Change is Good

I am getting ready for our next school year. I am SUPER excited about how it is shaping up. We've decided to enroll Jane in some online courses instead of participating in a co-op. She'll be taking a history course and algebra 2 online and we are both excited about it. The name of the game for next year is "simplifying" and we are doing a great job!

As I said, we will not be going to co-op, so that frees up Friday. We are also dropping piano which not only frees up our schedule, but saves us money. I am hoping after the summer to go down to 1 day of work during the week and 2 weekend shifts plus maybe a few weeknights a month. That will really make a HUGE difference in my time! I LOVE my job, I really do! But I am just spread too thin and I need more time with my girls and for housework, etc. Marty has been such a tremendous help. He does laundry, cleans the house, yard work, etc. when I'm working Saturdays. I work at the girls dance studio on Saturdays 9-1 and about 2 Saturdays a month I work at the archdiocese. This past Saturday I worked from 9a.m.-10p.m. Obviously, I get nothing done at home on days like that!

There are a few other changes that will occur next year. One is that Sam will be going away to college. Very weird. This is possibly the most difficult change. It was weird when our oldest, Martin, went away. We all noticed the empty spot at the table. It was weird when Leo went away. But with Sam, it seems drastic. There will be 4 at the dinner table, instead of 6 or 7. Strange. However, everything has it's pluses and minuses. The plus here is that we will have fewer car issues. We've had 3 drivers sharing 2 cars for school, and 4 different jobs among us. It's fine; carpooling works. But with Sam away and me home more, it will be easier. Another change is that Jane will be getting her driver's license, hopefully by the end of summer. That makes a difference with dance. Finally, she will be able to take herself to dance and maybe Ruth, as well. I'm not sure what the dance schedule will look like for next year. Jane's schedule won't change much, but Ruth's is up in the air right now. I am hoping it, too, works out with our "simplifying" theme!

One final change I've made that I'm really excited about is dinner. I have a friend who is selling Wildtree products and I love it! Since my life has been what it's been for the past couple of years, I haven't done my usual grocery routine. In the best of times I would make a menu, clip coupons, check the store ads, and do my shopping. I haven't had time to keep that up. Too much frozen pizza, too much wasted food. With Wildtree, Marty and I spend a couple of hours on a Saturday or Sunday (after I have shopped with the grocery list for whatever meal plan I'm making) assemblying 10 good, healthy, freezer meals. So far, we have loved them all and it takes me maybe 20-30 minutes to put dinner together. The 10 meals last us 2-3 weeks with leftovers and a frozen pizza here or there. It has been so great. I am so happy and satisfied to know that we are eating healthier. Wildtree not only has organic, low sodium, low sugar, products (and grapeseed and coconut oil), but they give you all the recipes and products so you can duplicate what you've done. Well, this is starting to sound like a commercial! I can assure you, no one is paying me; I just really love the time saver and the good food. You can check out their website: www.mywildtree.com\cathydaub if you want more information. We will be trying to get our pool up this weekend. YAY!! Looking forward to a beautiful summer and hoping our changes bring a less busy fall!

Spring

This is a wonderful time of year! I love the rain, the new growth, the busy birds and our new school books! Just when things are 'slugging' along and you think you are not going to make it out of winter, spring arrives along with the new books for next school year. It gives me renewed energy and I get all revved up again.

Even the girls love looking through their new books and seeing what they are going to be doing. In Jane's case, she has to finish what she is doing this year; all her stuff is for next year. Ruth, however, has finished her geography, math, and history so she'll begin new books right away. I bought a wonderful book on Greek history that she'll start reading, taking notes, and then writing a summary at the end of each section. Ruth loves Greek history, so that will be a fun book for her to use. It includes a section on Greek foods (I smell gyros). Following the sections on Greek art, furniture, and currency we will go on a field trip to the Art Museum. We LOVE the Art Museum! Ruth is also starting her Saxon 6/5 Math and I've looked through it and am wondering if it is too easy for her. I'll decide once our summer break gets here in July; I may just bump her up.

