Hey all! I hope spring has come with many blessings for all of you. God is laying the foundation for many good things to come for me and PJ. A lot has happened, so much, t hat I hardly have any time to blog anywhere (I have other blogs, mostly entertainment and media related, and they are all about as neglected as this one).  To make a long story short: We gave the quails away to a couple of avian enthusiasts who had hand-built two aviaries in their backyard and were looking for quails. I was initially only going to give the quail babies to them (no way was I going to have 5 noisy squawking birds in a 1BR apartment)  but when they told me they had TWO aviaries, I asked them to take my beloved Lucky and Lilo too, and they did. They are very happy and well taken care of now, and I'm sure they're much better off than in those big ole guinea pig cages :)

I had a big long post written up about how great PJ is doing and how I have fallen in love with Charlotte Mason home educating and all the fun we're having nature-journaling and studying art and music and whatnot, and mentioning the time-management crisis that I had back in February where I really thought I could no longer support this family and still homeschool, but right when I was about ready to give up hope, God provided not one but ABUNDANT ways for me to do so, and permanent ones, not just little jobs here and there that would make do. It is at a point where I have to choose what ways I want to make a living, because there are just so many options for me right now. It's amazing. 

Another reason I've been offline a lot is because I was extraordinarily tired and sleepy all the time, and was having various and sundry other health issues that were getting worse. I thought I had acquired a thyroid imbalance like the rest of the women in my family have, or worse, diabetes. The doctor suspected as much too, but no - this Friday, I received a completely clean bill of health!!!  I even managed to avoid the high blood pressure and high cholesterol that women in my family start getting in their mid 30s.  Everything is completely healthy and normal. They did an EKG and an echocardiogram and everything and all the results were great.  The ONLY thing I have is mild anemia, probably from the fact that, no, we don't eat a whole lot of red meat. So, more burgers and an iron pill and I should be back to normal soon, hopefully.

As for Charlotte Mason homeschooling, it has transformed not just our homeschool, but our home. PJ's tantrums are gone - he prayed a lot about it, and we have talked a lot about them in a frank way. He is 9 now, and the blessing of his Asperger's is that he's able to think his way toward things that would normally be off-limits to him because of his disability, which I think is what he's done. CM's methods have changed me too. We are just enjoying our time together a lot more. Today we had a lovely day of an outdoor picnic at a small park nearby, some nature journaling (I cannot believe how much PJ LOVES to do to this at the moment) from both of us. I forgot how much I like to draw.  Mondays we are only doing fine arts now, which he really enjoys. There is so much more to detail, really.

Anyway, the point of all of this is to say - our homeschool and home can no longer truthfully be called a haven for quails. We still have two hermit crabs, but Crab Haven Academy just doesn't have the same ring to it ;)  We still haven't thought of a good name for our school yet.  PJ insists it have the words "Stone" and "Academy" in it for some reason.  I vote for Stepping Stones Academy, he wants Sunstone School. We'll see. In the interim, I have moved to CMinSoFla. I'll have all my posts migrated there soon. and will be adding the entire friends list there, too. Hope everyone reading this is having a joyous and blessed Sunday.

1. Microwave the chocolate in a bowl for two minutes, stirring after 1 minute.
2. Stir in the peanut butter until thorougly blended.
3. Let sit at room temperature for about 10 minutes, then stir in the cool whip.
4. Refrigerate one hour.
5. Scoop out individual 1" balls of the mixture with a melon baller or with a spoon.
6. Roll it around in your favorite topping: powdered sugar, coconut flakes, chopped pecans or almonds, powder-ground chocolate or white chocolate, jimmies, etc.

I'm back!  I used to be user countitalljoy but I decided to change the name of my blog to the name of our new homeschool - Quail Haven Academy.  My son and I felt our homeschool should have a name like any other place of learning, mostly for fun but also for educational discounts and things like that, and we chose "Quail Haven" because we raise button quails for fun as pets.

We currently have three pet quails - one male and two females - but the male has pair-bonded with one of the females and they are laying eggs and building a nest.  Many button quail aren't "broody" but mine seems to be. When the eggs hatch, we are going to leave the pair-bonded pair in their own cage to let them raise their own chicks, sell the others in pairs, and keep all the remaining females. We plan to do this until we have a separate cage of 3 to 5 females, then we'll just keep selling the chicks to the local pet stores.  The females we keep, we're going to put in a finch flight, with some finches in the upper area, for our very own indoor aviary. You'd be amazed at what you can keep in a large one bedroom apartment without taking up too much space!  They don't smell, either, as long as I keep their bedding lined with pine shavings and straw.

Incubating, hatching, brooding and raising quails as pets has been both fun and very educational.  We got the eggs and the incubator off of eBay and it has been a constant learning proceess.  My son and I were able to watch our current quail cockerel (who does indeed crow - these guys are a distant cousin of the chicken, after all) grow from a tiny bumblebee sized baby to the big fat tennis ball sized magnum that he is today.  We named him Lucky because he was the only one out of 10 eggs we had that hatched - and on the 20th day! We were about to throw the whole batch out when he popped out of his shell!  He is very tame and social compared to most Chinese painted quail  because I hand-raised him and I was the only thing he saw for the first four weeks of his life. 

