Homeschooling and Life in Sunny Florida

Electricity

I had hoped to be rolling with school by now but we are still sputtering along....
Today we read our second to last chapter of Hitty, that book has taken forever! It was a good book but it has just dragged on to long for us. We will wrap that up this week to get it out of the way!
Then we worked on Electricity, I had gotten a dvd from NetFlix "Science Fundamentals: Getting - Charged", it was only 15 minutes long which Kelly was so happy about. I could tell Kelly was pretty much lost even tho it was only a few minutes long. The did a few experiments like the balloon rubbing then sticking on your shirt ect. but she was lost with the whole thing.
We then read "Science Around Us Electricity" by Darlene Stille an easy read but it still didn't make it clear for her at all. It seems when words are used like Atom, electrons ect. she just zones out instead of trying to focus in on what they are all about.
I have another dvd about Thomas Edison that I thought would tie into the electric topic. I just found out they are sending my Richard Simmons 80's Blast off excerise dvd : ( so we will have a day or so before the Edison dvd which really won't work well but it is what is it.....

Happy 2011 Blogging Buddies!

Start of a New Year - Wooo Hooo!
I always love the start of a New Year with all the hope & excitment of what it could bring.
I had wanted to post yesterday with it being 1/1/11 - How cool was that! But Kelly went down to stay at my son's house so I had the whole day to myself : ) I played around all day on the computer, My computer runs windows 98 so everything I do takes forever but it was fun to just be able to spend the day reading articles ect.
One of my MAIN goals this year is to lower my food bill! I am not kidding this year I really want to get a handle on our food. We do not eat very healthy to begin with so any improvement will be helpful. Yesterday I found this fantastic website/blog: http://www.grocerycouponguide.com/articles/eating-well-on-1-a-day/
This guy spent one dollar a day to feed himself! Now I don't want to go that low but some of his ideas are amazing! How he gets so much food for hardly any money at all. The blog posts are long but some of his thrown together food ideas look so much better then many of my meal ideas, I can't wait to try some of his simple menu tips. I am going to try his coupon ideas too, I can't print any coupons off of our computer no printer able to be hooked up to it : ( but I can buy the Sunday paper and start there.

I had another "Smile" moment, Kelly & I were watching Pawn Stars tv show. Someone brought in a Winston Churchill letter, I asked her if she remembered who he was and she did! I jumped out of my chair and hugged her. So many times I really worry nothing is getting into that cute head of hers and then I find out some of it does : ) I know I use way too many dvds in our school day but it really seems to stick so much better in her brain.

Another one of my New Years thoughts is to really try and find the positive out of things. This past year has really been a back breaker! Things are pretty bleak for the future also but I can't let that ruin every single day!

Hope everyone is having a wonderful New Year so far! Back to the grind stone tomorrow.... Hey now that didn't sound positive. See I'm trying to catch myself hehehe!

P.S. - One more thing, I NEED to drop a boat load of pounds! I am too heavy! I have a Richard Simmons dvd coming from Netflix. I have to start out slow and I thought of his videos, I hope I can stick with it.

Happy New Year's Eve & Sadness : (

I hope everyone has a wonderful night tonight with your friends & family! I always love the thought of a new year and all the hope it brings!
This year has been one of the worst for my family, and to top it off this morning my 18 year old cat Joey passed away : (.... The last few days he wasn't eatting so I was trying to prepair myself for the end but that cat has been with us since my son was three years old, He has see the birth of Kelly, all the moves we've made, evacuations for hurricanes & fire ect. We sure are going to miss that fellow he was one like one of my children.... Rest in peace Joe!

Happy Holidays!!!!

