Let it Snow!

It’s snowing! Living in the South, this is quite an event. We usually only get one or two snowfalls a year, so two “snow events” in a week is pretty amazing. Earlier I had classical music going while looking out at the snowfall. It was a very tranquil moment.

While the accumulation is beautiful, there is something else that I really enjoy about the snow…

Here in the South, when it snows, everything gets cancelled! It is awesome! No soccer games, no martial arts classes, no parties, no church events! We get to stay home. 

As I look out the window, I can see dads playing with their small children. Kids are playing outside, building snowmen and having snowball fights. The neighbor’s kids are over here playing with mine.

We are usually too busy for all of these things.  We have too many events to go to, too many places to be, too many practices for too many games.

And of all of the things that were cancelled today, how many were really all that important to begin with?  I think you know the answer…probably not too many. Time to simplify and cull the wheat from the chaff. Days like today remind me how much chaff I have in my life.

Let’s hear it for the snow!

What is Education?

Being the new year, I have been writing down short term and long term goals. One of my long term goals is to raise educated, responsible, spiritual children. Then I was challenged to get more specific.  What does each of those mean? How can I tell when I get there? Here is what I came up with…

Responsible – They are able to take care of themselves physically and financially. They are able to think through to the outcome in order to choose a course of action and then take full responsibility for that course of action.

Spiritual – They are in constant communication with God and make choices based on Divine guidance.

Educated – …

As you can see, I left educated for last because this one left me a little stumped.

What does it mean to be educated?

When I went to school, we learned a bunch of facts and read certain list books. Is that what it means to be educated?

I want more than that for my children. I want them to be able to form their own opinions. I want them to be able to write and speak eloquently about those opinions. I want them to be able to make sound financial and business decisions. I want them to know how to resolve conflicts and live in harmony with their families and neighbors. And there is so much more.

Shouldn’t all of that be part of their education?

So many times we focus only on the “book learning” part of home schooling. “Which spelling, math, or grammar program are you using?”etc.  But to send well-rounded young adults into the world, I think it is more important to be able to know how to invest money than to know how many protons are in the nucleus of a Beryllium atom (4).

What do you think is important to learn before leaving home?

Our Homeschooling Schedule

Here is our daily schedule:

• 8:00 am  Chores completed
• 8:30 am  Breakfast
• 9:00 am  School Work
• 1:00 pm  Lunch
• 1:30 pm  Free Time
• 5:00 pm  Afternoon chores completed
• 6:30 pm  Dinner
• 7:00 pm  Evening chores completed
• 9:00 pm  Bedtime

Here is what happened today:

• 8:00 am  Both children still in bed.
• 8:30 am  On child up. The other still in bed.
• 9:00 am  Both children up. One eating breakfast. No chores done. Trying to get in the school work we do together so I can get to my dentist appointment by 10:45.
• 1:00 pm  Get a call from the children saying they are having lunch without me. I have gone to the grocery store and run a few other errands after spending over an hour at the dentist.
• 1:30 pm  Still running errands. One child calls repeatedly for school work help. Other child calls hubby to try to get router security codes to hook up the Wii to the internet (which she is not supposed to do).
• 5:00 pm  Racing to martial arts class. Got home around 3:30; unloaded groceries; helped children with schoolwork. Some, but not all of the morning chores are completed.
• 6:30 pm  Fast food dinner.  Hubby has a meeting and so will not be home for dinner. Pick up something on the way home.
• 7:00 pm  School completed. Chores still not completed.
• 9:00 pm  I have a class that starts now. Hubby still not back from his meeting. Children will go to bed around 10:30.

We’ll see what happens tomorrow!

Overcoming Shyness?

Homeschooling is different from what I envisioned when my daughter was a preschooler and I was making the agonizing choice of whether to put her in preschool or keep her at home.

She was in a Mother’s Morning Out program when she was 2.  I had just had my son and thought that if she was in MMO a few days a week, it would give her good “socialization time” and give me some alone time with my baby.  Of course, it didn’t work out that way.

