Homeschool Mother's Journal- My son has been taken by aliens!

IN MY LIFE
I think my 12 year old has been abducted by aliens and replaced with an identical match except for the fact that his personality is  now a moody, grumpy, glum, full of attitude and a bit brainless. Seriously where did my son go? He can't read anymore either the aliens must have sucked that knowledge out of his brain as well. He is so spaced  out when doing his school work he has been getting a lot of his school work wrong because he just isn't reading the directions. When he does get something wrong and I am trying to teach him the correct way of doing it he rolls his eyes and argues back at me at why he is right and I am wrong.I would appreciate  the aliens to come back this weekend and give me back my happy, funny, jolly smart son.

A friend of mine called me this week and told me she had to quit Starbuck's, Yes  I said Starbuck's  not crack, or heroine STARBUCK'S!! I had to laugh because I am a closet Starbuck's drinker. The first time I went there I said to a friend " NOWAY will I go back there that stuff is so expensive and really not all that great" but then I started going a bit more.often, maybe I need to quit too!  There are entire support groups online for quitting drinking Starbuck's coffee. This woman's blog post about quitting I found quite funny!

My husband is away on a business trip with one of our clients trying to help her land a 3 million dollar client. He is in the Mile high city of Denver, so I have been single moming it all week!

I got the results back from all the heart tests I had done, the results to the halter test were that I am borderline tachycardic. Which basically means my heart is beating to fast. The doc wants me on a Beta blocker but that lowers your BP and my BP is already to low causing me to pass out often. I am a fit person who works out hard regularly and eats mostly meats fruits and veggies so I am not sure what is causing this. I am going to monitor my pulse more closely and look into some all natural ways to help fix the problem.

IN OUR HOMESCHOOL WEEK
We went to the Zoo on beautiful sunny 25 degree day with our homeschool friends to sketch live animals The animals were so active and amusing to see.

 Falcon's polar bear

Robin's Grey seal

Falcon finished up Animal Farm, we had many long conversations about all the hidden meanings in this book. It really is a great book to get kids really involved in critical thinking and reading beyond the words.
 A great Moral to the story "Don't be a sheep and blindly follow those in power without questioning their motives"                        

                                     


I had him listen to the audio book while following along in the book and then reading the Cliff Notes after each chapter.We watched the movie together on Netflix  after the book was finished.

Robin received another love letter from her boyfriend ( so cute!)

LIFE SKILLS, I even learned a new life skill!
When our toilet got plugged up again this week Falcon asked to learn how to plunge the toilet. So I taught him how to do it and not make a mess, no one ever taught me I just had to figure it out on my own and have had yucky water splattered all over me many time in my young years.

Falcon also learned why the washer gets out of balance and how to correct the problem and start the load again.
My 3 younger kids have been begging to help to laundry all week so I have been teaching them how to sort, fill and start cycles.

But the most entertaining life skill I tried to teach the kids this week was how to react and recover when your car is sliding. I took the kids sledding in the middle of a snow storm and as we arrived I did some donuts in the empty parking slide purposely making my car slide and talking to the kids about how to recover from a nasty slide on snow/ ice. We were all having a great time until I slowly slid sideways into a 3.5 foot snowdrift., I knew I was going to hit but did nothing to stop it because I knew it couldn't do any damage to the car. I did not think that it would embed my car so deeply in the snow that I would be stuck, lesson learned! It took me about an hour to dig myself out while the kids played in the snow. I felt like such and animal on all fours digging my car out with my hands ( I had no shovel). Good thing I was toasty warm in all my snow gear, I love my Carthartt overall they keep me sooooooo warm . Then off to the snow hill we went and had a blast.

Pulling Owl though the snow on the toboggan that I used as a child.

I would rather dig my car out of the snow than dig snow out of my car!

WHATS COOKING?

Lots of ice cream: strawberry, cinnamon,  orange sherbet, and chocolate and then I served it for breakfast!

Olive Garden's Zuppa Tuscana soap 

Strawberry spinach smoothies with cinnamon honey whipped cream ( from scratch)

Notice a theme yet? I bought a bunch organic heavy whipping cream a few weeks back when it was on sale  and it was going to go bad if I didn't use it this week, so made lots of dishes with cream in it.

Creamy potato soup

Cheesy hamburger casserole

OUTSIDE MY WINDOW RIGHT NOW I SEE.....

Melting snow in  turning into a big muddy mess.

I  AM WEARING ...

Fuzzy pink pj's, a pink Tinkerbell t-shirt, fuzzy blue striped socks, my leopard slippers and a dark grey sweater. My youngest kids are in bed so I am now in my pj's after a nice long and peaceful hot shower  When I shower in the morning I usually hop in when the kids have just eaten breakfast and are watching a TV show. They will be content and quite when I get in but not long after I am in the shower fully soaped up do I hear....THUMP....CRASH.... "AHHHHHHH" ...."NO" ...."I'M TELLING!"....... BANG,BANG...! I have no idea what goes in when I am in the shower, but when the water turns off it is quite again. When I am dressed and walk out they are all sitting on the couch again peacefully watching tv! Sometimes though I do get interrupted by children needing to use the bathroom or needing kisses on their owies! 

WISDOM TO SHARE...

I read once on someones blog a while back that kids learn better from experience and that she would let her kids go outside and play in the hose in 50 degree weather if they asked instead of telling them "no, you will freeze" because they will learn and remember the lesson better if they actually do it. I try to remember this always.

IN MY FREE TIME...

Of course I have tons of free time I only have 4 kids that I homeschool, cook all meals from scratch and do house work all day. It's not like I have a REAL job! How many times have you heard that?

I have been trying to finish up Green Eyes, work on my new Project Life Album, and watch Vampire Diaries on Netflix. I haven't gotten far on any of those though.