The last couple of weeks have been very focusing for me. The week before I started homeschooling, I sat down to figure out a schedule and had a dreadful time doing it. Finally it all came together but only after I sat down and did some uber-prioritizing. Funny thing: when you figure out which things you care about the most and then focus on those things, you’re a lot happier! Isn’t that brilliant? And it’s taken me a mere thirty-three years to realize that.

It’s not like I’ve been relaxing on the beach and that’s why I’m happy. In fact, I’ve been working my butt off even more than I was before (which I didn’t really think was possible because I’m generally prone to massive overworking myself than underworking); but it’s that satisfying kind of work that you don’t mind doing because you know you’re good at it, you’re doing the job you were born to do, and the people you work for love you.

Two small cases in point:

1. The other day the older three or four kids and I were making cookies to share with the company that was coming over later that evening (lest you think we would make a whole four dozen cookies and eat them all ourselves… hehe.. moving right along..). Trinity and Anika started discussing my hair and wanted to know why it has all those colors in it. Huh? My hair is a really dark brown and fairly homogenously so. What colors? Oh you know Mom, the shiny silver hairs. Why are those there?

When I told them they were there because I was getting old, they all laughed like that was the most ridiculous idea they had ever heard. Then they told me that the silver ones were beautiful and they wished they could have some. Huh. My computer never tells me it thinks my gray hair is beautiful (it does give me gray hair).

To tell the truth, between my Dad telling me all through my childhood that he couldn’t wait to have gray hair because it is a “crown of splendor, attained by a righteous life” (Pro 16:31) and my daughters telling me how pretty it is and why can’t they have it, having gray hair doesn’t really bother me. When I get older, I’m secretly planning to have long dark hair streaked with gray that eventually turns white like the Italians do instead of lopping it all off into short hair like Americans. It’s so much more Old World beauty. Hmmm, I may have put too much thought into this already.

2. This afternoon I was trying to put together a meal plan for the rest of the term so I don’t have to think about it for another five weeks when Kyra bonked herself again and ended up on my lap. She’s in the middle of a growth spurt and seems constantly surprised to find her arms and legs sticking out further than they used to. She’s sort of a giant bruise at the moment. Anyway, she noticed the mole on my neck and wanted to know what it was. After I explained that, she decided that she wanted one too. After I showed her that she did, in fact, have a mole on the back side of her very own knee, she seemed much happier and bounced off to go play.

This has been very gratifying for me. The kids don’t care that I have gray hairs popping up or a wierd mole on my neck. In fact, they seem to see these as desirable things, which I’m fairly sure is because they are attached to someone that they love. So, lucky me! Yes, there are frustrations. Henry has teeth coming in and cries all day. I now get up at six and don’t stop zooming until I sit down to scarf down some lunch at 1:30.

At that point, the kids all see me sitting down and decide that means that the ears are open for business so they can tell me their weird dreams from last night (Georgie: me & Trinity were chased by a gorilla), long-winded stories about Bionicle wars that I hope to never care about, a recap of an entire SpongeBob episode so I would get the context of the three second part they thought was really funny. Hmmm, actually those were all Georgie. Today I finally explained to him what time I got up, what I had been doing all day (most of it was teaching the kids), and that now I was going to sit down to lunch where I would like to sit in peace and read the newspaper so please go play somewhere else. That seemed to help considerably.

Overall though, I just feel more content and relaxed. My smile is back. I missed it.

Rachel

Ha! I love a deal. Tonight we decided to take the kids to their favorite restaurant, HomeTown Buffet, since we’ve been all broke and haven’t taken them out in ages. But you know, I don’t like going out and paying full price, so naturally I started scoping around for coupons.

There was one in my wallet from HTB that I pulled from the paper a couple weeks ago. It was Get Two Free Kids Meals with One Adult Meal and today was the last day before it expired.

