Mostly just a TV DAY!!!

We really NEVER do this, but we have spent most of our day today in front of the television!!! Sometimes you just need to have one of those days, to unwind and not do much of anything.

We started off the morning with part one of Gulliver's Travel - I absolutely adored this book when I was young and remember watching the movie when I was pregnant with KM. They do such an incredible job of bringing the book to the screen.

When part one was over I decided to get the bread baking started and KM watched some Saturday Morning cartoons, a rare happening around here. She is usually so into things that she doesn't realize that they are on until well after the ones that she likes are over. Her favorites are part of Kewlopolis on CBS and therefore she can watch them online at Kewl Cartoons, but I think she really likes the novelty of the "Saturday Morning Cartoons" idea.

While the bread was having its first rising time I made some lunch and got some dinner prep ready. Then we watched the second part of Gulliver's Travel. It was amazing to watch her try to figure out what was going to happen. We had to pause it several times to discuss what was happening or to have a further discussion of the comparisons that Gulliver was making along his way. If your kids - or even you for that matter - have not seen this movie I highly recommend it! It is a great family fantasy film, but can lead to such great realizations of society and the way that our lives are built.

When the movie was over, KM decided she would go out and see what CJ was doing - sure enough she found him outside sculpting the sledding hill. I am thinking it more closely resembling a luge at the moment, but I could be exaggerating a bit. Whilst they were out in the snow, I decided to go to the big screen TV try out my new Jillian Micheal's game for the Wii - it came in the mail yesterday afternoon...I am however waiting to make a full opinion of it until next week's Fitness Friday posting!

When they came in from the cold, I made some hot cocoa and we snuggled up by the fire to listen to a few more chapters of Dragon Rider - Can you tell we are on a fantasy kick lately? I have even reorganized our literature units to accommodate this need for the fantastical.

We made breakfast for dinner together and then we watched Before the Dinosaurs Walking with Monsters - I thought it would be a good way to start our prehistoric studies and since we had already spent most of the day in front of the screen, I thought we should throw in a really fantastic educational one for good measures!

I wonder if she realizes how much schoolwork she actually did today? On a Saturday - I know I am a cruel CRUEL mother!

Fitness Friday - week 2

I have done better this week, but it has just been the body tests, some games and aerobics part. I just get so aggravated with the wasted time during the yoga and strength training. They should have a way to set up flows or routines once you have the moves down. KM and I have also been doing the Wii Ski a lot - together as well as individually with the balance board. I was pleasantly surprised at how much you need to use your core muscles to really control yourself during this game. In case you didn't see my comment from last weeks Fitness Friday - I am awaiting the arrival of Jillian Michaels Fitness Ultimatum 2009 which I ordered last weekend from Amazon. I am very excited about the Jillian game...especially the fact that you can use it in a multi-player mode. I have seen widely varying reviews on a number of sites, but I am going to make my own opinion - and of course I will post it, hopefully by next week. Until then -keep up the good work everyone!!!

Happy Freethinkers Day!

Observing the birthday of Thomas Paine, the author of Common Sense which advocated the independence of the American Colonies.

Here is an incredible list of Famous Freethinkers that prove thinking outside the box is what has brought about inventions and innovations that have changed the world!

Here are some other pretty cool things that I came across to help you celebrate this rather interesting day -

• download this handy lesson plan - Freethinkers Day from ESL holidays
• Secular Seasons - has several links to other Thomas Paine related sites
• Movie-a-day - recommends the 1960s classic INHERIT THE WIND
  

Great Free Resources for Stories

I have been wandering around the WWW lately trying to find some new and interesting things to keep SC a little occupied on the days when I need to get a bit more one on one in with KM. Now since I don't have SC all the time, I do try to schedule our bigger projects on days when she is not here, but sometimes life gets in the way and you just have to push through and get things done! Anyway I thought I would share some of the great things I have found, so here are the top five in no particular order -

1. On one of the many homeschooling/parenting Yahoo groups that I belong to someone passed along this site and SC can not get enough of it. The site is called Silly Books and here is a synopsis -

Literacy is contagious. Catch it here. You'll find animated books, children's music, puzzles and games that entertain kids while promoting child literacy. Have your children had their stories published HERE yet?

