Where am I going...

Many days are crazy busy around here, and this week has been no exception.

It is canning season, and school has started.  Between homeschool, preschool, one in high school, outside activities, farmer's market, therapies, and anything else you can think of, almost every day is running around like a chicken with my head cut off.  But I'm managing to make it through.  I had a nice talk with a good friend a couple days ago, and really thought out a few things, so I'm working on sorting a few things out in my personal life.  Removing some toxic situations and damaging relationships, clearing my head, and removing "things" that I just don't need in my life.  I'm doing a little more for me now too.

As my adult life has progressed and I have thought about what I would really like to do with it and what I would like to pursue, the idea of homemaking has become more and more appealing.  I have always wanted to live on a farm, out in the country.  I don't want a giant herd of cattle or acres upon acres of crops.  I want a few acres maybe.  Fruit trees, berry bushes, a large garden - or a few gardens ;) - and a few animals.  Goats, chickens for eggs, a pig and a calf to raise to be butchered later.  I love canning.  I love cooking.  I never knew there was a name for it.  But now I know what it is.

Homesteading.

Many of my goals that I have been working on, and many of the things I love doing fall in line with homesteading.  Besides the cooking and canning,  there's gardening, attempting to be self-sufficient, home remedies, hands-on. I've been attempting to embrace minimalism as I've been purging and downsizing.  I'm not afraid to make things myself.  I already trade and barter at Farmer's Market quite often with the other vendors just because that's how things are done there.  Fortunately between me and my husband, we are able to do most things.

For now I'm going to attempt to expand what I'm already doing to include more and see how much homesteading I can actually do here in town.  I really wish I could have chickens here, but unfortunately that's not a possibility with our location.  We'll just have to see what the future brings.

TODAY is Day One

I've been flipping this first post over and over in my mind for the past few days... where to start with it.  I've tried to blog before, but I decided to start over, from the beginning, with Day One.  This is my journal, my stories, of my real life.  My successes and my failures.  What it's like to live my chaotic life where we rarely have a quiet moment.  My chickens are 3, 9, and a dramatic 14, which means excitement enough, but add in Cystic Fibrosis, homeschooling, and ASD, and well, ya know, everything is just a breeze, right?

Welcome to Real Life!

Let me introduce my chickens.....

This is my Monkey - 3 years old, crazy adorable, cuddlebug, and has everyone wrapped around his every finger.

This is Scrappy - 9 years old, fearless, and always has us wondering "what next?"

This is Princess - 14, feisty, coming into her own, but always a challenge too.

This man is my Hubs - the love of my life and the man who has made my life so much better.

And me :)  I hate pictures, but I'm learning to deal with them a little more because life only happens once, and I need to be able to save some of the memories with my kids.  I don't want them to look and say "Why wasn't Mom ever in any of these pictures?"

And what do I do? Hmm, the question should be what DON'T I do!  I craft for a living.  I LOVE making stuff, especially upcycling.  I crochet, knit, embroider, sew, try to paint... among others.  The list of things I'd LIKE to try is long too.  And I cook and can.  I love canning - I will try canning almost anything!  Lately I've been experimental cooking - and you'll get to join me in some of those adventures - and successes and mishaps!!!  This is going to be... fun.... and interesting.... and.... a whole lotta true life and starting over and over again on Day One!

 

Paper Clutter

Today was another rainy day.  Enough with the rain already!!  It's been raining for almost 2 weeks now, and I am craving Vitamin D in the worst way!!  My garden isn't sure if it's even growing season right now or if the seeds should still be hiding away underground where it's slightly warmer.  The poor tomato plants may be stunted.  I think the boys and I are feeling stunted.  WE need the sunlight and warmth.  WE need to get out and play in the sun.  Normally I wouldn't have a problem with the kids playing in the rain and the mud, but with the temps only being in the 40's, it's not quite warm enough for that.

Today we spent the day doing some cleaning around the house.  I focused on the paper clutter under the cleaning plan that I'm following.  As I may have posted yesterday, I'm not planning on following the 40 week plan over 40 actual weeks because I'd like the house to be clean before that.  I'm going to try to abridge the plan to make it through a little faster.  I don't know how fast, it depends on each step, but we'll see what happens.  Anyway.. here's the plan that I'm following.. https://organize365.com/organize-365-podcast/  I'm new with listening to podcasts, but I started with podcast #1 and am going from there. I came up with a total of 6 Sunday baskets!!

