Reports on NOLA from people who left Louisiana are saying that Tallahassee hotels are telling them to leave because the rooms are booked for a football game. Please, people, have some compassion. Is a football game really that important?

Rescue operations are underway in New Orleans, but there is also a lot of damage along the gulf coast in areas such as Biloxi and Gulfport, MS. If you are a member of a freecycle group - you can check freecycle.org for a group near you - see if they are arranging anything to help. There are so many charities out there already, but at this point giving money may not be enough. The immediate needs are for food, clothing, drinking water, and generators. I am a moderator for my local freecycle group. The first thing we are focusing on at this point, though, are the areas in my back yard, especially Carroll County in Georgia, where multiple tornadoes touched down in the area. I am in contact with freecycle group moderators from those areas, but they are reporting that most of their members want to help Mississippi and Louisiana. Moderators in Georgia are trying to arrange some type of collection and transportation system in order to travel to the Biloxi, MS area and surrounding areas to help with immediate needs. Right now it's impossible to get help into New Orleans, but if possible we are trying to help Mississippi areas. If you are a member of a freecycle group in your area, see if your moderator is able to do something similar.

Also remember that the Red Cross and Salvation Army are also on hand to help.

I've been following Katrina for a few days now. I'm hoping that everyone in New Orleans and the Mississippi areas are okay. I've been to Biloxi, MS twice now with my mom. The old part of the city is lovely and ocean breathtaking. My mom said that she heard the first floor of the Beau Rivage Casino, where we went to see David Copperfield, is underwater.

On our last trip to Biloxi we traveled to New Orleans. We found out the city was about 90 minutes away, and my mom and I are always up for an adventure. We walked on the riverwalk and listened to the jazz musicians playing their saxaphones. We walked around the French Market and had a snack at a locally owned restaurant. We listened to more jazz. We saw the many statues around the river walk area and we rode the trolley. Then we said "We're coming back!" And we are. New Orleans has a feel to it that we didn't get to fully appreciate during the few hours we were there. We are planning a trip there in October. We'll be staying downtown, just across from Bourbon Street, and we'll be there for 3 full days. I still don't think that will be enough time to really enjoy this city.

For a first hand account of what's going on in New Orleans, check out NOLA. Thanks to Tulip Girl for the link.

In my area of Georgia, we are still having rain, although the sun tried to peek through a little while ago. It's pretty windy as well. We've had so much rain this year - after so long of being in a drought - that the news said the 3 inches of rain expected would bring some areas flood damage. There were tornadoes as well all over last night. One touched down in Columbus, GA, about 35 minutes south of where I live. In Carroll County tornadoes destroyed many farm houses as well as chicken houses, which is how many of these people made their living. Here is a link to WSB Channel 2 in Atlanta, which reported much of the information about these tornadoes. I heard of one person injured during a tornado last night, I haven't heard about his condition as of yet, and there was a fatal weather related auto accident as well

I was at my mom's last night watching Channel 2 news - they stayed on the air instead of going to football - and watching all the tornado warnings that were surrounding our area. I'm in Meriwether County, and there were warnings north of us in Spalding county and east of us around Macon GA as well as the tornado sightings in Columbus. We are in a little valley here, surrounded by hills, so my mom feels that's why our area wasn't included in the tornado warnings, even though they were all around us.

Prayers and thoughts go out to everyone in the path of this storm.

Homeschool / Education

'Average Joe' homeschooling father vies for US Presidency

Illinois Family Chooses to Homeschool

Home vs. School

University Schools

"Free" Public Education Means No Fees - Don't forget all the other "hidden" fees on top of taxes as well. Fundraisers for books and computers and gym equipment and tons of other things. The newest favorite are school supplies that are shared by the class and subsequently lost. I homeschool and I still have to pay school taxes. My neice is in public school and they are already selling wrapping paper for a fundraiser. She got the information the 2nd week of school.

Home-school Education Grows in Boynton Area - Palm Beach

HSLDA President's Page - Public Education Isn't Preparing Teens

Virtual Schools In Salem - Is a virtual charter school or online public school, where the school work is done at home, really a homeschool?

Here Come The Strings - Alaska Government Support for Homeschooling Changes - This article details the main reason I do not want a homeschooling tax credit. It gives the government more reasons to be involved in private life, which I do not want.


Real ID

National ID Cards in India - So here it goes to other countries now. India is starting to have them, the UK is discussing them, the US is supposed to have them in about 3 years. Next all the ID cards will look alike. My speech that I presented in communication class about 2 years ago was mostly about the fingerprint requirement for a driver's license in Georgia and how it would ultimately lead to a national ID card. For the last frame of my presentation, I included a mock up of a what I thought an ID card would look like. I'll find it in my old computer and post it next week. Many in the class thought I was nuts. I wonder what they think now?

Real ID Card in Australia - Opinion Piece - The computer problems mentioned in this article is a very real possiblity for what could happen here in the U.S. And while these computer problems are going on, who has access to our records?