2. From the previous site I stumbled across an equally interesting one for emergent readers - Mighty Books - It says that you can get a subscription, but I am not really sure what more you would get with it, the free content including stories, songs and games in several categories seems very good -

Thousands of young children around the world have discovered the joy and power of reading at MightyBook.com. Now, we'd like to introduce this wonderful reading resource to your students. With more than 500 animated read-aloud books, songs, poems, jokes, puzzles and games to choose from, MightyBook provides many exciting opportunities for children to discover how much fun reading can be. Five new books or songs are added each month throughout the year

3. This next one I have known about for a while now, but never really had a reason to check it out. Now that I have KM has actually been poking around on it as well - Storyline Online - it has activities and printables to accompany all of the stories as well -

The Screen Actors Guild Foundation is proud to bring you Storyline Online, an on-line streaming video program featuring SAG members reading children's books aloud! Each book includes accompanying activities and lesson ideas.

4. This next one has lots of clips, games, and activities as well for the younger crowd - Up to Ten - I thought it would be great and though she may like it when she is a bit older, right now when I put it on SC walks away or squirms in my lap as soon as she sees the little guys - don't know why, I think they are awful cute!

UpToTen has been building prize-winning early-learning games and activities since 1999. Your child will love the reassuring, friendly world that our unique games inhabit. S/he will have enormous fun whilst building independence on the computer.

5. Finally this is just a fun click, click, click site - SC likes to move the mouse around and make the balloons and bubbles pop and she likes anything that allows her to be free to click away! Poisson Rouge or Red Fish Soup allows her to be able to do that. As you will see in the intro below, they are a very freethinking bunch and I think it is such a great site. If you get through the language features and can find English, you can also find a lot of cool printables as well.

There are no instructions on the site and there are some good reasons for that: most people, even adults, do not read instructions, children who cannot read will ignore written text anyhow, but most importantly for us, there is no need and in fact, instructions get in the way of the experience : the navigation through the various sections of the site is purposefully simple and intuitive, the functionalities within games are carefully thought out to afford a maximum of possibilities while keeping that special relationship to the real World.

So these are our newest favorites for SC, if you have any suggestions I would LOVE to hear them!

Thinking Ahead -

She has been diligently working on her Valentine's Day cards all week - she thought it would be more personal to make them this year instead of buying the generic ones.
She is using lots of leftover craft papers, stickers and stamps ~ they are very unique and she is really taking time each day to make them all a little different from each other.

SHE DID IT!!!

Scholastic Book Club has this program called Classrooms Care, where they challenge classes to read 100 books and they will donate books to a children's charity of the classes choice! Well she missed the deadline (but luckily Scholastic is not really big on deadlines) but she did it all on her own! She read 100 books and Scholastic will be donating books to the Anchorage Neighborhood Health Center from our little GCK Homeschool - KM picked this charity herself from the list on the Scholastic site.

They also offer some free character education materials to help supplement and reinforce the ideals that programs like this instill.

New Black Belt -

My youngest brother - DP - at 9 years old received his Black Belt last night! These children were amazing! Before the presentation began they were all running around, joking each other and being silly, but as soon as they were on that stage it was a different story!






We had such a great time watching the little skits the groups performed and the youngest group, of 4-5 yr old future black belt holders were just so adorable!

The dedication, discipline, and expertise of these children, at such a young age, is truly awe inspiring!

Fitness Friday - Week 1

Excuses, Excuses, Excuses -

I could sit here and list dozens of excuses as to why I have not been vigilantly sticking to some sort of routine on the Wii Fit, but I am not going to bore you with all that!

I can only HOPE and KEEP MY FINGERS CROSSED that I will get better. We have been using the Wii Play a lot in the evenings - bowling and tennis are KM's favorites, but I know I should be more diligent in my routine with it and I know if I am I will see results.

I think there are also some things with the Wii Fit that drive me a little crazy which is making me not want to use some aspects of it. For instance I am a yogi - in case you never noticed the pic on the side or my bio - I love yoga, but I can't stand the waiting in between and the getting into one pose then having to go through the controls to get to another it so not ZEN! I do like the basic premise of it and have heard that there is a game for the Wii that is just Yoga, so I may look into that when I get a little extra money - hahaha that's like an oxymoron these days right? -

I do LOVE, LOVE, LOVE most of the aerobics and balance games though. My favorite is the step, when I do get myself on there I have been working my way through the step levels and then doing the free step for 30 minutes with 1.5 lb hand weights - while I change the input and watch something on the DVR - LOVE THIS FEATURE! I also really like the boxing and will generally do at least one 6 minute set on there - again though I do wish that there were at least a little less in between time.

