A Fly On My Homeschool Wall

Our basement right now I have been only half-present with my family for the past couple of weeks.   As Baymax said, "All Mom does is sew, give us food, and sleep!" And he was absolutely right. But the skirts are finished. I still have accessories to make, but Nature Angel can help with those, and they are such a small project compared to 14 tiered skirts. Did I have offers to help? Yes. But I was designing each skirt as I went.  I was using sheets, cut up men's XXL shirts, and bed skirts--all from the thrift store--to make skirts individually without a pattern. It would have taken me as long to put kits/instructions together as it did for me to sew them.  I even talked it over with our director to make sure I wasn't being stupid, and she agreed that it made sense for me to just get the job done. And they're so cute!!!! Hopefully I'll post pictures next week after our dress rehearsal. Nature Angel sewed 3 new skirts for our opener. I didn't have to sew them...

 Obviously, our homeschool goes on as planned (mostly) when the weather turns bad, but the extreme winter weather has caused most--if not all--of the kids' activities to be canceled. We're starting a round of winter colds. But we dove into regular school all day Monday.  Nature Angel finished her star blanket while I read To Kill a Mockingbird to the teens. She hasn't blocked it yet--hence the curling points--but isn't it so pretty? It used to be half of another blanket that she started.  When it turned out much bigger than she thought it would be, she searched for more yarn, but it turns out that this yarn is now "vintage" and costs an arm and a leg per skein.  It sat half-finished for a year or more until she was inspired to do this star. It was so funny to watch one blanket unravel and turn slowly into another blanket. The teens and I still have most of To Kill a Mockingbird to finish, but we did complete the quarter 1 exam for The Mystery of History v...

 We started the week well. Morning Meeting, Symposium, and the first walk since last May! Ants! That's not a booger!  It's sap she picked off a tree and played with for the rest of the walk! Deep in conversation Jes' chillin' And then Brother was angry and throwing things and swinging sticks as weapons with the rest of us trapped in the dining room. I tried so hard to work with him. But I ended up calling 911 and his psychiatrist and his case manager and Sir Walter Scott. He ended up running away. He was gone long enough that I had a chance to throw dinner in the crock pot, organize lunch, suggest some nature documentaries for the kids to watch as school and as a rest, and pack a bag of snacks and reading material for the mandatory psych eval that was sure to follow. The police found him.  (May I repeat my enthusiastic refrain that our police are the best!!) We went to the hospital. He was deemed fit to return home.  (I agreed.) We all spent the rest of the day in a ...