The Known Unknowns of a National ID Card - Opinion - Of course they haven't thought it through. Does the government ever think anything through? They just say "Do it", yet don't explain how it will get done or by whom or how much it will cost. So I'll still be able to get a regular driver's license - at least in some states - but can't use it for ID? Personally, I think too many people are allowed access to our ID, and like the author says, for very slim reasons.

License Outrage - Editorial

National ID Cards - Discussion in the U.S., U.K., and Australia

Uncle Sam's Gets an ID Card by Making the States Do the Work

Real ID Could Cost $100 Billion

Thanks to Sprittibee for including this link to the song "We can't afford our gasoline." It was so funny we watched it twice :) I had to pass it on to those of you who haven't seen it yet.

I was searching for a place to buy gas the other day and ended up at a locally owned convenience store that doesn't have those new-fangled pumps that does everything except pour your coffee for you. It still has an analog readout where the numbers flip around and you have to watch to be sure you don't go over that little line next to the 0 and you have to flip the switch to turn it on. No fancy buttons on this baby :) I found 93 octane gas there for $2.71 a gallon - that was the price for the 89 octane at the 2 stations across the road.

We may not have a lot in this little town, but we are gas station full.

Monday was spent running errands and mailing paperwork. I sent in the Intent to Homeschool form required by the state yesterday as well as some bills. The only schooling done was listening to some Bach on cassette in the car. But I think a breakthrough has been made in regards to classical music! I'm enjoying it, for one, and the other day William was HUMMING along with the music! The first song that was played was a fugue (sp?) in D minor played on an organ, so it was perfectly creepy yet beautiful at the same time, kind of like the violin used in the theme song for Angel. William admitted to liking the music and seems to finally be getting used to it. My husband was evening listening to the Handel cassette while he was driving the other day and was really enjoying one of the pieces as well. So finally, some headway is being made!

Tuesday and Wednesday some schooling did get done, mostly just some history reading. Horseback riding was on Wednesday. William rode Flash again - I need to get some pictures of him with Flash - and since he was the only student that day they got to play on the cross country course. He went through 2 of the water hazards - the puddle and the river. Flash did the puddle fine, but didn't want to go through the river. The trainer showed William what to do and he was able to have Flash cross the river twice. After the lesson William got to canter back to the barn. He said that a canter feels much smoother than a trot.

After getting the horses unsaddled William and the trainer was taking them the pasture when William had an accident. Flash got a bit excited at seeing the other horse, Hunter, coming with him, so he stepped towards him - and stepped right on William's foot. William was a trooper, though, and though he screamed and cried a bit he handled it well. His foot is fine, but you can see a large bruise on his little toe and his foot.

Thursday we didn't feel well, so it was spent sleeping and trying to feel better.

Today has also been spent on errands. I worked this morning, but we discovered that our hot water heater isn't working any longer. We ran a few errands today to try to take care of it and also ran over to my mother's house to use her shower and dry our clothes since our dryer doesn't work right now either. I had hoped to end our first month with a full week of school, but it didn't happen.

I'm again working on a schedule, I'm the worst person in the world at scheduling, but I'm going to give it another shot. We found out that Scott - my dh - is starting back on day shifts on Monday. When he told me I whined on the phone, "Now I have to hear you snore all night, and you'll wake me up at 4 in the morning when you have to get up, can't you ask them to keep you on nights?" I had him going for a while, then I started laughing. It will be good to have him home at night, however we all prefer the night shift. He likes the quiet at work, and we like being able to spend almost all day together before he leaves for work. On day shift he's home maybe 4 hours before he has to go to bed in order to get up early. This is supposed to last through October, then he'll be back on nights.

I haven't heard anything from the other agent I contacted, and I now have some printer paper, so I'll be printed and sending off query letters on Monday. If that doesn't work out, then I'll be making plans to self-publish the books. The research on the 2nd book is under way and should be in the writing process shortly.

I have photos from our first field trip of the school year posted on my family website. Click the link above to go to the field trip page. Scroll down to the last set of photos for "Dorton Creek Farm".

Since watching "Supersize Me" a few weeks ago I stated we were going to start changing our diet. Since then we've done some things differently. We buy more fresh and frozen fruits and vegetables. I buy the salad mixes - romaine lettuce, not iceberg - and the baby carrots. I'm trying to figure out how to substitute spinach leaves without William noticing. I am buying whole grain cereals and the honey wheat bread. I just do not like the taste of whole wheat bread yet. We already buy skim milk so that hasn't changed. I am also drinking more water. It's been difficult over the past few weeks because the fresh foods are more expensive than the processed foods. I really wish it were the other way around. We are increasing our food budget a little at a time in order to continue to make the healthier choices. I also like to buy the prepackaged items to make it easier on us. I am NOT Betty Crocker or Martha Stewart and don't plan to become either one of them.

