Its a mess

This weekend I asked the kids to clean up their desks.  This is what I went into yesterday morning:

They worked all day on those desks.  I have no idea how they got anything done at all.

And with a one and three year old this is what the floor looks like during the day:

Mom had to get involved and I cleaned off the desks at the end of the day.  I couldn't take it anymore.

Thank all of you for your concern for Shadow.  He's not had another seizure.  I have to go this week and get his medicine.  We were sick for over a week and then down to one car.  We should have new tires on the other car Wednesday or Thursday. 

Continuing with our colonial studies, we may baked apples last night:

 They were pretty yummy.  We enjoyed them, but we're huge apple lovers here.  Here's a shot of Little Miss Trouble.  She likes to pose.  I need to get a shot of Monkey cause her nickname fits her well.  She's climbing everything.  I walked in yesterday and she was standing on top of the kitchen table.  She's giving me a heart attack.  I try to keep an eye on her, but sometimes, I turn my back and then she's on top of something. 

Hope you all have a wonderful week

I'm still here....

We ended up with the sickies here.  Fevers, runny nose, and sore throats.  Its taken several days to run through this and now the big kids are hopefully getting over it.  That's good because I'm exhausted and need some sleep.  I've continued nursing the Little Monkey only so she'll have my immunities.  She was the hardest hit.  I was hoping to be done by now, but that didn't work out as planned.  I may just continue the next two months to get through the flu season.

We've been working on the colonies.  The girls are learning to hand sew and are making a blanket for their baby dolls.  We'll be quilting them as well.

Since we've been studying Colonial Times, I ordered the PBS series Colonial House and we've been watching it.  I've really enjoyed it.  We have enjoyed watching how they really lived back then, and how difficult it would be for one of us to step back in time and exist in the 17th century.  I highly recommend watching this if you haven't already.  They also have Frontier House and 1900 house.  I only had one issue with the program, and that was the amount of bleeping on it.  One of the gents they got to do it is from England and apparently cusses like a sailor.  They bleeped over it all, but its quite a few.  Also, during the second episode one of the families finds out that their son and future son-in-law was in a car accident and the son-in-law didn't make it.  Its quite tragic, so I wouldn't recommend this for younger viewers.

I plan on getting Frontier House next, even though we're a long way off from Homesteading.  It's my favorite time period, and I'd love to see how these families carve out their lifes on the 160 acres that they are given.

Shadow

We have a big dog.  A really big dog.  He's half black lab and half newfoundland.  He's currently 130 pounds.  And he thinks he's a lap dog.

Unfortunately, he's experienced two seizures the last two months.  I took him to the vet immediately after the second one.  He was due for a check up anyway.  They ran all kinds of tests, updated shots, gave medicine for his ear infection and took my second oldest child for payment alot of my money.

The test results came back inconclusive.  He definitely has a thyroid problem.  He's about 15-20 pounds overweight.  So we have to get thyroid medicine for him.  We're hoping that will clear up the seizures otherwise we'll have to check for epilepsy.

He's a fantastic dog.  The baby can sit on him, jump on him, pull his ears, take food out of his dish, and he doesn't even move.  If she's jumping on him, he doesn't even sit up to get her off, its like he knows he's bigger and will hurt her.  He's big.  He thinks he's a lap dog-did I say that already?  My hubby will be sitting on the couch and Shadow will come over and climb up into his lap.  Its funny.  I need to photograph it.

The vet also wants me to get a urine sample?  How on earth am I to do that?  Visions of me chasing the dog around the yard trying to hold a bowl underneath him while he pees comes to mind.  She suggested putting him on his leash, except that he won't go when he's on a leash.  I could strap a cloth diaper on him and wring it out when he's done. 

All I see if the part of Jurassic Park III when the boy shows Dr Grant the TRex pee he's collected. 

If you have a video camera and are in the neighborhood, come on over for a show.  I'm sure me chasing the dog around the yard will be pretty comical.  If you enter it into America's Funniest Videos however, I do claim half the prize!

update

So here's a copy of the lessons for TL yesterday.  He can go through and mark off as he does them.

Our day yesterday went very smoothly with the kids having a list to check off.  You can see the girls being very studious here:

Okay, not so much here!

and here they are doing PE class:

Have a great week!

Another update on organization

I watched all the videos last night on Homeschool Skedtrack.  I didn't start imputting because it was too late for me to think clearly to do that.

This morning my code to download Homeschool Tracker Plus arrived via email.  I purchased this program over six years ago for about $25 (I think its $40 now).  I went ahead and dowloaded it and have been watching the videos of all the upgrades since I used it two years ago.  It allows me a few more options than Sketrack.  The biggest advantage is that I can save my lesson plans for the future adn don't have to retype them in.  I did notice that skedtrack was easier to get around and offered the kids option of signing in.  I have to check on this for homeschool tracker-they didn't used to be able to do that, but I think it may be an option now. 

So, my last weekend of freedom before school starts on Monday will be reading my assignments and inputing homeschooling lessons. 

Update on organizing.....

Well, apparently  my computer is so new and my installation disk for homeschool tracker is so old, that they are not compatible anymore.

So, I've been watching the tutorials on Homeschool Skedtrack (thank you a million Kidcraze!) and I really like it.  I especially like that I can give the kids a login to check their assignments for the day!  That's wonderful!!  Perhaps I can even go paperless!!  What would I do then?  The dust bunnies will not have anywhere to hide!!

Have a wonderful weekend!!  I'll be inputing lesson plans and doing my reading for school.  Classes start on Monday already!

I am a ding dong

They say with each pregnancy you lose some brain cells.  There are times like these when I have to agree with that saying.

Kidcraze recommended software for homeschool scheduling!!  I have Homeschool Tracker and used it for years.  I stopped when we left Japan in the middle of the year and my hubby had the only laptop and was taking it to school with him.  Fast forward to September with a new baby and unpacking a house, I never used it.  Then the desktop crashed this summer and I got a laptop and never installed it!!

So, I'm chalking this up to duh!!!!!  And logging off to into this on my laptop and get my lessons in.  As soon as I do all the upgrades and rewatch the tutorial so I remember how to use it that is!

Organization

I finished my last final on Dec 10th and I start again on Monday.  How did this happen?  These thirty days went way too quickly for me!!

I've spent some wonderful quality time with my kids, my hubby worked way too much and was gone most of the last two weeks.  I started reorganizing my recipe binder.  I did it about five years ago and I needed to revamp it.  I should be done with that this weekend. 

I've done some organizing and inputing of genealogy records.  I've worked on updating my genealogy blog.  I have a few more records to put in and should have that done today.

I've cleaned out and organized closets and other parts of the house. 

I'm starting to read my assignments for the first week of class.

And, I've revamped my lesson planner.  I used to plan each subject for each child on a subject page and checked off each day as we did it.  I decided to try to do weekly planners for lesson plans.  I figured out by Wednesday that this does not work for me.  I'm very anal organized and I can't handle not getting something done one day and having to hold it over till the next day.  This doesn't work for me.  I usually have several weeks of lessons done at a time, and being off one day, means that I'm off for weeks.  Drives me bananas.  So, last night, I started re-entering my plans on my subject planners.  I'll have pictures to show later this weekend.

have a wonderful weekend!