Jane is happy we've found a history book she likes. It's world history and it's a very readable book. In other words, it's not written like a text book but rather like a novel. She will be reading, taking notes, answering review questions (given in the book) and creating a timeline. Now I just have to find somewhere in the house where I can put the thing!! And, by the way, the conference went well and I think I did fine with my talk on intro to homeschooling; it was fun. I really enjoyed the people and there was a happy atmosphere throughout the whole conference. One of our vendors gave me a bottle of holy water that I took around both Friday and Saturday and asked God to bless our efforts and to send His Holy Spirit to fill the hearts of His faithful. That will be tradition from now on!

I just found out that Leo will be home for Easter this year and I'm very excited about that. We haven't had him home for Easter the last two years. I'm going to put out my hummingbird feeder in May and this year I'm going to plant a lilac bush. I feel like our house needs one and I'm looking forward to going to pick one out. I never love our house more than I do in the springtime! Happy Easter!!

Busy, busy, busy...

I haven't posted for a while. It's been so busy, I can't even decide what to write about. I've started a few drafts and then days go by and they are obsolete. One of the things that has taken up a lot of my time is the Catholic Homeschool Conference. I am the vendor coordinator and am going to give the Intro to Home Schooling talk. I'm not a person who gets nervous about talking in front of people, but I've had so little time to prepare that I'm wondering how this is going to go. I really want to do a good job. I keep trying to zone in on that one special message I want to get across. You know, the one most important thing to take away....but it seems to change daily. Mostly, I want to speak from the Spirit and not from myself. I love the conference, but it is time consuming!

Jane has been injured since Nutcracker. Turns out that her pointe shoes weren't right and she danced for months in them and did 4 shows with two pointe pieces per show (one 4 minute and one 7 minute). She kept telling me that she had this spot on her foot that was hurting. Being the sympathetic mom that I am, I said, "Well Jane, you're dancing 16 hours a week. Your feet are going to hurt. Soak them, massage them, take some ibuprofen and get used to it." Yup, that's the kind of mom I am! Seriously, though, I don't know much about dancing and I just figured it was normal pain that you here dancers suffer. Turns out she has deep bone bruises on both feet affecting mostly her last three toes. It's been NINE WEEKS of not dancing! That's a long time and we are all paying for it! What really got her back on the dance floor were the bio freeze treatments that speed healing of bruises. She's dancing again, limitedly. We are all relieved...Jane is not fun to live with when she can't dance!

My baby, Ruth, also came up with a neat little medical condition called Refractive Amblyopia. Basically, she is legally blind in her right eye. Yup. She's been telling me for years that her vision is blurry out of her right eye, but again, the mom I am said, "Well, look out of your left." There...problem solved. No, I did NOT say that, but I did discount what she was telling me. All evidence pointed to her being able to see. She had some rudimentary exams at the pediatricians - they never indicated a problem. My sister finally took her (Marty and I were out of town and I asked her if she would) to Sam's for one of their free health screenings and they said she had a big discrepancy between her two eyes. Well, an eye exam, a specialist visit, and voila! glasses! The good news is that her eyeball works fine, but her vision is SO bad out of that eye that her brain has stopped interpreting signals from that optic nerve. The specialist will be giving us exercises to try to retrain the connection. She was apparently born with this condition and her left eye compensates (20/20 vision out of that eye). So, my life has been vendors, doctors, dance, school, doctors, speakers, floor plans, doctors, etc. But these are the days to treasure. One day life will slow down and, God willing, I'll sit and smile and look back and enjoy the memories of these busy days.

Catching Up!

This is too funny!  I wrote this back in early December...about "catching up" and here I am just releasing it!  That seems fitting.  Here it is, warts and all:

It's been awhile.  My cup is overflowing with blessings that keep me happily busy.  It seems like everywhere in my life I am trying to catch up.  Catching up with my sewing, catching up with house chores, catching up with reading, baking, Christmas stuff.  I thought I'd take some time to catch up on my blog.

