Well today marks the technical end to another year.  Why do I say technical?  Well we have our 180 days required by the state in, but do I think I could ever stop teaching them?  We were going to head down to Indy today to the childrens museum, but a lovely migraine knocked me out of the loop for a bit.  We were able to get the few basics done that were needed, but not take a long trip.  So today I am feeling better and by tomorrow I plan to drive us down to Indy.  :)  And spend a day just learning whatever they guide me to wanting to know.  When I was a child and my parents took me to visit the museum, ususally once a year, we would start on one floor and either work our way down or up.  (there are four floors to the building)  We would make a day of the musuem.  Be there from open to close.  And other than having to go from one floor to another, there was no directed guideance from my parents. That is my plan for tomorrow. 

I have also been doing some thinking about my blog, about how little time I spend at my blog.  I spend time each day online, answering emails, but I don't spend time writing on my blog.  Then I figured out why the other day, I want my blogs to all sound very well thought out and to make sense to someone.  I read blogs of others, blogs about why homeschool, about why not to.   Blogs about different types of homeschooling and different curriculums.   As I read these I love the stories shared and then I think often, "am I doing enough?"  Well after time to think that out, yes I am.  No maybe we had to chuck our History curriculum last year because it just did not hold our interest.  Maybe multiplication and division was hard this last year.  Maybe we had point in reading that we were really struggling just to pronounce each word right.  But we made it through all of those.   We got books from the library on Historical events, stories that take place in the times of history we were interested in, wether fictional or non, when Ben Franklins birthday came we looked up strange and silly facts online.  We have gruelled over multiplication and division.  One child struggles to get the answer, but he has the concept, the other was so bored waiting to learn it while I was off in the corner with the first that she taught herself.  As for reading we never have stopped and those stumbling blocks become less and less of blocks each day.  We found science everywhere, got a bird feeder just to watch the birds eat and ended up with a stack of books trying to identify them and learn about their living habitats.  We found a park with a stream through it that we spent hours walking along and learning about everything living in the stream and along the banks.  My children even taught me about poison ivy this year.  A feet my father could not teach me for years, I just avoided all green stuff, but my oldest took a picture for me, so I could put it in my memory.  He figured out that I have a memory for sight things and since I needed to see this particular thing often that was the best way for me to know what poison ivy looked like. 

Yes I might question myself and think I am not doing enough, but I seem to be doing things okay.

Lastly I had a thought today as I sat down here, the older two of my children whom are only 14 months apart were not wanting to play with their brother who is collectively 3 and 4 years younger than them.  I remembered  back to a simpler time, when the oldest were toddlers and the youngest was all new and wrinkley and they told me "mommy he is so boring, will he ever play with us?"  I smiled as I listened to them trying to get away from the one deemed "boring" again.  Not because he was small and wrinkley, but because his dinosaurs had just destroyed the barbie/action figure-indian villiage set up on my dd's bed.  Time changes quickly.  And what a wonderful blessing my children are.

Thank you for listening to my rambling.  And I hope your days are blessed with much joy.