Friday, March 23, 2012

Do you have a hobby?

I do!!! It's scrapbooking. I never thought I would dig it, but as it turns out...it's my escape. My brain never stops going. Never. Not even when I sleep. And yet...when I scrap, my anxious personality gets a little time off, lol. So I scrap. I do scrap once in a while on my own, but it's always more fun with friends/in a group.

Occasionally Tracy and I will just get together. Sometimes her mom will join us. Sometimes we meet up with friends. Even her sister-in-law has scrapped with us a few times. And she lives in CT (don't forget, I'm in GA)! :)

With the tax thing, there's never really much time for us to catch a scrap-break; not until late spring usually. However, this weekend our favorite scrappy joint, Archivers, is having a special weekend-long event. Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Three days. Surrounded by paper, Cricuts and glue. Oh the glue! I have a slight adhesive addiction...

Guess where Tracy and I will be today, and through the weekend?

While I will miss my boys, I know I will have a great time. They will too. They enjoy hanging with dad, and he's got a special surprise for Braeden. He got his training wheels off of his bike this week, and he was promised that as soon as he does that, he will get to pick out a brand new bike. They are going shopping tomorrow!

They've done great with their homeschooling this week, so they won't have to work on anything this weekend. Bailey is making much better progress with his writing course. He's not up to the SAT writing level yet, but I'll give him a little more time (that was a dig at those that constantly ask me what my 12 year old is going to do about college). He's even mentioned taking a blogging course once he's completed this, so he can start his own blog; which I think is great idea.

Braeden also had a good week, giving us very little resistance to those subjects he doesn't like. Which is most of them, lol.

I have no idea what this upcoming week holds for us, as my brain hasn't been able to get past the whole THREE DAYS OF SCRAPBOOKING thing. I'm a teensy bit excited. Monday morning will probably suck more than usual thanks to this, but I'll take it as it comes at me.

Have a super weekend!



Sunday, March 18, 2012

A Stage Debut...

The boys have really enjoyed their first year attending Masters Academy; a fine arts program for homeschoolers. Bailey still has a few weeks left at his grade level, but Braeden's year wrapped up this week and he had his end of the year performance yesterday. He was very diligent about practicing his lines, and he did a wonderful job memorizing all of them. I was worried he would be nervous, especially yesterday morning, but he wasn't. It was great! The play went very well, he a fun time and he's looking forward to being on stage again. Here's a little video...hard to hear, but at least it's documented, lol.


Masters is going to have a Young Drama Troupe (sp?) camp over the summer. We are going to check prices and see if it's an option for us. Either way, he is looking forward to next year's program. With homeschool trends on the rise the way they are, I would expect he will not only be returning with his friends from this year, but he will have an opportunity to meet many new ones!

As far as the school week for the boys, it went alright. No major news. They are both just plugging along with what they need to do. I did discover that Braeden's idea of alphabetizing is stopping at the first letter of a word. For instance, there is no further order between the words "shoe" and "score." They start with "S" therefore they just get lumped together. So, we are going to work on that this week with him. As usual, game play seems to produce better results, so he's going to work on some ABC games from SpellingCity.

Other than that, it's going to be soccer, soccer and a little more soccer this week. Bailey is hopefully going to a midnight showing of The Hunger Games on Thursday night/Friday morning. He's never been to a midnight movie before, and he's excited. He hasn't read the books yet, because he's trying to finish up another series of Rick Riordan's he's working on, but he's looking forward to seeing the movie then reading the trilogy. Thanks to Tracy for throwing out the invite, and to Scott for letting him come along with Quentin and Zachary!

Next weekend is a big weekend for Tracy and I...scrapbooking the *whole* weekend. Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Archivers is having a special all-weekend-long thing, and we are really looking forward to it!

Alrighty. Going to get off the computer and enjoy this beautiful Sunday with all of my boys. We have a friend down for the weekend, so that means I had to clean the house already...so I have no chores to do today, lol. Yay! ;)

Have a great week!

Sunday, March 11, 2012

Daylight Saving Time. Bah.


