52 days since we moved mom to the first assisted living facilty.

• moves ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- 2
• times me crying (at least) -------------------------------------------------------------------------------52
• times mom crying (that I personally heard on the phone) -------------------------------------------1
• number of people trying to extort money from mom. ------------------------------------------------1
• phone calls to lawyers -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2
• times mom called me and asked me to bring her home ---------------------------------------------10
• times she called her siblings and my brother and said the same thing--------------------------100s 
• times my mom called me and asked me to put my mother on the phone---------------------------2
• times the electricity went out at my mom's house, causing the heat and fridge to go out and the water pipes to freeze.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------2
• times either my phone or my mom's phone has gone out  (ours was annoyingly nonfunctional for a week, ringing all the time, but not functional as a phone, just as a noisemaker). ----------2
• trees that fell across my mom's driveway -------------------------------------------------------------1
• inches of ice on the floor at mom's house that we had to deal with yesterday.---------------------1
• days of being on my period------------------------------------------------------------------------------23
• (conservative estimate) PMS days -----------------------------------------------------------------------8
• (conservative estimate) Hershey's white chocolate peppermint bars eaten by me and not shared. ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------10
• pounds gained --------------------------------------------------I don't want to even think about it.
• doctor's visits and phone calls, trying to get mom's nurse practitioner to give mom an anti-anxiety medication, with no success.________________________________1 visit/4 calls
• number of times my mom called my brother during one half hour meeting at work--------------7.
• number of jobs I have applied for since my job has went to voice recognition (not that I feel like getting a new job right now) ------------------------------------------------------------------------3.

Add working and the holidays in there and you've got 2 crazy, crazy months.  I am praying the new place is good for her. 

Art journal pages.

Per your request,  Amy. :^)

 Since art journaling is good for my stress and I have been having a hard time lately, I have been very productive these last few weeks.  

The Roller Coaster Ride.

We are all still on the roller coaster here, trying to find a way to help mom. She called me crying yesterday and in desperation, I called a private care home near here and asked for a tour.  They have one opening.  The place was reasonably nice and clean and they have home inspections by the state posted and so we are going to give it a whirl.  There is the lady who runs it, her aunt and she is allowed by the state to keep 3 elderly patients.  They have an open door, come in anytime policy and they operate like a family, hanging out together in a house, not an institution.  I hope/pray that this is the answer for mom.  We are going to move some things in there this afternoon and have mom spend the night there for a few nights before we decide whether or not to end our current lease at the assisted living facility.

I also pray that the chest pain I am having is asthma and not a heart attack.  It's been a rough, rough ride lately.

Monday stuff.

Wow, it's cold.  Yesterday I did venture out.  My husband had a prescription that needed to be picked up at the pharmacy and since he pretty muchly has pneumonia, I went and got it.  I also picked up a couple of other things we needed like a big old bag of dog food.  (With 4 dogs, we go through it pretty quickly).  It was so cold.  It made my head hurt and my lungs hurt.  I went out to mom's assisted living and had a not great visit with her.  I was feeling kind of bad after being out in the weather and she was feeling kind of sad about being in assisted living.  After a while, the phone rang and we realized that there was something wrong with it, so I went back out into the cold and got a new phone for her.  Then we hooked it up, verified that it would work and I came home.  When I got home, I sent my youngest out to the truck to get the dog food.  He came back in very quickly, trying to get in before his boogers froze.  :-) Earlier yesterday, the kids had been out blowing bubbles to watch them freeze and throwing boiling water in the air to watch it instantly crystallize.   Being homeschoolers, that was not optional.  :-P


After I got home from my outing, we had a pleasant evening.  My husband had made a big old pot of chicken soup and my daughter made us grilled cheese, (comfort food!) we played Munchkin and after that, watched Monk and I got to try out my new art journaling supplies that my brother had got me for Christmas that came in the mail yesterday. (comfort activities?).  

At some point last evening, I shared a dream that I had had in which we had 2 dishwashers and both of them worked.  This was wonderful as we only have one and it continually goes off and doesn't finish the cycle.  When I shared this, my husband shared that a couple of nights ago, he dreamed that we had a new house, which included 2 hot water heaters.  (So that if you take a shower after the 2 teens do, you still have hot water.)  I thought it was hilarious that both of us are dreaming of multiple appliances.  :-P

Yeah, it's cold, but there's no snow.

