Homeschooling Creativity

I saw her come toward me with the new bottle of syrup, straight out of the pantry. I told her not to eat that and please put it away, but I was not really paying good attention to her. She walked away.
When she came back I smelled syrup on her, so my antennas went up. I looked up at her and realized that I didn't know where the syrup bottle was. I asked her. She sighed and tilted her head in her thinking mode. "I am really sorry, Mom," she said in her matter of fact voice.

"Marley where is the syrup?" "I poured it out." I am thinking oh no, I will be cleaning syrup off the wood floor for the next half hour. Nope. Worse. "Under the dining room table." How long does it take to scoop 23 oz. of pancake syrup off a rug???

Sorting Day

This took one whole day. I am very happy to say that everyone was very cooperative while I organized bag upon bag of different sized clothes and shoes. Marley spent a big portion the day trying on clothes that were too small and too big for the fun of it. And all the shoes she had to choose from!!! Woowee, what fun! I got rid of five bags of her clothes, 3T and under. And I still have a bag of boys clothes that need a good home, and a bag of misc. clothes that are in need of the Good Will. But finally everything is organized by size in its own bag, easily accessible. This mess (which got much worse before it got better) should certainly never happen again!

What else happening lately? We made some homemade playdough. It was cheaper that way. And (except that store bought PlayDough smells better) we like our homemade better. I think I will try putting vanilla in it next time to fix the smell. Otherwise, ours is softer and easier to work with. I found Marley with a bowl of it and Bret's Polly Pockets, I don't know what was happening there.

Couple book reviews here...

Marvin Wanted More! by Joseph Theobald. We rent several books from the library at a time to read. I don't know why but Marley loves this one. The sheep wants to be bigger and faster than the other sheep so he keeps eating while the other sheep have stopped, until he cannot stop. He eventally eats the whole world (even his good friend Molly) and has to stand on the moon! I will leave you in suspense. If you have a two or three year old, this might be a good book for you. Again, I don't know why she likes it, but she does.

The End of the Beginning by AVI. Now I know that lots of people love AVI. I have read books that I have liked and disliked by him in my years reading to all the kids. This one is good. It is a book about a snail named Avon that loves adventure books and decides to have an adventure of his own. He opens his front door to leave for a grand adventure when he meets a strange little ant, Edward, who soon agrees to join him. This is their grand adventure together. They meet a "dragon" cleverly disguised as a mouse and battle a snail on the same small branch going the opposite direction. Avon tries to protect a caterpiller in her home only to find out that a butterfly snuck in a gobbled her up. And much much more. Great book for those middle ages, Brenda is 9, Bret is 7. They love it. This is one worth buying. And I don't say that often.

Batik Fabric Art

So did I say how much I love the library? Not necessarily my own, though it does have its merits. It is very small. I also love to go to other libraries in my area and check out other selections. Sometimes you don't know that there is a book you want until you go somewhere and find it.
So anyway, Bret wants to do a time-line too, like her sister. We went to the local library again for the second time this week (Yes I know it is only Tuesday) to find a topic to do a time line on. Then she was ready to go, but not me. Did I tell you I love books and libraries? Yes I am repeating myself. I found this book, a couple really, but this book on Batik and Tie-Dye, by Susie O'Reilly. In this book is all these tie dye and batik ideas that are easily done at home and don't need experts to do. One of the ideas (the one obviously that I am using) is making all these different kinds of designs and colors and turning it into a quilt. Well how can I go wrong with a quilt?

I am having issues with the pictures. They are out of order. The first one is when the girls had already waxed their fabric and I had already dyed them. They were waiting to be dried and ironed (so to get out the wax). This picture is me helping Marley with the hot wax on her fabric.

This is my first try at a Batik design. Not much to see yet, but when they are all together with red, blue, brown, green, yellow, etc. colors, it will be so cool!!

This is Bret's btw. The coolest part of all will be that the girls dyed the fabric, made the pattern, and made the blanket themselves! I am thrilled.

She Taught Me a Thing or Two...

