Garbage

It was a typical early morning. I woke up to Ty restlessly talking in his sleep. As I entered the bathroom, I felt the wetness through my socks. It took a moment for my foggy mind to make the connection to Ty and his reckless pottying. I changed my socks and remembered Maddie lost another tooth last night! Shoot! I rummaged through my husband's dresser and my purse pockets and found 4 quarters. The girls were sound asleep as I entered their room. Slowly, I slipped my hand under the pillow, searching for an envelope. Wetness. More pee . . . ? I left the envelope with the quarters in the wet bed. 

An hour later, another puddle appeared in my bathroom. When I approached all the kids about the abundance of wetness that morning, they lied. That was it. I called my children in and had an adult fit. You know, that fleshy garbage of "poor me" and "do you have any idea how much I do around here?"

I sat in my son's room and cried. I cried over the piled up toys and the smell of pee in his bed. I cried for my lack of freedom since we felt called to homeschooling. 

Then I felt a little hand on my shoulder. "Mom, why are you crying?" 
Me: "Because I'm tired."
Maddie: "Why Mom?"
Me: "I just don't know why I can't be like other Mom's and just send you guys to school."
Maddie: "No Mom, we don't want to do that. (Crying) We are sorry. We will help you."

Then, in a perfect moment, all three children hugged me. 

At first I felt guilty for allowing them to witness this weakness. But then I realized that is the humanity that our children don't always see when we get alone time. My children are with me all the time so they see the good, the bad and the ugly. That morning, they saw me as a person with feelings and they responded with compassion and love. Perfection.

Heirloom Garden Woes and Homeschool Week 1 Progress

 Our new property has a very VERY large garden space. In April, I decided it ALL needed to be planted and ordered 15 packets of Heirloom Seeds online. While waiting for my shipment, I had visions of baskets of vegetables covering my kitchen counter. I daydreamed about what I could do to preserve the abundance of produce we would have. Well, sadly, our baskets are not full. Apparently there is a reason that GMO free/Organic seeds and food is more expensive. Most of the seedlings survived but were too suseptable to bugs and disease. Maybe I did it wrong? 

This harvest is from an ordinary seed packet from a local grocery store. There is clearly a difference / :

 On a more positive note, homeschool week one was fantastic. I got this! We stayed on schedule and completed all assignments. Our curriculum this year covers Creation to the Greeks and is so interesting! We wrapped up the week with a traditional Friday evening Sabbath dinner. Each of us had prayers to say, Mike said a blessing for each child individually and then a blessing over the bread and wine. Maddie led us in prayer before hand-washing and Sierra sang us a hymn.

 This year we will be learning about all the traditional feasts.

Homeschool Year #2

Throughout most of the year, I considered our decision to homeschool constantly. Was I teaching them well? Was I missing something? Would my patience hold out until summer. However, the main question I asked is what would we do this next school year. I dragged my feet through the final weeks of homeschooling year one. How in the world would I do it again?

Mike and I decided to add the girls to a charter school waiting list in order to have another possible option. Throughout the summer, I secretly hoped I would get an email that they had been accepted into the school of our choice and I wouldn't have to make any decisions, nor would I have to face the tedious attempt at finding appropriate homeschool curriculum. As the days passed, I accepted that it looks like another year of homeschooling. I prayed about it . . . nothing. I checked my email again . . . nothing. Nothing told me to move.

This week I had the opportunity to meet with a friend who has been teaching her children from home their whole lives. She graciously offered advice, let us borrow curriculum she used last year, and handed me a few books to read on the subject. Home Grown Kids by Raymond and Dorothy Moore gave me an entirely new perspective on the subject of homeschooling.

"Education isn't books and charts and tests nearly so much as it is meaningful living, and no one can provide this better than good parents . . . a warm, responsive, and reasonably consistent parent with little formal education can, in an hour and a half or two hours a day, easily outdistance the teacher who has twenty or thirty kiddies in her coop."

This brought to mind the small window of time we have with our children and quite possibly the misconception that schools are the best place for our children to learn. I realize it is unconventional these days and the thought of this task is monumental to even the most confident of parents. But someday I will look back on these years and laugh at myself, smile and know I did the best I could.

We talked about sending Ty to preschool this year . . . even bought him a bold new Spiderman backpack. I think it will get a lot of use in our living room ( :