I know they're not all "baskets" but I just used whatever was handy.  I didn't get through all of them today because I was playing single parent while hubby was at the shop all day, but I did get through 3 of them!  I did a quick sort - his, mine, kids, and trash piles.  Then a more thorough where I went back through all my stuff and opened it and decided if it was keep, shred, or recycle.  If it was keep, I had to decide where it was going to go or what I was going to do with it and put it in the appropriate file/pile.  Turns out most of the stuff I went through was either shred or recycle.  I think that's what I'm going to find when I go through the rest of the stuff, which I'm hoping to do tomorrow. 

Breaking the cleaning down into these smaller manageable pieces is really helping me. Normally when I work on this stuff, my anxiety gets to me and drives me crazy because I get too overwhelmed and I need to walk away.  But so far this is working!! 

There is another podcast I found that is breaking down organization into little pieces, and I'm working that into my routine too.  It builds on itself.  It started with the first night - spend a couple minutes just picking up the bathroom before going to bed.  Put everything in the bathroom away where it goes, wipe down the sink/counters, pick up stuff on the floor.  That way in the morning the bathroom is clean when you go in there.  Now they added on Step 2 - pick up and put away 5 things before you go to bed.  Just 5 things you see sitting out that aren't where they belong, and put them away.

I talked to a friend of mine today who I had lost touch with for a while and has now moved back to the area. She is a personal trainer and I was asking for some advice because I'm getting desperate now that I've been diagnosed at pre-diabetic and have osteoarthritis in my knee.  I was doing my workout today - Hip Hop Abs - when the 2 oldest kids decided they had to start fighting and no one wanted to watch my Monkey, so I had to quit halfway through.  It's really grating on me when they have to fight like that ALL the time.  She only has 2 days of school left, so I'm sure they're going to be fighting  A LOT....

2nd Grade - Week 1 Review and on to Week 2

Well, week 1 of 2nd grade started out pretty good.  We were on track for the first couple days.  All of our scheduled lessons were done and checked off.  It only took, in total, about 3 hours to get all of Scrappy's work done.  I thought that was pretty good!!  I explained to him that if he was in public school, he would be there more than twice as long as that each day to get all his work done.  Here is what a full day, done, in my planner looks like.

A red check mark as each item gets done.  Once each item is checked off, he gets to put a star next to the subject to show that it's all done.  The first 2 days of school looked like the picture above.

This year we even added in Home Ec so he could do some cooking since he likes to help with supper.  Once day a week he will either be making supper or dessert.  This week he made a very simple soup recipe - Iroquois Corn Soup.

We were off to such a great start, I had such high hopes for this school year.

But then life happened.

Wednesday morning I attempted to get him to do as much as we could before we had to leave for my dentist appointment.  We got through a good majority of it.  I had hoped to finish it when we got home, but a stop at the grocery store and a few other interruptions put a dent in those plans.  Oh well, move it to Thursday.  As one of my instructors, Christy, would say, "Blessed are the flexible, for they shall not be bent out of shape."

Thursday morning - TOPS meeting. OK.  Then Chubbers had his physical therapist coming because he's still not walking because he's 17 months old and everyone is worried.  I mean, he IS furniture surfing and holding hands.  Yesterday he took a couple steps from the chair to Mommy without realizing it because he didn't want Daddy and he just wanted me :)  (and my big boy just got his hair cut yesterday too - he looks like such a big boy now!!!)

But he's so blonde his hair looks so much shorter than it actually is.

Anyway, back to school.  Thursday afternoon I had so much trouble getting Scrappy back on track.  Our schedule at the end of the day ended up like this:

obviously not done :(  Friday morning I had a doctor's appointment, but by the time that was done and I picked up my prescription, then got our roofing permit, it was after lunch.  Fortunately Beau fed the boys while I was gone.  Half the day was gone.  Tried as I could, we didn't get Friday's work done and ended up carrying our schooling into Saturday because of a very uncooperative student.

