Spring, Spring, Spring...

You know how I can tell it's spring around here? We have absolutely NO motivation to do anything inside! :D

Yeah. All play is what we want. Fortunately, we can take our homeschooling outside, lol. Tablets are super portable, and our big ole' fur baby, Moose, makes sure we stay on top of any lessons about nonliving and living things. As the back end of the goat (no, he didn't kill it...just dig it up from somewhere...gak) he was gnawing on can attest. :/

The boys really enjoyed their first archery class last week, and think this is going to be a great addition to our summer schedule. The Master's formal went very well! Bailey had a great time, as did everyone. Dinner before hand, followed by hours of dancing and goofing off. What's not to love, right?

My handsome young man. When did my baby get so grown up?!??

Not a lot else to report really. Today, we finally saw Captain America 2. Loved it! Tomorrow we have some housework and some gardening planned. We are about two weeks away from our annual beach trip, so we're trying to get ready for that. I know we all lament how quickly time flies, but for reals...cannot believe we will see the first of May before the week's end!

Okay. Signing off. Hope you all have a fabulous week! :)

Time for Some Random.

My brain is a big jumbled mess of stuff today. Trying to get the eldest ready for his Master's formal tonight, getting ready to spend time with the family tomorrow for Easter, trying to get back in our regularly scheduled activities now that tax time is over....gah! See? Jumbled.

So yeah. Random. :)

~ The Brew Fest was fun last weekend. We really enjoyed hanging with friends. I suck at photo taking, this is no surprise, but I did manage to get one of the hubs and our friend, Josh.

This guy has been in our lives for more than twenty years.  We heart him. :D

~ I have become obsessively addicted to the show Mad Men. SO good.

~ Boys have yet to log into their computers for school. The tablet thing is still working out fabulously! I'm hoping I can get them to spend some extra time on them this week. Bailey needs to do a little more than normal in his US History course, and I'd like to see if I can get Braeden to try out some art games.

~ Monday will see their first archery class, and they are really excited about that.

~ Captain America 2 has been out for 15 days and we haven't seen it yet. This does not please me.

~ I turned 37 last week. Weird. In my head, I'm still hovering around 20. My body knows very differently, but my maturity level just hasn't caught up.

~ Speaking of maturity...I ran to Trader Joe's yesterday to grocery shop for the week. The eldest managed to get 75% of everything we needed in the time it took me and the wee one to use the restroom. My boys really do rock. ;)

That's what I've got right now. I'm off to bleach some hair (not mine this time, but Bailey's), send the hubs out for a corsage, and try to get us to dinner on time. I'm never on time anywhere. Ugh. Hope everyone has a wonderful, and safe, Easter with their loved ones!

Beer Fest, a Birthday and Tax Day!

Yuh huh. That's what my week holds. Not unhappy about any of those things. :D

Tomorrow is the annual Classic City Brew Fest. This will be our second time there, and we are looking forward to it! It's really a thing for the hubs. He gets to hang with friends and sample some - or all if he has his way - of the 300+ craft beers that are there. Everything from local brews to cask ales (No, I honestly don't know what that means, lol, but the cask ales are the highlight of the fest for him). I go because even though I'm not a beer drinker (wine for the win), I do enjoy trying some of the things there, and I love that this makes him so happy. Plus, play date with friends.

Tuesday is Tax Day! Given that this has been the longest tax season evah, I don't think I really need to explain why this pleases me.

What about that birthday? Yep, it's on Wednesday. And it's MINE! I know, I know...when you're an adult you shouldn't get excited about your birthday anymore, but I disagree. I'm not excited about gifts or cake or anything like that. I'm just thrilled and grateful that when my birthday rolls around, that means that I got another year with the peeps I love. :)

I wish I had something to report about last week, but honestly...I was at the tax office every day. That's all I got. Boo. The hubs and the boys did some gardening, which was nice. Oh! And there is finally an app that the boys can use to do Time4Learning on their tablets! Talk about being excited about something! They downloaded it, Puffin Academy (I can't really link to it, but there's an app on both the Apple app store and the Android/Google Play store), and haven't logged onto their computers since. They reported that everything from the multiplication games they played, to the chapter quizzes they took, worked great. Woot!

Ok. Well. That's it for now. I am going to leave you with a couple of pictures of the boys' matchboxes they put together for the homeschool matchbox swap this time. This month's theme was mythology. I remembered to take photos of the boxes they created this time, instead of only getting pictures of the boxes they received. Go me!