Hope everyone had a wonderful Holiday!
Here are a few pictures Kelly took of the fire at our house two weeks ago. This was about 4 hours after it started. Most of our two acres are burnt. It was a terrible ordeal to say the least! Needless to say it really drained any holiday spirt we might have had from us. Especially since on Black Friday we had gone and used a Walmart credit card to buy Kelly a laptop (We HATE credit cards, We always get in trouble using them but we had no money this year to buy any gift for her any other way so we went ahead and did it). We had given it to her early before the holiday because we knew that the internet would most likely be shut off by Christmas and wanted to give her some time to use it. Well during the evacuation for the fire the charger for the laptop got ran over! We were all heart broken, But the internet was shut off soon after anyway. I am just glad to see 2010 go! I think I said the same about 2009, but the years HAVE to start getting better....

Freezing Cold in Florida : (

What the heck is this weather, We are having freezing temps. in Florida! That's just not right!! I put the heat on last night for the first time this year : (
I sure hope it warms up soon, I am really useless in the cold weather..

I wanted to ask you all, Do you have a website that you use for vocabulary words?
I am finding Kelly really is lacking in that area ex. I was talking about how I rode in a real stage-coach and she didn't know what that was.. also I mentioned something about a comedian and she didn't know what that was either. We have been working on spelling words which I guess in simular but she learns the word (she writes the words in a sentence, word search ect.) but by the next week they are just gone from her memory. I would like to maybe move away from that and get her to become more aware of more words and their meanings than learning to spell them.

Pearl Harbor Day... Kelly & I are going work on that today. I miss my dad's stories about that day. I wish he was here to tell Kelly the war stories... Soon most of those folks who remember that time will not be with us : (

Stay Warm!!!!

Fire!!!!!

Kelly & I were on our way back from the getting hay for our horses when we saw black smoke. I gunned the car and sure enough it was at my neighbors, I flew into our driveway and jumped out and yelled to my husband. I called 911, they wanted to know my neighbors exact address so I had to run down to his house. On fire was not his main mobile home it was one that I think he used as storage (he has 3 mobile homes and a motor home on his property), I could hear popping coming from the burning home. 911 asked me so many questions it was unreal!

Right before my eyes the fire started to move and it was going right towards my house! My husband ran down to where I was and yelled hurry we have to get the animals out right now! I ran into the house and got the dog crates and started loading them, my husband took them down to a neighbors. My mind was racing but yet I was in slow motion I could not even think straight. I looked out the window and the fire was right next to my goat fence, Kelly & I ran out to let the goats out. We could not get the boards to open so I busted them (It is amazing how strong you can be when you are under stress). A police officer was at our house yelling that we needed to leave NOW! We couldn't get Kelly's cats, they scratched her and ran from her so we just opened her bedroon windows and had to leave them there in hopes they would jump out. We then ran to open the horse pen and had to watch our horses just run... It was gut wrenching. The officer was getting very upset with us by now and the fire was so close. I sent Kelly down to the neighbors where the dogs were and went back to the house, by now the fire trucks were all over the place. I ran back into the house, I can not tell you how I felt looking around the house thinking that in a few minutes everything would be burned up. I ran to get the picture book my father worked on his entire life that is all I have left of both my parents, my husband was yelling hell with the pictures we had to go but I tore open the closet and with all my strength I pulled the picture books out and took them outside to the street. A wonderful neightbor was there with a golf cart and put them in to take them to a safe place. I ran in one more time and saw I had forgotten our 20 year old cat! He has been in bad shape and was out of sight, I got him in a crate, before I left the house I prayed to God and asked him to spare the house.

The fire trucks were in my driveway, tractors where making fire lines around my house and a helicopter was dropping water over the fire. It was unreal! Kelly said she turned her back towards the house because she didn't want to see the black smoke which would mean our house was getting burned : (

To make a very long afternoon/evening short, the wonderful firefighters saved my house!!!!! A number of wonderful neighbors helped in so many ways, our horses were running loose and this lady got them and took them to her house and feed & watered them and let them run in her pen, another fellow watched the dogs for us as we were back and forth, another lady I had never seen before helped transport the dogs for us in her truck.... the list goes on and on. The one I have to thank the most tho is God! The fire was on a bee line straight for our house and out of know where a wind came and the fire blew just inches past our house & goat house and spared us!

Praise God!