Who can homeschool?

Homeschooling: I'm often asked how I can possibly remember all one needs to know to be a teacher to my kids. The secret is...you don't have to remember much at all. I was thinking about that this morning as I watched a 45 minute movie on the Marianas Trench, took notes, and wrote a quiz. The Marianas Trench is the deepest place on earth. Earlier today I had no idea where that place might be. Had no idea there was a place called the Marianas Trench. And certainly had no clue that it's nearly 7 miles beneath the ocean floor! It's a mile deeper than Mt. Everest is tall.

Next I moved on to American Government. I do have a vague recollection of that subject and it's kind of hard to ignore how it's working lately but to make sure I don't mess up, I'm using an interactive DVD by Standard Deviants. After watching the first chapter I decided to take the quiz. Here's the first question:

I answered TRUE.

Oops.

There were 4 more questions about Chapter 1 and I got the rest right. I should have taken notes and studied! My kids will. They'll also take the quiz on paper so they can't cheat.

I actually really like how the information on government is presented by young actors using both serious points of fact and humor. I laughed out loud at the name they made up for The Articles of the Confederation before explaining that our forefathers didn't really use that.

I'm even kind of enjoying my recycled 6th and 7th grade education. Probably more so than I did when I was doing it the first time. I highly recommend it.

Baby it's COLD outside!

Horses: I think it hit a whopping 11 degrees today. It's 6 degrees now at 7:20 pm. Brrrrr. I haven't left the house but around 8:30 we are going to take Stanley some hot water to thaw out his water bucket. He has a heated bucket but it's not hooked up yet. He is wearing his fleece jammies under his heavy winter blanket so he should be warm enough but in this weather I'm glad I'm not a horse.

Last week we met up with 18 year old Saddle Seat Girl. She came over to ride Stanley since she's hoping to be on the MSU Equestrian Team next year and needs to practice riding a stock horse. First I helped get her stirrups the right length. She's in-between my holes and Equestrian Girl's.

Next she worked hard on using her lower legs and figuring out how to ride with a loose rein. She was amazed that Stanley would turn the direction she looked with no other cues but it drove her nuts that his head was so low!


In the end though she was all smiles - even wearing my helmet which was a tad tight on her!

Motocross: The boys were going to head down to the indoor track in Ohio today. But it was just too cold. They thought about going tomorrow but it might snow. Now they are tentatively planning on Wednesday. Next weekend is ArenaCross in Grand Rapids. Motocross Boy really wants to race there but Dad is leaning towards a no. Maybe we'll just go watch??

Homeschooling: Vacation is officially over on Sunday night and a full schedule awaits for Monday morning. Oh boy. Coming back from time off is never easy for Motocross Boy. I had good intentions of having him do at least some math almost every day but that didn't happen. They did watch the first episode of "How the Earth was Made" which was about the San Andreas Fault in California. Only 12 more episodes to go! I bought the whole series just before Christmas for $20 which I thought was a steal. Great science lessons so long as I take the time to watch and learn first!! Geology was never my strong suit.

Happy Birthday Equestrian Girl!

Today was Equestrian Girl's Birthday. She couldn't wait to open her presents this morning - luckily she slept in later than on Christmas morning. It was light out.

She liked her card.

She knew what was in this package.

It was this brown fleece jacket that we were going to have embroidered with APHA and her horse's name...but it didn't fit. The sleeves were too short.


The next gift was a surprise. She thought it was books. It was half a dozen frames for her ROM's (Register of Merit) from APHA. She actually only has 5 right now but the frames came 2 to a pack and no doubt she'll earn another one next year.

Later we went shopping, ran some errands and then went out for a semi-fancy dinner at our favorite restaurant - Stillwater Grill. I had thought she'd want to ride too but we really didn't have any time since we got such a late start this morning.

Happy 12th Birthday Equestrian Girl!

