Life on Planet Caddick

Well, the end of 7th grade is almost here. We have about 15 days left in our school year and we've been pushing forward with our state studies and some side trips. I wrote a quick post about our May trips on my other blog. Just good family fun. Something we definitely don't do enough. I think our year has been a success. History is always a struggle, but once we started focusing solely on states things went much better. We've also finished (completely finished) our math for 7th. Today we started working on our 8th grade math. If I can keep not so little man focused we should be working on Algebra in no time! We still struggle with writing. I know it's a skill he desperately needs but I'm at a loss when it comes to teaching it. We've been working paragraphs only for a while, but he needs to be writing papers at this point. Sadly, he's like me - his mind jumps from one subject to the next - so while he starts off great he gets the wandering off topic bug by t...

I know, I said I would keep my money posts to my Money Matters Page . But I figured this is my blog - I'll do whatever I want! Y'all know I roll that way - don't be surprised! Some might think this falls under YNAB's second rule - Save for a rainy day. I don't though, and here's why: I consider Rule 2 more like "I know it's coming, let me get ready for it now." For me that's things like vehicle tags, membership dues, Amazon Prime - whatever. These are things I know are going to happen, and I need to be ready to pay for them when they show up. Other YNABers (yes, that's what we call ourselves) may think of it in a different way. That's kind of the beauty of the program. I think of RDF's more of Rule 3 - Roll with the punches. We've had lots of punches around here, so we have lots of categories for these "will happen but when?" things. Here are some of ours: vacation, emergency fund, house stuff, car stuff, school s...

We've been lucky enough to take a couple day trips this month. We really ought to do this more often. The first place we went was The SC Aquarium in Charleston. It was just OK. All of us walked away a little disappointed. Understand, there are a lot of people who talk this place up. We expected 'incredible' and 'awesome'. Wonder how all these folks would react to a truly awesome aquarium. We still had a good time and spending time together was the ultimate plan anyway. In that regard it was a success! Here are a few of the sights from that day. My boys - I love these guys A hideously gross fish Zach touching a sea star Yes, he freaked out Albino Alligator This thing NEVER moved I say fake - Erik says real Who knows? Another super ugly fish Outside the aquarium This frog statue was super cool Our second trip of the month was to Riverbanks Zoo and Botanical Garden in Columbia. This was Erik's first trip - Zach and I have bee...