Car Prices!!!!!!

We have been having just one of those months when not a things seems to be going right!!!!
Friday, My children & I were coming home from picking my son up at the high school and the car broke down..... I had to have it and us towed home. This car is special to me (It was my dad's before he died and I feel very attached to it), So it brakes my heart to see it falling apart - The tranmission has been slipping, brakes are shot, It leaks water and want's to over heat ect..... so I have had to face facts that this car has seen it's last days on the road (Maybe I will keep it in the yard though...). I for sure don't want to take on a huge car payment - We had just gotten to a point were we had no payments at all ect. for utility payments & car insurance. We went looking for a car, I was stunned to see what they cost! We are all fighting over which way to go with this problem, I want a $3,000. car so we have no payments but my son & husband both want something "nicer" and payments - We will see how it works out as we need to move fast.

A Tough Week : (

What a tough week we are having.....
I have been so disappointed this week in both of my kids.
My daughter, I am trying all different types and ways to teach her but it just seems like she is floundering. She get's up and walks around when I am going over something with her, She lays down on the bench at the kitchen table where we do our work, and just gives so little to the lessons it is sooooo trying for me! I bought new workbooks in spelling & reading because the lessons we were using were to hard for her and these are a bit easier (I thought maybe all of the above was because she was just to overhelmed). Well that doesn't seemed to have help, she was doing the same thing again yesterday.... I asked her "Did you just walk around at your old school"? She said "No". I said then why don't you give me the same respect you gave your last teacher.....
I signed her up for Time4Learning: www.time4learning.com/ , I am hoping this might help since I know she seems to learn better by seeing then workbooks. I went on the site and played one of the lessons in the fifth grade folder - Well, I think it is just going to overwhelm her! I changed the setting to 4 instead of 5 at the top of the page, not sure if that will help or not. I won't find out if she likes it or not today since we have a homeschooling horseback riding meeting today at 1:00pm. (Which I know she is going to LOVE). This is a welcome change, I think we are spending way too much time in the house!!!!! With the brakes on my car going plus the tranmission slipping, water over heating ect. it looks like we may be down to one car very soon and we won't be able to take little trips : (

Then my son, He is still in public school. He skipped 1st. & 4th. period classes on Valentine's Day with his girlfriend! Her mother called me up and wanted to let me know what they were up to - Nothing like talking with a livid mother : (
I am just so disappointed in him, he knows he has taken to many days off already due to the horse running away & car acting up, he is well over the limit for this school semester. Then to have his girlfriend & another kid in the car and riding around!!!!!! I told him I am taking the car away for awhile.... He said he was glad because having the car just got him into trouble.
Oh well there is always next week.......

Thank Goodness it's Friday!

Gosh, We are having one of those days!!!!!!
The day started out just like any other - The dogs woke up at around 3:30am. I got up and let them out and then turned on the computer to check e-mail ect. (I stay up till my husband and son leave for school & work which is about 6:45am.) I raced back to bed, pulled the covers up and was just about to drift off to sleep when I heard someone at the door.... It was my son, the car was acting up again and wouldn't go into second gear. I think it just needs some transmission fluid again but the problem is my husband had broken the plastic pull tab inside the car so it is close to impossible to get the hood of the car open : ( After working on it for awhile we decided to give up - I dove back into bed and he took a nap too. I got up about 9:30am., Kelly got up (She had been up earlier not feeling well), She felt a bit better but she looks a bit peeked.
We decided to scrap schooling for the day since it has been so up in the air.....
We are going to the library tomorrow for a book sale "if" the car is working. We have a large bookshelf full of books that are hardley ever used but you know how it is - You just have to go and see if you can find any goodies : )

My husbands thoughts on our homeschooling : (

Last night my husband asked my daugher to clean out the horse pen, She said "Remember dad I have homeschooling in the morning", So I can't do it right away.
He said to her, "You don't do any schooling anyway".
Wow! That really almost made me cry! Here all the hard work I have been doing with Kelly he thinks is nothing! I thought it was such a nasty thing to say.... I think it made Kelly feel bad to!
We haven't been making much progress with her learning anything new yet because I have been searching for methods of learning that will work for her.
I also have been trying to get a handle on what she know & doesn't know - Like she doesn't know her times tables at all & her spelling is very bad. I have had to re-adjust what I had planned to work on because of a few of these things. Like we have started working on the states (We are going very slow since I know she has a very hard time memorizing things), My husband has been coming home each night asking her "What is the capital of this state, What's this one"? She really is just starting to know the names and where they are located.... But I guess by her not knowing these things he feels she isn't learning anything, and since he see's us not putting in a ton of time on schooling (We start at about 10:00am and go to 1 or 2pm.), I guess he feels I am not putting enough effort into it. We just started homeschooling on Nov. 17, 2006 - With all I have read about giving her down time to adjust to homeschooling ect. I didn't think we have been wasting time..... : (

