• Jun. 1, 2007 - Thankful Thursday
Wow! What a day!! I am thankful that it is OVER! Does anyone else every get those glimpses that you can be Supermom as you're scheduling something that is two weeks out? Well, I'd done that for today AND for tomorrow. So as I sat nursing my little man at 4:45 a.m. and playing out our upcoming day, I realized that to be Supermom for ONE day was potentially do-able. But to try to pull it off TWO days in a ROW was just sheer lunacy! By 9 a.m. I was on the phone rescheduling appointments for Friday.
Don't get me wrong ... I have four boys, two of which are homeschooling, one who has autism and one who is still nursing full-time. My older boys (and I) work out twice a week learning karate. They are also very active in boy scouts and in their church youth groups. My third son goes to a local preschool 3x per week to try to learn some social sense - because with the autism, that is just plain old MISSING most of the time. I am also trying to keep my rubber stamping business afloat. So I more than EXPECT to be busy ... but being DUMB about how busy I CAN be on any given day is something I need to try to contain!  So we made it through our day and tomorrow should be a little easier taking our rescheduling into account.
I am also thankful today for my very best (and insightful) friend and neighbor, Pat. She really keeps me grounded when I'm being a little less than realistic about what I can accomplish in schooling my kids. Sometimes it takes me a while to *hear* her, but eventually I do hear what she has been saying and I'm able to reassess, reassign or redirect my efforts more strategically. It's Pat's birthday today and I missed giving her a card on time. I also need to find a way I can bless her, even if it is a little past her actual birthday. Ideas anyone? |
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• May. 28, 2007 - Ponderings
Cool - my first blog entry! Let me introduce myself. My name is Amy S. We are currently a family of six. I say *currently* because my husband and I both are open to life and never know when we will be blessed again by God. Our children are all boys, ranging in age from 14 years down to seven months! When people mention teaching from high school to high chair (or Plato to Playdough), we are definitely there!
I believe us to be an *average* home educating family. We would never make the cover of one of those home school magazines where all the sibblings are dressed in clothes to match ... and even manage to match the curtains in the formal dining room!  Our dining room doesn't even resemble a dining room with the exception that we do have a dining room table and chairs occupying the space therein. That is where any resemblance of a dining room stops! Our dining room is surrounded by towering bookshelves, filled to overflowing with books that have titles as simple as Alphabet Crunch and as scholarly as Ben Hur or Invitation to the Classics. Our dining room table top is most often covered with open books, papers waiting to be corrected, eraser shavings, and other special projects. A copier sits on the cupboard adjacent to the table. A set of drawers containing miscellaneous school supplies is perched just behind the head chair! The solar system is located across two of our walls, starting with the sun and stretching out to include Pluto, complete with the asteroid belt immediately following the inner planets! Occasionally we will have guests over and we usually have to temporarily toss all our current school projects, papers and books into an empty milk crate to make room to actually EAT at the table!!
Our children don't always LOVE opening their books to learn the recent topics in Latin, geometry, pre-algebra, biology or history!  And while there are light-bulb moments  that can be observed as I teach on some days, our boys would most often prefer to play baseball with the neighbors, spend time on their Wii, or chat with their friends on the internet. Our typical day is not one of perfect harmony where one sibbling is overheard complimenting the other on a job well done on clearing the breakfast table! More often you will hear them squabble about whose turn it is to hold the baby and how long that person has to hold the baby to give the other person some time off!!
At our home one son sleeps in, eats breakfast late, and can still be found in his pajamas while we work through our latest Latin chapter. The other bobbles a baby while he tries to complete his geometry lesson and wonders (or would it be more appropriate to say grumbles) why a baby can't take a nap just 30 minutes after awaking! The three-year-old, who has autism, insists on being outside any day the weather permits and tries his hardest to make sure that we KNOW his desires and that we are at least CONSIDERING catering to his every whim! As this transpires, I'm usually found cleaning up after breakfast, scheduling appointments, planning Latin and/or history lessons, planning scout camp, fixing lunch, reading Mere Christianity to the oldest two, putting the Leapfrog DVD in the player for the third time, thawing dinner, cleaning the house, etc.
It can be difficult to find harmony on these very busy days. We work diligently on this, but find quite often that we need to back up and examine what we are trying to get done. I have to remind myself, more than once a day, that we are living and learning with the sole purpose of bringing glory to our Creator. It is in remembering this that I seem more able to patiently continue teaching amidst the chaos that sometimes seemingly reigns in our home. Raising children today is a BIG job. Teaching them and bringing them up in a Godly way is an even BIGGER job. But God gives us grace in abundance with each new day and although we won't ever be found on the cover of that home educating magazine, we CAN be found IN Him where only He can give us a perfect peace about what we are accomplishing FOR Him. 
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