Yep, that girl certainly is creative. This is what I walked into today. 500 or so little foam shapes spread all over the floor of the dining room. My first reaction was What the...
Marley said to me, "Look Mommy, I am having a party, wee," as she grabbed a bunch of the foam pieces into a pile with her hands and threw them up into the air like confetti. "Do you want to have a party with me?" And of course I did want to have a party with her. For about twenty minutes we threw those things in the air making more and more of a mess, the whole time I am reminding myself that the mess is easily cleaned, which it was.


We covered the girl like it was sand at the beach. In the end, it was well worth the fun we had. I am glad I brought myself to her level for a bit and had some fun with her. I forget that I can be a kid sometimes too. It is ok.

The World Is My School

If you were in school today, my appologies, you may want to turn back now and not read on. My kids spent the day with friends at the water park. A lot of the kids around here are at school so it wasn't crowded at all. Bret's favorite, the water slides, no doubt. Marley and I spent our time in the heated pool. Brenda was excited to be spending time with her friend that she hasn't seen this summer.

Something about Gaige and this water park. He has been invited several times to go with his friends here, and EVERY time the weather turns out cool, overcast, and rainy. Today again! And when I woke up the weather report said mostly sunny and 80something. But it drizzled on the way there and was overcast most of the day. No matter those boys had a good time anyway. It is hard to get a picture of Gaige since I spend so much time with Marley.

Back home we were all exhausted and energyless. I think it might have been the chlorine. All ready for an early bed time, and another busy day tomorrow.

Dinosaurs and Math

Brenda and I have set up a new time line for the dinosaurs she is studying. The big time line didn't have enough space for her to chart her dinosaurs. She asked me, after we put all the dinosaurs in the Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods, what was living in all the other periods that are on the time line? That isn't on our worksheets. We will have to look that up next.

These here are the times table cards I made up for Brenda. She has evidentally found a good use for them. We are only at 2's right now, and working one number a week. So next week will be 3's. Brenda checked the big chart of times tables to see how many weeks it would take. She figures three months. She is optomistic. I know that some of the numbers may take some more time. Plus we are not done with summer yet. Having fun is still our priority right now. If that continues we may never get through the tables completely. Ha ha ha. Like we care. Ok maybe we do a little right now, but that only lasts a few months usually.

Not-Back to School Picnic

There was football, potato sack races down a hill (maybe too steep to have a potato sack race on judging by all the falls), what at first look seemed to be kick ball until we saw the bat, water balloon fights, and a whole lot of fun. They supplied the hot dogs and burgers, everyone else brought a plate to share. This here was Brenda and a friend when the water balloons ran out. Never underestimate the creativity of a homeschooler, when they want to get wet.

Gaige hanging out with his friends. Last time we were at the park they were making a video of stupid crazy things that they were doing. Biking over a garbage can and down a hill, etc. Not a pretty site. This time they were a little more reserved.

Brenda and Bret's friend, B, showing off her wiggly tooth. Thank goodness it didn't fall out at the park. I don't know that the Tooth Fairy would leave money if she lost it...

We spent the early afternoon at the pool before we headed to the picnic. Exhaused we all are now.

Public School

This blog is primarily about our homeschool experiences, and I am stuck between homeschool and public school right now. I have set up a second blog to deal with strictly Josh's experiences at public school. If you reference this blog as well, please remember that this is MY account of what he tells the family about school. Any facts omitted are just a matter of accident. I am just telling it how I hear it.

psschoolvisings.blogspot.com

Check it out if you are interested.

The School Experience

One interesting note before I head to the store. Josh was up and gone before we even got up this morning. Hmmm. The boy really CAN wake himself up in the morning. Interesting...

Game Day

Marley has been feeling a need to spend a lot of time with me lately and I have not produced for her. Today I have to study for my finals (which I haven't been able to do lately with our homeschool stuff starting) then go to school and take my exam and produce my final project for the professor. PLUS get the kids organized to do their daily work AND get food because we are out. First, we got up at 7:30 to eat and get our work done. That was pretty quick today. We are definitely getting back into the swing of things.

Then Marley suggested we go upstairs to the auditorium to play. That sounded good. Even Gaige came down from his room to play a few games with us. Bret painted. Marley and I played air hockey. There was connect 4 and Hangman. We haven't played Hangman in a while.

