Just because I’m nosey, I’m going to ask how field trips fit in with your family’s homeschooling adventures. Do you make frequent field trips? Are adventures limited to your own family, or do you participate with other families within a support group?

We are manic field trippers.  Part of that comes from the fact that I currently set up the field trips for our support group.  In speaking with the facility coordinators, I tend to get hooked with the concept, and it is preordained that we’ll be there at the appropriate time.  Then I experience burnout, and find myself frustrated that I’ve signed up for far too much on a limited budget and tight schedule.  I am such a Muriel.

I *love* setting trips up. It sparks the creative nut in my heart. I am convinced that I should have been a cruise director. I play shuffleboard well, too. 

Saturday brings a new trip for 25 people.  We will be outside for over an hour, in the freezing cold, but it took me four months to set the sucker up…

“For over a quarter of a Century, Allegra Farm has had the privilege of being one of the largest authentic "livery stables", catering solely to those who desire a unique experience with a bygone era. This excursion is a veritable time travel machine to the days of yore; it's true that the 19th Century is well over 100 years behind us now, but John Allegra and Allegra Farm are keeping this era alive with the restoration of vintage horse drawn carriages, wagons and equipment. From the carriages to the horses, proper attire to proper etiquette, their meticulous eye for historical detail will carry you away to the Victorian Age. The museum houses 30-40 vehicles and a collection of memorabilia; our tour will be guided, and we will learn the documented history behind many of these well restored vehicles."

Anyone want to keep me company when my hair becomes cheap horse fodder? I always get too close to the stalls, and the horses seem to go wacky over my fruit flavored shampoo!

Our group tried out a new concept this past quarter, and it's worked really well.  We've set up multiple themed series', and it's been really exciting. 

In January we hosted 6 field trips that center on a "Career Exploration" theme.  Destinations included the FBI offices, The Supreme Court, a local Space Planetarium, Television Station and a Desert guru-extraordinaire. (That one was unbelievably yummy, and we all left with multiple cheesecakes and dessert to test out at home!)

In February, the theme was "Things That Go! A Transportation Series". Four trips were scheduled with the local air museum, a trolley museum, the horse drawn carriage facility listed above, and a submarine museum.  I would've scheduled on for our local lifestar helicopter rescue team, but it is FREEZING, and the top floor of the city hospital is not where I want to be standing in the middle of winter!

What’s your favorite field trip of all-time?  Are you organized enough to coordinate studies around an upcoming trip to enhance the experience? Unfortunately, I would represent the other side – we learn as we go, and I’m never “together enough” to do that… we have had some great learning opportunities though.  I am terribly excited that my very shy introvert of a son has finally come out of his shell the past 15 months, and will actually ask questions!

Looking for a special Valentine’s Day meal to create a special surprise dinner for your husband? This is THE one. It is seriously, yum-oh.  Be sure to prepare extra for freezing, as it freezes extremely well.  Make it earlier in the day, and reheat it for a late, couple’s only dinner.  Decorate the table with special touches, and light a set of tapered candles.  Romantic, special, and memorable!

Crabmeat Stuffed Flounder

¼ of a cup chopped onion

¼ of cup butter  (this is for the stuffing)

1 – 3 ounce can of broiled, chopped mushrooms

7 ½ ounce can of crab meat

½ of a cup of saltine crackers, crumbled

2 Tablespoons Parsley

½  Tablespoon of Paprika

½  Teaspoon salt, dash of pepper

2 pounds of Flounder fillets

3 Tablespoons Butter (this is for the sauce)

3 Tablespoons of Flour

¼ Teaspoon of salt

milk

1/3 of a cup of dry white wine

4 ounces shredded swiss cheese

Cook onion and butter in a skillet.

Stir drained mushroom in with flaked crabmeat, crackers, parsley, salt and pepper.

Spread stuffing mixture over flounder fillets, and roll them tightly.

Place stuffed fish seam side down, in a baking dish.

In saucepan, melt 3 Tablespoons butter.

Blend flour with salt, and stir into the butter mixture, well.

Add enough milk to the mixture to make approx. 1 ½ cups.

Add wine to sauce.

Cook and continuously stir until the mixture thickens.

Pour over the fillets.

Place dish in a 400 degree oven, for 25 minutes.

Remove from oven, sprinkle swiss cheese and paprika over the fillets, and return to oven to bake 10 minutes longer.

Serves 8. 

