Who Doesn't Love Hello Kitty?

• Jun. 3, 2007 - Hey

Posted By Allison

We just got settled so we just got back our computer. I miss virginia a little. Well talk l8er ( later ).

• Apr. 24, 2007 - Well, so much for that

Posted By jewellspring

Friends, if you began tuning in again in the last two months, I must say good-bye once again. HomeschoolBlogger's platform will not continue to work well and I need to switch to another host. Thanks to blogging, I'm writing more than ever, but 90% of it stays focused on Wellspring Tea, a business that continues to open doors and grow. Blogging is beginning to play a different role~as a business support more than a personal on-line web log. So off I go! Always sorry to disappoint.

Meanwhile...

Meet me for tea at three, (and we'll catch up in person!)

Jenny

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• Apr. 10, 2007 - Bloggin Psychology--Part II

Posted By jewellspring

A quote came across my path this week that lingered and rolled around as I mulled and chewed it over.

"People's favorite subject is themselves."

I reacted first by thinking, "Is that really true?" The more I think about it, the more I admit, even for myself, it's true.

Could this be why blogging has become prolific? How many blogs do you know where the author is writing about something other than themselves: their families, beliefs, laughs, book lists, or adventures? For the record, the rhetorical question isn't meant as a judgment, just an opportunity to clarify an observation.

So many of us work in some isolation that we need to choose to counteract, whether it's at home or a cubicle. Blogs and the internet provide endless opportunities for reaching out beyond our little worlds. Blogging gives anyone who wants one a voice.

I realized after some observation, the blogs I return to again and again are either those authors I know in real life that I love to read or the ones whose primary topic is not themselves, but share common interests. In my instance they often review books. The blogs I drop off reading after a few months are often because I'm done reading about this particular author's day-to-day life.

There's a slight light I think I see at the end of the writing tunnel. Its been there a while, but something in mulling the above statement made it click. Yes, some of us can write best-selling memoirs. But to move from writing as a wanna-be writer to a producing writer, the chance of "success" is greater if one writes beyond themselves, for the reader, with their favorite subject as a backbone, not the center. I can write about what I know, me, but if I really want to write for others, I need to be able to move beyond me.

Just a thought.

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• Apr. 4, 2007 - New school New me!

Posted By Allison

I MOVED!!!!!! HOW COOL!!!!Now I have new friends!!!!!!! how cool?!? Yeah we are taking the CRCT whitch is the same as the sol! So i can not wait to go to Middle school if i pass!!!So thxs for reading! And OMG have you seen Happy Feet? So funny!

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• Apr. 3, 2007 - So What's Your Mulberry Bush?

Posted By jewellspring

"All around the mulberry bush,
the monkey chased the weasel..."

So what's your mulberry bush?

What's the one lesson you have to learn over and over again? It doesn't seem to matter how many times you bump your head, you forget to close the cupboard door EVERY SINGLE TIME? What's the one life pattern that causes those who know you best to raise their left eyebrow and quietly ask, "I love you, but don't you know this by now?"

Is this normal or is it just me?

Just in case you're interested, this is my mulberry bush:

"All around the mulberry bush,
the monkey chased the weasel.
The monkey snickered with all of his might,

"Look at her high expectations!"

It's April and home-schooling moms are in the home stretch. We feel it. It's how I IMAGINE a marathon runner feels when they talk about the wall. It's the home-school time of year to hit the wall. It takes concentrated energy to get through the wall to find endorphins for the home-stretch.

So, in order to prepare for this wall I should know is coming, four years into it, I...

1.    bought Martha Stewart's newest book on Housekeeping that could literally choke a horse (yes friends with a raised eyebrow, I really did) and am actually reading it.

2.    almost decided to host another large soiree' for our overburdened home-school moms (ehem, of which I am not one because I take balance and boundaries so seriously...pride cometh before a fall) in my home on April 20th.
'
3.    spend the majority of my free time mentally massaging my latest business plan.

4.    try to purchase the perfect wardrobe for May's annual vacation to help compete with my post-two-babies-bikini-clad sister-in-law.

5.    decided NOW is the time when my children WILL leave the house with clean faces, combed hair, matching socks, and no sweats on.