Then I got the great idea that Gaige and I could play some Scrabble. Josh and I used to do that years ago for word recognition, vocabulary building, and spelling. Gaige started out right away saying he hated the game (altough he has never actually played it.) Dad stayed to help him (and me, ha ha ha). Bret and I play Scrabble sometimes. I come close, but I have never won yet. The man never really did good in school. He is very intellegent, but he thinks outside of the box. I always did good in school because I can follow the rules, not necessarily having to do with my skills or knowledge. So puzzle games like this, he dominates every time. Anyway, now he has his homeschooling job. He will be Gaige's helper in the game. It wasn't as painful as Gaige thought it would be. Isn't that refreshing.

Anyway off to the grocery for some food with the kids. Then maybe Marley will want to get her Noggin fix while I do some studying.

The Earth Timeline

Yes it is that long piece of paper on the wall of my dining room that stretches past the corner and keeps going. I had the idea, because Brenda has a set of worksheets she is doing about dinosaurs. She isn't really entirely interested in dinosaurs but it is interesting read. She is learning about some of the dinosaurs and the eras they lived in. That got me thinking that she really doesn't have a good feel for how long ago that really was from now. This timeline has sections for every hundred million years that science says the Earth has been around. This way we can add to it for everything we study. We might need to add some side sections to blow up the timeline of more current events. There isn't much space on my huge timeline where we people have existed.

This is the first addition to the timeline. Big Bret asked me to put when God created the Earth at the very beginning. He hasn't seen the time line yet. That man just loves when I turn our formal dining room into a learning center. (don't mind my sarcasm.) Did you notice my typo??? That should say 4.6 BILLION years ago. It is fixed. Oh well, to err is supposed to be human or something like that.
It ends at today.

Craft Day

In order to do the Science Experiment today, first I had to take a walk over to the dollar store for supplies. While I was there I found a craft of sticker bracelets. It really was a cool craft. There were three bracelets in the kit to decorate. What a coincidence that I have three girls.
Aren't they so CUTE?? I bought the craft for Marley. They are acting like they are too cool for this picture, but they couldn't stand that Marley was going to make a bracelet and they could not. We shared. The girls even asked me if I could set them up a craft day like the park has in the summer. Sure I will add it to the top of my list.

Science Experiment of the Week

For some reason my science experiment of the week website stopped sending me my experiments. That is ok. I am sure I just need to reregister. Who knows what the situation is. Maybe it was my computer telling me to get out my math book. How Math Works page 146 is where we are starting today. Gaige helped me with a spool some paper and a pencil, produce some Archimedian spirals. The instructions are on the book. That was Gaige's portion. It made it easier for the girls just to have to cut the spirals out.
Next, the spirals were cut out by the girls. They were hung from the ceiling by quilting thread. On was strategically placed over a hot lamp. The other was placed off to the side by itself. Eventually a third one was also placed by itself (Marley can't be left out of the fun of course). Which one do you think moved the most and why? The girls liked this, but Bret was upset because hers didn't really spiral much. It was stationary.

Last we finished off with this experiment. It is a take off of the spiral experiment. This experiment is not in the book. I just thought I could get similar results for the same reason. Two glasses with the same amount of water in them. The girls dropped two drops of dye in each. The one on the left was placed over heat from the stove for thirty seconds. The one on the right just sat on the counter. Clearly the left glass's dye is mixed well. The glass on the right, not so much. Most of the dye sank to the bottom. Why? Same reason.

The School Experience

Today we went out to a great restaurant, not well-known for their vegan meals. But we found out about how they can accomidate and went there so that we could all celebrate Josh's first day at school. How did it go? By all his accounts it was "Long". By now I have met with the guidance counciler, the principal, several of his teachers, and I have even had the pleasure to mix unfriendly words with that #?$& of a secretary. Pardon my shift key there. Anywho, he is there having the LONG days that he wants to have. What more can he ask for?

I have just finished signing all the papers that he sent home. Now I am off to study for a final exam in a couple days of my own.

But totally check out this cool pic! This is a spider and her home outside my dining room window. Is that gorgeous or what??? I cannot wait until she starts trapping bugs. Now that will be science in action for the kids!

