http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jar/ en-us Homeschool Blogger Thu, 4 Dec 2008 10:18:00 -0600 Thu, 4 Dec 2008 10:18:00 -0600 Wednesday evenings are my one break from the kids each week.  Our church has a  program for kids that night.  The kids that are too old to participate volunteer as does my husband.  It is a time I enjoy each week.  I usually make sure we clean the house during the day, because, I don't know about you ladies, but I have a terrible tendency to pick up and clean when I am home alone.  You k now how it is, so much easier and quicker by myself.  So I make sure we do that during the day so I can feel free to do something for myself.  I usually rent a  girl movie that my husband won't mind not seeing.  I get something to munch on, a glass of wine or a wine cooler, and the movie.  I sit myself down on the floor so I can pet our dog (she probably looks forward to these two hour weekly sessions as much or more than I do!)   and watch my movie.   It is a wonderful time!!  I do have to say, with the holidays here, it is harder for me to take the time for myself.  Last night I took off to do some errands.  Out to purchase wrapping paper for presents, a failed hunt for a Xmas present and some groceries.  By the time I got home I had less than 30 minutes to myself, in which I really didn't get much done.   It was nice to do some shopping myself, but boy, I really enjoy a movie instead!! Ladies, it can be so important to have time to ourselves.  Let's not forget ourselves, even in this busy holiday time.  Our families are better off when we can put ourselves first for just a little while.  Yes, I do believe in JOY, Jesus, Others, Yourself, but you do need that time for yourself as well. Blessings to you all! Julie http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jar/627950/ Thu, 4 Dec 2008 10:18:00 -0600 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jar/627950/ My life is such a blessing.  Yes, everyday is always a blessing to be here on this earth and sharing my days w/my family.  but for some reason, I felt more blessed lately than other days.   My girls and my husband are wonderful and terrific!  They are so special.  We all get along, we are all happy, we are all healthy, we all love each other, we all enjoy spending time together.  Do you realize how many families don't or can't say that??  It is very sad.  I feel very blessed that I can honestly say it!  Yes, we do have our issues, but they are so minor to what they could be, or to what some experience. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jar/627493/ Wed, 3 Dec 2008 11:52:00 -0600 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jar/627493/ I am feeling much better, most of the time.  Things are going very well.  School is so-so, tho.  We had a schedule and were doing great with it until I added a lot more school subjects and then it got all messed up.  I'm hoping dh and I will make a new schedule before the 1st so we can start that back up.  Things go so smoothly when we have a schedule!    If you like schedules, but have a hard time making one, or keeping with it, a great book is "MOTH", "Managers of The Home".  It is wonderful!  It really helped me to become a more scheduled person....some of the time!     Their website is www.titus2.com/ecommerce/products/prod_listing.php/1100. Christmas was great!   We had a wonderful day at home, just the five of us.  Grace was sick, tho.  She had  a fever for several days and finally found out it was a UTI the other day.  She still had fun, just wasn't as energetic as usual...which is ok for us on Christmas!  LOL   Everyone was very happy w/this gifts.  My favorite non-tangible item I got was a  nice long nap w/dh that afternoon!!!   I also got gift certificates to my favorite clothing store, a remote starter for my vehicle, and an under-the-cabinet clock/radio/TV/CD/DVD player!  It looks amazing!  It's been bought, but won't arrive for another 2-3 weeks.   All I wanted was for it to be a CD player, but dh went all out! Two girls got digital cameras, which they love and one got an IPOD.   Those were their big items.  Then just little stuff after that. I have to go for now.  Need to make lunch for the kids!  I hope to be on here sometime soon...not as long as last time! Ta-ta for now! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jar/452319/ Sun, 30 Dec 2007 10:43:00 -0600 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jar/452319/ It's been a long time, again.   I have been so happily busy that I don't care to spend much time on the computer, let alone have the time to! The summer has been awesome, but is going by WAY too fast!  I absolutely love this weather.  We have been around 90 for many days now and many more to come.  I love the warmth!  We have been to the town pool most days, which has been great.  The girls really enjoy it as well.  Gracie, my almost 4yo, is a complete fish!  Two weeks ago she would barely go under the water, now she is swimming!   She has learned to to the back and front float, bob up and down going under water, blow out her nose under water, and has now learned to swim under water!  She can only go about 4 feet at a time, but she is just incredible!  I am sooo proud of her.  She has come such a long way in such a short time!  She is almost caught up w/her 10yo sister as far as swimming abilities!   Now I want to look into a health club or somewhere else that has a pool for us to swim in throughout the winter so she doesn't lose what she has learned. I have also been reading a lot!  I have been reading all of Nicholas Sparks books.  They are great , clean romantics.  I have also started working p/t for my brother in law.  He is an electrician and has recently started his own business.  I answer the phones and do paperwork stuff.  It's great because the phone is a cell phone so we can still go anywhere and it just comes w/me.  He's very understanding that I am still a mom and that I can't always get to the phone, like when we're swimming, kind of stuff.  