County Fair Projects.

These are the county fair projects with ribbons. 

I think it's cute how she did this page with a tiny crochet project and a tiny knitting project with toothpicks for needles.

Of course I didn't

remember to take pictures of all the 4H projects.  I do not look forward to taking those things up there to an un-air-conditioned building where it takes about an hour to sort it all out.  Whew.  It's kind of crazy, the regulations that you have to abide by.   It's very difficult for all of us, staff, volunteers and people trying to enter, to figure out.   I was thinking so hard about the craft projects that I was standing right next to one of my best buddies and didn't even see her or hear her when she spoke to me.  I finally came down to earth and said hello a couple of minutes later.  It was actually kind of stressful, I guess since it was so chaotic and we were carrying so many things.   We had 11 completed projects that didn't fit a category or were over the limits for categories so we had to bring them back home.

Now nothing to do but sit back and see if they won anything.

And we don't have to do that again until next year.

Thank goodness.

Crunch Time.

Monday morning we have to turn in things for the fair and my daughter has finished her 6 foot long crocheted mat made out of grocery bags.  When she takes a picture, I'll share it.  It looks really good, nice and even, to my untrained eye.  Now she's working on knitting some dishcloths.  Later today or tomorrow we need to frame any drawings or paintings that they have done and gather up everything and get it ready to go.  It's a lot of work  but it's fun to let them be recognized for their hard work and they get money from 4H, at least a dollar per project, so that is a great incentive too.  :-)

It's time.

The crunch is on for the county fair.  Both of my younger 2 kids are going to be turning in various projects for the fair.  The terrariums that we made in our 4H class, the tile coasters, the bean collages, plus the crochet mat, knitted dishcloths, collections of fossils, photos and other things.  Next Monday is when we turn them in and boy do they have enough to keep them busy this week.  

We also need to start thinking about what we are going to study this fall.  It's time to send our letter of intent to homeschool to the school board.  The Rainbow Resource catalog arrived in the mail.  I know the girl is going to be continuing the French and the writing books that she already has.  I know they are both going to to Life of Fred geometry.  I'm pretty sure we're doing chemistry this year, but I don't have a text book or other resource for that yet.  For my youngest we need to work on his handwriting and his spelling.  Both improved tremendously last year, but both need more work.  Later on, when I have time, IF I have time (my life's been crazy lately) I will share exactly what resources we are going to use and also my older son's college plans, which seem to be coming together now.  :-)

Random pictures, summer 2012.

Cat posters on my daughter's door.

My 10 dollar yard sale chair.

Nerf darts, in storage.  These things are all over the house. 

Youngest son's 4H poster.

Ikea shower curtains that I'm using as window curtains.

My favorite Ikea pillow.

Pillow my daughter made.

Youngest son's favorite books right now.

Pool.

Heroscape board set up.

Pumpkins growing in the front yard from last years jack o lanterns.

Youngest son's library selections this week.

Daughter's needlework from last year.

My husband's needle work from years ago.  Thus hung in our oldest son's nursery but is now in the kitchen.

More of the same art wall, kitchen.

My daughter's owl drawing.

More art wall.

The yarn pile.  Her room needs some work, but we're working on the kitchen right now.

Girl shoes.

I did mention that it was going to be random pictures didn't I ?

Terrariums.

My son's terrarium.  I don't know why the picture is distorted.

My daughter's terrarium from the side.  It's kind of dark.

My daughter's terrarium from the top.  There are seeds planted in the soil area, that hopefully will grow and fill that in.

A tiny necklace terrarium my daughter made, with some moss, some dirt, some sand and a tiny seashell from the gulf coast.  :-)

Some pictures.

Gluten free groceries.  We didn't need bread this week, so pretty much everything I bought was gluten free.  It's not weird stuff we eat.  :-)

One of my daughter's drawings.

The "super moon" after it was higher in the sky and not quite so super anymore.

The crochet mats made out of grocery bags that the 4H kids are going to try to make.

At this point.

I'm getting used to the twice daily insulin injections for the dog.  I forgot him today until 2 hours after I was supposed to give it but I guess better late than never.  Today he's got to go get his blood sugar checked at the vet. 

We're all getting used (I guess) to oldest son being a working man.   He seems to be doing okay with it.    He does not want to do this for the rest of his life and I think that's actually a good thing.  I don't want him to either.

This is the last week of school.  We took fewer breaks than the public schools so we are finishing up way earlier than they are and way earlier than we usually do.  It's nice.  The kids are happy about it, that's for sure.

I wish I got the summers off from work, but I don't wish that enough to get a job in the school system ...

Last night we had the 4H needleworking class.  My mother in law taught the kids how to make crochet mats out of grocery bags for the homeless.  It went really well and now my daughter has a big old project to work on.  The goal is to get it done by the county fair the third week of July.  

The end of year count down.