The Girl Scout Front

Girl Scouts has taken an interesting turn during the summer. My girls DID earn a few try-it patches on their own. We buddied up with another troop to go camping. But we have been holding off for a sign from above as to how to proceed from here. There was another lady about 25 minutes away that had a troop for each of my girls, but they didn't know when or what day the troop would meet. We still didn't have our dance schedule yet so we didn't know if it would work or not. So here we are, school starting up again for the kids who go to school, debating whether or not to start a troop or two in our neck of the woods. There is not one currently. It is that or go independent this year. The kids would rather be in a troop. They know a lot of the kids here anyway. So I am gearing up to see if I can get a group of girls together to do some stuff together for Brenda's age. I am considering tagging Bret onto that one until I can get a troop together for her age group, hopefully within a month or two later. Fingers crossed, we will see how it goes.

Thanks C for all your help of course! Who knows about more about the topic??

Quote for the day, "I will eat AAAAANYTHING with Godess Dressing on it." Bret's answer to, "Eat your vegetables."

Some of the last Weekly Quotes

"Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality." -Beatrix Potter

All of your dreams HAVE come true, you just don't know it yet. You will see."-One of the Wise Woman

"I am going to leave that one on here and just add a new one. I want to remember that meditation for a while longer..."The day you die you will still have 30 or 40 e-mails in your in-box that will not be answered. You'll never get it all done so you might as well relax, take a deep breath, and enjoy the ride... Don't forget, too blessed to be stressed."From the book The Energy Bus by Jon Gordon

The End of Swim Team

The good news... the high school has open swim once a week for the majority of their school year. The not so good news... this swim-a-thon for a cause meant the end of swim team for the season.

Since I blew it with soccer, did I tell you about that one?? OOh. I forgot to sign the girls up and low and behold this is the first year that the teams are past their overfull limit. Neither girl got to be on the local teams this year. On the upside, they took the news rather well, PLUS that frees up our fall considerably. Since at the end of last year Brenda quit her music lessons, swim team, and all other scheduled activities citing that she was overscheduled, I have considered the possibility that it might be really healthy for us to underschedule this year instead. Also since we have stopped inviting kids over to play these last few weeks the girls have been getting along so well! Just DON'T LET ME FORGET ABOUT DANCE REGISTRATION or they really WILL have my head.

Anywho I digress... since I blew it with soccer, Gaige didn't want to take football again, and Josh has taken this year to be the first in 10 years to not play travel hockey (maybe because of the whole school thing, I don't know) for the first time in "like" ever, my fall season is going to be ok. Big Bret is already talking about scouting places for his hunting excursions, so that is going to keep HIM busy no doubt. Is there something strange about my gone-vegan husband going hunting to kill deer? Self-proclaimed, he doesn't care about saving animals. He just wants to stop eating so much saturated fats and other stuff that is not good for ya. That is what that is about. He is still trying to convince me that if we moved into the woods we would ALL be better off and much more happier. I am not all against the idea either. Especially if he could get me a creek and some good furtile land for an amazing garden. Again I am off topic...

I will actually be able to take a class or two this fall since I won't be running around with a crazy schedule for the kids. Good news for me. The girls have dance, Gaige has his co-op twice a week now, Josh IS going back to school (more about that saga later). They will all be plenty busy without all that extra stuff this year.

Either way, swim team is over and we are moving on to another busy year of I-Don't-Know-What yet. I do know, based on past experience, that it will be really cool!!

My garden Salad

Today for lunch I had a garden salad. That is not uncommon. But what is uncommon are the mushrooms I put in my salad. A few years back, after years of turning my nose up to the fungi, my mom was sauteeing mushrooms, onions, and peppers in butter for an omelet she was making. I was sold. Since then I eat onions on my pizza and all kinds of other things.

So today I was surprised when the idea to try raw shrooms in my salad popped into my head. Sauteed in butter, that is one thing. But I have continually snubbed the raw mushroom thoughts with this crazy idea about how they TASTE. Anyway here I was today putting those little cut-up white and brown things in my salad. And when I ate them, they didn't barely taste like what I expected them to taste like at all. In fact, with dressing (Goddess Dressing because I am a Goddess, the same reason that little Bret uses the dressing BTW) it had the texture of cheese to me. Funny how after all these years, I am fine eating something that I have never let myself consider eating before.

I ate fungus and I liked it...

Why is this homeschooling? Well it just is. I let my body tell me something today and it was right. Go figure.

PS UPDATE!! Read all about it...

