Posts Tagged Homeschooling

We are beginning our 15th year of Homeschooling this year!  Wow.  It seems like it was just a few days ago that I first started teaching phonics to Kendall and Ryan.  Time has flown.  Kendall started his 3rd year of college yesterday, and Alex will start his first year of college classes on Thursday, thanks to the Dual Enrollment option here in North Carolina.

So this is going to be a very different year, with both boys in college.  Alex and I will be studying some stuff at home, namely 20th Century History, and he will be taking French again with Mrs.  U.  At the college, he will be taking College Algebra, Expository Writing, and JAVA Programming.  To top it all off, he will be working several nights a week at the Outback, where he just got hired on as a bus boy.

Kendall will be working on “The Blue Banner” this year, as part of his Journalism degree requirement.  “The Blue Banner” is the school newspaper for UNC-Asheville.  He is really excited about it, and I am anxious to see some of his stuff in print.  He will also be starting new job in a couple of weeks, and is looking forward to having a steady income this winter.

Faith and I actually started schooling a couple of weeks ago, on a very laid back schedule.  Next week will be a “full” week.  This year, in addition to the regular school subjects (History, Math, Science, Latin, Language Arts, Religion) she is also taking violin lessons and we are taking a quilting class together.  So, it promises to be a very exciting and fulfilling year.

Ready for the Father/Daughter Dance

Today has been a really wonderful, busy, day. This afternoon, we attended the Annual Homeschool Valentine’s Skating Party.  It is always a lot of fun, and the kids love it.  Alex gets to flirt with all the pretty girls, (and for some reason, they flirt back) and Faith gets to hang out with her friends.  I get to visit with all of my friends and try to not eat all of the amazing goodies that everyone always brings.  It is hard to believe that this is our 14th such party.  The skating rink has undergone a massive makeover during that time, and many of the faces have changed over the years.  I remember Kendall learning how to skate there, and today he couldn’t join us because he was in class. . . at college!!!  Wow. . . I can’t believe how old I’m getting!!!

Tonight, Gaylon took Faith to the Father/Daughter Dance at our Church.  Faith has been so excited for weeks now, looking forward to her special night with her Daddy.   She got all dressed up, and I even let her wear a tiny bit of makeup for the big event.  Gaylon made sure that he flew in from Texas this weekend, just so he could be here to take her to this dance.  They are so crazy about each other, and I think it’s wonderful.  I never had that sort of relationship with my own father, and am so grateful that God has blessed me with a husband who is crazy about our children.  It’s awesome!

Tomorrow morning, I will make my traditional Valentine’s Day breakfast of heart-shaped pancakes, and we will all stuff ourselves.  Food = Love, right?   Then, tomorrow night, it will be my turn to celebrate Valentine’s Day with Gaylon!  All of the kids are spending the night with friends, and Mom is even going down to a “Pajama Party” with some of her friends down in South Carolina.  So, Gaylon and I will have the house to ourselves for the entire night. . . I can’t remember the last time that happened!!!  Now our biggest decision is whether we want to have cornish hens or grilled steaks.  Ummmm . . .

I don’t  have anything in particular to say, really, just a lot of random thoughts I would like to share.  Starting with clothing.  Mom and I went Christmas shopping yesterday at the mall down in Greenville.  Our annual tradition is to find a really beautiful dress for Faith to wear for Christmas.  So, the hunt was on.  And on.  And on.  I am not a prude by any stretch of the imagination, and am very laid back about weird fashions, in general.  But I have reached the end of my tolerance on this.  “Skanky” is NOT a fashion.  It’s tacky, sleazy and I will not pay for it.  More importantly, my daughter doesn’t want to wear that sort of clothing, and even if she did, it ain’t happening!  Have you SEEN what they are selling to 11 year old girls????  Who decided that young girls were supposed to look like, ah, how shall I say this delicately. . . prostitutes???

We checked all the usual suspects: Dillards, Belk, etc.  We skipped Macy’s because they officially told their employees they were not allowed to wish anyone a Merry Christmas.  No more of my money for them.  I was getting really, really discouraged, when we finally ran across a store that still sells elegant, tasteful clothing.  Expensive, but worth it.  Thank God for Coldwater Creek!  We found some really lovely things there, and Faith is going to be so thrilled.  But not nearly as thrilled as Mom and I were to find decent clothing.

We found slinky shirts and scanty lingerie being passed off as formal gowns.  We found lots of clothing for the gang banger in your life.  We found some obscenely expensive t-shirts and ratty jeans.  I have to wonder what our world would be like if clothing companies, department stores, designers, etc. decided that they weren’t going to sell that sort of garbage anymore.  What if they decided to sell flattering, tasteful, simple clothing that made everyone look NICE?  Oops. . .sorry, I’ve slipped into my little fantasy again.  The same fantasy in which everyone spends an entire week saying only kind things to everyone they meet and the media only reports good, happy news.  Imagine with me what that would be like!!  Wow. . .

Okay, back on planet earth, I have some happy thoughts, too.  We helped out with a local organization’s Christmas gift distribution today.  The Storehouse here does an amazing job of taking care of folks in our community who are in need of food, clothing, whatever.  Lynn, the self-described “demented elf” is the lady who runs it, and she is nothing short of amazing.  Our 4-H club volunteered to help, along with lots of other homeschoolers and various others in our community.  There were literally thousands of gifts there!  It was heartwarming to me to see all the warmth and love there.  The kids were blown away by how many families were there because they couldn’t afford to buy presents for their children.  A real eye-opener, to be sure.