We had 4H yesterday and it was nice.  My artsy friend had the kids making a collage out of beans and popcorn and stuff and it looks really neat.  Then we went out to eat at Fazolis.  I can't really eat anything there but the company was good.  I took Nutella, peanut butter and gluten free crackers as my snack.  That's my go to snack most of the time. It probably should be fruit but that's not the point.  The point is we had a really good time.  The homeschool moms and I hadn't gotten together in several weeks and we got kind of giggly and slap happy.  So much fun.  I'm so blessed to have found such a group.

Today we have a field trip.  I'll report back later on how it went.  

Back to school and a mom's night out (again).

We're back to school this week after a week of spring break last week. We didn't get as much done as I had hoped, but we never do, really, so I'm fine with what we did get done. I plan on doing spring cleaning/painting activities in June like we did last year. I know everyone will be happy about that. The trouble is, I'm working a couple hours more per day than I was last year, so I have more trouble fitting everything in. But, on the other hand, the kids are a year older and better at helping out, so they can do more. We started back to school yesterday with a minimum of whining, but also I think they did the bare minimum of work, so we'll have to see how the week goes. I had another mom's night out last night. I met up with some old friends and we talked and laughed for 2 1/2 hours at Cracker Barrel. It was such a nice evening. We should do that more often. In other news, both of my younger 2 kids won "top prizes" in the 4H poster contest and won 8 dollars. I was very excited for them. It's fun to win.

On the road again.

Yesterday was a nice day of staying home pretty much all day.  I did go see my mom, but she's only 3 miles away so I'm not counting that.  She and I played a game of UpWords and she beat me for the second time in a row, but that's still a restful kind of game and it was a restful kind of day.  Other than work, of course.  I always, always, always have to work.  I considered letting the kids take the week off and get the spring cleaning done but one of the kids (guess which one?) had already done a lot of his/her school work yesterday afternoon when I mentioned this so we didn't do it, but we are ahead this year and the spring cleaning bug has been biting me (this is very unpleasant) and I think next week we might do it. 

Today, we've got to go to 4H and someone else is teaching the lesson so I always like that.  I feel like I am coming down with the cold though, so I might have to make the decision to stay home due to possible contagion.  We will see.  I'm using Cold-Eeze zinc lozenges and I believe I feel better than I did last night.

Monday March 5.

Sometimes thinking of a title for a blog post is difficult.  Today I wimped out and went with the date.   We basically did nothing yesterday.  My husband had another attempt at fixing his car last night, which took my car away from me because he still hasn't gotten his car home.  It's about 15 miles away, parked at a hospital.  So we had to spend the entire day at home.  I did a bit of this and a bit of that, but mostly just goofed all all day.  I cooked dinner and made a loaf of gluten free Japanese Milk Bread which was pretty yummy and then kids and I worked a while on cleaning out my closet and took down a wire shelf in there, in anticipation of putting in a tall shelving unit that I will pick up if I ever get to leave the house again.  Just kidding.  Today, we've got 4H and I am going to ask my mom if I can borrow her car. 

This morning my youngest son is up and at it early for him.  He's sitting beside me now, watching the math lecture for his algebra lesson on Teaching Textbooks and yawning.  I said a few minutes ago that we might work on a project for the house this afternoon and he said "No, the kids need to concentrate on getting their schoolwork done" so maybe he learned a lesson last week from his procrastination?  I hope so.  That Friday night/early Saturday morning thing is no fun for anybody.

In weather today (since I've been blogging about weather all week) we were supposed to get snow today but we didn't.  It's sunny and cold.  I brought my tiny herb garden in last night.  

March Fools!

Our 4H projects from last week are done already, they're fake spills for April fools.  The instructions said that they would take 2 weeks to dry, but we just checked them today anyway and they were done.  Do you think they look real?

The Valentine Party.

We had our homeschool Valentine's party today.   By having it a week late, we saved money on valentines which were half price, and candy.  It was a fun time.  We combined it with our monthly 4H meeting.  At our meeting today we made fake spilled drinks and real copies of some restaurant drinks.  The fake spills are made from tacky glue and will be dry in a couple of weeks and will be great fun in time for April fool's day. Family Fun  The real drinks were copies of a famous restaurant's cherry lime-aid and ocean water.  Everyone pretty much loved the lime-aid but the ocean water must be an acquired taste.  To me, it tasted like suntan lotion.   Afterwards we went for a snack at Taco Bell.  It was a fun day.

Vindicated.

I have been having this problem at work.  The company I work for said that I was sending reports through with the wrong dates on them.  Now I'm not perfect, but I'm pretty good at checking the date.  I'll park my cursor there and wait until the doctor says the date and then I'll type it in.  Last week, I was fined 10 dollars by my company for putting the wrong dates on 5 reports.  The funny thing is though, the dates were correct on my end. The files that my computer keeps had all the correct dates on them.  No mistakes at all.  I send an email to my boss explaining that I didn't think that I had made these mistakes, but she dismissed it.  Then today I got an email again saying that I had messed up a date.  My husband was here and is very techy and we started discussing it.  He said that I could send them my file and a log/record from my computer to prove that I had not modified the file and I could prove I hadn't messed up.  So I sent another email explaining this, this time to the boss of my boss (who was the one who emailed me this time).  A few minutes later, someone called me and said they had a "glitch" and they'd pay me back my 10 bucks.  Yay!  It's not the 10 bucks so much as being believed.  You know?   Well, that and all the future 10 bucks.  It could have gotten expensive. 

