After PT this morning I jogged over to my local grocery store — OKAY, so I limped over and cried a little too from being pulled, and pushed, and prodded, and told to do 30 reps. and from being electrically zapped — but back to the grocery store run.

I always, always, always walk by the meat section of the grocery store cause you just never know what meats you will find there. Or better yet, what meats you will find on deep discount because they date expire today or tomorrow. This morning I couldn’t believe my find! Ground beef, and ground turkey, and sausage were all drastically reduced. YIPPY! I piled package after package into my grocery cart before heading over to pick up what I came into the store for; milk and bread. Boys seem to go through both those items very quickly.

Here’s my pile of ground beef, ground turkey, and sausage. Here are the prices I paid which, for our area are really good. Each package was about 1-1/2#, while the turkey was a little heavier.

Having found all three meat items I quickly decided to make meatloaf, and freeze them for dinners in the fall when time is tight. This is one of those things that I do—make dinner meat items when it isn’t hectic, so that when school life gets hectic we can still have a great meal with little prep time on my part.

Once home I pulled out a bunch of spices; chili powder, dry mustard, oregano, ketchup and poured a quantity into the bowl. Sorry, but when it comes to meat items I rarely measure out exactly what goes in. The quantity of each is my call and so my meatloaf is always a surprise but always quite good. Next a few eggs are cracked into the bowl, some oatmeal is added and finally I add in the meat. For this batch I put into this big bowl 5# beef, 3# turkey, 2# sausage and then mixed it up by hand.

You know it is mixed enough when the meat all looks the same color and you don’t see any bunches of spices. This still needs quite a bit more mixing.

Then I pulled out my scale and filled my bread pans with the meat mixture. The only reason I use the scale at this point is because DH likes to know how much meat is in the pan. The small ones each have 1#, the middle size each have 3#, while the largest holds a 5# meatloaf. I’ll be able to easily get 2 maybe even 3 dinners out of that large one, and we’ll have meatloaf sandwiches all week long. The 3# loafs will be two dinners and probable a sandwich or two for DH to take to work.

When we want meatloaf for dinner I’ll pull one of these baby’s out in the morning, let it defrost on the counter all day, and stick it in the oven for an hour at 350. We’ll have a salad, and other vegetables with it, and maybe some biscuits. I do not cook mashed potatoes and gravy. It isn’t that I don’t like it, but I like it way too much and could easily polish off a 5# batch of mashed potatoes and gravy. No kidding!

Since I ran out of bread pans I fixed the remainder of the meat mixture into 1/2# Salisbury Steak rolls. These will be frozen too and will be so simple to cook. Again, the morning that I want these for dinner I’ll take 4 out (one for each of us) and let them defrost on the counter all day. No, I don’t worry about bacteria growing in these as they defrost on the counter in a 62 degree house. Yes, that is really the temperature we keep our home when we have to turn on the heat. Otherwise our home is whatever temperature it is outside. But back to cooking Salisbury Steak, ummm. When I’m ready to cook them I’ll heat my electric skillet to 375, spray it with PAM, and put the logs in there to brown on each of their sides. While that’s going on I’ll open a Lipton Dried Onion Soup Mix, mix it with a cup of red wine and this mixture will go into the electric skillet, the lid will go on, and about 45 minutes later dinner will be ready.

See, MK is already dreaming about how wonderful these will taste for dinner. (Actually, he isn’t to sure he likes these ‘things’. And how do they taste? They smell great, but what’s the taste like Ma?”) LOL
And from the little preparation work I did this morning, for all of $30 plus the cost of 8 eggs, and a few spices I have dinner for us 4 for 15 dinner-times in the fall.

We went canoing this past week. Lovely day, fun outing, great to get out on the water again. I love going to the Sassafras River cause there are just so many heron and we usually get to see an eagle or two. This trip was no exception. I wrote about it, with photos, over at Adventure Mouse.

Readers might remember that I had knee surgery back in March; Dr said to get out and walk and everything would be fine. Well, I did get out and walked, and continue to walk, everywhere. Most days I log at least 3 miles, through the pain I have faithfully walked. But last week I finally said that I had had enough. It has been 3 months and I felt that by now the swelling and pain should have been gone or at least less. No, it has been getting worst.

So I went in to my regular Dr. He wasn’t pleased that the surgeon hadn’t sent me to PT and he said that my right quad was quite a bit weaker than my left quad. Today I went in for my PT evaluation.

My legs were put through a range of motion evaluation (where he moved my relaxed legs) — right and left were similar. Then he used a little hand held gauge to measure kilos of force I could push against.