So far its working out very well.  I don't think it'll be long term, as when he gets more business I am not interested in a full time job, but for now, its great! We're heading to Florida in September!   I can't wait!  We are all very excited.  Two weeks in the sunny warmth!  We will visit friends and relatives the first week and then spend time in Orlando the second week.  it'll be very nice!  (Hey Becky!  Can't wait to see you all!) My dh and I went on a date last night.  It's been too long since we've done that.  It was terrific!  We went out to dinner and then to a local restaurant/bar that has an outdooor patio.  We sat at a table outside and had a couple of drinks.  It was very relaxing and we could truly imagine that we were in Florida, as it is on a golf course and it was so warm.  We often think of moving down there but just can't seem to move from some family and great friends.  While sitting there, we thought that if we went a few times a week then maybe we'd want to move to Florida after a while! OK, that's it for now.  I want to get back to my book! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jar/368074/ Sat, 4 Aug 2007 20:42:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jar/368074/ Depression can do that to ya. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jar/337436/ Sun, 3 Jun 2007 14:19:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jar/337436/ Kimberly, our 12yo, got her own cell phone a couple of weeks ago.  She has been wanting one for a while now...I think because some of her friends have them, but she disagrees.  Anyway, dh and I decided that once she saved a lot more money than the phone would cost, that she could spend the money to purchase a pay as you go phone.  We told her that we thought it would be a waste of her money and that it would be a hard lesson learned.  She's done quite a bit of text msging which takes up a lot of minutes and she has had to purchase more minutes already.  (It came w/150 minutes when she purchased the phone)   I don't know, we'll see how it goes.....personally, I think it won't be much longer before she is done playing with the phone and wishing she hadn't spent the money.  But, then again, I could be wrong!   Either way....I love that kid! The funny thing to me is....she doesn't even like talking on the phone very much. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jar/326017/ Wed, 9 May 2007 06:26:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jar/326017/ Last night I typed in an entry and hit the 'add new entry' button.  I waited and waited and it finally said 'Done' at the bottom of the page, but the screen wasnt' showing anything.  So I backed up and typed in a nother long one, did the same thing, it said Done, and I got off.  Now today...they aren't even there!!!!  One of them was too much to try to put in again!!  Oh how frustrating! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jar/326015/ Wed, 9 May 2007 06:24:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jar/326015/ It has been a while since I posted.  We've been quite busy, and when we're not...going on the computer hasn't been my first choice of things to do! We went to Philly for a long weekend a couple of weeks ago.  We really had  a great time.  We went because my oldest niece, Kelly, from Florida was going to be there for a few days for work.  With her being so close I could't resist the drive to visit with her!  Also, her fiance, Daniel, was going to be there with her and we thought that'd be a lot of fun as well!   The down side of the trip is that we really didn't plan before we left.  It's funny because we always plan when we go on vacations, but this time my main thought was to visit Kelly as much as we could and I really didn't care about anything else we did while she was working.  We picked them up at the airport Friday afternoon and found our way to their hotel in the city.  (We'd never been to Philly before)  The traffic was incredible!  What could've been a 20 minute ride was at least 45 minutes due to traffic!  We ended up doing  a lot of driving to find things that were difficult to find in the city!     We often spend lots of time in the car for some reason when we are with Kelly and/or her sister Becca.  I guess we just like those great conversations that happen then!   On Saturday Kelly had to work so we spent the day with Daniel.  That poor guy, having to deal with us who were so indecisive and probably quite boring for him!  He was a trooper sticking with us!  He seems to be a great guy.  I hope he realized how blessed he is to have Kelly to spend his life with.  She is so awesome.  She is a wonderful young woman.  I wish we all lived closer together.  Yes, We dream of moving south, but I don't know if it will ever happen.  Two of three kids would love to go, hubby would love to go...but can I leave my roots????  We went to find  a Friendly's for dinner on Saturday.  That was quite a hoot!!  I can't go into it all or this would be WAY long, but in short version...we searched and searched and searched and searched for a Friendly's that wasn't even really there!!!  We had a scene from the movies with a bunch of quads!  We're going down a main street and all of a sudden at least fifteen quads come up from behind us.  They were driving in the street, doing wheelies, going on the sidewalk, just down right kind of nerve-racking for us.  It was loud and the way they looked at us was kind of scary.  Here we were, the obviously naive out-of-towners that looked rather innocent....and a gang-looking bunch of guys on quads in the street in the not so great part of the city driving rather erratically.  Boy, were we glad when they disappeared!  Now its funny to look back on it, but then, not so funny. On the way home we tried to stop at an IKEA in New Jersey at exit 13A of the Tpke.  I had some good laughs with trying to find our way there, but, my husband...well, thats a different story!!!     