Today we went for an afternoon hike at Greenbottom. The animals were lively today! Is this not the best frog ever?


We came upon a mama goose on her nest. She was NOT happy with us being there! It was all we could do to keep T2 from pestering her.


If you look closely you can see a bunch of turtles sunning themselves on a log! That always cracks me up. It's like a real life game of Frogger!


And now,, for my favorite! Anyone who knows me or has followed this blog knows I LOVE BIG BIRDS! Especially cranes! Isn't it beautiful?!


The last 2 are the obligatory artsey fartsy pictures.



We also found what we assume is a large dog skull. I'm not sure why all the guys thought it was a good idea to put the skull on the end of a sword. Whatever.... I'm a girl and I suppose I wasn't meant to understand!

Tuesday Co-op

I just wanted to take a moment to thank everyone who leaves my a nice comment that doesn't have a blog! I know quite a few of you are from the WVHEA list (Vicki, Dianna!) and I just haven't gotten a moment to email you back. Thanks for your encouragement!

Tuesday's Co-op meeting went so well! One of the moms brought in all kinds of wonderful things from the Philipeans. The kids hung on her every word and that's really saying something! We also had a traditional dish to eat. It was wonderful and almost everyone loved it. NONE was left! Even the little kids were sufficiently entertained. This session taught me a lot and I hope we'll have many more sessions like this next year. Co-op is over for the year except for the picnic. The boys are kinda bummed, they were really getting to a place where they looked forward to it.


We've decided to take a little mini vacation. A 5 day weekend if you will. Wednesday we went out to "The Farm" as the boys call it. I brought their bikes and my friend T and I didn't hear from them for hours! Gotta love that!
Today? We're just slacking. I just don't have the fortitude to fight with T2 today. Maybe we'll read something and make some decorations for the "classroom tree" later. I don't see tomorrow getting much better.






I still haven't settled on a Language Arts book for next year. I've got my catalogs and I've pretty much settled on the following:
Science- Apologia Botony (ON SALE RIGHT NOW FOR $24.95 W00T!)
Math- Saxon 3 and 76
History- Mystery of History Vol.1
Spelling- Sequential Spelling

Some things I'm on the fence about are:
Draw*Write*Now and Daily Grams
Anyone have any opinions on these?

Saturday Night

Hmmm, burning scrap out in the yard. What could be trashier than that? It's fun though, ya know? C had been cleaning the garage again this weekend and decided to get rid of a bunch of scrap wood so we had a marshmallow and hotdog dinner! T2 did not partake of course. If you read on into my next post, you'll understand why!

I LOVE my light up knitting needles! Sitting around the campfire and knitting. What could be better?!

T1 havin' a dog!

We had quite a blaze going. C prides himself on the "one match rule". No accelerants and ONE match.

Ever get up close and personal with an Alpaca? I've been waiting for almost 2 weeks for this field trip! On Saturday morning we were all going to pile in the 'ol SUV and head to Country Roads Alpaca farm to see them getting their annual sheering. So, I'm getting showered and I hear
"knock knock"
and my natural response to this intrution into my shower time is
"WHAT?!"
"(T2) is throwing up"
"Great."
I was devistated. I mean, how selfish am I? All I could think about was "crap! now we can't go!" But dh reminded me that it wasn't a big deal and it was just puke and he'd survive and T1 and I should go ahead and go. He would hold the bucket. Normally this is not something he could talk me into. I cannot in good conscience abandon my sick child. I'm glad he talked me into it! T1 and I had a blast!


I know what you're thinking, "oh yeah, hmmm, shaving farm animals,, big fun" but I LOVE those crazy beasts! T1 did too. We hugged them and petted them and fed them and... and... OH! I WANT ONE!

Oh yeah, there was also one Llama! I'd have one of those too!

When they would lead a new Alpaca to the sheering area, all the ones who had already been shaved looked on. You could see it in their eyes and hear it in their bleats they were saying "RUN! DON'T DO IT!" Don't they look funny after they've been sheered?!"

awwwwh,,baby alpaca!

This one was so pretty! He was very shy though. You know?, you'd imagine that they would smell bad. Farm animals usually do but these critters were actually very pleasant!

Alpacas on the run!

The sheering area

T1 feeding the biggest, fuzziest, coolest Alpaca in the bunch!

Last but not least, a pretty black Alpaca.
You know I had to buy yarn while I was there! They also had a few ladies there spinning. I'm endlessly facinated by that!
The 4H was there having a hotdog stand. I think we'll get into 4H. They do all kinds of stuff we're interested in! We never did get into boy scouts. The kids complained about it, saying it was "lame", "boring", and "stupid". The 4H has a kid's rifle team, and archery club and a hiking club! THAT is right up our alley! I'm very excited about it!

tomorrow's list

8:00am get up, clean up
9:00am school work begins (mama throws some laundry in)
12:00pm lunch
12:30pm (cutting it close here!) go pick up mom and take her to therapy
1:00-2:30 help mom with her therapy
3:00 take mom home, help her with the house a bit
4:00 Science
5:00 get dinner going
6:00 mommy collapse time
7:00 Kiddo time
8:30 Start baths
9:30 Bed time
10:00pm LOST (gotta watch Lost!)

