Occupational Hazard

This is why I'm a little afraid of kangaroos. They are so stinking strong! Do you see the muscles on that guy?? They're so cute but seriously strong. Those suckers are always on America's Funniest Videos kicking the tar out of some innocent little kid. They are magnificent animals though. Did you know that during times of extreme famine or drought a pregnant kangaroo can actually suspend the development of her fetus?? That's phenomenal! She just hits the pause the button and the baby's development is stopped until conditions are more favorable with no detriment to the baby. Amazing. Sorry, I'm a homeschooling mom. I'm full of useless but fascinating facts.

Seriously though, if I were a reporter I think I'd have to have a "no kangaroos" clause in my contract. And if I were to work in Australia I think I'd have to visit Hartman Thomas and take out a little insurance, maybe have a risk management consult :)

Here's a little more kangaroo violence for your enjoyment:

Biggest

Thirteen years ago today I gave birth to Biggest. I was barely 17, his father who was and is still by my side was barely 18. We had no clue about the difficult road that lay before us, no clue of the worry and only a hint of the reward. But we loved Biggest before we knew him and we love him now. Happy birthday Biggest. We are so proud of you and the man you are becoming.

Weekly Wrap-Up

This week was fun and eventful. A great week overall. How was your week? Tell us at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers.

Monday- We continued to plug away on our Sonlight curriculum which is all about the Eastern hemisphere. Biggest is really enjoying learning about India, the culture is fascinating him. I'm not surprised though, I like Indian culture and hope to travel there one day.

Tuesday- Co-op day, we had our usual classes. I teach General Science and we did a fun experiment that measures lung capacity. I didn't post about it so I'll take a few moments to write about it below. It was really simple and fun-the kids were making it into a competition.

Wednesday- We spent the day in Hershey, PA. That was a great experience. It was an all day adventure and you can read about it HERE.

Thursday- We just relaxed at home today, no pressure after the big day at Hershey. Today consisted mostly of math facts and read alouds. We're reading and enjoying Daughter of the Mountains. We're also reading Around the World in Eighty Days, I'm not enjoying this as much it's...wordy. That's the only way I can think to describe it.

Friday- We did a bit more academically than yesterday but still not a heavy day. More math and reading, Bible study and a little bit of geography. We also spent about an hour trying to clear our weed bed of a garden. I can't wait to have a veggie garden this year, I haven't had one in two years.

As for Tuesday's simple experiment you will need:

an empty gallon jug with lid

a measuring cup

some flexible aquarium tubing

your sink

Fill your sink about 4" high with water. Fill the jug to the very brim with water and replace the lid. Invert the jug into the sink, submerging the lid in the water. Remove the lid-be sure the top is completely submerged so no water escapes. Slip one end of the tubing into the opening of the jug, but not very far in, just an inch or two. Take a deep breath and blow as long and as hard as you can into the other end of the tube-this should force air in and water out of the jug. When you're finished blowing-still underwater-remove the tube and replace the lid on the jug. You can now remove the jug from the water. Use the measuring cup to measure how many cups of water are left in your jug. Knowing that on average there are 16 cups of water in a gallon you can calculate how many "cups" of air your lungs held to get your approximate lung capacity.

Gardening

You know I don't think I've mentioned it before, but I love to garden. I love to grow things and take pride in providing a small harvest for the family. I've probably not mentioned it because I haven't had a garden in about two years...I've had a weed bed.

I didn't even a attempt to garden the year I was preggo, no way was I going out to pull weeds in 95+ degree weather, 8 1/2 months pregnant . Uh uh. Then last year I planted three tomato plants and a pumpkin, but with an infant the garden became the last thing on my list of priorities and was quickly overrun with weeds. Weeds 7 feet tall.

Now Littlest is 1 1/2 and I've been yearning to get back out in the vegetable garden, but oy what a mess! This morning Biggest and I spent an hour pulling old dried grass and weeds and piling them in a heap to burn. What a pile it is, and we're still not finished! I'll have to run out this evening to get a burn permit if we hope to finish the job tomorrow. I want to have the bed ready by the end of the month.