Yesterday didn't go much better.  I didn't expect Monday's to be very easy anyway, which is why I schedule Monday mornings to be library time, plus a light schedule for the rest of the day.  We accomplished Math yesterday.  That was it.  And that was after Daddy was home.  Today Mommy had to be strict and is making Scraps sit alone in the office doing his work while I keep an eye on Chubbers.  Beau is gone this week at camp and won't be home until Friday.  Figured it's time for me to get in the habit of not having the extra hands to help me before she goes back to school.

I suppose I better go check to see what Scraps is up to... it's a little too quiet in there....

Last Week of Home School Break

I've spent the last few weeks getting ready for the new school year, which starts on Monday.  Wow, Monday already!!  Where does the time go?!?!  I know that I'm more excited about it than Scrappy is - obviously.  The last 2 years - k-1 - I've been flying by the seat of my pants, not really having a lesson plan, no set curriculum.  We just read whatever struck Scrappy's fancy for Science, did a few workbooks, fought over doing some copy work to improve him handwriting, and didn't have any real schedule per say.

Well, 2nd grade is going to be a wake up call for him.  Especially when it comes to his "I don't wanna do it/I want a break/I'm still hungry/I did enough homework" attitude.  I checked to see what the Minnesota state regulations are for school.  There is not a set number of hours that he must complete, but they do have a few classes that are required, but they're pretty basic.

Today's summary is just about how I have everything set up for the school year.  Later on I'll post how I set up my curriculum if anyone is interested.  If anyone is reading this.  

I finally got the office mostly cleaned up since that's where the school supplies are stored.  We do some of the school work in there, but since I have Chubbermonkey to watch too, most of our work is actually done in the living room so that Chubbers has room/stuff to play with.  But this is what we find in the office:

 All of walls in the office are plaster, so my hubby had to drill into the wall to hang theses rails so we have something to hang our posters, etc on.  Currently, the only thing hanging here is our weekly class schedule.  This isn't necessarily the order of our classes, I just kept the order consistent so it was easier to see at a glance.  I still need to update that every other Thursday is also Girl Scout night for Beau, which is a factor into planning our lessons.

This bookshelf is in the corner of my office.  The top shelf is my miscellaneous books and supplies.  The second shelf is filler paper, new and used notebooks, folders, and miscellaneous school books, mostly too young for Scrappy but that I'm holding on to for Chubbers.  The third shelf is the books and supplies for this school year, including a small tote with stickers and another with pencils, erasers, and other school supplies in it.  The bottom is just overflow.

This file box is how my weekly lessons are arranged.  There is a green folder for each week and a colored file folder for each class.  If for some reason a class gets pushed back for something comes up, the file can get moved to the next folder.  The Bible Study, Music, Math, and Art folders are kept in the front of the box because they are not used every week and are only inserted when they are needed.

Having 2 children with Cystic Fibrosis and only having one steady income, I don't have an unlimited amount of money to spend on curriculum.  Plus I didn't want to go with a boxed curriculum that decides everything for us.  I was able to put together a pretty good and interesting set of plans for this year.  My biggest struggle was how to lay it out.  

Fortunately I have been following several homeschool blogs, and one helped point me to a book that, after reading through it a couple times, answered almost all my questions.  I would HIGHLY recommend reading Blueprint Homeschooling especially if you're lost on your planning!!  It gave me so many great ideas and set me on the right track.  I adapted a few things to what works for me, and voila!!  Ready to go!!  Here is what my planning looks like...

Scrappy's "English" book information - what book(s) we're doing and what pages on what days, along with what days we have field trips written in.

This is how our Science plans are written out.  I use the same method for History/Social Studies/Geography (which are all combined this year because of how the study units are being done.  More on that later.)  Each numeral is for a week.  The purple is what text/DVD is being used and the pages, red is experiments, green is worksheets.  All of this information is gathered and put into the file folder for the week with the heading on the label such as for week I) Cells.

After I have my daily plans laid out for my classes, I pull everything together in a composition notebook for my class schedule.  I use one page per day.  I list the date at the top and the classes down the sides.  All the pages that we will read are listed, worksheets and experiments and activities are listed.  At a glance we can see everything that we will do for the whole day.

Here are a couple pictures of one of my folders.  The blue index cards stapled to the top of the folder is the list of all the library books that I will need for the week for that class.  In this case, this is a History/Social Studies/Geography folder.  One card is for books I need from our local library, one is for books I need to get via inter-library loan. (Note: Check with your library if you need to do this. Our library advised that it takes approximately a week to get inter-library loan books.)  The yellow index cards on the left side of the folder is for materials I will need for the week for various projects.  This could be for recipes, craft projects, or experiments.

