Big Universe, Small World... ©2013-2020

I used Grammarly to grammar check this post, because even homeschooling educator mommies can make mistakes!!" It has been a whirlwind of events since May 30. Though in actuality, it has just been life. My younger son was supposed to be going off to camp in the mountains. A colleague from LDA had secured him a place in an adventuring camp. He has been before and loved it. It was a great experience for him before, but it is a bit beyond our finances to be able to afford him the opportunity to go. He was supposed to spend the weekend whitewater rafting, rappelling, and doing a ropes course. I had planned to spend the weekend in the mountains recuperating from what seems like a series of weekdays with no weekends. I was supposed to go on a foraging hike that I had scheduled some time back and wanted to go to the wild foods market. After he broke his wrist, he could no longer go to the camp, so I thought the mountain weekend was out. Alas, despite the broken arm, we left for the mo...

             These two pictures above are of the burial ground of a Cherokee Indian, Osenappa.     The dimes and pennies on the end tomb marker are from the child and me. One set of coins for each. The pennies for our visit and respects to a warrier lost. The dimes for one of our own...a legacy to the tribe.          

I went to an IEP meeting this week...okay, it was supposed to be an IEP meeting. It was the first one I have went to in a long time that was not for one of my own children or for a child I taught. I remember what it was like to be a parent new to the IEP battles ahead...I remember coming in soft and now being a hard person to deal with - after approximately 13 years of special education battling. The cartoon below makes me remember what it felt like at times to sit on the other side of the table and feel like I had to battle the world and beat down the walls to get my child his accommodations...to all special education mommies - you are not in this alone. :)  The comic is even funnier, since it is the same as my name for the mommy!!  

been a baking/cooking machine today...made an apple yum yum and homemade pizza for dinner. made some banana bread for my younger son's homeschool social group tomorrow. tomorrow my neighbor and her junior league are taking some children from the children's home to the marionette theater. i made some banana muffins for them to have. :0) yummy!!  since i will be gone next week to the lda conference, i know my hubby and children will not be huge on cooking the veggies bought from the farmers' market and produce co-op. my younger son boiled all the corn after i shucked it. i flashed rinsed it and froze it for later. we flash froze the cauliflower as well. tomorrow i flash freeze the zucchinis. i am thinking of either eating the cucumbers or pickling them tomorrow. i am not sure what to do with the kale. i have 1.5 bundles of it. i thought of making crockpot apple and pear butter to use those up and canning the this weekend. i do not want then to go bad.  i harvested some ...

Realizing that your lemon saplings are year old, makes you realize your orange saplings are a year old as well.     I realized today that it has been a year ago that I germinated the lemon seeds and planted them. This made me want to try to do the same with orange seeds as well. I started germinating the orange seeds about a week after I started the lemon seeds. I followed the same schedule with the orange seeds as with the lemon seeds. The seeds were set to germinate in late October 2011.  I had to peel them to help them along in November. In December, I had several sprouts to plant.   In January 2012, I planted the sprouts.   By April 2012, I had little sapling sprouts.     The orange sprout saplings had much new leaf growth by July 2012.    T oday, it has been about a year since I began this process. Of all the orange sprouts that I started with only 2 survive...