Category Archives: Cleaning

Weekly Wrap up: Spring Cleaning

In my life this week…

The week started off with an event put on by my wife’s work. She works for a creative company with lots of very talented people. So this was an evening for all those people to show off their talents. It was an amazing production. There was a live show featuring a wide variety of musical acts along with some humor, dance and other talents. Out in the lobby there were other artists including paintings, sculpture, pottery and a fellow that makes his own swords and other medieval weaponry. His “Do Not Touch” sign also had the warning that they were sharp.

Lego Contest
Lego Contest

There was also a Lego contest where they were give a box of Lego that must be used, a limit of 100 additional piece and whatever other items. My wife and kids made the roller coaster from California Adventures. The roller coaster part was K’Nex and they had a huge line of mini figures waiting to get on except poor Yoda who was too short. We won one of the three prizes and received some company merchandise.

Bathroom Tub Tiles
Bathroom Tub Tiles

The bathroom is coming along. A lot of little detail things happened this week but culminated in the tiling of the tub enclosure. There is going to be a border going around the edge and the top.

I’m Cleaning…

Tree Haircut
Tree Haircut

We spent all day Saturday cleaning and doing yard work. Grandpa volunteers at a house for recovering addicts and brought some to help with the yard work. The yard looks as good as when we moved in and the tree in the front yard has had a severe but needed haircut.

Basement Play Area
Basement Play Area

The kids and I tackled the basement. This was an absolute disaster ie it was difficult to walk a straight line anywhere. We made lots of progress but this is going to be a long term project. At least now we have room to work. We got 2 bags of garbage, a bin of recycling and finally got rid of our old TV. I needed the help of one of the guys. I can lift it but with my arms stretched out I didn’t fit up the stairs. I also took all our DVD’s out of their case, most were already out, and recycled the cases. I guess that makes one more bag.

Basement TV Area
Basement TV Area

With access and the knowledge that I have a truck coming on the weekend I wanted to get all the large stuff out. That consisted of Margaret’s old dresser. You know it is not of good construction when you are able to tear it apart with your bare hands. It is in the growing pile for the truck to take to the dump. Also gone is an old office chair that was hiding in the storeroom. The more open basement let me see some easy items to get rid of specifically an old computer, VCR, receiver, PVR and modem.

The Pile
The Pile

In our homeschool this week…

Shelly the snail got more expensive. My wife decided that glass bowl wasn’t working and that she needed an actual aquarium with aerator and filter. I think she was right. She had stopped moving and that is a sign of a stressed snail. My wife did some research online and discovered that a lot of what the pet store told us wasn’t correct. We have corrected all the issues and she has been moving around well. We decided to pass on adding a second snail when we learned that they breed like rabbits and quickly over populate. I am not willing to deal with that so only one snail.

Philip is just about finished with the snap circuits. He has been recording each circuit and explaining how they work. Next week we will make a penny battery and a potato one.

Both kids have been reading poetry, specifically the works of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow and the The Song of Hiawatha. I remember that from my youth but now I am trying to remember if it was from school or my mother.

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Weekly Wrap up: The Irish One

In my life this week…

My wife and daughter are in an Irish band. Margaret sings and my wife plays the flute. So they have had events to go to all week. Philip who does Irish Dance, dances at few of the same events. Life has been busy. Two events we always do. The first is a Tea at our old church. It is nice to go back and visit with everyone. The second is the Irish Society Dinner. A steak dinner is always high on my list. Especially when it comes with a fully loaded baked potato.

Philip Irish Dancing
Philip Irish Dancing
Danielle on the Flute
Danielle on the Flute

 

My wife finished crocheting an Orca whale for Ian. She also taught Margaret to make these Shamrocks for St Patrick’s Day.

Crochet Shamrock
Crochet Shamrock
Crochet Orca Whale
Crochet Orca Whale

I’m Cleaning…

Closet Before
Closet Before

I started cleaning one of the worst closets in our house. This used to be the homeschool room but before that it was my office/storage. The closet was many layers deep. I am not quite done. I have a few things to find good homes for and I still have the floor to sort through. I’ll finish it up on Friday.

Current State of the closet
Current State of the closet

In our homeschool this week…

We tend to follow the public school systems schedule. It helps us stay on track and schedule activities that follow that schedule. This the first week of our two week spring break. Since we are behind in math we decided to have them do math this week. It is not a lot but it will help make sure we keep on track.

So how did we fall behind? Basically I got lucky last year and made the assumption that it would work out the same this year. We use IXL for math which is great and we love it. It covers all of the prescribed learning outcomes for our province. It also covers all the other provinces and I think all the states. I know it is available in both countries just not whether it is the same or not. Last year I had Philip do whatever sections he felt like the first two terms. In the last term I looked at the PLO’s that we were missing and made a list of sections that he had to do. I knew that he had done a few sections that had resulted in higher grade PLO’s to be checked. This year we are missing quite a few. They both ended up doing a lot of math that they didn’t need to. Not a bad thing but I still have to get those boxes checked.

