Accessorizing and feeling realllly old. And homeschooling?

If I could change my shoes and my handbag three times a day, I would. Don't really care as much about the clothes as I do the shoes and bags, but that's just me. Anyway, accessorizing is just what we ladies do. I think that same mentality should hold true for my blog as well. I'm sure you have noticed that I change the design of my blog every so often. Usually seasonally. From now until the end of the year are some of my favorite "accessory" changes! I may leave the Halloween one I have now up until after October 31. Or I may change it five more times before then. You just never know. This is your warning. ;)

So ... I know I talk all the time about how time flies. But sometimes things hit me like a ton of bricks. Example? This week marked the 20th anniversary of the release of Nirvana's Nevermind album. Otherwise known as one of THE best albums. Ever.

Whoa. Wait. What??

I know!

For those of you who remember buying that album as vividly as I do, I'm going to give you a moment to let that sink in.

Twenty. Freaking. Years.

I was 14 years old when I bought that album. And I knew every word to every song by the end of the first weekend with it. That album is still with me today. On my iPod at all times. Why? It's one of those defining albums for me. That one and Pearl Jam's Ten. I don't know that I could explain it; why they were so defining or why they're still with me. Other than just...music of my day?

Music of my day? Oh gawd. Listen to me. Pretty soon I'm going to be talking about these young whippersnappers today that wouldn't know good music if it fell out of the sky and landed on their face. ;)

Ok, moment over. Moving on...

This week was a great week for us. School is going well. Master's is going great. The soccer season is going fairly smoothly this fall. We have only had one rain out so far, lol. This week both of the boys won their soccer games! That's always exciting. With the return of soccer each season, comes the return of the small town introduction. No, that's not a "hello" like in most societies. Small town intros run like this "Now, what church do you go to?" or "Why don't I recognize your son from school?"

How I wish I was lying or being sarcastic. But this is true.

Since this is Bailey's 7th year playing with the recreation department, most of the families we interact with at that age range know us and know Bailey...so we don't have to do through the whole "we are heathen homeschoolers" spiel. But in Braeden's age group, no one really knows us yet.

So I explain. No, we don't go to church. Yes, I am a Christian (not the crazy Westboro kind), not that it's anyone's business. We just don't like the hypocrisy we find in church. Especially small town churches where the congregation is comprised of two families. No, I don't think I'm better than your child's teacher, or better than you, or that my kids are too good for the public school. Although, come to think of it, maybe I should say that. Then they would just ignore me all together. :D

Having said all that, it's not entirely bad. I am used to the questions and sometimes I get those questions that aren't condescending or criticizing. Sometimes people really do want to know how we make it work. Especially when I do look like a heathen (In rural communities, tattoos = the devil. The more you have, the closer you are to hell, lol), yet my kids can speak intelligently, and politely. Heh.

Anyway, those questions I love answering! So many people think they just can't do it. But why? Why has our society made them feel like teachers are the only ones who can teach? Take early child education. Technically that starts at home. Who teaches your child their first sounds and their first words? Who teaches them their colors and shapes. Who is the first person to read a book with them? More than likely YOU were the one that I did all that, not a teacher. That's homeschooling.

No, really. That's homeschooling. Sure, it's gets a little more complicated as they get older. But the principle holds. You know what's best for your child. You can see them and how they learn. You are the best person to help them get an individualized education; one suited for their learning style. If your child likes workbooks and textbooks, that's great. Find them, lol. If your child, like mine, lives and breathes computers, find an online program. Do some of both. Do neither. Even if your child is gifted or needs special education, you can still homeschool. You find what works for your children, and for you.

I would never say it's easy. And I will tell you that you have to want to do it, and do it correctly. But I can also tell you that it is one of the most fulfilling decisions I could have made, and I have never regretted going that route with our family. :)

Ok. I'm done. I talk too much, I know. Hope everyone has a great week!

Fall is here!

Well, for the moment anyways. Georgia always has a warm front, or eight warm fronts, that move in after the official start of Fall.

The air is cooler. The leaves are changing. Pumpkin candles are lit. And my hoodies have been moved to the forefront of my closet. Woot!

Things are going smoothly here. Hopefully I'm not jinxing myself, lol. Scouts is fine. Soccer is great. The boys are absolutely LOVING Masters Academy. Which I'm thrilled about. I was really worried that the first week was a "oh this is cool and different" fluke. But they are a month in, and still just as enthusiastic about it so that's fabulous. November will see our first Masters field trip. We are going to see the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra and we are visiting the High Museum of Art.