I don't know what I was thinking, not covering the garden. If I'd simply covered it I wouldn't have this mess to deal with now. Usually at the end of autumn we'll put a layer of leaves down, let it sit for a week or so the cover the entire garden area with a tarp. It's worked well in the past for us, better than cardboard or that landscapers cloth. The only problem is it takes longer for the leaves to break down since they're essentially protected from the weather.

So I was looking at tarps trying to find one that I felt might work a little better and I came across this one, it's heavy weight mesh which would allow some rain through to speed the decomposition process but it's also UV light resistant which I was hoping would deter weed growth. Am I correct or completely off base with this? Should I just stick with a regular tarp? Or perhaps a hay tarp?

Hershey, PA

Oh what a day! We spent all day Wednesday in Hershey, PA; home of the Hershey Chocolate Factory and Hershey Park. Hubby took the day off work so it was a family affair. The amusement park is not yet open but Hershey offers a myriad of fun and educational experiences all year long. We took advantage of the homeschool day offered at both The Hershey Store Museum and Chocolate World.

It was amazing. We all learned so much. Milton S. Hershey was a phenomenal man! I'm sure his museum wouldn't broadcast his shortcomings, but I'd surmise the sheer volume of positive contributions he made would far outweigh the average man's negative aspects. He had a few failed businesses but once he gained success with chocolate he set out to change lives. He built orphanages, schools, hospitals...a town. During the depression he paid the bills of 4 (I think) churches so they wouldn't go bankrupt. During WWI when sugar was scarce and it looked like he may have to close the plant or lay off some workers, Hershey went to Cuba, bought some land and built a sugar refinery (and another orphanage) so he could supply sugar for his plant in PA. I could go on and on but I won't. I have decided to seek out a biography on Hershey though, and I will encourage Biggest to write a report about him.

But back to our day. We started out at 9AM at the Hershey Story Museum. This was great, we watched a demonstration in the chocolate lab where they made a chocolate bowl using a balloon and a "bug" cookie. I'm using the bowl idea to make edible "baskets" for Easter. You can make the basket completely edible by dying flaked coconut green and using that in place of plastic grass! After the lab we went upstairs to the museum. This is where we learned all about Hershey's life, business and contributions. Biggest was given an activity sheet with economic/entrepreneurship questions. We walked around at our own pace, reading and observing until the questions were answered. I now have a great addition for our portfolio.

After the museum area we watched a quick presentation on the journey of the cacao bean (those things look SO unappetizing!) And I learned the difference between cocoa beans an nibs. The nibs are simply crushed beans.

Then it was onto the gift shop with adorable and seriously overpriced wares. We bought a few things anyhow :)

By now it was around 11:30AM. We were finished with the Hershey Story Museum and we weren't due for Chocolate World until 1PM so we went out for lunch and a little drive around town. Hershey is a really adorable town. See the Hershey Kiss street lamps?

Around 1PM we headed over to Chocolate World. Here we were treated to a tour of the "jungle" which is pretty much an atrium in the middle of a HUGE gift shop. I missed most of this presentation because I was chasing Littlest around trying to keep him out of the merchandise. After the jungle we went on the Chocolate Tour. This was an adorable ride where animated cows sang a catchy jingle (think Disney's It's a Small World After All ) and an automated voice shared the journey of chocolate-from beans to bars. Littlest loved this ride, he thought the cows were wondrous.

Then it was onto the highlight of Biggest's day, The Really Big 3-D Show. This was so much fun, I won't give anything away. I'll just say that I highly recommend you take in the show. It's worth it. After the show, since we were part of the education tour, we were invited to the front of the theater where the "professor" (who was homeschooled her whole childhood!) explained all the cool effects. The kids were given certificates to take home, another addition to the portfolio :)

And that was our day! It was fun and educational and not too terribly expensive. The museum, including the booklet and activities cost 8.00 per person and Chocolate World, including the tour and 3-D show was 6.00 per person.

