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2ndGenHomeschooler

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Everything posted by 2ndGenHomeschooler

  1. I’m still here. “Plodding” is a good way to describe my progress. My main focus in August was school prep. We start tomorrow and I just finished. Last year’s materials are cleared out, several boxes of books have found new homes, everything that’s staying has been cleaned up and reorganized. The planning and prep for next year is done and schedules are printed - mostly. I ran out of paper tonight. We start back tomorrow with half days, full days next week. Also this week, co-op and speech and debate clubs start back up and DD1 is giving her piano recital and we will “officially” graduate her. A little late but she needed the time and is taking a year off before deciding on future education plans. My goals and the action steps to achieve them have gotten more vague as the year has gone on. Still the same basic things - spending time outside, decluttering, reading, exercise - but in a much less specific way. I’ve already started to think ahead to 2023 goals. Mostly from the standpoint of what worked and didn’t work this in regards to goal setting, what things got in the way, and how can improve my chances of success next year. I’m not sure how to set my goals for September. It’s hard to say what my time will be like until I really get the new school year going. I’m going to go a week at a time I think and see how it goes. Week 1 Outside - 5 hours. The weather is finally cooling. August was a low hour month as it was simply too hot to spend much time outside. Reading - Choose a new book and read a little each day. It’ll probably be one of my kids’ literature books. Decluttering - Nothing for this week. It’ll be too busy. But I’m dropping my Saturday karate class so maybe I can plan to do some decluttering on Saturdays. Health/Exercise - Planning to start each school day with a walk so long as the weather cooperates. Also, more strongly encouraging exercise in my kids. We’ve all become too sedentary.
  2. Oops….wrong thread 😬 I shouldn’t post when I’m this tired. Moving to the goal group now.
  3. This is me! I type and delete responses more often than I actually post anything. In fact I just it this morning and wondered what people might be thinking once I decided just to delete the whole thing.
  4. August goals: Outside - 60 hours Health - Drink a full water bottle each day Take vitamins Walk 4 days a week Reading - 2 books Decluttering - Master Bedroom Kitchen School closet School Planning - finish all planning Week 1 Outside: 15 hours Reading: Choose next book and start Declutter: Master bedroom closets, dressers, bookshelves (biggest challenge here will likely be getting DH to do his) School Planning: Plan history for DD3 and DS, finish DS’s schedule.
  5. I haven’t done great with my outdoor or health goals. I did finally make it over 200 hours though and each month is slightly better than the one before. So I’ll keep working on it. I did well with my decluttering, reading, and school planning goals. I did the Master Bath as planned. And also did a coat closet and the laundry room. I read 2 (or was it 3?) books in July. School planning is underway. I’ve been through all of our books and have rough plans for every subject. August goals: Outside - I’m not giving up on my outside goal. I think I can still reach the 500 hours I’m aiming for if I’m intentional over the next few months. I’m going to shoot for 60 hours for August. Health - Same as last month. I really need to work on this. - Walk 4 days a week - Drink a full bottle of water a day - Take vitamins Reading - 2 books Decluttering - My bedroom. I started sorting clothes today. Kitchen cabinets. School closet. School Planning - This one HAS to be done this month so we’ll be ready to start back in September. I scheduled out DS12’s math tonight. This will be an evening project until it’s done. I’d also like to work on planning other things that will contribute to school going smoothly, like meal plans and kids chores, but we’ll see how the month goes. There’s a lot that I want to get done this month but I also want to enjoy the last few weeks of summer. I started working today on scheduling in the last summer activities we want to make time for - aquarium, beach days, River tubing, archery Groupon from SIL, science center….things like that.
  6. Mid month progress - 75 hours outside - I’m about halfway at 38 hours. But through any of the “action steps” I’d planned. I haven’t been walking, working on yard work, or reading outside. I need to step those up. But it’s supposed to be in the 90’s for the next week at least so I’ll need to get out in the mornings and evenings. Health goals - I’ve been hitting my water goal most days and vitamins about half the time. Need to get outside to walk more. Declutter - Master Bath is about halfway done. I’d like to finish it by the end of this week if I can find the motivation. Reading - I finished the last book and have started another. School Planning - I’ve planned out the science and now need to schedule it. Also started on history. I think I’ll go for a walk now. Get some exercise and time outside. This is the last day before the heat wave hits. The humidity is already up but it’s not too hot yet. I’m only a couple hours away from 200.
