How was your week? I hope it was a good one! Mine was! We had a lovely visit from my son and daughter in law! :) It was so nice to be able to spend a little time with them, even though my son was not on vacation and needed to continue with his work during the time he was here. But since his work is still all online at this point, it was a good opportunity for him to take a trip and we enjoyed seeing him in the evenings and at meal times when he was not working, and of course our daughter in law had more flexibility so she and our daughter had some great time spent together. Just chatting face to face, instead of over FaceTime (wonderful though FaceTime IS) was really nice. And when they left to head back to their place, a part of all of our hearts left with them!
But on to this week's frugal activities:
*My daughter took the ACT. This is frugal in several ways. First of all, depending on how she scores, she will be earning college scholarship monies. We are hoping that she scored high enough to be in the scholarship category that she wants--but if she doesn't, she will at least have a score so will have SOMETHING that her future college can look at. We are still waiting to hear what her score was--they said she will know in 3-8 weeks, so it could be quite a while still before she hears. Another way this was a frugal activity is that by God's grace, we were actually able to have her take it! So we didn't have to reschedule and pay a change fee! The ACT test people ended up messing up our daughter's test, in that they changed the day and the test center from the one that she signed up for six months previous. It is a long, sad tale that I will spare you, but the date they rescheduled her for was not a date that would work for her due to our religious beliefs, and the first customer service person I talked with when I discovered they had changed her test date simply said that we would have to pay a change fee and reschedule. I didn't feel this was fair, since it was the ACT that had changed her test, not us. So I called back later and talked with a second customer service person, who assured me that we would NOT have to pay a change fee--which was a relief--but we still had the problem of getting her a test date and location, since in the meantime the original place she had registered for had filled when ACT took my daughter's name off the roster for testing there. But ACT did find us a different testing location, but it was an hour drive away instead of one mile down the road. But at least it was a date that she could test! She needed to be at the test center at 7:30 a.m., so I packed breakfast as well as lunch food, so she could sleep just a little longer and eat breakfast in the car. Since it WAS an hour away from home, I did not drop her off for testing like I would if she was testing close to home, but rather brought some things to do and simply stayed there waiting for her during the morning.
My waiting location while my daughter tested. I was required to stay on the bottom floor, while the testing took place on the second floor in the classrooms. I was grateful for a place to stay inside, as well as for wifi. I had brought a variety of things with me, in case I was sitting in our car the entire four hours! Oh yes, access to a bathroom was also appreciated!
*We covered garden flowers when we had two nights of frost. The flowers that have been in the garden all winter long I wasn't TOO worried about, as they have had snow on top of them this winter even. Though of course it is harder on a plant when it has come out of dormancy and started to grow, and THEN it gets frosted. But we gathered what buckets, tubs, and even an empty trash can and covered the few plants that had already been planted in the garden. We are past our average frost date of April 14, but I guess average only means average, and the weather can do whatever it wants to!
*I repaired my son's shoe. He has a type of hiking boot that he loves, and as any other well loved item it has received a lot of wear. Overall, there is still a lot of good use left in his boots, but they are a velcro strap closure and the velcro on one of the top straps had come completely off. I wasn't sure if I would be able to repair it or not, as the upper side of the strap is leather. I didn't think my sewing machine could handle it, and wasn't sure if I wanted to take the chance on breaking my sewing machine. But I tried with a large needle and some button thread, and thanks to the help of a thimble to push the needle through and a needle gripper to pull the needle from the other side, I was able to stitch the Velcro back on to the strap. It won't last forever, but hopefully it will help him put a few more miles on those shoes before they need to be replaced.
My stitching is not exactly even, and the line of stitching wobbles quite a bit--but my son could care less about the stitching, he just needs the velcro to close the shoe. Overall, I am super pleased with the result, and am glad that I tried!
*We read my daughter in law's History blog as part of our homeschool history class. This week's article was all about Charles Coolidge. In our neck of the woods, there is a "Coolidge Park." We had always assumed it was named after President Coolidge, but we now realize that it is instead named after Charles Coolidge, who lived right here in Chattanooga area. He was truly a remarkable man, and we learned a lot from reading her post! If you enjoy learning about either little known people, or little known facts about well known people, you might also enjoy reading Jolene's blog. You can find this week's post at this link:
Men of Honor, Part 1: Mountains of Type
My son also guest posted this week on my daughter in law's blog, and wrote a fantastic article about the Civil War. If you are interested in reading his post, you can find it here:
Both my son and his wife love history--this is one of their shared interests, and they love to research and learn and share! They have quite a few resources on the Telling Their Stories blog--most of the articles written by Jolene, and many links to YouTube videos of historic places by Austin.
*We went to a museum together with my son and daughter in law. It was the Medal of Honor Museum in Chattanooga, and was our first time going. It is VERY well done, and tells the stories of several of the Medal of Honor recipients, including Charles Coolidge which tied in nicely with my daughter in law's blog post this week! It was a perfect homeschool field trip! The museum is currently having timed entry due to COVID, and masks are required as well. When we first arrived, I think we were the only ones in the museum except for the employees! At the museum there was also quite a bit about Desmond Doss. If you are not familiar with the story of Doss, you simply must look him up! A true hero for our young people--and old people as well--to look up to! While at the museum, we saved by parking in the meter parking on the side of the street, rather than in an all day parking lot. The down side of the meter parking is you are limited to just two hours at a time, but it is fairly close to the museum itself so it wouldn't be difficult to run out and feed a few more quarters into the parking meter. If you are visiting on a Sunday, the parking meter parking is free, but we were there on a Friday so did need to pay. But the meter parking was lots less expensive than the local parking lots, so I was glad we had no trouble finding a space!
One of the treasures at the Medal of Honor Museum was an 1818 copy of the Declaration of Independence. I was awed to see this artifact here in little old Chattanooga!
This document alone is worth a trip to the museum, in my opinion! but trust me, there is much, much more! So go visit it if you are ever in the area!
*After our trip to the museum, we went and wandered around in the Chattanooga National Cemetery. This was a "free" activity, and was even on our way home from the museum. Charles Coolidge just recently passed away, so we went to see his grave. We also located and visited the grave site of Medal of Honor recipient Desmond Doss. Such great giants of men! Also at this cemetery are graves of Andrew's Raiders, from the Great Locomotive Chase fame. If you are not familiar with this story, definitely look it up! History is fascinating!
*We decided to recycle what we already had, instead of purchase something new for our needs. I WAS going to purchase some cattle panels from Tractor Supply to use in our garden as tomato trellis and a trellis for other things such as beans and the like to climb. I have seen on garden blogs that this is a very popular thing to do now a days. However, the stores that sell cattle panels do not deliver--or at least, they do not deliver for anything that is a reasonable fee. Well, one day as I was pondering this, I realized we had an outdoor dog kennel that we have not really been using hardly at all. Our dog is quite elderly, and usually remains in our house when we are gone and a friend will run over to let her out if need be. I realized that the panels that made up our dog kennel would probably work pretty well in the garden as a trellis--and it was already here sitting in our back yard! Win-win in my book! I told my hubby my idea, and he thought it was a good one as well, so instead of purchasing new panels we simply used what we already had!
Here is one of the dog kennel "trellis" made out of two of the panels. The dog has six panels, so enough to make three of these. I am excited to see how it works for us! One thing for sure--it is a whole lot more sturdy than the tomato cages we have used in the past!!!!! I do not expect this thing to fall down under the weight of the tomatoes!
Well, that was my week! We were busy, busy, busy! How was your week and what were you up to? I would love to hear about it!
~Susan
No comments:
Post a Comment