If you live too far away and can't physically get to Hershey the websites offer lots of info and some activities. Click the links for The Hershey Story Museum and Chocolate World sites! But if you are close enough to have the experience I should tell you that the amusement park opens for a few weekends in April, then full time in mid May (I think). And May is Homeschool Month-ALL MONTH homeshcoolers are offered an admission discount. Check it out here. Hope you can make it, physically or virtually!

Blah

Its raining, well drizzling to be specific. It's damp and gray. Usually this kind of weather doesn't bother me, in fact I quite like the rain. Rainy days are great for reading in front of the fire, watching a movie or otherwise hunkering down at home. It's just that yesterday was gorgeous! It was warm and sunny, perfect outside weather. We spent the day up in Hershey, PA learning about Milton S. Hershey and his chocolate empire. I'll try and post about it tomorrow and I promise to share some pictures! It was a wonderful day that put me in the mood for spring.

Then today I woke up to drearyness...sigh...and darkness. I love winter but I'm so over it. This winter the weather was beyond screwy. One day it was warm the next it was freezing and snowing. But the snow wouldn't stay long because we would soon be hit with another freakishly warm day. Perfect pneumonia weather.

I'm ready for spring. For warmth. And most importantly, consistency! Just one or two weeks in which I can wear clothing from one season only. Oh, to not have to bounce between spring and winter wardrobes, wouldn't that be nice? Somewhere like Arizona maybe? Warm winds and blue skies! Vacation anyone? My uncle lives near Scottsdale, maybe he would let me crash at his house for a week or two...but then maybe the weather would be so nice I wouldn't want to leave. LOL.

Check out these Arizona homes and tell me, whadda ya think?

Funnies

I love this age. Earlier in the week Littlest, who is 19 months old, was running around nakey. He peed all over the hardwood floor. Then he pointed at the puddle and said "Juice!"

Um...No. Once maybe. But no. Gotta love kids. :)

Lesson on Friendship

Biggest had a pretty good lesson on friendships this week. I was really proud of the way he handled a difficult situation and thought I would share it here. We are the only homeschooling family in our development, well we don't technically live "in" a development, we live on a somewhat busy road. But there is a small development behind us where 4 or 5 children live who are close in age to Biggest. Also one of our immediate neighbors has a boy Biggest's age and all the "neighborhood" kids often play.

Our immediate neighbor boy who I'll call "Kid" can be a little difficult (not that Biggest is perfect). He's kind of an angry kid. He doesn't have the best attitude, I could go into a bunch of reasons why I feel he behaves this way but I won't bore you with my psychobabble and I'm sure you can use your imagination.

Kid can be really sweet, but like a light switch he can get broody and mean in a passive aggressive way. He and Biggest have had several tiffs in the past and Kid gets manipulative, thankfully Biggest comes to us (his parents) for guidance on how to deal with these situations; we try to teach him how to respectively call Kid out on his demands and manipulations. Basically we try to teach him how to deal with problems responsibly without allowing himself to become a doormat.

Earlier this week we had another situation. All the neighborhood kids were playing basketball back in the development; everything was fine until Biggest and another boy (I'll call him Boy) tired of basketball and asked the others if they wanted to play something else. Rather than just saying no Kid gathered up the other boys and told Biggest and Boy that the others "needed to huddle up to decide whether or not to play with them". Biggest wasn't having any of it so he told Boy goodbye and came home. When he got home he was irritated and told us the story. We told him he did the right thing in leaving.

The next day Biggest was playing with Boy and Boy told him that after he left the night before Kid began making fun of Biggest behind his back and telling the other guys that he "still calls his parents Mommy and Daddy". When Biggest got home he was fuming mad and filled me in on the story. He then told me he wanted to march next door and tell Kid he was done being his friend. I was hurt and angry too and wanted to tell him to go ahead and punch him in the nose for good measure but thankfully wisdom won out. I told him he needed to settle down and that he shouldn't speak to kid until he had time to think and calm down. He proceeded to tell me he was calm through gritted teeth. Calm? Sure, lol. I explained to him that he does call us Mommy and Daddy sometimes whether he realizes it or not and that's not the issue. It may have embarrassed him but the issue is that his "friend" was supposedly talking about him negatively behind his back.