I've started a routine as well for my day. Since I usually start working within 15 minutes of waking I can't eat anything and I'm really not hungry when I first get up, so I start my day with a bottle of water. This is usually tap water in a recycled bottle. I continue drinking water until my first break. I then make it a point to eat something for breakfast during that first break. I'm bad about skipping breakfast, but I know for energy and to be healthy I need to eat something. I usually eat a bowl of Cheerios or some other whole grain cereal with some fresh fruit. I like strawberries and blueberries in my cereal. Then I'm back to work with more water. At lunch I like to have a salad with whatever I'm eating. Lunches are usually soup or tuna. I like to snack on fruit or another bowl of cereal in the afternoon then have dinner. I still don't have a good fix on dinner, usually it's something made with ground turkey. I like to have a salad with dinner as well, but we have to watch the salad mix usually and only have a salad every other day so it will last until the next payday. I'm using the USDA guidelines for eating the different colored vegetables so we bought some turnip greens, sweet potatoes and other colored vegetables to eat as well.

It's time to add exercise into my plan now, I'm just not sure what to do. I'm having increased trouble with my left knee. Just climbing the 2 steps to my porch hurts. I can hear my knee pop when I sit down. I have been walking with my mom around town, but I pay for it at bedtime and usually have to take an Advil and use Aspercreme on my knee for the pain. I'm thinking of getting a mini trampoline for exercise since it won't hurt my knees. My mom also bought a glider machine from Walmart. It's easy to use so I may go over there a few nights and use it as well.

My weight is actually lower than I thought it was when I first weighed myself. I'm not going into details :) but I am over 200 pounds. I know this is the main problem with my knee pain, so I need to address the weight issue before seeing a doctor about my knee. Making better food choices is the first step.

We had our first homeschool group field trip today to my mom's ranch. It was a lot of fun. Silly me forgot our camera :( However, the group leader brought hers, so I'll see if I can get some of her pictures to put on my family site.

My mom took everyone out to see the animals and the babies. The babies were very nice and enjoyed being pet. She gave some advice to the group leader about a horse she just got for her son. After learning a bit about mules we went back down to the house for snacks and to cool off. After cooling off a bit, we went back to the barn. William put a halter on one of the miniature donkeys and led her to a stall, then had some of the other kids help him let the mothers and babies back up into the top paddock area. Then we had to get the miniature some water, so William walked down the hill to the well pump, turned on the water, I filled up the water bucket, then we all walked down the hill and William turned off the pump. I told him he did a good job with Ola Mae, the miniature, and he said "It's gotta be done, so you do it." I can tell that my mom has taught him well out there about the animals. He's going there again tomorrow to work with my dad on some things. I guess it's about time I let him be more responsible for things around here as well.

We headed back to the house for more drinks and snacks and talking. This was much smaller than the last homeschool day we had and I think since the group was smaller we had a better time and learned more. Everyone wants to come back when Ola Mae's baby is born in November.

I'll get some pictures as soon as I can.

Monday was a short day. I read some from Famous Men of Science and we discussed cells in the human body book we have. William then read chapter 1 of Across the Continent about Lewis and Clark. After that we stopped school in order to run errands and pay bills. We did listen to some Handel on cassette in the car.

Tuesday we read more of Age of Fable. Then we reviewed multiplication again and practiced some 3 digit multiplication that he seems to have forgotten how to do. We briefly touched on division. He's saying he's not understanding it. Hopefully that will change as the year moves on. I then had him finish his paragraph about his first trail ride. Next time we'll go over the spelling and sentence structure, but he did pretty well, even though it took him 3 weeks to write it. That's saying something from a boy who hates to write. We then went over more history of Scotland and some items that were invented either in Scotland or by a Scottish person.

Here is William's paragraph, spelling and all:

My First Trail Rid By William
The tall grass I didint no what whas out thar. I was hit by A Branch and miss Rachel's hors beet me at the top of the hill. then we went bak and I had fun. THE END

We are continuing to work on our room swap around and hopefully will have it finished soon. I would like to have my office be up and running by the end of the week.

Wednesday was short on table work as we had to leave at 2:30 to clothes shop and leave by 3:30 for horseback riding. We started with math where we briefly reviewed multiplication with multiple digit numbers, word problems and roman numerals. He remembers the roman numerals very well. He even said, "Mom, Star Wars uses roman numerals." We briefly began to touch on fractions. He seemed to get the concept of fractions / division when I mentioned cutting up a pizza. He said "That's like when we go to Krystal too." Usually when we go to Krystal (White Castle to some of you) we get a sackful of the little burgers. There are usually 12 burgers and we split them between the 3 of us. He has known for some time that means we each get 4 burgers. Now, mathmatically, he's seen how that works for other things. The 4th grade computer game I bought him has also been using fractions, as well as his Jumpstart 1st grade game that he's had for years, so he's been introduced to the idea, it's just not been spelled out for him.