I’m cooking…

I ended up with two meals out this week which is always nice. We don’t eat out often so it is a real treat. I somehow came home with just enough leftover steak for Stroganoff. That is one of the dishes that my wife makes. I can make it but it doesn’t turn out the same. Wednesday my wife had to work that night so we had bachelor’s fare and made meatloaf. Thursday night was a big pork roast that should last a couple of days.

A photo, video, link, or quote to share (silly, serious or both!)…

My wife refers to these weekly journal posts as my ‘homework’ and that she reads them so she knows what we have been doing all week.

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Homeschooling Journal Week 36

In my life this week…

It is a bad sign when you have to read your last post to remember what happen last week as apposed to the week before. I was all ready to tell you all about Oliver again. It has been one of those weeks.

Our week started of with Relay for Life, which raises money for the cancer society. We were all to tired and stressed from the week before. That led to a cranky family. Add to that pouring rain for the night and we ended up sleeping in our tent most of the night instead of walking. If it had been any other event I think we would have gone home but it is important so we stayed. For me the highlight of the night is always the lighting of the luminaries. Throughout the night you can buy paper bags and decorate them in memory of those that didn’t make it. Philip as he has always done did one for his friend Connor. As night falls they line the track with them, weighed down and light candles in them.

Relay For Life Luminaries

We then do an almost silent walk around the track. The silence isn’t required but all the talking is in whispers as people stop at certain luminaries to pray and remember. My walk was weighted by thought of a little girl that I follow on CaringBridge that passed away days before the Relay. She was about Philip’s age and had been battling cancer for years. I know she is in heaven and there is no cancer there.

The rest of the week has been appointments. Nothing earth shattering just your normal everyday sort of appointments but they all hit this week and my schedule is a mess. So is the house. Next week should be much more sane.

Reading BabyCenter this week there was talk about kids being punished, expelled, and even arrested for bring anything shaped like a gun to school. When I was picking my daughter up from school there was a boy showing his friend the gun that he had made out of scrap wood and metal. He had obviously taken some time to get it right. It was clearly not real but it was obviously a gun. Listening in he had made it as a prop for a play. He wasn’t allowed to use it in the play. That was to be expected, we do have rules about not having toy guns on school property. The thing that struck me was that was as far as it went. He was not suspended or even had it taken away from him. Somebody made the judgement call that extreme measures were not needed. Hats off to them.

My Weekly Clean up task…

I call it my spice shelf but it has a lot more on it than that. Mostly it just needs to be organized but I am sure there are a few things that are not in their proper home or should be garbaged.

Messy Spice Rack

In our homeschool this week…

At the beginning of the week Philip was given the goal of moving his percent finished in Rosetta Stone from 75% to 85%. He managed to get to 83%. Given that we had some technical problems I chose to accept that. His reward was a field trip with Grandma that he really enjoyed.

The technical problem was that he is having trouble getting the speech recognition portion to work. We still have not solved that completely. It appears that part of the problem was with the newest version of flash, 11.7.700 seems to have problems with Rosetta Stone. Downgrading the flash made it work sort of again. I am left with a couple of possibilities.

  1. The rather old laptop is doing something funny.
  2. The headphones are faulty. We have gone through a number of them this year already.
  3. Rosetta Stone is having problems. It is an online service so who know what goes on in the background.
  4. That it is the last unit and it has just gotten harder.

I am going to set up an old computer with a clean install of windows and see if it works better there. If not I am not sure what we are going to do other than contact his teacher with our problems. The good news is that he is passed the ‘Minimum’ 80% and thus has passed the course. However if I do not resolve this problem I am reluctant to pay to continue the course next year.

I’m cooking…

This week cooking has been survival mode cooking. I did a big beef roast up on Sunday and that lasted for three meals. Beans and Wieners were in there somewhere. Ham steaks in brown sugar sauce was another. I will have to measure the ingredients for that one next time I make it and post the recipe. It is quite definitely not healthy but it is yummy.

I have been having fun joining recipe blog hops and viewing some of the recipes. One of those I am planning on making this week and have bought the ingredients for. It is a salad that comes with a history lesson. The recipe is Coronation Chicken and I will send you to the blog for the recipe and the history lesson.

My week’s recipe is a revisit on baking bread. I have long made my own bread for cost reason and that I know what goes in it. Over the years things have changed a little so I decided to redo the post with those changes.

I’m Praying for…

My kid’s Grandma worked in our church for many many years. One of the women that she worked with all those years just had her granddaughter diagnosed with AML, another childhood cancer. He granddaughter is a year older than Philip. So please pray for Savannah and her family. They are less than week in from diagnoses. This first bit is a whirlwind. It is tough to put into words the emotions and disbelief that occurs. It is the worst time from here you settle in to a new normal which again is tough to explain unless you have been through it.

A photo, video, link, or quote to share (silly, serious or both!)…

Ian (4y old) trying to confirm that the person we were talking about was our priest.

“That man that stands up in church and reads God’s papers”

The Homily is written out that our priest carries to the pulpit.

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