Oh forgot to schedule in a walk for us. Maybe we can squeeze one in the morning.
Our walk today turned into a nature walk. Good thing as we didn't get any science in. As we were hiking around the boys located a massive dirt pile to play on. I wandered over to the edge of the swollen Mud River (we've got some ugly flooding right now!) and I spooked a wild turkey that was sitting on her nest!

Wow! it was so freaky seeing that gigantic bird lumber through the air! The kids were right behind me in lightning time when they heard the commotion. I was lucky that bird didn't fly right into me. It reminded me a lot of when a deer chased me through the Appalachian Trail (remember that Mary?)
What is it with me and wild animals?

Those of you who came to blogger from homeschoolblogger remember the wonderful friends list right? Ahh,, loved that friends list! Well I keep getting questions about a friends list for Blogger. I haven't answered anyone because it's one of those things that if I give it a quick answer, it'll leave you hanging so I kept thinking, "I'm going to answer that when I have time". Yeah right! Well, here's my answer!
I use Google Reader. It rocks! It's a free service and it piles all the blogs that you read into one easy peasy page! It has a very easy to organize feature that will allow you to check the blogs that you read the most. It's the blue field to the left on the above picture.
I love it. It does exactly what I need it to do! I've been using it for quite a while now.
You may have to open up a free google email address but that's quick and easy. I also log in with my yahoo address so either might work.
Once you've signed up, subscribing to your favorite blogs is super easy. The way I do it goes like this:
1. I see a blog I like and I copy everything that is in the address bar by highlighting it, right click, copy.
2. I open a new tab (or if you are running an older version of explorer- File- open new page) and go to Google Reader.
3. After I've signed in, I see that there is a green bar in the blue bar on the left. It says "Add subscription". When you click that a screen like this will come up-

4. Now just paste what you copied right into that bar that says "Keywords". Click "Search for Feeds" and viola!
5. A search will happen and it will come up with the feed information that you need to subscribe! It really works!

I spent so long trying to read up on and understand RSS feeds and all I have to say about all of that is PLLLEEEGHH,,, techno jargon. Yuck. If you are not already using Google reader, trust me, you can do this! No more clicking all over the place to read all your blogs!

Sleep? who needs it.

Today was such a hard day. T2 was the most uncooperative child on the planet. I did stick to my schedual tho.
Let's see, quickly a schedual for tomorrow.

8:00am get up, clean up, breakfast.
9:00am start school (3 Rs)
12:00am lunch
1:00pm science
2:00pm go to the park, walk 2 laps.
*call mom, check on her
*mend T2s quilt
*keep the laundry up (I got it all done today!)
*work on the portfolio (didn't get a whole lot done with it today)
5:00pm start dinner (chicken)
6:00pm collapse, read, knit, etc.
7:00pm kid's time
8:00pm baths, night time reading.
9:00-30 Bed time!

I'm sure there's more but I'm so tired that I can't think. Maybe I'll edit it some tomorrow. On the up side. We planted our Tomatosphere seeds today!

Monday

Where did last week go? It went by so quickly. I imagine that the days leading up to the end of the school year will just fly by. There are so many things to do. Every group we are in wants to have an end of the year picnic or party, not to mention it's time to get our portfolios ready for review! Our family calendar is starting to get busy as well. It seems like we keep the roads hot every weekend as long as the weather is nice.
I think I need to get organized. When I plan my days I get so much more accomplished and it feels good too! When I look back over my day and see that I got it all ( or most of it) done, I can give myself a pat on the back.
7:00am Get up
7:45am Leave to pick up mom
8:30am Drop mom off at the hospital
9:00am arrive home and start school
12:00pm Lunch, call and make dr's appts.
1:30pm Go to the bank and make a deposit
2:00pm Guitar lessons
3:00pm Trombone lessons
4:00pm arrive home - straiten house, do a load of laundry, check on mom
5:00pm start dinner
6:00pm Work on portfolios
7:00pm collapse in a heap for a while (gotta schedual a time for ME)
7:30pm go over and check on mom
8:30pm make kids bathe, read together.
9:30pm bed time.
I'm going to make myself a list for every day this week and see what I can get done! You all hold me to it ok?!

Things I'm thankful for

My spam folder. That number is after 1 day. I clean it out every morning. There is some crazy stuff in there and thankfully, I don't have to read any of it!

what?........ wait. WHAT?

