God should have invented a way to temporarily freeze time - for Moms to use

Christmas has come on a bit faster than I was hoping. I did manage to figure out why the season took me by surprise though. My parents come for Christmas every year (and are here for between 6 weeks and 5 months one year!), and this year they were going to come for Thanksgiving and stay until early Jan before going back home. My dad has been working on a truck - completely rebuilding it over the last 6 months - and he didn't finish until last week. They came up as quickly as they could after that, but it still put them getting in late on Dec 16th. I had in my mind that they would get up here, we'd have a few days to get settled in, do some cleaning, then break out the Christmas decor, take the family picture (my mom would be photographer to save us the $ going into a studio) and get copies of the picture for the Christmas cards and then finish the extended family Christmas gifts and any shopping. Well, when I knew they were going to be late, I couldn't manage to readjust my thinking on the rest of my holiday preparations. We have been doing things exactly how I was thinking, but we are about 2-3 weeks late. I have never been good about sending Christmas gifts off on time, but I try to get things before the end of the year and there are a few people that I like to get by Christmas. At this rate we are looking at going well into Jan before I have it all ready.

So that this doesn't happen again, for next year I am putting together an Advent/Christmas binder with a calendar and To Do list written in. Then the binder gets set with the Christmas stuff, but not packed in it. I would love to do one for Lent as well, but I'm thinking not this year. We'll see. I am great at things like making up a binder, but not-so-good at implementing what I have in the binder - though having a To Do list with due dates should help there.

Back to Christmas plans for this year, I also think I am procrastinating because I am nervous about what I plan to send to family for gifts. Most of my family is not Catholic or at least not really practicing, and my big idea was to send a painting or picture of a saint on something sturdy like a wood backing. The idea is to send the nice picture with the Saint's life story, a letter explaining why I chose that saint for them, and how and why saints fit into the Catholic faith. I started with a list of about 25 people which became about 35 and then I went through and found saints for almost all of them. Now I have to find pictures to print because there is not enough time to paint or draw pictures. I plan to use a glossy spray to protect the pictures once they are glued to the wood or whatever I manage to find that will make them more lasting than a piece of paper. I really should do a test page to make sure my grand scheme will work out. I keep getting distracted with all the cleaning, preparations, kids needs, etc. I am nervous about backlash too. Hopefully most of them will think I am a little more nutty than they originally thought and will not get upset. I think that is the main reason I wasn't working on this months ago when I had the idea and knew it would take a long time to get it together. Part of me wants to put it off until next year, but I know I will end up in the same situation next year with procrastinating. Plus, I'm sure I will find another great idea for next year. Best I get back to work on it with the few minutes of peace I have.


On a totally unrelated topic, we have been fighting mice! My housekeeping skills have improved since we moved (which is not saying a whole lot), yet at the other house we never had rodents or pests of any kind! Here we get ants in the spring, summer and fall, flying critters in the summer (one of the disadvantages of having no screens) as well as giant spiders in the basement, and now mice for the fall and winter. I couldn't bring myself to harm them at first and I still cannot handle the dead bodies nor the thought of killing them, but I relented and put out the poison. Jeff has been bugging me about putting out poison for months (our problems began in late Aug-early Sept), and I finally gave in once the mice got into the heater ducts. Before that we would let a stray cat in the neighborhood in to hunt, but he failed to get them all and then the mice got into the ducts forcing me to turn the heat off and that was it. I am very allergic to anything with fur, so I don't do well with mice running around, esp in a place where air will be circulated - I have been sneezing as if it is spring all fall. Of course, within a week of turning the heat off, we were hit with the coldest weather we've had in a long time. I think it was this cold a few years ago when we had ice, but instead of ice we have snow! I love the snow and will try to get some pics of the kids playing in it up, but it made the heater situation rather dire. We had poison in for about a week, then vacummed the best we could and changed the filter, removed a couple dead bodies and I installed metal screen material in all the vents and sealed the holes. So far so good on keeping the critters out of the heater, but now we have at least one mouse in the house. Fortunately where it is hiding I was able to drop a block of poison without fear of the baby getting it, but I don't know where it is getting its food and water (though arguably there is enough around the kitchen table where it hides). I just hope that one of these mornings I will not be greeted with rustling and chewing noises, then I can feel bad about taking the life of one of God's creatures and have Jeff get rid of the body. Of course we still have mice in the basement that need to be dealt with too, and I think we will go back to the traps for those. That and cleaning anyway. I will try and keep up with the Great Mouse Hunt as the nightmare continues.

A reason to love unschooling...

