2011 the Year of Realization

My own baby girl was IN a wedding this past summer.  One of her high school friends who is a few years older than her…. got married.  I know that sounds like a DUH! moment, but it made me sit up and realize that marrying off my baby girl is not that far in the future…. like another 10 years maybe.  Maybe.

Today is a wedding of a daughter of one of my friends.  That means I’m old enough to have friends with daughters getting married.  I know that sounds like another DUH! moment, but I’m realizing again that marriage of ones children is inevitable.  But how can it be happening to young people MY age????  I am heading over early to help with decorating.  That’s what MY MOM used to do.  MY MOM!

So, as today slips by, remember to hug your little babies, who may be taller than you now.  It won’t be long until they come and tell you that they are leaving you FOREVER.  Sad but true!  Happy but true!  This IS what we prepared them for, but no one prepared ME!

AHA

Hi.  My name is Linda and I’m an American-History-Aholic.  You know, every nerd has their area of passion…. mine just happens to be history.  Seriously, a National Park or Historical Marker sign on the highway causes whiplash in our vehicle if I’m driving.  There is simply too much good information to pass up one of those!  You never know when you might get a Trivial Pursuit question about Wilson’s Creek Battle in southwestern Missouri!  I’m ready, baby.

This year, as you may know if you have read MSJ in the past few months, I’m teaching American History to a group of homeschool nerds students. Even if they are not loving it, I am.  And I know they are learning something from my sheer enthusiasm!  I decided not to be the hard-core teacher that I’ve been in the past.  I figure, any way to get the information into the kids’ heads is good…. whether conventional or not.  I.e., I give quizzes each week on all of the assignments from the previous week.  It is a small percentage of the actual information that is tested.  And there is LOTS of information to cover in a week.  So I devised a plan to make the tests easier.  First if there are 54 or 63 questions on the test, I round down to score out of 50 or 60.  How nice of me. Next I made a set of 15 5×7 notecards that tell the students how much help they get on the test.  One card is drawn each day.  They say things like:  “Phone a friend… seriously with a phone.”  or “Ask the expert.” (That’s me) and all of the kids in the class can listen to the answer.  Another is “Work together.”  And “You may use your textbooks.”  And “Do every other question” and “Skip one section.”  See, easy-peasy.

Today they drew the card that said they could each phone two friends.  I told them if they considered me a friend, they could text me.  Three of them did.  haha.  My daughter asked for one of my friend’s phone numbers.  This is another homeschool mom in California.  The question was ‘What is a chandler?’  Lucky for my girl, the mom was on her computer and googled it for her.  I figure….. it’s all good.  Will my daughter know what a chandler is for the rest of her life?  Yes.  For those not near a computer, it’s a person who made candles.  (haha… get it…. not by a computer!)

Anyway, my students are all doing well in the class and I’m having fun.  Isn’t that what it’s all about?????

House Cleaning at MSJ

Just wanted to pass the word along that I finally got around to doing some house cleaning here at My Sister’s Jar!  I deleted the obsolete blog links and I added some of my new favorites that I have been reading for a while… and not sharing until now.  If you’re the creative type, check out Hostess with the Mostess, Tinker Verve and So This is Julie…………. over there —> in the links.  Other great family and/or homeschooling blogs are Jenny & Pearl, Life in a Shoe and Courtenay Momma.  Enjoy!

The Alliance

Yes, it sounds like a movie title but in this case it’s not.  The Alliance is a group of age-old homeschooling families who have walked in their own moccasins for more than twenty-five years and have come together to support homeschool state leaders.  They put on a conference, to which my husband and I attended this week, sort of like a family reunion but we were just meeting the family for the first time. I haven’t mentioned here on MSJ that my husband and I are on our state’s homeschool board, partly because I don’t feel worthy to be there half of the time… and the other half of the time I can’t figure out why they let us on after hearing my husband’s stories.  (Yes, he did it again.)

We were invited to a “refresher weekend” in January so the current board could get to know us casually over a buffet lunch and some chat time on a Saturday.  All went well until my dear husband started telling a biking story as we were moving from tortellini to cheesecake.  Rick and I were sitting next to each other in the middle of a rectangular table.  He was speaking to one end and I was speaking to the other.  I kept one ear on his conversation the whole time in case I needed to run interference…. but as the forks went into the cheesecake, realization hit that I was too late to save the day. Mercy sakes alive.

