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September 30 One of Those DaysYou know those days you have where you get to the end of them, you replay them in your mind, and there truly just isn't anything redeeming about the whole day? I didn't have one of those days today... ...but it was close. The redeeming factors? Spending an hour helping a friend plan for her daughter's Tinkerbell 9th birthday party (seriously, some day, I'm going to run a party-planning business and I'm going to throw birthday parties for children. no joke. and i get to make the cakes. i think i'll do this when my kids are in college and i need a kid fix before i have grandies.). Talking to my pastor about what he expects of me for this weekend's services. Watching Bryson wear his glasses and read like he's never read before. I'm sure the novelty will wear off really, really soon...but for today, he read like a little maniac. Did this mommy's heart good. Yep. That was it. No, having my husband show up with a Contractor and his foreman without any notice and take a tour through my house was not a high point. No, having Reasa's trainer approach me about the possibility of leasing the horse she is currently riding as part of her general lesson fee was not a high point. No, the discussion Seth and I had regarding this option was not a high point. Nor was the conversation regarding another opportunity... Having to tell a friend I just couldn't help her with her statistics of sociology homework because I didn't understand it any more than she did...nope. Not a high point. Fearing I had stepped on another friend's toes...heck no. Tomorrow? It wouldn't take much to make it a better day. I don't want to tempt Murphy, though. So, I'm going to say...it's going to be better. Please, God. September 29 This Week......I get to really figure out balance. Or I get to figure out how little I really have. ...I get to teach my kids the science of pyramids. How fun is that? ...I get to jump in headfirst into our next Singapore math curriculum with the girls. If only they loved math as much as I do... ...I get to experience two of my littlies adjusting to everyday life with reading glasses. So thankful that's all they need. ...I get to step into a role in my church I never expected I would have anywhere...but feel pretty stinking blessed to be trusted to tackle. ...I get to watch as the monkeys put together Greek root words and make sense of them...and watch lightbulbs pop over their heads. ...I get to listen as my kids learn the discipline of repenting...and accepting Grace and Forgiveness. ...I get to pray more. And focus more. And concentrate more directly. ...I get to intensify my karate workout as my instructor prepares me for a tournament. And I get to feel those competitive butterflies kick around in my stomach again. ...I get to design two cakes...one for my sweet niece's birthday, and one for her great aunt's wedding reception. I love this week. And it's only Tuesday. September 28 Simple Woman's Daybook, 9/28/09
Click to join Peggy at The Simple Woman or to view other daybook entries.
A few plans for the rest of the week... trip to the library...deciding how to advertise my cake business...school, school, school...a major focus on the Days of Awe, and a Yom Kippur celebration on Saturday (yes, we're a week behind)..maybe my birthday celebration with my family on Sunday...you just never know what's going to happen around here!
Here is a picture thought I'm sharing with you... 
Pretty sweet find last week. The kids had never seen one, and I had never seen one that wasn't all green...he (she?) was huge!! September 25 Sabbath RestSo, I'm pretty sure our next 24 hours have nothing whatsoever to do with "rest," but we're pretending. I just sat down for the first time (basically) since 7:30 this morning. If you know anything about the Jewish practice of "Sabbath," you know that this 24 hours of rest begins at just about sundown on Friday evening, with all of the preparations for the evening meal and the next day (including house cleaning, meal preparation, etc.) complete by the time the evening meal and its blessings and traditions begin. This is a beautiful theory. I'm sure that if I had planned well for this before today, I may have been able to accomplish that. OK, maybe not. I have to say, though, amidst my crazy cake-for-125-decorating-and-delivering, sit-at-Munroe-Muffler-for-an-hour-and-a-half-waiting-for-a-diagnosis-and-an-oil-change-that-cost-me-over-$200, run-Lainie-to-the-gym-after-cake-delivery, make-another-cake-for-tomorrow-while-making-our-Sabbath-meal kind-of a day...my children cleaned this house till it shone. And nearly without complaint. Our curriculum planned this day as a "day of preparation" rather than a normal school day, and I'll tell you...if I ever needed a day planned to have them help me...today was the day. Tomorrow may not be quiet (with a car scheduled for repairs at 9:00, two kids' eye doctor appointments at 10:20, a cake to finish for a trip to Elmira, a plan to hopefully buy a new car in the afternoon (we'll see about that), and that trip to Elmira...), and it may not foster reflection...but the preparation for tomorrow has helped me to appreciate my kids...the blessing they are, their willingness to help me when I need them, their sweet, gentle spirits during our celebration, and knowing that they can flex and stretch during craziness as well as restfulness. We need to find some restfulness. Maybe next month. :) September 23 Theoretical FreedomDays when school starts at 11... ...suck. You start homeschooling thinking it's going to be this wonderful, schedule-free situation. Oh, it's wonderful all right. But the schedule...well, if you have a doctor's appointment in the morning, a car repair scheduled for the afternoon...no problem!! You can work it in! You can school around it. In theory...this is true. In reality...this sucks. Now, don't get me wrong. I know that all you working moms...you have to fit this in around