The fun stuff.

Not really.   Today I'm sitting at the Toyota dealership waiting for them to complete a 15 point safety check on my car, then I'm going to Hobby Lobby to return a marker that doesn't work.   After that I get to take my dog to get her kennel cough vaccine and then home for cleaning, laundry, dishes and cooking supper.  Another exciting day, but I don't mind really.   :-)

Wedding Prep and Homeschooling and Other Stuff.

We are getting some things done around here.  Most of what we are doing seems to be wedding prep.  We had gotten my daughter's bridesmaid dress in December.  That's pretty easy.  They tell you which dress to buy and you order it in your size.  Mine, which we finally got on Saturday, involved a lot of shopping, one purchase and return; after which I decided not to shop online and then a lot of trying on.   I got a dress on Saturday at Dress Barn, which I just love.  

I've been practicing cooking some of the menu items for the rehearsal dinner.  I have to serve 60 people in a park pavilion in another state, which I am told has electrical outlets, but I am not sure how many crock pots I can plug in.  Also, I don't want to have to work really hard the whole time I'm there, I want to be able to relax some and enjoy myself so I'm trying to come up with a menu that is easy and not too expensive.  For now, the menu is pulled pork barbecue, green beans, coleslaw, potato chips, various drinks and cake for dessert.  They are having a wedding brunch on the day of the wedding, with no cake, so we won't be redundant serving cake.  Also, I can cook the cakes here and ice them there and that will be easy peasy.  Now that I've got that planned and my dress bought, the next thing is to outfit my youngest son who is a groomsman.  That won't be too difficult.  He's an easy size and I've been told what to buy.  

These first 2 pictures are from a trip to Q-Doba during the dress shopping adventures and are to illustrate my daughter's neat hand napkin, table napkin, table napkin, face napkin technique for eating nachos and my pile-o-napkins method.  I just think it's funny how different we are.  The next picture is Cosmo, just because he's cute.  Please ignore the piles of clothes and vacuum cleaner behind him.  :-P   The other pic is a page from the Fredrick Bachman book I just read, Beartown.  Wow, that was an intense read.   I felt like I had truly been in another world for a few hours.  It was more serious/less funny than his other books and therefore I don't know if I'll read it again.  I've already read the other 3 each twice since discovering him as an author last year.  

In homeschooling type news, we had the board game group meetup today which was fun.  We had a good turnout of 8 kids/young adults.  My favorite line from the meeting was when one of them asked if there were any nerds here and another one looked at him and said "Dude, we're all nerds."  :-)   Since we are in the launching stage of homeschooling, I am going to call the local community college and set up my son's orientation.  He still hasn't decided if he's going to community college or going to do an apprenticeship.  We'll see.  I keep trying to prepare for any eventuality, scheduling things like this, keeping up with his application status and scholarship applications and things like that.  I've also started moderating a homeschool group on Facebook, so I'm lending my voice of experience to younger moms, which is kind of cool.

Spring! (Random news from around here).

Beautiful!

It's beautiful and then it storms and then it's BEAUTIFUL and then it rains and the pollen counts are over the moon, but I'm still enjoying spring.  Our lawn mower is not working again and we have huge weeds in our yard, but this seems to have increased our wildlife sightings.  In this picture, there is a turkey right in the center, at the base of that tree.  I know you can't see it well, but we got a thrill out of seeing it.  It was fun.   Then the other day, we had a turtle walk across our deck, notice the hole where the tree fell on the deck and decide that yes, he could definitely fit in there, only to get stuck and need rescuing.  :-)

Turkey

I can do this!

No, no I can't.  

Spring also brings my birthday and I got a couple of presents and had a wonderful cake, so that's good.  I still don't like getting older, but I do enjoy the cake part of birthdays.  :-)

I'm officially as of last night, halfway through my challenge to read 50 books this year and I currently have 3 that I'm reading, so that's going well.

My daughter only has about 18 more days of work until she's off for the summer.  

Youngest son has decided that he will not learn to drive from me, so I've been fired from that position.  His dad will have to step up or he'll have to wait until his sister turns 21 so she can teach him legally.  That will be in August.  I'm kind of relieved. Now I can take it off my every day list.  Every day I have been asking him if he wants to go driving and he pretty much always says no.  Now I don't have to ask.  It's on him.  It's his responsibility.

In other random news, oldest son is graduating from college next month and getting married the month after that so we're trying to get ready for those 2 events.  I am doing a lot of dress shopping for the wedding, but I haven't found anything yet.

