Good Golly Miss Molly...

The second week of school for my girls starts today. I've been trying to keep the schedule kind of light for the first 3 weeks, taking care of the core subjects and trying to add in little projects that reinforce some of those lessons but are fun, as well. Last week went pretty well. We did work every day and worked well together for the most part. I found some wonderful online sites, thanks to other home school moms who post these helpful tidbits. www.currclick.com is a wonderful resource for unit studies and helpful supplemental materials. They offer many free items and lots of their products are less than $5! (They didn't ask me to promote their site. I just thought I'd pass along some helpful info to other home school folks.) Another of my favorite sites is www.enchantedlearning.com . This is a worksheet and information site. You do not have to be a member of the site to print out some of the worksheets but many of the topic specific worksheets can only be printed out by members. I think it's well worth the member fee (which is somewhere around $25/yr, I believe) to be able to print any of the worksheets I might happen to need. The worksheets vary in grade range all through the elementary level. They are easy to modify for a child who is a bit older. As an English and Science project throughout the year, my DD will be posting to her new blog www.journeytoaworldofherbs.blogspot.com . She'll do research during the week on various herbs of her choosing and post her findings.

In other family news...my extended family still doesn't get it about our food decisions. Eating out is unhealthy for us. So bringing food home that has been made at the fast food place is also not a good thing. Also, Domino's pizza has got to be my least favorite pizza of all the 'fast food' pizza chains. I guess that's why they offer their product for school fund raisers. :( So my middle daughter, who would love to kill herself with junk food, is now upset b/c Domino's pizza will be on the table for supper at my mom's but she won't be able to get any. I suppose my question is why. Why was it important to tell my girls what others were having for supper? Did they ask? If so, then the truth was better than a lie but...it's still annoying to have to deal with grumpy kids who'd love to have some pizza. And, no, it's not ok for them to have it 'just this once' because 'just this once' turns into a regular occurrence. If we're going to pinpoint what is making our allergies worse, then we have to eliminate all kinds of that stuff. Tough when it keeps getting shoved under our noses...

More news... My dh has started getting his things together to start the new semester at a new school. While shopping for books (at the store the school referred us to), we found out that his books were going to cost about $400...which we didn't have. The school gave us the ISBNs for two of the books but not the third one. When my DH went back to the store this morning, the owner said he didn't give out the ISBN's because it hurt his business. Poor owner! He just didn't really realize that he hurt his business even more by /not/ giving us the customer service we needed. I'd never shopped there before and had planned to go back but not now. I'll just shop at Amazon. I'd even pay 3x as much, rather than shop at that store now. Honestly! Did the imbecile not know that we /can/ research the stuff on our own? He still lost business on the school books and now he's lost business on his used books, too! I'm not stupid. My DH is not stupid. We found the ISBN at the school and got all the books online...for about 1/3 of the cost. We would really have been stupid not to get the books online... Which bookstore? "And Books Too" in Lafayette, LA. If you need comic books, I'd recommend you go to the other comic book store that I don't know the name of. If you need used books, I'd recommend the one off of I-49 on the north side of town. Can't miss it. It's a huge building with a bright orange tin roof.

In the midst of all this chaos, I think I'm staying sane. Well, as sane as possible considering my 'normal' state of mind. LOL Trying to stay positive in the middle of all the negative...but wondering if that attracts the negative, now. After all, physical science teaches that opposite charges attract. Ok, since I'm rambling, I'll stop for now. I hope some of this helps someone out there.