Not Another Homeschool Blog

Fingers crossed for an offer completed on the current house. Progress on the new house. I just remembered that my current house was framed on the 4th of July and we moved in on the 31st, and surprisingly, there has been no real structural issues in this house.  I don't expect the new house to go up quite that fast, we still have 3 months to go, but I still have a feeling the builder is going to offer us an earlier closing... of course, we will need to have the current house sold first.

I wasn't really worried about the state of the house. It was in the beginning stages and I knew that anything that blew down could be put back up. What I was worried about was the projectiles that a house in progress could cause on the rest of the neighborhood. The good news is that only a couple pieces of wood blew away and did not ruin anyone else's house that I know of. The bad news is that the construction workers probably needed a fresh toilet. eww.  At home, we in the NE suburbs of ATL lost trees in the neighborhood.  My yard is a mess. A shutter is kinda in a precarious position and we lost power for an hour. Most of our friends and family lost power for 24 hours. Some lost power for two whole days... one person is still out. 

As my old house gets closer to ready to sell, I am becoming nostalgic as it is a particularly beautiful home.  So why am I moving?  It doesn't work well for us as a family. My "old" two story foyer at Christmastime It doesn't work for a 4 car family. We have to constantly shuffle around cars every morning and evening. You could say that it only temporary as my children will fly the coop before long, but whenever my grown family will come home to visit or whenever we have visitors, we will have the same annoying problem. Photo of "old" great room Another reason it doesn't work is it doesn't flow to fit the way we live. We walk in, kick off our shoes, put down our bags and go about our business... the foyer door and kitchen door become littered with, shoes, and bags, and mail and stuff like that, and with 4 adults in the house, it gets a bit overwhelming to stay on top of.  With a proper mud room and foyer closet, the new house will hopefu...

Getting a house ready for sale is a nightmare, and makes me really crazy.  So far I have replaced flooring.  Had painters do the deck, some minor facade repair, and interior painting.  Now I am looking at fixing the front porch, and it's a bit more money than I expected.  Ugh.  I don't want to sell a house with issues, but I also don't want to pay much more to sell the house... what to do, what to do? So far, I am just practicing being mean and difficult with the people who sell the services. In the meanwhile, we are building another house, thankfully far enough away to not be obsessive about always being there.  They are kinda nickel-and-diming us too. I mean after you've paid a sizeable non-refundable deposit. Why does a couple of minor changes mean you have to pay an additional non-refundable deposit?  Are my changes so egregious that no one in their right mind would want them if the sale fell through? It's not that it is a lot of m...

So it was time to replace the carpet in my house since I moved in 15 years ago and it was in terrible shape.  It did not go smoothly. First, I went to the local home improvement store warehouse and picked up samples, telling the carpet person that I would want it by the end of the month, they said: “no problem” and nothing else.  I brought the samples home and got opinions and made decisions. I went back a few days later, and once again told the guy my decision and my timeline and we arranged a measurement appointment. Now, I was apparently there on the last day of the sale, so I paid my deposit to lock it in.  In included “free” installation, and no additional stair installation, and moving of heavy furniture, so I was happy. The guy who measured was great and we had great conversations while he did it.  He measured 5 rooms and the upstairs hallway and the stairs. He saw what was in each room and what was not in each room.  His estimation for my ...

This crap happens.  See the letter that I just sent to my high school who took weeks to be able to report that my husband (and I) graduated. To Whom it may concern:   I am writing to request high school transcripts for myself and my husband. We need these transcripts because we discovered that Yonkers Public Schools records department reported that (xxxxxx xxxxxxx 19xx) had never graduated high school.  Upon calling the schools to investigate we also discovered that the records department also did not have my (xxxxxx xxxxxxx 19xx) graduation information.  In fact, it turned out that both of our high school records had the same wrong information. This is incredibly disconcerting to me because it makes me wonder what opportunities I may have missed over the years due to such an error. Unfortunately, when I relayed my concerns to Miss. Dodie who runs the Yonkers records department, I was met with defensiveness and anger. I did not deserve that. I do de...

During my homeschooling years, I often found myself saying, "why would I bother homeschooling if I am going to follow someone else's rules?" I found that most homeschoolers were homeschoolers in deed, but not necessarily in action.  They would pronounce they were homeschooling, but then look for a full curriculum in a box or homeschool program online to follow.  They might get desks and even turn the dining room into a classroom and have the kids call them teacher(mom) and principal (dad).  Sure that's cute, and a good way to present homeschooling to previously schooled kids, but there comes a time when the transition ends and the actual homeschooling begins. I often get requests on how to homeschool, and I have been struggling with finishing a book for a