Planning Day--Nov. 14, 2006

My theme of the day--planning for school!

After the winds of Monday night again and finding nothing blown down yesterday...praise God...yesterday went fairly smoothly. Alyssa and Jenna, again, had an early practice so I went to work out (and I worked out this morning as well) so that is three times down to my goal of working out at least 30 times before Christmas. I noticed that I am already starting to feel better. Before I started to work out almost two years ago I was noticing my hips aching, especially when I woke up in the morning. When I am working out regularly, that hip pain is pretty much gone and I feel much better. It still bothers me sometimes if I sit for a really long time, but not nearly as bad. Also, I just notice that I have so much more energy when I am working out. I don't love to do it, but I love the results!

I picked up Alyssa from practice on the way home from the gym and we came home to get started on schoolwork. She disappeared to her room and I went to get ready. Of course, first I had to have "cuddle drink" with Tara. That is a habit we established early with her and I hate to give it up. She and I sit on the couch and cuddle while she has her cup of hot chocolate in the morning (okay, she does it at night too). I love this and want to continue it as long as she will cuddle with me.

After that I got ready for the day and got to my school planning. I am trying to keep everything in the Homeschool Tracker program on my computer so all the grades and everything are kept together. Also, the girls can easily look at their assignments and progress and work ahead if they want. I am a little behind in grading, but hope to catch up in the next week or so. I also ran to Blockbuster to exchange movies. Blockbuster has recently changed their "mail-in" program and I really like it. You take the movies back to the store and turn them in, you get to rent a movie from the store for every movie you turn in, plus they send you the next movies in your queue. They are really trying to compete with Netflix and this is something Netflix can't do. I got a few new movies, including Lassie, which just came out yesterday. I also got The DaVinci Code to watch. I have had so many non-Christian friends ask me questions about this, I wanted to see it to be able to refute it. I did listen to the book on my iPod while I was working out about 1 1/2 years ago, but I don't know if there is much different in the movie or not. Also, Tim has had questions asked of him and he has not read the book or seen the movie. I'll report my thoughts after we have watched it.

Alyssa had to be back at school at 2:30 for more Drill Team practice and it lasted until 4:30 (usually over at 3:45). We came home and she worked on more schoolwork while I ran to Walmart to get dinner stuff. Jenna went with me and we got a Tortilla Soup mix and some tortilla chips and came home to make it along with a salad. Alyssa was not nearly done enough with her schoolwork to be able to go to Bible Study that night so she had to stay home and Jenna went. When she snuck off to her room in the morning she had gone back to bed while I got ready! I hate to keep her from Bible Study, but she was WAY behind by her poor choices of time management. Sammy and Tara decided they wanted to play "chef" and so they made some chocolate chip cookies. I hated to discourage them, but we have sooo much candy left from the harvest party at church we need more dessert like we need a hole in the head, but they made them...hmmm...maybe I can give them to someone.

Today I have already gotten to workout...lower body lifting, I rode the bike yesterday. Now I am home and need to get ready for the day. The plan is that I will get ready, go over to the house and pay the concrete guy (they are pouring the cut-out for our driveway today, yeah!!!), work on Bible Study (it's tomorrow and I haven't gotten nearly as much done as I would like), make a grocery list/menu for the week, pay a few bills, do discussion with the girls for TOG, grocery shop for the week while Alyssa and Jenna are at Drill Team practice, come home and make dinner (I am not sure what we are having since I have not made the menu yet) and get everyone ready for AWANA tonight. Alyssa doesn't usually go, but they are missing a lot of leaders tonight and they asked if she would help just this once. This means Tim and I will get a night alone. Woo Hoo! I'll report if I get all this done later.