I'm enjoying the Thursday time for myself as well. Since it's a little too far to drop them off and go pick them up again, I just hang around Athens for the day. Lunch with friends, errands, shopping, pedicures...not a bad way to spend the day! :)

No problems with school. Yet. They are plugging along with Time4Learning as always. Braeden is working on 2nd grade Dolch words this week in spelling. Bailey is working on words from "Treasure Island." I'm hoping he enjoys that book... Both of the boys are playing US States games too. Kinda cool to try and memorize all 50 of the states. That's all I'm asking of Braeden right now, but Bailey is also working on the state capitals.

I'm still working on posting more Dragon*Con pictures. That will happen. I promise. I have to find my camera. :D This past week we spent days, DAYS, working on cleaning and thinning out the house. This is hard for me. Think "Hoarders." Anyway, we saw mucho progress and I am very pleased with what we accomplished. Having said that, I am notorious for putting things away when cleaning, only to lose them later. I really do thrive on that whole organized chaos thing. Once I locate the camera that I found a new, organized home for, I will post more pictures. :)

Hope everyone has a great week next week, and enjoys the first week of Fall!!

I'm always grateful that I am a homeschooler...

...but this time of year really rams that home for me. :)

I'm sure it won't come as a great surprise to you to learn that I, as a blogger myself, like to read other blogs. I like all blogs, but homeschooling blogs are of a particular interest to me. I like to read how other families handle certain situations and what curricula/programs/resources they are using. Even though I am very comfortable with our current curriculum, I'm not opposed to adding or supplementing with additional books or programs.

I also like to read about current homeschool trends. We ended up homeschooling because I showed my butt and pulled Bailey out of public school in a fit of anger thinking (ok, hoping, but whatevs) that someone in that school office would call my bluff and bend over backwards to make things right for my kiddo. Obviously, that didn't go as planned. Heh. Having never thought about it before that, I hadn't given any thought to why people would choose to homeschool. Now, being much more secure in my decision, I find it fascinating to see why others make this choice. Is it a religious or spiritual issue? Are the schools in their area really that bad? Are other parents as selfish as I am when it comes to wanting to squeeze out every possible second of time with their children as they can? :)

Crap. I've digressed again. One day I'm going to be able to be focused and concise when it comes to my thoughts. One day. *sigh*

Back to being grateful. Why am I so grateful this time of year?

Because I know, at least mostly, what our year holds for us. I am not scrambling and searching through curriculum choices. We aren't trying a new program and having to adjust. I don't have a lot of hoops to jump through with the school board (In GA, we are very lucky. Taking a glimpse of other states' homeschool laws...all I can is yikes!). I have been reading other homeschool blogs and I see posts about changing curricula, AGAIN, because something was tried and didn't work. I see posts about homeschoolers having to submit homeschool plans and syllabi for school board approval. I see homeschooling moms kinda freaking out about how they are going to prepare and keep their homeschool portfolios for the year (this is something that I honestly don't have to worry about because Time4Learning has excellent record keeping... all I have to do is print off what I need, when I need it, and voila: portfolios! Lol.).

So for all of these reasons of me NOT worrying, I am grateful. :D

Post Con Sadface....

With all of the build up for Dragon*Con, when the end rolls around, we are all left a little pouty.

Exhausted to point of drooling and stuttering, but pouty.

This year's con was good. The hubs had to work more over the weekend than any of us liked, but such is life I suppose. Going down a day earlier this year compared to years past was fun...the boys didn't know what to make of Atlanta without the 50,000 freaks and geeks. Arriving on Wednesday rather than Thursday (when most everyone else arrives) made checking in to the hotels easier, parking MUCH easier and we were actually able to enjoy a nice swim on Wednesday almost completely alone in the pool!

The new staff position this year was a BLAST. It keep me busier than I had expected, but not in a bad way. Got to meet some interesting people this year. There were name droppers (blarg) and butt kissers (blarg-er), but those folks didn't take away from the good stuffs and overall it was a fabulous experience. Already looking forward to next year!

The boys had a great time this year. They love the costuming and cosplay that goes on  (during the day...nightime Con is usually adult only, lol) and they enjoy just wandering around looking at everything. I will have a lot of pictures to share. Eventually. This is what happens with me and D*C photos. There are hundreds (Nope, not a typo. Hundreds. As in multiple of a hundred) of photos to go through to decide which ones to share. Some, like the parade photos, look almost just like the parade photos I shared last year. And the year before that.

Anyway...here are few pictures that you guys can start out with. Sorry if they are blurry...I had to thieve them from Tracy's facebook, lol. I haven't even dumped them from the camera cards to my computer yet. :/

Costumes of 3 of the 4 boys... Bumblebee, An Empty Child (Dr. Who) and Aragorn

One of my FAV costumes from the weekend. Nope, have no idea what she is supposed to be. All I can tell you is she was fluffy. And pink. And fluffy + pink = awesome! ;)

Daddy: "See what happens when you misbehave? It's a wrench to the face for you!"

