You Are Pocahantas!

Free-spirited and wise. You have a strong passionate spirit that touches and changes all who know you. The wisdom and common sense that you have is really what guides you through life. Even so, you also have a very playful side that loves adventure and excitement.

Which Disney Princess Are You?

First Day of School - Homeschooler Style

Last week as I was reading blogs, I noticed that a lot of my friends and family members were posting First Day of School pictures. Well, we started school today and I thought I would post some First Day of School pictures of my own.

Here are my children at 8:30am:


Here is a slightly blurry picture of my youngest who is officially a kindergartner this year - Yikes! I am sure I would be sad and emotional if I weren't keeping her home with me.

I think the picture is blurry because Arwen kept sticking her legs up in the air and showing her underwear. It is probably a good thing that I am not sending this crazy child out into the world just yet.


And here is a picture of all of my students getting comfy on the couch for our read aloud time. I meant to take more pictures, but I got busy with the, ya know, doing school thing and forgot. It was a pretty good day. I will post more about it later since I should probably get to bed so I will be ready for the second day of school - homeschool style.

35

I turn 35 today. A few months ago when I thought about this impending birthday, I felt good about it. I felt like I had come to a point in my life where I feel good about myself, I know who I am, and where I am going. I have known women in their 40's that seem so confident and sure of themselves, flaws and all. I was starting to feel like I was getting to that point in my own life. Sure, I have started to notice a few wrinkles in the last year or 2 and I am still 15 lbs over my pre -baby weight even though my baby is 5 years old, but I haven't found any gray hairs, yet, and attractiveness is 3/4 confidence anyway, right?

But then I went to the mall...

If you are over 30, I do not recommend shopping for clothing at the mall. I haven't shopped at the mall for years. I figured I couldn't afford the clothes there. But we just moved and I wanted to check out mall here and I had birthday money to spend. So Saturday, I went to the mall. Now, I gave up shopping in the juniors section when I was 29, but what I didn't realize is that the mall (except the department stores) is one big junior's section. When I came home crying - yes, I really did cry, I guess I am not quite as self actualized as I thought - my dh pointed out that, of course the mall is a bad place for a 35 year old to shop, the mall is designed for 13 - 21 year olds to hang out at... Duh!

But here is my dilemma. Where do women in their 30's shop? The cute clothing at the mall and in the junior's section is not cut to fit a woman in her 30's, skinny or not. Nor is most of it really appropriate either. I have been looking for graphic t- shirts, but I don't think a 35 year old mother of 3 should run around in a shirt that says," I kissed a girl and I liked it." I was also looking for a lace bottomed tank to wear under stuff, but apparently if you have short waist, the lace will hit you about mid thigh and that is just not attractive at all. But I don't want to wear old lady clothes, now or ever really.

So I have resigned myself to plain colored t- shirts and jeans. And until I get nominated for "What Not to Wear," I will be shopping at Target, Ross, Marshall's, and Macy's (sale rack and store brand) And carefully avoiding the junior's section.

Maybe next year I will become the confident middle aged - ack! - woman that I dream of becoming...

My name is Michelle and I am a booklist junkie

I admit that I have a problem. That is the first step, right? I just love looking at booklists. And I can't just find one great booklist and use it for our homeschool. No, I have to search out every booklist I can find and consolidate them into my own personal booklists. So for all of you booklist junkies out there. I have published my lists on Google Docs and set up links in my side bar.

They are in excel spreadsheets. Be sure to check out all of the sheets. Some of the lists have several sheets. I couldn't figure out how to give each column a heading and still be able to organize the lists. They should be easy to figure out. I put an X next to the books we have read and stars to indicate how much we liked the book. I also noted age level for some. My kids are 5, 7, and 10, so most books are appropriate for that age range. I also noted if we owned the book. If the documents have more than one sheet, it is usually because each sheet is a separate sub category. For example, the Around the World Books are divided by area of the world. And the ancient history list has separate sheets for Egypt, Greece, and Rome.

This is just a portion of my lists. The rest are still hand written. Check back as I will be adding new lists after I get them typed into excel. Enjoy.

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...