We bought the two little females from a local fowl farm. My son named them Bambi and Lilo, and Lucky definitely prefers Bambi. This upsets Lilo, I can tell, because she fusses at and sometimes half-heartedly pecks at Bambi. Since she does seem to be jealous, I'm afraid she's going to attack the new chicks, so I am intending to remove her when the current clutch of eggs start hatching and will slowly introduce her to the new all-female flock whenever they're old enough to house with an adult female. 

Currently we keep them in a large guinea pig cage with approximately 16" square inches of floor space per bird. They have hollowed-out logs that they can (and do) hop onto, so they have a little extra space there. We have learned a lot about quail anatomy and behavior, like the fact that unlike most birds kept as pets, they don't have the feet necessary for perching, so they require a lot of horizontal space instead. This is why we keep them in a guinea pig cage instead of a bird cage - lots of space for them to run around!  This is also why they make good aviary companions with finches, who perch almost exclusively.  Basically when we have the finch flight, it's going to be like a condominium building of birds, with finches on the top levels and the quails on the ground floor. ;) 

Anyway, we think this makes our home unique and we thought it was a good idea to incorporate mention of the quails in our school name, so Quail Haven Academy it is. Here, I'll document the trials and joys of being a Christian homeschooling single parent to an 8 year old  boy with high-functioning autism.  It's not always an easy ride... but it sure is always interesting. 

"Self-confessed television addicts often feel they 'ought' to do other things - but the fact that they don't read and don't plant their garden or sew or crochet or play games or have conversations means that those activities are no longer as desirable as television viewing.  In a way, the lives of heavy viewers are as unbalanced by their television 'habit' as drug addicts' or alcoholics' lives. They are living in a holding pattern, as it were, passing up the activities that lead to growth or development or a sense of accomplishment. This is one reason people talk about their television viewing so ruefully, so apologetically.  They are aware that it is an unproductive experience, that by any human measure almost any other endeavor is more worthwhile."

- Excerpt from The Plug-In Drug by Marie Winn

I've been giving a lot of thought to this. She names computer use and video game use as similar offenders, but her main focus is television. If I'm going to be totally honest, both I and my son watch WAYYYY too much TV. I cringe at the months, possibly years, that I have wasted planted in front of it, day after day. My son is totally addicted to his five zillion cartoon and kid shows, a large majority of which I am not entirely comfortable.  He is getting more DVDs and video games for Christmas from his family, etc., so after Christmas, he'll have even more of an opportunity to sit all day and vegetate. Frankly, with his Asperger's Syndrome, he already  misses enough social experience just by default.

I have decided that tomorrow, I am canceling all but basic cable, and only keeping it in the living room. That way, I can keep better track of television viewing in our household.

I am also considering canceling broadband. I know I need it for work, but the fact that it's available all day, at all hours, just by turning on my monitor is a real temptation for me to sit at the computer all day, to play all night on it, etc.   Both Elias and I are completely addicted to Internet games, and that's not just saying "addiction" like "I totally overindulge." I mean bona fide addiction. Maybe getting dialup will help.

The problem is I don't have a landline. I have a cell phone only. It's definitely got its conveniences, but it's older than Methuselah anyway, and we're severely inconvenienced by not having a landline all the time. Also, if I had a landline, I could send and receive incoming faxes for my business.

SupraTelecom has a pretty good plan: for about $35/month, I can have unlimited "super speed" dial-up and a landline with voicemail.  Not too bad, I think.  Comcast's basic cable plan costs $13 a month. Even figuring taxes, that means that I'll be paying $60 a month for phone, cable and Internet, as opposed to the $170 I'm paying now.

I'm making these changes tomorrow. Because I bet we could do a lot of productive, fun things with that extra $110 a month. ;)

Well, my first Thanksgiving meal was such a huge hit (especially the butternut squash bisque - sooooo good!) that I will now be cooking Christmas dinner, too. I don't mind at all; over the last few years, I've really come to enjoy cooking even though I don't get the chance to do it often on a large scale. Living next to my grandmother, who is my cooking's biggest fan (seriously, she brags about it to her neighbors!) has helped in this regard. She doesn't tend to eat in very wholesome or healthy ways when left to her own devices, God bless her, and we both enjoy fresh foods with a Mediterranean bent, so I've gotten to do a lot more since we moved here.

So far I've amassed a dozen or so cookbooks I draw from continually. They are:

• Fresh and Fast by Marie Simmons
  
• Italian Cooking - I got this off the bargain bin at Waldenbooks and it's been a godsend. It devotes the first 100 pages to Italian techniques, from pasta making to dough kneading and vegetable sauteeing. I LOVE ITALIAN FOOD, so I love this cook book. ;)
  
• Fix it And Forget It - by Dawn J. Ranck. My crockpot is my bestest friend.
  