Then he took a break and we started back with English. We went over his paragraph and the spelling errors first, then I went over how to make the first sentence sound better. He also read from his Abeka English workbook and chose to complete a research paragraph about wolves. He'll begin it probably next week.

He then read part of This Country of Ours. By the time he was finished it was time to head out for clothes shopping and riding lessons. We listened to more classical music tapes in the car on the ride over.

Thursday was another short day. We watched "Passport to Europe" that we'd saved on the Tivo. The subject was Edinburgh, Scotland. There was a lot of information for a 30 minute show. The countryside and the city were both very beautiful. William has always said he wants to go to Ireland when he graduates high school. We're now considering a week long trip around the UK. We'd spend time in England and visit London, Salisbury Plain to see Stonehenge and Stratford-Upon-Avon to see where Shakespeare lived. We'd spend time in Edinburgh and Inverness, Scotland so that we can see Loch Ness, and then we'd visit Belfast in Northern Ireland. I hope we can actually take this trip one day. William mentioned it years ago when he discovered my senior trip / graduation present was a trip to New York. I do hope that William's trip would be better than my New York trip, although I can always say that I got to see Cats on Broadway :)

Friday we again went over fractions. He seems to have picked it up quickly, despite saying his head hurt :) Today we not only reviewed the fractions we also went over how to find one-half and one-third of a whole. He again said his head hurt, but I'm hoping that after giving it the weekend to gel he'll understand it better on Monday.

For English we went over note taking. He's chosen to do report on wolves. It started as a paragraph about snow wolves or white wolves, but while googling the topic he found a site for a wolf rescue operation. He's been reading about this place for almost 20 minutes. He said he's changing his topic to rescuing wolves and wolf dogs. He's always been fascinated with animal care and protection, hence his love of the Animal Cop shows, wanting to be an animal cop or a mounted policemen (Andrea & Ron, maybe he'll work for the mounties up in your area :), and wanting to volunteer at the new animal shelter our county is building.

Now he's wanting to go to New Mexico to visit this rescue place. Anyone willing to put us up? LOL :)

I love google :) Luckily I discovered that the first agent I contacted - who was more than happy to have me send in a manuscript - was not recommended by many writers. In fact, the company was known for some shady dealings. So I am not going to send my manuscript to this person. I contacted another agent who stated that the story idea sounded interesting, however she wasn't representing children's authors at this time. Since I'm not going to give up easily, I did a few more google searches and came across a few more websites, including one that has an extensive list of agents and if they are recommended or not. I found an organization that some agents belong to as well. I searched and found 2 agents that accepted children's books, accepted email queries and were accepting new clients. The email queries just went out a few moments ago, so now I wait again. I like being able to do an email query, especially since I don't have any printer paper at this time.

I figure I'll give it a month to find an agent. If that doesn't work out, I do have some publishers that accept unagented submissions. The only problem is it takes 4 months minimum to get an answer. If that doesn't work out, then we'll do the self-publishing route and see what happens there. I'm just really bad at marketing and know the books won't do as well if I self-publish.

Tomorrow I start researching the second book. I'm going to try to keep the momentum going.

**Another update. Got a response from one agent, she's not interested. I have one more out there, then I move on to my list of publishers.**

// posted by Admin @ 8/16/2005 10:14:00 PM

About 6 months ago my mom traded one of her mares for another mare that she hoped would breed with her jack - my mom raises mules at her home nearby, Dorton Creek Ranch - but she got a surprise. The mare she traded was expecting. The foal was sick with fescue poisoning. My mom had to take it to Auburn University for care, then when it was out of the woods she brought it home. Since the mother wasn't making milk the foal - aptly named Surprise Package - had to be bottle fed. William went to my mom's almost daily so he could feed Surprise. My mom took photos and wrote an article about the experience for Mules and More Magazine. One of the photos of William feeding Surprise was in the July issue.



The photo is a bit grainy because I don't have a scanner. I had to photograph it with the digital camera as the article wasn't online. It's hard to see in the photo, but William had the biggest smile on his face. He loved feeding Surprise and was sad when he was weaned from the bottle a few months ago.

Surprise was fed bottles every 2 hours at the beginning. The bottle was a large soda bottle and the milk replacement powder could not be mixed in advance. It had to be mixed with hot water within 15 minutes of being fed to the animal. My mom finally got him on a system where he was fed at 6am, 12pm, 6pm, and midnight.

I've taken a step out on a limb and could use some prayers, vibes, whatever you feel is right. I've always loved to write and I've finally taken the step of contacting a literary agent. William and I came up with an idea for adventure stories involving homeschooled kids. I finished the first story the other day, then contacted the agent through their website. The site said they try to get back with you within 2-5 days, so hope and pray that they like the synopsis and contact me for more information. In the meantime, I'll be working on the 2nd story in the series.