your work schedule, or during your lunch breaks, or on your weekends. I get it. I understand. If I had to choose, of course I would choose what I have. Flexibility is a wonderful thing. Sometimes. Some days, when I know that tomorrow, we have a dentist appointment in the morning and have to go look at a car in the afternoon, then we have gymnastics and karate and worship team rehearsal in the evening...and I need to change over my license and car registration and that tomorrow after the dentist would be the most convenient time to do that...I have to strategically plan school. What can we take with us to the dentist's office so that we don't lose an entire morning of schooling? What can we leave off tomorrow and pick up on Friday to make tomorrow a more realistic day when we're out of the house for hours? Friday is a "day off" in preparation for our start of Rosh Hashanah celebration (yes, I know that started last weekend, but we're celebrating it to understand the biblical feasts, not because it's when they're really happening. I do not mean to be sacreligious by any means...really.) and sabbath...and I have a cake to be delivered by 6, and one to begin for Saturday. Couldn't we just do a couple of things on Friday morning that we're going to go crazy trying to fit in on Thursday?? UGH!! I always work it out. Really. But never without losing my mind a little bit. And if you ask the kids...they probably don't even notice. But when we're running around like maniacs, and school gets checked off as kind of an afterthought... ...I hate those days. You can pray for us tomorrow. I'm going to fit it all in...but I'm going to slightly lose my mind in doing this. I love homeschooling. Everything else...well, some days, it could all go away and I'd be ok with that. September 22 The Unexpected, etc.Do you have things that pop into your school day and reek absolute havoc on your grand plans?? I'm finding, more and more every day...I have to fight for days that don't include those unexpected situations, circumstances, phone calls, visitors, or events. And even more importantly...to ignore them or reschedule them or just plain old refocus when they do come up. Just as a "for example..." For whatever reason, when my husband comes home from work in the middle of a lesson (because we've put off school until the afternoon due to several unexpected kinds of things), the rest of the lesson, and generally the rest of the schooling, for that matter...completely over. Might as well pack it up and walk away. In our new location, however, that is a much more difficult scenario. He is closer to us even when he's working now than he has been in the past two years, where before he worked either a couple of hours away or at least a couple of towns away, and couldn't do his work (operating heavy equipment) from the kitchen table, this is no longer the case. A couple of times a week, he may set up office in the kitchen...or spend an hour or two making and receiving 900 phone calls and sending 400 emails in the garage while he works on a project for home...or he comes home in the early afternoon to prepare for a dinner meeting with a construction firm or a township meeting or a meeting with some senator in Harrisburg. He loves his job...and I love that he loves his job...but we're going to have to adjust. So, today, when he walked in the door during the beginning of our math lesson...we refocused. I know it was hard for the kids, I know they had to work through some loud conversations and fight the urge to run up the stairs to see what Daddy was doing...I know Daddy would have liked a bit of our attention...but we did it. They even got their 30 minutes of quiet reading done after that math lesson...while he paced the living room and typed reports at the table. Maybe today was a breakthrough. We'll see. Yesterday, we found a praying mantis in our back yard...and today, the kids found a cicada...neither of which they have seen before. I kind of like this house. :) This has nothing to do with our breakthrough...just fun information. Today, I made the decision that long division is taking too long because my girls don't know their times tables well enough. I remember 5th grade...standing at Mrs. Jautz's desk, reciting times tables, or having her quiz me, getting one of those lick-'em stars to put on the chart for each fact family I learned without a mistake, terrified of that final "all-of-the-families-combined" test...and then rejoicing in the fact that I had done a certain (crazy) number of facts in a minute without a mistake. The girls are in fifth grade...and it's just going to be more important that they know their facts from this point on. So...we add "times tables" to the morning chore charts. They'll love it, I'm sure. And for the record...Bryson thinks Spelling Power rocks. I think he thinks it rocks primarily because it means he's doing something just like the girls have been doing the past two years...and that makes him "cool." But the great thing? His enthusiasm is contagious. I have two girls who haven't complained one bit about getting two spelling words "wrong" the past two days. You won't hear me complaining. :) And, for whatever reason, this entry is on a white background. I have no idea why. It just is. I apologize. September 21 Simple Woman's Daybook, 9/21/09 Click to join Peggy at The Simple Woman or to view other daybook entries. For Today, Monday September 21th, 2009... Outside my window... gloomy clouds...and the largest praying mantis I have ever seen! love when my kids turn into scientists. I am thinking... that I'm thankful for fresh starts...even at the library. I am thankful for... the disaster in my home--a result of a house-full of family and friends. finally. I am wearing... jeans and a melon-colored t-shirt, fuzzy socks and a cream cardigan I am reading... The Tanglewood's Secret aloud to my kids. I am hoping... to work through some of the frustrations involved in parenting pre-adolescents and the challenges of a