Thinking maybe there was another one of those online somewhere, I started surfing around and found a site saying that if you sign up for HTB’s mailing list, they’ll send you a Buy One Get One Free Adult Meal coupon. Hmmm, didn’t I sign up for that a while ago and never use the coupon? A quick search through my inbox said, “yes.” One problem: coupon expired in February. Oh well, it never hurts to put on your pathetic face and ask if they’ll make an exception (dragging six kids along with you helps too). I stashed the printout in my pocket and off we went.

When we got there, we must have shown up right in the lull between big mobs of people because we walked right in. The cashier started counting everyone and I flashed my first coupon at her. She asked if I only had one (!!), and I told her that I also had a really old one if they could maybe take that. She said she didn’t think so since it was from February, but she’d go ask the manager since we had eight people in our party. He sweetly decided to let us take it, and we ended up with George, Georgie, and Trinity being free. That amounts to $23 of our $43.59 bill. Yay for a cheap night out!

Rachel

Our church has the coolest Sunday School classes ever! A month or so ago Georgie came home all excited because he had homework from his Sunday School class (!!). He had two weeks to build a complete tabernacle out of whatever he wanted, so naturally he decided to make his from Bionicles. In case you are having trouble envisioning this, I have pictures.

This is the whole covered Tabernacle

And here are the individual pieces:

The Golden Lampstand (left) and Table of Showbread (r) with all the bread, of course.

Sacrifice (l) and Altar of Burnt Offering (r)

Ark of the Covenant

Altar of Incense

High Priest (l) and the Bronze Laver (r)

The whole shebang minus the tent top.

I’m particularly fond of the altar of incense and the High Priest. Georgie seems to have all the pieces of the tabernacle down now, and they seem to be glued to his brain cells pretty well. So great idea, Mr. Nieman (the SS teacher)! And awesome job, Georgie!

In other news, this week I started homeschooling Georgie, Trinity, Anika, and Kyra (well, and sort of Faith). It’s going pretty well! The kids are enthusiastic and have been working hard (a couple of them have even decided to get up early and do their half hour of reading before school starts at 8:30).

We’ve been pretty close to on schedule, and I’m nearly done figuring out all the curriculum for the term. It seemed better to start and finish figuring things out as I go along then to wait until everything’s perfect, which will happen in about never. Today I made the mistake of having the kids each make a set of sea animals flash cards during science. They colored and I glued the pictures onto 3×5 cards.

Math pop quiz: 5 sets (one for each kid) of 17 flash cards, each with an animal glued to the front and facts for that animal glued to the back means Mommy gets to glue how many pieces of paper to index cards? If you guessed 170, you have won the fabulous prize of coming to be my helper next time I have a stupid idea that should be spread over a few days instead of all done at once. At least science was the last class of the day.

Anyway, here’s my cuties on their first day of school:

Today Georgie and Trinity had a blurb in history about the clothing that people wear in the desert, and it was talking about the aba, which is a long bathroby-looking thing that gets worn over your long flowy shirt, and about the head coverings, which I can’t remember the names of (bad teacher!). This seemed like a good excuse to torture my children (not that I really need an excuse, but when the opportunity presents itself…):

No, actually they were quite pleased with themselves. Georgie took the stuff off his head but left his bathrobe on until I made him remove it to go to choir practice at 7:00.

This one just made me laugh because it’s amazing how expressive Trinity can be with just her eyeballs.

Okay, well that’s it for today. Is the weekend here yet?

Rachel

Okay, so I am officially starting homeschool with the kiddos this coming Monday (4/20/09). Yikes! Actually, I’m feeling pretty ok about it. Got the schedule all sorted out. See?

What, you can’t read that? Well, click on it and it will take you to the bigger version. For term study this time we are doing a unit on sea life. That way when we go to Family Camp at the end of the term, we can have an excuse to go to the excellent Oregon Coast Aquarium (like we need an excuse).

Even better, the aquarium has a whole bunch of downloadable curriculum for homeschoolers, which will make organizing easy for me (big plus). Yay! So now I’m all excited.

I went through what I have and need yesterday and am hoping to make it out to Exodus Books tomorrow or Saturday to finish picking up class materials. I think I need to clean off one more bookshelf today so I can finish setting up the classroom and then I’ll be ready-ish. So yep, feeling pretty good!

