FINALLY!!  I'm actually here--sitting down--thinking thoughts--and blogging them!!  End of May/beginning of June -- that's garden planting season here in northern MN, and we're gardening with a capital "G".  The garden I've had for the past couple of years was too shady and too small; so that became what I call the kitchen garden (for herbs and shade-loving crops), and we added a huge "main garden" in a sunnier area for corn, melons, beans, tomatoes, vine crops, etc. Although this year has required lots of labor, we're hoping future years will be substantially less; we built boxed, raised beds to avoid tilling, put in drip line irrigation for better watering, covered beds with black plastic for better production and weed control, and put mulch between beds also for weed control.  LOTS of work -- but worth it, I hope, and they are beautiful gardens.  I will post the pictures later in the season when things are growing.

Aside from all our busy-ness outdoors, my sort-of-end-of-year evaluation of our schooling is not encouraging to me.  When I look back over our year, I see the kids learning (maybe) mostly out of self-defense while I frantically re-evaluated and rearranged our schedule for the umpteenth time every few weeks.  I think I'm in that shift I've read about other homeschoolers doing from "doing school at home" to learning together.  I started out 3 years ago telling everyone I wanted an "old one-room schoolhouse" education for my kids.  I think I pictured me as Laura Ingalls or Anne (of Green Gables) sweetly and enthusiastically leading my equally sweet and enthusiastic students into the wonderful world of reading, writing and...well, arithmetic didn't figure very highly since I always have hated anything to do with numbers in books outside of real life.  Gradually (V--E--R--Y gradually) I've shifted away more to what I read is relaxed homeschooling.  I want to be my kids' mom, not the "schoolmarm".  I want to read Little House on the Prairie because the kids are asking for it, not say (as I have), "wait till we hit that place in history."  I want to take time to train in all areas of life, not always be out of time because we have to follow our schedule.  The question is, "HOW?"  How does it look -- really?  How do you keep up records when you're either doing things with the kids or taking care of the house and baby and there's no plan to simply check things off of?

God has told me 2 things so far -- "Quit the obsessive scheduling," and "Teach your kids" (not the books, schedule, curriculum, ___method. etc).  But I am just not getting the full picture and would really appreciate some input. Others who've gone thru this switch?  And why is it so hard for me to drop the reins??  (Well, you don't actually have to answer that one!)