My 100th Post

I started this blog 18 months ago and I am finally at my 100th post. That averages out to about 5 posts a month. That sounds about right. I started this blog after reading many homeschool blogs in an attempt to figure out what I am doing with this whole homeschooling thing. And this blog started out as mostly a homeschool blog where I tried to share ideas and a place to vent when homeschooling was tough.

Lately I have been posting more about life in general. I don't know whether that is because I am more confident in my homeschooling ( I doubt it...). Or because we haven't been doing much formal schooling with moving and summer (that might be it). Or because more family members have been visiting my blog and blogging is a good way to keep them informed about what is going on in our life.

In any case, I think this has become a hybrid blog. I am sure I will post more about our homeschooling when we get back to more formal schooling in the Fall and I will continue to post interesting happenings in our life. Something for everyone to enjoy :) If you are a frequent visitor, leave comment. I'd love to know who is enjoying my rambling on homeschooling and life in general.

I am a Feeder Watch Flunkie

Last Fall I signed up for Project Feeder Watch. It seemed like a great home school project and my oldest daughter loves birds. So I paid my $15 registration fee and went out an bought a bird feeder and seeds. You are supposed to record the number of birds at the feeder for 2 days in a row each week throughout the winter. I never did. Not once. Never. At first there were no birds at the feeder each time I looked and then I could never find 2 days in a row to take the time to look. I know, seriously sad that I couldn't schedule 5 minutes 2 days in a row to look out the window, but I couldn't. I finally just gave up. I am a Feeder Watch Flunkie. I am sure it would be a great project for some homeschool family out there, but not ours. My husband even made fun of me for paying $15 for the opportunity to do research for someone else :P

I Love my Mop

You know you have sunk (risen?) to a new level of housewifedom when you start proclaiming your affection for a cleaning product. But I just love this mop. It is the Clorox large area mop with the terry cloth cover.

You see, my husband hates when I mop. He doesn't like the smell of the cleaning solution and he doesn't like that the floor stays wet for 20 minutes and he can't go in the kitchen. Now it would make sense for me to mop when he is not home, but I prefer to mop the kitchen at night when the kids are in bed, so I don't have to deal with keeping them out of the kitchen.

The floor in our old kitchen was white and always looked dirty, so it needed mopped rather frequently. I thought about getting a swifter mop after I saw someone mopping with one and noticed that the floor seemed to be dry almost immediately, but I really didn't like the idea of constantly having to buy the replacement pads.

Then a friend mentioned terry cloth mops. I had never heard of them and thought I might have to order one online. But one day I went to Target and there they were - a whole selection of them. I have to say now that I am so glad I got the large area one.

At first I tried to use the mop swifter style. I put cleaner and water into a spray bottle and sprayed the floor and then mopped the sprayed area. It didn't take me long to figure out that the dry terry cloth made too much friction and was difficult to push across that floor. So I tried wetting terry cloth and using the spray. This was still kind of a pain, but better that the ol' sponge mop and bucket routine. Then brilliance struck. I wet the terry cloth and put the floor soap on the terry cloth and squish it around, put the Terry cloth on the mop, and go. Swish Swish, Swish and I am done. The floor is dry in less than 5 minutes and I have no bucket of yucky water to deal with. I pull the terry cloth off and throw it in with the dirty laundry. And you can buy extra terry cloths (which I did), in case one is still dirty and you need to mop.

I wouldn't recommend using this mop for a gross - o mopping jobs, but for regular floor cleaning, it is great! Also, if you have crusty stuff stuck on the floor, you may to to keep a scrubber sponge (another one of my favorite cleaning products) handy. You know, the one with the yellow sponge on one side and the green scrubber on the other. The terry cloth isn't so good at the crusties, but still better than the bucket and mop... You can get terry cloth mops with their own scrubbers build it, but the large area one didn't have that feature.

Go, buy yourself a terry cloth mop. I highly recommend it.

...end commercial...

