Positive encouragement.

Hope all is wonderful with you guys! I love keeping up with your kiddos adventures through Facebook! Wondering if you have any advice/wisdom/websites/helpful hints for me and Scott as we embark on the adventures of home school? We've decided it's what we want to do at least until middle school. If not for your children turning out so well!

I got this note on Facebook today from a family friend with a 2-year-old. How cool is that?


Then today I got another message from her that said 
thank you so much for your encouraging words and helpful information! The last part of the message was supposed to say "if it weren't for your kiddos turning out so well we wouldn't feel so confident and strongly about our decision." I'm super excited and so thankful and blessed to have someone like you to help and guide me.

Hanging in here.

This is me when we recently went out for dinner.   I'm hanging in there.  I got up this morning and instead of working, went straight to the doctor's office because I was in a lot of pain.  Turns out, it is a kidney infection.  Oh well, at least that's something curable.  Until the next one.

We did start homeschooling this week. My son seems to be actually enjoying it.  I found some on-line German lessons - he wants to learn German because he thinks it will be easiest foreign language.  I ordered him a writing book, my husband is planning his math, he's doing World History.   The only thing that I am truly worrying about/struggling with is his spelling.  I am not sure how to approach this because he truly has a disability in this area.  I have been looking at software and apps and programs on line, but I am thinking that I will do a couple of things with flash cards.  One is maybe this set of Greek and Latin roots and the other is the other is the method we were using last year - the Dianne Craft method of teaching him how to spell by writing the words on cards and holding them up and having him move his eyes up and to the left, then close his eyes and spell the word.  It's taking a mental picture of it, which is what he seems to have difficulty with.

This week also, I started crocheting.  My friend Amy (Hi Amy!) posted a picture of a scrap afgan and I said that I thought those were neat and I might have to learn to crochet (again) and make one.  My daughter was so excited by this, that I would learn to crochet and also she liked the look of the scrapghan and she has a lot of leftover yarn ... so anyway, I mentioned this one evening, and by the next morning, my scrapghan had been started and 5 rows had been done.  Then, my daughter taught me to crochet again and I did about 25 or 30 stitches, then she took over and did a couple more rows.  It's funny.  My husband and I have been joking about what a good job I am doing and how sometimes I do a few rows in my sleep.  I am pretty amazing.  :-)

Steps toward feeling better ...

 First some pictures of my son's new on-campus apartment.  It's nice isn't it?

Now onto my steps to feeling better .... oh how I hope so.  I went and had an intravenous iron infusion yesterday to help with my anemia, which has gotten pretty darn severe.  It was really not very invasive.  I have easy veins according to every nurse I've ever discussed this with and so it's not very traumatic for me to get an IV.  It lasted about half an hour and I will be having them once a week for the next few weeks.  Afterwards I was planning to go see my mom, but it was (according to the bank clock by the hospital) 105 degrees and the vehicle I am having to drive right now is not air conditioned and I felt really horrible, so I went home instead.  I'll go today, starting from home.  It stormed yesterday and hopefully is not as hot today.
We have not started school yet and hope to this afternoon.  I realize I am terrible this year, but 3 or 4 days does not make that much difference in the long run.  This is our 11th year of homeschooling and we are pretty relaxed about it now, especially with this one kid who only needs a few more things to graduate.  :-)

Some of my drawings are going into frames in preparation for a showing in November.

I got to see the sunrise the other morning on my way to the doctor's office.  Yes, I took this while driving, but I was totally alone on the road as you can see and I slowed down.  I love barns and this one looks pretty with the fog and the sunrise.

Wednesday, August is almost over.

I kind of can't believe that August is almost over, but since this summer has been kind of a bust without my beloved pool and my beloved air-conditioned vehicle, I'm pretty much over it and ready for cooler weather. I usually dearly love summer, but not as much this year.  I loved having my oldest son home, but I felt bad all summer long and not having a good vehicle kind of keeps one from going as many places as they ordinarily would.  My oldest son started school on Monday and we should have too, but I've had a back spasm this week and every chance I get, I've been lying down with heat on my back, so I haven't done any lesson plans.  Last night, I told my daughter to do it.  She'll get him started today.  My husband was also present for this conversation and is now preparing to get the math started.  So there. It's a family operation with the head girl moving up to an assistant teacher position.

Doing nothing and feeling kind of guilty about it.

