Currently, it's like a refresher course for those of us who have been out of school a long time! We do school work online, but we meet once a week for questions and discussions. Then this fall, I transition to only online. It's been good. I'm planning on a web design degree. We'll see if that changes!
My life has been hectic for the last 10 wk. I’ve been at the hospital a lot as my GD sustained traumatic brain injury. Dinner has been really late when we get back, around 8 or 9. Not much scrapping for me right now. I’ve been doing lots of baking to take to the hospital. I now have some gluten free muffin and loaf recipes that we love. My hubs got his new van today and he’s having fun learning how everything works. We went to the hospital today and on the drive we enjoyed the adjustable leather seats. Bought some new summer dresses and now am looking for some casual skirts. I’m starting to make my own spice/herb blends and am having fun experimenting.
Welcome back! Congrats on the chicken! 1. My daughter Rhiannon's choir is having their spring concert this weekend. Anyone who would like to hear a 2:30 minute sampler of the songs can find my video on my Facebook timeline (Michele Kendzie). I'm proud of Rhiannon for being chosen to sing a solo at the beginning of The Climb and proud of myself for making my first iMovie video all by myself. My other daughter, Caroline, taught me earlier this year and I think she approves of my use of only a single repeated transition between each clip this time, as opposed to using a different transition every time in the video I made when she was teaching me. 2. Both of my daughters are performing in Annie with their homeschool drama club next weekend. It's neat because Annie was Caroline's first play (about 6 years and 15 plays ago) and now she's student-directing. She's also performing as Lily, and Rhiannon is Ms Hannigan. 3. Rhiannon, my oldest child, is turning 17 on Thursday. It's kind of mind-boggling to think of how long I've been a mom and the fact that I can remember being my kids' ages. (Caroline is 14 and Ian is 11.) But instead of feeling sad about my kids growing up, I'm feeling grateful. This month is the one year anniversary of Rhiannon's third suicide attempt, which comes from depression, largely based on her feeling incapable of being an adult. So every step toward adulthood my kids make feels wonderful to me. 4. Like @A-M I recently gave up a volunteer role. Starting in 2011, I was photo editor of VaHomeschoolers Voice magazine. I wanted to give back to the organization that helped me get started with homeschooling. And I stuck with it for a long time! But in the last year, my heart wasn't in it anymore. I felt bad leaving, but they eventually found a good replacement, and now it feels like a good step forward, so I can focus on other things. 5. I was almost the winner of the Bart-kissing game during iNSD. It was the first time I'd really tried, and didn't set out to, but I got started early and had a big lead for half of the weekend. And it's addictive.
A game truck is a trailer that comes to my house, it's got pry 5 TV's, and every gaming system and game under the sun - Nintendo, PS4, XBox One, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Wii, Virtual Reality, etc. Each TV can play up to 4 kids... and then there is an outside TV as well. So they play together for an hour and a half, then we have BBQ or pizza and cake. I'm hoping for a sunny day, and that the outside TV's can be for adults, lol! It looks like this:
Whew. Life has been really busy and I have made one page in the past week. 1. We left on Mother's Day and went to Disney World for a week. It rained every.single.day. but we still had an amazing time. We rode a lot of rides, met characters, saw old friends and made new ones, and ate a ridiculous amount of food. This is the start of an unusually busy summer travel season for us (we are usually more off-season travelers). 2. I am engrossed in planning our next homeschool year. I seriously LOVE school planning, so it's a super exciting time! We do year-round schooling, so we won't start next school year until sometime in August or September, but I am already excited just thinking about it. 3. My husband's allergies have been ridiculous this year- so much worse than he's ever experienced before. He had gotten to the point of taking 2 Claritin D 24 pills per day and was still feeling awful. He finally went to an allergist and goes back Tuesday for the full back prick allergy test. I am hoping it is the start of him getting some relief. 4. I bought a planner today- so actually I bought three because I wanted to bring them home, thumb through them, and decide on the one that I loved most (and I'll take the other 2 back). I got a mini, classic, and big happy planner. I am surprised at how much I am loving the big happy planner, but it just feels so..... big! I feel like the classic is more what I need, but we'll see. I haven't decided which one to keep and use yet. I have never been a planner person before, so I am pretty excited. 5. We've been watching Designated Survivor and I seriously love President Kirkman and wish he were real. I would vote for him in a heartbeat.
That's super cool! And I bet it's an awesome and easy birthday plan! Watch out! It's a whole other hobby if you let it! I have the Michaels planner in like 6x9 or something? Not the huge one. If I was homeschooling more than 1 kid, I would consider the big one. Unless I kept school stuff separately. Because I like to use one of the sections (mine has 3 per day) for homeschool stuff.
(01) Eight more days of school, and then I will have a fourth-grader & a preschooler. My DD is very young for her grade (the youngest in her class by a few months) and won't turn 9 until the first week of school in August... but is already starting puberty! I'm so worried that she will get her period before she is emotionally ready for it. I didn't get mine until middle school, and it was still traumatic. I will be getting her a book to read through & discuss and praying that the big change holds off another year (or two!). (02) I started a new job in December, and it's going well... but it's still rather boring & un-challenging a lot of the time. It makes good money for the job that it is & I adore the people I work with & it's right in my wheelhouse skillset-wise but I often have to actively find work for myself and/or take longer on something than I really need to. I'm not sure that there is a solution for this. (03) I feel so crummy but am terrified to go to the doctor & have to pay for it all upfront with the crappy insurance we have. We do get one "free" well check per year but after that appointments are between $150-250 each which doesn't include testing, etc. (04) I am eligible for a week of vacation at work next month but can't go until the end of July as I work in a very small office & my bosses will be gone several weeks this summer on both personally- and professionally-related things. Anyways, I want to plan to go somewhere local-ish to get away but my husband is being a PITA about committing to anything... and if we don't make plans soon, it means we'll just be stuck here doing nothing. I am tempted to put down a deposit somewhere that we've been discussing and say, 'Hey! We're committed now. You can go with us or you can stay here but the kids and I are going either way!" (05) I am so tired all of the time (see #3) that I'm having a hard time scrapping. I usually get one page done a week during the workweek (when I used to get 1-2 pages done per night when I wasn't working) and try to do more on the weekends when I can but I'm not always successful. I've never felt "behind" before (and I've been doing this for the past 15 years) but I feel that way now & it's affecting my mojo when I do finally have the time and the energy.