(Except in my house. Then it serves 2, on a lucky day. )

Have you ever experienced being completely stunned by a total stranger’s life?  Perhaps something you’ve read about online, or an update about an acquaintance in your homeschool group?  Maybe even a newspaper article regarding a family halfway across the country. The funny thing is, you can learn things about yourself through the experiences of virtual strangers. Certain points, knowledge, or issues that need to be worked through can come up, and their lives can virtually impact yours forever.

In my situation, there are a handful of situations I’ve read about online, or heard from “a friend of a friend” that force me to feel such a profound empathy, I’m helpless to do much other than send up a prayer.  Even with that, however, my heart is touched forever, and I find a new appreciation in my heart… if I’m really on my toes, a new understanding for a different situation that I hadn’t thought about before.

Witness the most profound example that I have ever experienced.  The story is simple; I read of this woman through an online group of forums for infertility issues.  I was communicating about parenting after infertility. She was communicating on a babies due board.  She was pregnant with her second child, following four years of trying to conceive. Everything went swimmingly well, until they checked in to deliver… the baby was born stillborn, due to a cord accident. 

She is a professional photographer, and involved with a non-profit group that goes in to a hospital when requested, to take photographs for special memory videos or slideshows for the parents – all free of charge. This wonderfully giving woman found herself in the position of grieving parent, and requested a photographer to come in and memorialize her own precious baby boy.

The slide show is profound.  The grief is tangible. The love is evident. Through it all, your heart soars out to them, but you recognize that we truly are all trying to make our way in the world, with love to guide us. I have watched the clip twice, and been reduced to a blubbering idiot. After composing myself, however, I have found an intense need to hug my son, cuddle up over a good book, and pray to god that those suffering intense grief find peace of heart and strength of soul to get through their pain.

What have I learned?  A LOT about grief.  I had experiences my own miscarriages after the birth of our son (twins, and a singleton between the 8 and 10 week mark), and had somewhat of an understanding of the pain of loss... but this virtual stranger has taught me the incredibly simple concept of " grief just is.... you can't manage a feeling without experiencing it first.."  More importantly, that although some doctors never discuss the importance, there are some things you can do to help monitor cord issues - kick counting, for example.  Or the fact that a sudden increase in activity, or decrease towards the end of the pregnancy can be an issue, and should be paid attention to.

Has the life of a virtual stranger ever impacted you? Has a newspaper story ever hit so close to home that you sit, stunned while trying to process it? Is it a sign of our electronic times that we can be impacted like this? I think that it's fantastic to have resources to reach out for in online communities, via search engines, etc.  It allows us to extend our community throughout the world. Your thoughts?

Question of the day: Why do some people treat their children’s awareness or understanding of academic subjects as if it’s the 500 meter speed skating event? Have you ever experienced this phenomena when talking with a neighbor, friend, or family member?

Before I start hypothesizing, allow me to share some background.  After dropping off the car for service yesterday, we followed the courtesy shuttle driver to the van for a ride home. We ran into an 87 year old man that lived across the street from us for several years, until he moved in with his daughter two years ago.  He was a nice gentleman, but extremely nosy, and he lived (not a typo) to gossip.  We were friendly, but kept our distance.

When we began homeschooling, he and his 40 year old daughter began pestering us. Given a five second opportunity, he’d begin boasting about how incredibly brilliant his granddaughter is, and by the way, how smart is your son?  The daughter would actually attempt to grill our son on Historical facts. Terribly annoying. Matt and I were raised to show respect, kindness, and a stiff upper lip; we just dealt with it politely, recognizing that we certainly could say nothing to alter the situation.

Yesterday, after the shuttle driver dropped us at home, we settled in for the morning. Thirty minutes later, the doorbell rang. You got it – Grandpa stopped by.  My first reaction (I am such a sucker, and I never learn!) was “Great! I kind of miss the old guy and his tales of the past – this will be a nice living history lesson!”  Ha.  Ha, ha, ha.  I invited him in to have a seat (along with DS) and we proceeded to “chat” for 45 minutes. What an exercise in futility. I’d have preferred to have a cavity drilled.

Mr. Grandpa proceeded to elaborate for a full 30 minutes (“I don’t mean to brag… mind you… “) about the exceptional brilliance of his granddaughter.  Shy of bowing to her reverence, there was really nothing we could do. It was pathetically irritating. While making polite nods, and murmuring agreement, my head began to flirt with potential retorts.  I was raised better, however, and found that a dash of olive oil certainly would have helped me to swallow the words easier.

Mr. Grandpa proceeds to turn to my son and begin pushing for his activities.  “Well, what are you involved with? What activities do you excel at? Are you smart? Does your mom teach you well, or do you feel that you miss school? Do you have *any* friends?”   AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!!!! Okay, here, I clipped it.  This was destructive rather than annoying.  I inserted a “Well, thanks for stopping by, please send your daughter and granddaughter our best!” remark. He took the hint and hightailed it to exit, stage right. Yet, as he was walking out the door, shouted out “Well, I wish you lots and lots of luck little man!” to my son.

