Friday, February 26, 2016

Weekly Wrap-Up {Catching Up}

 photo First Macro Shots 2.jpg

Eek! I got a little behind on my weekly wrap-ups after our Disney trip in January. It just seemed like for several weeks in a row I was moving from one urgent matter to the next, and as soon as I knocked one off the list a new one was added. I'm not going to go through all of them, but here are a few of the things that have kept me busy:

Transferring the thousands of pictures I took on our trip caused my computer to have a mental breakdown, resulting in an emotional breakdown on my part. After three trips to the Apple store, we narrowed the problem down to a glitch in my Lightroom software or my lack of computer organizational skills or a combination of the two. ; )

College financial aid forms are torture. For those of you who've been through this, you know what I mean. For the others, college is highly overrated; just move on to Plan B. ; ) Seriously, I've learned some BIG lessons the hard way. Check the individual school's FAFSA deadline -- not all of them are March 1, like I was led to believe. Some are February 1, and trust me, January 30th is not the best day to learn this bit of info! I did get it done by February 1 and breathed a deep sigh of relief. But the relief was short-lived because then I learned on February 2 that there is another financial aid form called the CSS Profile, and it was also due February 1. And CSS is even worse than FAFSA. I was pretty sure they were going to ask the color of my underwear at some point.

One of my least favorite things to do in life is go shopping. Yet, it seemed like every weekend there was some new outfit to be bought -- a dress for Anna's Protocol, a business casual outfit for the scholarship luncheon (ended up that half the kids wore jeans, but at least Anna looked nice), and a suit for Ryne's Protocol (thankfully, Marc took over the responsibility for that one) One thing I didn't have to do much shopping for was for a car (SUPER thankful that Marc likes to do that!), but I did end up driving to Oklahoma to pick one up!

I'm no longer a minivan mom! It was a little bittersweet to say goodbye to our faithful Toyota Sienna (shown below on one of her last major road trips, camping in northern Michigan), but she was up to 265,000 miles and it was time for her to get some rest. She was truly one of the best cars we've ever had and I'm pretty sure she could drive herself to Denver with all the trips back and forth she made. Lots of great memories were made in that car!

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We replaced her with a used Hyundai Santa Fe, and of course, we found out a few days after bringing it home that the AC wasn't working. Yes, I'm thrilled to add one more urgent thing to the list.

Anna finished the last of her college applications on February 15th, so now we just wait. Except that some schools don't care about other school's deadlines, so things might get a little complicated in March. She was awarded a nice scholarship at a school she really likes, but she has to let them know if she'll accept it before she finds out if she's accepted to another school high on her list. You know, if I didn't personally know moms who've survived this whole college process, I'd never believe it's possible.

Homeschooling is going fairly well. Ryne continues to work hard; I continue to lag behind. We did manage to squeeze in a field trip to the Federal Reserve Bank a few weeks ago, which was very timely since he's studying economics this semester. We've both been doing very well with algebra  the last several weeks (I've mentioned before that I take the tests for each chapter to make sure I understand everything he's working on), but today was a disaster. We both got stuck on a review problem and I was convinced the answer key must be wrong, even though it was not listed in the corrections. So I texted Anna a picture of the solution and asked her if it was correct, which she affirmed. I'm pretty sure they're both wrong. Let's see . . . Mom who didn't do so great at algebra way back in 1985 vs. Steve Demme of Math U See. Or me vs. my daughter whose favorite subject this year is calculus. You'd bet on my odds, right? ; )

One little bit of fun news is that I got a new lens for my camera so I can take macro photos. It just arrived yesterday, so I've only tried a few photos, including the top picture of the dreaded algebra problem. I'm learning you need a very steady hand for macro photography (which I don't have) or you need to get out the tripod (which I always find cumbersome). Nevertheless, I'm determined to get some good practice in because spring is coming and I want to get some great up-close nature shots.

Hope your January and February were great! I'll try to get back on track with regular updates. : )

Happy Homeschooling!