Homeschooling My Senior

Up until this year, homeschooling the high school years hasn't been all that tough. Well, really not tough at all, to be honest. This year, however, the only maths I saw at first for Morgan to take, were maths I never had. When I was in high school, 3 maths were required, and the ones I took were Algebra I and II and geometry. That's about as hard as it got and I aced them. Morgan, on the other hand had her algebras and geometry, but I couldn't seem to let her go a year without a math, even though she's had all that's required of her.

At the beginning of the year, all I saw was calculus for her to take. I cringed at even looking at the word, along with her science that was available...physics. (I took Earth Science, Biology I and II. Again, easy) With calculus, I tried and tried, and up until the end of the first semester, I could teach it. It just took a while to remember things and to be honest, it wasn't any fun. Morgan dreaded it and it took too much of my time away from lesson planning to where I was falling behind in everything, which in turn, hurts the other girls. Last month I decided to do something else. That's the glory of homeschooling. If it doesn't suit, you can change it without having to worry about anything.

Morgan has always been an accelerator in academics. Always. She's always been behind in everything else in life. She didn't learn to ride a bike until she was 8, and that was after she watched Allison doing it at 4. She couldn't say her "Rs" until she was 9, well after her baby sister was learning to talk. She's going to be 18 next month and still can't drive. She's just very afraid of learning new things. She wants to learn, but she's too scared once she's behind the wheel. Allison is very self sufficient and can cook whatever it is she can find in the kitchen. Morgan, eggs. That's it. When I'm not home and she gets hungry, she asks Allison to cook. Up until a couple years ago, she wouldn't check out at a store unless one of her sisters went with her. That's just Morgan. Nothing has happened to traumatize her, that's just her.

Knowing she's a senior in high school and she's really got to start getting in the groove with things, in a hurry, I decided to change her math to something that's going to be more useful in life than calculus. We chose comsumer math.

I'm really excited about this math! I just know it's going to be so much fun and useful! We just have to double up on it since it's a full year and we only have one semester left. No biggy, though.

As far as the other things I felt like she really needed, she's also taking life management. Another useful subject. As you can see on the front, it covers quite a few areas in life:

When I began homeschooling, 3 years ago, I wanted to definitely give all the girls a home economics course. I bought the curriculum but never really used it. We never could get past the first few lessons. I was just starting out and felt if there was more time left in the day, they could do more math or something. I didn't need a book to show me how to teach them to manage a home, right? Well, that time never really came...not on a regular every day basis anyway.

Her new home economics course:

As you can see, it comes with a lab manual. Can't wait for her first one! I'll be posting each one she does.

My baby's grown now. Bittersweet.

Snow Day

I wouldn't really consider this snow, but when it's avoided you like it has me, any amount of white on the ground is considered a "snow day" for us. It was supposed to have snowed for hours but it didn't, and by the next morning it had turned to ice. Still a little bit was fun enough.

Emily and I woke early the day after the snowfall and with nothing to eat at my mom's, we decided to take off to McDonald's for breakfast. We got there about 10 minutes before they opened, so I parked in the back to quickly be able to swing back through the drive-thru when they were finally open. As we were sitting in the car, Emily decided she wanted to get out and play in what snow ice that was left on the ground. Where she was playing was on a tiny bit of a slope and as I watched her play, the joy in her eyes and big grin on her face made me jump out of the car and look in the back to see if there was possibly anything at hand she could use for a sled. Sure enough, Allison had a plastic bin back there. I quickly grabbed the lid and gave it to Emily and watched her race back up to the top of the "hill". Love quick little fixes like that.

McDonald's finally opened so we grabbed our food, went back to Mom's, packed up and headed out, killing hours of time on a very cold day, all day, in Shreveport. I was too afraid to drive on the interstate and really had to wait until I knew it was open again.

There's a place there called Norton's Art Gallery (I believe), so we decided to go check it out to see what it looked like with a little bit of snow on the ground. Since it's very hilly terrain, Emily grabbed the bin lid once more :)

That didn't work out as well.

So, I'm steadily freezing and the girls didn't want to leave just yet. They just kept wanting me to snap pictures of them acting silly. They are blurry because even my anti-shake couldn't keep up with my shivers.

I wonder who my girls get their personalities from... ;)

Home Sweet Home

Last weekend the girls and I traveled to Shreveport to visit with my sisters and mom. It wasn't the greatest of weekends and if I could, I would have done things a lot differently. My mom and I had a HUGE fight, which I regret, but what do you do? On the bright side, it snowed a bit, so the girls finally got to see a little snow stick. I'll post pictures soon.

Since I missed my Monday organizing this week, today will be my Monday. The girls and I planned to go to Galveston today to scope out some places for me to take senior portraits for both my nephew and Morgan. I just think it's going to be too cold to do so today. I plan to just stay at home and chill. (it's quite cold enough for that!) It's the middle of January (already??) and the majority of my craft supplies are still in boxes in my itty bitty craft room. Since we are bound and determined to do a Christmas ornament each month of this year, make cards for every occasion, and gifts for family members and friends, I think I need to focus on making everything accessible. So, for this week's organizing, I'm going to finish my craft room. I have to paint it and get an armoire out of there, so it's going to take more than just today to do so. I also have almost everything in there to organize, but I'm going to start with just one area at a time. Today I'll be emptying boxes and gathering like items together. I have stamp sets that need to be put in binders at least until I find I don't like that way of organizing them. All other things will have to just be put into bins or something until I can get some storage in there. I have zilch storage total in that room. I'll take pictures once everything is out and the walls are primed. I won't have to buy paint because I have a mother lode of left over paint from when colors just didn't work here. In there, I'm not too worried about the color.