Ever since my kids got sleds for Christmas a couple of years ago, we haven't had any significant snowfall.  For anyone living near me, you're welcome.  :-P   The weather guys locally were predicting several inches of snow yesterday and today, but as usual, nothing.  My youngest son sure would like to see some snow, but it's 7 degrees here, so I guess it's a good thing he is not tempted to go outside.  I know I certainly am not.  Today, we need to take our Christmas tree down.  We are really late this year but the cold virus that has rampaged through here this week has been pretty rough.  I guess I need to just schedule this darn cold every year because it's going to happen the week after Christmas.  There is a lot of coughing around here.  My husband sounds the worst and he probably has pneumonia.  He went to a clinic yesterday after work, but they didn't do an x-ray, so we are not sure.  We're still not doing school here due to my oldest son being home and with the illness, everyone is so, so lazy.  We've been having a Monk marathon, and since everyone has seen all of the episodes multiple times, we can join it at will and go take a nap at any time without feeling like we're missing something.  We haven't even had the energy to play all of our board games.  How sad is that?   I'll have to do my usual games review post sometime later.  Like, in the spring.

January 3, Randomness.

Some dishcloths my daughter made and sold right before Christmas.

The cheesecake my daughter made for Thanksgiving.

One day the kids decided to "tattoo" (with markers) themselves with a rule out,roman legion tattoo from the Percy Jackson books.  Hey, it involves latin, so that's educational right? 

So yesterday, we went to a restaurant to meet another homeschool family and played games.  My husband had taken my vehicle due to snow/etc. so we didn't have the main game we were planning on playing and had to play one of our new Christmas games we haven't got the hang of yet.  It's called Munchkin and there seems to be a pretty big learning curve associated with it.  Oh well, good for the brain to stretch a little.   In other news, my new great nephew* was born the day before yesterday and we looked at a lot of pictures on Facebook.  Of course he's very cute.  It will be fun to see him in person, but with the bronchitis-y thing still hanging on in a couple of family members we felt it would not be nice to visit him in the hospital yesterday. So I'm back to work, my husband is back to work and my son has one more week before he has to go back to Mississippi and so school is out here as well until then.

We went up last night to see my mom and I would appreciate any prayers, warm thoughts or suggestions for her.  She is still stressed from the move and is having a hard time with it.  I am not sure what to do.  As I have stated many times on this blog, it is very difficult.


*Apparently, since my Dad has a daughter from a previous marriage who is  15 years older than me, I have a lot of great nieces and nephews that I haven't met, but that's another story.  Speaking of that, I need to send my sister a card or letter since she doesn't do Facebook. 

Trying to think of a new direction.

I've only got a couple of homeschooling years to go.  :-(  When I started this blog, the homeschooling years seemed to stretch out for a long, long time, but it's been a long time already.  We started homeschooling in 2004, so this fall, it will be 10 years.  It's hard to believe.  Let me tell you, I don't regret one second of it.  I think it's the best decision we've ever made as a family.   So I guess I've got a couple of years to decide what direction I want to take with this blog (and with my life in general).  I've got a huge bunch of information on here, most of it only useful, probably, to me.  I use the blog to look things up so that I can figure out when we did something.  A lot of homeschool moms, post homeschooling, do talks and write essays and generally help and mentor the moms who are currently homeschooling, but I can't really see me doing that.  All of my best homeschool advice is pretty simple and it's right on this blog, over on the right.  See it?  I might also add another thing we do which is hit the basics, math and literacy pretty hard and let the rest be interest driven mostly.  Other successful things we have done include limiting screen time, adding chores and hygiene to the homeschool lists and reading, reading, reading.  To this day, we do read alouds pretty much every night although often now, the kids read to me while I art journal.  

So anyway, with the blog this year I'm thinking of doing different types of posts for different days, including sharing links, recipes, pictures, etc., but I haven't decided for sure, so meanwhile today, I will share a link.  This seems to be a great time of year for lists and here's a great list of a bunch of homeschooling freebies.   Check it out:  176 Best Homeschool Freebies and More.  Definitely worth a look.

Have a great day!

Happy New Year!

I sure do pray this year is better than the last.  Hey 2013, don't let the door hit you in the rear on the way out.  Good riddance.  Now I just need to put on my brave face and charge right into 2014.

Last night we brought in the new year with 4 of the 5 of us sick with this cold virus that's been running wild through our family and the other one of us (me) on steroids for whatever is wrong with my elbow.  We had invited friends over to play games and celebrate with us but my friend tore her calf muscle exercising yesterday morning (doesn't that sound awful?) and the battery went out on their van, so they decided to stay home.  So we watched many episodes of Monk on TV, art journaled, knitted and generally were lazy.  We won't start back to homeschooling until my oldest son goes back to college in a couple of weeks.  Hopefully, everyone will feel better, we will get to spend time with friends before he goes back.