Okay, so my child missed the gold, silver and bronze medal (in his opinion), and the anthem from Timbuktu vs. the USA played after that sporting event. Is this really a competition?  Who the heck are the judges?

What the heck causes this? I am grasping, but this is all I can come up with – am desperately seeking better theories!

1) Bragging rights. Proud Grandpas should have the right to brag about their grandchildren. It’s comes from love, and a certain amount of pride that they must have done something really right to have a lineage so brilliant.  I grasp this – but excessive pride?  Or pride that centers on comparison to another child?  Ick.

2) Parental guilt.  Most of us have witnessed some parents of traditionally schooled children weighing themselves against us and feeling threatened.  They might express a feeling of  “I could never do that… I give you credit”  and you can smell it on the wind – parental guilt that they can’t give something to their children.  Still others think they can detect a judgment from homeschooling parents that simply doesn’t exist – we’re certainly not inferring that we love our children more; we simply choose a different method of education. I can always pick out the individual when I see the thought of  “she’s a better parent than I am…  crap…”  float on the wind – the eyes give it away.

3) Genetic competition. I think that to some degree, we all battle the temptation to compare our kids against others, even if silently.  Think back to your child’s infancy, didn’t many of us pick up the “What to Expect…” books with our firstborn and compare where our child stood on the  “your child should be doing this… might be doing this… is a future Einstein if s/he’s doing this….”  Okay, maybe it didn’t have those exact categories.    How about the old standby “well, I managed to breastfeed for two years, I did what’s right for my baby!” Don’t those thoughts come streaking through if you’re dealing with an arrogant sister-in-law (that happened to bottle feed) who’s pushing your buttons at a family gathering? This whole competition thing is just weird for me. I really struggle to understand why it’s necessary, or why we seem to confront it as parents on a regular basis. Are we born with a microscopic gene that encourages us to strive to do our best while occasionally checking out the “competition” on either side of us as a marker?  Or is an ugly side of parenting that we have to carefully work to erase. Shoot, I’ve even thought it; DS was 10 pounds, 13 ounces and 25 inches tall at birth.  Why the heck I felt such pride at the fact he was the biggest baby in the nursery is beyond me. I didn’t do anything – he did all the work growing and absorbing nutrients in utero. But I wouldn’t approach someone with a preemie and boast, for goodness sake.

In conclusion, I realize that I simply don’t have a decent response when confronted with this.  What the heck do you say? I don’t want to offend (although I could certainly say that I am offended), and I don’t want to be rude.  Any suggestions? Any experiences you could share?

If I could invent any thing I wanted, anything at all, these would be top of my list of inventions:

1. The Failsafe Car Meltdown Alert: The very second your automobile feels an old-fashioned virus coming on, a special disco ball drops from your interior light compartment and begins to spin in appropriate color scale.  If something serious is brewing, say red for (of course) your budget status in the near future. Orange, for something pricey that’s pending, like a squeaky hag of a fan belt; this would appropriately come with a two week warning flasher. Finally, green, for those special items that the service center insists must be repaired immediately, lest your family suffer permanent impairment from your scrooge-factor (you know, the horrific wiper blades that are leaving a .00001 inch of a streak on your windshield). Blimey.  Can you tell that the minivan’s in the shop, and they’ve called twice to “suggest add-ons” for the service – Over $ 600.00 and it’s only early afternoon…. UGH!

2. A Pain-o-Meter: (can also be used to measure how ill someone actually is i.e. a cold vs. pneumonia) This little device would be strapped to your wrist, like those heart rate / distance monitor things that the exercise nuts use to measure how hard they are working out. The Pain-o-Meter would give an exact, quantifiable, and measurable, objective reading of exactly how sick you are / how much pain you are in compared to your husband. He, of course, swears his illness is worse than yours. This device will give you a reading of your illness / pain, and your husbands, which would once and for all prove that men are bigger ninnies when it comes to pain / illness.  We could even activate it for mommies of munchkins that aren’t quite old enough to express with words why they’re howling. This nifty sucker could double as a decoder!

