Ordinary Time

let's do some bullets anyway. Besides, it's all I've got for tonight. We may be deep in winter #5 (yes, it snowed again today), but the table is fully in spring mode. And those things in the vase? Those are little catkins from the willow in our yard. The same willow which was totally uprooted in a storm last summer. I guess it wasn't totally uprooted. Aren't they beautiful? On Friday we had part of the driveway regraded and more gravel put down. The pot holes had become so bad that we had all been perfecting our slalom skills to avoid them. It turns out they were so deep that even regrading didn't get rid of them. It was a lot of gravel. Looks nice, huh? It took two full truckloads to do that and fill in the holes, which is one more than I really wanted to pay for. Those two truckloads got as far as the house. In full disclosure, here is what it looks if I turn around from where I was standing. But the driveway is in much better shape this direction, so I think ...

K.'s 16th birthday was actually yesterday, but we celebrated tonight both because one of his good friends from Evanston could come and spend the night and because weekends are easier for adult siblings to make it. We had everyone here but A. and D. this evening.  K. chose sriracha chicken and garlic potatoes for dinner and wanted a chocolate mayonnaise cake for dessert. Y. made the cake this afternoon.  TM holding the birthday candles. A Lego car set from Grammy. Another fancy Lego car from us. These were from B. and W. They realized that they had accidentally bought the same gift so had K. open them both at the same time. More Lego cars (do you see a theme?). He was thrilled regardless of whether they were identical or not. Lego sets are really about the raw material for him. And his good friend did not give him a Lego car, but instead gave him a giant Nerf gun. This was also extremely popular. They put it to good use immediately after dinner. How can this child be 16 already...

I have told this story in many different places, but after doing a search here, I realize I have never blogged about it... at least as far as I can tell.  One of the most difficult aspects of parenting a child with a trauma history for many parents is the sometimes outright defiance. I should change that and rephrase it to perceived outright defiance because that is more accurate. Usually the story goes something like this: Child is engaged in an activity. Parent needs something done and asks child to do it. Child says no and goes back to activity. Escalation ensues.  Traditional, consequence-based parenting says that you can't let that happen. If you let a child get away with saying no to you like that, you have lost their respect. The child will become a brat at best and some sort of rude, lazy basement dweller or felon at worst. The parent must assert their control and their authority to make sure their child grows up to be a decent, hard-working, polite human being. Limits...

A while back, when I was asking for suggestions about what I should write about, a reader asked me about the individual projects I was having my children work on. Since I saw most of them with their books out today doing just that, it seems like a timely topic. I called a holiday today. I woke up feeling totally done in from my weekend away and knew I just needed to spend the day mostly resting. It has done a world of good, as I am feeling significantly more myself. We'll be back to our usual schedule in the morning. Because I had cancelled school this morning, at least my part of it, I was rather heartened to see quite a few people at work in the dining room on their individual animal projects when I got in from the barn. I hadn't asked them to do this, they just did it. That's always a nice homeschooling moment that one likes to share. It sounds so much more impressive than if I say that my daughter ripped her math book up in frustration, which is equally likely to happen...

I'm back home, and boy, I am tired after getting to the airport around 4:30 am. I had a lovely time visiting my mom, reading in the sun, having lunch with friends I've known since first grade or longer, warming up, and eating a lot of good food. Oh, and I judged a lot of pianists. In with all that there was a trip to a fiber store. So tonight's post will be short, and I'll stick with showing you what ended up being crammed in my suitcase. First I want to show you this. You may remember this quite from a few years ago when I took that quilting class. The top was finished, but I knew I didn't want to quilt it, so there it sat. When a family friend decided to start a quilt finishing business with her long arm quilter, I jumped at sending the quilt top to her to be finished.  She brought it over while I was there. She did a phenomenal job. (She also did the binding for me. Hooray! I hate binding.) You can see a bit of the quilting in the photo below. Do you see the musi...

That is an orange blossom, the world's most fantastic smelling flower. I can take a picture of it for you because I flew into Phoenix this evening. I was thrilled to discover that the orange blossoms held on until I arrived.  I'll be here until Monday, visiting my mom and judging a piano festival. J. is holding down the fort at home. I didn't bring my computer, so I'll be having a little bloggy break until I return. (I'm writing this on my phone, and it is not my preferred way of writing!)  It will be a hard life sitting in the sunshine and reading books, but someone has to do it. 

I promised yesterday that I would continue sharing my disturbing memories from my gifted education experience. Fun times, huh? My elementary school began a pull-out gifted program when I was in fifth grade. More specifically I should say the school district began a gifted program because it wasn't housed at my grade school. Instead, a couple of times a week, I was bused in the middle of the day to another grade school where the gifted program was housed. As much as I can remember, it was essentially free time in a classroom filled with interesting things we could use and look at. I don't remember having extremely strong feelings about it one way or the other, but did wonder why these cool things weren't shared with everyone. You want to know what I remember most about that year? The school the program was housed in was an open classroom model. (I know that I have just significantly dated myself as open classrooms were definitely a 70's thing.) It was the open classrooms...