Spring is coming

 

I think spring and winter are having a hard time right now. I’m sitting on my porch, the windows are open, the kids are in short sleeves it’s gorgeous (the windy is a bit chilly) and yet at night it’s still quite frigid. I’m getting anxious, planning gardens, cleaning up the porch, and hot tub and just read to get into the swing of things again. The girls have started digging and pulling weeds, getting the front bed ready for the red, white, and blue gladioli plants I’ll be putting in.

This winter has been very hard on us, for many reasons and it’s almost as if we’ve hibernated for the past few months.

• School work as usual slacked as we curled up under blankets and read our stacks of books from the library. We slept much more than we usually do, which oddly enough seemed a common trend for a lot of friends as well.
• We had many issues with water pipes freezing and busting which will be wrapped in heat tape this spring/summer so it’s prevented next year.
• We had an animal (I suspect it was the same opossum we’d rescued from our toilet) take up residence in our cellar but we adopted a live and let live and just left it there to hide out from the weather.

At the beginning of this month we had a terrible accident, in which our only running vehicle was totaled. It was just after midnight on a Sunday and we’d all fallen asleep watching Down Periscope in the living room when the oldest woke us up saying there was an accident out front. A drunk driver going approx 60mph (in a 25) slammed into my car which flipped and spun around facing the opposite direction.

The driver and passengers were not hurt, but both cars were destroyed. Now that’s a bad enough thing to happen but the salt in the wound was this car was my moms car; she passed in 2010 and we’d kept it and the vanity plates she’d maintained for 20+ years. Now I can’t just keep those plates and put it on the next car we get (ALWAYS, ALWAYS, ALWAYS, maintain full coverage insurance) because the connection has been taken.

I can’t not even describe how fortunate we are despite this. While I have full coverage, it reimburses the losses which means if we had to rent a car for the Mr. to get to and from work it would be our money up front and they would repay us. That was not an option, but immediately upon hearing what had happened the Mr’s boss asked if he needed to borrow a truck so that issue was covered and now we’re in a waiting game on getting a pay out to buy a new car. I think the worst part for me was watching the girls sobbing at the loss of the car that they rode around in, with grammy, and sang nursery rhymes.

I know I’m supposed to be grateful that nobody was seriously hurt and I was at first, but now I’m beyond furious that a 22 year old fool could so easily have killed someone. That our lives could’ve been destroyed (no ride to work=no money=no mortgage payment=homeless) because he couldn’t just stay home and drink with his friends.

You might have noticed that the .com address is no longer valid, and it will not be renewed. I’ve maintained this blog for a few years with the same name and I won’t be changing it BUT it also is not a current representation of us as a family, and our homeschool journey. So no sense paying to maintain it. We’ve changed our school name to one more fitting and while we are still freaks we have our tent. I haven’t made a new homeschool blog, and I probably won’t. I’ll update here now and then but I’ve really been enjoying the quiet, more private internet without feeling I need to share, share, share with the world.

Enjoy your spring, and Happy Ostara should you celebrate it.

Weekend at Grannie’s–Wordless Wednesday

Lucky little ducks

Yesterday afternoon I got a call from the Mr. while he was working. One of the owners of the company he works for was helping a friend clean out and relocate an element sport store. In the back room there were two child’s sized Mongoose bmx bikes that they were going to throw out but called Mr. to see if our girls would like them. YES!!! They are sitting in the living room right now, one green and one white. There are a few rust spots and they need a good cleaning/oiling but WOW, and the girls are ecstatic.

They can’t officially HAVE them until Yule, which gives us time to get them cleaned up, and buy some great helmets.

Oatmeal, Checkers and Mr. Peabody

Lazy Friday morning as usual. The girls have made wooden projects (that little checkers game is a Lowe’s Build and Grow)  this morning and are eating big bowls of warm oatmeal while playing and watching the old show, Mr. Peabody and Shermon.