Why am I tired? I'm trying to get over the beginnings of a cold before it develops into a real cold, including ear infection, and so I've been going to bed early each night for the past 3 days so I could get a good night's sleep and still be able to work in the mornings. When you have to talk for a living you cannot afford to have a sore throat and an aching ear. Scott (dh) and William have been playing Playstation 2 most nights as I'm off to bed. Each night I say "Don't stay up too late" and each night that Scott has been off work he comes to bed around 4am and wakes me up. This morning though, I got to sleep until 6:30am, when I'm suddenly awoken by the loudest snoring on earth. I shove Scott over and tell him to sleep on his side. Usually that helps, but not today. I glance at the clock and continue to lay there, trying to doze, but it's impossible. Finally, around 7:00, I came into the computer room, set up the computer so I could log into it on time at 8:30, then went to sleep on the couch. I didn't sleep that well as I was scared I would oversleep, but I did get a good hour of dozing in, so I did feel a little bit better when I had to start work.

Scott has worked nights for so long I guess I'm used to sleeping alone and having it quiet. I also turn off the fans as I'm very cold natured. When Scott's at home he has on the ceiling fan AND the floor fan and I freeze all night.

Oh, well, husbands, gotta love 'em :)

Education / Homeschool

Leave No Child Behind - An editorial regarding the No Child Left Behind Act. I'm sure Pres. Bush has the best intentions, but what is the point of only teaching to a test? This is what is happening, and, as Spunky says, if it's not on a test then it can't be important, right?

Bullying Main Reason for Home Educating - an article from the UK. I think it's wonderful that people all over the world are able to homeschool and many homeschool parents have the same goals for their children. The main country still holding out is Germany. They have a compulsory schooling law at this time.

Alabris and Fox Donate Books to Homeschool Family

Children in Homeschooling Face Problems - This isn't what it sounds like from the headline. This is an article about homeschooling in Beijing! Isn't that wonderful! People are homeschooling in China! The problems discussed is the compulsory education law in China that is being fought in the court system.

I Teach My 7 Children at Home - another article from the UK.


Real ID

New Plans in Store for an Old Number - my favorite quote - "The measure also makes traffic in fraudulent ID credentials a federal crime." Ummm, I thought that was already a crime? Another quote: "The institution of a national ID card raises fundamental questions about the relationship of power between the citizen and the government." I totally agree. How many rights are we going to continue to give up?

Why the Real ID Act is a Real Mess - I agree with almost everything in this article. I don't agree with how it should be amended. I believe it should be struck. Then a law needs to be passed stating that items cannot be added to a totally unrelated bill within Congress. An appropriations bill should be just that - only appropriations related and nothing more.

Monday was spent first on math. Thanks to Tulip Girl and some of her multiplication links and some other links that I was sent I am working towards teaching multiplication differently. Monday was first spent on reviewing what multiplication was and going over the properties of multiplication. Then I had William do a timed test on tables 1-3. He didn't do very well, he only did the "easy" ones according to him. So, since he skipped around, after I told him not to, I assigned him some homework on those problems in order to practice what we'd worked on.

We went over again proper paragraph forms, capitalization and punctuation, then he started working on his re-write of his paragraph. He asked if he could do a report about sharks, and I told him he could after the current paragraph was finished. After he worked on it for about 10 minutes he read a few more pages about gathering information for reports from his Abeka English text.

After a break with some banana bread we'd made that morning we continued on with history. He read 4 pages of chapter 64 in This Country of Ours and we talked about when George Washington became our first President.

On Tuesday we had a math breakthrough! Thanks to a site posted on Tulip Girl's blog, I think we've conquered multiplication! The site is called Natural Math. I went through the site last night, read it closely and printed out copies of the table used on the site. I went over all of the tricks and tips given for figuring out the problem instead of rote memorization, which is how I was taught the times tables. After I was sure I understood all the tricks - I had never seen the pattern in the 9s table before. Write it out vertically and see if you see the pattern in the answers - and I also didn't know the finger trick when you multiply by 9. I got everything ready and it was the first thing we went over when we started lessons on Tuesday. After going over the table and having William practice the tips and color in his own chart, we played a game of multiplication bingo. You can get the board from multiplication.com. He had a good time playing and was able to get the answers to the problems by using the tricks we discussed. After the game I went over some of the remaining facts with him and we focused on the ones that rhymed, like 5x5, 6x8, and 4x5. I do think we can finally begin to move on because while he may not have them memorized he knows how to figure out the answers.

He worked on some spelling then we watched parts of CNN Daybreak and The Early Show that I had TiVo'd. I wanted to see the shuttle landing but I knew I wasn't going to get up at 5am. We learned a bit about the shuttle and how it gets ready for re-entry. William asked why it needed a rocket to get into space but didn't need one to get back. Luckily I had read a bit about that on NASA's website last night when I was looking for the expected time frame of the return. We watched the return on the Tivo, hours after it happened, of course, but it was still exciting to see. Then we read a bit more of the Isaac Newton biography and called it a day.

