Life on Planet Caddick

We've been plugging along fairly well in our school year. Once we made the science change things have been going pretty smoothly. We've chucked the Sonlight reading schedule. Not the books - just the order. I know it seems rather weird to be reading stuff out of order, but so far it's been working out just fine. Our current read is Operation Yes which is about a school of military kids (Air Force even!) who have parents that deploy to Iraq and Afghanistan. A subject close to our hearts here. This actually ties to the history we're reading about (the Persian Empire). It's easy for him to see that even though the names of players change - things in that region of the world have been pretty much the same for thousands of years. So I'm good with letting him pick our reading schedule. I'm pretty sure he's been playing me for a fool in math for a long time now. He lets little slips happen where I know he understands, then tries to back pedal. Um, the gigs up s...

Goodness, I can't believe it's almost Christmas! Our year has been going pretty good though. Some things we're having problems with though: Getting my boy to remember anything about history. I don't know if we need something more hands on, more heavily invested in writing, or just some books to reinforce. Granted, the Middle Ages is sooo long ago for an 11 year old. To him, the 1980's is more like the middle ages. No computers? No video games? *gasp* how did we even survive he often wonders! One day he asked if we even had cars. Um yeah, no sweetie, we rode dinosaurs everywhere. Or Fred Flinstone cars. pshh We are backtracking through some missed, or not learned, math concepts from grade 5. He's still struggling with some of them, so I think that is right where we need to be. The middle of the year also starts the look to the next year. What's working for us? What isn't? What are we willing to change for the next year. After all, he will be in 7th grade ...

I'm not just a slacker because I haven't posted in a while. I'm also a slacker because I'm posting without pictures. After drinking two glasses of wine and taking my sleeping pill. And going two days without a cigarette. Yeah, this is going to be a nonsense post if I ever saw one. Read one, typed one, whatever. You get my point, right? Of course you do. So we've been doing good. We are about 9 months away from Erik's retirement. He's starting to get a smidge crabby. And by smidge I mean iceberg size crabby. Unfortunately, I'm sure that will increase exponentially as the months move past us. I'm still trying to talk him into becoming an expat. I thought I might have a leg to stand on after the election, but he's still resistant. When will he realize that I'm like the Borg - resistance is futile? I've even opened the pool to other Central/South American countries, but he's not rolling with it yet. (I must remember gentle nag...

It's been a long time. There's been a ton of stuff going on. It's been a hard few months. Quick recap - My dad passed. Not ready to talk about that, moving on... I fell short of my required progress for last term. Now I'm on academic probation. I've never been on academic probation - ever. It's nerve wracking. It makes me feel like such a loser. But, at least the VA will cover this terms tuition but I've got to keep it together for sure now. No more crawling into bed for days at a time and just wanting to never get out again. After a terrible year at school for Zach, I struggled for months about homeschooling again. I decided to go ahead and do it. Surprisingly there was no argument from Erik. I just explained we needed to make him academically competitive with students outside of South Carolina. So far it's been working well. We sit across the table from each other and work on our schoolwork. Plus my science whiz has helped me with my Science clas...

We had a plan. We still may have a plan. For now we are going to call it "The Super Secret Plan" (SSP) because, well, it's a secret and it's a plan. That's how we roll around here. And it feels good to have a plan. Being 44 years young you'd think I'd somehow remember to include Murphy in our plans. Even though my dearest calls me a 'glass half empty' person, deep down I'm not. I love to think that the glass is half full - but sadly, it rarely turns out that way.  Thanks Mr. Murphy you rock But I'm letting all of you, my fine readers know - we are re-working SSP. And I'll share with all of you when we have a lock. Promise! This is your heads up for a random later post. In the meantime I thought I'd share some of the things we've been doing around here. School for me about halfway through the term Yay I'm a lot overwhelmed still but getting a grip kind of like this but that counts ~ right? Right Z-man's knees look...