I woke up with a splitting headache this morning.  Despite that, I got up and went to church, but I didn't end up staying the whole time.  I came home, took some more Tylenol and laid down.  I was supposed to go to my niece's second birthday party, but I didn't feel up to it.  I took a very long nap.  After my nap, I did feel better and got some housekeeping done, played a little bit of Words With Friends, watched a little Mythbusters and a little CSI, and did some art journaling.  I also got some of my art framed, which I've been meaning to do.  It's difficult because I don't like cutting the art pages, but the sketchbooks I buy are odd sizes for framing.  I may have to start cutting them before I draw on them.  I think that would be less painful.

My oldest son starts classes tomorrow and so my youngest son should also start classes, but I have a doctor's appointment and we have gym day and I'm not sure if we will.  Tuesday is starting to look better and better.  I still haven't ordered any supplies or books, but it wouldn't be the first time we actually started school before ordering.  I can start him with some reading.  I think I'll work on a plan for that tomorrow between the doctor and the gym.

I'm sure it will be fine.  :-)

Big day at the fair.

There was a variety show and therefore a crowd most of the day.

Sale tables.

A random large pumpkin. That's what's great about the state fair.

My daughter's blanket, class champion.  :-)  My son's terrarium won a red ribbon, but the picture I got of it disclosed too much personal information.  I may edit it and post it later.  :-)


It was a long day, but it was a pretty good day.  We had a good location for our sales tables and there was a variety show going on most of the day, which was entertaining most of the time.  There were a couple of off key singers and it made it hard to hear my daughter sometimes, but most of it was pretty good.  There were some that were absolutely awesome, some singers I won't be surprised if they make it big in the future.  At one point a choir started singing the star spangled banner without any real introduction (or we may have just not been paying attention) but when everyone started realizing what the song was and standing up and stopping talking and removing their hats, it was really pretty cool.   My daughter and a couple of the girls who were new to the sale this year bonded over knowing all the words to a bunch of the songs, stuff from Disney movies and old musicals.  It was fun.  Neither my daughter or I had had much sleep before going so we were very, very tired and a bit giggly.  The first funny moment was when I got out of the car, picked up my 47 things I had to carry in and almost face planted into a fence.  Then later, when I was in the bathroom, a dog came into the stall with me.  A lot of people bring their dogs to the Kentucky State Fair.  I spent most of the day people watching.

When I got home, I went to sleep in my clothes and slept 11 1/2 hours.  :-)  My daughter went to sleep before I did and is still sleeping.

We still have a bunch of tickets so we may go to the fair another day as well just to walk around.  We'll see.  We won't stay so many hours though.  Whew.

Interesting?

This is what the watermelon looked like when we cut it open.  Is it just me or is that interesting?

We went yesterday and began cleaning out mom's house.  She was not exactly a hoarder and her house always was clean and nice, but she sure did have a lot of stuff.  She kept Christmas cards and birthday cards and get well cards and church bulletins and old check registers and I think there was a Sears credit card from the 70s.  Anyway, that's going to be a job.

I went to the lawyer's office about some more of the paperwork and one of the lawyers on staff may call me.  We'll see.  We wanted to do a quit claim deed on mom's house to transfer it into our names, temporarily while we are selling it but apparently no one knows how to do this and no one has the paperwork.  I asked at the county clerk's office where the record the deeds, but even they are uninformed.  Odd, I think.

Also I took my daughter to get her hair thinned and they took a couple of pounds off, but no inches.  It is still just as long now but thinner.  I had hoped that this would help with her headaches, but as of last night, it hadn't.  It did help once before.  Oh well.  I also made her a doctor's appointment on Friday and we will also get an eye exam just to rule that out.

Today, I need to clean up my house a little (or a lot), finish working, pick up a 4H T-shirt and I don't know what else because I left my list in my purse.  I'm list driven.  :-)  I'll get it in a few minutes and make sure so that I don't miss anything.  I'll probably go see mom today.  

Out and about a bit.

We still haven't started school.  My youngest son and I did go to homeschool gym day yesterday and on the way, we discussed again what he wants to do this year.  He wants to learn to play the violin, he wants to learn German, so I really need to work on finding a way for him to do those things, preferably without spending a lot of money.  After I typed that sentence, I Googled "buy a violin".  :-)   Sigh.  I just don't really feel up to it right now. and we may just start with a few things and build up.  I'm pretty sure my son's math teacher (my husband) has not ordered any calculus curriculum yet and since I haven't ordered anything for either the German or the violin, we may start him on whatever language freebies we can find online and assign some reading and let that be all we do at first, gradually building up throughout the year.  Over the past 10 years, there have been several times when August has found us not ready to start school and sometimes our school is seriously underfunded.  :-)

In other news, we are trying to get some things done regarding my mom's house and her VA benefits which we hope to get and part of yesterday was involved with that.    It seems like everything we do, leads to something else we have to do.  We had the appointment with the person who is going to help us apply for VA benefits and she had a couple more forms for mom to sign, then we had to go to the bank and then we, mistakenly it seems, went to the property records office and found out that instead of going there we needed to go to the lawyer's office, but when we went to the lawyer's office they were out to lunch, so we didn't get a whole lot accomplished.  It feels like everything is going so S-L-O-W-L-Y.  This kind of thing just drives me crazy, but I have to do it and I want to do it very, very well, for mom.