FYI After calling the school two times, my husband going in to the office in person in his suit and tie on the way to work, and calling yet another time, finally we are set to meet with the principal and the homeschool paperwork guy tomorrow afternoon. Updates to follow...

Workbooks and Worksheets

This year at Gaige's co-op, he is taking Algebra 1. In order to be fully prepared for this class I asked him to take a review course of basic math skills at home. We could fill any obvious holes he might have. He agreed. I went to Sam's Club for one of their hundreds of pages of cheap worksheets. I wanted to pick up a math workbook for him. When we got there the girls started begging for their own Comprehensive Curriculum of Basic Skills workbooks. This is about 4-500 pages of worksheets related to math, English, reading, reading comp, and usually spelling. I didn't want to waste the $7.something on workbooks that I knew they wouldn't use. BUT THEY PROMISED!

So already Brenda is crying it is too hard. I don't get it. I can't do it. BUT SHE PROMISED!! PROMISED! She would work this workbook through. What to do? Is the work too hard? No. Does she like the worksheets... yes. Are we going too fast? No, in fact it is taking us two to three days to complete a sheet sometimes. So what is the problem here? The problem appears to be this... she doesn't like to not know something because then she feels like she cannot do it. She would rather pretend like it doesn't matter and only focus on what she knows. Can she do this work if we work slowly toward understanding? Yes of course. I don't like worksheets. But I see this great opportunity here. We can work something out. This constant I CAN'T DO IT attitude she has about anything that doesn't come easy to her.

I thought I better get creative here. I used something that I am using in my own life right now for a goal of mine. Affirmation. A song really. Made it up myself. Don't worry about the tune. I will make a new one daily probably because I will forget the old one. Here goes something like this.

I am learning and I will soon understand it.
I am learning and I will soon understand it.
Like the rain it is soaking into my brain.
I am learning and I will soon understand it.
I am learning and I will soon understand it.
I don't know it yet. Soon I will never forget.
Like the rain, it is soaking into my brain.
I am learning and I will soon understand it.

Small side note here. Big Bret does not think this song goes together well. I don't think that matters. It is more about some annoying song that some day will be burrowed into their heads like a bad smell that they can't get out of their noses. Then they will hopefully remember that the path is as important as the goal. If you don't care about anything else but getting there, you miss all the scenic view on the way.

I sing this until we are all giggles and ready to move on. Moving real slow is good. We are in no hurry. But this mantra it will stick soon. Ha ha ha. She will sing it to her kids some day.

Bret's Story

So Bret, at 7 years old, and somewhere between 1st and 2nd grade (we don't do grades with the girls since they have never gone to school) doesn't read yet. Well she CAN read the basic three lettered words like pit, cap, met, and, the. When she decided to write a story yesterday, I became the secretary and she the author and illustrator. A school teacher or a homeschooler "teacher" might frown on me. How will she learn to read and write if you do it all for her?? Well that is not what was important here to me. If I told her to write the story herself it would not have gotten done. Her creative moment would turn into frustration and she would put it down as another thing she will not want to do again. My goal here was to inspire her love for creating stories. So for that I can write the short skit she had in her head.

Bret's Cattail Pillow.

Here is the doll, singing and stuffing her pillow with the cattails that we collected from Scott's house last month. She sewed it herself and is excited to sleep on it, probably tonight after we finish closing the pillow up. I had to stop and clean up the mess of cattails that Marley made when I turned my back on her. The pillow didn't get closed because of that.

Public School Update

No pic for this one. It is just an update as to how the public school thing is going. The Principal, who was supposed to call me and set up an appointment yesterday, never did so. Today is now Tuesday, less than a week until school starts. We have not met with anyone and no schedule of classes has been discussed. We don't know if testing will be required or what will be required for that matter. I will call in a bit.

My Garden

So this is my "garden". As you can see I was originally lacking in the fundemental necessities that make up a garden. I have improvised well. Never mind Marley's sand that is sprawled on the cement and I have a fabulous quiet relaxing environment with which to sit and meditate.
This is, BTW, my back yard.