Also while we were looking at this, I got a call and I won a 25 dollar gift card at the 4H fair yesterday.  Cool! 

No school.

We didn't do school today because it was President's day and the girl talked me into it.  She was still tired from her busy weekend.  After I finished work, we went to a 4H Health and Safety Fair which was kind of fun.  We got all kinds of freebies and got to take a look at a fire truck and meet our county's K-9 unit.   Amongst the free things, my youngest son was given a box of raisins, which he doesn't like.  He carried them around politely at the fair, then when we got home, he wrote "eat these raisins please" on the box and put them on his brother's desk.  We also had plain yogurt with fruit which I kind of liked and my daughter really liked, but youngest son most definitely did not. 

Yesterday, just kind of

whooshed by me.  It went quickly.  I got up and while I was making my coffee, a friend called and she needed to talk, so instead of working, I talked for an hour to her.  Some things are just more important.  One thing led to another and I didn't get started with work until 10:30.  So, 6 hours later, I finished work, at 4:30 and then we had 45 minutes before I needed to leave to take the kids to youth group.   So I dropped youngest off at grandmas, took the older two to youth group, went to the library to return 2 overdue books and look on the shelves for one we thought we had already returned.  No such luck.  Then, I went to mom's and played a game of UPWords with her while waiting for the older 2.  Then youngest and I headed back into town, picked up the older 2 kids, came home, dropped the boys off at home and then daughter and I headed to choir practice.  It is from 8-9 pm.  All this and we would have also had 4H needleworking class at 4 if we'd remembered it.  I don't know if we could have made it ...   Anyway back to the choir practice - we've joined the a choir temporarily to do an Easter concert.  This is good for my daughter because she's learning to read music in her guitar lessons and now she's trying to learn to follow along with singing.  I'm going to sit down with her and give her a small crash course in 'where do I go from here" in complicated choral music, because she's never dealt with anything like that before.  It's hard for me too because I haven't sung in a choir in many years but it is slowly coming back.  I've also been trying to sing soprano because my daughter is a soprano and she wants to sit by me and sing what I'm singing.  My voice is not that high and its kind of a strain, so if you were outside last night and heard some awful squeaking noises, I'm sorry!  :-P

Busy Day Planned.

We have a busy day planned today.  It's our monthly 4H meeting and I'm going to teach the lesson.  We're going to do Mod Podge again.  Last time we did it I got it on my favorite shirt and on my jeans and in my hair. Today I'm going to try and be more careful.  That stuff does not wash out.  I had to cut it out of my hair.  :-/    Then we are going to eat dinner together and plan our homeschool group's activities for the next few months.  We've gotten into the routine of planning a quarter at a time, because if we try to plan too far in advance, we end up canceling and rescheduling a lot.  I got up early this morning, hoping that I can get my work done before we need to leave at 2:30.   Above is a tiny picture of our homeschool group.  The big one wouldn't load.  I'm 3rd from the left standing.  I think it's left.  :-)

School this week.

Really, the way it has worked out with the busyness and excitement of this week, is that we are pretty much just doing math.  Math is the only subject that has a certain number of lessons that we really need to get done.  Everything else can flex.  So we're flexing.  Today, the kids did algebra and I did work and then we went to 4H where one of the other moms taught us how to make the cutest little candy bouquets.  Then we went to Pizza Hut and had our homeschool group Christmas party.  It was great.   We blessed the 4H workers with one of them while we were there but we don't know what we're going to do with the other ones.  Might just eat them.  Christmas calories do not count until after the New Year.

I did learn an interesting rule today.  One of the boys walked by the mom's table, burped loudly and excused himself, but quietly, so that his mom didn't hear.  She made him come back and told him to say excuse me.  He said that he did and she said "the excuse me has to be just as loud, or louder than the burp."   That way, everyone who hears the burp, also hears the politeness that follows it.  :-P

A little better.

Today has been somewhat better, somewhat less painful than yesterday so maybe the antibiotics are working.  I got my work done and then we had 4H and someone else was teaching the class, so that's good.  They made apple fritters or dumplings.  We got there late because we had to add coolant to our car and it took us a while, but boy did those fritters or dumplings (whichever they were)  smell good.  Yum.  I have the recipe and I might try and make some tomorrow if I get time, which I probably won't. This new work schedule is making everything like that difficult.  This may only be temporary.  :-(  

The kids didn't completely get done with school before we left, so they are finishing up now.  I guess they are not the only ones because as we were leaving the restaurant earlier, one of the other kids in the group asked her mom if she still had to do math tonight.  Boy did that sound familiar.