Author Archives: Beth

Kate Asks……

Leave a reply
Kate asks the funniest questions. Most of them are rhetorical or meant only for amusement or sometimes just to fill space. She can be serious but these questions rarely are. To give you an example, I’ll try to feature one or a few of them each week(because she sometimes asks many of these types of questions per day). I wish I had started writing these down a long time ago but didn’t, so this is a good place to record them.
#1. “What would you rather have, a nose shaped like a carrot or a head shaped like a balloon?”
#2. “Mummy, would you help Luke shave if he started to grow a mustache over his nose?” Uh, yeah.
#3. (While eating lobster). “Mummy, what would you do if my lobster stood up on my plate………………
and started doing kung fu?”
You see how the questions largely aren’t designed for an answer or serious discussion?
Hope you got a chuckle….Have a great weekend!

 

Internet Addiction Test- An Admission

Leave a reply
Internet Addiction TestThat was wierd. I tried the widget-type thingy on the website and it just published its own post. I clicked on this through Elizabeth Foss’ blog. Took it and my only objection to it is that there’s no option on ANY of the questions for NEVER. I thought that was odd and maybe makes it a little inaccurate.

Just to be real, I scored a 25. Honestly, I think I would have scored lower but there was no option for “NEVER”. I never think about being on the internet when I’m not. My horrible habit is checking my email. If I could curb that, I’d be fine.

I check 2 blogs nearly every day in the morning (yes even before my prayers) while the coffee is percolating because I usually find them to be interesting or inspiring. That’s about it. On Thursdays and Fridays, I look forward to 3 blogs that host “linky” parties for people who post DIY projects or recipes. I admit, they inspire me and I’ve acted on that inspiration.

I’ve been pretty negligent in posting on my own blog(s) only because I haven’t organized the time. If it meant more to me, I’d organize a specific time to make it more regular. I like writing and I like the record but I rarely would rather do that in the place of reading or being with the kids or actually getting something accomplished in the house. Believe it or not, I take photos of most of the things I accomplish in the house but then don’t feel like posting about it. That’s totally fine by me for now. There may be a time when I derive satisfaction from that. Probably when all the kids are more independent in their schoolwork or spend most of the day in school.

I could probably go nuts in thrift stores and yard sales but that goes against my inclination to purge and simplify.

Take the test. It probably will give you a decent picture.

 

How a Homeschooled Kid Likes Public School

Leave a reply
Hannah’s about one month into her public school experience. As a homeschooler, I always wonder whether my children will be prepared for traditional school if they had to go. I always knew Hannah would do well in school and she is. I don’t take credit for it. I don’t not take credit for it. I just have always known that Hannah would meet challenges, rise to the occasion and do fine.Her core classes are math, science (physical science), social studies and language arts. She also has gym once a week (yes this is graded-not pass/fail-huh?). Finally, she has art every day (her major). She has A’s in almost everything. The one class that she doesn’t have an “A”, she set a goal to have an “A” by the end of the sememster and I’ve never known her NOT to meet a goal. She’s adapting fine to the commute (about an hour, give or take 5-15 minutes) and the LOOOOOOng day. She wakes up about 5:40, we leave the house by 6:55 and she doesn’t usually get home until 4:45.

She gets along great with everyone in her class. The junior-high boyfriend/girlfriend drama is starting already. Even though most of these kids have only known each other for a couple of weeks, they think they might be in love. Hannah’s a witness to all of this-not interested as of yet. I believe her.

There are some girls who openly discuss s*x and which boys they’d have it with (in 8th grade). Again, Hannah is appropriately offended by these types of conversations. It not only grosses me out and worries me but mostly makes me sad that young girls think they have to be this way to matter. Hannah doesn’t. The tricky part will be for Hannah to opt out of this type of conversation without being targeted as odd. We’ll see.

There you have it. Overall, it’s been positive for Hannah, with the exception of the odd happening here and there.

Inexpensive Room Change!

Leave a reply

I enjoy painting and I love SW paints. I’ve been waiting for this sale to come around again. This weekend is the 40% off super sale. This sale is super. Paint can be expensive-especially the good stuff. Even their little samples will be on sale if you’re not sure what color you need. You don’t have to paint this weekend but if you have a project hanging over your head, buy your paint this weekend. I read somewhere else that if you do the color visualizer on the website you can print an unlimited number of $10 off a purchase of $50. Even with the sale, you’ll likely spend more than $50.

