Friday, January 25, 2008

Personality Test

Have you ever had to take a personality test? I have had to take one for two different jobs. I thought it was odd that I should take a personality test for a job, but I trudged through them.

If you haven't taken one, zip on over here. I think you will enjoy knowing more about your personality.

Here are the results from my test.

The Portait of the Inspector (ISTJ)
Inspector Guardians look carefully and thoroughly at the people and institutions around them. Making up perhaps as much as ten percent of the general population, Inspectors are characterized by decisiveness in practical affairs, are the guardians of institutions, and if only one adjective could be selected, "superdependable" would best describe them. Whether at home or at work, Inspectors are nothing if not dependable, particularly when it comes to examining the people and products they are responsible for-quietly seeing to it that uniform quality is maintained, and that those around them uphold certain standards of attitude and conduct.

These quiet, no-nonsense Guardians have a distaste for and distrust of fanciness in speech, dress, and living space. Their words tend to be simple and down-to-earth, not showy or high-flown; their clothes are often homespun and conservative rather than of the latest fashion; and their home and work environments are usually neat, orderly, and traditional, rather than up-to-date or luxurious. In their choice of personal property (cars, furnishings, jewelry, and so on) price and durability are just as important as comfort or appearance. Classics, antiques, and heirlooms are especially valued, having achieved a certain time-honored status-Inspectors prefer the old-fashioned to the newfangled every time. Even on vacation, Inspectors tend not to be attracted by exotic foods, beverages, or locales.

Their thoroughness and orderliness, combined with their interest in legality and standardization, leads Inspectors to a number of occupations that call for the careful administration of goods and services. Inspectors feel right at home with difficult, detailed forms and columns of figures, and thus they make excellent bank examiners, auditors, accountants, and tax attorneys. Managing investments in securities is likely to interest this type, particularly investments in municipal bonds and blue-chip securities. Inspectors are not likely to take chances either with their own or others' money, and the thought of a bankrupt nation, state, institution, or family gives them more than a little uneasiness. The idea of dishonoring a contract also bothers an Inspector -their word is their bond-and they naturally communicate a message of trustworthiness and stability, which can make them successful in business. With their eye for detail, Inspectors make good business men and women, librarians, dentists, optometrists, legal secretaries, and law researchers. High school and college teachers of business administration, home economics, physical education, civics, and history tend to be Inspectors, as do quartermaster officers in the military.
Queen Elizabeth II, Harry S. Truman, Warren Buffet, Queen Victoria, James K. Polk, and J.D. Rockefeller are examples of Inspector Guardians.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

Our Outting Today

Our home school group leader, Mrs. Merrilee, sends out an email every Monday giving us all a little heads up for our weekly Thursday meeting. I tried to keep it a secret about what we would be doing. My secret keeping abilities failed last night. In our conversation at supper, I told the boys that we would be visiting an island. An island? Well my goodness, we're gonna need a boat. Imagine that! LOL

I woke up this morning and the boys were all dressed and were modeling their backpacks. Water bottles were all filled up and snacks were packed. Do ya think they were excited?! Yeah, me too. Even Mindy our little Schnauzer was running around barking and carrying on.

Down the road we go. The excitement didn't stop. They were going to get to ride in a boat. They just kept on and on. You know how it is!

Finally! At the river. Now I hear, "Where is the boat?" "Is that it?" And on and on.
The boats in sight and it's time to all load up.

The boat that we all rode in was a canoe. LOL No joke! It was not just an ordinary canoe. It was handmade out of cypress wood with a fiberglass shell. The owner gave us lots of information about the canoe. I sure wish I would have written some of it down. Ok - I now have an F in note taking. Hmm...I think I need to set a better example.
The canoe could only take 3 of us to the island at a time. It took a few minutes to get everyone there but it was well worth it.

Rum Island -
I don't know all of the history about the island, however; what I do know if pretty darn interesting. The history goes something like this: Years and years ago there was a house on the island. Yes - there was a still where they made rum. The island sits in the Santa Fe River with one county on the north side and another county on the south side. The island didn't have to abide by either of the counties laws because it wasn't connected to either county. Both of the counties were dry counties. A dry county is a county that cannot sell any alcohol.

The island's name is supposedly derived from moonshine and bootlegging operations that was located on the island in the early 1900s. A current sign on the site ironically warns, "Rum Island "No Alcohol Allowed." It has been reported that undercover police stake out the grounds, looking to bust people with open containers.

At some point the house burnt down. I have no idea what happened to the still. Somewhere on the island there is a small part of the foundation of the house. Today we did not find the remains. I would love to explore more on the island and find out more about the history.