So in my strive for more consistence in a fitness routine, I will do what any good homeschooling mom would do - put it into the schooling routine! If it is in that school schedule IT WILL GET DONE! One way or another! It is magical how you write it in there and it manifests itself within day!

Lets see how it works!

Sledding, Sledding and More

SLEDDING

This was earlier in the week...

Then CJ decided to have his friend come over with some machinery to move the snow so he could park his truck in it's usual spot - CAN YOU GUESS WHERE THEY PUT THE SNOW?




The mound is at a high spot in our yard and crosses part of the driveway and heads down into the far back corner where the jeep mounds usually are. Originally it just went smoothly down a slope in the hill, but of course that wasn't good enough for the men with the machine - all I could think of was Tim "The Toolman" Taylor!!! - they had to redirect the course so that it went faster and off a pretty good jump! They did also make a side hill for SC when she comes back on Saturday. As for the BIG hill - I don't know which set of kids liked it better!

Spelling Giveaway at Freely Educate -

One of my FAVORITE blogs is Freely Educate - tons of FREE resources for learning at home - and she has a chance to win a great new product called Spelling Quizzer.
It looks like it would be a really interactive program and she usually has GREAT recommendations, so swing on by and take a peek at what else she has listed!

Inauguration Day!

Good-bye Georgey!!!

Hello Change!

This will be quite a historic day!

Here are some links to check out -

• http://inaugurationday2009.com/
• http://www.inauguration.dc.gov/index.asp
• http://www.insidetheschool.com/2009-presidential-inauguration-day-lesson-plan
• http://inaugural.senate.gov/index.cfm
  
• http://lesson-plan-help.suite101.com/article.cfm/lesson_on_obama_inauguration
  

Utterly Exhausted -

There is no other way to describe how I feel right now! I awoke at 1:30a to complete blackness in my room, no idea why I woke up, but there I was laying there wide awake. Suddenly there was a huge flash of green light - honestly I thought I was dreaming that they aliens had arrived - then there were three power surges and another HUGE flash of light. The transformer blew three houses down and the power was out for our grid of the neighborhood.

Normally most people wouldn't have a problem with a power outage in the middle of the night, but you see it was 23 degrees out and we noticed that it was still snowing - it was suppose to stop that hours ago - We look out in the driveway and their is a good 4 more inches on the driveway that CJ had plowed before he dropped himself into bed last night - he had been plowing all day -

Of course the first thing I thought of was I am hungry - don't ask, I am always starving when I wake up in the middle of the night - so I go out to the kitchen and I hear this faint humming noise coming from KM's room, she had also woken up and was listening to her MP3 player with her battery powered speaker. She jumped right out of bed when she heard me in the kitchen - she gets that hunger trait from me - so I made her, CJ and I PB&J sandwiches, we lit some candles and had a picnic in our bedroom.

As we were sitting their, CJ's phone rang and he was off again to plow some more. He decided to get a fire going as we had been without power now for a little over an hour. He also got the generator ready before he left in case I needed to hook up the oil burner to it. Our oil tank is outside and exposed to the elements so he gets very nervous about the line coming into the house freezing. So I sat down in front of the fire with the Brian Jacques book I have been reading - Mossflower, the sequel to Redwall - and made sure it stayed going.

140 pages later, I realized I should probably close my eyes for a bit. So I put the book down, but within minutes - OF COURSE - the lights came back on. Now there were multiple things beeping and going off around the house that I needed to fix. I finally got everything quieted and made sure the heat was working properly, before I headed to bed.

So now I am sitting here, drinking coffee, waiting for SC to come...hopefully I will get to take a nice long nap with her this afternoon!

Changes...again...