3. A time freeze dental cap. A device that slips over your back molar (with the aid of your dentist), and can be activated by clicking one side of your mouth in a quick fashion.  Imagine! Your son comes to you at 11:30 pm with a disturbingly (for that hour of the evening) philosophical question, completely out of the blue, such as “wait a minute… what’s going on before the moment of conception for the future embryo? Does God have a reserve for souls someplace that we don’t know about?”  Click! Flash! A few precious moments to think up a really fascinating and thought provoking answer! Better yet… your husband questioning “Honey? What happened to the last three potato chips I was saving for tonight’s snack?”  Click! Flash! Down to the grocery store for a quick purchase and he’s none the wiser by the time I re-activate the clock and answer his query.

4. Instant boot ups / start ups / whatever you call it: I want to invent a computer that is ready for use the second I push the ‘on’ button. I don’t want to wait for what feels like hours for the thing to start up and get ready. It’s annoying and seems very old fashioned.

5. A weight loss pill that really works: A pill that you take at night and you wake up in the morning 5 pounds lighter. If you take two pills, you wake up 10 pounds lighter etc. In the right places. And it firms as well, of course. You could take a lose-five-pounds-around-my-belly-but-not-my-arse flavour, or a ten-pounds-off-the-arse-and-5-pounds-off-the-hips flavour.

In fact, it would be good if we could add a nail-growing, hair-conditioning, leg-waxing, wrinkle-reducing pill as well. Imagine: go to sleep at night and wake up refreshed, thin and hot.

6.  Lego specialty sorter:  It seems like every toy my son owns now causes some Danish executive at Lego to purchase a roomier wallet each fiscal quarter. If it’s not on his wish list for Christmas or his birthday, he’s cutting another lawn in the summer to purchase it himself.  Just how many of those specialty Star Wars kits do they make, anyway? After 6 hours of assembly, he poses them on the end table with pride. One of the furry babies suddenly suffers from an itchy chin, rubs against it, and dislodges a piece. We are constantly collecting stray pieces that never get matched up with an appropriate set. We have millions of Lego’s in drawers that don’t make sense.  If you think building a complicated design is tricky and time-consuming, try completing it when the pieces aren’t set aside for the task. This little gadget would find all these of little parts and put them back with the original kit each night.

Ok, so the last few are silly. Oh, but a girl can dream, can’t she?

What would you invent if you could any invent any thing at all?

I'm Michele.  When I met Matt 21 years ago, we didn't think immediately of  having children.  In fact, we were fresh out of high school, doing what teenagers do best: flirting, planning our Saturday night dates, and simply enjoying our time giggling together. A few months later, my mom and dad were being relocated out of state by their employer, and my entire world tipped off axis.

At the age of 18, I had fallen in love with the little bugger, rooted myself in New England, and decided to stay put. A few weeks after turning 20, we married. It is one of the most amazing decisions I've ever made in my life, and to this day, I'm convinced we started life together so impossibly young simply because we've had so much life together to live!

There are certain things you just don't know about a person until you  share close quarters.  I didn't know about Matt's annoying habit of  leaving dishes in the sink "to soak," brimming with cold, gray, greasy  water.  He didn't know about my remarkably clever way to cover the bases of superstition; I was terrified at the thought of physically giving birth to a child, and yet, convinced that fate would lash me with a wet noodle by not allowing me to physically bear children.

And what I didn't know until I visited a gynecologist in 1988 was that my world would shortly become unrecognizable. Newly married, I visited with a new gynecologist for a "tune-up" and "certification".  (Picture a doc with a headlight on her head, nodding    " Ayuh... we'll just stamp you with approval... you pass! "  Don't know why I always picture a mechanic inspecting a car at this juncture.)    Two seconds in to the physical exam, she detected a cyst near my ovary. Five minutes later she offered a laparoscopic surgery as an option. Holy crud, 20 years old, newly married, and an optional surgery? This "decision" was harder than Final Jeopardy! Three months later, Matt kissed me for luck as they wheeled my trembling skinny butt into surgery.  Four HOURS later they wheeled me into recovery and informed my terrified, 22 year old husband that our future was changed forever. As I was still blitzed to the wind on pain meds and feel good IV drips, he drove around that night for five hours, trying to figure out how to tell me the next day; The odds of me ever getting pregnant without medical assistance were less than 5%.  Apparently, the Appendicitis I suffered as a fourteen year old girl left a nasty little surprise, only to be discovered many years later; the poison from the rupture leaked through my uterine wall, and wrought unbelievable damage.

Hello.  We were babies ourselves. Children weren't even a blip on the radar yet! They told us to get very busy as within 6 months time that whopping 5% chance would rapidly dwindle to zero due to scar tissue growth.    (Superstitious Note: I can't help thinking - AHA! See what happens when you worry about what's out of your control? Now it's the real deal, toots, and you practically dared it to happen!)