Summer posting...Not really feeling it...

As many things do in the summer, posting has become a chore.  It really is much more fun to lay in the sun in 98 degree weather and spray myself with the hose when I am supposed to be spraying Jake as he runs by...I looked at a ladies legs at church on Sunday who had white hose on and realized that my hoseless legs were the same color...I have not pool to tan by (except our little $10 Walmart kids/puppy pool) so the hose will have to do, because another summer with out tan legs just isn't happening.  I bet my cousin Mallory (who is the tan queen every summer and who lives in VERMONT for goodness sake!!!  How can I live in the the hot and humid South and be whiter than a Vermonter...It is sad...) that I would be tanner than her this year and I am not going down with out a fight!  So, that is just one of my excuses for lack of blogging...Another excuse is that we are having too much fun homeschooling.  We have our...We still can't think of a name for them...Mine is "my compass" (it is what is leading us in our educations) and Jake's is his "Case-It" (the name brand of the big binder all AIG students had to have at his former school and it broke half way through the year so we had to replace...but I wasn't going to waste our money again so I let him use a cool Stephen Covey planner/small briefcase I found on clearance at Sam's Club for $12 a few years ago....), but I am trying to convince him we should have a really cool name for it...Jake isn't buying it so far.  But any way, I took pictures of our "whatever you want to call 'ems" because I am really into paper products and pretending I am organized. :)

This is my "Compass".  How cool is that name? The whole idea behind it is that we can take these binders with us wherever we go and have what we need to homeschool.  Some one with more homeschooling and grammatical knowledge tell me if homeschool is one word or two please...When I type it is says it is spelled wrong, but when I type homeschooling it is right...Things like that make me wonder just what kind of education my son will be getting....Any way I love the idea of an education from the classics, but I have to say that I don't think I am ready for it.  So, this is my happy medium.  No, we don't have a curriculum we are following.  I have the list of what Jake has to know in NC for the 5th grade and we will of course cover all of it and then some.  Yes, we are going to focus on reading and studying the things that interest Jake because those things will lead easily into the things he "needs to know".  In the Thomas Jefferson Education books they believe that you must educate yourself as you help your child educate themselves, so I made my own "Compass".  In the book it tells you to make a list of what you want to study  and get to it-that is your compass.  We made the list and the binder is just something I thought would help us focus.  So, here it is:

Have you heard of Peter Walsh (I think that is his name) he was on an organizing/redecorating show and he has a line at Office Max of organizing "stuff".  I could spend all day in Office Max...I am a paper product junkie-that is one of the reasons I retired from scrap booking...I liked to collect the paper not actually use it.  Any way, his line is called  [IN] PLACE and I am kind of in love.  It is just the fancy version of regular things like binders, page protectors, and subject dividers...but I still love it.  I bought this binder a long time ago and never had a reason to use it (at least not a good enough reason to use it...It was too special for just any old paper holding job...) until now!

I have this cute pencil case so that I will have pencils and pens on hand whenever we need them.

And this amazing post-it note thingy-ma-bobber.

I have a calendar, our chore lists (that I believe is totally part of homeschooling), attendance records, a place to keep track of grades because Jake still wants to get report cards, and all other things related to being a homeschooling mom! (I have a section of things I am going to be studying right along with Jake-right now it is the states.  No I do not know all I should know geographically or other wise about this fine country...) I even a list for library books (found it at http://donnayoung.org/homeschooling/index.htm,) and their due dates because we ALWAYS have late books-but not anymore!

I have a section with answer keys to the math worksheets I found at one of my new favorite websites:  worksheetworks.com.  We aren't really going to get into math until we get back from Vermont (in September), but Jake wanted to do some sheets (math geek). Which I think is an awesome idea if that is what he likes to do.

I have my compass which has all the things I want to spend time learning about for the next 6 months.  I am going to do some sewing, canning, and dehydrating-the domestic side of me is dying to come out.  The "academic" side I am focusing on studying: US history, the Constitution and the way our government is supposed to run, the Federalist Papers, (you get it-all the things the founding Fathers laid out for us...).  On the spiritual side I am going to continue to study the Book of Mormon and read the Doctrine and Covenants, that I am going to admit for the first time ever:  I have never read the D&C all the way through...I am a sad person I know...

This is Jake's.  His is binder is broken into the 3 main categories he wanted to study this summer:  The States (location, capital, order of statehood, and interesting facts.), animals (he wants to research a few different animals-you may remember he started a project a week or so ago on the Black Mamba snake), and History (he wants to research Blackbeard, Beethoven..and a couple of others I can't think of at the moment...).  His binder has built in pencil/pen case and calculator.  He loves it and everyone in his AIG class was jealous of his "briefcase".  He has a section in the back labeled "other" with his "Math: Keeping Skills Sharp" section and a section to take notes on things he is reading-especially the Book of Mormon, which he would like to finish reading by his birthday.  Behind the first page (a picture of a compass) is the list of things he wants to learn in the next 6 months, that he can add to any time he wants.

This is his "compass".

We also went to the library and signed up for the summer reading program.  They gave him a bag with info. on the program, a book mark, and some other cool things that I really can't remember off the top of my head...He did get a free book called Extra Credit by  Andrew Clements, since he signed up the book club for it in a couple of weeks.  This is the plastic bag that he wanted to keep but I talked him into taking a picture of it to preserve the memory and then tossing it. :)

Jake checked out several books (he has already read almost 3 of them since Friday) and these 2 DVD's that he thought looked awesome.

This is Jake doing his first math worksheet.  We weren't going to officially start until July 5th, but neither of us could wait any longer!  Our binders are so cool and were just waiting for us to use...