new school year. I am creating... plans for two birthday cakes this weekend... I am praying...for my friend Tina...that she would have peace and comfort and wisdom. would you join me? Around the house... a bit of clutter from the weekend...but more of a feeling of home than a week ago... From the learning rooms... a fascination with dinosaurs, experiments involving light and waves... From the kitchen...tiramisu cake, and leftovers from yesterday's picnic. :) One of my favorite things...Macintosh Apples. In season. Right now. :) :) :) A few plans for the rest of the week...the usual crazy schedule, deciding whether to allow my gymnast to become a horse rider, last real rehearsal before our worship team makes things happen for real, one more week of sanity before I actually start my new job. Melting Down Over our 7 years of homeschooling, we have used two main curriculum companies...both of which I have enjoyed for different reasons. We began our adventure with Sonlight, which, though rich in real literature and jam-packed full of great information, wound up not really working for our family. I found myself spending hours every week trying to make the information interesting, whether through hands-on types of activities or skipping some of the more complex, uninteresting material presented to first and second graders. Don't get me wrong...with the "right" kid, this presentation of information would have been perfect...it just didn't work with my girls' learning styles. And I realized that along the way, I would add a younger brother to the mix. Not wanting to teach two different levels of history, we needed a curiculum that would work well through a couple of different (three-school-years-apart) levels. With a bit of research and a ton of encouragement from my friend, Paige, we jumped into My Father's World's Adventures curriculum when the girls started 3rd grade, 4th grade brought us Exploring Countries and Cultures (and Bryson worked through MFW 1st grade), and Creation to the Greeks began this year in grade 5. As a result of this hopping around, I'm pretty sure that 4 years out of the seven (plus Bryson's 1st grade study while they inadvertently listened in)...we have begun our studies with Creation. Let's add in there the number of times they have talked about creation in Sunday school, VBS, different churches we've now attended, and general family devotional types of situations... I think my kids are "creationed" out. Don't get me wrong...it's a great topic for my kids to explore. They still can't tell you exactly what happened on each day, or how the rest of Biblical history progresses in exact sequence...so there is always more to learn, always deeper to dig. But they know the stories. And therefore, they assume they are experts and shouldn't need to study this further. This has become a sticking point in our schooling this year. Because, you see, they aren't just applying this philosophy of "we've studied this before...we're over it" to History and Bible. They have decided that anything we've covered in any subject shouldn't be revisited, and they currently plan to throw a fit about it if I bring it up. It has been an interesting couple of math lessons, let me tell you. I had the audacity to bust out a couple of review sheets on 2-digit multiplication and long division last week in the midst of our Singapore 3B review. You would have thought I had told them they had to conjugate 30 greek verbs. And when they suddenly realized they didn't remember how to correctly do these problems (because every problem of this type wound up with a big red box around it on each of their papers)...the meltdown began. "We shouldn't have to do this again" was met with "But you don't know how to do it anymore" and the comeback? "But we already learned it! We shouldn't have to ever do it again!" This led to a lengthy discussion (ok, so it was more like a lecture) about how all of the information you learn builds upon all of the stuff you already know...and how knowing how to do this type of problem will help them when they have to learn more difficult math, and might even help them with more complex science and so on...it pretty much went right over their heads. They sat at their workstations and cried...but not because they were worried about that difficult math or complex science...they just didn't want to do long division or two-digit multiplication. So...tell me...how do you handle it when your kids meltdown over something they're doing for school (besides the repeated asking of yourself why on earth you chose to homeschool, or reminding them that if they were sitting in a classroom with 25 other students and their teacher, they wouldn't be crying over a multiplication problem)? Especially when it's truly not too difficult for them? Especially when it's a matter of plain-old-stubborn-refusal-to-want-to-work-at-something-that's-less-than-obvious? Or am I the only one battling this?? September 20 Blog Walking Each day, I sign in to my google reader to check in with my friends via their blogs As a result of reading along with the friends I know personally, I have been tuned in to the informative, thought-provoking, sometimes belly-laugh-inspiring blogs of their friends and family members. In the mix, my favorites have also found their way into my reader...including several blogs belonging to fellow homeschoolers...moms who write amazingly, who challenge me to love deeply, who give me ideas for subject matter or projects (including the design of my own homeschool classroom (thank you www.my3boybarians.com!!) (my link thingy isn't working tonight, apparently...sorry about that...cut and paste!!), who have a sense of humor about their lives and their children, and whether they share my opinions or views or not...always make me think. Reading these blogs helps me realize that my life isn't so unusual. That I truly am not completely insane, that I struggle through the same issues with which other moms struggle, that my kids are