We get off the exit and get in the lane that the arrow tells us to, then at the last minute, we notice the arrow has changed lanes, but now its too late!  We had to go WAY around, through tolls, and back again!!  My husband, several times on the trip, made the comment "Theres Ben, there Parliament" from the movie European Vacation w/Chevy Chase.  The problem was my husband said it with great frustration and I was trying my best not to laugh out loud.  Then the kids questions of, "Are we going to IKEA?  Are we almost there yet?  I thought it was right out the window a minute ago" and so on, just made it worse for him and harder for me not to laugh!    Along with all the rain...that was the weekend that the east coast started their major rainfalls and flooding, made the entire trip home even worse!  Roads and ramps closed here and there all the way home.  It was too much.  What should be a 4 hr ride was over 8 to get home!  The kids were more than happy to be home when we got here! All in all, it was worth every bit of it just to spend that little time with Kelly and Daniel.  We hadn't seen them in over 18 months, maybe closer to 2yrs, and it was great to see them! http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jar/319344/ Wed, 25 Apr 2007 07:23:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jar/319344/ While typing my last blog, I got to listen to my 3yo daughter 'teaching' on my bed.  She has pads of paper, pencils, and is teaching the invisible people all about Jesus.  What a beautiful precious time to take in, watch, and remember. http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jar/312605/ Wed, 11 Apr 2007 08:07:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jar/312605/ Yesterday my sister came down to visit.  We are working on a scrapping a photo album for my mother for mothers day.  When we started this project we wanted it to be for her birthday which was in January...then we thought for Valentines Day...then we hope for Mothers day!   You see, my mother has alzheimers (or some other form of dimentia) and we want to help her w/remembering the people in her life.   It takes a lot of work to go through these old photos, generations of people that we don't know, figure out who they are, some w'the help of other relatives, and then putting them on the pages, what order do we want them in, will mom even remember this person, is it worth putting in there???  Will this page be too crowded and she'll be bothered by it?  We noticed that she was being forgetful about 12-13 years ago.  She would  come home from work and complain how she can't understand this new system they have up and running and how Melissa shows her but Melissa explains it way to fast for me to keep up.  That was a common complaint.  Now see, my mother was the hub of the office.  When computers first came out, she learned them, understood them and taught the others.  She was a whiz w/the computer stuff and w/numbers.  When she started showing signs of not understanding it, I started to get concerned.  Over the next couple of years, and showing a few more signs, my sister said it was probably the stress of work and wait until she retires.  After retirement it didn't get any better, but slowly got worse.  You know, asking the same question over and over and over and over in a 30 minute time period was a big sign.  My brother, sister and I sat down and talked with her about it.  She thought (and still thinks) we're nuts, but trusts us and loves us enough to respect our concern and agreed to go to a dr...'to prove us wrong.'  After going to a few different drs., it was confirmed that she has some type of dimentia....looking like alzheimers.  Over the years it very slowly declined.   These last couple of months have proven to be the largest decline!  My parents split up and divorced about 11 years ago.  It was a marriage w/no love for many many more years than that.  My father passed away this past February.  That was the first sign that my mom's memory was getting much worse.  When we went to tell her we said "we came to tell you that dad died" her response was "My father?".  Her father died over 50 years ago!  That day she never really understood who we were talking about.  The next day my sister and I went to visit her and she seemed to get that it was a man she was married to, but she thinks she was married to him Yeeaarrs ago and only for a short time (they were married 40 years!).   I don't think she ever understood that he was her childrens father.   She also started to make up stories about her high school boyfriend (whom she hasn't seen in 55 years and is still alive) had died and she greatly confused the two men.  Thankfully, the Lord was very gracious to me and let me see the humor in it all instead of the sadness at the time.  Her made up stories were just hysterical and I had to leave her room to laugh which is better than the tears of sadness that often come up. A couple of weeks ago I brought her to her drs. appt.  They ask the typical questions about her memory.  We had a new social worker before the dr. this time.  She asked my mother how many children she has.  My mother responded w/the correct number, 4.  The sw said, 2 boys 2 girls?  My mothers answer was, "um, no, all girls"  When I reminded her that she has a son (its actually 3 girls, one son), she said "Who, I do?  Who?"  I reminded her of my brother and she said "Oh yea, well, I haven't seen him in ages, I don't know if he's dead or alive."  She's seen him several times this year!  Then later she told me how she and my father divorced.  She had a whole story made up that wasn't true, but did happen to her mother.  The drs. said its generation confusion.  It was very bizarre.  Besides that she is often thinking that my sister and I are Her sisters.  Well, I think we are heading on a down slope, but God is gracious and helping me through this on a daily basis.  Thank you Jesus! I http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jar/312603/ Wed, 11 Apr 2007 07:20:00 -0500 http://www.homeschoolblogger.com/jar/312603/