We are heavy into dance.  Jane dances 6-7 days a week now.  It's a total of anywhere from 12.5 hours to 16 hours a week with 6 of those hours being on Sunday afternoons for Nutcracker rehearsal.  Ruth dances 1.5-2.5 hours a week.  Her regular class is 1.5 hours long and then there is another class she sometimes picks up.  The house has dance shoes and bobby pins everywhere. 

Co-op is going okay.  Still not thrilled with things there.  Jane is still doing great in geometry and literature.  Once in awhile, she'll get stuck in geometry, but so far I've been able to help; sometimes by just guiding her to find the answer.  In literature, they just finished reading Hound of the Baskervilles and now they are reading Frankenstein.  She is whipping through them and does great in class and with the study guides and tests.  Chemistry is a different story!  She and I both hate it.  It makes our brain hurt....I'm not kidding.  Marty, my husband, said at the outset of homeschooling that he would be no help in science, so we are on our own.  Fortunately, the text is really good; it's Apologia science, Exploring Creation with Chemistry so it's a very student friendly text.  We are muddling through and every month that goes by, we say a little prayer of thanksgiving (and add a prayer for help for the next month).

Ruth is doing awesome.  She has finished her reading comprehension and her religion book on saints and her geography on eastern europe.  At co-op for geography we are studying the states, capitols, and identify continents and countries.  She is midway through her social studies, finished her science, and will finish her 4th grade math by the end of January.  Her english is moving slowly, but that's because I'm keeping her on pace with the co-op class.  In January, she'll begin a new science, new geography, new reading comprehension and 5th grade math.  Right now, Ruth is not liking piano, but that's because our teacher had the girls learn a trio on the piano that they are going to play for the recital and it's not going so well.  I think once that is over, she'll make friends with piano again.  She generally loves it.

I have been trying to get back into sewing.  I am sewing some elastic-waist sleep pants for Sam.  They are soft cotton flannel and have two pockets.  Everything is cut out and one whole leg is done and the pocket is sewn onto the second leg.  I am honestly not sure it's worth the effort.  Somehow, if I finish, I imagine that the endeavor will bring me a sense of accomplishment.  We'll see.

The house is a disaster.  The chore chart failed miserably.  I can't help but wonder if I had started with the house all clean, would that have made a difference?  I don't know.  No one seems to care but me.  I look at it (it being any room in the house) and sigh.  Then, one time, Jane came up and said, "What's wrong, mom?"  I sadly replied, "Just look at this mess.  When am I ever going to get it cleaned up?  It's horrible."

"It's not horrible, mom.  It's a happy, busy home!" said sweet Jane.  I looked at her and said, "Really?  Is that what you see?"  She smiled and nodded.  I'm gonna go with that....that sounds good.  Not sure that it's true, but I like it!

I'm still working 7:30-4:00 on Monday's and Wednesday's and teaching at the co-op on Friday mornings.  I still work at the dance school on Saturdays 9-1pm and it all seems to be working.  Sam's doing great his senior year.  Martin got a new, better job and is making plans to get back to school.  Leo will come home for the holidays this weekend.  There.  Now you're all caught up!

Reality Check

So, as it turns out, it's not enough to have a chore chart.  You have to actually look at it and then DO IT!  I think we stuck to it for one blessed week and I was so excited and thought, "Wow, this is really working."  I don't know what happened.  Life I guess.  We still try and I guess the benefit is that it got us all thinking that chores are not just for Saturdays anymore.  Overall, I'd say the house is staying cleaner, but I was hoping we'd stick to it long enough that it would become a habit.  Still striving; haven't given up yet!!