Later that evening his father and I discussed the situation with him. We explained how situations like this seem to be more the rule than the exception with Kid, that he needs to think carefully about what he wants to say and to be sure that when he does say something it isn't out of anger or spite. I also told him to think of what he would say if Kid denied saying the things he said (that's happened before) and if this is a serious enough offense to end the friendship or if it's something he can forgive.

All was quiet the next day and evening. Then last night Biggest received a text message from Kid simply saying "hi". Biggest replied with a curt "I heard you were talking about me behind my back." An hour later Kid finally replied..."yes, that's true". I had to give him credit for telling the truth. They texted back and forth a while, Kid giving excuses for his behavior such as "school is stressing me out, I had a rough weekend at my Dad's house" etc. Biggest essentially told him he was sorry he was going through those things but that didn't give him the right to take it out on him.

In the end Kid apologized and Biggest forgave him. I was glad for that but at the same time I wished the friendship had ended because it's not an altogether healthy one. One remark Biggest made that disturbed me a bit was along the lines of "he's just depressed and needs someone to help him". I pointed out that while that's true, he can be his friend, it's not his job to save or fix Kid. He isn't his responsibility. All he can do is be a good friend.

I think experiences like this are important ones, and I'm forever grateful for the fact that we homeschool and I can walk Biggest through such things rather than him winging it at public school. It's hard though. When my baby is hurting the mother bear in me comes out and I want to growl and snarl. Sometimes I'd like to forbid him from playing with Kid but I remember when I was about 9, I had a friend my father didn't approve of and he told me so. He also told me that he would allow me to chose my own friends but to be careful with "her". Not too long after that conversation that girl smoked cigarettes in front of me and offered me one. I declined but I realized my father was right. It was a huge learning experience for me and it proved to me that my father knew more than I thought he did. I hope it's the same feeling for Biggest.

The only thing I wish I'd done differently is told him to pray about it. I don't know why I didn't, it was one of the first things I did. Sometimes I get so caught up in the lesson that I forget to point out where the wisdom comes from. Wow, this has turned into a long post, sorry.

What about you? Have you had situations like this? How did you handle it? How about your kids?

Manic Monday

Manic Monday is brought to you by Fleur de Lisa at Manic Monday Pop over and enjoy the fun!


What would you do with an extra hour each day?

I would probably find some inane chore to fill it with then still complain that there aren't enough hours in the day, LOL.

Do you wear a watch? If so, tell us about it. If not, how do you keep track of time?

No, I don't wear a watch. I'm blessed in that I don't usually have to worry about time. There are only 2 places I have to be each week-Monday at Biggest's guitar lesson and Tuesday to our homeschool co-op. So for those I just rely on my household clocks or the clock in my vehicle. Our days have a certain rhythm so I usually know about what time it is without a clock or watch.

If it was possible, would you want to know how many days you had left to live?

That's a difficult one. Hmmm. If it were 3 months or more I'd say yes I want to know. I feel that even though that's a tremendously short amount of time I would be able to get angry, grieve, take an amazing trip, write farewell letters and say my goodbyes. I think knowing would help me pack more into my life and really live like I should. Not knowing kind of leads to the "there's always tomorrow" way of thinking... But if I had less than 3 months I don't think I'd want to know, I'd be too scared and angry I think, leaving my Hubby and kids, no time to prepare or really say goodbye. I don't like this question, I'm not going to think about it anymore.

Free Cloth Diaper!!

Ahhhh! Stampede! If I know my fellow clothies this will cause a commotion. Thank goodness it's a random drawing or this could get ugly...LOL In order to enter to win you need to post on your blog about the giveaway. The info is below!



Win a free Bumgenius 3.0 Diaper! This is a valuable All-In-One cloth diaper that you can use for yourself or give as a gift to someone expecting a baby! Go check out Hot Belly Mama's Blog for details on how to win this wonderful All In One Cloth Diaper. Hot Belly Mama will announce the winner on March 30th, after her 30th birthday! Here is the direct link to her blog:

http://hotbellymama.blogspot.com/

Good luck!