The story went something like this…. we were attending a new church that had Saturday night services.  Rick and our son went on a bike ride Sunday morning in the direction of our old church.  Rick has been going to church on Sunday mornings for 44 years… if he is out bike riding on a weekend morning, in his brain it is Saturday, even if it is Sunday.  So Rick and our son agree to meet at our old church, as our son needed to pump out an extra 10 miles without killing off his father.  So my husband pulls into the packed parking lot of the church and sits in a patio chair out front… in his biker stretchy shorts.  He visits with a few friends and keeps asking what is going on that brought so many people on a “Saturday”.  Many people told him that it was for church.  He didn’t get it.  Finally our son pulled up right as the main service was getting out.  A dear friend finally explained that it was Sunday and approximately 300 people would be leaving the building soon.  Rick minorly freaked out and ran to fill his water bottles, jumped on his bike and they peddled out of there as fast as they could.  The story simply sounds funny at this point.  If only he had stopped there.  He continued telling the homeschooling board members that after he arrived home he discovered holes in the back of his stretchy shorts……(story still sounds mildly okay)…. here was the clincher… he finished by laughing and saying ”and we go camou under those shorts.”  Yes, he meant COMMANDO, but I was not about to correct him at that point.  It was an out-of-the-body experience for me.  Why, oh why, did that story seem appropriate at that moment??  I have no idea!

They smiled and said goodbye nicely, like there was never a holey-bike short story ever told…. and they said THEY would call us. (Like ‘don’t call us, we’ll call you.’) I assumed that if God did not want us on the board, this was his way of working that out.  Lo and behold, no call came the first month.  No call came the second month.  THEN a call came!  Unbelievable!  Maybe they forgot the end of the story!  We were invited back for another round of questions and the rest is history. 

Back to the Alliance.  I thoroughly enjoyed the conference, especially being surrounded by like-minded people who are sold-out on homeschooling their kids and/or training the next generation to stand strong.  It also made me realize that there is a whole other level of politeness, respect and love that can cross generations and keep families tight.  It was like coming home… all over again.

Many Prayers Later

Two days ago my first born son turned 15-years-old.  He is taller than me.  I’m not sure if I could take him anymore.  He has more muscles than Jack LaLanne. ……..Ok, no he doesn’t.  I just looked up Jack on google.  But my son has the potential of turning into the juicing giant.  Wasn’t it just a few months ago when my chubby, blonde little boy was yelling every word and stuttering because he was so excited about life???  Wasn’t he telling me, just weeks ago, that “Daddy take good care for you, Mom.”  Where have the years gone? 

Sadly, said son’s birthday happened to be on the busiest day of our week…. really, the ONLY day we all leave the house together.  I did make cupcakes and take them to co-op… like all good homeschooling moms.  He asked for vanilla cupcakes with vanilla icing.  WOW!  Go crazy!  I called him from Walmart to make sure I got the right kind.  Then I asked what kind of cupcake papers he wanted…. Dora… Mickey Mouse… Cars… Cinderella.  He said he didn’t care as long as the cake and icing were vanilla.  I bought purple.

And what gift did my 15-year-old ask for on his birthday?  Money to go on a missions trip to build houses in Mexico in October.  What kind of kid asks for missions trip money for his birthday?  Maybe the kind of kid who asks every Friday night if he can go downtown and feed homeless people.  Or the kind of kid who spent his summer vacation feeding men on skid row in Los Angeles.  He recently told his Dad that he didn’t think he was doing enough for others.  To which my wise husband replied, “You are doing WAY more than the average kid your age.”  My brilliant son retorted, “I’m not an average kid.”  SO TRUE!  I couldn’t be more proud of my 15-year-old son. 

However, (that always means the next words are important and contradictory in nature) this is my one in four children whom I have probably mentioned in more prayers than all the others.  Okay, that’s not true because my 17-year-old daughter went to Africa for three weeks this summer…. they might be tied.  His leadership ability has been obvious to me for many years…. I hoped and prayed it wouldn’t be for the dark side.  And his drive is unbelievable.  Even when he was nine, he would get up early and do all his chores and as much school work as he could…. before I stumbled out of my room to whip us some breakfast.  (For those who know me well, they are thinking “That’s nothing… she sleeps in.”  It’s true.  But still!)

We had a family gift opening for Aus… with little girls invited.  :o)  But he simply wanted $$ for missions, so no grand party was had.  Weird, I know.

