Life on Planet Caddick

I follow Hip Homeschool Moms, both in blog form and on Facebook. I love them. A group of homeschoolers helping out other homeschoolers. Let's face it, we all need that sometimes! If you don't follow them you should! I love how on their FB page they will throw out random questions that make you think, laugh, or whatever. I also love that people message them (I'm just guessing here) and ask questions which get put out there for all the other page fans to see and hopefully help the stressed out, stumped homeschooling parent. I wish I had a chance to follow all the updates, but if I get on FB then lets face it - my schoolwork doesn't get done! My son's always gets done (um well, usually always). So when I saw an update the other day that said something to the effect of "play nice" it made me upset. I don't usually offer any tips if I have no experience. Sometimes I say 'we tried such and such, but it wasn't a good fit for our family' or whateve...

Growing up in the military, spending 20 years in the military, and currently being the spouse of military member makes it hard to have roots. Home was always where we were at the moment. When I was in the military home was either Salt Lake City or Lansing. I've never lived in either of those places - that's where my parents had settled down so 'home' was where they were. Ask any adult military brat where they are from and they will say "I'm a military brat." or in my case I say "I'm a Navy brat." We are rootless nomads. Since both my parents are gone, home is neither of those places anymore. Home is here - where I live. Not that it hasn't always been that way. I just had some nether world I could call home, while we were in our temporary place. Until the military moved us again. Now we've lived here, in South Carolina, for over six years. In the same house. At the same exact place. How does that happen? How do you stay in one plac...

A lot of my friends on FB are doing the 30 days of thankfulness (or whatever it's called) and that's cool. I have a lot to be thankful for - my boys, my friends, a roof over my head, etc etc etc. What I'm most thankful for is the election is over. Although I'm not glad with the results, what's done is done and it's time to move forward. I'm going to be honest though, this was not my first thought. Not by a long shot. Thought #1 - I'm going to vomit Thought #2 - Well, the Mayans did predict the world will end next month, so maybe it will end up ok Thought #3 - I wonder how long it will take to get passports and blow this lemonade stand? Thought #4 - Montana is pretty big - I bet we could buy a piece of land and fall off the grid. But, the end, I'm proud to be American. I love this country, even if I'm not sure where it's headed. I know I can't defend my rights if I'm not here. But most of all I know we must all now stand un...

I can't believe it's November, I'm not sure where October went! Goodness, Christmas is almost here!! We've been doing good here. Enjoying some unseasonably warm weather for fall. Getting pictures taken for the school year.  Hitting up the pumpkin patch where we not only enjoyed the corn maize and picked our pumpkin but also got to make Erik jealous by checking out an old firetruck We didn't get many trick or treaters on Halloween. Zach doesn't trick or treat. Not because we don't let him - goodness, I'd love it if he went and collected tons of free candy for me - but because he doesn't eat candy, so he doesn't think it's right to take something he won't eat. Sometimes he's too nice!! He is my candy hander outer and likes to see all the different costumes. I guess since that works for him it works for me too. He did ask for a Boo (from Mario) pumpkin, and Erik did his best without a stencil or anythi...

Well, I've been terrible about updating this blog - my other blog also sits on the sidelines waiting for me to update. We've had some setbacks in the last month. I finally realized my son was missing important math skills, so we've put our 6th grade math on hold and have moved back to 5th grade. We are moving through it pretty rapidly, focusing more on the things that he missed in public school. I'm not sure why this surprised me since I had to do this the first year we homeschooled too. I could just kick myself for being silly enough to put him into public school for those two years. I hope we can get on track and be at grade level by the end of the year. The bain of my college classes right now is Science. I've never been good at Science. This strikes me as odd since it is the one subject my son excels at. He took one of my pretests (not official, just in the book) and scored way better than I did. A college level test - one that sadly had me stumped. Plus I got t...