Oh, were you wondering what the heck Resurrection Term is? We are running our school year according to the church calendar and days of creation. So instead of having three or four terms of school and then the summer off, we are having seven terms that are seven weeks each.

The first week of each term the kids have off of school as a reflection of Sabbath rest the first day of each week. The school year starts mid-November for Advent Term, and that entire term of seven weeks is off of school (first term of seven, also reflecting Sabbath rest on the first day of the seven day week).

There are several advantages to doing it this way.

1. Your children’s brains don’t leak out their ears over a long summer holiday.
2. The longest break comes around Christmas when everyone is swamped and wants to do family stuff anyway.
3. If you don’t like the schedule or get behind on something, your term is only six weeks of actual school time so it’s not going to screw the kids up too much to just wait and revise next term.
4. For summer, we do a bit lighter load and the schedule is flexible enough to allow for that.

If you’ve been calculating in your head as I’ve been explaining, you’ll notice that seven terms of seven weeks makes 49 weeks but there are 52 weeks in the year. That leaves three floating weeks to take elsewhere as vacation.

We’re taking two in June, before and after Family Camp which is the start of the Apostolic Age Term and then the last one probably in August somewhere during the Church Age Term. No doubt this will come up again in a later post, but if you’d like to do a bit more reading on your own, this idea was developed by my friend Melody at Solis Ortus.

Oh! Also, I’ve decided not to bore all of you with our day in, day out homeschooling details so I have started a dedicated blog for that in order to better bore only those of you who wish to be bored. It’s at HomeschoolSandbox.com. My friend Lana who is currently homeschooling her two school-aged kids has joined that blog as an editor, so she’ll be posting her homeschooling life on here as well. I’m excited! Should be fun.Welcome, Lana! This should be fun.

Rachel

Every year on Good Friday, our church holds a special service that goes through Jesus’ dying words on the cross and reminds us of his death and resurrection. Seven candles are set up and after a reading of each section of what Jesus said, three verses of a very long song (21 verses) are sung, one candle is extinguished, and the lights are dimmed slightly.

The last candle represents Christ, and when it goes out the lights are turned off entirely. The Elders exit the sanctuary, the church bell rings seven times, and a loud earthquake noise is made. Then the Elders return with the last candle relit. We sing O Sacred Head, Now Wounded and then everyone leaves in silence, reflecting on the work of our Savior.

Usually we don’t make it to this service, but today I decided to take the older four children while George stayed home and watched the two little ones. Well, Georgie didn’t want to go. He wanted to stay home with Daddy and so gave me a bunch of grief, to which he received the reply, “Too bad; you’re going.”

By the time the service was completed, his reaction was somewhat different. “Wow!” was his remark upon leaving the sanctuary. Hehe. Mommy: 1; Georgie: 0. By the time we pulled in the driveway he had reflected a bit more. “The effect of the bell and earthquake was amazing!” he said. “Before the earthquake I was thinking of everything except for Jesus, and by the time it was done I couldn’t think of anything else.”

And now we know why God created art.

Ever wondered what happens when your four year old does your hair? When I was pregnant with Henry last year I spent several months on the couch trying really hard not to vomit, and Kyra decided that good Mommy and Kyra time would involve her sitting on the arm of the couch right by my head and brushing my hair for hours. This was actually quite relaxing, so we both enjoyed it(after I gave my hair a quick brushing beforehand to diminish the “ow” factor of a young hair stylist).

Since Henry was born a year ago, though, I’ve been more in zoom mode and less in lie on the couch mode so Kyra’s hairdoing opportunities have lessened considerably. The other day she asked if she could do my hair, and I had some computer stuff to do so I just laid on the couch with my laptop and let her play all she wanted. Soon she was heading my way with armfuls of hair clippies. Hey, if two clippies are pretty, all the clippies must be ever so much more lovely! And here is my resulting ‘do:

This picture doesn’t get the back which is completely covered in clippes as well. And how many clips, bobby pins, etc. do you think were in my hair? Oh, just fifty-nine. Took me fifteen minutes to take them all out!

Rachel