We have been revamping how things work again!
~~~ BIG SURPRISE I KNOW~~~

The first thing is our vocabulary program - KM has been using Wordly Wise 3000 second edition, since I brought her home from PS last year, as she "really liked the way it was set up." Last year they had let her keep the workbook copy that she had started with and since it was a fairly inexpensive system and she did seem to be learning from it we kept it going this year. However over the last few lessons, I noticed that she was having more and more problems with the testing part of it. She just did not seem to be understanding the definitions, when they were taken out of the content of the book or if she couldn't check the definitions. You see the workbook is set up with the words and definitions listed at the beginning of each lesson, then through out the week you do one part each day Monday through Thursday and then you test on Friday. So I sat down with her and had her show me exactly HOW she goes about doing the work. What I found was that she was never actually "reading" through the definitions of the words, she had been taught/instructed by her PS teacher in 4th grade on how to figure out the answers to the different sections using different types of context and scanning clues. Great for building "TESTING" skills, but not so great for "VOCABULARY" skills. I spoke with CJ about this for awhile this afternoon and we have decided to scrap the Wordly Wise for the time being. I am by no means knocking the product at all. I really do like the way it is setup and the different approaches, but my daughter has been trained to cheat her way through it and that just seems like busy work to me. By the way on the test she doesn't have the definitions available and that is why she can't use the system that they taught her in order to pass this test, so I wonder how well those testing skills do actually work?

So in lieu of the Wordly Wise for vocab skills we have decided to try a few different things. For one I had gotten her the My Word Coach for the Wii for Christmas - before the price shot through the roof, guess people found out how great it is!! - so we are going to incorporate that in, as well as some really cool free sites I have found online for vocab building including -

1. Number2.com
2. Free Rice
3. Learning Vocabulary Fun
4. Prepme.com

We have started Ancient History and I think the outline that we have planned is going to work really well. The hands-on project booklets, lapbook sets and ancient science are going to tie the information from the textbook together really well. I downloaded the audiobooks of the Story of the World from our library network site and I think that as we get into each section I will introduce it by using one of the stories from the set. I am stressing to her that they are stories though. I know that many, many, many people have said that SOTW is a secular program and I get why they think that since it covers all religions. At the same time, in my opinion, the way they present the stories just doesn't feel right as a "History" curriculum. However the stories themselves are great little tidbits of "this is the type of stories that they told at this time" or "these are the things that they believed at that time." I will be sure to post pics as we get more into our ancient science and kits that we will be using.

We are also adding in some more math practice review days as she is starting to get into some unfamiliar territory. Each time she comes across a new concept I am shocked at how much I thought she had learned at PS, but she really never even touched on the subject. She is using the Teaching Textbooks Pre-Algebra as that is where she tested into in the system and she really likes how the system is set up, but it also assumes that you have a really good understanding of a lot of the basics and while she does in some areas she is REALLY lacking in others. At the moment we have taken a step back and are spending some extra time with percentages. These can be tricky little buggers and she just doesn't seem to want to follow all the steps in the process. She starts out fine and gets so close to the answer, but somehow gets tripped up on one or two steps. The weird part is that each time it seems to be different spots as well. So we will be taking this next week to reinforce the concepts with some hands on things and real-life math problems to see if I can get her to understand that completing ALL the steps is the only way to get the right answer. As I have said a gazillion times before, I really do not like to bash the school system, but they teach the kids that any answer is better than no answer. You see on the MCAS test they get points as long as they put something for an answer. If they leave an answer blank they get 0, but if they at least take a guess, even if it is the complete wrong answer, they get 1 point. If they take a guess and get the answer that is "almost" the right answer they get 2 or 3 points. If they get the right answer they get 4 points. ---hmmmm

I adore math! I always have and the 1 and only reason for that is that math is not a subjective topic. The answer is either right or wrong, even if you can have more then one solution to a problem ~ i.e. name a prime number that is less than 11 - the answer could be 1, 3, 5, or 7 ~ the answer that you give is either right or wrong. There is no arguing about it. There is no teacher saying that THEY don't interpret it that way. It is a truly black and white subject. So it baffles me that things like this are going on in our school system and I am having to retrain my daughter's brain.

When I started typing I never intended for this post to turn into another rant about the PS system - HONESTLY I DIDN'T! Since it has been a year out of that system I really should be beyond that by now - shouldn't I? But the more I am thinking about it, the more amazed I am that I am still discovering things about the system that I somehow missed when she was there. I also think that the scary part of that is that I was a very involved parent ~ I was even a substitute teacher for a while at the school and volunteered all the time ~ so how much are the uninvolved parents missing. The parents who barely have time to read through the mass of papers that come home from school or to check their kids homework. I am not saying that they all choose to be that way or making a judgement on them, but it is a little bit frightening to me to think that their kids are just being shuffled along and taught strategies to get through the test instead of being educating in order to be a productive and prosperous member of society.

I do apologize for the twisted route that this post has taken...I guess you just never know where you will end up once you start out -or what kind of changes you have to make along the way - so maybe I didn't get so far off topic as I thought I had!

Appreciate a Dragon Day!

Hip Hip Hooray for Dragons!!!

I am so excited about this one!!! Check out this site - here! There are lots cool ways to appreciate dragons today!

I will be back later to fill you in on what we have done!

