Thoughts, Adventures, & Daily Life of a Home-Schooled High-Schooler

      The puppies started opening their eyes in the last few days, and the younger children are very excited that they can hold them more often.      But for me, their eyes being open means taking puppy pictures (not as easy as it sounds, trust me), setting up accounts with advertising companies, and (grrrr) the registration process.  Mr. Avery decided that he would rather sniff out this new environment instead of looking at the camera. I think that taking pictures of puppies is actually harder than photographing people. Humans at least understand the English language and cooperate better than 2 week old puppies. For the most part. I did have 1 pup that thought it should be back with its brothers & sisters rather than having somebody try to set it into a pose on an old sheet.   Asher, who decided to crawl around after the camera, and hence his paw is not on the pic. "You think I should look at the camera? No way! I'm going exploring!"  

      Several weeks ago, Nate sent out an email asking for a group to do the food stand at the Eastern Regional. I thought that it would be fun, but trying to convince mom was slightly difficult at first, but at last she consented(I think that she rather enjoyed it because she already told them she would do it next year!).        During the few weeks leading up to the quiz-a-thon, one of our closets slowly filled with astonishing amounts of candy, paper supplies, hotdog rolls, chips, tomato juice, packaged cookies, borrowed roasters, and other numerous food stand items. The only picture that I have of any of the food prep operation Our team did better at the Regional quiz-a-thon than we did at Lititz. We placed 13 out of the top 15 teams.(There were 24 Sr. High teams total)   I had several videos, but I was having a hard time uploading and editing them so that may come at a later time. There was someone walking around taking random pictures, so I have a few of these (un)fl

      Yesterday, Feb. 2nd, was Groundhog Day. Punxsutawney Phil didn't see his shadow, according to CNN. That is supposed to mean that spring is just around the corner, but CNN also said that sometimes Phil's message is misunderstood by his handlers, so we might be in for 6 more weeks of winter. On the other hand, judging the weather is a hard job, and Phil's skills as a weather meteorologist are not always the best. In the last 130 years, Phil has been correct about the weather only about 40% of the time. I guess that's not too bad, I mean really, he has a 50% chance of being right every year.      The younger children really enjoyed the warmer afternoon, and some thought that it was so warm that they should be able to go outside without their coats on. This scheme was quickly squashed when mom caught wind of the idea. Before their mother realized they were not wearing coats      Either way, the snow around here is really starting to melt, but then it starts