Wednesday was a short school day. We got started with history and while William was finishing his chapter in This Country of Ours I was doing some house stuff. I was feeding the hermit crabs in the schoolroom and checked on one that hadn't been active in a while. It's hard to tell what's going on with them sometimes because they are mostly active at night. Anyway, we discovered that it had died and we didn't know how long it had been gone. To protect the other crab from mites or anything else we went ahead and cleaned the aquarium. Scott gave Kermie a stress coat bath, I cleaned out the aquarium and changed the sand and William cleaned out the shells and the sponges. By then it was time to get ready to go to horseback riding lessons. William rode a new horse this time named Flash. He said that Flash likes to trot, not walk, and he was a bit harder to control than September. After riding we went to my mom's for dinner then a walk around town. She said if he was already riding Flash then he's doing very well on his lessons.

Thursday & Friday were"unschooling days." I wasn't feeling well so William watched a few of his "The Most Extreme" shows from Animal Planet that had been saved on the Tivo. One was about babies and the other about cats.

My MIL came into town as well on Thursday so we spent part of today with her at her sister's home. I'm feeling better so everything should be back to normal next week.

I have a new look that I'm still playing with. I would like to make the 2nd column table wider, I just need to play with it until it's where I want it. Let me know if you can see the links ok, if not I'll change the colors. It's taking more time to load the page, probably because of the colors, but I'm not sure. I'm only using 1 graphic.

I hope you like the new look. If you like it, scroll down to the bottom and follow the link to Point of Focus where I downloaded the files. She has a lot of free blogger templates with instructions.

We had a free rental so it was my choice of what to pick tonight. I've wanted to see Supersize Me for quite some time and I knew our local Movie Gallery had it. We all watched it as well as the extras on the DVD. My dh said "We are eating better from now on!"

If you haven't seen this documentary and you eat out even once or twice a week, you need to watch this. The producer/director of "Supersize Me" is Morgan Spurlock. He ate at McDonald's for 30 days - breakfast, lunch and dinner. At day 22 his 3 doctors were telling him to stop - his liver was pretty much all fat and was showing the same effects as if he were an alcoholic. He did continue his "McDiet" and finished the 30 days. His girlfriend is a vegan and had his detox diet ready for the day after he finished his experiment. His cholesterol rose, he gained 20-25 pounds during the 30 days, and he felt terrible.

He does say at the end of the movie that this was extreme, most people don't eat at McDonald's or other fast food places for every meal, every day. But most people do eat at the restaurant more than once a week.

He also had an interview with the author of Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser, on the DVD extras. Mr. Schlosser was talking about the foods and sodas in our school system and how they cater to kids. One comment was "You're required by law to give up your kids to the government for schooling." Hate to disappoint you, Mr. Schlosser, but no, you do not :) It may seem like a silly thing, but one of the reasons we took William from the private school he was in was a disagreement over the foods that were served. I sent him to school with lunch and a snack. We didn't have much money for lunches, but I tried to send him with something good. I bought little tupperware cups and bought big jars of applesauce to send with him as a snack in the cups. I also bought the different beef a roni type things for him to take to school. I made him sandwiches and tuna salad with crackers. One thing I bought him were the Jello pudding cups from the dollar store - 4 cups for $1. The school said he could no longer bring the chocolate pudding cups due to the sugar and caffeine in the chocolate. However, they said he could conveniently purchase a honey bun from them as a snack. The honeybuns were .50 each.

According to Kraft Foods, 1 chocolate jello pudding cup has 27g of carbohydrate, 21g consisted of the sugar. I can find nothing on the ingredient list about caffeine, but it does have cocoa in it so I can assume it has caffeine, even though it doesn't say. The honeybun they were offering had about the same amount of sugar but had total carbohydrates of 38g. It also had 19g of fat where the pudding only had 4g. To me that didn't add up. After comparing the two items I still didn't see a problem with the pudding. Even with the sugar being almost the same to me the pudding was still healthier. In my eyes they wanted me to spend $2.50 per week to the school - $5 per two weeks - for a snack instead of spending $2 for 2 weeks worth of pudding at the dollar store. After I complained they did stop selling the honey buns as well. I mean, if they have the same amount of sugar then what was the point of keeping them there if they were going to say "no sugar"?

My husband and I are both overweight. I'm only 34 and I'm already having trouble with my knees. I don't want to have to have knee surgery or be on crutches or on a little cart in 5-10 years. I had already done some research on the USDA's food pyramid website. Did you guys know the food pyramid changed? Check out these sites:
mypyramid.gov and Pyramid Tracker. Who needs to pay for ediets when these are FREE :)

I have already started drinking more water and when we last bought groceries I bought more fruits and vegetables. I made a really good spinach lasagna one night but I need to find a better way to hide the spinach. William pretty much refused to eat it. He picked out all the cottage cheese and noodles and ate them. I am glad that my husband is now on board with me to lose weight.