  7. I’ve been making a list of the suggestions I’ve been given and I can see how almost everyone could apply. I get migraines too, although not as frequently the past few months. It’s interesting that the sugar cravings could be tied to that. I’ll have to pay attention to that. I’ve definitely experienced my share of stress the last few years between covid stuff and just really crappy life stuff. I used to take a probiotic. Probably wouldn’t hurt to add that back in. I am terrible at drinking enough water. To the point that I have a couple of friends who text almost daily to find out if I had anything to drink yet that day. I’m getting better but still don’t drink nearly enough.
  8. This has all been very helpful. Thank you. I have several ideas to pursue over the next few weeks.
  9. I have had some depression the past few years. I was treating just with St John’s Wort (which took the edge off enough to function) but stopped that a couple of months ago. I wonder if that is a factor? Glad I’m not the only one, but I’m sorry you’re dealing with this too. 😞 This is what I need to do, I think. And if I can make the effort now, maybe it‘ll be easier to maintain once things get busy again in the new school year. An addiction sounds about right. I can’t seem to get off my phone either. 😞
  10. No antibiotics in the past couple years or signs of thrush. Well, I’ve never had thrush or a yeast infection as far as I know so I don’t know exactly what they are. But no signs as far as I can tell.
  11. Hmmmm….my eating “schedule” has certainly been off lately. We eat our main meal at lunch time due to DH’s work schedule and I put off eating dinner til I’m too hungry to ignore it anymore - usually somewhere between 8pm and 10pm. It’s definitely true that I’m too tired and hungry to put together a healthy meal at that point so I eat something like microwave popcorn and call it a day. So maybe just scheduled meal times would help. I didn’t know picking up a glucose monitor over the counter was an option. Good to know. I’ve done “sugar free” for a month at a time before. But it’s been years. I think I found it helpful but I don’t remember. I guess I could do it again although my ability to stick to things seems to be non-existent right now.
  12. I have always had a “sweet tooth”. I also love bread and pasta. But lately, these cravings are intense. I want SUGAR. And if we don’t have anything sweet in the house I fill up on carbs - bread, crackers, popcorn, Mac and cheese - although carbs don’t seem to touch the craving. I try not to buy sweets. Except for ice cream once a week or so, I typically only buy ingredients, so desserts have to be baked from scratch if I want them. I don’t particularly like to cook (although I can) so this is typically a good deterrent from eating to many sweets. Recently, I’ve started baking. This board seems to have a wealth of knowledge about health topics so I thought I’d ask here: What could be causing these cravings? Tips for stopping them? Giving up sugar cold turkey seems to require more will power than I have right now. I’m feeling tired, run down, have low motivation, and I know my diet isn’t helping. My kids are going to camp next week so I’ll have the week to focus on myself and what I need. I thought it would be good to take advantage of the time to come up with and start working a plan to improve my health. I’d love tips, tricks, advice, and personal stories if you have them.