I was hoping the MMO program would help bring my daughter out of her shell.  She would have been considered shy if we had been looking for labels.  She kind of takes after me in my younger years in that respect, so I felt that I understood what she was going through. But I didn’t know how to help her feel more comfortable around people.  Getting her around other kids seemed go along with conventional wisdom.

But instead of becoming more outgoing, she was becoming more introverted.  Even when I picked her up, I would ask her what happened in class and maybe I got “I’ll tell Daddy.” – which she never did. I think instead of helping her rise to meet some sort of social challenge, the whole situation was just overwhelming to her.

As for my baby boy…he would sleep in the back of the car while I ran errands. So much for one-on-one time.

Needless to say, I didn’t put her in preschool. She has been home with me ever since – and at church and Girl Scouts and YMCA Adventure Guides and martial arts and swim team and enrichment classes and, and, and.

Now, at 11, she is very outgoing with kids her own age and younger.  When we go camping, it is very likely that she will come back to the campsite with at least one new friend.

She is still warming up to adults.

I guess I’ll go into my expectations of homeschooling in another post.

Starting Back with School

Momentum is a wonderful thing when it comes to school work.  When we have momentum, the work gets done quickly and easily. Sometimes the kids even try to get up early and do all of their work before I get up. It is awesome!

But when you lose the momentum…those can be long days.

 We have been homeschooling for over 6 years now, but I still have not found a good way to transition from break back to doing school work again. We are like that train slowly moving out of the station.

We’ve tried starting back gradually, with just a few main subjects, and we’ve tried starting back with the full load. Either way, it is a slow moving train.

We actually do what we call “mini-school” over the summer so that we don’t atrophy all together.  Our “mini-school” includes things like simple math problems to keep the multiplication tables sharp and special stuff that would be overlooked during the school year like typing or handwriting. That has worked pretty well for us.

I think I will try something like that over shorter breaks too. I think it is about keeping the rhythm of the day…sticking to the routine.

Any ideas?

How Many Books Do I Need?

I love books.  Granted, I don’t actually read as many of them as I would like.  But I love them none the less.

Actually, I think it is the possibilities that books hold that I love.  They represent what I can know, the experiences I can have, or who I can become.  If I could only get through them!

I get about 1/3 of the way through most books and lose interest.  Put them down to be discovered later under piles of other books I have not finished.  If there are exercises to be done at the end of each chapter, I probably left off at the end of chapter 1…maybe 2, because I didn’t have the notebook and pen handy.

I want the knowledge the books hold, but being a fairly slow reader, I am not patient enough to search through the pages for the nuggets.

Most of my reading lately has been about creating a better life spiritually and monetarily.  And I am not finding much new information that is worth the search. 

How many seminars, lectures, workshops, books, articles, etc. do I need to go through before I hear that one statement, law, or question that puts it all into place and makes it all easy? I think the answer approaches infinity.  I don’t think there is that one statement that will put it all into place for me and make it easy.

What is occurring to me is that I probably have all the knowledge I need to live the life I want to live, but I am not applying what I know.  That is the kicker.

I understand the principles, but I am not applying them.

Where do I start?

Getting Rid of the Stuff!

We usually take our Christmas decorations down on New Year’s Day. I always feel a sense of great accomplishment when we are not the last house with Christmas lights still up.

But this year we were at my grandfather’s funeral on New Year’s Eve, so we were not around to get our traditional packing up done.  So now we are into January, and I can see the angel and tree outside shining brightly. The festive decorations that brought such joy over the holidays now feel like a bunch of clutter.

And it is not just the Christmas decorations. I am feeling clutter all around. It is time to get rid of stuff!

I think that I am going to have to kick into gear with the Fly Lady. I have followed the FlyLady program in the past and really liked it.  You can find it at www.flylady.com.

She has you declutter, clean, or straighten up in 15 minute segments.  You can do anything for 15 minutes, right? You also have 15 minutes to spare somewhere in the day.

There is a weekly general cleaning that she spells out, but she has recommended areas that you concentrate on each week. By the end of the month, you have covered the whole house.  And if you did 15 minutes a day, you have actually spent 7.5 hours getting the house cleaned and straightened up.  Of course, once I get going, it is hard to stop at 15 minutes.  But it is nice to know that I can.