This here is one of my potted rose bushes that Bret wanted to buy this year. Do you see that little thing that looks kind of ferny just barely off to the left of the rose bush? It just popped up there. It looks like the beginning of a cosmos flower. I used to grow them years ago when we DID actually have a yard to plant in. I am not sure what it is or where it came from but how exciting that it is there growing!
OK now here is one of my Morning Glory vines. Let me tell the story about my Morning Glories. If you have heard it before, bear with me. I brought a tomato plant with me when I moved a few years back. We moved into a 1 bedroom appartment while we were waiting for our house to be livable. The tomato plant ended up having Morning Glory seeds in it from our last place. They grew. When we moved I took the tomato plant container with me and the seeds grew the next year into flowers. The following year, they were growing. Rather than growing in the pots, they were growing out of the cracks in the cement. They grew up the sides of my chairs and table. This year I have provided wood trellessess for them to climb and they are just gorgeous. They are just now blooming. I have purple and pink ones. By next year I will need to be picking them from all my garden I am sure.

I have veggies on the side of the house. They aren't much to look at. I will try to take a good amount of the plants inside this year to replant next year.

This Week in Our News

No Pics this week. I need a new battery for the camera. It's on my list of things to do.

Well for starters, the science experiment for the week: With only one more week left of the pool being opened all week, I thought a water experiment might be nice so here it is. Go to the shallow end of a pool that reaches about up to your waist. Plant your feet at the floor and let your body sit back in the water as if you were sitting on a chair. So first take a deep breath and hold it while you sit in your make-belief chair for a minute or so. How ever long you can. Then let all your air out at once. Watch your body fall backwards into the water. You can experiment with this in all kinds of ways at the pool. Go into the deep end, maybe 5 feet or more, take a deep breath, and dive down to touch the bottom. Watch yourself float back up to the top. Then let all your breath out and watch yourself sink back to the bottom. Is this too simple for you? Well some of my kids are still young. We are fascinated by the simple still.

Next let's talk about literature. I know it is only August, but you can homeschool in the summer without letting them know they are learning. I watched the movie last week, Into the Wild. Great movie, was surprised by the ending, I must say. I didn't really think that was the way it would end. My husband OF COURSE had already anticipated that. OK so he was reading Jack Kerouac and Henry Thoreau, and a bunch others like that. Books that I had always wanted to read but had never taken the time to do so. I went onto my library and realized that I could get a bunch of those books as online books on... I donno, MP3's they are maybe? Then I found them. This series of Henry Thoreau books for KIDS. In these books Henry is a bear doing things that really happened in Thoreau's life. And in the back is a little caption of how his life really was. What he believed, what he did, and the such. A couple that I got are "Henry Builds a Cabin" and "Henry Climbs a Mountain". They are by author D. B. Johnson. They are just these magical stories that introduce this man into children's lives. They are easy reader books. (If you are familiar with easy reader books, this doesn't always mean they are easy for children to read. It means that they are books a parent could read to little children.) But what do my kids love?? They love to be read to. And they are enjoying these books too. This is definitely a find of the week.

The last topic I want to touch on is family. We have been falling apart at the seems for a while. And most of us are trying to get ourselves back together again. So we have been playing a lot of games together lately. Even Daddy Bret is having a great time with the girls with this quality time. I have talked to Daddy Bret as well about the amount of money we spend on birthdays and Christmas. That conversation began when our oldest child sent him an email about something he wanted. He emailed that he knows it is expensive but it could be a birthday AND Christmas present. The cheapest one of this thing was $600.00. I told Bret that is going to be more than just Christmas and a Birthday. We won't be spending so much this year. We will take the extra that we don't spend and put it toward quality time: going to see a movie together, a weekend camping in a cabin, whatever. Does it seem extreme to you to say that we won't be spending $600 between Christmas and a birthday? Does it seem extreme that we used to spend that much easily per child for Christmas? Where do you fall on that pendulum? Us we need to downsize. We have so many things, and not much to show for it.