basically normal, and that homeschooling...is the challenge I try to brush off and say "it's not that big of a deal" about all too many times. In reading through one of those amazing homeschooling mom's blogs tonight (a friend who writes briefly about her schooling nearly every day), she linked to another friend who wanted to keep track of bloggers who blog about their experiences with My Father's World curriculum...I realized I almost never write about what goes on day-to-day in our schooling. Almost never. We currently use My Father's World Creation to the Greeks this year...with a smattering of other things (all recommended by MFW, with some additional read-alouds thanks to Sonlight's list for our grade levels), and we absolutely love it. This is our third year with MFW, and if you were to ask me any given day, I would recommend it in a heartbeat. With that said, at this point, my lack of writing regularly about school changes. I write about everything else...with the goal of remembering things I know I will forget, and maybe helping my kids remember it some day when my memory is truly gone...because I haven't taken the time to write it down in any sort of journal. I can't promise that anything we do in a given day will remotely interest any of you...I can't promise that I'll say anything inspiring about our schooling...but then, that won't be a big difference between that and what I already write. So, umm, consider yourselves warned. September 09 *insert sigh of relief here*On Monday, August 31, 2009, at 9:00, we signed the papers. At 9:30, we shook hands with our lawyer, and walked out of his office, homeowners. By 11:00, the first load was off the trailer...and life got a little nuts again...but it was nuts inside a house that is ours. *insert sigh of relief here* Since then, we have discovered much about this wonderful place...how fabulous a clean, working pool is when your kids have been desperately wanting to swim every day of the summer. How wonderfully said pool occupies them when mommy has a million boxes to sort and unpack. How spoiled I was with the kitchen in the brown house...but how incredible my father is for restructuring the existing pantry (including knocking out a wall, pushing it back, and adding shelves) to make it more usable for me. How huge and fanastic the classroom space is and how much more productive the school year will be as a result. How yucky carpet can become when people don't remove their shoes or train their animals well. How textured walls become when one applies faux finishes to them...and how interesting that is to cover. How far you can stretch one can of chocolate brown paint in a 13'x21' room that started out light grey. How much furniture it actually takes to fill a 2500 square foot home. How long it takes to sweep, mop and vacuum a 2500 square foot home. How quickly the floors in that home become...well, yucky. How a little more than a third of an acre in a neighborhood where you already feel welcomed and at home seems a lot bigger than the little more than two acres in the middle of the woods that you thought you really wanted. How great it is to be over the hump of "transition," and moving quickly into "settled." I have to tell you, though...I've been wandering around this house, going through the motions of "getting settled," and not quite sure how to feel at home here. I think that I have spent more than a year feeling not-at-home. We listed the house in Painted Post on August 20, 2008. We sold the house and moved on October 24, knowing that the cabin was as temporary as three months, but more likely closer to six. We lived in the cabin until May, but had an initial closing date on the brown house of March 13. We actually moved to the brown house in May...but within a week of moving there, issues had come up...and we knew all was not well. We moved out on August 13, and into my parents, then here on the 31st. My brain is still swimming. I keep feeling like, "Well, I'm going to paint this room, but I'm going to save the paint chip...I want this for the next house." And, "I love this (fill-in-the-blank-feature), but I'm not going to get too attached." It seems like there's a lot at stake this time...I love this house. So much more than the last house. It is ours. Period. The papers are signed. The check was handed over. The deal is done. No turning back. I keep having to remind myself. So, in the midst of all of this "transition," we've torn out that pantry, painted two bedrooms and the classroom, gone to lessons and rehearsals, attended a neighbor's birthday party, groomed a horse, gone to a horse show (Reasa, as usual, did very well), found a wonderful ice cream place (that's open year-round and makes it's own ice cream...mmmmmmm), restructured a classroom, sorted curriculum, built desks, and had our first day of school. Which, I must add, rocked. I love the classroom. It is my favorite part of this house. Seth kept coming into the room yesterday while I was working and saying things like, "You're going to love this room, aren't you, Mrs. Frazer?" and "You look like such a teacher in this room," and "Wait until your homeschooling friends see this room," and so on. I even have a chalkboard painted on the wall that's the same color as the wall itself...this is the kids' favorite feature of the room, I think...and it was my last-minute addition. Along with corkboards above each kid's desk. One more addition of pretty white shelves above their desks, and a couple of coats of white paint on the now-wood bookshelves we already have, and it will literally be the perfect classroom...I can't wait to take pictures of it completed. It made such a huge difference in our day today...everything in one place...everything where we need it...everything usable and accessible and organized. *insert sigh of relief here* We're here. We're getting settled. We're loving it. It's taking some adjusting...as usual...but...we'll get there. |
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