Painting really doesn’t take that long. If you can get everyone out of the house, you really can paint a room in a couple of hours. Or if you can only get small windows of time, do a wall at a time. When I do it that way, I usually wrap my roller in plastic wrap. I do wash my brushes between sessions, though.

*Believe me, I’m not getting paid for this endorsement.

Edited to add, you can print the $10 off coupon without doing the color visualizer but you can’t use it with sale prices.

 

14 Years Ago Today

Leave a reply
Hannah on her first day of public school

No words and many words. Does that make sense? No words are adequate to describe how much this girl amazes me. But every great word might do it.

I’m sure everyone wants to know how school is going. I don’t want to speak for Hannah (or lump any expectations on her in case she’s secretly miserable and is just waiting to drop the bomb) but it seems to be a perfect fit for her. The transition from homeschool to traveling for an hour on a bus has been as seamless as it could be. I miss her, of course, but am so happy that she likes it. So far, she likes her teachers, tolerates the long bus ride and is meeting lots of kids both in her class and in the other grades. The school seems to have a uniquely positive atmosphere which suits Hannah’s positive outlook on life. (She was born that way-I take no credit). She’s lucky that the 12 or so kids in her arts major are a really good group and get along well. So far, there doesn’t seem to be any of the cattiness and extreme insecurity that seems to plague junior high these days-yay! I think the teachers have high standards for responsibility, behavior and performance which Hannah thrives on. She’s adjusting fine to textbooks and homework, which doesn’t surprise me.

Happy Birthday, Hannah. So glad your birthday fell on a Sunday this year.

9/11: Remembering a day early

Leave a reply

I have mixed feelings about remembering that day 10 years ago. Partly because it was Hannah’s 4th birthday and partly because I think I’m still traumatized. I wish Hannah didn’t have to share her birthday with that madness.

I have avoided talking a lot about 9/11 with the kids over the years. It’s impossible to explain it in a way that doesn’t scare them. It’s difficult to convey the magnitude of the events without showing them a video and quite frankly, I can’t watch. The same panic begins to surface when I think about the clear blue skies, the calm of that morning and how it changed in an instant into chaos.

I remember feeling that life as I knew it was over. Like everyone else, I felt like planes were falling out of the sky and they were. When Flight 93 went down in Somerset, I called Mark to come home.

I called all of my family members just to hear their voices and to make sure they were all o.k. I was on the phone with my brother when the towers collapsed. That’s something I wish I hadn’t seen live. A friend in New York City was unreachable for hours but we finally got word that she and her husband were alive. She had almost reached her office not far from the towers when the first plane hit and she turned around to go home. It took her hours to walk back since transportation was shut down. She was pregnant but miscarried not long afterward. All this while little Hannah was happy as a lark because we would have cake and presents that night.

I avoided malls for nearly a year. I was too anxious to allow Mark to go to a conference in Florida the following January. Not only was I worried about him flying, I worried about being home alone with the kids if terrorists attacked our town. Do you remember that school in Russia not long after 9/11? I know I’m not alone in my reaction, I’m just explaining why I feel badly that I’m not up to revisiting it. I do want to honor the people who died senselessly, I’m just not capable of doing so publicly. I will fly my flag and answer as many questions about that day as the kids have but I won’t be chatting about it with my friends. I hated that day. So, tomorrow, I will pray for the repose of the souls of all those lost on September 11, 2001, I’ll pray for the families and everyone affected personally, I’ll pray for peace and then I’ll come home from Mass and celebrate Hannah.

Worth Repeating and Where Have I Been?

Leave a reply

This is a super quick post just to pass this link along about the movement to unschool higher education. Good links in that article. Read it.

It’s been a while since I posted ANYTHING. I’ve been busy this summer enjoying the kids and the break from school work. I’ve been finishing up and starting projects.

Some of the work has been tedious and time-consuming (making 6 new box cushions for our couch in the mountains…WITH PIPING AND ZIPPERS! Some of my projects have been spur-of-the-moment like rebuilding a tiny brick wall that houses flowers right by my grill (see above). Some other projects have been hanging over my head for a while (like the dresser I needed to paint for Hannah, the chair I wanted to reupholter-OH YES I DID- and the bedroom I wanted to repaint. Sorry I haven’t posted about those things. I think seeing what others are accomplishing is incredibly motivating but I’ve been so wrapped up in getting stuff done that I haven’t wanted to take the time to post about it. Also, we’ve been getting to our mountain house nearly every weekend since baseball ended for some work and play. Making progress there-yippy.