The hubs and I. And Jayne hats. :D

Bailey and Buck Rogers! No, seeing how he has aged does NOT make me feel old...

Jefferson Starship (who are ALL kinds of nice, btw)! Nope, still don't feel old... :P

The boys and Mark Sheppard! We totally accosted him in the hall on the last day of Con as we were leaving. The boys know him as Badger from Firely, Sterling from Leverage, Canton Delaware from Dr. Who and Crowley from Supernatural. Yes, they know him from *all* of those shows, lol.

What was my boys' highlight from this year? Meeting three of their favorite cast members from one of our most favorite family shows, Eureka!! They got to meet, and get autographs from, Jordan Hinson (she plays Zoe), Chris Gauthier (he plays Vincent) and Colin Ferguson (Sheriff Jack!). They were all incredibly sweet and from that little moment, the kids got their most prized picture from this year...

Aaaaahhhhh! While this was my boys' favorite photo op, this was also my total fangirl moment from this year! This photo is now my computer wallpaper. And that has *nothing* to do with how cute Colin Ferguson is. Nope. That's all about my boys. ;)

When I can sit long enough at my computer to sort through the rest of the photos, I will post some more.

As far as getting back to normal around here, that was a slow process this week. Tuesday I spent my day in a vegetative state, trying to start recuperating.  The boys are being troopers about starting school. There was only a little bit of whining, and mostly that was from me.

7th grade started off good for Bailey. He had a little math anxiety when he started his first math lesson. But he did fine. I'm hoping that he starts to feel more confident about math. While it's not his favorite subject, he doesn't do poorly in it...but he still worries about it.

Braeden is off to a good start as well. It was apparent to him right away that the 2nd grade lessons were different than the 1st grade lessons, but it didn't scare him or deter him. He enjoyed doing his first real wordsearch...that wasn't on his nintendo ds. He definitely does not prefer the paper version over the handheld game version, but they don't prefer paper anything over the electronic gadget version, lol.

Ok, that's it for now. Hope errbody enjoys the rest of their weekend, and has a great week next week.

Tomorrow, say a little prayer for all of those who are remembering 9/11...the lives lost there, the families that are still grieving, and for the country that was changed so much by one awful, crappy day...

Back to School...

Yep, finally. This week is our official start to our school year.

Nothing is really different than every other year we start back. I know I'm very fortunate in that. I have been reading a lot of blogs lately, and soooo many parents spend the end of summer struggling to find a curriculum, worrying about scheduling and revisiting that whole "pros and cons of homeschooling" thing.

We know we are good with continuing to homeschool. We know what we are using. We know schedules don't work for us (School schedules don't anyway. It's all I can do to keep up with the schedules of everything else going on with us), so we know that we really don't know how our day will go but we will take it as it comes at us, lol. We know about when we will take our holiday and planned breaks. I'm good.

How lucky am I? ;)

To start off, we are going to jump in one subject at a time. Years past, we would take time off in August, go a few weeks without actually doing anything, then WHAM!...back to school with a normal (haha, what's ever normal around here?) school day. This year, we were working on spelling throughout the summer, and did more reading than we have before. But I still don't want to overwhelm them and have 4 days of whining. Mostly it's me whining. But whatever. Still don't want it.

So, we are going to start with more spelling, but more formal spelling, rather than just game play. I have some spelling lists by grade that they will work on. Besides the spelling, they are only going to work on math this first week. Then next week, I will add language arts. The following week science, then social studies. As much as I don't want to overwhelm them, this is to also help with our new weekly schedule. With the extra homeschool group meeting and the weekly Masters program, I want to make sure that things don't get hairy before they even really get started. :)

By the way... I wrote and scheduled this to publish before we left for Dragon*Con (I like to try to keep up with a weekly posting if possible, otherwise, I end up pushing things back and I only post about once every 6 months, lol) so if this post is sandwiched in between some weird and freaky convention posts, I apologize. If you haven't seen a convention post before you see this one...don't worry. The weird and freaky is coming. :D

The End of August...

...Already??!!  Gah. I feel like just did a blog post about it being the beginning of August...

So this is our final week before life gets back into crazy busy mode. Finally made my way into town and registered the boys for soccer. That's our Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday evenings, as well as our Saturday mornings when games start. Scouts is in full swing. Let's see how I can be there on Monday nights AND at the soccer field 40 miles away. Our homeschool group went from meeting every other Friday to meeting every Tuesday. And Masters started! There's my Thursday afternoons.

Whoa. Reading all that is making my eyes glaze over.

Speaking of Masters...