Our recent excitement has been a third dog.  Our son, Martin, found a stray and brought him home.  He is a pit bull and after referring to him as "the dog," I finally started calling him Bullet.  He had a wound that looked like he may have been hit by a bullet and he had been cared for but somehow gotten loose.  He was not micro chipped.  It's been a little traumatic.  We all fell in love with him; so sweet and gentle.  Our two dogs (both males) loved him as well which is miraculous, really.  Manny, our older dog, is the dominant one and loves other dogs, but Rocky does not like other dogs.  Rocky took to Bullet right away, though.  He was just SO BIG!  Marty and I prayed about it and both discussed ways we could make it work.  We kept him in the basement and hooked him up outside as often as possible.  It's funny how God answers prayers sometimes.  Over the last weekend, I just kept thinking, "I can't see this dog in my house.  It would be a train wreck." and went to bed Sunday night (early) praying about and thinking that we had to let him go.  Monday morning, as Marty was saying goodbye to go to work he said, "I think we need to take Bullet to a shelter."  I agreed.  Later that day, about lunch time, I get a call from the girls.  They are both upset, Ruth is crying.  Apparently, Bullet chewed up some stuff in the basement and peed in the basement (first time that had happened).  He also broke the lead in the backyard and the girls were beside themselves about what to do.  Marty went home to deal with the situation and calm the girls down, but boy, that made it abundantly clear that it just wasn't working.  Marty and Ruth took Bullet to a shelter that night.  It was difficult for all of us.  We had him just 10 days and we all loved him, but the reality was that we were not the best place for him. 

Co-op is going well.  I enjoy the classes I teach and the girls seem to enjoy their classes, too.  Ruth loves her art class and tells me I'm doing great with English and Geography (okay, she finds geography boring, but she said she is having "fun" in english!).  Jane loves her Geometry and Literature; not so fond of Chemistry!  I told her that's perfectly normal for most of us, just get through it.  I still struggle with whether co-op is helping more than it is hindering.  I guess the reality is that the girls enjoy it and especially for Jane, it is very helpful with her high school level courses.  I really enjoy learning along side her, but not having all the weight on my shoulders.  I guide her when she's stuck and help her to discern when it is time to ask the teacher for help.

Facing reality helps us to put aside what we want so we can see what is best.  I would love a cleaner, neater house, but the reality is that life is messy and it's not time for that right now so why stress about it.  We just keep trying to stay on top of it.  We all wanted to be the family that kept Bullet, but the reality is that would not have been in Bullet's best interest.  We did the right thing by that dog and often that is the hard, selfless thing to do.  Boy, wouldn't I love to not go to co-op on Fridays, but the reality is that it is good for all of us and we make good contributions there; so we go.  It's good to do a reality check when things are not working or when things feel uncomfortable.  Wishing you peace amidst your reality!!



 

About Those Bloody Chores!

Marty and I have tried to teach our kids personal responsibility.  From the age of about 3, we expect the kids to clear their own dishes from the table.  Our 4 year olds empty the utensils from the dishwasher; it's a great sorting activity for pre-schoolers (we use a stool so they can easily see into the utensil drawer and we empty any sharp knives).  At 5 years old, they can clean the front of the dishwasher, oven and refrigerator; spray windex and give them a couple of paper towels and they go to it.

Our kids have always been expected to do certain things like pick up after themselves, help set table, pitch in with yard work, help with grocery shopping and putting groceries away, and changing linens/make beds (I have to admit that I don't expect their beds to be made every morning, just what I call "straightened" and we make beds when company is coming).  As the kids grew up, we "assigned" certain chores.  The younger kids were expected to unload the dishwasher, clean bathroom sinks and toilets, and vaccum.  The older kids (usually starting freshman year) are responsible for taking the trash out which used to be twice a week, but is now only once a week.  As a junior or senior, I taught them how to do the laundry.  We used to do all these chores on Saturday mornings and the house would get cleaned up in no time.

This system worked until about the time Leo (our second oldest) went away to college.  Also, with me working Saturday mornings, it's just not happening.  We've been limping along with a system that no longer works.  Now, it's time to develop a new system.  The plan is to have a weekly schedule so things get done weekly, but not all on one day.  I figure that if five people take 10-20 minutes a day to do chores, that makes a big difference in the cleanliness of the house.  So, I made a color-coded chart that shows who does what on each day.  I'm excited!  I hope it will help us stay on top of the mess.  It sure can't hurt!!  Here's a picture of the rudimentary chart.  I hope you can read it; I'm new at this:)  Marty is at the top, in blue; followed by me in pink; Sam is orange; Jane is green and Ruth is purple.

