I was so pleased to give away my serger today through Freecycle! It has been sitting in my attic for several years and I was never going to use it….so now it has been passed on to someone who can use it. I am still striving to “purge” more of our belongings here in the house. We (5 of us) lived in one room at the Knoxville TN Ronald McDonald House for 6 months and learned to live with a limited amount of “stuff”. When we got back home, we realized that we have way too much “stuff” here!! So, I’ve been getting rid of a lot…and it’s nice! Less to clean! The one thing I miss about the house there in Knoxville is the 5 washers and dryers…it was really cool to finish all the laundry in a few hours!!

As if I don’t have a ton of other things to deal with during my day, we have a DEAD smelly possum in our back yard. Now that’s exactly what I need in my life right now!! Pete poured Chlorox on it and the steamy, smelly gases rose from it. Pete pours bleach on everything…his answer to making everything right!! What I loved about the whole situation is that our neighbor was watching Pete “take care” of that ol’ possum…I know he thinks we are all nuts here and I’m sure that Pete confirmed that! Anyway, truth be told, it was kind of cool and I think it could somehow count as a school lesson…right??!!

I found the following at http://www.geocities.com/HomemakersRus/home.html

This first tip just cracked me up…that “over a period of a few days…” part is funny. I think we run our dishwasher at least 50 times during a 24 hour period!!

“While waiting for the dishwaher to be fully loaded over a period of a few days, sprinkle a little baking soda over the dishes or in the bottom of the machine in order to neutralize odors.”

Now this sounds like a good tip…I hope it works! I’ll let you know!”Buy the cheapest automatic dishwashing detergent and add some white vinegar to it. Your dishes will sparkle without spending a lot of bucks!”

Wow!! It’s the simple things….”You will increase your light output by 50% JUST BY DUSTING OFF YOUR LIGHT BULBS!!”

I’m going to add “light bulb dusting” to the chore list…this will please my children! They love when I add new jobs!! heehehee!!

ok…ok…I finally did it! I finally made my own cleaner with vinegar!! I’m not sure how well I like it yet but it sure does seem much healthier than the chemical stuff. I found my recipes at www.organizedhome.com Tomorrow I plan on making glass cleaner and then maybe I’ll clean my toilet with a pumice stone (since I broke mine..the pumice, not the toilet!)…or maybe not! I have not mastered the toilet cleaning job yet. With two boys, it can be quite a daunting task! But I won’t be discussing that now…..

We discussed 4 Spanish explorers today in history. We also talked about the Northwest Passage. Here are some sites about 3 of these guys:

Juan Ponce de Leon
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/explorers/page/d/deleon.shtml

Hernando de Soto
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/explorers/page/d/desoto.shtml

Francisco Vasquez de Coronado
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/explorers/page/c/coronado.shtml

We are going to make a timeline along the top of our schoolroom…hopefully tomorrow. We have timeline books but I think it will be better if the actual timeline is up on the wall. Wish me luck!

In science we are studying the ocean…tomorrow we will be talking about mollusks and crustaceans. This site has some great photos…there is even a close-up of a shrimp eye! How cool is that?!! www.oceanicresearch.org/index.html

We are currently doing a mini-unit on whales. Did you know that the largest Blue Whales have hearts that are the size of Volkswagon Bugs?? And that a human could crawl through the aorta! That is mind-boggling to me…and suddenly very disgusting! Oh, one more thing, the blue whale is the loudest animal coming in at 188 decibels…jets are 140 decibels and conversation between humans is 60-70 decibels. Interesting….they are big and loud…sounds like my two oldest boys!!!

Pete made a 94 on his Anatomy & Physiology exam…the class average was 68. We are all really impressed with his vast knowledge!! I believe he is studying bones right now.

Leif Erickson was who we talked about today during history. I came across this website that was very interesting… http://www.viking.no/e/people/leif/e-leiv.htm

We are really behind on learning sign language. I think we need to practice more during conversations. I’ve been signing with Gus when I’m bathing him, changing his diaper etc…but then sometimes I forget! It will just take some getting used to. I’ve finished the story props for Lunch by Denise Fleming and they are really cute, if may say so myself! Go visit her website. It’s neat. www.denisefleming.com