Damien and Ariana turned 10 and 12 this last week, and from Grandma Dawn they got a card with the same number of dollars as years they have been born. They were both very excited and counted out all the money they have stashed around the house (theoretically all the money should be in their wallets, but they are kids), including missing money that they hope to find someday. Damien then asked, "who is on the 10-dollar bill?" this sent him off to the picture of all the presidents to see if he could find the mystery man. I commented that I didn't think "he" was a president as did Ariana, and once Damien had satisfied himself that we were right he moved on to the next step in solving the mystery. I asked him who the man was and Damien sounded out Hamilton, so then we looked him up online and read all about him for almost 20 minutes. My deficient public school education left me with no knowledge of Hamilton, but over the course of trying out different styles of homeschooling, I had seen a documentary and had a little knowledge of who Hamilton was. Damien and I talked about Hamilton's character quite a bit, since he was a rather impulsive man who could have spared himself a lot of suffering if he had learned to control his temper. Damien found it particularly interesting that Hamilton's oldest son died in a duel at the young age of 19. Since Damien struggles with impulsive outbursts, it is interesting that he honed in on that aspect of Hamilton. Our discussion led us to talking about the infamous duel with Aaron Burr, Mr. Burr's character and whether Hamilton really missed on purpose or not. With unschooling you never know where a "lesson" will take you, and I love the freedom to go wherever the kids lead. If I had planned this lesson (or if I hadn't managed to shed most my teacher training), I would have focussed on learning more about the history of money esp since Hamilton was Treasury Secretary, and maybe gotten into who the other men were on the bills, but I don't think I ever would have thought to talk about the good and bad aspects of Hamilton's character.

Advent Conspiracy

This is awesome and I had to share.

I am so excited to finally figure videos out! Now I just have to be careful not to add too many...

A New Outlook

With the trip to California finished I find that it is harder than I thought it would be to get back into the "daily grind." I am relieved that we are taking at least this month off swimming and that the co-op classes are almost finished (though we will still be involved in bi-monthly Catholic celebrations like an immaculate conception tea party, mardi gras party, etc). I have a few schemes to keep me busy this month and next month, so hopefully I won't overcommit when everything gets going again. I am pleased with the impression I made on the other families in the co-op with my teaching style (and they were excited to have a new way to do things), but overall I think it is more trouble than it is worth doing official classes. My kids love them and I really love teaching them, but I have a lack of tolerance for office politics and the long drive and late nights preparing for class. With my experiences in CA, I am beginning to think I lack finesse in general when it comes to politics and other "taboo" topics of any kind. It doesn't help that the election happened while we were in CA and that almost everything I cared about lost, but more than that I think I am finding resolve in my opinions and since I love a good debate, I can't manage to keep my opinions to myself.

I had a wonderful time bonding with my BIL and SIL as well as my cousin-in-law (I guess that is the term). Lisa is only 16 and she and I disagreed on pretty much everything, but we had a great 90 minute conversation about religion, history and politics and while neither one of us walked away with different opinions, it was awesome to have a non-heated debate about where we stood and why. I have not had that much fun disagreeing with someone in a long time. Lisa's small-town public education shined through as being far better than anything I have seen the city public schools churn out. It almost gives me hope in the public schools - though they are still very biased, at least they give some foundation so that the children can sound like they know what they are talking about (they may even be able to draw on that knowledge in the future to learn to think for themselves!). My experience with larger city-run public schools is that the kids come out knowing how to be "popular" or at least not picked on, all about how unfair society is and how the government can fix it if only the 'people' will get out of the way and where to go to get free condoms or abortions (they've also probably been to Planned Parenthood at least once to render one of those services). Of course there is more than that, and I'm sure my oversimplification will inspire indignation in many individuals, but this blog is for my opinions so tough luck! Those are the things that stick out most in my mind from my own city public education.

Another huge thing both J and I realized after the trip is that we are good with taking long extended family visits for quite a while. It was nice visiting, but we have established a routine within our own family that doesn't lend itself to imposing on another family very easily. There are just too many of us. When your family is outnumbered almost 3 to 1 for an entire week (8 of us to my in-laws 3), there is going to be stress and it isn't fair nor conductive of a good visit. I figure we will find our way down to visit again, but it will be in the context of a larger trip and we will take a day or two to go out with family, but we will have our own space at night. I would love to see all the missions along the El Camino Real, Yosemite, the CA beach and a smattering of other sites in CA with the kids. We'll just have to see how it goes. I also discovered that a trip to sites would not be as expensive as I feared. I'm even tempted to try for an East Coast trip this summer if gas prices stay as low as they are. I am so excited to be spending $2.25/gal for gas! It feels like I can drive again, but since I have lost many of my wasteful and expensive habits (like family outings to the store, running errands and eating junk food) we will be able to better afford and enjoy those trips.

I am looking forward to time at home with the kids to prepare for and make our extended family gifts, hopefully getting rid of lots of junk around the house, getting caught up on housework, making house repairs and things like my garden prep bigger priorities and accomplishing (or at least starting) my homeschool goals for this year. I am hopeful that the next couple months will be productive on those fronts. We will see...

A Brief Hello and We're Off!

