Ordinary Time

K., who spends a significant portion of every day looking at photos and recreating those photos in Legos, ventured out of his Star Wars obsession for a bit today. At one point, as I was continuing to cross things off my to-do list, he comes in to show me this. Any guesses as to what it is? He had been looking at his book of Lego architectural buildings if that helps. Nope? How about this. See the overhang above the river on his building? Yes, it's Fallingwater, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. I think he did a pretty good job since he didn't have any of the specialized bricks that this version takes. Fallingwater happens to come up in conversation more frequently around here than you would think. It was one of the buildings we learned about last spring, and it really struck everyone's fancy. At some point we'll have to figure out how to take everyone there so they can see it in person.  And because I was actually gearing up to write an education-type post tonight before

I'm down to crossing things off from a to-do list one page long, which is a significant improvement over my three page list of a week ago. I have lesson plans (exceedingly detailed, open-and-go, I don't have to think lesson plans) completed not only for our learning at home but for the three year long classes I am teaching at our co-op. I realize that when it comes to writing things such as blog posts, I'm more than happy to bang out something and hit publish, rarely even rereading it. As you probably already figured out by the amount of typos that are left behind. (My children let me know about them, never fear.) But lesson plans? It takes me three drafts. The first to just get my thoughts organized, the second to flesh out those thoughts, and then the third to polish them up, clarify things to myself, and add in anything I've forgotten. That means over the past month, I have written five different curricula three separate times. No wonder I feel as though I haven'

We made it home about 7pm last night. It was a brutal drive. At least J. and I found it so. The younger six in the back seemed rather impervious to the heat as long as they had a steady supply of snacks. By the time we reached home, J. and I were pretty much done in, between the sweating and the noise from having the windows all the way down. I hadn't planned dinner because I had no idea what time we would hit the house, so after getting home, I headed to the grocery (in the air-conditioned car) and bought supplies to make a chef salad. After too much bad food while traveling, we all needed something fresh and healthy... and that didn't require turning on anything that produced heat.  This morning I hit the ground running because I had scheduled two Girl Scout merit badge sessions for the girls to come out and earn their horse merit badges. We had fun and tried to stay in the shade as much as possible, but it was still hot... 92 degrees with 80 % humidity is not my favorite wea

We gave D. one last hug this evening and officially left him at college for his freshman year. I think he is going to have a great year. He is definitely ready for this next step. I'm excited for him, even if I will miss him horribly. Many of us drove out to Ohio yesterday. In a heat wave. In our van whose air conditioning stopped working a couple of weeks ago. It was a fairly unpleasant drive. We eventually bought a bag of ice and people either ate it out of cups or put it in plastic bags to hold on their faces and necks. It was bad, but we made it. This morning, we checked in and got everything moved up to D.'s room. He scored a corner room, so has two windows. It's pretty roomy. There were various events for parents and students throughout the day, so we spent time walking around, going to events, or just sitting in the student union to cool off. This is also where J. went, so he enjoyed seeing the campus. It is a particularly gorgeous campus, even in a heat wave. This e

Most people when they think of Salman Rushdie think of the fatwa that was levied against him for his book The Satanic Verses or for his Booker Prize winning book, Midnight's Children. Not so many people know that he wrote a chapter book ostensibly for children: Haroun and the Sea of Stories . I first read Haroun for a book club I was a part of, and it was one of the few books I actually enjoyed. It is a hilarious, fantastical book that is great fun to read. I loved in so much in fact, that it made me pick up and read Midnight's Children. While I enjoyed Midnight's Children, it was not an easy or quick read. It was definitely one of those books I was glad I had read but had moments where I wasn't sure I was enjoying the reading.  As D. was working on organizing his room and getting things ready for school, he came across the copy of Haroun that I had given to him as a gift quite a few years ago. We had just finished reading our latest teatime book, so it seemed the obvio

Surgeries are done and were successful. Both parties are feeling more than a little rough, but that is not unexpected after surgery. R. is still blissfully unaware that hospitals were involved in any way. I always find it a great relief to be on this side of things... even if they were fairly straightforward procedures and my-child-having-surgery experience is now well into the double digits. It's never something to take lightly.  I spent the day being very productive which is pretty much how I handle serious stress. I have finished our school planning, I have finally ordered the rest of our books, I have both checkbooks under control (because what I didn't really think about is when you start your own business, there are financial things to keep on top of there, too), the laundry is nearly done, and those of us going to take D. to school will be ready to leave on Wednesday.  I still need to get my piles of books put away, write actual lesson plans for the co-op classes I'm