If you haven't seen this documentary yet see if your local video store has it for rent. It will change how you think about fast food. And as a bonus, check out "The Smoking Fry" on the DVD extras. Morgan tried a "spoilage" experiment with many of McDonald's products and products from a regular restaurant. See how long it takes the foods to spoil and keep a special watch on the fries.

Here are the plans for week 2:

Math:
Spend the first part of the week really hitting multiplication hard. I plan to look into buying the Math-It game and playing some multiplication bingo. I would like to move on to easy division by the end of the week or at least test it out to see how well William will do with it. I'll also have him listen to his multiplication CD.

Spelling / English:
He needs to practice the spelling words we went over last week. We never got to finish up with them so there won't be a new list this week. He also needs to continue working on his draft of his paragraph and begin the re-write.

Science:
We'll read 10 more pages in the Isaac Newton biography and another 11 in Famous Men of Science. We'll also need to renew these at the library. I may have him start reading Isaac Newton on his own this week and just skimming through the pages myself so I have an idea of what he's read.

History:
This Country of Ours and Lewis and Clark was not read last week, so that will be the focus for the beginning of the week, then at the end of the week William can read more about Abraham Lincoln. After he reads some about Lewis and Clark we'll explore some of the websites I found.

Geography:
Our country study is Scotland this month. Last week we studied the map and the major cities of Scotland and I found a website that goes through beginning Gaelic. This week we'll go through some information regarding the currency of Scotland and some of its history. I have Scotland chosen as a keyword on my Tivo but nothing has popped up yet, so I need to make a phone call to renew the listings.

Literature:
Since we are FINALLY!! done with Robinson Crusoe we'll be starting on King Arthur this week. William's riding teacher also recommended White Fang, so we may read that as a bedtime story. Age of Fable will also continue.

PE / Health:
We'll continue in the body book that we have and William will continue horseback riding once a week. He's taking a break from karate for a month right now. We also have some limbs to pick up in our yard so that will also be considered PE.

Other:
We haven't done any art appreciation. I think I'll find a painting recommended by Ambleside Online's list and print it out to hang on the wall. We are listening to classical music still in the car and Scott had a talk with William about his "boy" attitiude regarding the music. After all, most of it was composed by men :) I would also like to add in a Shakespeare story next week. We have Lamb's Tales of Shakespeare on CD so we can listen to it. I also found a site on free-ed.net where Shakespeare plays are available for free online. The link is here. My goal is to find a cliff notes summary of the story, listen to the story on the Lamb's CD, then watch a video of the play. He won't actually read the play until he's older. I'm also going to work in some poetry and the public speaking CD given to us by our co-op leader last year. I'm sure William will also play his 4th grade adventure CD I got him last week. He's been playing it a lot and already has learned a bit more about fractions even though we haven't covered them yet.

So that's next week's plan, and we'll see how it goes. Of course I'm working every day but Monday and we still have house stuff to do and other things, so I'm going to be relaxed and know that we have plenty of time.

The first week has gone pretty well. I'm doing well about not freaking out when the list isn't followed. I already posted about our first day of school for the year. The rest of the week went well.

Tuesday we followed the list - math, some reading, some history, and we started on our health class. That seemed to wake William up. I found a book about the human body about a year ago at a used book store and that's what we're using. The first 2 pages were about the various systems - digestive, circulatory, and nervous. There were pictures of the layers of muscle and skin and bones. We had a good 20 minute discussion just over those 2 pages. We continued going over math. He's really good at addition and subtraction and some word problems. He is enjoying roman numerals. We worked some on multiplication and I had him write out the 3 times tables as we worked with flash cards so that he could figure out the answers by counting by 3s.

Wednesday was spent running errands. I did bring one of the classical music cassettes with us and we listened to some Beethoven while we ran errands. After paying bills we got gas and stopped by Dairy Queen for Blizzards and talked a while. Then we headed home, picked up William's library card, and headed to the library for some books and a library lesson. I found some Science Weekly magazines on the for sale table and picked up 4 of them for William to read. They aren't necessarily kid's magazines, but they looked interesting. Then we headed to the chiropractor and back home, still listening to Beethoven and discussing the choir that sang at the end of the 9th symphony on the cassette.

Thursday began with a short, hour long horseback riding lesson followed by lunch at Subway and a playdate at the park in the afternoon. We listened to some of the classical music tapes I purchased from Christian Book Distributors. I did have some grumbling about the music but William eventually gave up arguing about it. I can see the music will continue to be a hard sell. I'm not familiar with classical music either, but I want him to have some understanding of it or at least appreciation. Instead I get comments like "Ballet music is for sissies or girls." I didn't appreciate his attitude and let him know it. I hope that eventually he will come to an appreciation of the music the same way he appreciates some of the books we read.

I'd hoped to begin reading some of the science books we'd gotten from the library during the afternoon, but instead after the play date we ran more errands, with Scott since it was his day off, had dinner, then had to head back to the pet store to purchase more hermit crab food. One of our dogs ate the hermit crab food :( We took William's dog Scrappy with us and he got to come inside of PetSmart. He was so happy and excited to be in the store with us.

