Meeting Colby

Over Thanksgiving weekend, we were all excited to get to cuddle sweet, quiet baby cousin Colby who was almost two months old.

School's Out

The kids and I headed to my parents for the weekend before Thanksgiving. Will's school is out of school for the entire Thanksgiving week, and I chose to do the same for home school. Allen needed to work, though, so he stayed home. We got to my parents' on Sunday morning, and it was almost too cold to play outside. The temperatures and raindrops fell, and the walls seemed to be getting closer together (my kids are almost always outside at Gramma and Granddad's house.) There was an afternoon that the kids did get out and raked leaves so they could jump in them. Another time, they braved the cold to check out the fort that Will and Granddad built last month. Mom and I took the kids to run a few errands when the rain let up, and we stopped at the craft store so everyone could choose some yarn. That afternoon, we watched The Apple Dumpling Gang and used the knitting looms. The kids -- especially Ben -- loved the movie! Before we left Waco, we celebrated Will's birthday at his [new] favorite restaurant -- a Chinese place in Waco that has a huge buffet that includes octopus, squid, oysters, and frog legs. I think Will was wanting to prove how he could bravely eat the strange foods, but Ben didn't chicken out a bit when Will dared HIM to try. As Ben munched on his third frog leg, I asked him if they tasted like chicken and his reply cracked me up, "No, Mama. They definitely taste like frogs.... Frogs with a hint of flies. Yes. I can tell they used to eat flies." The next morning, Will got to open a birthday gift, then we headed home to get Allen after our short visit.

Running Away - a persuasive letter from Jon

Written by Jon on 21 November 2013.

After he packed his second bag, I needed to slow him down so he wouldn't run away before Allen could come home to tell him good-bye. I asked Jon to write a letter convincing Allen and me that we should LET him leave. This is what he brought me. (PS: I asked why he added the part at the end about Daddy spanks since he hardly ever gets in enough trouble to even get spanked. He replied, "Well, that time I DID get one, it really hurt." I asked if he remembered when that was, but he didn't.)

Starting some art

 

Seven: Experiment Seven

I didn't mean to miss the intro to the final experiment for my Seven year. October was my month to give up excess stress. Strangely, I went into the month knowing that it would be a HUGE challenge -- maybe my hardest one yet!

We knew several months ago that Allen was supposed to be on turn-around most of October. Since the little kids' birthday falls in October, and we had school commitments, and I'd be a not-quite-single-parent, we decided not to have parties for birthdays this year. We DID plan to celebrate, but not with a clean-the-house-all-week-for-company-and-worry-about-head-count-and-and-goody-bags kind of celebrations. I also told Will that we needed to focus on him getting through his afternoon at-home school work done in a reasonable amount of time before we would consider any extra-curricular activities AND that I wouldn't consider signing him up for anything other than scouts until November. Again, this was KNOWING I'd be going into a stressful month because of Allen's work schedule.

What we DIDN'T know until just before the turn-around started is that Allen would NOT be participating with the turn-around much. He ended up working mostly normal hours, and his work schedule didn't add any stress to our lives. But... by then we already had plans to not party or do extra-curricular activities. Nonetheless, it was still quite a challenge for me to chill out. I had my good days. I had my bad days. I had many runs of days that were so frustrating that I almost gave up trying for October, but I kept at it.

I started home schooling, and planned the days so that stress would be at a minimum. Knowing the things that stress me out, frustrate me, and make me angry makes it easier to plan to avoid those things. Overall, my strategy was to plan, prepare, but keep my plans flexible enough (and slightly under-planned when I knew it would be better to "go with the flow") that I would not get frustrated if things changed. I also tried to eat healthy foods and practiced saying "no" when others asked me to do things that would add to my stress unnecessarily.

Yes, I learned some things this month. One: reducing stress is harder for me than skipping sugar (January), skipping laundry (February), and getting rid of stuff (March). The other things I learned really pulled all the year's experiment results together though.