  13. I’ve spent some time this week rethinking my goals for the year. They turned out to be too ambitious, even though they felt small at the beginning of the year. I don’t want to give up on goal setting altogether as I found this to be very helpful, so I decided the halfway point would be a good time to re-evaluate. Some goals will be changing, others I still haven’t quite decided if I will alter the goal or extend the time to complete it. 1000 hours outside - New goal will be 500 hours by the end of the year but I’ll keep counting until I get to 1000 and see how long that takes. Lose 20 pounds - I’m scrapping this one. While I do need to lose weight (and more than 20 pounds at that), more importantly I need to get healthy. I’ve been through some things the past few years that have taken a toll on my physical and mental health in ways I hadn’t recognized until recently. So this goal will shift to health goals - gentle exercise, healthier eating, drinking more water, making time for rest, things like that. Declutter my house - I’m keeping this goal but extending the timeline. It needs to be done but when I think of the goal and when to finish it I get overwhelmed and don’t work on it. So I’ll be taking this one week by week and month by month. Reading - I actually don’t remember where I started with this one. Four books a month maybe? New goal will be two books a month. New goal - Plan 2022/2023 school year, clean up from previous year. This is a summer goal to be done the end of August. I finally bought a planner. I looked through the events of the week and looked at the weather forecast and tried to be realistic with what can be accomplished. I’ll tweak as I go but I think using a planner will be very helpful. I probably should have done this months ago. July goals - 75 hours outside - walk daily - yard work - read on the patio Health - walk daily - take vitamins daily - drink 48oz water Declutter - clean master bathroom Read - finish current book School planning - work on science plan/schedule for all three kids
  14. Goals this week - Simply to take a look at my yearly goals and rethink them. This year has been rough with one crisis after the next. I thought I had made small goals for the year but they’ve turned out to be too big for what life has thrown at me. For a while now I’ve had dear friends gently encouraging me to slow down and rest as they can see the toll the past months (and years really) have taken on me physically, mentally, and emotionally. I thought they were overly concerned, but the past few weeks I’ve begun to realize that they are right, at least in part. Physically I am completely exhausted and unable to handle much. So this week I plan to take another look at my goals and rework them. I don’t want to give any of them up. I still want to make time to be outside, declutter my house, read more, lose some weight, etc. But I think I need to pare down and possibly change the focus of my goals to be sure that I’m taking care of myself. I bought a planner last week and plan to be more purposeful and realistic as I look at each week. I hope that writing things down will help me keep track of my time and commitments better. I’ll post again this later this week as my “new” goals come together. Thank you for continuing to post the goal group! Even though the year hasn’t gone how I’d hoped, having goals and working on them in small ways has been very helpful to me!
  15. I am only barely over 100 hours. I think I may have to adjust my goal and work towards 500 hours instead. The year just hasn’t gone as I expected in so many ways. I’m kind of disappointed as this was a goal I was excited about but I’m going to try to just adjust and keep going. Since it is summer I should be able to get a lot of hours in over the next few months.
  16. This is extremely helpful. Thank you! I was looking more through LLATL last night and definitely think I’ll go more with just using excerpts from it as a jumping off place. I’ll look at those lit guides you mentioned. I think she would like that. I’m not sure how much we’ll actually do with poetry as it isn’t DD’s favorite and she covered some of that in a co-op class last year. She does ok with writing and grammar but hasn’t put much effort in over the past couple of years. Thus the review and another year of writing instruction - from somewhere. Maybe a co-op class but the class options haven’t been posted yet. She has finally decided what she wants to do after high school and is ready to work hard this next year. I usually have all of my planning done and books ordered by now so I’m feeling a bit behind this year. This list is very helpful. I think I’ll be able to look at these options, go through my shelves to see what’s on them already, and finish ordering books this weekend. Thank you!
  17. My rising junior will be doing American History for the upcoming school year. I’m planning on using Notgrass. I have the LLATL Gold American Literature book but it doesn’t seem to have much writing instruction. I do like that it includes short stories and poetry. Notgrass includes literature but no short stories or poetry (and some of the books are biographies). I’ve also been looking at IEW’s Advanced US History Writing lessons. I think this would cover writing better than the other two, but is clear that the suggested literature is not enough. There is some overlap between these three programs as far as suggested literature. I don’t want to overwhelm my DD but I do want to be thorough. Has anyone used one or more of these programs? Anything I should know about them before I attempt to combine them? I would not use each in its entirety but want to be sure to include enough and cut the right things. Oh….she will also be doing an AG review book for Grammar. But that is only scheduled once every week or two.