On the up side, homeschool gym day was fun.  :-)  In this picture, it looks like a kind of lazy gym day.  This is not all the kids and this was after a couple of hours of basketball and ultimate frisbee, so they were taking a break.  :-)

Awesome post by another blogger.

Give me Gratitude.

Go over and read this today.  This is an awesome, funny article about appreciating what you have by looking at your life with "fresh perspectacles".  :-)   Everyone needs to think about that occasionally.

Art Journaling.

Here's kind of a step by step art journal page, but it's backwards, so start at the bottom.  :-)

And it's done.  Maybe.  I may outline all or part of it in black.  Or white.  We'll see, I guess.  I think it's better to take some time, so I'll look at it in a couple of days and then decide.

I did some detailing with my magical white Sharpie.

I decided this flower needed a darker circle around the middle.  See it below, it looks kind of weird.  Now it looks better. 

I wrote in a bible verse because that's what I do and drew in a flower stem that I had forgotten on one of the flowers and drew some ferns with a green sharpie.  

More coloring.  

More coloring.

I use multiple colors on the leaves too.

I like to use multiple colors on each flower, my goal is at least 5 different colors per flower.

Then I piled a bunch of markers on my desk.  Generally when I do this, I make an effort to use them all in the picture.  Today I kind of cheated because I decided I didn't like all of these colors.  I used some and threw some of them back into the caddy.

Went a little crazy with this because it was pretty fun.

Back to the stamps, using a pencil eraser and a marker this time.  

Then I outlined the rest of the flowers.  At this point, I always think that whatever drawing I am working on is going to turn out horrible.  I always think they look bad, but I persevere.  :-) 

I did go over the mistake with a white paint Sharpie to help minimize it a little.  

Then I made this mistake on one of the other flowers.  Made a mental note to color this petal with a dark color.  :-)  

So I decided to make it into a different type of flower.

and then another one, quickly making a mistake by encroaching this stem on where I would normally draw the flower petals.

Then I started drawing with one of the center flowers.

Last night I lightly painted the page in blue/green.  It's very light. Then today I used various objects (above) to stamp circles on the page.

This week in random pictures.

I don't always have my tablet with me to take pictures but I have been doing pretty well this week, carrying it around with me.  This is the last week before my son moves back to Mississippi for his third year of college.  It's hard to believe that he is halfway done.  I am hoping that he moves back home after college, but I don't know if he will.  :-(  It's hard being a parent when the kids just insist on growing up so quickly!  Anyway, here are some of the things we've done this week.  

Yesterday I drove by the KY State Fairgrounds.  This is fair week and we will be up there one or maybe 2 times. 

We ate out last night, something we only do for birthdays and we are counting this one for my oldest son and for my daughter because one has an early August birthday and one has a September birthday.

I took this picture of the garden at mom's assisted living facility on Tuesday when I was there.  I try to get there a couple of times a week, though with it being an hour away, it is more difficult.

 p

The back to school sales at walmart had these shower caddies for college students for 3 dollars and I nabbed this one for my markers.  Fun!  

A drawing from this week.  I have been very into the big, many petaled flowers for some reason lately.

The view from the seventh floor at my doctor's appointment yesterday.  I hope now that mom is settled to be able to keep my doctors appointments for myself more often and hopefully get some of my mysterious symptoms cleared up.  

Still not back to school.

I'm reading all the posts on Facebook about the crying-over-hours of homework kids, the kids whining about working so hard all day and now they just want to play and they are not allowed to, kids being gone from home 9 hours a day and I am thinking what are we doing?  I joined into this madness when my kids were little.  I woke them up at 6:30 in the morning and took them to school.  My oldest was going into 6th grade when we finally stopped.  We decided to keep him home for 1 year, just to let him grow up a little before middle school (and to help me adjust!) and that was all it took.  Homeschooling was SO MUCH EASIER and so much more fun and relaxing and wonderful.  It is pretty much the best parenting decision we ever made.

Just some random pictures of homeschooling past ....