There is more stuff on the site now then when I followed the program a few years ago.  The site itself looks a bit cluttered to me. She also has many associated product for sale. But the general program is free. Just look at Beginner Basics and FLYing Lessons in the left column. 

Off to tackle the spice drawer…for 15 minutes!

Are You Really Ready?

For years my husband and I have shared the “moving out to the country” dream.  We can feel our bodies relax as we head out of the city and into the less densely populated areas.  He is already a beekeeper, and I think he would enjoy puttering around in the garden as long as our existence didn’t depend on it.

He currently has a stable, fairly secure, 9-5 job that doesn’t require him to travel too much. We are able to pay the bills and take vacations. But there is still the inkling that there is another lifestyle we would like to try. Maybe it is a “grass is always greener” notion, but you never know until you try it out.

We actually bought 12 acres a little over an hour north of here a few years ago. We had plans for the house drawn up and made a few improvements to the land.  Then we chickened out and sold the place.

Our plans included my husband continuing to work at his current job. The commute and having him well over an hour away all day felt too far away. We also wanted to be involved in our current activities which would require driving to the city a few days a week. 

The bottom line…we still wanted the safety net, the life line to the life we already had, the life that was comfortable. But I know that to grab something new, we often have to let go of what we already have.

I gave my husband the following scenario:

Someone in the next state knocks on the door and says he wants to swap houses…for keeps. He has 20 acres with a big stream, a nice house, guest house, and barn. It is a great property, but he really needs to be in our area, and our house would really meet his needs. Do you swap knowing it would mean leaving the job and the area?

It took him a little while to agree to the swap. His dream was handed to him on a silver platter, and he hesitated.

I am glad he was honest about it. His concern was about financial security. But it seems that with every unfulfilled dream, there is some concern, some fear that is holding us back. Once that fear is overcome, then the dream can become reality.

Are you really ready for your dream?

Being Remembered

So I have given some (a little) thought to the idea of how I want to be remembered.

Here is what I came up with:

• Always put family first. No matter what was going on, always made time for the children.
• A successful businesswoman who’s business really helped make people’s lives better.
• An excellent example of living in joy.  Was always present in the moment, appreciating and having fun.

The common theme to all of my answers is they are things I need to work on.  I guess I have my ”To Do” list for the year. 

How about you?

New Year, New Choices

Well, it is the the first day of the new year, and I have already blown the traditional “eat only healthy foods” resolution.  I started out the day well, but we were travelling today.  Around 3 pm without sugar and caffeine, I was dozing off.  So I dug into the goodies our neighbors gave us before we left … just to keep up my energy, you know.  After that, you might as well just start again tomorrow, right? So it was pizza for dinner.

We were actually coming back from my grandfather’s funeral.  He was 96 when he passed the day after Christmas. He was the epitome of the life well lived. He was a small town doctor, who was a true community leader. He helped found the local hospital, the local theater group, the county SPCA, and the local museum. He was involved in the historical society, Boy Scouts, and American Legion.  He was proud of his service as a flight surgeon and loved to tell us tales of his adventures.  He also collected stamps and had a passion for orchids.

He continued to make house-calls long after other physicians had stopped.  He used common sense and probably knew as much about human psychology (although not formally trained) as human anatomy.  When you talked to him, you knew you had his full attention. He always had a positive attitude and an encouraging word, making everyone feel special. He was continuously described as a gentlemen.

Even though he had quit practicing medicine exactly 20 years ago, the church was full of friends, former patients, colleagues, and other well wishers. It was clear he had touched many lives.

While paying tribute to my grandfather this weekend, I was also thinking about my own life. 

How will I be remembered?

Who’s life have I made better?

Do I make people feel special?

I know my grandfather didn’t do what he did with the intent of having people say good things at his funeral.  He was just doing what he thought was right. But I still think that pausing to look at the path you’re on is a good thing.

With this introspection due to my grandfather’s passing and the beginning of the new year, it seems like a great time to start making some conscious choices about my life.