Hannah is getting ready to go to a charter school next week. I’ll try to post about that transition for our family. (Sniff sniff and “YOU GO GIRL!”-I’ll miss her for sure but am so excited that she has this opportunity). The rest of us are looking forward to a fresh start with school work. It’s been a good summer.

April Foolery

Leave a reply
I forgot how mini Mark has a somewhat skewed version of “April Fool’s Day” and just spends the day not playing tricks but generally causing mayhem. He grabbed the innards of a red pepper from the compost bowl today and threw it at Hannah….”April Fools!”.  He spent most of the day pelting people or trying to pelt them with some thing or other and then running. Thankfully, he’s the youngest and everyone sort of just knits the eyebrows, shakes the head with a puzzled half-smile and takes it mostly in good stride. I can’t possibly count how many times I said “That’s enough! Mark, you aren’t fooling people, you’re just bullying them!”At lunch, I accidentally scratched Hannah as I was handing her a plate and she said, joking, “Trying to gouge me?” I said “April Fools!” We both cracked up.

 

March Madness Redux

Leave a reply





From the Archives: I don’t have much to add to this-except since Mark now works on Thursday and Friday, it’s not a whole day off and the kids (boys especially) have been scrambling to get their regular school work done in order to become couch potatoes starting at noon.


Who doesn’t love Mach Madness? I’ve loved the excitement of everything leading up to it and the tournament, itself since high school back in the “Phi Slamma Jamma” days. I didn’t start filling out brackets until graduate school and only then discovered how it made you care about ALL the games-not just your favorite teams.

As a mom, I still fill out my bracket. I don’t watch all the games, but I’ll sit down here and there to catch some of it. I love how it unites the family in a shared experience. Even Kate, who has no interest in the X’s and O’s of any sport, makes her picks and likes hearing who wins and loses. I think last year, she almost won the 6 bucks!

The Thursday afternoon that the tournament starts is one of the times that I love that the kids aren’t in school. Tip-off 12:20, pick your seat, grab the snacks. I’ll go to the mat defending this experience as education-though I don’t count it since Thurs. and Fri. are our typical weekends. This is the type of 3-D, real-world, delight-driven learning that grows the brain.  Handwriting, spelling, reading, math (what are the odds of Robert Morris winning the tournament, what’s the score-how many does RMU need to tie it up?) social studies, (wonder how Chief Kicking Stallion Sims got his name), physiology, language arts in its most applied, authentic form, all integrated naturally by the conversations that go along with it and topped off by the more frequent trips to the driveway hoop during time-outs and half times. Mind you, I don’t instigate or hijack any of the above naturally occurring “educational” moments, they happen spontaneously and usually without any input from me. I would never ruin the experience by trying to schoolify the tournament, I’m just saying they’re learning.

Admittedly, I don’t have much wisdom to offer to the chatter and pontificating since I don’t follow basketball all season but I love to listen to the conversations. I’m telling you, neurons are firing and brains are growing because its relevant. Maybe not relevant to the world-at-large, but March Madness is relevant to our world for the next 2 weekends and I’m grateful for the tradition.

 

Facing Fear ~ Take 1

Leave a reply
Well, today wasn’t the first time I’ve barrelled through a fear since I first decided not to allow fear to hold me back. But it involved a few fears or reservations.I attended the first of a six week series at Mark’s new club which introduces different mind/body classes that are offered. Fear #1 was overcoming a dread about commitments. I’m a real baby if I’m locking myself into something-especially on a Saturday. I’ve always disliked recreational commitments for myself. Even when I was in a tennis league, before children, I did not like the weekly obligation.The second fear was actually committing to trying something new. The six samples are pilates, yoga, personal training, spinning (SCARY!), zumba (SCARIER but it looks like fun) and BOOT CAMP (AAAAHHHHHKKKKK!) So that’s a whole bunch of fears. I’m afraid of hurting myself in about 5 of those 6 because I’m so weak and inflexible. But I’ve committed. I hope this will kick start me into taking time for fitness. It would be a shame to waste the value of our family membership at that beautiful facility.