I’m Finally Making a Colombia Scrapbook

Yes, we’ve been home with the Colombian princess for almost nine months…. next Thursday, it’ll be nine months.  I’m finally getting around to making a scrapbook of our trip.  I’ve spent much mental anguish on the Colombia scrapbook topic over the past six months. (The first three months home I just needed a nap.  That’s all.)  I know there are LOTS of photos.  I know there are LOTS of photos that I want to include.  I also know my scrapbooking speed is not what it used to be in the days of old when I got 65 pages completed on a weekend retreat.  I’ve weighed the digital vs. traditional issues too.

This morning my problems were solved when I opened my email and Snapfish had sent me a free digital hard-cover scrapbook.  Well, the first 20 pages are free.  I was all over it…. but the deadline is Sept. 21.  My husband and I are leaving on a jet plane in three days… and not coming home until the 22nd.  So today, instead of teaching my pupils (well I did have Nora do math… and the others are pretty self-motivated at the moment)…. (yes, those were guilt justifying comments)… I uploaded 296 photos and put them in a digital book.  BAM!  Done!  Well, almost.  I only did half of the journaling… and it’s too late in the day to write coherent sentences, much less remember the Spanish names of places and fruits.

Into my closet I went searching for my journal from our trip to South America.  One paragraph smacked me between the eyes and I want to share it with you.  For all those who have adopted, want to adopt, are trying to adopt and are thinking they might adopt…. here’s some cold, hard facts to think on:

“As I drove home the seven hours from the Colombian consulate in Beverly Hills, I had one of those God-moments where I realized that this whole adoption is not about me… or Rick and I… or even Nora.  It’s about God taking care of His children – about His children taking one step at a time, obeying the call on their lives – about God providing everything we need – far before we figured out what we needed.”

 

This was taken right after we landed in Bogotá!

That was so philosophical of me…. and rare… here’s the next page in the journal for your pure enjoyment.

(This was the night before we were leaving Cali to fly to Bogotá.) “As late as it was after packing, 12:30 a.m., I simply could not fall asleep.  The thought that Nora was leaving behind her life as she knows it – kept me awake.  One reassuring thought was that we LOVED Cali SO much – we will return someday.  I also wondered at 2:30, 3:15, 4:12 and from 4:35 on…. would Nora have motion sickness? Would the airplane terrify her?  Did we check under all the beds? And finally – I was awake at 5:00… “ready” for our adventure to Bogotá.”  No wonder I needed three months of naps!

The Daily Drizzle

There are seasons in life when it rains.  There are seasons in life when it pours.  There are also seasons in life when it drizzles.  I’m in the drizzle phase…. constant and ever busy with nothing big at all.

Forty-Five!  It’s not only how old I am…. are you ready?  It’s how many pounds I’ve taken off in my quest to be ever-loving-healthy again.  Or actually for the first time in my life.  It is encouraging to see perseverance paying off…. but my wardrobe is dwindling.  A GOOD thing!  Trust me.  I sweet-talked Mr. Wallet into taking me shopping to get at least one presentable outfit for public viewing.  My jean shorts that I wear every single day (Two pair…. stop judging.) are not my idea of acceptable business casual apparel.  So off we went.  At the store, I thought of you, my faithful readers, when I spotted a supremely tacky gray t-shirt that blazed, “My BLOG is better than your blog.”  But I knew at that moment that it wasn’t true.  I have not been faithful to writing.  I’ve been faithful to keeping my sunglasses clear of the present drizzle that is consuming me in the first few weeks of homeschool madness starting.  We did start, by the way.  And it’s going well.  The initial week was a RUDE wake-up call to my two male offspring who have coasted until this year.  By Thursday, when both were three days behind, the wonder-twin powers ignited and unbelievably to me, they completed all their work.  Amazing what kids can do when you withhold nourishment.  JUST KIDDING!

Here we are my four chillins on the first day of school. 

Our school uniforms this year are tank-tops, shorts and flip-flops. (Remember when THOSE used to be called thongs?…. sigh.)  No, that happy kid in the back didn’t get the memo, but he is happy and that cancels uniform infractions.

The drizzle continues.  I’m off to the cool pines of Prescott today for four glorious days of scrapbooking.  Well, that is what I used to do the whole time… but now we watch movies, get pedicures, go to Goodwill on 50% off day, shop, eat out, you get the picture.  But we still go under the guise of being crafty women. 

Enjoy your weekend.  You know I will.  :o)