Friday was spent mostly driving. We left around 8:30 am. William and I stayed busy in the back seat watching a movie while my mom drove through Atlanta traffic. I am such a baby when it comes to traffic. I hate the speed and weaving that everyone does, especially in Atlanta. I was happy to leave the city and head on up north.

We stopped at Tallulah Gorge Overlook for a picnic lunch and to see the gorge. It was very impressive. We read about the Great Wallenda, a circus performer who walked across the gorge on a tightrope in 1970. The river at the bottom of the gorge is now dammed and handled by Georgia Power and they release water on a rotating schedule. We didn't get to see a water release while at the the overlook, but I've heard it's impressive.




We got to our cabin in Cherokee a few hours later. My brother and his family had already arrived. My mom had rented cabins at Ol' Smoky Mountain Cabins in Cherokee. These were very nice cabins, very reasonably priced. The price was comparable to many hotels in the area and they cabins offered a full kitchen as well as being right on the Nantahula river. Our cabin was 2 bedrooms and 1 bath. William and I had a loft bedroom. My brother had a 3 bedroom cabin with 2 bathrooms. There were 6 cabins in a row. They were on a busy street, but once you got around back to the deck you couldn't even hear the cars. The kids played in the water just below the cabins, we grilled out on the camp grill provided, and ate dinner on the deck watching birds eat at the bird feeders. We saw a red cardinal and a yellow finch our first day.





We didn't do really anything on Friday, we were tired from the trip. But we had a good dinner and enjoyed our cabin. All of us went to bed early, ready for Saturday's rafting trip.

William and I have the strangest discussions at the strangest times. We watched a VHS copy of George of the Jungle last night and here is what we discussed:

How can Ape talk?

How did George know to build a house with an elevator and everthing else?

If there really was a person who was raised in the jungle by apes, would he actually wear a loin cloth?

During the wrestling scene with the lion, we tried to figure out which was the real lion and which was the fake one.

This led to animals who are trained for movies, and William said that he wanted to have a lion and a monkey and train them to be in movies.

That discussion led to stunt people in movies and which part had a stunt person and which had the actor.

How does shep the elephant act like a dog?

How does George know English? and if Ape taught him, we're back to number 1 again :)

What is a bird's beak made of? Bone or something else?

Sometimes our discussions can go way out in left field, but I enjoy the journey they can take us on.

My grandmother had a birthday earlier this month on July 7. Today, my grandfather turned 80. We took him to dinner at his favorite local restaurant and visited with him a little afterwards. There were 20 of us all at one table - grandparents, aunts, uncles, one of my brothers, his girlfriend, both of their kids, cousins, my parents, me and William. We all had a really good time. It's really nice living so close to family - sometimes :)

The beginning of school is about 2 weeks away. We'll be starting back on August 7.

Dh and I talked a bit tonight about what we want William to accomplish within the next 2 years. He's supposed to be in 6th grade, but he's still struggling with concepts such as multiplication and division and we haven't even started on fractions yet. He still cannot write a paragraph or any type of research paper. Spelling is pretty much made up as well. Dh and I have different ideas regarding our goals, mostly based on things we enjoyed in school and things we hated. Dh hated reading and anything having to do with reading. He reads now - he has tons of books to prove it - but while in school he hated being told to read something and then to write about it. In my case, writing has always come easily. I loved to read in school and I still do. I am also a natural speller and it's difficult for me to accept that William is not. We are coming to a compromise on reading / spelling / writing.

We both agree that math is important. He will be taking his standardized test again this year and I hope to see some improvement since we started. However, I'm scared we will not. I'm suddenly fearing this year and wondering what have we been doing for almost 4 years? How can he be 12 and cannot multiply or divide without being shown many times over what to do? Within 2-3 years he needs to be ready for 8th grade work, transitional work for high school. High school looks a lot closer now that he's 12. It seemed so far away when he was 8.

This school year will bring some changes and more structure than we've had the past 3-4 years. I will be working different hours in order to focus only on William and his education during school days. Dh will be attending technical school for the next 2 years and he will be home more often. During times he is home he will help William as well. We still have the Lifepac curriculum I bought close to the end of last year. That curriculum will be completed this year and next year we'll purchase Switched on Schoolhouse instead of the workbooks.

In addition to doing the Lifepacs, he will have a paragraph a week to write, based on the Paragraph a Week program here. Since I tend to want to offer content and layout suggestions and pretty much rewrite the entire thing for him, I will be staying out of the paragraph writing except to look it over at the end of the week. Dh will be helping William with proofreading and writing during the week. Spelling words will come from his writing as well as this 5th grade online spelling book and 6th grade list.

William can read very well, but we want him to enjoy reading more than he does. He's more apt to play a video game than read a book, so for 30 minutes a few times a week he will be reading to either me or his dad.

I also want him to continue learning to type, but I'm not sure how often to schedule it in. His handwriting is very bad, so I do want him to practice writing in print and cursive before he begins typing everything.

I'm seeing the schedule as this:

Daily - 4-5 pages in each Lifepac, work on paragraph, study spelling words.
Twice a week - read out loud to a parent
weekly - spelling test, turn in paragraph, do science experiment
As scheduled or when feel like it - Field trips, watch relevant videos on topics in curriculum, typing lessons

I'm thinking of 6 weeks on, 1 week off, then having a 6 week summer before starting back next year so that he can get up to grade level within 2 years.

I know that all kids are different and that each learns at their own pace, but over the last few years I've learned that our family tends to not do things until it's absolutely necessary. This has to change. We've been too lax since we starting homeschooling. If he's going to graduate by age 18, things have to change. His education has to come first. I'm so glad that I have the flexibility to arrange work hours in order to do that.

So, this is it. 2 weeks to go. On Friday we'll be taking a summer trip to Cherokee, NC, with my mom, my brother and his girlfriend all all the kids. I'll post pictures when we get back. Then a week after that, time to get started.

Yesterday was my 35th birthday. Dh woke me by singing happy birthday. I had forgotten! I took the day off work and my mom called and invited us over for lunch. She made a big lunch and my grandparents brought a cake. My youngest brother and his fiancee were also there, along with another brother and his girlfriend. We had lunch with cake and ice cream, then we spent the rest of the day making various dips to decide which ones to use at my brother's wedding. We had a good time testing them all out and supper consisted of all the different dips.

My other brother also showed up that evening and brought me a present - some new towels with some cucumber melon bubble bath. It smelled really good.

It was a very good birthday :)

I'm shamelessly plugging my ebook again.

I have an auction up on ebay now for the ebook copy. The book is in pdf format and costs $10 through the auction. You can see it here.

You can also get a wire bound copy from Cafe Press for $12.99.

If you want to get one though, I would prefer it if you did the ebay auction so I could get the money faster. Without going into details, I just need to say that it's needed fairly soon.

I have finished my first children's book and received it back from the editor. After making some adjustments and having some artwork completed, I will be selling it as well. I should have it ready by the end of August. It's called "Mystery of Loch Ness: Homeschooling Adventures Book 1". It's written for children ages 9-12 who like adventure and mystery stories.

I'm also working on a romance novel that I plan to submit to Harlequin by the end of the year.

As you can see, working and writing has kept me busy. We will be starting back with school the 2nd week of August. Regular blogging will commence at that time.

There is a carnival going on over at Tami's Blog. My post about committing to homeschooling is part of the carnival. Head over to Tami's and read enjoy the other great posts that are also part of the carnival.