Definitely it's okay to go at his pace. I always feel like we are way behind when I go to the high school board so I tend to only stop in with a specific question. My son is a sophomore this year and is definitely missing a few things. But I also know he's unlikely to do a traditional college experience, and extremely unlikely to be applying for any rigorous programs. So I don't worry about it. (easier said than done, I know).

I was doing the challenges for a while but then I stopped getting the notifications. Are they still going on?

The FIL stuff stinks, but CONGRATULATIONS on the new house.

We seem to have a lot of flies right now. Which is annoying because we bug bombed not that long ago. We're going to have to do it again pretty soon. Not until the new heat system is in because I"m sure they'll be going in and out a lot doing that. I think I may watch Captain America with my beer. I think I"m done with work for the evening. Even though you guys didn't confirm and made me look at Google to make sure it was in fact still Friday.

I probably could but we ordered the right one from Amazon and it won't be here until Sunday so Dh can just do it when he gets home. It was already 5pm here when I said that. it's almost 7pm now. I have beer but haven't had any yet because I'm still working on a class and since I have absolutely NO tolerance for alcohol, I will get absolutely no work done once I have it so I'm being a responsible adult and waiting. Today is still Friday right? I have two more days to get things ready.

Pretty.

I'm pretty sure it's time.

Dh has left for his moms. I told the kids they are on their own for meals for the next two days and I'm ordering take-out on Sunday. I have so much work to do (I know I know, I've had months). They are 13 and 15 so certainly capable. We had to go pick up his car at the shop and he left right from there in my car so I'm stuck with his truck again. Shouldn't be bad, I just have to go meet older dd in the morning to work out and maybe make one trip to the store. I'll have to see what stuff I really need for the first couple days and what can wait. I don't really want to go to BJ's or the AFSA on the weekend. Dh tried to move our washer/dryer before he left but it turns out the plug we ordered was the wrong one (three prong not four prong) so he ran to Home Depot to get the right plug and installed it but then it turned out to be the wrong 4 prong (different shape to one of the prongs) so I have no washer/dryer for the weekend. It's been a heck of a day.

I LOVE Halloween, LOVE Supernatural, really liked the movie The Cabin in the Woods. But I don't like to read horror as much as I did when I was younger. I read a ton of Stephen King and Clive Barker when younger, now I can handle Dean Koontz and Robin Cook type stuff at most. I can't read any books where kids get hurt, regardless of whether it's horror or not. Pet Sematary is one I definitely can't read or watch anymore. I would decorate like crazy for Halloween if our house wasn't extremely small and Christmas didn't already disrupt things for months at a time.

I have a bag like that sitting on my couch but it's a tool bag. My end pockets have my phone, my glasses, and some post it notes. Dh's holds the tv remotes. In the big middle is a box of tissues, a notebook, some lotion, a few other things that rotate. The side pockets have pens, pencils, charging cords, my allergy meds, scissors, etc. It basically stays sitting on the couch but is easy to move if we have company over.

And dh is going down to his mom's again because they just found out the surgery is too dangerous so she has 6 months to 3 years left. She's 85 so it's not a complete surprise but still.

I just had to spend the first hour after waking up dealing with ridiculous people on my local group. Not happy about it. I woke up to dh coming home, which totally confused me and made me feel like I slept in too long but turns out his car didn't start and he had to get it towed and was just back from getting that done so it was still only around 8:30am. We're having another day of almost raining so I have a headache. Had a lovely argument with the kids last night because they got too used to staying up late talking to friends and we've been too relaxed because, why not?, and now they don't seem to want to make the switch until the very last day they have to.

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We have roads marked as bike routes that are as described above - narrow, twisty, hilly, very little visibility and no shoulders. I refuse to even walk on some of these roads because between the cars and the bikes, you'd be taking your life into your hands. Most areas you can't even step into a yard, there's either rocks, trees or restraining walls. And definitely this. Large groups that pay no attention to which side of the road they're supposed to be on, much less staying toward the shoulder. Riding 3 and 4 across a busy road, swerving suddenly, not signaling, not stopping. It's awful. I was stopped once at a stop sign, turning left onto a busier road with very little visibility to see cars coming from the right and no stop sign for the cross traffic. A biker came up behind me, went over into the middle of the road so they were on my left and went straight across the road without stopping. I almost made the left turn without even seeing them which would have put me right into their path. Plus there could have been a car coming down the main road and there's no way they would have known. You can't see until you're right at the intersection and the line of sight is pretty small.

This is my pet peeve, and it comes mostly from the long-term homeschoolers. Someone asks 3rd grade math and everyone just starts throwing out suggestions without asking even the most basic questions. Do you want religious or secular? Textbook, workbook, video, online? At least narrow it down a little bit.

