Week 52 - Gardening, Pioneer Life, Doggy Meds and Being Overwhelmed

This is how I have been feeling all week.  I have been writing down our summer schedule and it's completely overwhelming me.  The crazy times starts next week!!  I am so not prepared for this.  So much for a laid back summer vacation.

I can't believe that our "official" school year is over this week.  I don't really have a set finish to very many of our projects.  We just keep chugging along.  We have basically finished our history and science for the year.  But the kids have already started their next books, I didn't wait for the new school year.  Didn't see the point.

The puppy's have been on meds all week.  So on top of our own kid's med schedules, I had to make sure the puppies were getting their meds.  Turns out they had a parasite that is common in puppies, and not contagious to humans.  So they are on meds for 10 days, twice a day.  At least they are more cooperative than our own kids.

My hubby let me get a new play toy this week.  I loved when I was able to go to a gym and work out on the weight equipment.  But unfortunately I am unable to do that anymore due to his travel schedule, so we used our garage sale money to purchase our own weight gym.  It took a couple days to get together, and some rearranging in our storage room, but I have a little workout room in there now.

I got hurt Tuesday when we were walking the dogs on the Humane Society.  One made a mad dash and I had to chase it to catch her.  Pulled a muscle in my hip/leg.  So no running right now.  I am still walking the treadmill though and now I have my arm/leg workout I can do on the weight bench.  Makes me very happy!

The kids were excited to get to work with a couple dogs this week while we were at the Humane Society.  Normally we just play with cats and clean up after the cats.  We did that too, but they got to play with a couple dogs too.

This week the girl's competitive cheer practice started.  Lydia is excited, but Caty isn't sure yet about this new adventure.

Since Daddy was able to get our garden tilled, we went and bought our plants Sunday afternoon.  Summer weather is finally here, or fingers crossed it stays!  So we spent a couple days this week working on getting the garden and some flowers planted.

We planted zucchini, Brussels sprouts, celery, yellow tomatoes, green beans, peas, sweet onions, sugar baby watermelon, and rhubarb.

And some flowers

Caty handled the patio flowers, and Lydia planted the flowers out in the front of the house.

The fun part is getting them to water the garden.  I have it set up for them to take turns.  It's not turning out very well.  They tire out after two trips to the garden, and it takes many more than that.

This week Caty started the Prairie Primer book.  We are working our way through The Little House in The Big Woods the next couple weeks.  So far we learned about bears, breathing, made homemade butter and biscuits and also made molasses-on-snow candy.

This was all hands-on for me.  Making the syrup and then I let her pour it on the "Snow".  She got to see why I wouldn't let her cook the syrup when she accidentally touched my thumb with the wooden spoon and my thumb blistered from the heat.  This was very...very yummy!

It cooled almost instantly on the ice.  It was almost like taffy.

Both girls worked on learning about the respiratory system.  I had stepped back a little the last couple weeks from their regular science program since we had been learning about toads/frogs, and a few other animals.  Well, I was informed that they wanted to keep doing their regular science book.  So this week the Sassafrass twins took us to Australia and we started exploring the respiratory system.  This week they labeled the respiratory system.  We learned about the lungs, trachea, and diaphragm. We built a set of lungs to watch how they expand.

Lydia is still chugging away on her Dog Unit study.  This week she learned about more breeds and of course got lots of experience with giving dogs medicine.  She is really enjoying the Pet Shop math that she started a couple weeks ago.  She has almost closed her books for the month of January.  One of her projects this week was she had to learn how to write checks to pay her bills.

This week in History we learned about Lewis and Clark and also the Oregon Trail.  We did learn about the Donner Party also.  And our state was Idaho.

We did have more to do outside, and this included painting my parent's Adirondack chairs they keep out for decoration.  I didn't buy enough paint, but the girls got them started.

We didn't get much done on the 4H project front.  We need to get some more finished on these.  We have a huge chunk of all of them done, but still need to finish and work on posters for judging.

Brayden fought hard all week to do a little as possible.  He learned yet again that not finishing your schoolwork means you are working on state capitals at 9 pm when you want to be playing your Star Wars game with your friends.  He did do well on his next level of math.  He had to work on rounding decimals and adding and subtracting decimals.  He whines and whines and then realizes that he does understand it and can easily do the problems.

Joey is chugging away at his Exploring Careers curriculum.  Each week he is looking at important topics such as interviews, asking questions, and paperwork that will be filled out for employers.  This week we signed papers for him to possibly work with the State of Ohio Disabilities Board to work over the summer in various jobs.  It is really hitting me that my son is almost 16 years old, and he is growing up.  This will most likely lead to an even busier summer schedule than we already have.  Life is going to be interesting from here on out.

We bought a new swing for the backyard that is also like a hammock.  Joe and Lydia got started putting it together.  And then we discovered that they shorted us screws.  So they couldn't put the whole thing together yet.  Needless to say we are all very disappointed.  We were looking forward to laying out and doing our reading next week.  Oh well, just have to wait for the rest of the parts.

Hope everyone had a great week!!  We have a very busy weekend/week ahead of us.  I will post all of our excitement in our next post.  What a way to start out our next school year!!  Bring on 2016-2017!!

Linking up with other homeschool moms at Weird, Unsocialized Homeschoolers....