My thoughts on being too busy were unfortunately more accurate than I care to admit - hence a 3 month hiatus from writing! I have already dropped helping with Jr High youth group. I would love to help, but it is like a drug, I will not be able to limit my "help" unless I am not needed. Besides, as Ariana gets older I am really enjoying homeschooled kids a lot more than their schooled counterparts. I also dropped taking over the local social get-togethers, someone else stepped in and handled that. Yeh! I like it when someone else steps in and makes things work! I'm probably going to let a bit more go too, because the kids want to "be home" more. I'm not making any commitments on dropping things yet though.

The co-op has been a lot of fun! I really like the kids and parents involved I would be sad to leave, but I did tell the kids we would take a bit of a break so that we are not running around at least 3 days out of the week. For the remaining 5 weeks, I just need to work on preparing for class more than 12 hours before the class begins. I manage to get it done, but 4-6 hours of sleep and the stress of running around to get everything together in the remaining 6-8 hours is a bit much, plus Jeff has had to bail me out every week so far because I run out of time. Yes, the plan is for 5 more weeks of classes, not 3 like the original plan, because then "my" classes match the preschool and babysitting schedule. I am looking forward to the extra classes because we have been having so much fun. I am actually kinda sad that we will miss one class for our trip to CA. The CA trip plans are a story for another time.

I'm now off to the dentist (where I can work on prep for class next week, maybe?) and then trying to clean the disaster that is the house after almost 2 months of me being sick with one illness or another.

This Year is Shaping up to be Just Right...right?

I tend to overcommit myself every summer and then stress out until things drop off in the Fall and Winter. By Spring I am bored and desperate for more things to do, so I start the whole cycle over again. This year my goal is to try and find that elusive happy medium before the year starts. So far...
I am the leader of the Catholic Homeschool group we belong to of about 135 families (I have awesome members on the board so I shouldn't have that much to do)
Trying to do more 'organized' school with the kids this year
Help out if necessary running the Middle School youth group at our local parish (Ariana will be one of the kids involved and I want to make sure it is a good experience if they will accept help)
Participating in a new Homeschool Co-op that will offer activities and maybe classes for the kids
Possibly take the lead in social get-togethers that another more local homeschool group needs
Then I get to be chauffeur for Cub Scouts, Swimming/Ballet, Little Flowers, CCD, Girl Scouts, etc. I am cutting out OMSI classes at this point because I don't know what gas prices will do, but it may get added in later.
I also have some writing projects on the side that could go a long way to help bring in more income if I can find the time to do them.

This may seem like a lot to commit to, but I have never made a good stay-at-home anything, so these things should keep me content. The Youth Group is the only thing I am afraid to do and that is only because of how much I love Youth Ministry. I am afraid that a taste will not be enough and I will end up more involved than I can handle.

Right now my leadership position is almost too much, but I think things will get better as the year starts. Since I am part of a whole new committee, we have to learn the ropes, review policy and figure out where the year will go. Once the basics are down, we will just be overseeing things. I am excited about the new year and look forward to the lessons I will learn - who knows, maybe I will be able to finally become comfortable talking in front of a group.

If anything has to go it will probably be 'organized' school. I have stated the supposed need for "more organized school" every year for the last 3 years and it has never materialized, so I am not stressing about it. I think my proclaimation of more organization is a defense mechanism when I am around family and friends who do not approve of unschooling. My plan for "more organized school" this year is actually relatively simple and would still put me firmly in the unschooling realm. When I have described what unschooling means to me I have had several people suggest that I should create a new term because it is not what they think of as unschooling. I will expand on this in another post.
My four goals with school this year:

1. Put up a timeline that the kids can add to whether pictures, words, symbols, whatever
2. Add a poster of the succession of Popes to our walls of educational posters
3. Start planning our trip across the country by collecting info on the states, looking up landmarks, campgrounds, etc
4. Write down lesson or subject ideas for the kids in a planner, so that they can look up and do work whenever they want. Since some subjects are progressive I don't know what I will be writing down, but I'm sure I can figure something out.

I am looking forward to however this year turns out, as long as it is better than 2006 was!

Getting started

I have started and restarted this blog a few times with different posts. I am finally ready to say that this is the last first post I am doing. I don't know where I will go with my posts or if I will have a set plan for who I invite and what content I have. I'm just going to go with it and see where this blog ends up.
My biggest 'problem' has been the immense responsibility I feel in posting my thoughts online for others to read (however few it may be). I have plenty of thoughts on a broad range of topics, and many of my opinions are fluid (and may change over time on some issues), but I do not have enough experience and education to feel like an authority on any subject (I have a tendency to sound like I do though). I know why I have the opinions I do and I am very fond of logic and research so I am comfortable with where I stand, but the responsibility of possibly turning people away from what is good scares me. I have done enough damage in my life and I am so scared of doing more that I prefer being in the background where no one sees me, doing the best I can to make a difference without recognition or blame. I know that God sees everything and knows exactly how my actions and words hurt or heal, but putting myself out here like this is a whole new level for me. I will just have to see where this all goes.