A Math Equation

Returning from a family vacation + a broken dryer =

This:


+ This:

The good, the bad, and the ugly of our new house

Welcome to my new house. Are you ready for a tour? It's good, it's bad, and it's ugly. I cut off this picture so you can't see the other side of the duplex. It looks just like our side only reversed. If you walked in the front door you would see this:



Well, actually it would look more like this:

Here is the other side of the front room:The kitchen is bad and ugly. It is small and has no counter space. Our IKEA table takes up half the room

The counter NEVER looks like this. We have no dishwasher, so the counter is always covered with dishes. There is only on thing I like about this kitchen and here it is:

Why doesn't every kitchen have a built in cookie sheet cabinet? I have been wishing I had something like this for years!

Here is the upstairs bathroom. The yellow counter top is pretty ugly, but at least is matches with my butterfly shower curtain.


The girl's room: They wanted to all share a room, but the room is so tiny. They look like little orphans with their beds all in a row.

Here is the other side of the room with its tiny carpet space showing.

With the girls sharing a room, the other upstairs room became the play room:

I know we have way too many toys.

That's the whole upstairs. It is very tiny, but this room saves us from killing each other due to being crowded:


It's a basement, but it gets tons of light. And this room is huge. It can fit our new couch, the TV, all our instruments, both Rand's and my desks, and several book cases. And still have floor space for the girls to play games. I was tempted to make this room the play room, but my dh wisely suggested that we should make this big room a room that the whole family could enjoy.


Here is our bedroom. My dh bought all the decorations when we lived in Colorado. He did such a great job. It is the nicest decorated room in the house. And now it is in the basement... When we first got all the decorations up my dh said it looked like our old bedroom had been shrunk in the dryer...

We have a garden plot in our backyard. That is one of the "goods" assuming I can get anything to grow. I have tried gardening before, but I never really had a good space to work with. I love planting pretty flowers, but I haven't had too much luck planting things from seed.

Here is another on of the "goods. " This is the view from our backyard. Feel free to be jealous and then remember I have no dishwasher.

Only a 5 year old...

I came upstairs yesterday and found this on the kitchen table. It took me a minute to figure out what I was seeing. Yes, that's right, someone had been STAPLING a graham cracker. It only took me one guess to figure out who had been doing this. I confronted the culprit:

Me: Arwen, have you been STAPLING the graham crackers?

Arwen: Yes

Me: Um, why?

Arwen: Because I wanted to.

Me: Uh, OK.

What was going through that 5 year olds mind? Did she come up with the idea to staple the graham crackers and go and get the stapler? Or was the stapler sitting on the table while she was eating the crackers and stapling them seemed like a good idea? Who knows, but I am stilling laughing at the sight of the stapler with the graham cracker crumbs in it.

The 10 year old gets her ears pierced

OK, I was going to post something sentimental yesterday about my oldest daughter turning 10, but by the end of the day's festivities, I was exhausted. We went to our homeschool group's park day in the morning - and brought treats. Then we met my dh on campus and had lunch in the food court - yuck. We then walked around campus and went to the art museum's family art festival. Back to the student center for ice cream- yum. Home for a bit before heading to the library for their Shakespeare for Kids activity (Sierra insisted even after I suggested we skip it since it was her birthday). Then home for dinner (lasagna - Sierra's choice). At 7 pm we had Sierra's new friend from church over for cake (cheesecake - Sierra's choice). I wasn't planning any kind of friend party since we just moved here and I didn't think Sierra had made any close friends, yet, but I was informed on Sunday that her friend Emily was so excited about Sierra's birthday and wanted to give her a present. Well, what's a mom to do? So, I quickly came up with a plan to have the friend over for cake in the evening. So as you can see it was a very busy day that led to a very exhausted mom at the end of the day.

But that is not what this post is about. Last year my dh decided that Sierra was old enough to get her ears pierced if she wanted, but she didn't want to, yet. This year she was ready. Here are some hilarious pictures of her reaction to getting her ears pierced.

Before the first piercing... feeling a little nervous


Time for the second ear. The crying has begun.
Getting the second ear pierced. Love the reaction!



Very happy to have gotten her ears pierced?



Feeling better