I'm the Mom
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Jun. 11, 2009
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Summer's Lease
Summer’s lease hath all to short a lease…..William Shakespeare
Summer’s here!…..for this Homeschool mom this statement doesn’t bring on the same sort of terror in my heart that it can bring into the heart of a mom who has sent her children to public school. I am glad of that! The statement "Summer’s here" sends a different chill through my limbs. It is the chill of not being able to squeeze as much fun out of the juice of my summer as I would like. So, I plan, in my head, many fantastic ideas, however, all the things I plan (or fail to plan) never seem to work out the way I plan them. Then, I ask myself rhetorically, “when have the plans I plan ever work out as planned anyway? Aren‘t we still trying to finish the school plans that I made months ago?” Who am I kidding, plams are fallible! I should enjoy the juice I do squeeze out of our summers, even if my plans never quite take off. You see, summer seems to slip through my grasp and is whisked away with too many sentences starting with..“I wish we coulda….” . All that stated still, this year, I have made a purchase of a book called the Summer Survival Guide. So with determination and despite my previously unfinished past plans , I keep all hope alive and have determined that this book will help put our summer fun in order. Putting fun in order does seem like an oxymoron, yet I am determined! As Ann Dillard says “A schedule (plan) defends from chaos and whim. It is a net for catching days…” I want to catch some days! I desire to catch some days because not only does summer seem to slip away but my children are slipping away into grown up’sville. I want to have as much juicey fun with my children as I can, now, before they slip totally off my plate onto the plate of their own lives. Don’t get me wrong I do realize that the fun should, and I hope, never stops. Yet, this is a special time that I want to press into before the photo-ops are gone! So, we did something as family that I was so excited about. Even in the crazy “unredeemed” family I grew up in had a large portion of painful memories (another blog perhaps) I remember fondly all our family camping trips! So, in order to follow this pleasant memory path with our own family memories, we purchased a used “pop-up” camper 2 years ago. Yes, it is a pop-up and some hard core campers will decry such a thing as not real camping. I assure you that stuffing seven people into one small camper does constitute “hard (enough) core” for this camper. I look froward to drinking deeply from these well squeezed days! Of course School is never fully out. We will have Math Mondays and Shakespeare Sundays. Math Monday’s are fairly self-explanatory…. But on Sundays I hope to have some fun, this is the day I hope to read some of the Lambs Shakespeare tales and to have the children each quote some of the fun lines from the actual plays! Again I plan & plan because I do hope to enjoy this summer’s fruit!
Funny Story
My 2 older sons, 15 & nearly 17, and I recently attended our state homeschool conference. We had a wonderful time. It is such a pleasure to see my boys become men! We attended the key note address of Steve Demme. (Thank-you Steve for your wonderful Math U See curriculum you have saved my sanity!) His address was funny and encouraging. At one point he encouraged the children in the group to “rise up” and say “Blessed” to their mothers. I was the pleased recipient of this encouragement. My wonderful (not perfect!) sons have decided to continue giving this encouragement to me even after the conference. However, today my 17 year old surprised me by suddenly jumping out from behind the doorway and “Blessing” me. I was pleasantly surprised… He told me… “Mom, sometimes I rise up and call you blessed, but this time I popped out and called you blessed….!” I’ll take it any way I can….Blessing! |
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• Jul. 29, 2009 - Untitled Comment