New year, new look

Welcome to School Year 2009-2010! In honor of our sixth year homeschooling I’ve updated my little slice of heaven on the ‘puter with pretty colors and graphics. I wish I could say I wrote the html code; I got it from a blogging template site. Funny thing was the code was written correctly but all the text was in Spanish. So where you see the word, “Pictures” now was “Fotos” before Amy showed me how to change the code. Glad we paid for her web design class last spring.

Not everything works like I want it to yet. For instance, the link for “Pictures” does absolutely nothing right now. I hope to have that up and running later this week. And now that Amy knows some code basics I’m hoping she’ll help me with some other goodies like a “Contact Me” button and a few additional things.

We’ve been doing school for two weeks. The first week doesn’t count because that was when Sean and I were in Ann Arbor for his bone marrow donation. My Mom was the kids’ substitute teacher and upon our return from the hospital she was fired for dereliction of duty. Those grandmas don’t know how to say the “N” word –No. The kids wanted to go to the park - yes! The kids wanted to go shopping - yes! The kids wanted to go to McDonald's for a drink - yes! Schoolwork? What schoolwork?! (She has since begged for a second chance, vowing to make the kids do their work; I just want to know how soon she can be here.)

The second week was last week and we did pretty well, but we knew we had two weeks to complete our work since our go-to-school-day is Monday and that meant no school meeting this week due to Labor Day. So we’ve been thinking, “I’ve got another week to complete this! Woo hoo!” Boy is that going to bite us in the backside next week.

The kids have done fairly well; Latin is proving a challenge, as is logic (no comments from the peanut gallery, please). Amy and I have been working defining terms by genus and difference using six specific rules (not feeling so smart now are you, peanut gallery?). It’s challenging our way of defining everything, including the sign on Target that states, “Only seeing eye dogs permitted.” That fails based on rule #3: A definition should not be too broad or too narrow.

Ah, those homeschooled families are just barrels of fun!

Amy plays in her first volleyball game of the season tonight and all three are gearing up for Friday’s auditions for the musical Seusical. Sean’s also going to be a part of the production; he’s one of the rehearsal accompanists. I think he’s secretly hoping that transfers into show week pit director just like he was for his high school’s production of Grease. That was only 20-something years ago.

Year Six of Homeschooling is off to a good start. Check back in a few weeks from now; hope I can say we’re still going strong.

Now I need to figure out how soon that sub can get up here...