Braeden's box. He focused on Egyptian mythology. The cover of the box is a photo of Anubis, the God of the Dead. He also created a match game (think the Memory game), made some clay figures and the folded pieces of paper are cool little fun facts about Egyptian mythology.

Bailey's box. He focused on Greek mythology. The cover of the box is a photo of Poseidon, the God of the Sea. He also created a match game, made some clay figures/weapons and had lots of fun facts about Greek mythology. 

Spring just started...

...yet, I'm already thinking about summer. Crazy when that happens, no?

We usually school year round, working through a lot of the summer. Why? Have you ever hung out outside in Georgia in July? Yeah. Not pretty. Sweaty, muggy, sweaty, hot, sweaty. Blech. We'd much rather just relax inside, with our A/C. The upside of that, is we take more breaks throughout the year. Spring beach trips. Our annual pilgrimage to Dragon Con over Labor Day. Extra time off during the holidays. We even managed to sneak in an extra vacation this past fall.

Even though we I say we school all year long, we usually end up wrapping up our year in July, giving us the month of August off. Not always, but more years than not, they had that month long break. It works out well, since we don't start our next school year until after we get back from D*C.

Why am I thinking about summer now though? Because the eldest is in high school now, and I'm really working hard on building a portfolio/transcripts for him. And also, summer plans = fun stuffs!

We have more plans for this summer than we have had in the past. I want to take my computer geek kids to a live sporting event. :) They love soccer, but haven't really been exposed to other sports. Especially not live sports. We have a minor league baseball team/stadium about 45 minutes from our house, and I think that would be an awesome field trip.

For the first time since we started homeschooling, we are a part of an active homeschool group that we LOVE! There's park day. Hike day. Archery day. Help at the Animal Shelter day. Lots going on and lots to be a part of. We also purchased season passes to Six Flags and White Water.

I'm kinda tired already. :/

With all of these plans, you might be wondering how we will fit in any school at all.

Well, fret not my pretties. We have gadgets. Tablets, apps and WiFi, oh my! ;) They have long been appreciating being able to do their spelling and vocabulary on their tablets with the VocabularySpellingCity app, but just this week, they were able to ... wait for it... waaaaait...

DO THEIR TIME4LEARNING ON THEIR TABLETS!

There was an app released, Puffin Academy, that allows for programs like T4L to run. It's totally free, and every lesson/video/quiz they've encountered so far has ran smoothly on their tablets (They both have the Galaxy Note 10.1). I got a text this morning from one of them, informing me that they did ALL of their T4L from the comfort of the couch, and they loved using the touch interface of the tablets over using a mouse on their PC.

Fabulously snazzy!

So, yeah. Thinking ahead to summer already. Man. This wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey stuff needs to just slow the heck down for a little while, dontcha think?

UGA Vet Open House

This past Friday we had a great opportunity to learn more about animals, and to discover the University of Georgia's College of Veterinary Medicine.

It. Was. Awesome.

I know I should be ashamed, because it's so local and so cool, but I had no idea that they did this. Once a year, they have a free open house. Open to anyone who wants to come, not just homeschoolers or public school field trips or anything.

They offer presentations on different things, live animals, demonstrations and more. We saw a dog show (frisbee catching and agility competition), we saw llamas, camels, cows, bugs, plants...TONS of stuff. We went with some friends and didn't realize we would kill six hours and still be sad when it was over, lol.

Here are just a few photos:

This was weird, gross and...honestly kinda neat. This is a healthy cow, with healthy gut flora. Basically, that's like a picc line in it's side. Where they can go in and take some of it's healthy gut flora, so they can insert it into a sick cow's gut. 

I think that's called a Walking Stick. And it's not yet fully grown. Will eventually be about 8 inches or longer. 

Madagascar Hissing Cockroach. Eeeeeeeek. 

Eating crickets. 

Yep. Crickets. Eating them. 

Prepping for "teddy bear surgery." So cute! ;)

Dr. Braeden is doing an excellent job...

It really was a great time, and we are already looking forward to next year. As much as we did get to see/do, there was still so much we didn't make it to. Pretty freaking cool to think that we could probably spend the whole day there again next year, and not repeat anything that we did this year!

This week will probably be pretty slow on the school front. I am working six days this week, getting ready for the end of tax season. Blech. And of course, because I'm still trying to win that "homeschool mom of the year" award, I don't have a thing planned. Ugh. At least they have some notes and some saved wiki-pages from their vet day. They can use those to create spelling/vocabulary word lists to study, and to play games like Match Sentences. That's better than nothing, right? :)