A year and a half ago, three children bought their first aquarium, with much glee and joy and silly fish-naming. The three children loved their betta fish and three zebra danios, and their relationship began with much adventure.

One of the three magic-lucky-disappearing-reappearing Danios did eventually pass on and the rest of the happy go lucky fish found new friends through one dwarf guarami, one aquatic frog, one sea snail and one male fancy guppy. They all got along swimmingly,… except for the frog who immediately.. CROAKED.

The sea snail quickly became the family favorite. He was so intriguing to watch as he quickly sped over ever tank decoration, to see the way his body folded around the molded shapes, to know that he was helping to keep the tank clean and make less work for Mommy. Alas, one day a few months later, the sail suddenly died without warning. … It was a sad day.

After some passing of time, about six months after their fish adventure began, the Mother took them back to the store to replace the frog, the snail, and another one of the Danios who disappeared from the tank one day. The Mother found it most odd that each of the small fish simply disappeared from the tank when their time was up, so much for fish floating belly up and all that.

The excited children returned home with MUCH glee, two fruit tetra and a fiddler crab! Oh they were so excited about the fiddler crab. Imagine their shock when their new fiddler crab, Mr. Crabs, seemed most inclined to climb the fake plants and try to catch the betta fish or fruit tetras as they swam by!! The children were much alarmed, but the Mom was quick on her feet as she removed the fiddler crab to a small bowl of water and quick with her fingers as she turned once again to The Mighty Google. “Tell me, great Google, will the fiddler crab eat my fish?” “Indeed he may,” replied the google “If they are small and not fast enough to stay away from him. Alas, you should also know, that fiddler crabs are not truly meant to live in freshwater aquariums.” And thus, Mr. Crabs embarked on his own journey, full of it’s own excitement and much educational science fun.

The fish lived happily together for a long time, and would have lived together much longer, if during the following Christmas while the family was away, the power had not gone out, and the fish had not suffered fatally from hypothermia. It was indeed a sad return from Christmas vacation, but the children held themselves together remarkably well (as by this point they indeed understood, such is the cycle of fish life.) Even so, there was one happy thought amongst the sadness for it seemed that once the heat was restored, the Danio had survived!

Once again the Mother returned to the store with her small children in tow. Once again they returned home with a betta fish and four fancy male guppies. Make that FIVE fancy male guppies! The store clerk AND the cashier AND the Mom had been fooled by two identical guppies in the plastic bag!! The family was nervous at first, for the danio did not seem to pleased to share his space. Soon, however, he accepted them and the fin-nipping ended. The children were happy to have found a good family of fish that would not eat each other!

Many months passed. The fish lived. The children began to bore. Apparently when the fish are living and there is no need to replace the fish there is no “new” to entertain. Still the mother liked the fish and wanted to keep them. As winter turned to spring and spring careened into summer, the weather grew hot and miserable, for the family lived in a land that was hot and miserable like the Sahara desert but not.

Perhaps it was the summer heat, perhaps it was simply their time to go. One by one the fish disappeared. The children hardly noticed. The mother watched them dwindle down at last to only just one.

The danio.

That ever-lasting danio! The mother had surely gotten her two dollars worth out of that little fish. For the final week he swam alone, all alone in his five tank. Until one day.. he died.

And then there were none. The fish tank cycling water for fish that weren’t there. No one mourning his loss but the Mother. “Perhaps if we’d moved the tank to an air conditioned room, even though he’s a warm water fish? Perhaps if I’d been more diligent about adding fresh water as it evaporated more quickly in the summer heat? Perhaps, perhaps,… Perhaps he simply had lived as long as he could, after a year and a half of surviving a score of mis-adventures.”

“Will we get more fish?” The children asked?

“Perhaps one day,” the Mother replied. “Perhaps just a betta in large fish bowl.” The Mother likes the Bettas.

I’m not sure why the Facebook Places warning is circulating around Facebook again, but it is. The warning that’s going around this time is written in a rather panic-inciting tone, but as far as I can tell, Facebook places is the same as it was already. The warning makes it sound almost like just using Facebook is enough to give away your location. You actually have to use Facebook Places for it to show where you are. However, your friends can use Facebook Places and tag you (showing that you’re at X location also.) If you don’t want to use Facebook Places and/or don’t want your friends to be able to check you into a place, there are three privacy settings you need to change.

• This video from LifeHacker is very short and easy and shows the three different settings to check: How to Disable Facebook Places
• Here’s information about what Facebook Places is/does: Facebook Places

HOWEVER: There’s one more thing that people who are concerned about giving away their locations should know about. And that’s geotagging. Geotagging on smart phones allows people to use apps like Foursquare (and I’m sre that’s what Facebook Places is using.) Geotagging imbeds the actual GPS coordinates of your location to an image taken with your cell phone. Some people use that to upload pics and attach them to a map. However, if you take a picture of something in your home, geotagging is turned on, and you upload that picture to facebook or twitter — that picture includes embedded geotagging, giving away the exact location of your home.