Need me to go on?

Oh, that my mind would be renewed! There must be a better way!! Unfortunately, lower expectations to me means we turn into a beer-drinking, cheeto-eating (on the couch while watching America's Funniest Home videos EVERY SINGLE NIGHT), farting-at-the-table family who thinks there's something wrong with OTHER people. I can't get my brain around it any other way. Yes, I could invite you over for just tea and dessert instead of dinner with ironed linens, but buy a Mrs. Smith's pie to serve? I CAN'T DO IT!

If this isn't your mulberry bush, your suggestions/comments/etc. are welcome. Maybe, maybe, one day the lightbulb will go off and I'll GET it.

Meanwhile, the monkey's laughing his head off.

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• Mar. 27, 2007 - Blogging Psychology

Posted By jewellspring

It continues to amaze me the amount of creative, talented, well-read, and unique people I meet through the Internet. One could lose hours pouring over the well-designed graphics, photographs, book lists, and hyper-links available. Communities abound and it's relatively simple to become a part of one. I, myself, have dabbled with the Home Arts crowd, intellectuals, bookworms, fellow home-schoolers, teenagers I teach, and authors I love (oh, and don't forget fellow Lost fans).

I find myself responding with a number of reactions to this real or imagined sense that the blog-train is flying by and I must jump on. Somehow a successful blog might prove my worth as a creative and well-read writer. After all, "everyone else is doing it". If there are all these creative writers out there with a simple platform to get themselves known and I'm not one of them, what does that say?

And maybe all the other bloggers publish their entries and photographs (complete with hyper-links), leave comments, and read others much faster than I (or sleep less), because where does everyone find the time? A few I've found are paid to write and can promote their other work through blogging, but I'm guessing most of us blog for fun.

Some personalities more than others are driven and care about tangible success. Success, of course, can be defined a number of different ways. Success for me includes receiving notice from others, mainly strangers, for a job well-done. I tend to think that if I'm really good at something, others will pay for it. That somehow it will be recognized monetarily.

Some people are discovered, but most of us knock on doors with bloody knuckles and look for our chance to prove ourselves. Some of us come inches close to quitting right before our lucky break and some of us may quit not realizing the breakthrough is just around the corner.

Honestly, try as I might, I don't know if I will ever be truly satisfied knowing I was a good mom, homemaker, wife, and friend. Honestly, in this life, I long to be recognized for my brain and heart by strangers who will pay money for whatever it is I'm capable of offering, That's the real deal, folks.

And so I blog. And I read blogs. (And I don't comment nearly enough, this must change). I blog to exercise muscles and read them to learn.But will it ever amount to anything for "them" or me?

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• Mar. 21, 2007 - March Catalog Madness

Posted By jewellspring

Its the time of year when catalogs arrive and the imaginings of next year seem so much more possible than the reality of this year. Highly intuitive, I find the planning, imagining, and visualizing our home-school much easier and exciting than actually making sure grammar, bed-making, and long division are learned. The catalogs and wonderful books almost never address sibling squabbling, getting out of bed struggles, or the constant pull of the internet community over our own children.

Each family schooling at home deals with their own unique challenges and dynamics, I'm sure. Mine involve more boys than girls, a strong reader and a weak reader, and at least six years of difference in academic levels of work between the oldest and the youngest. Working with this reality looks a number of different ways, none of which I really like.

When we work together, the oldest isn't as challenged. When we don't, he works alone and while the work is completed, I'm not sure it's enjoyed. And I find myself stretched between trying to teach the five-year old to count in 5s to 100 with chocolate chips, dealing with my extremely bright but struggling eight-year old's frustration levels, and following the 11-year olds narration and fascination with electro-magnetism. Some days, its exhausting and far from the imagining of dynamic history lessons with colored time-line figures, cuddling during long reads of Little House books, and deep Bible discipleship.

Part of our reality is that "school", the academic subjects aren't given enough time which I think means MORE discipline and LESS involvement in other things...neither of which are my natural strengths. However, I will say, its amazing how grading lousy high school writing motivates me to tackle grammar each day.