~~~~Evening Update:

We had a rather difficult time getting ourselves together today, so we did not get as many fun dragon things done that I had hoped. However we did talk about different dragon myths from around the world, watched Puff the Magic Dragon and colored some print outs. We got a jump start on our decorations for the Chinese New Year as well, but you will have to wait to see those later!!
When I was looking for some cool printouts earlier I came across an incredible site Phee's Coloring Pages. If you check it out you will see why I liked so much! I think it is going to be my new favorite printable site!!!

Hope you had a great day, appreciating dragons!

Quick Recycling Project - Art Smocks

I had some old towels laying around that I had been trying to figure out something to do with, when it hit me this morning - Art Smocks!

Here's what to do:
Very simply fold the towel in half one way and then fold it again the other way, mark off the center and cut out a hole, big enough for ~ whomever it is intended for~ head to fit through. Pinking shears would obviously work best, but since it is a towel and they are weaved, holes made from regular scissors will work as well. Then WALLAH -


If you want to make it last longer, have the time, and ability - you can also seam off the edges of the head hole. For now I just want to see how long it will last without the seaming.


I am going to save the extra circles that we cut out of the neck - to make bean bags with! 2 for 1 project deal today!!!

I have been TAGGED,,,

Six Random Facts

Leigh over at Wingbeats and Reflections has tagged me. Since I am up at the crack of dawn, it is fairly quiet, it is cold I don't want to move from the arm chair, in my fuzzzy pj and blanket - I will play along.

Rules:

1. Link to the person who tagged you
2. Post the rules on your blog
3. Write six random things about yourself
4. Tag six people at the end of your post and link to them
5. Let each person know they've been tagged

Six random things - hmmmm -

1. I grew up ten miles from where I currently live and although we moved around a bit (LOT) when KM was little I have lived in the same area for 27 of the 30 years of my life.
2. My favorite anonymous quote about homeschooling is completely true - "I survived Public School...that is why I homeschool!" I dropped out of HS days after turning 16, got my GED and was off to college.
   
3. Ironically as Leigh alluded to in hers - I took Auto Mechanics in High School for a Semester.
4. My favorite color is purple and when I see it, any shade of it, my heart jumps just a little bit - don't know why, doesn't matter how mad, sad, frustrated or whatever I am, purple makes me feel better!
5. I have had the same cell phone number for 11 years!
6. MC is having another girl!!! Another wonderful little neice will be arriving in late May/early June!

I think those were random enough for ya and most of you wouldn't know them - I don't think so who to tag, who to tag....I am heading to my followers list for this one!

1. Candace
2. Stace
3. Jodi
4. Fairyluver
5. Rainbow River
6. Lorna

ENJOY ---I can't wait to see what they come up with!

Another Nifty Science Experiment...

...from the free homeschool Classic Life Science curriculum by Mr. Q. Although we have found some small errors in some of the text - more grammatical than anything. This program still rocks!!! The fact that it is free is even better, but the BEST part is all the really cool, simple experiments that are included that can be done with things you have right around your house. Some of the other experiments I have posted have come from this curriculum as well and I do try to credit him whenever I can!

So today we were discussing the digestive organs and how they break down food. We then did the experiment for this unit which was called Cat's Meow -

Please excuse some of the spelling errors and/or homophone mistakes in the video! She did this one pretty much all on her own!

Rave Reviews for Wii Music

KM got this game for Christmas and I didn't really have too high hopes for it, but it is actually a really cool game! It teaches pitch, helps tune the ear, helps improve rhythm and so much more!

Here are some screenshots of KM's Mii..

Here is the very intriguing instructor, whom KM says she loves!

She was so into it...

It was soooo easy to play that SC even got to try it out in
Jam Session Mode.

Of course she had NO idea what she was doing, but she thought it was great that she even got to hold the controller. I honestly think the Wii is one of the best investments that we have made in a long time! I am constantly impressed with the quality of the games that they come out with!

Yet another bloggy award....

So Stace, one of my new favorite bloggers, has listed me for this wonderful blog award! Here are the rules...

*List six things that make you happy.
*Pass the award on to 5 other bloggers
*Link back to the person who gave you the award.
*Link to the people you are passing it on to and leave them a comment to let them know.


