I Had a Birthday

 I am now 52 years old.

My children are ages 9, 9, 11, 12, 12, 13, 14, 17, 20, 21, 22, 24.

I have been homeschooling for over 20 years.

Prior to that, I was a public school teacher (middle school English, K-3 special ed, and K-12 substitute).

I find myself feeling very reflective about self, family, home, spiritual growth, marriage, goals, wishes, dreams, etc.

Rather than try to put my mental ramblings into reasonable, readable sentences, I'll say this:  It's been a wild ride, and I'm grateful for the life I've lived thus far.

I feel very aware of how few homeschooling years remain to me.

Oh!  How I want to make them count!

This week I did a rather good job at making memories with my children.

The teens and I continued The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin and our American Literature text.  The best moment of the week was reading The Declaration of Independence from beginning to end. 

I cried.

(Just a little)

The kids (I read it aloud while the younger kids were at the table) and teens were mostly struck with awe and satisfaction.

Little Princess said, "This should be required reading regularly for our leaders.  So many of them are doing the very things The Declaration said we were fighting against!" 

Yup.

The younger kids and I finished The Lilac Fairy Book.  I'm replacing it with A Child's Garden of Verses and D'Aulaire's Greek Myths.  The kids have done lots of math, and we've continued reading our other books.

We also baked cookies! 

I bought a triple pack of gluten-free cookie mix at Costco.  Each team of two kids mixed up one batch.  And then we ate them!

We also had a fire, roasted hot dogs, and toasted absolutely perfect marshmallows.

Don't you want an apple right now!?!?!?

Looks like he's communing with heaven.

Ladybug's marshmallow is so gooey, it's falling off.  She barely caught it!

What's he thinking about?

Ladybug turned her marshmallow goo into hard candy.  It was quite a scientific process!  (And then we read about chemical changes in our chemistry book the next day!!)

We also took a day trip to a nearby natural history museum.

(Photo dump coming!)

This is the face Lola made when Little Princess told her to smile. :)
Such a difference in a couple of 9-year-olds!

Comparing chimp and human DNA

It was so enjoyable to have big kids that could wander around in 2s and 3s according to interest and energy! 

I printed scavenger hunts and check-off sheets before we left for the museum, and some of the kids were so industrious, filling out their sheets completely.  Other kids didn't care for the sheets, preferring to just be immersed in the moment.

And I was fine with both.

It was hard work to get there because Brother had a breakdown of sorts, and we almost didn't get to go.  My smartest move?  Making sure he knew we wanted him to come then leaving him to think while I quietly continued preparing food and drink for the outing.  When he had enough space to change his mind, we were ready to go!

We had a park day with a couple of American Rhythm families.

This is the only picture I took--Baymax asked me to document him at the top of the climbing structure.

Between the three moms, we had 17 kids ages 2 mos-19 years.  At one point all of the kids but the baby were playing together at the zip line.  We moms watched the strong tween/teen boys launch the other kids down the line as hard as they could.  Kids were flying all over the place, and everyone was laughing.

I had the opportunity to hold the deliciously squishy baby girl in my arms while she napped, and I soaked it up as long as I could.

The teens talking and laughing together was extremely fun to watch.  The younger kids band together and play so well all of the time, but the teens always struggle a little bit to connect.  They were so well connected that they laughed over loose tooth memories, hairbrushes, and water bottles.  The younger kids wore themselves out playing crazy tag games on the structures, but we moms didn't want to pack up and go home as long as we could hear the teens communing.

But it was eventually time, and everyone was happy to go except the baby . . . I had to put her in her car seat, and she told us in no uncertain terms that she'd rather still be sleeping to the rhythm of a heartbeat coming from a warm chest.

Little Princess headed off to Encampment Staff Training; we're going to pick her up in just a couple of hours.

Her medical boot makes her easy to find!

The last event I want to write about this week was an opportunity I had to be a mentor to a young mom getting ready to homeschool her little ones.  Homeschooling had never been part of her plan, but she lives in a not-so-good school district, and she had been quite unimpressed with her oldest's K year.  It was fun to imagine starting over again, preparing ideas that would help her get started finding her own rhythm and meaning and joy, purposely leaving out certain kinds of information to keep her from getting too overwhelmed.

Which kind of brings us back to where I started this post--reflecting on my years of motherhood and homeschooling.

Nine years left . . . it's gonna fly by.