A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

 I am grateful for many blessings: My husband My faith My kids My extended family Homemade bread Finishing a project Waking up to snow Snuggling under warm blankets in a cold room Clean laundry Leftovers Laughing kids To name a few. I'm also grateful that even though this week almost killed me with the cooking for Thanksgiving Day (I'm a really good cook.  We eat well every day.  The excess of a Thanksgiving meal has been slowly wearing me down over the past several years.  If I had my way, we'd celebrate with a pot of homemade soup and fresh homemade bread dripping with melted butter.), it ended up as a week that healed my heart and mind a little bit. The teens and I kept up with grammar and history M-W. Here they are working on a weekly review included with the Mystery of History program. The younger kids and I only managed to get to Bin School once this week, but we did math 3 days. I think they got out clay M-W. Mister Man really enjoyed creating Pokemon sculptures. La

 The kids and I call their workbook school "Bin School." It's separate from math, reading, nature studies, and anything hands-on or real-life that we do. After several weeks of not doing Bin School, we pulled them out again this week and had 4 mostly successful days. Actually, she's drawing just for fun, but I didn't take any Bin School pictures, so this will do.  In addition, we had lunchtime reading more regularly  (still loving The Lilac Fairy ). And I checked on math completion instead of just rolling with it. While waaaay not perfect, it's sure an improvement in our academic schedule! We're also really enjoying Tal: His Marvelous Adventures with Noom-Zor-Noom by Paul Fenimore Cooper.  It's like lots of fairy tales within a fairy tale.  The kids groan every time I have to stop reading aloud. We had our second and last dance performance for the semester. The pictures are in reverse order of how they happened, so we'll begin at the end and work o

 I know what the final push was that caused me to break, but I don't why. I couldn't stop crying. I told my kids I needed a time out to cope with big feelings. My two biggest boys patted me on the back and told me, "It's okay, Mom.  It's going to be okay."   Which made me cry even harder. Their sweet kindness! By the time I got to my room, I was sobbing and hyperventilating, so I called my mom to talk me down. She's a family therapist, and she both listened and said all of the right things. When we hung up, I was breathing normally and mostly composed. I came out to find Brother cleaning the kitchen.   He just wanted to serve, so he did. It's kind of like whiplash--living with him. Less than a week later, he disappeared twice in one day because he was angry. (We had to call 911 for the second disappearance.) I wonder what it is like to BE him. Today is the first day I haven't cried for significant portions of the day.  (It's only 1:06 pm though

 It was NOT a suicide attempt. He was actually trying to redirect anger at me (I interrupted his self-designed morning workout to remind him to do his chores) to another place. Which is good! Unfortunately, he chose to smash both hands into the bathroom window.  It shattered and cut his wrists in several places. Which is bad. Sir Walter Scott was home, so he checked out the cuts and bleeding, reporting to me that a stitch or two might be a good idea.  I texted him Brother's med list, psychiatrist's name, case manager's name and phone number, and list of diagnoses.  Thus armed, he and Brother were the first in line at urgent care for the day. Two stitches, some derma bond, a handful of Steri-Strips, and a tetanus booster later, they were home. Nature Angel and Little Princess handled breakfast and Morning Meeting while I cleaned up all of the broken glass . . . so thoroughly! Not all of our days were like that, but it was a rough week because I signed myself up for more than