Last Day Of School Summertime Freedom

Wow, look at all the new Moods they added! Quite the choice now, very cool.

So its Friday, and we are on our last day of school. Shelby will have successfully completed the Seventh grade, with flying colors. :)

This is our third year of homeschool. Every year just seems to get better and better. I always give her the option of going back to public school the next year, but she continues to want to be homeschooled and I am very happy about that. She is able to continue to learn more than any public school could teach her this way. She is able to pursue her own interests and truly be herself without peer pressure. She is writing stories and making short intervals of movies to go with her story. She is still drawing up a storm. She loves music, has learned to sew this year and we even started on learning Spanish. I can't tell you how proud I am of her. She is just doing so well in school and in life. She has a great head on her shoulders. :)

I already have some fantastic books picked out for school next year. I am anxious to get them soon and look over them. I think homeschooling is good for me too as it keeps my brain working full time. Things that seemed boring back when I was in school are no longer boring. I do remember what made them boring though, the teachers were a big part of that problem. I try to make sure it stays interesting and peek her interest in things. That is why I am so excited about this particular type of book I am getting. It asks the questions to peek your interest and then tells you an in depth answer. We have the geography book in this series, and she has really done well with it. She has retained a lot from this type of teaching.

For all the good time we have doing school, and many accomplishments we have made...there is nothing like the release from school for three months! Ahhh yes, summertime freedom. As much as I love to teach her, it will be a nice break for me too. I have a lot of projects I need to get on over the summer. I want to paint her upstairs playroom, and my bathroom. I have the pigs new enclosure I want to get done and the fenced walkway from out the side porch door. The horse is eating away at the stairs slowly. They areactually rounded at the ends now. That is one habit I have not been able to break him of. He is a wood chewer. He chews on the sides of his house, on the fence gates. I have had to staple chicken wire over the gates so he wont chew on them. I will have to do the same with the barrier I am about to make to keep both him and chickens away from the stairs. (The chickens (cochins)like to hang out on the stairs and poop them up, and I just hate that). I am always modifying things so I can have the animals without them tearing everything up.

One example of this is we are going to have to get sand and some big rock gravel this weekend. It seems slowly but surely the chickens have dug out from around the edge of the bottom of the pool under the deck. You can get in and feel with your feet around the edges where it has sunk in. Not good, not good at all. So we have to fill that back in best we can with sand and put down gravel so they cant pick it back out with their little beaks.

These are all things I have chosen to live with I guess. I just have to modify the offending area, like the pool, and the stairs, to prevent damage.

The goats decided to start eating the siding on the back of the garage. I couldnt figure out what the heck was happening to it til I caught them doing it. So I had to staple some chicken wire over the offended area to make them stop. I will have to see about blocking that whole strip of siding from them this weekend. Hopefully they won't eat the whole garage before the weekend.

I want to stop a minute and thank everyone for the encouraging and kind words from my recent losses of chicks. I know people have a lot bigger problems than I do. Losing chicks is nothing compared to some of the hardships many are facing now. With gas prices and food prices soaring I am worried for the average person how they will survive. I know a lot of people that were already stretched thin, and now, how do you stretch thin thinner? Especially worried about a few in particular.

Well now I am just rambling aren't I? ;) I should go take some nice chick pictures to post before the day is out. I never end up getting online over the weekend since Ian is home. I give it over to him so he can have some weekend fun and relaxation. That isnt all he does of course. He will be working in the garden and cleaning the pool this weekend also.

Time for me to go for a while. I will post some pretty chick pictures shortly.

OH be sure and go by and see Carrie. Her eggs I sent to her in the mail are hatching. :) Congratulations Carrie, you are officially a mother hen. ;) She will have a video of one of the cochin eggs hatching out later today hopefully. That ought to be great to watch. Here is the link to her journal if you don't already have it and visit her. Carrie