I know I've already whined about the fact that we are still observing this, but considering that this morning is the morning that I woke up and felt horribly cheated...it was worth another whine. :)

I worked all week last week, and while I'm looking forward to getting the paycheck, I am glad the week is done. After the long work week, we woke up Saturday and headed to the ATL to see my parents and my in-laws. It felt rushed, as it usually does, but we had a really good time and enjoyed the visit with everyone.

This week is going to be just as busy, but in different ways. Soccer officially starts on Tuesday and this is Braeden's last week at Masters. Saturday is his first end of the year performance; of course we are all super excited! We will have more days in Athens, thanks to dress rehearsals and stuff, but it's all good. We are having a friend over for the weekend as well, and hanging with friends is always fun.

As far as school goes, Bailey will continue with his Time4Writing while Braeden concentrates on reading. I'm also throwing in some extra focus on vocabulary this week...both boys will have some root word games and some other vocabulary games to play. Since game play isn't usually a problem with those two, I'm thinking the extra will be alright. Hopefully.

Okey dokey. I know that was short. But I'm drooling all over the place here. Need. Sleep. And an episode or two of Big Bang Theory. :D

Happy Sunday night, errbody! Have an amazing week!

Saturday, March 10, 2012

A Plug...

The hubs is one of those creative types; a writer. He has a great post on his site today, Halla Litriocht. He's talking about the dreams he had of being a writer when he was younger...and what, as an adult, being a writer is actually like. There's also some handy dandy tips and info. Go check it out! :)

The Big Lie of Writing

Sunday, March 4, 2012

Code Milky Green...

Yeah, kinda gross. But those of you who love Dr. Sheldon Cooper as much as we do will appreciate the funneh.

Week before last, the hubs and Braeden were sick. As the days went by, and the 73,000 mg of Vitamin C that I was consuming continued on, Bailey and I thought we were out of the woods. Turns out, he was but I wasn't. So I have spent the better part of this past week sick. And again with the Dr. Cooper...I don't do sick very well. More whiny than normal, if you can even imagine.

This helps though:  ;)



Other than the sicklies, the week went well. I only had to work at the tax office one day. Braeden is starting to pick out his own word lists from the homeschool spelling curriculum we use (up to now I have been assigning them - we're trying to see if he will challenge himself, or if left to his own devices, picks the PreK lists so he can get finished quicker, lol). He has just about finished his 2nd grade stuff with T4L, so he's spending a more time on SpellingCity than on T4L right now.

Bailey is doing well with everything, and still plugging along with his Time4Writing that he's been working on. We are so relaxed here, as far as schedules and such, that I was worried the additional "school time" would be met with resistance. Turns out, he said he loves the course. Yep, he really said "I love it!" He is enjoying what he's learning, and I would imagine his desire to write creatively helps with his motivation.

Tuesday at work was slow and I spent some time on YouTube. What? YouTube is almost better than Facebook when it comes to ways to kill time. After watching some old favorite clips (like the one where I met Jeff Dunham's Achmed for the first time - SILENCE! I KEEL YOU!) and surfing through some music videos, I started looking for homeschool videos. I initially started out looking for funny little spoofs, to kinda go along with my last post about misconceptions. But I ended up finding this video, 5 Things I Wish I Had Known When I Started Homeschooling. It was funny, and really encouraging...even for someone who has been homeschooling for several years. When I first started, and was completely lost, it would have been nice to have seen something like this. All of the things that I was worried about; turns out they are pretty common concerns of other homeschooling parents too. Anyway, it was good to see, and I would recommend it to any homeschoolers...not just new ones. :)

Today, I'm going to try and do laundry. Try being the operative word there. Also going to watch some movies with the boys. We have Hugo and Moneyball on the playlist for this afternoon.

This week I will be working most of the week, if not the whole week, covering Tracy so she can be with her mom who is undergoing yet another surgery to fix her hip. Sending prayers, happy thoughts and good juju out to her in hopes that this one will finally be the last one and she recovers quickly and without issues!

Hope everyone has a great week. Don't forget that next weekend is Daylight Saving Time. Boo. I'm all over the "fall back." Not a fan of the "spring forward." :/