Our 3 boys were extremely interested in the island. Their interest is an encouragement for me to take them back and do a little more exploring.

Note to self - next time - take the darn camera.

Wednesday, January 23, 2008

Something Cool for Home School

WooooHooooo! Thank you Karisma for posting these links on your blog. You know I gotta post them here to share with my friends.

Seagrass Adventures great site for the kids.

Community Environment Network is an alliance of community and environment groups from Lake Macquarie, Wyong and Gosford.

Time On My Hands

Today I found myself with time on my hands. Time for what? What the heck am I supposed to do? I stood in the dining room and I thought - "hmm...now I have nothing to do". LOL Have you ever thought that?
I think I was outta my mind for a brief second, when I thought I found time on my hands.

Yesterday in WW's and JD's Language Arts class, we studied Idioms. Yesterday I thought this would be a neat thing for me to tell you about. Of course I slept last night and when I woke up I had forgotten all about it. Which it doesn't surprise me that I forgot about it. I think that's why people say if you can't make a decision, just sleep on it. By the time you wake up you'll be forgot all about it.

An Idioms is a phrase or phrases that have meanings that cannot be understood from the literal meaning of the words.
Think about how someone that is trying to learn the English language. They hear an idioms and they automatically think of the idioms as a literal term. Time on my hands would probably mean to them that I have a clock on both of my hands. How about bent over backwards - which means have made a great effort to help. Can you just see in someones mind that you literally bent over backwards while trying to help? LOL

So I sat down at the computer this afternoon and thought I would just get you caught up a little. Especially since I haven't talked to you in quiet some time. I've bounced in and out here and there, but that's it. I was going to tell you all about how wonderful the past 3 days has been for me. That was my intent anyway.

I just started rambling here and there and somehow I recognized an idioms. So here we are, talking about a word that I have such a hard time saying. LOL

Can you think of any idioms to share?

Friday, January 18, 2008

The Days Go By

The days go by so fast sometimes. And then again, I sometimes wonder if the day will ever end. Do you have days like that? It seems like the more fun I have, the faster the day goes by. Now if I just happen to be having one of those days. Yeah - you know the kind. LOL It's those days that I wonder if they will ever end.

We have gotten back full force in our home schooling. We work on our regular subjects most of the time, but it's the extra things that I want to do. The extra things are games, cooking, sewing, exploring, discovering and on and on. I think the boys really just wanna throw their books out the window and do the things that I want to do. But we just gotta get that book work done.
B-o-r-i-n-g!

I think tomorrow I will just sleep in a little later than usual.
Or maybe take a nap during the day.
I think tomorrow we may just play one of those games.
It's always educational.
I think tomorrow we just might bake some bread.
Or just get out the flour and play.
I think tomorrow we might play hopscotch in the dirt.
Or find a stick and play fetch with the dog.

That's it! We are gonna throw the darn books out the window and play!

Happy Friday!

Monday, January 14, 2008

I Gotta Do This

I think when I say "I gotta do this", I may be asking for help. Help comes in many forms and the one that I am referring to is moral support. A pep talk or an "Atta Girl" or something. Shoot, I don't know. Ok, I'm gettin to it...

Every now and then, Superman will mention that we need to consider stopping the use of tobacco. I have always agreed with him. No doubt about it, we have to stop using tobacco.
I'm a smoker and Superman uses Copenhagen, every now and then Superman will smoke. Our tobacco is costing us way to much money. We all know the health risk so I don't even need to get into that part of it.
After the first of the year, I guess about a week into the New Year, I made a decision. A very large decision too.
I have made the decision that I want to quit smoking. I announced this to Superman and he is all for it and very glad that I made that decision. I even made the call to the doctor and set up the appointments for both of us.
Off to the doctor we go. We both come out of the doctors office with our prescription in our hand. We went straight to the pharmacy to get the prescriptions filled. The doctor said that the prescriptions would be expensive to fill, but he didn't know just how much.
Well we certainly found out how much the prescription is going to cost. Yes, it's expensive. $150 for me and $150 for Superman. $300!

I know just what your thinking... If we are spending the money to buy the tobacco, why can't we just get the prescriptions filled. Ok, it isn't that easy. We spend the money on tobacco a little at a time. Having the money all at one time is the problem.

What's going to happen? We are saving every penny that we can to get these prescriptions filled. I really am excited about getting started on quitting.

I'll keep you updated on how this works out.

Not Much Happening

I say there's not much happening but then again I could say that life is happening. We all know that life happens. No matter how we want to slow down time or even stop time at times, it just goes on and on.