Sure enough my right quad pushed 11kilos, while the left pushed 22 — he told me that the 50% difference is significant and the goal is to get it to within 90%. I was sure they were pushing the same too.
My right hamstring pushed at 60% (don’t remember the numbers now)
My right hamstring/butt muscle (OK, he used the correct term but that’s where he pointed to) was at 65%

My right knee is ‘very tight with little movement’ All the tightness of the knee and the weaker muscles, which by the way, will NOT be strengthened by walking, are the reasons it is painful to go up or down steps, or bend over, or squat, or move around….

He showed me a couple exercises (more leg lifts and heel slides against a wall) to do and then he hooked me up to an electrical stimulation of my right quad. Imagine your leg being filled with pins and needles. Whew, what a sensation, and I hope that it really works. Then when I got used to the sensation he cranked it up a bit and we watched my quad contract. Interesting. I’m supposed to go 3x a week which will make for a very boring ‘What I did over my summer vacation’ story.

We have Adventure Mouse visiting us this month and today we took her with us to French Creek State Park. Read about our adventure here: Adventure Mouse.

To afford to travel to Wichita, Kansas for the National Science Olympiad competition, our Science Olympiad kids wrote to businesses requesting funding. SK wrote a dozen letters, and then followed up with phone calls or visits to these businesses he requested money from. Every child on the team was required to do the same, and as result our team was fully funded. Yes, all our travel expenses for 15 kids and 15 parents were covered! What a great job they did raising funds in a very short time period.

Today ScienceKid composed a thank you note to send to the companies who contributed funds as a result of his letters. I was expecting—Thanks for your support, but look what he composed!

Dear Mr. Johnson,

Thank you for your support. Competing at the National Science Olympiad was an experience of a lifetime. For me this was my third Nationals and almost certainly my last. In my three years participating in Science Olympiad I have gone from being an alternate to being a three-time nationally medaling competitor. I have learned that teamwork and commitment are the two things most needed for success. The commitment needed in Science Olympiad is incredible; we read post-grad level biology books, we laid up carbon fiber on our machines, and we programmed our robots so that we may during one day of competition prove ourselves to be the best. For close to six months my team members and I have had little free time, no weekends, and no spring break. For us perfection was the goal, and I would like to thank you for sponsoring this obsession. At this year’s Nationals I finished in my events 2nd in Storm the Castle, 14th in Mission Possible, 17th in Rocks and Minerals, and 29th in Heredity. Thank you for helping our team.

Sincerely,

SK

I don’t know about you, but for me this was a proud Mama moment. As I told him, his writing skill far exceeds his teacher.

We all participated in Relay for Life on Friday night through Saturday morning. Wow, was that totally exhausting. I recorded our adventure at Adventure Mouse.

The boys and I are not headed out west this summer like we did last summer since we have a kitchen to remodel. We our planning one for next summer; to the Southwest area of USA. We have the tentative route of heading SW to my sister’s home north of Dallas, maybe heading south to the Alamo and Big Bend National Park then over to New Mexico, Arizona, north to southern Utah and southern CO before heading east through OK, to Wichita, KS (SK wants to see the zoo he missed while we were there) and I want to visit the Salt Mine nearby. I know this route wouldn’t take us into CA but I’m thinking of that for a far-west trip.

What National Parks or State Parks or other natural spots would you make sure you see in this NM, AZ, UT, CO loop? Any tourist traps you would visit? The boys really loved stopping in to Wall Drug, SD and wonder if there are other ‘point-of-interests’ that we shouldn’t miss? (Tombstone?) Please share them with us!

We have on our list so far, and in NO particular order:

Grand Canyon
Zion
Bruce
Mesa Verde
Great Sand Dunes
Carlsbad Caverns
Arches

I’m thinking that we could easily be gone for 2 months without anyone getting too homesick. And yes, we would be camping the entire time. What spots would you include?

End of the year. Graduation parties are happening right and left around here with one for us to attend this weekend and another one next weekend. Got me thinking about our past year. Whew, ScienceKid’s 9th grade. What did he do?

Today I started putting together his 9th grade transcript. So far I have each of these courses at one credit:
Rhetoric
Biology
Algebra 2
Ancient Classical Literature
World History 1
Latin
Field Ecology 1 (I’m counting our trip out west for one science credit. When I went on a similar trip in 9th grade that was what it was called and how it was counted.
PE

Art History and Music History for 1/2 credit each

That’s a total of 9 credit hours which reflects what SK put in for school hours this year. Yes, he routinely spent 9hrs a day on school work, and he frequently expressed concern about being behind, or being too lax, or not doing enough….. right.