Ok so first things first - 6 Things that make me happy:
1. the smell of something baking
2. the light that goes on when a child TRULY GETS a concept
3. savasana
4. a giggling baby
5. first snowflakes
6. warm cozy bed after a LONG day

Now for the second task - Pass to 5 other bloggers
I have come across so rather interesting new-to-me blogs lately so here are the 5 that I have become hooked on recently:

1. Cynthia
   
2. Spooky
3. Sarah
4. Lorna
5. Sagedust

So I have also completed the third and fourth tasks as I was posting, so I think I am done!!!
Thanks again Stace!!!

Playin' in the Snow

Some Pics I forgot to post the other day ---- our first time playing in the snow with SC!

Sooo much to put on!

Trudging through the snow!

Determined to climb up, even with the extra garb!

Still just wants to swing!

The joys of 3 dogs!!!

and the LOVE of two cousins!

International Programmers Day!

For decades, programmers have made major contributions to our lives. Programmers are ultimately responsible for many of the conveniences we enjoy such as DVR, direct deposit, web surfing, online bill paying, cell phones, etc. Behind most modern day convenience, there's a computer programmer.
This website is dedicated to those programmers who make our lives easier. - check it out
Here is another site specifically for kids to learn about programming - Click here!
Find a programmer and thank them for all that they do to allow us to live our lives with a little bit more ease - or fustration depending on how you look at it! The above listed site has some cute little e-cards you can send.

This site - click here - has a huge list of resources to teach kids about programming on several different levels.

----EVENING UPDATE ----

We had a very fun afternoon, we discussed codes and how every language is a code of its own and what programmers do. KM had a friend over this afternoon and they made a few video clips on Scratch. They had some difficulty at first until they actually read the instructions! I will try to upload one of the video clips tomorrow, but now I am off to bed!!!

Hope you had a great International Programmer Day!

First Art Project of the New Year and updates on older projects!

We have been getting antsy around here with holiday things slowing down so we decided to work on a project today. KM got this incredibly cool book for Yule and so we thought today would be a great day to try some of those marked pages - can you see how many she has marked off, there are more tabs coming out of the bottom that you can't even see!
KM picked "Past, Present & Future Picture Show" - but of course, as with everything around here, we had to tweak it a little, so we did past, middle and present.

These are the three pictures that she choose to work with:

We used butcher paper instead of construction paper, as we didn't have any big enough for all three pictures across - she measured the 1/2 inch increments diligently.
Since she was pressing into the soft top of the card table while she was drawing the lines it actually made it easier to make the creases.

The hardest part was making sure that the picture strips were in order and right-side up as they were glued onto the paper.Final product - even front view

View tilted to the right:

View tilted to the left:

There were some other things that we thought of to try for next time, like leaving a small amount of space between each for the fold, so that it comes out with cleaner lines. We also thought the if we had used bigger pictures and stuck to close ups it would look more even and clean, but I kinda like the differences in the context of the three that she chose.

As far as the update on the other projects, I have been a bit side tracked with them lately, but I have converted all of our VHS videos to DVD. I have not as of yet burned them to DVD, I have them backed up though as AVI files for now. I also got HP SimpleSave for some of my families members and myself for christmas and after hearing multiple stories over the last few weeks of people losing ALL there pics from computers crashing, I have all the photos backed up and stored safely away! Yippee!!!

I also had a sudden urge - or I guess it could be a realization of sorts - when I was putting the Christmas decorations away, to put out some new pictures. I realized that I hadn't printed any new pics in quite a while and didn't have any pics of SC up anywhere - of course she is here sooo much do I really need pics of her up? (JK) So I went in search of pics to hang up, I also had CJ bring up a box of frames from the garage that I had left over from Noni's stuff. Of course a lot of the pictures that she had were duplicates to those that I already had up, so I thought I could reuse some of the frames. Well as I began taking pictures out, I realized that she had been reusing these frames as well, and I found some HYSTERICAL pics of MC and I when we were young. They are sooooo bad I can't even post them here as I would have to fear for my life - really her hair was just soooo big! I don't know how they didn't realize that something that could hold your hair up that HIGH was not good for the environment. So that was a good little chuckle I had going through all the old photos, half of which I had forgotten about or thought were gone forever!

Now that I have all the older photos that are already digital backed up. I am going to start, over the next few weeks, going through the older baby pics and scanning them into the computer. That is going to be the time consuming part, but I figure that computer and scanner are in our Play/School room so I can work on it while KM is doing her independent study stuff and I can still be within reach if she needs me and if SC is here I can stay contain in the room with her. I think it will work out, I just have to get it started!