  18. June goals….June is “split” month for me. The first half of it we’ll be in our school year schedule and the second half will be summer schedule. Makes it a bit hard for me to set goals for but I’ll try. Outside hours: 75 Exercise: bring back the daily walks - might not happen until after my trip next week. Weight loss - 2 pounds Decluttering - My bedroom, laundry room, and sunroom/craft room. This will wait til the second half of the month, after we finish school. Reading - one novel School - FINISH! I think I can have my younger two done Saturday, or Tuesday at the latest. Older two will have a little passed that, hopefully by the end of next week. I’m leaving to go out of town Wednesday of week and would love it if all four will done but that seems unlikely.
  19. May ended up being an insanely busy and challenging month. I was only able to focus on surviving each day and thought very little of my goals. I added another 24 hours outside and finally passed the 100 hour mark. Exercised very little, no weight loss, no decluttering (I wasn’t planning any so that was ok), no reading outside of what I do with my kids for school. BUT - We wrapped up a very successful year of co-op, my girls did amazingly well in the drama production - especially the one who had to jump in late to take the main role for the girl who moved away, senior pictures are done and came out beautifully, oldest DD got her black belt and her driver’s license, and next DD got her learner’s permit. I also made some progress in some personal goals I’ve been working on. So still a successful month, just in different ways. On to June! 🙂
  20. Co-op is done except field day tomorrow, my girls did amazingly in the play, DD17 passed her black belt test and got her driver’s license, senior pictures are done, DD16 got her learner’s permit. Next on the “list” is finishing school. We have 3 weeks left on the schedule. I want to be done in two and a half because I’ll be heading down to VA with my sisters that last week to go to the homeschool convention. But older two DD’s are a little behind in a couple subjects so we’ll see what happens with that. The last few weeks of school are practically torture. 3 weeks, 100 days per week. 😆 With the end of school in mind, my goals will be simple this week. 1) School, school, school. We don’t have a lot of “extras” this week. But DH has T/W/Th off work which always cuts into our productivity. My goal is to finish personal finance with my high schoolers, and make some progress catching up with my older two. Also, get my younger two working ahead. Oh….and figure out where DD17’s grammar book ended up. We’re going to be working on Saturday as well, something DD14 calls “child abuse”, but I can live with that. 2) Beyond all the school I can possibly squeeze in, I want to get my daily walks going again and try to spend an hour a day outside. I still haven’t hit 100 hours, so 1000 for the year doesn’t seem realistic, but maybe I can make up some hours this summer.
  21. We have Ohio Mutual. We have full coverage on our mini van but only liability on DH’s car. We put DD as the primary on his car as that’s the one she prefers to drive. It’s a 99 Camry so not worth much. I should be getting all of the policy renewal info in the next couple of weeks so I’ll read through it all carefully and make sure the coverage is what we expect and need. It probably wouldn’t be much to add full coverage to DH’s car and might be a good idea to consider that since she is a new driver. She won’t be driving much til she gets a job, probably in July, so I can use the next few weeks to do some research and make sure we have the right coverage. I was sorry to read of what your DD and both families have been going through. I can’t imagine how difficult this must be for all of you. Hope you all are finding love, support, and healing.
  22. Update: It looks like it will be around $350/year to add DD to our policy. Wow! I won’t know exactly til the policy renews in July but it’s only $42 for the next few weeks until then. Pays to drive 20+ year old cars I guess! DD will be relieved. Thanks for the info everyone!
  23. I talked to someone yesterday and she was sending all the info on to our agent. I called late yesterday. DD won’t drive solo until she’s on our policy. I’m assuming I’ll have that taken care of today.
  24. DD isn’t going away for school so that won’t apply. We use an insurance broker so they do the shopping around for us typically. But maybe I’ll do some of my own as well. This is a rough time to be adding another expense to the budget! Even though we will be expecting her to cover the cost of insurance herself, we’re also realistic enough to realize that we’ll be helping out some while she gets the concept of “paying bills” figured out.
  25. She will be paying her own insurance and gas. But we may have to help her out at first. Our policy renews in July and I’m not sure she has enough saved. The form I was sent doesn’t ask for a transcript so I’ll just fill it out and see what they say. Better finish that up! I’ve been putting it off. $600 sounds wonderful but I won’t get my hopes up.
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