give the book to the oldest and let him share it if he wants. If he finds it interesting, he'll show it to them and read passages to them out of it.

I've got a Mom's Night Out with the homeschool moms tonight so we spent part of the time this afternoon chopping vegetables for a veggie pizza for me to take tonight and then we ate the leftovers that wouldn't fit on my decorative tray. Yum.

Testing out Murphy's Law.

I'm trying to prove out Murphy's Law today with my job. You know the one that says "Everything that can go wrong will go wrong." When I first started this morning, my computer was running very, very, very, slow, so slow that I really couldn't work. So I ran some Spyware scans and got that working better. Then, I started to download work, but there was no work in my 4 hospitals. My company sent me a packet to initiate a fifth hospital, something I didn't want to do because I don't like having to keep up with all the little quirks the different ones have. I'm old and I should be allowed to stay in a rut, doing what I know, right? One hospital does not allow abbreviations. Three of the hospitals expect abbreviations as long as they aren't in the diagnosis part of the report. One hospital never allows you to type the phrase "emergency room", it has to be "emergency department". It goes on and on. So anyway, I tried to initiate the new hospital which took a long, long, long time because of our terribly slow internet. Then, just as I got ready to get started, I had to leave and take my son somewhere. When I got back, 3 out of 4 of the company's servers were down and I had to switch servers 3 times and then reboot and finally, finally, finally (I'm into triple words tonight), at 8:47 p.m., I am ready to get some work done. But now I'm tired.

On the other hand, school (which we did while waiting for the files to initiate) went well, I guess. World War 2 is a difficult subject but we're getting through it. The other subjects, math, reading, grammar, writing and spelling are all going okay. Thank goodness something is.

Writing.

Yesterday, we started our discussion of WW2 by reading a chapter about Hitler and then each child wrote a mini-biography of him for the notebooking page on the war. My youngest son's was really 'mini'. He drew a picture then wrote "This is Adolf Hitler. He was mean. He had a funny moustache." This child has always had a lot of trouble with writing so this was good for him. I noticed when he was little that he didn't draw and color like the other 2 kids had. Now he does like to draw but still does not like to write. It has crossed my mind to take him to an occupational therapist to work on his pencil grip and whatever other issues he has but I'm not sure insurance would pay for it, if he really needs it or if he just needs more practice.

I don't seem to have any more thoughts in my head today and my computer is delaying and driving me crazy, so I guess this will be my whole blog post for now.

Hey!

I've been reading the Carnival of Homeschooling. It's big this week, with tons of entries. It's here.

The Carnival led me to a list of the 50 best homeschooling blogs and guess who is on there! Me! Can you believe it? Here's the list. I'm not sure how I ended up in such a list of fine bloggers. A lot of my blog is taken up by discussing motivation or my lack thereof. Lol. Anyway, I'm honored to be included in this list.

The Carnival also led me to this really interesting site. It has free study guides which might be very helpful for my oldest when/if he does his literature Clep tests.

I've been updating/downloading for work while I've been blogging and reading the carnival and now it is mostly done, so I'll finish here and get back to work. We are going to do school today, amazingly. Hopefully. I would like to report that the foster care meeting went well yesterday. I was a little worried about it, but it turns out some numbers were transposed on our financial statement, making it seem like we had a lot more money going out than we do and we've cleared that up now so we should be okay.

Have a great day, everyone!

Snow!

It actually snowed a tiny bit last night! We probably will still do school this afternoon. I have no idea if the county schools are out or not. I really don't miss getting up at 6 o'clock in the morning and watching TV to see if the kids have school. DH and I have a meeting this morning for foster care (pray it goes well!) and then we'll do school this afternoon.

A dear reader asked about art projects - I'm not sure what we are going to do but I did find this wonderful page a while back. Art Lessons.
We'll probably do some of these. Here's a paper mache one.

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!

A high school record book.