I just set up a couple of board game meetups with the homeschool group.  I'm thankful they let us do this because the group is growing and everyone seems to be having a good time.

I'm also job hunting and job hunting and job hunting, but I haven't (obviously) found anything yet.  I'm tired of it, but what can I do?  Keep trying, that's what.

Anyway, that's the random news from here for today.

I hope you're having a good one!

What is the purpose of education?

Peter Gray is asking for opinions on his blog.  What are the proper purposes for a system of schooling?

I'm not sure how to put my response into words.  Maybe to prepare for adulthood, to teach the basics of literacy and to teach kids to teach themselves so that they never stop learning.

What do you think?

The 12 types of Homeschool Moms.

The 12 Types of Homeschool Moms on Blimey Cow.

My oldest son told me this week that I was definitely the "Everything is educational" type of homeschool mom.  :-)

A week of camp.

I'm sitting here in the break room at the Montessori school where my daughter works having my lunch.  She has been off all week and I have been here all week working their camp week.  It's a day camp/day care kind of situation, while the other teachers do spring break.  There are about 18 kids, ages 3-8 and 4 teachers to cover the 10 1/2 hours that the school is open each day.   I'm a substitute teacher here and I had previously worked 1 day, so now I have 5 more under my belt.  It's been an interesting week, a tiring/exhausting week and I've learned a lot.  One thing I've learned is that I can do it.  I worried that I would not physically be able to handle it, but the worst part for me, as an introvert, has been just having someone in my face all day long, not the physical exertion.  I have been coming home pretty tired every day and my house is a mess right now.  I'm not used to balancing housework and working (never have been) so the housework suffers when I am gone all the time.   This is the last day of camp so next week, back to my regular life.

It's hard to think of titles for posts about not much.

I've used the phrase "not much" as a title before, probably, in the 12 years that I've been blogging.   So anyway, we're doing things, its just not especially exciting, but it's fine.  My daughter has been on spring break from her job and here's what we've done this week.  On Monday, we had a board game meetup. We had a few new kids and one returning kid so it was a good group and they had a good time.  Two of the moms opted to stay, which they don't usually do, so the time passed quickly for me since I had someone to talk to, but I missed hearing the kid's conversations and knowing what games they played.  Still, I could look over every now and then and see that they were having a good time.

On Tuesday, my daughter and I headed to Louisville for her migraine appointment which she has every 6 months.  This time there was nothing but good news as she said that her headaches are only 3-4 times a week (instead of every day) and that none of them are severe.  She is able to use the biofeedback techniques that she learned last fall to 'back down" the pain.  Since we were in Louisville, we went to the gluten free bakery there that we love so much and got a cupcake and cheesecake slice and a cookie, all of which we split.  Very good.

Then yesterday, I went to physical therapy then came home, cooked some Chinese food and watched a really intense thunderstorm last night.  Our electricity went off for a couple of hours, but it was fine.  We all had books.  :-P

Today, we're meeting some friends at a restaurant for a little while and we've got to go shopping for an Easter Egg Hunt that our church is having this weekend.  Tomorrow we will go setup for the hunt and Saturday we will help host it.

Next week is scary to me.  I signed up to work "camp" at the Montessori school and so I'll be working a 40 hour week.  I didn't realize it was that many hours when I signed up for it, but basically, it's daycare for the kids while the school is on spring break.  I don't know how my arthritic knees will hold up but I need the money so I'm going to try and survive it.  It's a terrible feeling when you want to do something, but you don't know if your body will let you.  My knees have been behaving particularly bad this week, so that's not encouraging.   :-(

I'm supposed to be taking youngest son driving every day but we're not doing well on that.  He's on one of his cycles where he stays up late and sleeps a lot of the day and I just haven't made an effort to fit him in.  I need to do better.  He needs to do better.  Our goal is to take him for his test at the end of this month, so we need to get on it.   I think he's got a non-24 sleep disorder which is contributing to his sleep issues so I am not sure how hard on him to be about this.  Also, I know we both have a mild case of post-traumatic stress disorder about the driving, after our first day driving into a big ditch.  Sigh.  We just need to get this DONE.

So I guess we're not done homeschooling; we've still got driver's ed to finish!  Also, my son is still working on learning German and we meet up with homeschoolers every couple of weeks, so it doesn't seem like we're finished.  I guess it really is a lifestyle thing.

April Fool's Day!

Doing a minimum of jokes today since I have a headache,  but still fun.  I'm filling the shoes with balloons.  I resisted the impulse to set the boots up and neaten up the shoes because I thought that might make them suspicious.   :-)