It is unbelieveable how quickly time flies sometimes! I can't believe how long ago my last entry already is!
Anyway, we aren't starting our school year until the day after Labor Day. You would think I would use this time to be preparing for start day, but..... Nah..... I am actually catching up on some housework (which we know, actually, IS preparing for the first day of school), and have been trying to finish some last UFOs (crafting term for (U)n(F)inished (O)bjects). I finished knitting a baby sweater (need to sew on buttons), matching booties (need to finish sewing the 2nd one), and want to make a matching hat (a set for a charity). I also made a nice tote, and hope to get a pair of pajamas and a pair of pants made for my ds.
We have a little local fair that I am planning to add these to; entry day is next week, so that's what I've actually been preparing for!
I'll try to post some photos to show these items, but not today. I need to go get going with my day!
Oh, and anyone reading this entry today, please remember to pray for Emily throughout the day today as she is having surgery. For more info, click on the link to the right.
There are new posts on CrystalStar's blogspot. Click on the "Pray for Emily" button for an update, and please, please pray for Emily (and her mom and dad, Crystal and Scott). They are going through a very difficult time right now, and hope is shaky right now...
My poor son... Day after day, time after time, he goes into the hall bathroom and uses it without closing the door. His sister, grossed out, screams, "Close the door!!!!"
So, today I'm coming down the hallway and I hear the door to the bathroom closing slowly, quietly... Suspicious that he is has scissors or something and is cutting his own hair (again) or cutting the shower curtain (again) or something like that, I slowly open the door and quietly say, "What are you doing in here?" As you have no doubt concluded by now, he was doing what he was supposed to do: closing the door before he used the bathroom. Poor boy.
He can't win. If he leaves the door open, we want him to shut it. If he shuts it, we want to know why. When he starts coming up and announcing, as we are talking to the neighbor or sister or talking on the phone, "I'm going to go potty." We're all saying, "TMI!" (Too much information....) He just can't win!
Ahhhhhhh!!!!!! Unbelievable! I went to take my daughter to her co-op, and the temp. is, like, 65 degrees, headed toward 75 for the day. (Don't feel bad, northern states. Just come visit, if you want!)
DD was so delighted with the weather, and ds (6) was so funny... We walked out the front door, and he had put on his winter coat,... He stopped, and put both hands up, palms up, like to check the weather, and said, "What?!!!" And he shed his coat and threw it at me like, "I'm not going to need this!" and whooped and hollered on his way to the car!
So, we figure to spend some great time outdoors today. Finally we'll get in a good CM nature walk. We listened to a cardinal's song, while we sat in the car waiting for dd to get there. Why do I have so much trouble remembering which song goes with which bird? I'll take my digital camera with us on our walk, and we'll try to keep track of the birds we see. Hopefully we'll be able to note more than just how much trash we pick up! (That was the notable notation in my blog of our last significant nature walk...)
I'm itching to get in the yard and bag those leaves and find that yard. (Yeah, we must have only bagged 200 bags worth of leaves in the fall. What were we thinking? We needed to continue bagging after the temperature had reached 20 degrees...)
Well, I'm definitely not going to spend all day on homeschool blogger today, so I better get off to my laundry and such, which really needs to get started before I can go outside and "play".
I just learned of the death of one of our fellow homeschooling moms, and wanted to ask everyone to be praying for the dad and the children. Missey (at http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/HeartSchooling was expecting the family's 5th child, and was visiting the doctor for a stress test that she had been getting regularly through the pregnancy. The test revealed that the amniotic sac had leaked to a dangerous level, so she was immediately taken for a c-section. However, amniotic fluid leaked into her blood stream and caused a bloodclot which caused her death. She has gone to be with the Lord, but has left behind a shell-shocked husband, a newborn, and four other kids.
You can find more information at Christy's blog, http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/Christy, and and Missey's blog, http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/HeartSchooling, by reading the comments that have been added since her entry yesterday, before her appointment. She was a member of the AmblesideOnline community, and was a part of, I think, numerous YahooGroups. I think more of us than we realize have probably known her in receiving advice and encouragement. Please, let's remember to pray for this hurting family.
I hope to make this humerous, while bringing truth to light about the real life of a home school mom!
At about 9:30 a.m., the mom decides it is time to get ready to exercise. She plugs her 6 year old into a computer phonics game and goes to put on exercise clothes.
She sees the bed and remembers that she needs to strip the sheets on her bed. She strips the sheets.
She goes to use the bathroom, so that the old, saggy female plumbing won't give her trouble while she is exercising, and she gets sidetracked playing "Jawbreaker" on her Pocket PC. She finally gets up and gets dressed.
She heads downstairs to the treadmill, but halfway there remembers the sheets sitting on the bed that need to go in the wash, so she goes back and gets them. On her way, she sees the tissues that her allergy-prone child has discarded on the carpet, and picks them up and throws them away.
She gets the sheets and goes down and sticks them in the washing machine. While she is at it, she folds the stuff in the dryer and takes it up and puts it on her bed. Since she is upstairs again, she goes into dear son's room and strips his bed as well. While she is in there she puts away his toys, throws away stray tissues, and puts away clean clothes that are sitting on his dresser. She takes his sheets downstairs, and makes sure that she has her hair clip, her MP3 player, and her water jug. She dumps the sheets at the washer and then goes to the treadmill.