So I DO have one more topic. Changing over to Public School. As you may know, my 17yo, who is actively rebelling against us these days, is planning on spending his last year of high school in Public School. He is using the guise that he would like to have a program that forces him to be responsible for his work. (However, when we offered to pay for him to be in this great homeschool co op instead he refused. We know that keeping him in this co op would surround him with kids that WANT to learn and are supported by their parents. He would be around teacher that care about the kids they teach. The opposite is true for this particular high school.) But anyway that is not our decision to make. I am sure it is part of his rebelling against our say in the matter. He is doing what he thinks is best for himself for whatever is his reason. So he has been working for the month to get himself enrolled. It has just been a matter of WAITING AND WAITING AND WAITING. No one was really helping him at the school. Finally a few days ago, he brought in the last of his paperwork to the school office. Some lady in the office on a high horse, telling Josh she is doing him a favor, told him all kinds of garbage about how I should have been sending in samples of his work for the last few years so that they can give him credit for the work, and how they would probably not be able to account for his credits for the last few years because they can't prove that he did the work he says he did! I won't go off on a tangent. But in the end I called the BOE and left a message but no one got back to me. I called again the next day (Now mind you this was Friday and school starts in another week.) and told the secretary all the problems that we have encountered trying to get him enrolled. Now it is a week before school starts, he doesn't have his classes selected, he is worried that he won't be accepted as a senior, no doubt there should be some testing he has to do, etc. When I got off the phone with her, within 5 minutes the principal from the high school called me all ready to set up an appointment with himself and the man who handles the homeschool paperwork. Why do I have to get involved? Because schools don't tend to respect the children they teach. (Well that and obviously we were facing a wall of some lady who takes issue with homeschooling and is SEVERLY misinformed.) All Josh could get was the run around. It took me being firm with them to get the job done. Unfortunate, because it was something that I wanted him to handle.

Swim Team Trophy

Our team was first in our division this year. It it has been a while since this. Each year, the coaches come up with a special thing that each child did this year and that is what they receive their trophy for. Bret's was for "Is it time to get out yet?" Evidentally that is her famous quote. Lovely. And Gaige's memorable quote is, "Someone is in my lane!" Because for championships, the pool accidentally put two people in the same lane at the same time. So someone was actually... IN HIS LANE. I couldn't make the championship party because I have a class on Thursday evenings, but I am sure the kids were all glowing from their success.

Exciting Pool Times

This weekend was unofficial family weekend at home. We had some family meals, played games, even went to the pool all together. Yes, that is MY HUSBAND in the WATER. Who would believe it! I know. The man and his girls. What could be better than that?

And new news on the pool front. Yes that is two year old Marley swimming to her dad. She is swimming all by herself now. She spends a good portion of her time in the deep end swimming to me and back again. Jumping in by herself and swimming around. How did I do it? you ask. I didn't, she did. I did help her along by taking her to the pool every day and letting her find her love for water in her own time and her own way. Also it helps that her sister and brother are on swim team, so she has spent the last eight or nine months sitting out while they swim back and forth with their friends. She wants to do what they are doing. So obviously Marley is thrilled. Her quote is, "Look, Mommy, I am a fish!"

August Field Trip

I set up the homeschool trip this year to the Blackberry farm. Our family does this every year. Brenda, the lady who takes our money, is this beautiful wonderful older lady. Last year she told us all about how there are not enough bees to pollinate for her blackberries. They bring in a bee hive hiver who sets up his bee hives near their blackberry bushes. After the bees are done with the blackberry bushes, the bee hive hiver picks up the hives and collects the honey the bees produced. Then he is off to the pumpkin patch not too far down the street to drop his bees off there.
It is sad that it has come to this. We are gardening bees so that we can have our food harvest. I think it used to happen naturally on it's own. Thank goodness we didn't need bee hive hivers 200 years ago, or we might not have any fruit to speak of now.
Brenda also told us this wonderful story about how she used to go skinny dipping when she was younger. She told us she was carefree and never thought of a thing but having a good time when she was younger. That makes me smile to think of this old wrinkled lady as having those kinds of memories of being young. I hope that when I am old and gray, I have all kinds of cool stuff to remember like that. The skinny dipping I have that covered, but I need to make lots more cool memories to keep my mind busy when I get older. That I will think on.

We took them home and froze them. Our first blackberry food, other than the grazing we do the day we bring them home, was blackberry cobbler. (With extra sugar, because we picked some tart ones this year.) Mmmm. It was good!!The kids always look forward to blackberry picking. Though I pick long past their attention span. I pick enough to last the whole year, so that makes the trip worth it for me. At $1.55 a pound this year, I saved a bunch of money, even considering gas. With all the talk about green living, it is great to show the girls a little about buying local.