Straightening the girls room

You can see here the bed is partially painted, and I’ve not yet started the bookshelf. The walls eventually are going to be a darker gorgeous purple, and the trim will be the same brown as the rest of the house will be. Bed linens will be a combo of blues, greens, and purples. It needs a lot of work but it’s CLEAN….mostly. It’s clean enough!

The goose egg

Twenty days since my last post, and a lot of things have been happening. The littlest, Bug Hunter, tripped on a step up when going out on the upstairs porch. Banged her head right into the wood and ended up with a goose egg. I’ve never seen one like this, it’s always been AFTER the fact and hours later the Mr. would have a small knot on his head or something. No, this was a hard boiled egg cut in half mere minutes after she fell. I was scared at first, honestly, but with no blood, no pupil issues, her balance was fine I checked online while Spider Monkey went and grabbed the ice pack. It seems this is not at all uncommon and to just keep an eye on her for any sign of troubles that would require scans.

By the following morning the lump was almost entirely gone with just a faint blue/brown bruise.

I tried to alter my lesson logs by writing ‘Documentary’ in the day/subject blocks rather than the title OF the video. While I keep a separate sheet listing the documentary and it’s information it just looked incomplete on my lesson logs so it was back to a bit more detail.

I am still very much enjoying the folder system over the book planner that I was never able to maintain. I have a clear folder in my daily planner that I can keep just 3 pieces of paper in and a sheet of stickers on the other pocket. It’s working wonderfully.

Let me see…I made an agreement with the girls that for each workbook they complete they get 1 hour of video games. We have accumulated a lot of workbooks, most are 3/4 of the way finished but having so many is getting to be a mess. Another video game reward will be an ENTIRE day of free game play when they finish their Time4Learning lessons entirely.

I’ve also been considering changing the name of my blog/page name. I’m not sure yet, it’s just an idea I’ve been tossing around the last couple of days. The only thing holding me back is that I don’t focus ONLY on homeschooling so changing it to the name we adopted for our little free range school just doesn’t seem *quite* right.

Last time we went skating…

Wordless Wednesday-Our first camping trip at the end of the season

Tuesday 9/24/13

These four boxes of books, worksheets, diagrams, maps, a cat are what I have been sorting lately. They came from a fellow homeschooler who got them from a former public school teacher. First was to sort out what I was definitely keeping which brought it down to two boxes. Then bring it up to the school room and sort again into categories and then subjects. It’s been a glorious mess.

 

There has been camping, roller skating, this additional curriculum, rearranging various rooms, the Mr. has started going back to school every Tuesday night. I’m just now getting things caught up, I had almost a month of lessons, documentaries and such that I had written on just notebook paper which had to be copied into my actual log sheets and folders.

Today the girls wrote letters to a few Disney Princesses that they are particularly fond of. It seems you can send letters and you will receive an ‘autographed’ post card back in a few weeks. Needless to say they are determined to write to EVERY princess. On the positive side it is fantastic practice for language arts. If you’d like to write some letters send them too;

Attn: Character Name

Walt Disney World Communications

PO BOX 10040

Lake Buena Vista, Fl. 32830-0040

Here is another fun little item from the boxes, a dry erase map! The Little Bug Hunter didn’t do so well labeling, but Spider Monkey got all but two.

10 Rules for being sick in my house

1. You will eat soup. It will be homemade.

2. If your temperature goes above 100 you WILL lose your blanket

3. Popsicles are good for you. Especially fudge popsicles.

4. There will be water, and vitamins, lots of both

5. Cool showers/baths required when temperature goes above 102

6. Sleep. AS MUCH AS POSSIBLE.

7. frequent hand washing and tooth brushing, a must.

8. No sharing cups, no kisses on the face. Cover your mouth!

9. Visits to the Dr. require complaints from me.

10. Stop complaining, we all know being sick sucks. Also stop apologizing for being sick.

-This post brought to you by the Mr. and his small but stressful case of pneumonia.