While we didn't do any table work today I'm not seeing the day as lost. It took a long time for me to get to this point in order to realize that a day without math could still be a school day :)

Friday has been another short day. I worked until 12 then we had lunch and started school. The one big achievement - we finished Robinson Crusoe! It only took about a year :) We read an old version of the book, unabridged, with no chapters marking the pages. Many parts of the book were very long, especially where Robinson discussed how God provided for him on the island. After about the 10th time he had his little "Thanksgiving" celebrations I was ready to say, "Okay, Robinson, we get it!" The end of the book was much less exciting than the beginning or even the middle. It just kind of ... stopped. The section where Friday says he'll give them a laugh then killed the bear after teasing it was not a favorite for me or William. The writing in that area also seemed to be a bit off, like Defoe was just trying to fill in some space about what happened when he left the island. Instead of just stopping the story where he did he could have left out the section regarding the bear - for that made no sense to me, especially since they had just been attacked by wolves and had an injured man in the party - and included more about what happened to him personally. It also seemed that everything worked out wonderfully for him. No one was dishonest regarding his estates. He got back his plantation in Brazil. It seemed a bit too good to be true, especially since he was gone for 28 years.

Anyway, after we read Robinson Crusoe we started on a biography of Isaac Newton. William fell asleep while I was reading so I put the book away and told him to take a nap. He napped for about an hour, then we started school again. We read from the Isaac Newton biography, then from Famous Men of Science, then we updated the century notebook we have. We talked a bit about Copernicus from Famous Men of Science and looked up a few unfamiliar words using google. Did you know you can get a definition of a word by going to google, type in define: word and it will give you definitions? It's a very useful tool.

So, that's the end of our first week. Has anyone else started yet or are you waiting a few more weeks? I like to start in August so we can take December off for the holidays.

Education / Homeschooling

Why Do We Homeschool - Square Dancing - This is a funny article from the living section of the Clarksville, TN newspaper.

Book Excerpt - Homeschooling, A Wonderful Way of Life

Unschoolers in College - Summer - reprinted from a 1998 issue of Home Education Magazine

Feet, Shoes and Shoehorns - a thought provoking article relating to homeschooling curriculum.


Real ID

New Hampshire Article About Real ID - I like these quotes from the article: Former House Speaker Donna Sytek worked hard to protect women from stalkers by restricting access to addresses retained by the state Division of Motor Vehicles. "A driver's license was never about identification. It was about being able to drive," Sytek said. "It's been morphed into all these other things."....Sytek believes the public will revolt once it understands the law's implications. "This is typical. They have the seed of a good idea and haven't thought about the consequences for the people on the front line," she said. ....State Rep. Robert Guida is a United airlines pilot who lost friends in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. He thinks a terrorist intent on packing a car with explosives is more likely to slip across poorly guarded borders without a driver's license than to go to the trouble of obtaining a false one. "We keep trying to apply a law-abiding mind-set to non-law-abiding people," he said. "You can anti-terrorism yourself into immobility."

Cost of Drivers' License to Rise - From the article - States are free to buck the provisions of the new law, but at a steep price. By 2008, residents in states that don't meet the requirements won't be able to use their driver's licenses to board commercial planes.
``The reason is that if you don't adopt these minimum standards, we don't know exactly who you are, and there's a reasonable concern that there could be some type of security risk,'' Lungren said. ``That's just a reality in a post- 9/11 world.'' end the quote from the article. So, there is a concern that a perfectly regular person MAY be a security risk. So the answer is to just treat us all like criminals? Criminals will find a way to circumvent all laws. I don't believe any type of law will ever totally end terrorist or criminal behavior.

Today was a usual first day where nothing seemed to work right. We got started late, William didn't want to eat the spinach lasagna I made for lunch, there just seemed to be one problem after another. But we did finally get started and ended up having a pretty good first day of school.

We started with math. We reviewed addition and subtraction with multiple numbers, then we reviewed some roman numerals and did some word problems. Then my neice showed up - and stayed :) - and she did an English assignment with William. We went over the steps of writing a report. I helped William brainstorm ideas for a report on his first trail ride. Then I gave him some rules on writing out a paragraph - 3-5 sentences, complete sentences with capital letters and punctuation, and a beginning, middle and end. He didn't finish his rough draft but he started writing without too much arguing. My neice wrote a paragraph about the trip they took with my mom to Cherokee, North Carolina, over the weekend. She also practiced her cursive and then wrote on the white board.

After English we started on a spelling list for the week then read a mythology story from Age of Fable. My neice wasn't familiar with mythology and said she enjoyed the story. Then I told them they were finished and they went off to play. My neice is playing Sims on the Playstation, William is playing 4th Grade Adventure - a computer game I bought him yesterday. All in all I guess it's been a good day.