For more information about Geotagging:

• Geotagging Your Photos Is Easy And Fun But You Have To Be Careful @ ABC15.com
• Celebrity Stalking: How Online Photos, Videos Give Away Their Location @ ABCNEWS.go.com
• When You Let Twitter Track You, ICanStalkU @ TechGoesStrong.com

That middle news report addressed how you can turn geotagging off, but if you do, your smart phone won’t be able to access maps to help you find the nearest gas station or driving directions. You might choose to only turn the geotagging on when you need GPS assistance. Or you might leave it on and just use discretion about which places you check into and where you upload pictures taken on your cell phone. Either way, it just takes a little bit of paying attention and then you’re not putting yourself at risk.

Have I mentioned that it’s been HOT this summer? No, not hot. SCORCHING. We haven’t seen temperatures under 90 since the first week of July. We haven’t seen temperatures under 100 Since the last week of July. Two days ago we broke a previous daily record as we hit ONE HUNDRED AND NINE DEGREES.

Yowza.

Yesterday was our first sign of relief as we only got up to 98 degrees. ONLY 98. There’s something wrong when you say, “Oh it’s only 98! Yay for 98!” Twisted weird. Wrong.

Today is miraculously, wonderfully, amazingly only supposed to get up to 89. Ok, that’s still hot but after two months since we’ve seen it last I am SO glad to see 89 again!

This summer has warped me, I tell you.. WARPED.

Maybe that’s because this summer we roughed it out without central air conditioning. (WITHOUT. A. C.) The reasoning for that being the unit was so old and inefficient and the ductwork under the house just as bad.. that last summer even with the air conditioner running non-stop our house still got up to indoor temperatures of 93-ish at the peak of summer. And we paid an arm and a leg for an air conditioning bill that we weren’t experiencing. We turned our unit off last fall (a time when our unit doesn’t run at all) and watched our electric bill drop in half.

Let me say that again.

We turned the central heat and air OFF, instead of just kicking it off and just not having it running, and our electric bill for a month that the unit usually doesn’t run at all was HALF what it was from the previous year.

There is something wrong with that unit.

We haven’t turned it on since.

It would be crazy to do so!!

So we survived the winter with space heaters (and did just fine) and then we survived this summer with 3 window units. One in the master bedroom, one in one kid bedroom (they all slept in one room) and one in the separate office/school room. The living room and kitchen? They still got hot. TOO HOT. We spent all our time in an air conditioned room and came out here as little as possible. (Kinda goes to show you how little space you actually need to live, doesn’t it?) Anyway, it worked. We survived. (And P.S. our highest electric bill of the summer was still only half from the year before. SHEESH.)

But now that the worst of the summer is behind us, now that we’ve melted and deep fried and lived to tell the tale, I find this wonderful, cheap, easy, simple solution: Space blankets and velcro.

S p a c e B l a n k e t s and V e l c r o. What are space blankets? Highly thin, heat reflective, durable, CHEAP emergency blankets that cost under $2.00 a piece. And we all know how inexpensive the peel and stick velcro is. I am truly tempted to go ahead and do this to our windows anyway.

I’ve been resisting the whole “tinfoil on the window” suggestion all summer … I guess the space blanket and velcro is just a little bit classier, or maybe after sweltering through the summer I’m more willing, I don’t know. But doesn’t it really sound like a good idea?? What do you think – would you do it?

I had a little mini panic today. People all over Facebook and Twitter were talking about their first day of school and I immediately wanted to hyperventilate as I thought about our fast approaching first day!! *breathe in, breath out*

Originally planned for next Monday, hubs and I agreed to move it to the following Monday because of some things on the calendar that will make starting school next week extra difficult. So I get an extra week! Yay! And I feel like I need it, too. I still need to order our history curriculum and I’m not mentally ready or prepared to take off with our new schedule and there’s a million tiny little things I want to get done before we begin. AHH!!

*breathe in, breathe out!*

I’m actually feeling much better after a very productive day though! So much better. I spent today pouring over the table of contents of each lesson book and creating a spreadsheet for our first semester. (Number of lessons divided by 36 weeks gives a minimum number of lessons per week, plotted all on a row in a spreadsheet makes for easy lesson planning at the beginning of each week.) I still need to order our history curriculum but at least now I have a rough sketch for each week and I’m prepared to make more detailed lesson plans for our first week back to school.