Tonight we had a big family dinner before we take D. to school this week. Everyone was able to be there except TM, whom we missed. So there were just 15 people at the table instead of 16. As usual, people laughed until they cried at least three times. Maybe there were more and I lost count. It's just a think when we all get together. I do love that every dinner together ends in laughter.  One of the things that caused a great of amount of it was the fact that a couple of children have minor surgeries tomorrow. A. is having her gall bladder removed and MC is having sinus work done. Both are out-patient and considered relatively minor. (This makes family surgery number 14 and 15... or maybe 15 and 16... I have honestly lost count at this point.) But even though they are minor, we absolutely cannot mention it to R. R has such extensive medical trauma that just the word 'surgery' can send her into some extreme anxiety, and surgery for people she loves would probably just drop h

I have written before about my opinions of RAD (reactive attachment disorder) as a diagnosis . In strict terms, RAD is an extreme diagnosis where the child in question cannot develop attachment to anyone and has no empathy towards other living creatures. It is an exceptionally dire diagnosis which goes hand in hand with some significantly dire behavior. It is so filled with pain, hurt, and brokenness on all sides that it is not something I would wish on anyone. RAD is at the extreme end of attachment difficulties. But attachment issues are on a long spectrum. It is more than possible to have attachment challenges and not have RAD. It is entirely possible to to have some significant behaviors and not have RAD. It is entirely likely that anyone with these behaviors has experienced a great deal of trauma.  I hope that anyone who has been reading here for any length of time understands that trauma is not kind to growing brains. (Well, it's not kind to any type of brain, but growing, im

I'll just jump right in tonight. This morning at 8am, I got to see the livestream of TM's turning green ceremony. This means that he has officially graduated from basic training. After the ceremony, they got to have their phones along with a three-day pass (but still on base). It was great to spend time talking with him. Monday he begins AIT (advanced individual training). I am so proud of him. Today was also D.'s last day working at the library. There was a small party for him, and he is going to miss working there. I am going to miss having my own personal librarian. A lot.  I will be back to driving to the library multiple times a week to either return things or collect things that have arrived and are on hold. No, it doesn't seem likely that I will be able to limit these trips to just one or two a week. The very first question I am asked by many people every morning is if I can look and see if any of their holds have arrived. When you average a book a day, you canno

I'm discovering that blogging with just middle schoolers and up (as opposed to toddlers or preschoolers or even early elementary aged children) is a tough gig. In the past, when trying to come up with something to write, I could fall back on sharing some cute thing a child did or share some cute child pictures and call it a day. Now? All week long, most of the people around here have either spent their entire day with their nose in a book or building with Legos, alternating with going to the kitchen to get themselves a snack. It is a constant loop. Read or build, move onto snacking, back to reading or building. And while I can get away with one blog post about it (for instance, the one I am currently writing), a week or two of that would grow rather tedious. It is truly how they have all spent the summer. I'm not really complaining, because who complains about children who read constantly? But surely, every now and then, they could rise up from the couch and do something I coul

I've written here before about my bouts of pathological amounts of canning , usually when stressed because it is something I can do that I have control over. Last summer was a very productive canning summer, for all the obvious reasons. Not leaving your home helps a lot. So, I may can a lot (sometimes), but I have to admit that as much as I love the product, the process is not my favorite. It's just time consuming.  I had mentioned the other day that our apple trees are loaded with apples. And this year for the first time, they are actually good apples. Good apples as in you would want to eat them instead of looking at the blighted, wormy thing and dropping it on the ground. I don't know why this is as we have done absolutely nothing different this year. (We have done absolutely nothing with the apple trees in general, actually.) See? They're beautiful apples. With all that free, good-looking fruit just outside my back door, I decided I really did need to do something a

There is really not much going on around of here of note. I seem to be spending a lot of time on the computer and at my calendar working on getting things scheduled for the fall, but other than that, it's pretty much every day life. That does not make for terribly interesting blog reading. (I'm not complaining, mind you, I enjoy calm and ordinary very much.) There even seems to be enough give in the schedule for me to spend tomorrow afternoon working on making applesauce. So instead of just skipping another day of blogging, I'm going to share some photos that J. took the other day. 

