It is 7:30 and my boys (all three of them) are still sleeping. I don’t expect it to last much longer, but I’m hoping the extra time spent in snooze land will help our day run more on the smooth side than it has been lately.
But as I sit here waiting for Fuller and Tebow to make their appearances, I realize the sleep, while good, isn’t the only thing that will help our day. Mainly it is the need of an attitude adjustment. An attitude adjustment done by me.
As a homeschool mom, I love to talk the talk of how flexible our lives are. When the school bus goes by in the morning, I puff my chest out in pride because my children might still sleeping and getting the rest they need, not what the alarm clock doles out.
However I realize that recently our days have been rough because though I think we are flexible my actions don’t seem to show it. I try to get us started in the morning at a certain time and when a rough patch appears (sometimes in the form of Tebow wanting more food or attention, other times in the form of Legos stealing attention), I don’t really roll with it, but pitch a mommy hissy fit.
So, it is 7:42, my family is still asleep and I’m looking at our day, knowing that right now, I need to just enjoy the coffee and when we get our schooling done will be dictated by just how flexible I am.
Damon sent me out last night to pick something up for his office today. While making the drive I had the sudden inspiration that maybe I should “celebrate” St. Patrick’s Day in some form for my kids. It’s not that I don’t appreciate St. Patrick and his contribution to spreading the word of God, but really it has become watered (or beered?) down in such a way that people don’t even pinch you anymore if you aren’t wearing green.
So, to introduce St. Patrick to the kids I picked up streamers at the store. I got red, orange, yellow, green, and blue. They didn’t have it in indigo or violet. When I got home, the kids were already in bed, so I got to work. And this is the product:
No, it isn’t a pretty video, but the project was a bit too large to fit in a picture. Continue Reading »
Reading daily is just a part of our lives… I read Fuller his lessons, he reads a book to me almost every day, and Damon’s new kindle has sparked a father/son reading marathon of the Wizard of Oz books (I think they are on book five).
I sometimes joke that having a child who can read is a big adjustment for our family. Suddenly Fuller is gathering information from word he sees, not just words he hears. At Christmas he was reading over my shoulder as I had an IM conversation with Damon. The topic was Christmas presents, so I actually switched computers to finish the conversation with D. Fuller sees URLs as part of advertisements or on packaging and asks to visit the sites (um, no).
But joking aside, I love that Fuller can read and I cherish the reading aloud he does, because the joy it gives us both is more than I ever imagined. And watching Damon spend an hour or more reading about Dorothy, Tick Tock, and whatever other characters live in the Kindle also brings me joy.
So, I say bring some more joy into your life. Read out loud to someone today, and celebrate bringing literacy to the world.
Today we started our second semester of school. I had been prepping Fuller the last few days to get him in the mindset that Monday we would be back to school.
I know I haven’t blogged much in general and even less about our homeschool efforts, which has saddened me a bit, but I know I need to get some things out there. If mainly to keep a record of it for our family memories, I shall blog about homeschooling!
Today marks our 91st day, so sayeth the attendance keeper I log Fuller’s hours into each school day. As I look back at the first semester of school, I keep being reminded of Melissa Wiley’s Tidal Homeschooling post. It is a post I read when Fuller was only two years old. We knew we wanted to homeschool Fuller but had no idea how it would play out. Funnily enough, I can see the tide moving in and out in our homeschool life.
We decided to go with the Georgia Cyber Academy because of a BIG selling point: FREE. It uses the K-12 curriculum (2011 resolution: learn to spell curriculum), with certain modifications for the Georgia standards. When we got our books I was a tad overwhelmed (which I shouldn’t have been since a friend of mine has five kids enrolled in GCA and she has many more books to keep track of and I saw those books many days before mine arrived… oh the boxes she had!). In the days leading up to our first day of school I was continually frustrated with lack of information on exactly how things should play out to actually start school in our home. And since K-12 and GCA rely heavily on online activities from school assemblies to online classroom sessions, I was annoyed at the amount of time I was supposed to be spending in these virtual meeting rooms listening to people repeat themselves over and over.
The Christmas spirit entered our home a few days before Thanksgiving. We (as in Damon and I) had decided that for our first Christmas in our new home we would purchase a potted Christmas tree that we would be able to plant after the season. We did it at our previous house and I honestly felt a little sad leaving that reminder of our first Christmas.
Because of our schedules we decided to tree hunt before Thanksgiving, which lead us to Lowe’s and Home Depot. While both had potted trees suited to the task of showing off our Christmas cheer, Home Depot had some tiny Italian Stone Pines at decent prices. We quickly used my phone to check wikipedia and see what the trees would look like full grown and decided to buy three.
We held off decorating until after Thanksgiving. I had the goal of creating a tree that was Tebow friendly and decorating it with items that we didn’t care if Tebow got a hold of and destroyed. (This is where I remind you what a destructive bugger Tebow is. And if you don’t believe me, invite us over. Tebow will prove you wrong.)
The end of Fuller’s football season came after they lost twice in one weekend during the playoffs. It was a tad emotional, but it came with a needed break from the busy schedule of practices and games.
Though the athletic part of the program is over, we anticipate a good time to be had at the team banquet in a week. And there is always the delicious anticipation of the next season, knowing with a little off-season practice we can get better.
A team event that was unknown to us (until this past Monday) was the team riding on a float in the local parade. I was so excited for Fuller. Having been in two parades in my life, I knew the thrill of riding down the street, waving at people and chucking sweets at them.
The parade was tonight. We bundled everyone up, made sure we all had gloves, got Damon and Fuller to the staging area, then Tebow and I camped out near the end of the parade route. Tebow wasn’t as happy as the rest of us (and I didn’t get great pictures), but overall, I think as a football family, we can look forward to this holiday tradition in years to come.