The 4 boys and Dax, who runs the program. (We were hoping for a shot with everyone in their Masters shirts, but those haven't come in yet...will post once that photo op comes to be.)

...the boys had their first day this week. They were so excited! I knew Bailey would be fine for the day, but I was worried how Braeden would do in a group/class setting. With structure. He's a little bit of a talker (dunno where he gets that from, lol) and even he was a little worried about not being able to talk. At least he is aware of his difficulty in keeping his mouth closed, lol. He was also worried about me not being there to help him read something - he was a late reader, remember.

Of course, there was no need for worry. My brain still has issues with processing things like the fact that this is a group of homeschoolers. Homeschoolers who understand that everyone learns at different paces and everyone has different personalities. Not like public schools, where all of the kids are expected to act, think and learn in the same manner.

Both of the boys had an absolute blast and have already asked to make sure we sign them up EVERY year, lol. I told them to at least get through this year to decide, but they both said there was no need. They knew they were going to looooove it. :)

So what are our plans this week?

Braeden is going to read a whole "I Can Read" book. He finally found one he actually wanted to read on clearance at Borders (they are going out of business by the way...if there is one near you that hasn't closed yet, everything is 40%-60% off right now) and he's looking forward to going cover to cover. It's nothing big, but I think that if he can go from start to finish, even if it's only 30 pages, he will feel like he finally accomplished something major in regards to reading. He's improving daily, but I think finishing a whole book will boost his confidence even more.

Bailey is always in the middle of a book, so I don't even know what he's reading right now. If he's reading...I'm trying to tear him away from the Scott Pilgrim vs. The World movie. He and Braeden have watched it about 50 times! I wish I were exaggerating. Bailey informed this week that not only has he watched the movie repeatedly, he has watched all 4 versions of the commentary at least twice. Each. /shaking my head

In his defense though, it's a really good movie...

WE ARE SEX BOB-OMB!

Ok, where was I?

Braeden will be working on compound words in spelling. These are always fun. Homeschool (har har, I know that one was too obvious), Firefly (yes, that should be capitalized as I'm referring to the TV show, not the bug) and birthday are some of his favorites. Bailey has some geography games on his agenda. Hopefully. We have a short week this week, so it's hard to get them motivated to do anything other than talk about next weekend.

What's next weekend? Just a little thing called Dragon*Con. I might have mentioned it before. Maybe. But only briefly.

What? It's not like I've referenced it in just about every blog post for the last month and a half or anything.

We are heading to the A-T-L a day earlier than normal, so this means we will be arriving Wednesday instead of Thursday. I am so looking forward to this new staff position this year and just hanging out with everyone. It's going to be so different not being at the store and with 95% of our group not being on staff, but I think it's going to be a blast!

I downloaded this nifty blogger app for my phone. I'm hoping this will make it easier to do a quick post or photo from the con....can't wait!

Hope errbody has a wonderful week and safe, fun-filled Labor Day weekend!

12, 11, 10, 9...

Only 12 days until Dragon*Con! Yeah, yeah, I'm sure errbody is getting tired of hearing about it. But it's a big deal for us. A really big deal. Sure, we love our annual beach vacation. But this...this is DRAGON*CON. It's 4 days of family and friends, 4 days of celebrity sightings, 4 days of costumes and fun, and 4 days of just hanging with 40,000 of my peoples. :D

The boys got their costumes this week and they are super excited about that. Bailey is going to be Aragorn (sigh...he's from the Lord of the Rings trilogy for you non-geeks, lol) and Braeden is going to be Bumblebee. I know, Transformers aren't so much what you'd think for D*C costuming, but he's 7. So we go with it.

Besides being so excited about D*C, this Thursday is the first day of Masters. And this week is soccer sign ups (I was supposed to do that this past week, but I'm a slacker). Our homeschool group has resumed meeting as well and we are going to try and change things up. We are changing our meeting days and have a new location where we are meeting...a very nice recreation outreach center. Hoping these changes bring about new families and great year for our little group!

Still not ready to jump into our school year, but we are baby stepping. We'll continue working on spelling and vocabulary on VocabularySpellingCity (almost love this site more than T4L and that says a lot!!! Lol). Braeden will be working on syllables ("but really Momma...*why* is it si-lent instead of sil-ent?!") and Bailey will be working on some science vocabulary, which is actually a new addition to the site and something different for him.

This weekend holds a trip to Atlanta for Tracy and I (last D*C staff meeting before the con) and maybe a family movie date on Sunday. Rise of the Planet of the Apes looks good. PG-13 is not automatically off limits to the boys. And dear lord...maybe if we bribe them with a semi "grown up" movie, they won't sucker us into seeing Spy Kids 72...or whatever number they are up to now. ;)