Morning. Met up with dd and did some yoga this morning. I was going to meet a friend to kayak but it's raining so nope on that. I'll be working on class stuff today, as usual. I really want to have everything finalized for at least the first half of the year. Then I can do the rest over Thanksgiving and Christmas break. I should be able to do it no problem in the next four days. My oldest slept with me quite a big until she was 7 or 8 years old (after my divorce where she was gone every other week she seemed to need that connection). That's when I married dh and when I was pregnant with ds, he firmly declared "no child of mine will sleep in my bed". Then ds NEVER slept. No matter what. Nothing worked. Not cry it out, nothing. Guess who was sleeping with us by the time he was 6 weeks old? Contrary to what so many people said, he didn't stay in our bed until high school. He actually stopped probably around 4 or 5 years old. Youngest dd stopped around the same age.

Wow, how did I wind up three pages behind? Had our first Teen Club meeting tonight. It went well. The kids didn't talk much but that's expected the first time they ever meet. They seemed to have fun. Now I"m just relaxing a bit before going to bed. I'm meeting dd in the morning, then was going to meet someone to kayak at the lake but it's supposed to rain and thunderstorm in the morning.

I would have yelled at them to watch out for the flowers at the end as well. That's really rude and I'm sorry, looking out your window to see a strange man in your yard is alarming. The cars in my driveway, I would have parked blocking them in and not been in a real hurry to let them out if they had to go somewhere. But I think people just don't respect other people or their property anymore. The house right next door to us was a foreclosure that some people recently purchased to fix up. They kept getting things stolen, work supplies and equipment, etc. so they set up cameras and alarms. In addition to finally catching the actual thief, they caught some neighborhood girls breaking in just to dance around their living room. When the parents were confronted the mom just laughed it off as "kids' stuff" and offered to have the girls write an apology note. The girls were 16 and 19 so no, not kids. And who does that?

Extreme sensitivity to light, noise, textures, tastes, temperatures. In particular, certain noises like fans or blowing that didn't even need to be particularly loud. He seems to be a super taster, and even now won't wear anything but sweats and tshirts. Trouble with baths that got better when we made them warmer than usually recommended for babies/toddlers. He still basically has a narrow range of comfortable temperatures. Speech delays but spoke in his own language with typical inflections and cadence, just no understandable words. Needs routines. Until he hit the teenage years he basically ate on a schedule. Wouldn't necessarily feel hungry but x time was lunch, x time was dinner, and he'd get upset if it was too far off especially if it was without warning. Intense interests. For a while it was Pokemon, he knew EVERYTHING Pokemon. Liked playing with figurines but not in a typical pretend play way, more just lining them up or making patterns kind of way. Needed explicit instruction on social behavior, help reading social cues. He's better now but still obviously not typical. Hates being touched. As a baby he liked being held a lot and it was the only way he would sleep, but outside of mom/dad, he's always hated anyone touching him and will cringe away from even mom and dad now. Especially if it's done without warning. If someone (like gramma) asks for a hug, he can gear up and do it for a couple seconds. I don't think we would have changed too much, but I wish we had known sooner because understanding where it was coming from would have made a lot of things easier. We wouldn't have pushed certain things, would have known a better approach for other things.

Nevermind, looks like we're still 10 away. Even I can't babble for that long.

IF I miss the booya by one post again I'm going to be annoyed.

We were going to go to the zoo for a Not Back to School day today but no other teenagers were going, and my kids have spent the past two days at the lake, and none of us wanted to get up early (zoo at 10am and it's 45 minutes away) so we bailed out. I have the first meeting of my Teen Club tonight. We'll see how that goes.

I don't do a schedule. We use stuff that's pretty much do the next thing, do some of it year round, and just take off whenever we want/need to. Things get done in a reasonable amount of time usually. I do have to do some planning since we start year round full school next week. And I start classes Monday. And I'm sitting here thinking I really should have started all the school stuff this week while I'm home all day and not next week when I'm at the science center all day. Now I have to decide do I get everyone up early to go over their school stuff before I leave or do I make them go over things with me when I get home at 2:30 to 4pm? They do a lot of their work independently but especially the first day or so, it would probably be good if I could show them some of the new stuff. They come to the science center with me on Monday and Friday.

I made the butterscotch brownies with dark chocolate chunks in them. I used a bigger pan that has the dividers that supposedly makes every piece a corner piece. I turned down the heat and shortened the time because they were so thin. So they were slightly undercooked other than the real corners. Between dh, dd and I we still managed to finish them all off in one evening.

They ate the SEEDS??? I thought they planted them and ate the veggies that grew. But they ate the seeds. That's bizarre. And dumb. We received seeds but they were ones we actually ordered. And almost none of them sprouted.