A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

Lola made me laugh this week . . . about my bed. I love a well-made bed.  When my bed is made, it is a sign that I am feeling a healthy sense of order in my world. When it is not made . . . well, that's a sign that life is hard. It's been hard for going on 2 1/2 years now. Intermittently, I've made my bed for a day here or a week there, and of course it gets made every time I wash bed linens, but mostly I've been in survival mode, and so has my bed. This week I had a day when I got it made.  The morning went smoothly, and I got a lot of good things accomplished in my early quiet time.  While the kids did their chores, and the oats simmered on the stove, I slipped into my room to give my bed a sweet facelift. Lola gets tucked into my bed each night, and once she's asleep, I move her to her own bed. In her small experience, the covers are always open and ready to receive her. Well, the evening of the day I made my bed, I carried Lola into the bedroom f...

It's Saturday morning, but it feels like a weekday.  I keep checking the clock and mentally reviewing what our schedule will be, and then I pause and shake my head as I realize that our schedule won't include school, but it will include a thousand other things that must be done. *Our little babysitting friends will be here in 20-ish minutes. *I need to make a menu for the week. *GROCERY SHOPPING *Drop off salad for 50 for the memorial service of a church member by 10 am *Pixie's off to ballet class *Finish the housing/schooling/car use contract for Rose Red (that should have been done last week, but I've hit road blocks). *Organize everyone through Saturday chores to prepare for the Sabbath *Finish up my Relief Society lesson for tomorrow *Put soaked beans in the crock pot--with some veggies that still need to be chopped *Thaw ground beef for dinner *Help Little Princess finish her primary talk on "Jesus Christ is our Savior" *The teens are all he...

Starting at the end of last week, this week became a week of incredible mental, emotional, physical, and spiritual work. And it is not over. How interesting is it that as the week began I was finishing up Deuteronomy and reading how Moses told Joshua to "Be strong and of good courage" several times.  Then I began Joshua and found that the Lord himself repeated the same advice several more times.  Then I read two different bloggers who wrote on the theme of courage. It has been good advice for me. I have wanted repeatedly to give up.  The work has been actually too hard--too fraught with fear, hurt, collateral damage, and ignorance. But I have not. And I have received encouragement along the way. In the mean time, the kids' delightful aunt and uncle in California gave us their unused Nikon camera.  It is a VERY NICE camera.  It was kind of for Pixie because she's such a beautiful photographer, but she's dancing so much that picture-taking is on hold...

This afternoon Mister Man told me, "Dad's working on the chicken coop." "Oh, are you going to help?" I asked. "No, I'm watching my wind car to see if it moves." "That might take a long time." "Yes.  It's not very windy today.  But I am very patient, Mom.  I am very patient." Here's the wind car we built together this week.  It was a Christmas present, and he's been waiting for the right time to build it.  I think I agree with my 6-year-old boy that he is quite patient! I did teach him that it would move if he blew into the sail.  But as well as being patient, he's also quite literal, and he wants to see the wind push his wind car. It is an early spring day . . . even if the calendar still reads late winter. Things are waking. The robins are singing their hearts out every morning and evening. We went in search of one today, and Nature Angel found it!  A gorgeous male just letting the worl...

As I wrote in depth about Tuesday, I thought it might be kind of pointless to write about the week in general. Especially as I don't have any more pictures to share. But stuff did happen that deserves to be recorded. The teens and I had a book club meeting on Friday about Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin.  It was a challengingly sexual and violent book to read--not one I'd have chosen had I known (and I did a powerful lot of editing as I read aloud).  However, it opened doors for lots of discussion, and the story is so compelling that I'm really glad we've at least been exposed to it. Due to the fact that zero copies were available at the library and the shipping delays in the copy I ordered, we didn't get to start this 263 page book until Wednesday!  So when book club time came, in spite of our best efforts, we still had 59 pages left to read.  We pulled up an online synopsis so we could participate in the general discussion, but we're g...