Scrapping

Last year I spent approximately 9657 hours between Christmas and New Year's Eve chronicling our entire year in scrap book pages. In previous years I had managed to complete this task in just 8544 hours during that lovely week of aftermath but last year I had discovered digital scrapping and just knew it would save me tons and tons of time. What I didn't take into account was that I was creating all these wonderful pages in 8.5"x 11" to fit my printer but the books I had bought called for 12"x 12" pages...which meant I did this very cool combination of digital and old fashioned scrap booking but it took foreeeeeever to do.

This year I had a new plan of attack. I even started a bit early and had picked out my favorite few pictures from at least 10 out of the 75 events I photographed in 2009! I also had figured out that Scott's new printers for his t-shirt business would work with 12"x 12" paper and he had all these lovely ink cartridges that were just sitting around doing nothing since he had swapped them out for special transfer inks. I was a bit worried about the cost of the photo paper in this size but was very happy to find that HP was having a great sale on their 13"x19 paper (I can trim) making it only $0.89 per sheet!

I started Christmas Day afternoon and just 36 hours later (including sleep) I was DONE!! 52 scrap book pages all done digitally. Some were "quickie" pages designed by "real" scrap queens where I just had to plug in a picture or two but most were done by me using papers and elements that I've either purchased or downloaded for free.

Enjoy a selection of my favorites!

Merry Christmas!

Homeschooling: I received an email yesterday from a woman I am honored to call friend. Marcie Lipsitt is a self-less fighter for the rights of special needs children to get a free and appropriate public education as allowed by federal law. She came through for me with advice and help when we needed it most as Motocross Boy was about to be expelled from public school. She encouraged us with our decision to homeschool and inspired me to continue to fight for the rights of other special needs public school children even if we weren't going that direction. So I wasn't too surprised when about a year ago with her family she agreed to allow HBO to film them for a documentary on bipolar disease in children. I also knew it would be a quality and fair program if Marcie was going to be involved. Her email yesterday was letting us know that the documentary will finally air on HBO2 January 6th at 7 p.m. I'm now on a search to find someone who can record this for me since we don't have HBO...

http://www.hbo.com/docs/index.html Diagnosis Bipolar: Five Families Search for Answers

Christmas Breakfast: When we were young the tradition was always for Dad to make his famous "sticky buns" for Christmas morning breakfast. I'm not sure how that got started or even where the recipe came from but they were yummy and we all loved them. Later as an adult with my own family, we started making what I think some people call "monkey bread". It was easier than the sticky buns but had a similar taste and no nuts - I have a family of nut haters somehow. This year I wanted to try something new and while looking for something else I spotted this recipe for Raspberry-Stuffed French Toast with Custard Sauce. Anyone who knows me knows I'm not a baker and I don't like anything complicated. This didn't look too bad and I usually have most of the ingredients except Neufchatel cheese. It was delicious!!! Everyone loved it this morning and I highly recommend it. Do pay attention to the fact it serves NINE. I'm going to try freezing our leftovers - we'll see how they fare.

And Christmas isn't Christmas without the bathrobe early morning bleary eyed pictures. And yes, that is a blender that Motocross Boy got for Christmas!! His VERY own blender for making his yummy smoothies.

Equestrian Girl is showing off a silver blingy necklace and earrings set that she will wear for Western Pleasure classes next year.

Scott and I are not in any pictures this year. The kids were up at 3 a.m. squeaking the floor boards and talking LOUDLY hoping we'd wake up (as if we could sleep through that!) and let them come down to open presents. Made them wait until 6:30ish.

Ticked me right off...

