Homeschool Appreciation Day

(Disclaimer: images of blood are shown)

So my state governor (Mr. Rick Scott) has declared today (Wednesday, March 23rd) Homeschool Appreciation Day.

Unfortunately I only heard about this last night, thanks to an email from my wonderful pastor's wife.

So I was going to do something impromptu to celebrate. I wanted to take the kids to the park today and maybe go out to lunch with them. I wanted to give them the day off of school (even though we haven't done much school since we got back from our vacation last week). I even wanted to give them a break on some chores.

Well, it didn't work out very well. Last night Deborah had a bloody nose and decided that she should lean over the side of her bed and let it drip on the carpet. Did I mention the carpet is white? I told her last night that if her nose starts bleeding again, I would rather she let it drip on a pillow or blanket or something that I can throw in the wash. I thought she understood me at the time.

Well, Hubby and I had an emergency budget meeting, and decided to pay for carpet cleaning, since I haven't gotten them cleaned since the last time we got vomit on the carpet (only a tiny bit, and it was cleaned up pretty well, but it's still faintly there). Oh, and because my daughter's artistic talent got a little ahead of her common sense, and I found this a couple weeks ago:

Then her nosebleed started up again this morning. The kids were doing pretty well, getting their basic chores done (essentially just putting things away), and I thought we were on track to do all the fun stuff.

I called the carpet cleaner, Heaven's Best run by Chad Cohen. He did my dining room chairs a few months ago, and I really liked the fact that he was honest, and didn't have a bunch of hidden charges. The last company I used to clean the carpets had an advertised price, but when they showed up they told me I had to add a room to get the discount and it ended up being over $100.

Well, this morning's nosebleed threw everything off. It took over an hour for her to get it stopped, and when I went in the room I found this:

Blood spots in a much larger area. (oh, and the toothpaste... I forgot about that... my 2 year old did that right about the time I found the star.)

So anyway, I had to clear their room as much as possible so Chad could reach all the necessary spots. This meant all the bins under the beds had to be moved out. Where could we move these things? Well, the hallway is a great spot.

Oh wait, the hallway is still lined with all the stuff we moved out of the playroom to make it into a school room: closet doors, empty plastic bins, etc. So we had to move all that stuff too. The kids got everything moved to the garage (grrr... I just cleaned out the garage).

By this time, I realized there was no way we were going to a park because I didn't want Deborah being too active and causing her nose to bleed again. We certainly weren't going out to eat, because it was already lunch time, and I had to make sure I'm home for when Chad gets here.

So I ordered pizza instead and finally told the kids that today is Homeschool Appreciation Day. My 13 year old son rolled his eyes and said, "So what's that supposed to mean?" I explained that it's like Mothers Day or St Patricks Day... it's just a fun day to celebrate homeschooling. I told them that I ordered pizza since we can't really do anything else amazing.

I'm disappointed, but glad that we accomplished something.

Now on to laundry... post vacation laundry is bad enough... post camping laundry is ridiculous. But that's another entry.