• The Little Spanish Cookbook
• The Little Irish Cookbook
• The Little Scandinavian Cookbook - this is a series of slim, small ethnic cookbooks; I intend to get the rest of them one day. There's over a dozen others and I love the three that I have!!
  
• Crockery Favorites - by Mable Hoffman
• The Recipe Hall of Fame Cookbook
  
• Quick and Healthy Recipes and Ideas - by Brenda J. Ponichtera. More than a cookbook, it provided me with a user-friendly introduction to incorporating healthy eating every day at every meal... painlessly. ;) It's made with moms in mind, so a lot of the recipes, the kids can help out with, and there are very few "weird" dishes in here that are liable to make kids wrinkle their noses. I've used it so much that it no longer has covers!  I should really get Volume 2 one of these days.
  
• Cook's Book of Essential Information - by Barbara Hill - out of print, and not really a cook book, but more like a field guide for the kitchen, which is really how I learned to cook. I didn't know anything about how long meat and vegetables kept, how to freeze things, how to prepare different meats, what kitchen terminology was, nada. I'm now a lot more comfortable as a cook and baker, though I would still term my skill level as intermediate.
  

Today the little guy actually asked me to "do school." He wasn't bored; we'd been doing stuff all day. He just missed his textbooks and workbooks. I was all about the "manipulatives" and "alternatives to seat work" etc but my kid LOVES workbooks.  I guess he likes the feeling of working toward the finish line.  He prefers that I don't tear the pages out of the book, but I do for record-keeping and organization purposes for the most part. 

Also, this year I took great care (hours and hours of pouring over the curriculum materials) to break up all the lessons into achievable, non-overwhelming increments. This really helped, because I think it gave him a lot of confidence that he's able to do the material that I give him. Nothing's really been too challenging, although we have had to take some extra time for a few concepts in science. Otherwise we've been good.

Another thing that's been a great motivator is Pizza Hut's BookIt! program. Free pizza is a great motivator for anyone, really. ;)  They have some terrific reproducibles and a special free program just for homeschoolers, which I appreciate. His goal is to read one long chapter book per month, with a minimum of 15 minutes, five days a week. We're on the second month, and he's almost done with November's quota. They have awards, book review forms (which has been a great introduction for MC to the concept of book reviews), goal-tracking forms, and quite a few other useful and eye-catching reproducibles. I recommend it.

Honestly, this year, I was starting to become concerned that he would never enjoy reading fiction independently, but in the last few months, he's blossomed into an avid reader of both fiction and non-fiction.  The BookIt! program is one reason; another has been the discovery of the Henry Huggins series by Beverly Cleary which for some reason he ADORES (I loved the Ramona books at his age too); and a third has been the phenomenal and highly kid-friendly library that we go to every week after his playdate. Twice a week, actually:  on Mondays, they have a fun "after school" arts and crafts program for kids 5 through 12 which we go to, and on Thursdays, we go after the playdate just to hang out in the kids' library, browse, read, play on their computers, etc. The last few weeks, he's been coming to the check-out desk with his little arms eagerly filled with books. I am so happy about this, I can't even fully articulate it.

The library also has a lot of social clubs for kids; one that MC really wants to join is the Anime Fan Club. Every first and third Wednesday night of the month, a bunch of kids get together and watch an anime movie and discuss it.  I inquired at the front desk about its content, since I know some anime can be really questionable, but they assured me that it was a bunch of kids from around age 10 to 14 and that the library screens all films to be shown for appropriateness.  He'd be the youngest one there, but sometimes this works to the advantage of his Asperger's. Older kids tend to think he's cute and precocious and love little children who want to act like they do. Unless it's a hardcore social group - which I doubt - I think he'll be fine there if I supervise, which they assured me I'd be allowed to do. This week will be our first meeting, so I'll write about how that goes. =)

Soooo sleepy. I need to do some work and then head to bed, because tomorrow I'm going to try that arts and crafts thing at the local Michael's and see how it works out for the little guy. He loves art, and I need to stock up on yarn anyway. ;)

Since it's now officially Thanksgiving here on the east coast, I just wanted to post my favorite prayer of thanksgiving, and also, my favorite Psalm:

Psalm 100

A psalm. For giving thanks.

 ¹ Shout for joy to the LORD, all the earth.

 ² Worship the LORD with gladness;
       come before him with joyful songs.

 ³ Know that the LORD is God.
       It is he who made us, and we are his;
       we are his people, the sheep of his pasture.

 ⁴ Enter his gates with thanksgiving
       and his courts with praise;
       give thanks to him and praise his name.

 ⁵ For the LORD is good and his love endures forever;
       his faithfulness continues through all generations.

BTW, my little guy got himself a blog. He always wants to do what I'm doing too. ;)  I don't know how often he'll update it, but maybe if I find some good journaling resources, he might have an easier time with it.