This is what I woke up to this morning.



This is just wrong. It hurts every fiber of my being. It was in the 80s a few days ago!

Now look. I'm sure it was much colder over night but how can it be 25 degrees? I have HOSTAS comeing up! I don't know why this comes as such a surprise. In February I had this conversation with the boys.
T2 "Will it be warm enough in March to go swimming?"
Mom "NO!, it's still winter in part of March"
T2 "How 'bout April, that's spring right?"
Mom (in my best matronly voice) "No sweetheart, I've seen it snow in April many, many times."
T1 and T2 "NUUUHH UHH!"
Mom "yup"

So why does this hurt so bad? I had already accustomed myself to shorts and t-shirts. I had already started putting winter clothing to the back of the closet, and the flip flops have already made an appearance.


And now they have snow on them. If you'll recall, I posted on the first day of March about how badly I hate winter. So when the 80 degree days started happening, I said "BRING IT ON!". hmmmm, how soon I forget. Our 10 day forcast here isn't looking much better. A week of 40-50 degree days with a chance of rain almost every day. At least it's not plant killin' weather.

So wear a coat over your Easter dress tomorrow girls!

FRIDAY!

I know why I've been slacking lately! It's that evil Glenn Beck on the Ra..di..ooOOoo. I can't get anything done until NOON! I'm going to just have to discipline myself to download it to my ipod so I can listen to it when the kids are done with school.

T2 is in there practicing his guitar....or errr,,, goofing off with his guitar whislt I yell at him and say "I BETTER HEAR YOU PRACTICE OR YOUR 20 MINUTES STARTS OVER!" ugh. I wondered why it sounded like a dying cat. I tuned it and now it sounds much better. He had every string tuned to E.

Now T1s all done with his history and he's starting in on his music practice. It's going to sound like the apocolypse in here. Trombone and guitar. All I can say is.... "wow" and pass the earplugs.

OH,, hip update. I'm supposed to stay off of it for 2 weeks. Oh,, it is to laugh. Apparently, I'm not giving it time to heal and that's what's causing the cyst. whatever. I will make an effort but I don't see it happening. Well, we're off to the library now to pay fines and get more books. YEAH!
Happy Easter ya'll!

I'm a slacker

I feel like I've been slacking in just about everything lately. I'm not sure why because nothing could be further from the truth. I've done quite a bit of spring cleaning, and we've plugged right along with school even though the sunlight has been calling out names! Maybe it's because I haven't been writing everything down. My dear husband reminded me of that too.
"you haven't updated your blog lately", "what are you guys doing?"
Well, the answer to that is "nothing much". It seems as though we're not abnormal. Everyone has that end of the year slacker mentality right now.
Ok, enough pity party. On with the accomplishments.
*Gutted both boys rooms
*Patched walls and prepped for paint
*Tom is finished with Math for the year
*Completed the worlds largest mound of laundry (see the first accomplishment)
*Had an MRI on the old woman hip (I *HATE* MRIs)
*Got rid of a bunch of stuff for a yard sale
*listed some books on Amazon.com

Tonight I hope that I can get out of the house a bit. It's mom's night out with the homeschool mommies and I hope I can get a movie and some Easter shopping in too. We shall see. Chris won't be home till late and I'm down a baby sitter so I'm going to have to do some creative wrangling to get out of here. I've also got a follow up on my weird hip this morning. It seems that the reason (possibly) that my hip cracked is that I have a cyst in my hip socket. When I stooped down, it must have been just too much pressure and that's when it cracked. I don't know what the plan of action is on that but I'll know more later I suppose. That reminds me- (must pack up boys books for school AT the drs office). Oh,, they are gonna LOVE that!
Goals for this week include-
*focusing on Tristen's math
*focusing on Thomas's writing (research paper)
*hit the library for new history lesson and weather unit
*paint bathroom
*mop floors
*come up with something creative for co-op (anyone have an ideas for learning about the Philippines?)
*get more reading time and instrument practice time in

Gripe of the day?
My insurance sux. T2 has needed to go back to the psych for a while but every time I call up the insurance to get them to refer me to someone in our network, it's a nightmare! I call, they say "go to so and so", I go, they don't pay, I rack up huge bill. IT SUX! So we've just not been going which is a huge mistake. So I spent most of yesterday trying to get T2 into see a new therapist. No luck. No one is taking new patients and the one LOW quality mental health facility that could possibly get him in won't return my calls. I called the local rep for NAMI (the National alliance for Mental Illness) to get an advocate and he was very little help at all. Just between you, me and the other leigions of people who have nothing to do but read my blog (HA!) I think most of the mental health professionals I've encountered have been crazier than us and that's really saying something!

Well, I must bathe now and get myself and the boys' ready for my illustrious dr's appt.
Arevoir!