I looked a lot of places on the web for something to track high school records with and kind of keep a portfolio in and I found a good one. It's from Rainbow Resoure Homeschooling supply and I think it's going to work well for us. Here it is. It will help me keep up with what my son has done and what he still needs to do. I printed out the minimum graduation requirements for Kentucky and taped it inside the front cover and I put in the classes he's taking now and I'm working on getting his grades in there. I'm very happy with it and it was hard as heck to find, so I thought I'd share.

Grocery Shopping.

I am a terrible grocery shopper. Yesterday I made a list of 2 items and then left the list at home. On the way to the store I realized I'd forgotten the list, but figured I'd remember them, only 2 things. Right? Wrong. Despite filling the cart full to overflowing and spending a crazy amount of money, I forgot the two items. I realized it in the middle of the night. The thought woke me up.

I would like to be one of those people who plan the menu and shop accordingly, thereby saving a lot of money, but I haven't made it yet. I'm so, uh, let's face it, spacey, that I wonder if I could stick to it if I did it. Still, I might need to give it some thought and try it again. Groceries are getting so incredibly expensive these days.

End of day report.

Today was a pretty good school day. We've mostly concluded our study of WW1 and we're getting ready to study the time period between the wars. Someone here mentioned the History Of Us books by Joy Hakim and I discovered that our library has them and now we're using them instead of the textbook we were using. It is such an improvement. I've been reading ahead in book 9, just because I'm interested. The folders that the kids did for their notebooks turned out really well. I'll try and post pictures of them when I find my camera.

On the work front, it was great, because it was my day off. That's always good. I didn't get as much done as I wanted to. I really intended to get my closet cleaned out, but I didn't. I got some high school planning done, some teaching, some laundry, some cleaning and a TON of dishes (still with more to do). I also went to the grocery but I didn't get my closet cleaned out. Oh well. Tomorrow's another day, I guess.

On the foster care front, we're not getting anywhere. Our paperwork is done, but our home renovation is still not. When did we start this? Anyway, our worker won't approve us until the heavy duty saw is out of the house.

Let's see, do I have any more 'fronts' to discuss? I guess I've picked up on some of the WW1 language from our study. I guess I've got nothing else going on so that's it for today.

The pros and the cons.

While I was working this afternoon, my husband took my 2 older kids to his parent's house. They were gone a couple of hours. My youngest stayed home with mom, thinking that this would be a great chance to play Game Cube and X-Box uninterupted. He played Guitar Hero. Every few minutes, he'd come and tell me how he was doing. I'd cheer, but then go back to work. (I'm really far behind today!)
After a while, he got discouraged with this. Without the other kids, he could get all the time he wanted on the game systems, true, but "there's no one in there to cheer me on." So pitiful! I took a short break to cheer for him but then, joy of joys, his siblings came home, his 2 best friends in all the world.


*The picture is a totally unrelated picture of a sculpture my daughter did, of modeling clay.

A little taste of summertime from my mom's garden last year.

Those are just too pretty to not share. Doesn't that make you feel almost warm?

Deadlines and random photos.

I'm working today, trying to meet the deadline for tomorrow night. My work goes in 2 week periods and tomorrow's the end of these 2 weeks. With all this holiday partying and meeting long lost relatives during this 2-week-period, I got really behind and consequently, have to work a lot this weekend. I hate when I do that, not the partying, the getting behind.

I've recently put my computer screen saver on the picture slide show and we're all really enjoying it. Over Christmas break, I had uploaded about 700 pictures from my digital camera onto my computer and now we're getting to look at them whenever my screen saver is on. A lot of them I don't even remember. There are a lot of good ones on there and it's a good review of our last year and a half or so; maybe 2 years. I wish I was one of those super organized scrapbooking sort of people but I'm not and this is about as good as it gets for us. At least I am good at getting out the camera and taking the pictures even if I rarely get any developed and never get any put in albums or scrapbooked, right? My daughter also uses my camera a lot and takes some really interesting shots. These 3 are hers, I think. I'm really glad we went with digital because it frees you up to take a bunch of shots that may or may not turn out well. If they're bad, we just delete them and don't waste film.

