F-I-E-L-D T-R-I-P!

We took a field trip yesterday to Mammoth Cave National Park.  Our home school group planned the trip, but several families had things going on and so only 2 families went.  We took advantage of not traveling with a large group and were a bit more flexible than the group usually is.  We took in the walking tour of the cave, then went to Big Mike's Rock Shop and Mystery House, which has one of those houses with the crooked floors and walls where the water seems to flow uphill.  It was a ton of fun.  Then we had a picnic on a scenic overlook and then went to a really great salvage grocery store where I got Gluten Free Bisquick for 75 cents among other things and then came home.  It was a really good day.  I share pictures whenever my photographer (my daughter) feels like sharing them.  For some reason, attaching her camera cord to a computer and uploading pictures is a really onerous chore for her. 

Kentucky law says
KRS 158.080 states the minimal school term is 185 days, which includes 177 days of instruction KRS 158.070 and 10 non-instructional days.

I think someone did the math wrong here, and 177 plus 10 really ought to equal 187, but that's beside the point.  The point is that these 10 noninstructional days are supposed to be teacher meeting days, but since I really don't have any need for a teacher meeting, we try to do 10 field trips a year.  :-)

So the first one for 2012-2013 is done.

Resolved.

Okay, I didn't even bother with resolutions at the new year.  I postponed them until after Easter.  Since then I've exercised, by walking and getting in the pool, sporadically, but a couple of days ago I decided that I'm going to get in the pool every day (unless it's storming) until it gets too cold this fall.  Once I get in the pool, I will exercise, so it's the getting in that is the difficulty sometimes.  So far, I'm doing pretty good.  I've gotten in the pool every day for the last 3 days.  Unfortunately, it's so hot, we have to leave the cover off to keep the water from heating up above 100 degrees and bugs are attracted to the water and come and drown themselves so the first 20 minutes every day is spent scooping out the bugs.  I hate that.   Last night, when my daughter and I were swimming, there were flies buzzing around driving us a little bit crazy.  She grabbed the pool net and said she was going to hunt flies which led to me saying "Be vewy quiet, I'm hunting fwies"  and much laughter.  Then when I looked at her, intensely scanning for flies I looked up and there were 2 on her goggles which she had on top of her head, which I thought was hilarious, because she was hunting them and they were on top of her head.  :-)  Bugs bunny probably did that to old Elmer Fudd at some point, didn't he?

Happy first day of summer.

We did more of the same.  More work.  More blackberry picking.  More swimming.  More laziness about getting our work on the floor done, but really we didn't have a lot of time.   Actually, yes, we could have done it during the time we picked blackberries or the swim time, but our friends were going to be at the pool and we wanted to see them and we didn't want the berries to go to waste!  The floor is first on the list for  tomorrow. 

While I was supposed to be working, I went over to Donna Young's Website.   and looked at high school planners.  I haven't been able to buy one like I used for my oldest and so I printed one out from her website to use.  She has a ton of great stuff over there.  You should go check it out if you are, as I am, right on top of things in planning the fall semester.  :-P

Beautiful day.

It is just gorgeous.  My oldest son apparently has recovered from his work shifts (ah, youth) and went kayaking today with some friends.  It turned out to be a great day for it.  It's hard for me to sit in the house and work today.  The younger kids and I went on a trip to the mailbox/fossil hunt.  We had creek rock delivered instead of regular gravel for our driveway so now every trip to the mailbox brings interesting fossil discoveries.

Wow.

Curious Boy's Book of Adventure

This is the latest book my youngest son is reading.  It's about building treehouses, learning to fish, safe ways to build a fire and make S'mores and various other things.  He's really enjoying it and has been scouting the area around our house for the perfect treehouse tree.  Yesterday, he said that a book he had read recently said to put down the video games, turn off the TV and do some fun stuff.  He said "I already have all day long to do fun stuff because I don't have screen time."  I asked him if he was glad we did screen time the way we do and he said that he was, because if we allowed him to play video games all day long, he would and he'd miss all the coolest stuff.  Wow, validation on screen time control policies from my baby.  They really are growing up.

The last day of school.

The kids have been working mostly on math this week.  They've had to go back and correct any of the lessons where they scored less than 80.  I gave them a break on writing, mostly because the girl is sick and she begged and begged not to have to do writing.  I really think they are doing more than the public school kids would do on their last day or so.  For last days of school when I was a kid, I remember field days, sitting around, watching TV, movie day and stacking chairs and tables.  We went out and cleaned out the gutters yesterday.  Do you think that counts for anything?  Probably not.  We did it in addition to school, not instead of school, anyway.

While we finish up here today, enjoy these pictures of my mom's garden.    My daughter took all of these Wednesday.

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.

Summer planning.

This is the last week of school.  Three more days.  The summer looms ahead of us.  12 weeks.  In my opinion, we have 3 priorities to accomplish this summer.

1.  Finish the refinance plans we have been working on procrastinating about for over a year.  (Don't ask.)
2.  Exercise/fitness.
3.  Have fun and promote family bonding.

There will be other things we'll do but these are the main things.  I also want to do some volunteer work and work on my book some more and take a little time to stop and smell the roses. When one of the kids asks me to play something or do something with them, I'm going to try most of the time to say yes.

Feels like summer!

Picture of our creek, not our pool.  I don't have any good pictures of the pool.

I got in the pool today.  Can you believe it?  May 6.  That's the earliest I've ever gotten in the pool.  We don't usually have it up until memorial day weekend.  The temperature outside was 87 degrees and the temperature inside is not much better since our air conditioning does not seem to be working.  It keeps freezing up.  I did some chores around the house, got very, very warm and decided to just get in the pool.  I felt much better for a while, but now I'm back inside and getting very warm again and so I might have to go back out there.  It's so nice to have it as an option.  I'm thinking if we leave it up until September I can get 5 good solid months of exercise in before we take it down and I turn back into a slug.  I really need to get a winter exercise plan.

There are several reasons.

Our front yard as photographed from inside, through one of the front windows, a few weeks ago.

There are several reasons that my kids are playing the Wii Sports today for exercise.  The first is that it's raining and although they have been out in the yard several times today, they don't want to have to be outside for exercise.  It's different, you know?  Exercise is on their list every day and they have to do an hour, and they usually do this outside but it's deer season and we live in the woods and over the weekend, we heard a lot of gunshots.  People aren't supposed to hunt on our land, but they might wound a deer on another person's land and follow it onto ours to finish it off.  If we do go outside of the front yard for our later "15 minutes outside with mom", I'm going to wear something more bright than my basic normal black.  :-)

An addition to the schedule.

A couple of weeks I added a small thing to the schedule for the kids.  It says "15 minutes outside with Mom".  That's a new one.  They've had to go outside before, but now they have to go outside with me.  I am getting all kinds of walks in and the outdoor time is good for me.  What gave me the idea was this book  .  It is written for younger kids, but it does emphasize how good going outside can be for all of us and it's got a lot of good ideas in it.  I checked it out from the library and read it and put the item on our schedule and now next time I go to the library, I'm going to get it out again and maybe write down some of the ideas for interesting things to do, other than just go for a walk, although the walk in the moonlight we just took and the walk the other day in the rain were different and fun.  One other thing that I do remember from the book that the kids and I want to do is to take a picnic of hot muffins and hot chocolate outside on a cold day.  I think it's cold enough now in the lower 50s, but the kids want to wait until it is at least 40, maybe 30.  That should be quite bracing.  :-)

Play.

Great post over on Parent At the Helm about play.  Here's the link.   Play is absolutely necessary for kids and most kids aren't getting enough play time.