My coffee cup is now empty so I guess I'd best get off my tail, teach my kiddos some lessons, and get busy with the rest of my day. Stay warm, folks!

HOLLYWOOD!!

My family and I went to Los Angeles a couple years ago and had an ok time. Well, I think the family had a great time, but me, not so much. We were there for an entire week and I still felt rushed and didn't get to do all I wanted to do. It was more wasted time than anything.

I really had no desire to ever go again, but my sister is turning the big 4-0 in March and I've been wanting us and our little sister to start going on annual trips together. We've never done anything like that, which I find to be a shame. So, with her birthday coming up, and she and my little sister have never been, I thought, Hollywood, why not? I just talked to both of them and we are all so excited about it. We are going to drive up there so we can stop at various places I wanted to stop at when I went before. It's going to be so much fun! My sisters are so fun to hang around and we just never get that chance. It's gonna be great! Can't wait!

The girls and I are going to get our hair done today. Imagine the cost of 4 ladies getting cuts and color...whew! Maybe I'll even take pictures of them somewhere if I can find a nice place. I don't know. I haven't taken pictures here since they were little bitty.

I'm going to try to get Emily to do her little project tonight...the one I promised last week. It's great, so keep looking for the video.

BEYOND ECSTATIC!!!

Years ago, before the digital camera age, my husband bought me a Canon SLR. I loved it and still have that old thing, but when digital came out, he bought me a digital SLR. I had it for just a few months when there was a milkshake accident, ruining it. I then bought another one from Ebay, which I failed to see that it had a shutter problem, so it's been junk from day one. I went for a while without one, not even going back to my first SLR. I finally broke down and bought myself another DSLR and had it for about a year when all of a sudden, it wouldn't shoot. I knew nothing damaging had happened to it, but was just so down and out about it. It would shoot sometimes, but not when I really wanted it to.

This morning, I decided to go ahead and call Canon to send it in for repair but didn't know exactly where I had put my camera. After talking to the agent on the phone, he said for me to call him back whenever I had the camera in my hand, that it may be something that could be managed over the phone. He told me it wouldn't be a setting, so I didn't know how he would be able to walk me through the problem in order to fix it.

So, I just figured I'd call back later, just whenever. In the meantime, the thought of him possibly being able to fix the problem over the phone intrigued me, so I looked online for possible problems. Now, you have to know I have had lenses with all these cameras, and with trying to save money, I'd buy Canons so I could use the same lenses with all of them. With that being said, I have 3 lenses that are basically the same, just factory lenses that came with each camera and a few larger lenses I only use periodically. With the 3 lenses that are basically the same, I would just grab one, without even remembering which one went with what camera and start shooting. That's where I went wrong. As I was reading for possible fixes, I came across one post where the person was having the same problem I was having. Someone replied to her post asking if she was using older lenses in a newer camera. If so, that may be the problem since the lenses have firmware that may be out of date to the newer camera.

I quickly found my camera bag in the back of my closet and decided to give it a shot. It didn't work with the lens that was still on it, so I grabbed the lens I knew did go with that camera and it worked! WOW, it worked!!!!!! My battery is still charging right now and can't charge fast enough! Two years...TWO YEARS without my camera and all it was was outdated firmware in one lens! UGH and AH!!

I feel like I have found myself again. No more fuzzy pictures on this blog!

Just wanted to share...

Emily made a dump cake tonight. Yes, the very easiest of desserts to make, but hey, she's 10. Just wanted to share how it turned out even though the taste can't be. Yummy blueberry goodness right here:

Great job, Emily! Can't wait until cools down so we can eat it!

Today's the Day?

Did I say Monday I was going to start gathering those discs in one place and find them a home? What I meant was...no just kidding. I am off to a slow start, but I have gathered what I have seen. I just haven't figured out what I want to do with them yet. I want something that's going to be easy for everyone to put them away immediately, but there's nothing easier than having the movies in the drawer right below the blu-ray player and sometimes, no one knows just quite how to open the drawer to put them back. That's not really a problem, though because those get cleaned up and put away at the end of the day or whenever I see someone in the process of leaving them out. The problem is all the picture, music, programs, etc. that have somehow been mixed together and stored in the original container of blank CDs. I never know what's used and what's not. Not being organized leads to spending more money, and you know how it is, you go buy a replacement of something lost and as soon as you do, the old one is found. That's my life's story.

So, as of this moment, I've gathered what I immediately saw and have them ready to go through to see what's on them. As I'm doing that, I'm putting them in new cases and separating them for future storage. Morgan had a cool idea as to what to do with all her music CDs and I'm hoping she'll do the same with her movies. She's going to leave them in their cases and velcro the cases to her wall, side by side and up and down, making a piece of artwork, so to speak. I think it'll look pretty awesome.

Right now I have to make a quick trip to Sam's. Gotta get my bulk stock for the month. That's always fun.

TTFN!