Not much going on today, so back to work.

Since you asked.

On the comments below, Freakmom asked for a clarification of our schedule. It doesn't always go as planned, but I'll share the plan with you.

Monday mornings I print and give out lists. I do these in MS Word using a table and everyone has their own personalized list. Most of us hang them somewhere in the house on the wall and use a marker to mark off what they've done. Each person has a morning section and an afternoon section.

Here's the morning list for Monday for my oldest:
Breakfast
Brush teeth
Pickup in your room.
Exercise 1/2 hour.
Unload dishwasher.
Pickup in living room.

These chores rotate during the weekdays and aren't always the same. If I don't put breakfast on there, they'll go until time to start the afternoon list and then complain they haven't had breakfast. I get up earlier than the kids and do my housecleaning, exercise and some of my transcription, eat my own breakfast and shower. (not in that order!)

At 12:30 we have lunch and start the American history unit study which we all do together. This takes about 45 minutes to an hour. After the unit study, oldest son goes to his room to finish his other classes, which right now are intro to computers, algebra 1, guitar and reading. I've been back and forth all year on what to do with him. I really want to get him an accredited diploma but my husband doesn't, so right now, I'm planning get him a plain homeschool diploma but also to have him take some CLEP exams so that he has some college done before he turns 18. Right now we are preparing for the American History test. I hope to get him to take it this spring. I actually think he'll be better off this way and learn more, but it's hard to let go of that accredidation mindset. It's not necessary legally or to get admitted to college, so I don't know why I struggle with it.

After he goes to his room, the youngest 2 and I do math together. It's easier to keep them on the same level for math. I don't think I could do 2 sessions of math a day. Then youngest goes to play while I do spelling with my daughter. Then she goes off to do reading and handwriting/copywork, while he and I do his reading and phonics together. We finish around 4:00 usually.

From 4 p.m. to about 8 p.m. is our 'running' time; that's when we might go to the grocery, the library, skating or game night, etc. After that, I usually do the rest of my transcription.

I'm not totally thrilled with this schedule but it works okay for us. I will probably be adding more language arts/grammar to the day for my oldest 2. It's sadly lacking right now because we've had so much trouble finding a curriculum, but I'm working on it.

We also have read-alouds the last 1/2 hour before bed. Usually we read something goofy and fun like Hank the Cowdog but every now and then we read something educational.

A different approach.

Today, we did took a slightly different approach to our afternoon school lists. We got started on our WW1 study and it was going well. We're making a large notebooking page out of a manilla folder about the war, what caused it, which countries were in it, a timeline and all kinds of things about the war and it was taking a while today. When I did my sample timeline, I just drew it in there freehand and mine was kind of crooked. But the kids wanted to do theirs neater. They got out rulers and measured the folder, divided the number of inches by 5 for the years of the war and did it very carefully. We discussed the difference in inches and centimeters and discussed how the inches were divided into 16ths on the ruler. Then we looked at a graph of the number of soldiers each country had in the war and the number of casualties. My youngest wanted to draw his own verson of the graph on his page. Then, my daughter wanted to add up all those large numbers. We read all the numbers, practicing getting all those place values right. Tonight, we're going to listen to a book on CD called "The Night Flyers" which is about the use of homing pigeons during the war.

We didn't get to our formal math and spelling today but the unit study was going so well and the kids were so engaged in learning, that I didn't want to interupt them to make them learn something else.

The joy of autocorrect.

I type for a living doing medical transcription and my company recently made the switch to MS Word from Word Perfect, after many years. I'm still getting used to the autocorrect feature although it's been a year since we switched. Sometimes it still gives me a good laugh. Tonight, my patient was a CNA and the doctor dictated "She makes her living as a CNA." but of course, autocorrect changed it to. "She makes her living as a CAN." I was so tempted to just put in an exclamation point and leave it like that!

Still transitioning back to normal.