"Visual Spatial Learner"

I have been searching the web for sites that might help Kelly learn her times tables - She is having the hardest time with them (I remember plain as day, I flew along in school until I hit 3rd. grade and we started the times tables. I too had the hardest time remembering them, which caused me so much ridicule from the kids in my class because I couldn't get it!!!!!).
I found some sites about "Visual Spatial Learners", It sounds so much like her:
http://www.homeschooldiner.com/specials/visual_spatial/main.html
http://www.visualspatial.org/
http://giftedhomeschoolers.org/articles/organizational.html
When she was in public school they classified her as an IEP student, But they couldn't pinpoint her learning disability.
It is something to look into as a new possibly way to make learning a bit easier for her.

Where have all the good neighbors gone??????

I am amazed at how little respect some people have for one another....
When we moved down to Florida from PA., Our hopes were to find a place where the kids could run around, have lots of animals, a stress free area ect..
Where we ended up could not be further from the truth! We have lived here for about 3 1/2 years, the first 2 years were wonderful - The last 1 & 1/2 years have been horrible! So far we have had cars racing in fourth gear past our house, ATV's riding & racing past, a monster truck which was inches away from running me over, people throwing firecrackers when my daughter and the horse trainer were out with our horse, monster truck roaring past when we were out with the horse, they go into our mailbox, I could go on and on but I think you have the point. My husband & I have been married for 22 years, We have had a few different neighbors in our time but we have NEVER had neighbors like this before! As I said I am amazed at the complete disrespect these people have for other people. Yes, all these things and more were done by just one family.... We have tried to talk to them, yell at them, I called the police when they almost ran me over (even though the man was visable drunk or drugged out the police only gave him a warning!). The horse trainer called the police over the firecracker episode - again another warning was given (The day after this episode took place the teenager kid was back out on his fourwheeler riding like a maniac, Even though the police were there the night before they still let the kid do what he wants). We have come to relize we are on our own with these people that the police out here just aren't going to do anything : ( Now isn't that a scarry thought when you have children to think of! Then to top it off since we have called the police on them, they constantly call the police on us.... Our goats broke out of their pen one day and they called the police saying our goats were attacking their kid as he walked past from school (Our goats are from a petting zoo & our very friendly), they also called the animal control officer and they came to my house too. Then they called the police about our dropping horse poop on the road (The very next day when we went out in the morning to feed the horse, He was gone! Now we can't say for sure but we kinda think they scared him sometime in the night and be broke the fence and ran away). You can not imagine the stress this family is causing my family!!!! If we were able to move I would in a second, but it just isn't an option right now.
I find it so upsetting that I try and make a nice life for my kids by teaching them respect, to care about other peoples feelings, respect other peoples property ect and then you run up against people like this who are just so self centered it is disgusting! To tell you the truth this is just another one of the hundred reasons why I homeschool my daughter, to try and combat against these types of people she may run up against in the future.
Okay I'm done now ranting and raving - I'll sit down and have my diet pepsi now : )

Evan-Moore Website

I signed up at Evan-Moor for the teacher file box: http://www.teacherfilebox.com/
Kelly has been enjoying the workbooks that we have bought from them, so I thought since we are finding a number of areas were we could use work from both 4th and 5th grade this would work out for us. It is a bit pricey at $9.99 a month after the introduction special of $ .99 cents for the first month. I have printed out a few items already but I think we might not stick with it at that price.
As far as the horse episode, I have talked it over with Kelly and she still wants to work with Chance and not sell him..... Sooooo being the mom that I am I called around to find more options as far as training for her ( Our local homeschooling group is organizing horse back riding lessons, but not sure at what level those will be). I talked with a few different people and I found a lady who actually lives a few roads over from us who trains horses. We had her over on tues., She said that Chance is a lovey that all we need to do is get Kelly better trained in how to ride Chance, She gave Kelly some tips to work with. We are really not sure what route we will take on this as far as training.