Since I'm not completely sure on all the field trips that we will be having this year yet, I don't want to get too far ahead of myself on the scheduling.  We are running on the 6 weeks on 1 week off schedule, so I have the first 6 weeks definitely scheduled in my composition book.  I have daily plans made up for all my classes so that they are ready to go when I am.

Spring Break for One

Homeschool

This week is spring break for Beau.  Unfortunately Scraps isn't getting the week off from school because he hasn't been consistent enough with doing his schooling to get large blocks off.  I've been trying several different approaches to get him to do his work.  Some things seem to work for a while, but then fizzle out.  The one I've been making the most progress with is Easy Peasy All in One Homeschool, but I think some of the reading is too advanced for him right now, and he is ahead in the math.  We tried getting into some of the history in it, and he has NO interest at all in it.  I'm going to be meeting with another homeschool mom who has been doing it longer than I have to get a few pointers and to be sure I'm covering what needs to be covered.  If I'm doing any extra, that's great!  I'm we're coming up short, well, then I'll need to adjust.  Now that Chubbermonkey is getting older (OMG he's a year old already!!!) I can finally try to set a schedule to follow a little better!!  I'm going to try to work on a spring schedule this week while Beau is home.

The Battle With CF

Scrappy is going to be going into the hospital next month for his tune-up.  Dr P is trying to get it done before we go on vacation.  Yup - we get an all expenses paid vacation this year!!!  Scrappy is getting his wish from the Make A Wish Foundation!  We will be going on a 5 day/4 night Disney Cruise in the Bahamas!!!  He is so excited - but so are the rest of us.  Especially since they are covering EVERYTHING, including flight, passports, and spending money.  We really need this vacation.  

Now just to make it through the 2 weeks in the hospital.  It's going to be a little more difficult this time because Mayo has become an accredited CF center, so any CF patients admitted must be kept in isolation during their stay.  I guess it'll be a good chance to work on homework....

My Real Life

Some chaos is going on here.  My grandma has not been well. Both of my great grandmothers have not been well.  I've been trying to do what I can to help, but there's only so much I can do.  It's very frustrating.

A little over a week ago, we had to have our oldest kitty, Abby, put down. She'd been vomiting a lot and lost a LOT of weight.  The vet initially thought she had an ulcer and thought it was something we could work through.  After she wasn't getting better, we discovered she had tumors in her abdomen and around her heart.  She was the best kitty a child could ask for - she had the best temperament even for babies.  I miss her a lot.

My health has been frustrating too.  I hit my highest weight ever 2 weeks ago.  My thyroid had been on the fritz for a while, so my meds had been adjusted several times.  Then stress piled on top of it.  I was doing great with working out until my grandma's surgery, but got sidetracked with helping her (I know, another excuse) so I slacked off a little.  But I'm trying to get back on track.  I've officially lost 4 pounds in the last 2 weeks.  So far I'm down another 2 this week (unofficially).  As of March 12, I gave up pop.  Coke specifically.  I used to drink a ton of it.  But my doc changed my migraine medication to topamax, which makes Coke taste like crap as a side effect.

Since I've been struggling with my weight, I'm teaming up with a friend with getting back on track.  She has also recently joined TOPS.  As of today, she and I are starting on the C25K program (again) with the intention of running the Tiger Trot next year, along with (hopefully) a few other 5ks.  Wish us luck!!

Summer Declutter Day 4

I know - you're wondering what happened to Day 3.  The honest truth?  I was just so dang tired after all my running that I fell asleep in the recliner - when I had ever intention of getting some work done.  I guess I really needed the sleep.

First, I have a picture of some progress

This is my desk after all the previously posted clutter was cleaned off of it.  You really don't  want to see how awful it looked before!!  But I am happy that I AM making some progress on my office!!

Here is the Day 2 pile

Left: recycle Right: shred Bottom: Keep

And the pile from today.

Left: recycle Top: shred  Right: garbage

What you don't see here is the "keep" pile, since I had started going through some of the files in my filing cabinet too.  I'm making room so I can file my paperwork soon!  For now, though, I'm going to let my wrist heal :(