Fun day with the homeschool group.

We planned gym days every other week this summer and it has really worked out great.  I've enjoyed them very much and I think everyone else has too.  Today, while the kids were playing basketball, badminton and volleyball, the moms played Telestrations.  It was fun as always.  The funniest one was when my friend attempted to draw a groundhog seeing his shadow for groundhog day and I thought it was a bungee jumping pig, or when my other friend drew a humpback whale that looked like it had Mick Jagger lips.  LoL.  

Afterwards, we went to Burger King and had 50 cent ice creams and talked and talked.  Just when we were ready to leave, a kiddo came in that my kids hadn't seen all summer due to schedule conflicts, so I had to stay later and let them talk to her.  They had all missed each other very much.  It was a great day seeing friends.

Yes.  Homeschooled kids have friends.  :-P

Computer Issues.

I got up this morning to find that I had 2 computer issues.  One was a network/internet issue that, though we tried very hard, we could not solve until my husband, our in-house technical support person, got home from work.  With that one solved, I could contact my work and try to get help with the other problem.  Apparently, with the hard drive failing in my computer, as we already knew it was, it has lost track of a file called "backward beep tone" and it can't play a little beeping sound that it wants to play when I back up my wave player.  So the whole system won't work because of this little beepy thing.  Crazy.  The tech support guy from the company I work with tried all kinds of solutions to try and go around it and to try and diagnose and fix it, to no avail.  There were many hours today spent dealing with these frustrating issues. 

In other news, 2 of the kids caught colds from VBS and the other one probably won't last long, so today's planned first day of MWC (Mom's Work Camp) was postponed.  Next week, though.  It's happening.  :-P

I hope.

My Pinterest Score.

Last night was VBS commencement and afterwards, we had a small party.  A few of us were standing around talking about pinterest and one woman said that she had pinned a bunch of things but had never done any of them.  I, of course, tried to start thinking of things we had actually done from Pinterest.

Here's our hastily assembled score just from a quick glance at Pinterest.  (I'm working this morning after all!)

On my homeschool board, I've done or used about 4 out of 21 pins.

On my books board, I've read or used (book reviews) most of them.

On my built ins and rooms I like boards, I have done nothing.  These are just for dreaming apparently, of some day when I have money and/or time.

Art journal board approximately 17 of 56 pins.  I have used bits and pieces, but not copied whole pages.

Craft and Bake Sale Ideas - My daughter and I have used about 7 of these out of 207 pins.

Thoughts - I have had 100% of these thoughts.  :-P

Gluten Free Stuff - We've tried 19 out of 22 of these.

Recipes - 3 of 36 pins and really, that's plenty.  The recipes I pin are things like chocolate cobbler and something called Died and Gone to Chocolate Heaven so I'm better off not cooking them.  I need to make a low calorie recipes board.

Here's a link to my Pinterest boards and here's a link to a book about how to use Pinterest.  

I'm still here.

The kids have been busy with VBS this week and for some of them it requires a nap each afternoon.  They aren't morning people, folks.  I have been not feeling well as I posted before and so today, I didn't go to my volunteer shift and took a nap.  After the nap, I got in the pool and it was wonderfully warm and felt great.  I feel better now and my heart is not doing drum solos, so that helps. 

I have declared next week, Kids Work Boot Camp week.  It's mandatory.  They need to get some things done.  We need our gutters cleaned out and someone needs to clean up Piper's messes and that's not gonna be me.  They have been working this week 3 hours a day for VBS and they can do at least that much at home each day next week. 

I checked out a library book today Trim Health Mama.  I haven't gotten into reading it yet, but hopefully it will contain the magic formula so that I will lose weight once and for all.  A girl can hope.   While I was there, I did a bunch of the summer reading activiites.  One of them was checking out a quote book and writing the quote on the sidewalk outside the library with sidewalk chalk.  I chose a book called The Quotable Einstein because it was pretty much the only one I could find and wrote the shortest quote I could find in it on the sidewalk.  It was something about not trying to teach someone until you had learned something yourself. 

I didn't want to sit on the sidewalk and my knee did not want me to squat, so I backed into a corner and bent over, trying not to draw too much attention to myself.  A woman walked by with her child while I was writing and you should have seen her face.  You could tell she hadn't heard how different the adult summer reading program was this year and I think she thought that the vandals in this town sure are unusual, middle aged, female, chubby ...

Not feeling well.

Last week's adventure with taking too much medication accidentally, threw my heart into it's irregular rhythm/palpitations thingy that it sometimes does, so I have not felt good for the past few days.  Not. At. All.
I went to the doctor yesterday and she was not particularly concerned.  She ordered a heart monitoring study to be done.  On the one hand, I hope the palpitations go away immediately so I will feel like I'm not dying, but on the other hand, I would kind of like them to still be around to show up on the monitor this time. 

As usual, when I don't feel good, life goes on.  Unlike most people who work I don't get paid time off, so I continue working even when sick.  The kids are doing VBS so I'm trying to make sure I have a meal ready for them when they get home.  I remember how I would come home starving from VBS when I was a kid. 

Other than that, not too much going on this week.  I did go to a mom's night out last night which was nice.  I got to see one of my favorite moms who I don't get to see very often, but missed a couple of the other ones.  :-)  It's hard to find time for everyone to get together. 

Anyway, that's my report for today.  If you are a praying person, pray I get this monitor thing done soon or that the palpitations just go away very soon on their own.   I'm pretty miserable.

Public Speaking 101.

My oldest son was asked to speak last night at church about his trip to Peru.  His camera had stopped working on the first day, so he borrowed some pictures from his friends, set up a projector on his laptop and stood up and talked about his trip for 30 minutes.  He did a good job too, speaking clearly and you could tell he'd learned a lot about the country while he was there.  Afterwards he answered questions from the crowds, like if it doesn't rain there, how do they get water (it runs down off the mountains) and what are those crops we can see in the fields (beans and corn).  What was the most interesting cultural food item?  (fried guinea pig).  Even I learned a lot. 

That's one kid I won't have to worry about being paralyzed by fear when he has to do public speaking in college, it looks like.  :-)

Well, this is embarrassing.

Okay, my plan was that I would blog about my getting ready for our school year and challenge my blog readers to do the same, after I had done it, I would challenge you to do it.  And what have I done?  Pretty much nothing.  I accidentally took too much (double) of one of my medications on Friday and since then I've felt pretty awful.  I think I may be turning it around now, but whew.   The only thing I have done is incidentally, while cleaning the kitchen, I took the old writing papers out of the hanging file on the side of the fridge and, I'd like to say stored them neatly in a file cabinet, but I threw them out.  I don't feel it's necessary to keep every little thing.  I still haven't cleaned out the big old wardrobe that contains most of our homeschooling supplies and I need to badly, but I'm probably going to make my kids do it and at the same time, challenge you to do it. This is what we have that I did clean out -  Nylon File Folder Thingy.

Another challenge.

This one is kind of cheating because I didn't write it, but go to Laura Grace Weldon's blog and read her article about homeschooling.  It's really wonderful. 

Here's the link. 
Homeschooling Worries Erased