Weekly Wrap Up

I don't have much time this evening, but I want to participate as I missed last week. So I'll make this as quick as possible. :)

Monday- School as usual, regular routine. Biggest started reading Rascal by Sterling North and he's loving it. I have to make him stop to do the rest of his studies. It's a story of a boy and his raccoon. Guess what pet he wants now? Oy.

Tuesday- Co-op day. I had trouble with the van's transmission sticking I think it was low on transmission fluid due to a leak the Jiffy Lube people told me about...then I promptly forgot.

Wednesday-Another regular school day. I took a couple hours to gather up all our tax documents. We had a home based tractor trailer business which we shut down last year when the fuel prices went nuts, so this is the last year I'll have to fool with taxes for that hallelujah. I was out of my element with trucking LOL.

Thursday- At 8:30 my father-in-law was on my doorstep asking if he could take Biggest with him to the home of a friend that has hundreds of old motors, lots of old time hit-and-miss steam motors. Field trip? Sure! So off they went. Littlest and I went to drop off the tax info to the accountant-fingers crossed for a refund!

Friday-Another regular school day-although looking back at my previous Weekly Wrap Ups I have to wonder if there is such a thing-LOL A mechanic friend of my dad's agreed to take a look at my van so my little brother picked it up and drove it to the shop for me, how nice was that?

And that's pretty much it. To share your Weekly Wrap Up head on over to Kris' blog!

Slacker

Well, it's been a few days and I still feel the same way about the nursing-driver-lady. Oh well.

In other news, I myself have been a slacker mom today. Littlest was sitting underneath the kitchen table with a pen. He proceeded to color the underside of the table in a lovely circular fashion. But...being that it was somewhere no would be likely to see the damage I didn't stop him as quickly as I should have. I finished loading the dishwasher to be exact. I know that decision will come back to bite me in the butt...

Stupidity in Action

I'm a big breastfeeding advocate. I feel that if you can and it works for you family then you most definitely should. I also think nothing of moms breastfeeding in public or nursing a child until 2 or 3 years of age-if they chose to do so. Littlest is 19 months old and still nursing. But in my not so humble opinion THIS is the stupidest, most irresponsible thing I've heard in a long, long time.

Gennie Compton of Dayton Ohio was ticketed for not having her child in a seating restraint. Apparently a concerned citizen witnessed Compton nursing her child and talking on the cell phone WHILE DRIVING her older children to school!!! Hello!! She should be charged with child endangerment. The child was in Compton's lap with her head against the steering wheel. The thought of what could have happened gives me chills.

Her justification? In short Compton states that her daughter was hungry and she fed her so that she didn't have to listen to the crying during her drive across town. She goes on to say that she may do it again because she didn't feel it was wrong and that she doesn't deserve the ticket because the officer didn't witness the offence.

What ever happened to common sense? What happened to caring about driver safety? What happened to giving a crap about our children's safety--being a mom means having to deal with a little crying every now and then; if you're not up for the job I'll gladly take the little darling. If you must feed her right then PULL THE CAR OVER, I've done this numerous times because it breaks my heart to let my baby cry. What's more important, safety or punctuality? Personally I'd rather arrive 10 minutes late than not at all.

What angers me the most is her complete inability to admit she was wrong, the ridiculous pride in ignorance. And the fact she feels she doesn't deserve the ticket because the officer didn't witness her stupidity. Would it be okay if there were no witnesses?? NO!!

I'm sorry, I'm usually not this judgemental. I'll probably feel bad about this post in the morning. I'll think of all the harebrained things I've done as a mother (though usually unintentionally) and want to extend some grace. But right now I'm appalled. I guess that's why you shouldn't blog when you're angry. You just might "say" something you'll regret. :)

Sick of Being Sick

Ugh. Okay, so we're not technically sick but ever since we had our first bout with a stomach virus, then again two weeks later my stomach hasn't been quite right. I guess since my system was so depleted my digestive enzymes haven't built back up yet. It seems that if I eat anything other than rice or plain noodles my tummy churns and gurgles for a few hours. It's getting better...slowly...but boy would I love some tacos with lots of refried beans. Oh well, today I ate tomato soup without trouble :)