Equestrian Girl and I got back from the cottage a little while ago. We were there a bit longer than planned - we had just ran up to clean the house to get ready for renters we have coming in after Christmas. Last night when I was cleaning the basement I noticed one side of the window in the bedroom was cracked. On closer inspection I saw that it was actually pushed out of the frame at the top and the latch was unlocked. I ALWAYS lock that window and usually the blinds are closed too (and they were open which is how I noticed the window was cracked in the first place). After mulling it over since nothing was missing and the house looked just like we left it, I decided that when Motocross Boy's friends were over last time we were up one of them must have fallen against that window and broke it but never said anything. We called and asked Motocross Boy and he didn't think that had happened but it seemed to be the only logical explanation. I probably should have gone outside to look but it was dark and I didn't.

So this morning I'm dusting the TV and I realize the stereo is gone! I'm 100% sure it was there when we left because Equestrian Girl had asked to take it home just as we were walking out the door and we said no because we didn't really have anywhere safe to put it since the truck was packed. I had already called the window people to come fix it so then I had to call the police. When I went outside with the officer to see the outside of the window, sure enough, someone had carefully chipped away the seal in order to pry the metal holding the glass out of the wood frame. The prying cracked the glass but none had actually broken out. They had pulled it out from the top corner just far enough to slide something down to flip the lock open then slid open the window. VERY odd that all they took was that little stereo - probably not more than $50 3-4 years ago (Scott's mom had sent it as an x-mas gift) and even closed the window when they left. The detective dusted for prints (I was cracking up that he was doing that for a $50 stereo but whatever) but didn't find anything useful. He even tried to get foot prints from the little bit of dirt that was there!! Slow day for the detectives in Mancelona I guess. He was thrilled to discover that I still had the box for the stereo including the serial number on it. That about made his day I think. That's what happens when you don't have garbage service - you save all the big boxes to burn in the bonfire pit in the summer but that one hadn't made it out yet.

I was pretty proud of myself last night. That window was leaking cold air pretty bad and we had plywood in the garage and plenty of dry wall but no saw. Nothing to measure with either. Then I found a couple of pieces of ceiling tile that looked to be pretty close to the right size. I fit the two big pieces in pretty good and then found two narrow strips to fill the gap. One was too long but I could score it with a kitchen knife and then break it. Then I found a roll of duct tape and went to town! That side ended up better insulated than the good glass side. But the window guy that came out this afternoon was supposed to board it from the outside too so it should be pretty secure since they can't actually fix it until after January 4th. Apparently the glass supplier is shut down for the next two weeks. Only up north.

Scott was freaking out that we were up there alone and hadn't even taken the dog with us but I really wasn't worried. The snow is so deep now that anyone would be nuts to try getting in through the back again and I had left the truck outside so anyone driving by would see someone was there. The detective said it looked like whoever did it knew what they were doing the way the window was opened but to only take that little stereo was weird. Didn't even take the bottle of tequila in the frig... So we are guessing that someone might have pulled in the driveway and spooked him off. We get a LOT of turn arounds for whatever reason. Very weird.

Old Houses

I really love old houses and the architecture. Our house was built in 1923...or maybe its 1927 - I can never remember - but it's been remodeled and added on to so many times it's hard to know what it was really like when it was "new". We find little remnants of the past when we remodel. Right now our master bathroom, which was an add on in the early 80's is semi-torn apart revealing an old opening in the original side of the house. Apparently the room we now use as an office (which was originally a bedroom) had a second window!

When we drive back and forth to the barn we pass this house. It's old and very beat up. The picture actually makes it look better than it is. It also sits very close to the street corners as you can see and while this isn't exactly a busy intersection, it does see a fair amount of traffic for being dirt roads. We always joke that Equestrian Girl is going to buy this house - she could probably afford it right now the way houses are priced around here.


This is another house that we pass. It looks a lot older than it probably is. I think it's a sad little house.


Now this house I love. I love the simplicity. I love that it's all white. I love the single wreath as a Christmas decoration on the door. I love that it probably has incredible lighting inside. I love that it's different.


We pass within 100 yards of this house every time we go to the barn but I never noticed it until just recently since we don't actually drive in front of it. And then the other day - it was waving at us! We just had to go closer and take a look and a few pictures.