She turns the treadmill on and sets it to run Program 1. Seems easy. It's for 30 minutes, and that's what she wants. She starts out the warm up and walks for 3 minutes, and then she sees her dear son poking his head around the corner. She stops the treadmill and asks him what's up. He says the computer locked up. He rebooted it but needs help getting back into Studydog.
She walks upstairs and shows him how to get back into the program, and gets him into it. While she is in the kitchen, she empties the dishwasher and loads the things that are in the sink. She goes back downstairs to the treadmill. She sees part of a sewing project has fallen behind the treadmill, and she squats and squeezes and gets to where it is and picks it up. It is the sleeve to a size 6 months sweatshirt. Her son is now six. ::sigh:: She turns the treadmill back on.
The crazy treadmill does not seem to understand what she wants to do (remember, she selected a pre-set program). The crazy thing keeps changing pace, changing to an inclined ramp, no matter how many times she reduces the speed and puts the ramp back to level. It seems convinced that she should go 6.0 miles per hour. She knows that she will get an inflamed knee if she goes that fast, but it speeds up every 60 seconds anyway.
Dear son is back again. He says big sister kicked him off the kitchen computer. She turns the treadmill off again and sets him up at the downstairs computer, by the treadmill, to play Studydog again. She turns the treadmill on again and is finally able to finish her time on it, with her son resting his foot against it the whole time, giggling because it tickles his bare foot as the treadmill turns.
She turns the treadmill off and closes it (so dear son won't play with it), and goes to check the washer. There is very little time left on the cycle by this time, so she goes into the sewing room to do some pick up while it finishes. She picks up the construction paper that is all over the floor from dear daughter's birthday card project last week. She also picks up pins from daughter's sewing project, and ignores the mouse droppings from whoever had the pet mouse out last.
The washer turns off, and she transfers the sheets to the dryer and starts the next load. She goes upstairs to shower, but since she is still sweating, she puts away the clothes that she brought upstairs earlier. As she reaches the bottom of the pile, she is glad she put them away, because her shower towels were in this load, and she is going to need them.
She goes into the bathroom to shower, and resists the urge to clean the bathroom first. She turns on the water and hops in. She shampoos, conditions, and starts to shave limbs. By this time the water is no longer hot. Remember, she just started the second load of sheets in hot water - necessary to kill dust mites in an allergy home. By the time she finishes shaving the water is truly 70 degrees--not her idea of a good time.
She gets out of the shower and gets dried and dressed. She starts to dry her hair, and daughter comes in to remind her that she needs a ride to work. Hair finished, it is now 1:05 p.m. Daughter is supposed to be at work at 1:00, and it took 3 and 1/2 hours to exercise and shower.
That's why homeschool moms don't usually bother trying to exercise.
Sorry about neglecting to do any updates lately. I have been working, instead, every day on the actual format of the blog and the information included in it. Let me know what you think.
Very happy weekend for my kids when we got a foot of snow! I'll to post a couple of photos I took a little later.
Today someone is coming to measure our windows--we are getting new windows in our house in a couple of weeks! Woo Hoo!!!
Here's my day:
7:30 - up, fed critters, got son his morning cocoa, made coffee
8:00 - cleaned master bedroom. Son got his own breakfast. I showered
9:00 - drove older DD to co-op
9:15 - home again; age breakfast, computer time. Cleaning up my YahooGroups. Dropped a group, reactivated a different group, posted a school subject checkoff list to blog.
10:15 - plans for the rest of the day:
--change sheets on my bed (strip, make bed) (in process)
--clean up JDs room; put all the books back in the bookshelf
--change sheets on JDs bed
--start a load of laundry (done, and 2nd load too)
--clean mold off my bedroom window (done, and bathroom window too!)
--put away clean laundry (some but not all)
--work on clearing my dresser and my nightstand (some but not all)
--pick B up from co-op at 11:00 (she got another ride)
--dust
--vacuum
--sweep and mop kitchen
--lunch
--take B to work (done)
--Be ready when window man comes sometime bt 12 and 4 (done - he came at 1:00)
--homeschool JD
--spend time reading (for myself)
--go online and order B's literature book for next week
--clean hall bathroom
--know what's for dinner; thaw it. (chicken--it's thawing)
Books I am currently interested in looking at:
-The Well Trained Mind
-What Your Kindergartener Needs to Know
-What Your 1st Grader Needs to Know
-Teaching With The Brain in Mind
-Charlotte Mason in the Home and other titles I picked up on my last trip
I might edit this later, but for now this is the plan.
D
I have others on my "to be read" list, but I want to pick something from the above list for reading today.
Well, while I was sleeping last night I was apparently clenching my jaw. I woke up to a "POP!" as a crown on one of my molars cracked and lost some of its porcelin. The good news is that I can still work with this crown now that the dentis has smoothed it down... I don't have to get it replaced. It just has metal showing now instead of porcelin. ::sigh:: It's on a very back molar anyway.
It is raining... pouring... And cold. And I HAVE a cold. I tried to read out loud from The Magician's Nephew at bedtime. Fortunately JD fell asleep after only a few chapters, cause I don't know how much more I could have read! I need some Nyquil and some rest, so this is about it for my post. My daughter B is visiting a friend in California for 13 days, and my daughter T is visiting from college for six days. So we lost one and gained one, and still have four at the dinner table.