For us the weather has been warm and cold. Not hot, but warm and cold. During our warm days we can actually wear shorts. During our cold days we certainly have to bundle up. One day the ac is running and the next day the heat is on. We are still way below the average rain level. We did get a little rain this weekend, maybe an inch. Just enough to make the sand stick to your shoes so you could track it in the house. And of course we had company yesterday and a lot of sand was tracked in the house. It's ok though, because the dogs bring in a lot of sand all the time.

Over the holidays I only gave the boys a few days off from their lessons. If I give them too much time they seem to have a huge memory loss. Is that with all kids? I'm actually wondering who is learning more, me or them. LOL At least one of us is learning.

I have worked on a few crafts. I actually finished a small quilt that I had started about 2 years ago. The boys really like it. We use it to snuggle up with when we are watching a movie.
I started another quilt last night. I dug through my scraps of material and started getting them in some type of order and cutting out squares for the quilt. I want to get really creative with quilts but I have a lot to learn when it comes to quilting. I have a book somewhere that has a little info about quilting but I think it covers more on applique than actually quilting. Yes, I want to try applique also.

I am still working on my gather points. I just got a free gift card to Home Depot and I can hardly wait to spend it. I'm working on getting my second gift card. I kinda thought I would save up my gift cards and maybe buy some paint.

Friday, January 11, 2008

"Meanest Mom on the Planet"


‘Meanest mom’ sells car after finding liquor.

After finding alcohol in her son's car, she decided to sell the car and share her 19-year-old's misdeed with everyone — by placing an ad in the local newspaper.

You have got to read this! It is awesome! I am so glad that a parent actually took action.

Finally

Finally! I am back again. I tried to do this earlier but life happened. Imagine that! LOL

The weather here finally turned cooler. Ok, we had 3 days of really cold weather. It was a nice break away from the heat. Florida generally has some really strange weather. I hear people talk about this and that when it comes to our weather. And we have an old saying - "If you don't like the weather in Florida, stick around, it will change really soon".

I did a little bit of organizing in our classroom. I moved some book shelves around, put most of the books on the shelves, moved some of the boys school stuff and a little here and a little there. It is so much more organized now that we can all find what we need without running all around looking for it.

I have also been working on the Gather community a lot. A LOT! LOL
I really enjoy the Gather community. All you have to do is join, read a few articles, rate a few articles and if you are really interested you can post articles for your friends to comment and rate. It only takes a few minutes a day. Be careful though, it's addictive! I actually have just ordered my free Home Depot gift card. Yes, you heard me right - I did say FREE. Free things are always good!

Tuesday, January 01, 2008

Christmas at our House

Christmas at our house - it was our first Christmas with the boys. It was our first chance to let Santa into our house. I told you about going out and selecting our tree. That was a lot of fun and something that we will do every year. We had to buy some new ornaments because we had thrown most of the stuff out a few years back. We did have some homemade ornaments that we used. I love those. We also made some new ornaments. They turned out wonderful and we had a lot of fun making them. The cards that we made with the boys pictures inside were a big hit. Actually, everything that we made was a big hit.

Nana loves here canvas bag the boys made.
Christmas Eve:

Granny K stayed over. That was nice. It gave Superman and I a chance to do what we had to do. Superman read "Twas the Night Before Christmas". The boys were so ready to go to bed when it came bedtime. They were sound asleep almost when their heads hit the pillow. I baked several dozen cookies during the day. Sometimes the boys would help with the cookies but they really just wanted to eat them. Go figure!

Superman had been holding on to the 4 wheeler secret for so long. Just one more day and he can let the cat out of the bag.



Oh yeah - I almost forgot. We made a Santa Clause Landing Zone. We used milk cartons with tea light candles in them. The Santa Clause LZ looked so much better than it does here.


Our tree before Santa had arrived.


Christmas Day:

Our tree after Santa had arrived.

No this is not the Taliban! Talk about pulling the wool over their eyes!


The face of a very surprised and happy child.


Instructions, directions, do and don'ts!



Even do and don'ts from Grandpa.

Of course we have to try them on. They fit well...I know they belong to the boys. Now get off of them.

Oh yeah! Somebodies just gotta get brave!

And Mindy says it all...I've had enough!

I know there no helmets on anyone of us. Superman turned the 4 wheelers down, so they would go really fast. One the boys learn a little more about them and really get the feel of them and learn to respect them, then they will be turned up a little at a time.

Helmets are coming this month. We will not ride them anymore until protective gear can be worn.

New Years before Christmas

Talk about mixed up. LOL I posted New Years before Christmas. Now how did I manage that? Who knows. Maybe because I have been upside down with my head stuck inside a box trying to unpack all this stuff. When I finally pulled my head up out of the box and stood up - well - it was New Years.
I gotta go back and tell you all about Christmas.