Happy 38th birthday to me! This Friday Plays with Fire and I are getting out of town together, the same weekend BOTH sets of grandparents decided to leave town (how could they?). Between the three children and two nights we've coordinated with four families which means in order for the two of us to get away, twenty-two people need to stay healthy. That's worth a prayer, don't you think?

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• Mar. 14, 2007 - Latest Coaching Exercise

Posted By jewellspring

Sorry to miss a Tuesday posting, my day for updating this blog, but I spent the day in the lodge at NorthStar, while my children experienced their first day downhill skiing. The lowest temp our car thermometer registered was 28 degrees, but the children began to shed clothing as early as 9:30am and when we left at 4pm, the temperature was close to 60 degrees. The sun shone bright and the clear blue sky meant our first experience on the slopes was a success.

Since exiting and entering the gondola is enough to throw me off balance, I didn't ski. This meant I guarded home-base inside the lodge and kept track of the abundance of gloves, sunscreen, sunglasses, and jackets while finding many hours to read and write, despite the abundance of piped-in rock music. It amazes me how much I got done, including completing an assignment my coach gave me last time we spoke.

She told me to list IN ORDER the seven priorities of our home-school. Now coming up with seven wasn't difficult, but ORDERING them as in "I need to let number five go because two is more important" was difficult. All deserve number one! I must conquer every mountain every day!!

This, however, is the result of the exercise:

When our children leave home we care that they are (IN ORDER):

1.   Co-Creators. Made in God's image, they are co-creators with him. We want their attitude to be one that knows what they can do to make their world a better place instead of focused on what they can get out of it.

2.   Subjects. That they would stand under and accept God's natural boundaries in life. This affects how they eat, when they rest, when they work, how they spend money and when they have sex (ehem...).

3.   A Wells. May they feel connected in a healthy way to their family before they are able to make their own. We want them to learn from this family how to treat and live in their future family as well as nurturing their identity as a Wells with fun and connection.

4. Cultured. We want them to recognize, appreciate, and encourage objective beauty and goodness in all the arts, believing "artists are the canaries in the mineshaft of culture" and preserving objective beauty and goodness will help preserve the best of our culture.

5.   Conservationists. That they would know the difference between what God provides for our good pleasure vs. what man makes for profit at the expense of others. This involves where and how we shop, supporting local, small farms, the entertainment we choose, etc.

6.   Individuals with confidence and capabilities to pioneer their own way with God in the time and place they find themselves.

7.   Hospitable, believing practicing and valuing hospitality and providing home for others is a vital part of ministering to others.

I think this means that if I give in and visit McDonald's, I haven't fallen off the conservation bandwagon forever, especially if its on the way home from Music in the Mountains. But I don't know if I'll ever serve soft drinks, even when the basketball team comes over for pizza, but fair-trade tea instead. We'll see.

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• Mar. 9, 2007 - So Bored

Posted By Allison

Hi I am so sorry I have not wrote in a while! I just moved so.... still gettin use to it.

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• Mar. 6, 2007 - Winter's Gifts and Beauty

Posted By jewellspring

This winter in Northern California, the rain and snow fell much less than last year. Granted, the rain visited us only ten inches less than normal. However, last year, we received 51" by this time over this year's 29 inches. As well, last year, it snowed 20(!) of March's 31 days.

I treasure rainy, snowy days.

Rain represents comfort. It's sound soothes a churning mind. It waters the abundant spring wildflowers that bloom and die quickly in our Mediterranean climate with hot, dry summers. Rain grants permission to read, stoke the fire, and stay home if possible, burning candles and preparing home-made soup and fresh-baked cookies.

As a result of a low rainfall year, I find myself not appreciating the approaching spring. (Can you BELIEVE someone legislated turning the clocks forward THIS WEEKEND already!). Winter solstice was two months ago, but is it already time for children to ride their bikes after dinner? Say it isn't so! Why do I find myself sad when facing spring?

Could it be because a mild season can't complete the work or present the beauty only winter can provide? Or is it that I'm so focused on what I won't experience to appreciate what I will?

The parallels of the soul fall both ways, though I'm still ruminating on this theme of mild seasons.

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