After our holidays, we need some relaxation time. I think we're all still kind of in a daze. Oldest son has got a flu-like illness and the rest of us are just hanging in there, trying to get back into our groove and hoping we don't catch it. We've eased back into school but I haven't been able to get myself to do math with the kids. We've been skipping math every day since we've started back. We've done everything else. I'm not sure why I have such a mental block about math these days, but I think I may have to get their Dad to step in and do it, so it will get done. He's a much better math teacher than I am anyway, but he does make them do more practice problems, which they don't like.

I haven't got one thing done on my list of January home improvement/organization chores. I just don't have any energy, motivation or get-up-and-go. Whatever you call it, I don't have it. Our Christmas tree is still in the living room. It's down and in a box, but in the living room, nonetheless. I have got to get that done today!

Well, maybe today.

Maybe today we'll get back into our routines. Yesterday turned out to be mostly a rest day. We did go to a meeting with the homeschool group and we planned field trips and meetings for the next 3 months. Other than that, we didn't do anything useful. I'm trying to get things done I told people I'd do, uploading pictures to share from the holiday and sending some files and things to people. Also today I need to get some transcription done, a LOT of transcription done and get school going. We're getting ready to study the time period of WW1 and I've been reading a bit of background information. I don't remember ever studying much about WW1 in school. I remember studying WW2 in high school by watching a mini-series on Pearl Harbor and then in college I took a class called United States History through 1865 but I don't think I ever took the second half. How could I have gotten my degree without ever studing the second half? Anyway, I've got some pre-reading to do. I'm not sure when I'll fit that in.

Normalcy?

We're hoping to get back into more of a normal routine today. We won't get to stay home because we have a homeschool group planning meeting this afternoon, but maybe we'll get a few things done along with some rest, which I know we're all needing now. Why is partying more tiring than working?

I'm going to print lists today, get mine done and try to do some work for my job (even though it's supposed to be my day off) because I'm behind. I didn't get much work done on Friday or Saturday and I need to make that up now. Honesty though, I'd rather do that than have another party! I'm too tired!

Wow, lots of things going on.

We've had some wonderful times so far this weekend. We spent Friday night with some of my husband's family, playing games and having a really good time. Then tonight, I finally got to do some visiting with my newly found sister. She says that she doesn't believe in that half-sister business and now neither do I. We're sisters.
We shared pictures and stories tonight, hopefully the first of many. It's a little overwhelming and I know that I haven't processed it all yet. My brain is in some kind of emotional overload. It's a little hard to know where to go from here. She lives in another state so we're not sure when we'll get to see each other again.

We've got one more family Christmas party this tomorrow and then our holiday season will be over. It's been a good one but it will be restful to get back into our routine.

Ahh. That's better.

And lest you think I have too much time on my hands I want to reassure you that I didn't do this. My husband did it. At work.

Another homeschool report. Yesterday went okay. If anyone is lazy and resisting school starting again, it's me. The kids are doing fine with no whining. I, on the other hand, don't want to do anything. Yesterday, I declared that since we had a new Yahtzee game that we should play Yahtzee instead of math, so we did. Hey, it is educational. That's pretty much how I learned my times tables up to 6 when I was a kid.

In my defense I have had my mind on other things. We've had some exciting events going on around here. Last night I met my half sister from my dad's first marriage for the very first time. They'd been out of touch for 47 years, so it was a huge big deal. No wonder I couldn't get my mind on math, right?

It's a start.

We started school this morning, our first day of 2008 and it went okay. I had put a couple of new chores on the kid's morning lists and they did them pretty much without complaining. I was kind of shocked at how well it went. When I was getting ready for the afternoon lists, though, I suddenly remembered that I had made a vet appointment for the dogs and one of the cats today, so we skipped afternoon school and went to the vet. We only got in half a day, but it was a good half day and there was, dare I say it, no whining. Hopefully mentioning that won't jinx us for tomorrow.

I think I may need a pedicure.

These are the monster slippers I got for Christmas.