When you are gone most of the day having gone to the city to visit friends and there just isn't time when you get home to make the dinner you had planned, what do you do? Well, sometimes I would resort to take-out, but I've been buying school supplies, so that really wasn't an option. But we do have outrageous amounts of apples and eggs. (We have four apple trees and they have produced an amazing amount of good apples this year. We always have an outrageous amount of eggs. Until we don't.) So, it was a baked apple pancake sort of dinner tonight. Oh, and a tiny bit of bacon because we took out the last package of bacon from the freezer which was a small amount of jowl bacon from the last side of pork we bought. It was a very frugal meal.  I need to do something with this overabundance of food, though, because it would kind of kill me to waste it. We need to get to making applesauce, and probably the best thing to do with the eggs is to make a bunch of them into little m

(For those of you who are tired of the endless homeschool planning posts, feel free to skip this one. I promise I'll be back to posting other things once I get all of this out of my head.) When I have children start to enter middle school, I begin the process of teaching them to take charge of their own learning. We start small, usually with some single learning project. One year P. made dozens of lap books about individual animals. Another year, B. worked through a book all about bridges which gave both information and directions for making each type of bridge. D. did a huge project on dinosaurs. I help a bit, finding resources, making suggestions, keeping tabs on them so they keep moving forward, and through doing this process a couple of times, they figure out how to learn about a topic by themselves.  There's nothing different this year, except I am going to be doing this with four children (five if you count H.) Usually, I just have to mention that I will want them to thin

And it's Friday again. Funny how that works. August is zipping by too fast, no doubt because I have a lot that I want to get done and am dreading the week we take D. to school.  K. has made at least two more helmets since I last posted. He has had to slow down a bit because the cardboard is running low as is the glue stick supply. That was the bag of glue sticks that turned out to be much larger than I thought it would when I ordered it, and it was so immense, I thought I might never have to buy a glue stick again. Silly me. K. has taken care of that. It's time to order more. Bristol came up lame last Saturday. I think we have finally figured out what was going on. She is now on antibiotics and is doing much better.  G. has been working on writing a book about different types of birds and how they do and don't get along and how they have to band together to save the world. (I think that's the plot she told me.) It meant that I was asked to put innumerable books on hold

This is all I've got for you tonight. And this is with nine books I'm still waiting to arrive at the library. But believe it or not, the end really is in sight.

I thought this might be helpful to some.*** 1. Try to recreate brick-and-mortar school at home.  We all know that the current American school system is the only way that children can learn anything of value, so be sure to try to recreate it as best you can. You tread in dangerous waters if you dare to go off the path in any way. You might even want to invest in some sort of bell to signal the end of each separate class period and creating hall passes to use the bathroom could be a dandy use for your printer and laminator. Be sure to separate each subject by itself, so that it is totally unconnected to any other subject. Spelling stays in spelling and science stays in science, people. We wouldn't want any child to get confused. You might find it tedious to occupy your child for six or so hours a day, but if you don't, you will be cheating them out of a decent education. Time in the seat is what counts. Sure, you may get burned out and think this homeschooling business isn't

I have something to share with you that I am very excited about and that has been in the works for a while now. I am also a little surprised by it all because I don't think of myself as an entrepreneur... at all... but I guess I am because not only do I now own a business, but that business has its own website. And a beautiful website it is, too! I can say that because other than do some writing for it, which is hardly an effort for me, I had nothing to do with it. This is all the work of MC., my extremely talented son-in-law. He has spent probably more hours than he will admit to creating a really lovely and function website. I am in love with it. Plus, it has the ability for people to sign-up for the classes I teach on it so I no longer have to do it via text and email which proved to be somewhat of a nightmare. People sign up, I get a message, and we're all set. It's wonderful.  So, go have a gander at it, because it is lovely. And if you know MC. in person, you can tell

Now that it's August, everyone seems to have found their summer rhythm. There has been much game playing, book reading, bicycle riding, cooking, taking out dogs, painting, drawing, and making. At least once or twice a day, I am asked by a child to put a book on hold for them at the library. (We currently have well over 100 books checked out at the moment. Have I mentioned how much I adore the fact that this library doesn't have a book limit?) Every so often someone will wander through the house mentioning that they are bored, but I express sympathy, go back to what I was doing, and they sort it out. It's all rather lovely, especially since every so often someone will wander into the kitchen and either unload or load the dishwasher. I adore that, too. K. has been especially productive over the past couple of days making things (more things, more Star Wars things) with cardboard. Here are his latest creations. K. made two helmets, this is the first one. I have no idea what ki