• Making healthy food choices greatly reduces stress. When I eat well, I have more energy and patience. This month, when I ate right, I didn't have the energy highs and lows that add to my stress levels.
• It is much less stressful when I have fewer choices of clothes to wear. It makes it easier to stay caught up on laundry.
• Stuff. Piles of stuff, drawers of stuff, everywhere stuff stress me out. I really like my desk clean and empty on top. I like nothing on my nightstand except one book and my alarm clock. I made time to clear away clutter from some of those spots, but it keeps coming back. (Part of the problem is that I'm usually reading half a dozen books at once.) That's an area I made a lot of progress on in March, but I still have a really long way to go.
• Media adds a lot of stress to my life. TV was pretty easy to minimize, but I did catch up on a couple episodes of Castle. Otherwise, I still skip most of it. The radio is sometimes on, but with my hearing issues, any other noise means I can't hear the music anyway. Emails I often need, but even my email account gets cluttered with ads I can do with out. I spent a bunch of time unsubscribing this month, but I think I only put a tiny dent in the pile. 
• Waste is still something we struggle with. We found great containers that mean we use hardly any baggies, so the ziplocks aren't taunting me each night when its time to wash them. But, the piles of recyclables in the garage continue to grow. I did take a carload to the recycle center finally, but ended up bringing all the glass back since they just quit taking glass. It is more effort to recycle now than to just put it in the trash, but feeling guilty about being wasteful adds stress.
• Spending -- ah, spending. Last month, Allen and I gave up all our disposable spending (is that the right term?). This month, we started home schooling three kids. We purchased desks, some book cases, our school curricula, and lots of books we would be using for school. Stressful? Spending that much at once can definitely can cause me some uneasiness, but not this time -- after all, we saved a bunch last month. 

It's been a semi-successful experiment. I did reduce a lot of stress, even if it wasn't as much as I had hoped. I did keep from over-booking an already busy month. I probably need to quit stressing about how much I stressed... but, unfortunately, that's me. Maybe the part of ME that I can work on in 2014.

First Grade Homeschool: Week 1

When we started the school year, we planned to give it a semester before deciding whether to take the kids out to homeschool. Unfortunately, the first couple months didn't go very well and the teachers pretty much refused to challenge our kids beyond what the rest of the class was doing. We met with the teachers and principal, then even gave it a few more weeks, but enough was enough and it just wasn't working. This was our first week of homeschooling Ben, Maddie, and Jon, and our first week at home went extremely well.

These three wore school uniforms for all of kindergarten and for the first couple months of first grade. Since they often seemed a bit jealous that Will could choose his own outfits each day, I expected them to be excited to not have their clothing predetermined. What surprised me is that all three got together the night before our first day of homeschool and set out matching outfits to be their "First day of homeschool uniform." They came downstairs for breakfast in matching swirls of color and black pants. :)

Allen and I worked hard to create a list of our education goals for the kids. I worked hard to choose a somewhat flexible curriculum that I think will work for all four of us -- thought that remains to be seen. I decided to just work on developing a core routine for the kids and me. In a few weeks, probably at Thanksgiving, I plan to add in a bit more. For now, we are focusing on getting used to each others' learning and teaching with math, reading, and writing. I hope to add in arts and crafts soon, but PE (for now) will just be playing outside while I help Will with his school work. At the end of November, I'll start thinking about how to pull in Spanish since they all really want that. One day at a time for now... but its been a great five days for most of us. The only major challenge is that Will isn't used to sharing Mama in the afternoons.

Project and Food Bank

Today, Ben, Maddie, Jon, and I went on our first homeschool field trip -- to Will's presentation at school! Will's latest project was working with his class to design and create a cook book of recipes that the kids created themselves. The presentation time was spent explaining the process, the recipes, the ingredients, and some of the sub-projects (arrays, fractions, bar charts, nutrition, etc.) they did connected to the cookbook. The class also collected canned goods to take to the East Texas Food Bank and we were part of the delivery team. While Will's class wrapped up the day, another mom and teacher helped Ben, Maddie, Jon, and I load all 700+ pounds cans into the back of our van. There were enough products donated to put some in another car, too. After a quick car-picnic lunch and long drive across town, we unloaded the goods and the Innovation kids posed for a pictures with the school donation. All the kids (including younger siblings) on the trip worked hard to fill bags of food for several hundred underprivileged school kids to take home on weekends. All in all, it was a terrific experience for all four of my kiddos, and I always love seeing them work with others so well.