The girls and I have the most chores, so it seems a little sexist.  However, when the boys were younger, they did the same chores the girls are now doing.  As they get older, they learn more about contributing to the household.  Sam is in his senior year with no less than 8 college credits to pass this year and working 15 hours a week at the grocery store.  He also buys and shares groceries and pays for gas.  My college age boys are also generous and contribute in ways that make me proud.  They do their own laundry and pitch in wherever they see a need and that is so gratifying to see.  As for my husband, well, his "Honey, do" list is never-ending!  In the end, it's about teaching that everyone pitches in whatever they have to offer.  Many hands make light work, right?  Right!

Summer's End

"Mom, did you know..." Follow that with any fact about birds and that's what I hear almost daily.  Ruth is focusing on science this month.  We've been back at school since August 5th.  I gave her the Apologia science book and just said, "Here, read this cover to cover."  She can't wait to tell me the stuff she's learning.  For instance, why the Dodo bird went extinct, how birds fly, how banding birds came about (something about King Henry IV and his pet Peregrines) and how birds mark their territory.  She is just consuming that book and I couldn't be happier.  She is picking and choosing what experiments interest her and we are doing just those.  After Labor Day, she'll be back to school full time, but right now it's just her science, math, and penmanship.

Jane is focusing on her algebra.  At the co-op this year she'll be taking chemistry, geometry and literature.  At home she will be doing history, typing, sewing, and religion.  She recently checked out a movie from the library called "Ballerina."  It was a documentary on 4 ballerinas and their rising careers.  At the end of the film (mostly subtitled because they all spoke french or russian) Jane tells me she wants to learn all about the famous ballerinas and famous ballets.  She says she's going to research it and write a paper on it.  Awesome!  I was so happy to hear her WANT to do a paper on something!  I so often have doubts about what we are doing, but then, along comes a moment.....and you are reassured, rewarded, re-inspired.

Speaking of doubts....I had many last year.  I had mapped out our lesson plan for my first year homeschooling a freshman and then took a "temporary" part-time job working two days a week!  That really threw the whole schedule off and I wondered if I was doing a good job at anything.  Jane is the one who continually works hard to convince me that it's okay.  In many ways, she is braver and stronger than I am!  This year, I am still working, but at least I get to plan for it.

I've planned to simplify our schedule.  I will still work Mondays and Wednesdays, except I'll have the third week of every month off.  We have co-op on Friday mornings from 9-12noon.  Piano lessons will be on Wednesdays while I'm at work.  That leaves us with Tuesdays and Thursdays completely free.  Jane will be dancing 5 times a week (7 if you count her demonstrating classes) and Ruth twice a week.  Any doctor's appointments, etc. will be scheduled on Thursdays or on Friday afternoons.  I'll also be working at the girls dance center on Saturdays from 9-1p.m.  All in all, I am excited that this year is more planned, organized and simplified.

Marty, Jane, and I are going to put together a list of household chores and a schedule of when they need to be done and by whom.  I have got to get on top of the house cleaning.  Sam has really urged me to have a garage sale this year.  Marty and I cleaned out the garage and already there is stuff on tables, cleaned and ready to go.  We will clean out the basement as well and that will add to the size of the garage sale AND to the cleanliness of our house!  Then I've got some rearranging to do on the main floor and I'll feel like I'm on top of it....finally.  With the money we make at the garage sale, we are going to go to Six Flags in October.  I can't wait!  Ruth has never gone and I hope all 7 of us can go (maybe more with girlfriends) but even if it is 3 of our kids, it will be fun. 

Summer is ending and a new school year is underway.  I love this time of year.  I am re-energized and full of hope and new ideas.  I know it won't all work out and time will come when I will be tired, overwhelmed, discouraged, but right now is a good time.  A time to look forward, a time to make plans, a time to savor summer's end!

P.S.  Here's a picture of our fairy garden.  See Mr. Frog?  And the "bird bath" and some strawberry plants.