We had fun going through our little turning in and me checking it process (we have a turn in folder and a graded folder in one of those wire magazine holders.) and Jake was seriously thrilled at his first 100%.  So excited that he gave me a hug. :)  I am glad he is so excited to homeschool.  It isn't like he isn't used to getting 100%'s on his math worksheets, but there was just something about it being the first one for our school. :)

It was fun for me to use my red pen to check it and then put it down on my grading sheet. :)

  We also did our first state yesterday: Florida.  Jake decided he wanted to do Alaska and Hawaii tomorrow.

How cute is Jake's manatee?  Did you know that Florida was the 27th state (I thought it was a state way earlier...) and that 80% of the US's oranges and grapefruits are grown in Florida?  It also has more varieties of fish than any other place in the world has.  Pretty cool.  We also learned that while Crayola's eraseable colored pencils are great for coloring or highlighting...they are not so great for writing with...Jake's handwriting really isn't as sloppy as it looks on this sheet. (Seriously-I wised up and switched to a regular pencil half way through my sheet. :) )  He wanted to make sure everyone knew that....but don't look to closely at his math worksheet that he decided at the last second he wanted to sign and date (in case I got it confused with another students)...not sure why he wrote that so sloppy... :) 

I realize that this is an awfully long post about binders and papers, but we are really excited to be homeschooling and I wanted to document this so on days when we want to pull each others hair out we can remember we really do like each other. :)

(dis)Organization...

At different periods in my life I have been very organized. Example: alphabetized spice rack. I have never been completely organized. Do you remember on the show "Friends" how Monica was a neat freak, but had one closet filled to the brim with junk that nobody knew about? That is me. Even at my best organizational phase I still had the hidden chaos...I am working on it. I think it was a "what will I do if everything is done kind?" of self sabotage. I have moved past that phase. I am not however moving forward in this battle. I am in a very disorganized period right now. Example: This organizational tool (that I LOVE by the way and have missed horribly) was lost for...I'd say a good 6 months and Aaron just found it for me in a basket of stuff...

That's right folks I couldn't find my label maker...This made me take a few moments to reflect on how desperate the situation had become. I decided to tackle a few areas that had been bothering me in the kitchen. They aren't perfect, and they never will be, but it works and I felt better after doing these 3 things:

1. Going through the pantry and tossing things that were out of date and organizing it...again...Yes, this is organized...It's hard to tell I know. You should have seen it before...

2. Cleaning out under the sink, where there were 25 (give or take a few) bottles of old, 80% used up, cleaning supplies that were taking up space. I consolidated the 4 partially used glass cleaners into one bottle, I scrubbed the waste basket (you get the picture), and called it good.

3. Organizing the baking cupboards. Which included throwing away some very old corn starch (I don't use it very often and apparently you didn't either Mom because it was pretty old...), and again consolidating the two (actually 3, I found one in the pantry too...) sugar containers (one mine and one Mom's, the 3rd...I have no idea...). It is nice to open the cupboard and know where the vanilla extract is instead of having to search for it, or having a muffin mix fall on your head. I can now look in the cupboard and say "oh look, I need corn starch".. along with several other things, as you can see by the mostly empty containers...Again this was organized in the past...but hasn't been as of late.

After organizing these three spaces and emptying all the trash cans in the house I was left with this pile of trash:

Awesome! It actually isn't as much as it looks like it is because I threw away a lot of boxes from the pantry (they don't recycle card board here) and I didn't break them all down. I was feeling good about my progress...Until I thought about what we were going to have for dinner...And then I walked into the sun room to see that the table we were supposed to eat this mystery dinner on looked like this:

Note to self: Before "organizing", I should probably prioritize. The trash can smells lemony fresh-but there is nothing to eat for dinner and no uncluttered surface to eat it on if there was....Prioritize first, organize second. Mental note taken...I am a broken record. I seriously feel like I have learned this lesson before. I should look back to last January, I probably did the same thing last year...Some day it will finally sink in.

Sometimes I rock. It's just who I am.

Two evenings of this....
...This being neglecting all house work to cut out coupons. I was a coupon clipping machine getting ready for an awesome Saturday of grocery shopping. Sadly, I am not being sarcastic. I LOVE to shop but when you are poor college students (again) the only shopping you do is for food and other necessities. You see as a Bi-Lo employee I got 10% off today. Plus, we double coupons up to 99 cents every day. Plus, turkeys are on sale and we price match, so I got it for 35 cents a pound. Plus, we have awesome sales because it is the weekend before Thanksgiving. Plus, we have double fuel perks this weekend. Plus, you get 10 cents (per gallon of gas keep in mind) on every turkey you buy (and I bought 2). Plus, Tina (my sis) and her family of 6 are coming down (YIIPPPPEEE!) for Thanksgiving and that triples the mouths to feed (they are chipping in on the groceries since our budget for a week of groceries is 50$)! So, I had fun figuring out how to make the mighty dollar stretch the furthest. And STRETCH it did people.


And neglecting all house work lead up to this...
This being what was left of the dishes, all rinsed and ready to be put through the dishwasher after the load that was in there was done...In my defense I did clean out the fridge too...

And all this work lead to this....


I rock. The total for two trips (In order to get the good price on the turkey, you could only buy one with a $35 purchase. We needed 2-one to deep fry and one to cook the old fashion way. I am sorry I don't do turkey gravy from a packet...So, I broke it up) was $317.97. Of which, I only paid $115.27. That is right, I SAVED $206.50. This included a $10 coupon that a sweet lady (that I hugged twice as I held back tears) gave me because she said she wouldn't be able to use it before it expired. :)