Last Day of School

Today was our official last day of school, for this school year. Now I have to get their portfolios together. I will probably work on that on a rainy day. I love the sun, and sitting by the pool. I do not like the heat and humidity though. So, by one I am in the house hibernating until about eight. We are doing only Math now, and DJ does have a couple more History chapters to finish up. Nothing that takes long. I started doing flash cards with Caitlin, for addition and subtraction, this past week. She uses a number line and fingers, but I figured she should start memorizing them instead. She cried and whined liked she was going to die. It is going to be too hard, blah blah blah. She knew almost all of them. Granted she could be faster, and that will come with practice. Why does she do that? She did the same thing with Reading. Told me forever she couldn't do it, and then I caught her reading one night a chapter book to her doll. Little stinker! But, I still don't understand why she wants me to think she doesn't know stuff. Even though she is doing Math over the Summer, I am going to try to sneak in some spelling. Her spelling actually too is better than she leads me to believe. I think she is just a lazy student. That sounds awful, but the truth hurts sometimes. We just had our first Tropical Storm, and my plants were in Heaven. I think I don't water them enough, even though I water every day. With the exception of the roses, the veggies will have to just be soaked I guess. I have friends that planted the same time as me and have veggies already. I have had tomatoes, but that plant is two years old, and produced tomatoes all Winter. So, unless I am certain it is going to rain I will be dousing them with water every day. The bunny poo helps alot too. I am also doing 30 Days of Creativity for the month of June. If you would like to see what I have been creating, please visit my blog Melissas Jewelry and Gems. DJ has let his blog slide a bit, but not because he has not been writing. He did an online Language Arts course, and it was a lot of reading and writing. He got an A in that class. Now he has decided to write a book over the Summer. He writes about a chapter each night. He really is very good. I am going to see if he will publish it. Of course it will have to be proofread and edited before all that. I also am preparing for my sister to come for a week on the 12th, and getting ready for the next school year. I will be doing posts over the Summer about interesting facts you may not know. Some of them are like, Wow! Happy Summer!

Last Day of School

Well another school year has come to an end. I can't believe it already. The kids have their evaluations in July, and DJ has a 4H scrapbook to create. So, don't worry I will still be sharing and writing. I wouldn't want anyone to miss me too much.

I return to work tomorrow night. As much as I love being home, I am ready to go back. You don't realize how much you need money until it is not coming in anymore. Of course we still have my husband's pay, but my pay covered some pretty hefty bills. Plus it allowed us some breathing room for play and fun things as well. Because I am basically a contract worker, there are no benefits as in sick pay and such. The benefit is that I make my own hours. I am not usually sick so this has never been an issue. Anyway enough about all that. The wound is healing and can easily be covered and managed without risk of infection. So I shall return.

I thought I would share the pictures from the farm the other day. I only didn't share two. One of a chicken, and one of the foal. DJ wants to use those two in some photography contests. So, until I get a watermark on them, they won't be shared. It is a shame you have to worry about people borrowing your images. I keep all my Picasa albums private as well. Google images does offer a wide variety of images available supposedly for people to use. But beware because you can still get scolded if you use one and the owner did not intend for that purpose. Trust me. My kids love cats and kittens. Unfortunately I am highly allergic so there will be no cats or kittens at my house. That is probably why they like them so much, LOL!

I have already started working on next years curriculum and lessons. I am trying to avoid textbook learning as much as possible. Plus, I am trying all the free resources I can. There are some fabulous resources now, and not just for homeschoolers. If you visit my Pinterest board, that is where I have been sharing all the new ones I find. They save space on my blog and my computer.

Well that is it for now.  Have an awesome weekend, everyone!  I have given DJ a writing assignment for his evaluation.  It is a poem, so be on the watch for that.  Are your kids on Summer Vacation yet?

Update!

OK, the picture of Biscuit has nothing to do with this update, I just like to add a picture to the post, and she is so cute. Anyhow, I was bitten by a spider, or so they are assuming it was a spider. I have lived here seven years and never been bitten by anything more than a mosquito or those pesky black flies. I actually felt it bite me, it hurt really bad. I couldn't find anything that had bitten me though, and since it didn't really itch and the pain ceased pretty quickly, I paid it no mind. It took a few days, like six I think, and I started to notice it looking kind of yucky. So, I hot packed it. And I kept hot packing it. Well that just made it worse. The doctor thinks the hot pack made the venom really go into full activation, even though it had taken so long to start. Usually within 48 hours of being bitten by something with venom, ie the brown recluse spider, it is a hot mess. My body doesn't do anything normal, so I was not surprised. So I started to put some Neosporin on it and kept it covered. Well by Saturday morning, it was really bad. Large area, hot, hard and edematous. Ugh now what, the doctor office was closed. So I called off from work and got to the doctor first thing Monday morning. Now it has been 48 hours and it is improving rather quickly. I had developed some slough on the wound and the doctor wanted to promptly debride it in the office with a scapel and a big needle. Uh no thanks, lets try something less painful and intrusive first, thank you very much. So, I got an antibiotic and wet to dry dressings started. Wet to dry dressings are extremely painful but effective. By this evening I have removed all slough, and the bed of the wound is healing nicely. Now I hope I can just do moist dressings once or twice a day to avoid the dry dressing ripping off new skin. The moist dressing is much less painful, and easier for me to get around with it on. So far it is going well, but I still have to be diligent in using good sterile and clean technique, eating healthy, and staying well hydrated during the healing process. I have not been able to exercise, and that has me bummed. It was just too painful. Hopefully tomorrow, I will get to at least walk at a snail pace, but still a walk.

I have to miss two Saturdays of work, which strains my pocketbook, but I always think it could be much worse, so I don't complain. I got all of DJ's photos ordered for his 4H photography book, book 2. He has one more book for next school year. We also are finishing up the first Entomology book, with two more to go next year and the year after. He still needs to do the 4H scrapbook, but that is not due until August, and other members have pictures they want to include, so I wait. I am not a good waiter.

In June, I am creating a new project everyday for a challenge. Now this can be you make one thing everyday, or if it is a big project you work on it, and then show your progress everyday. If anyone is interested in joining in visit my jewelry blog, for the info.

I have been adding all the cool school websites I have found over the past year, to my Pinterest board, Eclectic Homeschooler.   You can see them all by clicking the link.  Pinterest has a weird format for letting you share things.  If it can not locate an image, you can't pin it.  Also some websites, why I do not know, will not let you share their website on Pinterest.  So, after I am all done pinning the ones I can, I will do a blog post for the rest of them.  Most of them will be on Pinterest. 

Now that DJ's pictures have been ordered, over a hundred of them, I will uploading his images to his blog and his Picasa album and getting them off my computer.  He took way more than a hundred, but only certain ones were for each assignment.  He got some really good ones this year.  Since I want to watermark them all, it is a very time consuming project.  Might take me all summer. 

June 9th is our last official day of school.  Evaluations are already set for July 11th.  DJ will do math, some Science, and educational games over the summer.  Nothing that should take more than a hour out of his day.  Caitlin will do Math and educational games as well.