Ordinary Time

How'd it get to be Friday already? Does anyone else feel as though Christmas and New Years was at least a month away? On the doings of the past week. I realized that this time last year we were in Urumqi, a day away from meeting Y. for the first time. I'll guess I'll do her one year home post tomorrow. When I took down the Christmas decorations earlier this week, I realized that our tree was still incredibly fresh. Fresh as in, I could run my hand down the branch and very few needles fell off. It was the first time ever that when the tree was taken out the door that I didn't have an inch thick trail of needles marking its path to vacuum up. I'm really liking this cut your own tree business, I'm pretty sure we'll plan it into our festivities again next year. I spent the first part of our week thanking myself for being so forward thinking in my school planning. We were all ready to get back to a normal schedule, so we started school. I knew we had a few t...

"Whenever we read anything, the brain is actively putting the words into known sensory images so we may understand them. Notice that when you can't get an image of something you have read, it is difficult to determine the meaning." from Smart Moves: Why Learning is not All in Your Head by Carla Hannaford (p. 36) I thought I had already written about teaching reading comprehension to H., but when I tried searching for it, I couldn't find it. It is the activity I came up with after one too many sessions like the one I wrote about in the this post ( Pronoun Hell and other adventures along the path to comprehension ). I wish I could say I completely made this up myself, but it's what I came up with after some long discussions of the comprehension problem with another wise, homeschooling mother. Much of the credit should really go to her. I'll describe what I did, and then tell you what my newest thinking is and why I wrote out that paragraph from the book I...

I'm pretty good with comments about our family. Either I repel them by sheer body language, or they are one of the same few questions or comments that I usually receive and for which I have well-rehearsed replies. Every so often, though, I get a question or comment that sets me back on my heels and I mumble through some kind of response, it taking several hours of thought to really come up with a half-way decent reply.  I received one of those types of questions the other day. What was it? I can't remember the words exactly, but it went along the lines of, "I'm curious about your decision to homeschool. So you're content to just do that all day long? You don't miss the camaraderie of the work place?" I'll let you just sit with that for a few moments. It feels a little more demeaning every time I read it. The trouble was, the question was asked in good faith and wasn't meant to sound snide. So the snark response goes completely out the window...

Today is our last day of vacation before real life sets in again. I'm not quite ready. Today I will finish taking down Christmas (sorry, I just can't leave it all up until Epiphany), I'm in the process of making bone broth in order to make albondiga soup for dinner, and I still want to get some of my older people together to try out our new game. The younger people also have a play date set up with a new friend. It feels like a full day and it is only just starting. That is why I am going to take the easy way out and just give you my 2016 reading list. I had a couple of readers tell me that they would be interested in it. Here's how I'll do it. If I wrote a blog post about the book, I'll link back to that post. If there is something particularly interesting about the book, I will make brief mention of it. I've also highlighted these comments in red to make it a bit easier to find them if you are skimming. If it is one that I would recommend, I'll put a...

We're doing more relaxing here, and getting ready for our annual New Year's Eve party. If I ever doubted that my crystal ball is completely non-functional, all I would have to do is look at the stats page for this blog. Posts that I wondered whether I should even hit 'publish' on turn out to be super popular, while other posts, which I really like, linger in obscurity. Maybe it's word length. I know I can be a bit wordy. To end a trying year, instead of coming up with something to say, we'll just do a little retrospective of posts I thought would hit a chord more than they did. It could just be that no one liked them, in which case this will be a collection of completely loser posts. I'm hoping that they just got a bit lost in all of my wordiness. There is a lot to slog through on this blog, and it's easy to miss something. So here's a bit of reading to occupy your hours as you wait to drop kick 2016 into oblivion. January There's really n...

What have we done this week? Nothing. Well, unless you count laying about, playing the occasional game, fixing the occasional meal, and muttering things such as, "I wonder what we should do," as something, then we've done a whole lot. I wonder what I can come up with to talk about. We celebrated Boxing Day again this year, but due to schedules, it was the 27th instead of the 26th. Our good friends the P. family came over and the adults talked, the children played, and we ate some food. We even got to Skype with our other good friends the H-S family. It just seemed right since we usually celebrated Boxing Day at their house. A child was sent to fetch a tissue only a couple of times. Talk around the meal table continues to debate what other animals should be acquired. There is still a strong lobby for a miniature goat to live in the house, though the miniature donkey contingent is fairly powerful. I question the motives of some of the lobbyists since I have discover...

Our sole accomplishment for the day? Making gingerbread cookies and decorating them. Yep. That's it. Partly this is because J. and I have been staying up far too late reading, followed by sleeping late in the morning. The whole house is sleeping late. It's lovely, but kind of messes up one's productivity. Next week, when J. is back at work and we are back to school, is going to be a great shock. But back to the gingerbread.  While I finally had molasses, we had run out of brown sugar, so J. walked to the store for me to pick some up. He was just going to go by himself and this would have been quick and uneventful. Instead, he ended up taking G. and L. with him because that was quieter. At the checkout in the store, the clerk, in a very friendly manner tries to talk to the girls. The girls stare. This is what the girls do when they are out in public and strangers talk to them. The staring does not often dissuade people from talking to them, though. "Are you twi...