This last week Brandon an I made our very first lapbook. Did I read instruction? Did I give instructions? Well, not really. We just kind of printed a bunch pictures and information off the internet and well we winged it. I did however find this great lapbook that I used bits and pieces of at Our Homeschooling Expedition.

If any one is looking to make an Ancient Egypt lapbook I highly recommend printing hers out and actually following the instructions! Here are some pictures of what we ended up with.

Way back when, when I first started homeschooling Cecil brought home this really nice bulletin board for absolutely free. Naturally I was over joyed. Oh I was going to keep it decorated so cute! I would display all the children's precious work. I just knew I'd buy all kinds of wonderful seasonal decor to put on it! Then I became a real homeschool mom. I came back down to earth. Needless it say it often goes several months with no change at all. I really do at least try to keep it seasonal but not necessarily with all the great "store bought" bulletin board decorations from the teaching store.

However, this week I decided it was just a shame to have something so great in my reach and not utilize it. Yes, we've updated our bulletin board. And you are here for the great unveiling. Don't you feel so blessed to be here for this grand event?

Those of you who follow along my blog may remember I mentioned we rescued some sick stray puppies awhile back. Well they are healthy little rollie pollies now. I haven't been able to find homes for the last two. I call them the Poopies. The black one is Luke and the white one is King Tut (AKA Tutters). The family has voted 3 to 1 to keep them. They are sweet and adorable but if a good alternative home magically appears you better bet your bottom dollar I'd kiss them good bye and tell the familial to suck it up and move on! LOL

Oh Ok I've already typed one very grumpy, cranky, people shouldn't even have to read it blog today elsewhere. So, I'll try my best to spare you. In fact I'll try to post the positive side of things here.

1. Although I can't find homes for the puppies we rescued and I spend a great deal of time trying to keep my floors sanitary. They are healthy, growing and cute.

2. Although I was late to the fall festival due to many many things going wrong at the last minute. Due to the fact that I was late my booth was given over to a youth member to run leaving me free to enjoy the festival with my family. Cecil was late but did make it in time to eat with us and play some games. The festival was even bigger than last year and had a great turn out of non church members which is our goal. It truly was a wonderful community family friendly event! Kudos to the awesome woman who organized this!

3. Although I've had/have a lot of issues with my neighbors...the list of their deeds would make the average neighbor shudder... (I am really praying for strength to continue to stay on friendly terms for witnessing and ministry's sake.) However, last night really took the cake. I took their daughter to the fall fest with me because they were taking their son with some friends to a haunted house several towns away. I knew they would be late which was really fine. If they were too late I'd just let her stay the night and send her home in the morning in time to get dressed for school. But around 11 PM we got a call that they and their friend had been arrest for PI and DWI. Could I come pick their son up? Well yeah! It was more like how fast could I get there! No kid should have to be sitting at a jail while their parents are sitting in the drunk tank. So I went to get him. We didn't home until around 2 AM. The bright side of this? He was ok. He was alive. They didn't wreck. And someone cared enough to come get him. Hopefully what I did will have more of an impact than what his parents did.

4. Cecil has been promoted. He has done this job before with no pay increase and been demoted due to lack of a college degree. When offered the position again a couple of times before he has been leary. However, we talked and prayed about it when it was offered again. This time it does come with a pay raise and bonus package. He has also been promised a lightening of his work load so he can once again join us in a family life. I pray this was the right decision. It sure sounds like a good thing. I guess time will tell.

5. Lately with just life stuff I'm feeling a strong need of the Lord for strength and guidance which no matter how that may sound is actually a good thing.

Remember the mystery snail egg clutch I was so thrilled about? Well, they hatched and.... so did the second clutch that the snails laid and... we are still waiting for clutches 3 and 4 to hatch. Needless to say after the first 100 or so baby snails some of the excitement has died down! We are raising the first two batches in a separate tank to protect them from being eaten. However, I told the kids that the next two batches can fend for themselves. In fact I got caught last night feeding a few baby snails to the fish! LOL I've tried to explain to the kids that this is good food for our fish and... Where on earth are we going to keep 100 grown snails anyways??? It goes with out saying that any new egg clutches will be removed before the children know about them! LOL However, I am still glad we had the wonderful experience of hatching our own snails.

You want some irony? I decided it was time to clean my son's tank in his room and discovered that he had an infestation of wild snails clogging up his filter system! As I was scrubbing out his filter to remove all the snail eggs and little wild snails (I guess they came in some of the food or something) I just couldn't get over the irony of carefully raising one set of snail eggs in one tank while unknowingly having an unwanted colony growing in another! LOL

Did I also mention that we caught 2 baby fish in the living room tank and that they are doing fine? Hopefully they will be big enough to put back in the big tank soon. Meanwhile I think one of my platys is pregnant. Babies, babies everywhere in my aquarium!

Here is the icing on the cake. As if we didn't have animals/baby animals running out of our ears around here a stray dog had a litter of pups under the vacant house on the lot next to mine. Well, I got worried that we'd have a pack of wild dogs running around if something wasn't done. Plus, the last person that lived on that property had 5 dogs which all died because the fleas where so bad on that land. So I had my son and another neighbor hood boy catch them. They were so infested with fleas it took 2 baths to get them off. They were weak and terrified of people. I wormed them and fed them and we loved on them. It has now been just over a week. They are now very healthy lovable pups. I've found a home for one. My family wants to keep one, ugh. But I still need a home for the last one. If I don't find a home soon I'm going to take it to the pound. I'm afraid if it takes too long to find it a home it will never leave.

Animal count at my house at this moment:
1 cat
4 dogs
1 rabbit
3 guinea pigs
1 aquatic frog
16 fish
3 adult snails and around 100 hatched baby snails with 2 egg clutches.

Ouch! I wonder if I can apply for farm aide to feed this herd? LOL The bad thing is we were at a stand off. My husband and I were firm. NO more pets. This was it. Unless some of these passed on. Which with this arrangement should have meant no more new animals until at least 4 more years based on most of these pets life spans. Then the puppies came. Guess who wants to keep one puppy? Daddy. Sucker!

For Brandon's first semester of Zoology he is studying Flying Creatures of the Fifth day. To that end we have been making our yard more bird friendly.



Of Course Humming Bird Feeders are a must. We had about 20 HB zooming around fighting over the feeders for weeks but I think they've moved on now that it is cooling off a little.



We moved our bird bath under my wisteria vines and Brandon made a bird feeder from the pattern out of his science book.



This last one was fun. We made our own Suet! The recipe was made up of lard, peanut butter, oats and bird seeds. Then you freeze them into blocks. Our batch made up 7 blocks of feed. The book made it seem like the birds would be flocking to this thing like crazy! Although I have seen birds eating at it so far we've had no really eating frenzy! LOL

We've been waiting and waiting and finally the magic day came! I went to feed the fish Saturday morning and what to my wandering eyes appear? But a tiny little egg clutch! Yeah and Hooray! One of our snails crawled up to the top of the aquarium and laid her eggs. Now we just got to wait... hope the eggs stay out of the water but stay moist enough not to dry out ..... and in 2 to 4 weeks we can have anywhere from 30 to 100 baby snails! SO COOL! I mean so cool it might be KEWL!

Honestly, what is more nerdy than a homeschool mom with an egg clutch to show off?


These are our three snails. One on glass, one on tree, one in rocks. Two are blue mystery snails and one is a golden snail. We had 2 of each but one of our golden snails suffered from an unfortunate incidence. I have no idea who Mommy and Daddy are but aren't they cuties!