I’ve also decided to do P/F grade for the high school transcript. Really what is an ‘A’ in a homeschool? Shouldn’t he get a ‘C’ for everything since that is supposed to be where the average is for the classroom and he is the only one in the classroom? And really isn’t the ‘A’ reserved for the kids in the classroom that are Excellent compared to all the other kids in the classroom? Or all the other kids the teacher has ever had? Besides, when he does his work, if it is not acceptable he does it over. We use each assignment as a full learning experience. ‘C’ papers are not acceptable and he is learning what makes a paper an ‘A’ paper. He takes tests in math only after he has gained total understanding of the topic so even there his tests are all ‘A’. If they aren’t he continues to work on the topic until they are ‘A’s. This is our homeschool and I don’t move the kids on until they either have the understanding of the topic or they want to move off the topic and on to something else. Grades—what’s their meaning, and this is from someone who routinely walked away with A’s on my report card.

My fondest grade-memory was when I took Thermodynamics from Dr. Carl as an undergrad. Thermodynamics, ah, now there was a fun course. Tons and tons of math. Just the stuff I love. Anyway at the start of the course he was upfront with us female engineers and shared his view that a female could never, ever get an ‘A’ from him since our brains were not wired properly and thus could not have the through understanding of thermodynamics to justify an ‘A’. I proved him wrong not just once but twice. He later helped me secure a position in a highly respectable R&D lab and while doing such he remarked about his faulty opinion and my abilities in his course. I didn’t mind his prejudice since he was quite open about it, and since he was willing to admit when he had been proven wrong. So SK will get grades when he takes classes at the CC or online classes and I figure those will suffice.

So, getting back to that end of the year transcript. Next I’ll list the book and DVD resources SK used, the books he read, the titles of the papers he wrote, and anything else that will spark my memory when I have to put together stuff for the final transcript and portfolio that will go off to colleges. I’ll also include his Science Olympiad work and medal standings in there.

Once all that is completed I’ve got to start planning for next year. I have done NONE, absolutely nothing for next year. Oh, I did order a bunch of books from RR, Reading books for SK using TWTM Middle Ages book list for high school and many of SK’s books for next year are already on the shelf but I haven’t done the planning. The —what do we need to do every week so that we cover what I want to cover. No time yet; but at least I’ve figured out his grades for the year.

Pass — What else, A’s?

We’ve been back for awhile now but, my oh my, have we been busy. The long and short of it — Wichita was fun, but not as much fun as University of Illinois. Nor as much fun as Indiana University last year. The town does have an exceptional zoo. Top-Notch for sure.

But let me share the results—-
Storm the Castle; given a 2.2KG counterweight and a 24gm squash ball SK set the target at 28M. He was quite concerned about the low ceiling and without that concern he would have set the target out at 32M. If he had set it there he would have hit the ceiling; but with a proper room setting, say like the room Storm the Castle was in at IU where the ceiling was not an issue, SK would have walked away with First Place. Instead he missed the box by a few inches and a few competitors later we watched as the box was set at 28M and the ball landed in the box. Back at home, the trebuchet threw the squash ball 32M. Sad. He had a great machine with a carbon fiber arm he developed himself, but wasn’t able to truly show it off.

Mission Possible—a Rube Goldberg device where the object is to have a very light weight can lift a heavy weight can. They set up their device and hit the operating time the judges gave them. They called the judges over, described how each simple machine operated, and then started the device. Suddenly the operation stopped and SK had to touch a wedge to get things going again. 19 point penalty which placed them into 14th position. This wedge never, even failed in the thousands of runs over the last 4 months. Why it failed that day, why it failed on that run is totally baffling. Helping SK deal with such disappointment was tough. We heard him say that he hated himself…. and quite a few other unpleasant things about himself….parenting that day was not fun at all.

Rocks & Minerals — they finished 17th which is quite respectable for a National Competition your first time through.

Heredity—SK finished 29th, which was OK too. He was disappointed because he said he really knew everything on the test but just ran out of time. He felt that if his partner, who only came on the event the previous week so he isn’t finding fault with her ability, had been able to answer questions and thus work on half the exam as he worked on the other half, they would have done quite well.

MilitaryKid was in two events too.

SumoBots—-finished 8th place! Way to go!
Geo-Cache—-the two brothers did this and for not preparing at all they did quite well with a 21st finish.

Both boys have already started planning which events they want to go for for next year, which pleases me. The results might not have been as stellar as they wanted but the experience is still beneficial.