We also rearranged and cleaned the school corner today and there’s really only a few minor things I still need to do in that area. For example, I still need to print & laminate coins for our calendar activities, plan and create a “Pursuit of Education” trivia review game (think Trivial Pursuit meets homeschool for multiple grades.) I need to print and laminate handwriting sheets for each of the kiddos. {Side-Note: I’m doing something completely “radical” and letting them choose their handwriting method (Dnealian, Zaner-Bloser, etc.) and printing off the alphabet in that style for them to refer to during lessons. I don’t mind which they choose, the only catch is they have to *DO* it. Radically crazy, right? Letting them choose their handwriting style? I mean.. IMAGINE THAT. }

Unfortunately, I have to wait for a new toner cartridge to arrive so all printing is on hold until that comes in. Until then I have time to fill in the lesson plans for our first week and plan our trivia game (for use either mornings or weekly, I haven’t decided.) I’m really going to put some thought into that project. =) I think I need card file boxes for each child, tabbed dividers for each subject and then we can create flash card style question cards throughout the year as they learn, to be added to the box. Cards need to get shuffled frequently to keep them mixed and they’d need to get a score piece for each subject to win. How does that sound for starters? Yeah.. I’ll keep working on it.

So…I’m still not ready but I am also OH. SO. GLAD. that I still have two weeks!

I sometimes day dream about yellow school buses and shiny lunch boxes. I remember how much I loved the first day of school, dressing up in new clothes, carrying my new backpack… HAPPY to go back to school for another year.

I was ONE OF THOSE.

I loved school. No, I loved seeing my friends at school. Yes. That was it. I sort of enjoyed some of my classes. I drudged or yawned through some of the others. I enjoyed ALL the electives (because, again, I was ONE OF THOSE.)

The best part was sitting around with friends before school started or chatting at lunch, or hanging in the library during study period.

Clearly – it was all about the socializing.

Because I’m also one of those social butterfly types. I had a lot of friends, A FAIR AMOUNT of drama, a handful of enemies at any given time and pretty good grades. School was never the hell hole for me that it can be for some students. (That it was for some people that I knew.)

And because I enjoyed it so much, I get nostalgic when “back to school” rolls around and kids start picking out their school clothes and talking about their new teachers. Just because I home school doesn’t mean that I hate public school, doesn’t mean that I don’t smile at all the cool “back to school” stuff in the stores.

But for all the fond memories, beckoning school supplies, and adorable young children lining up to go off to school in their hand picked 1st day outfits, it’s not enough to draw me back to the public school setting.

I didn’t choose to homeschool because of bad public school experiences. I’m not going to choose to public school because of good ones (especially since none of them have to do with the actual quality of education and more to do with passing notes and cute clothes.)

One might ask, “If you enjoyed it so much why aren’t you sending your kids there, too?”

I realize that these are the fond childhood memories I have because those are the childhood experiences I had. My children will have a completely different set of childhood experiences – they will look back and remember different good things and bad things. That’s a part of childhood, it’s inevitable. I just want to make sure that there are plenty of good things. I want my kids to look back and overall say that they enjoyed being homeschooled.

I get to thinking about those fond things again. Hanging out with my friends. The first day of school. New school wardrobes. New backpacks and lunchboxes. Extracurricular classes. We can have all that. We should.

As we prepare for the new school year on August 30, I need to start thinking about these things. We’ve always done a special breakfast on the first day of school, sometimes we take pictures, sometimes I forget. This year I definitely want to take first day of school pictures, in brand new first day of school clothes, with new school supplies, after having a special breakfast. Why? What’s the point?

Memories, dude, memories! Special memories don’t happen by themselves.

The first day of school was special because it was unlike the other days before it – though there were many days like it after it. Our first day won’t be special by itself, unless we make it a day different from the days before it, a day set apart from the rest of the days that are to come.

What special things do you do to set the first day of school apart? What are your favorite traditions or your new traditions you are trying out this year?

Photo Credit: Via Caitlinator on Flickr, with CC 2.0

You know that age old rule: “Don’t laugh when your child does something wrong no matter how terribly cute or funny it is”?

I broke that rule today.

Shoot, I took a sledgehammer and smashed it all to smithereens when I turned to hubs saying “Watch him! Do it again for Daddy!”

A teensy moment of bad parenting.. I’m not perfect.

My son may have thrown all table manners to the wind when he took off the top piece of bread to his sandwich, held the other half in his hands and then dove in face first, nom-nom-nommed on the deli turkey, swallowed satisfactorily and then pretended to burp sheepishly… but:

1. He was eating his meat (which is what I told him to do, and what he didn’t want to do.)
2. He was doing it joyfully and agreeably.
3. He was awfully darn cute.
4. And it was the last thing I was expecting, the playfulness catching me off guard under normally frustrating circumstances until I giggled like a little girl.

I guess sometimes you just gotta laugh!

Hubs just stood there and shook his head at me. “You’re probably going to regret that later.” Yeah. I might. Remind me of that tomorrow.