An added bonus was getting to see our old pastor and catch up with him for a bit.  He is a wonderful man, with a heart of gold and a warm loving spirit.  I got to see lots of other folks that I hadn’t seen in quite a while, and that was really nice.  With our upcoming move looming large, it’s a sweet blessing for me to get to visit with old friends before we leave.

And, no, we don’t know when we are planning to move.  Our house must sell first.  However, we have found a realtor that we really like: Janis Moore with Keller Williams.  She is sending a professional photographer to come take pictures of our home next week!  I am very hopeful.  Even in this economy, God can sell our house!

Tomorrow will find us back down in Greenville to do Christmas with my lifelong friend, Emily, and her family.  We pick a day every year to get together and exchange gifts and of course, eat!  We are all looking forward to that.  Then, on Sunday after Mass, our 4-H Club is going caroling.  Afterward, they are all coming over here for hot cocoa.

I have had a warm fuzzy feeling all day, and it was topped off tonight in the coolest way.  Faith and Alex each have a friend spending the night, and we hadn’t seen or heard any of them for quite a while.  I went up to check, assuming that the boys were probably playing video games, and that the girls were probably watching Christmas movies.  Nope.  All of them were playing a board game together, having a wonderful time!  And people ask me why we homeschool. . .

So, that’s it for my randomness tonight.  Now that my Adobe InDesign class is over I will have a bit more time for this blog.  I love it, but it has been really busy lately.  Peace, out.

It feels like I hit the ground running on Monday morning, and things have yet to slow down!  On Monday, Faith and I loaded Pippin up and took him to the vet to be neutered.   When we picked him up at 4:30 that afternoon, the poor little guy was absolutely stoned!  At one point, when he was trying to walk, he just fell over!!  However, he made a quick recovery and is doing great now.

Faith and also started working on her new denim jumper.  She has been after me to teach her how to sew, and this is what she wanted to start with.

On Tuesday, Faith and I went into town to pick up some extra fabric we needed for her jumper, and for a quilt she is planning to make.  Then we had lunch.  That evening, Alex and I had dinner with some friends, then all of us headed over to the Flat Rock Playhouse for a Spotlighter’s meeting, then got to go to the Dress Rehearsal of “Tuesdays With Morrie”.  It was a really poignant play, and gave us both a lot to think about.

Wednesday was spent with more sewing, and of course, schoolwork. I spent some time working on the website I am tring to get up and running for my genealogy research, too. It’s coming right along, but still nowhere near ready!

Thursday was spent doing more sewing, and hanging out with my friend, Lisa, in the afternoon.  That’s always a nice break!

Today has been spent finishing up the jumper, 90% of which Faith sewed by herself!  It is beautiful, and it looks so sweet on her.  Now we just finishing up packing so we can head over to the Eucharistic Congress.

Packaging is everything.  So, in an attempt to get folks excited about summer coming to an abrupt halt, and in the spirit of American Commercialism, everywhere we look these days there is some sign, poster, or advertisement that says “Back to School”.  I am too old to be fooled by such.  I know what those signs really mean:  “End of Summer”!  End of Freedom. Which, for as long as I can remember, I have dreaded.

Perhaps it is because I am a product of the public school system.  In public school, kids are expected, almost encouraged, to hate school.  They are segregated by age and sent through their days in assembly-line fashion, but expected to remember all the new information that is directed at them at least long enough to regurgitate it on an exam. School is often more like prison than a freeing and enlightening of the mind. But it is very effective in mass-producing students who cannot think for themselves.

We chose to begin homeschooling 14 years ago for many reasons, but they can almost all be boiled down to freedom of thought. As homeschoolers, our children are free to choose many of their topics of study, we can sleep late, or call a trip to the grocery store a field trip in economics and nutrition.  Homeschooling is, if nothing else, an exercise in freedom and enlightenment.  No wonder public school officials fear it so much.  We produce thinkers.  Homeschoolers not only think for themselves, they question and challenge.  They seek Truth.  In the socialistic setting of the public school, thinking is dangerous. Questioning and challenging are discouraged or even punished.

No wonder hordes of young men and women think Obama is such a great choice.  They were never trained to think, to question, to challenge.  They hear what he tells them, and, because they were trained by the public school system to accept what they are told as the gospel truth, they blindly believe he’s honest and can be trusted.  After all, he has a microphone, doesn’t he?  He’s using all the right buzzwords that they were programmed to get excited about: hope, change, belief. He looks and sounds like he means business.

So they never bother to check his voting record.  I wonder if they even know they can do such a thing.  They don’t bother to question his contributors’ motives.  Who is funding his campaign?  What do they stand for? Make no mistake: nobody is going to donate money to a political campaign if there’s nothing in it for them. Why do foreign investors think giving Obama millions of dollars is a good idea?  What are the changes he is promising?  And, if  he is able to actually implement them, what will that look like in real life?  What will be the long term effects of the changes he is proposing?  Can we even pinpoint exactly what those changes are?  The summer break mentality is not up to the task of choosing the next leader of the free world.  Our educational system has failed us by producing generations of people who cannot make educated, informed decisions.

As a nation, we cannot afford to take a ’summer break’.  We must Think.  Question.  Challenge.  Seek Truth. These are skills and habits that should be employed all year round, for the rest of one’s life.  We cannot shelve our brains for the summer, or it truly will mean the end of the American Summer. The End of Freedom.

I am finally finished with the Yearbook!!  Yay!  For those of you who don’t know, I have done the yearbook for our homeschool support group for the past two years.  This is my last year, because it really does take up all of my time and energy, especially toward the end.  I love doing that kind of stuff, but my husband is starting to drop hints that he’d like to see me again at some point, when I’m not buried in a computer screen.

I have plenty of other projects on the back burner that I would love to get to.  I actually got to one of them today!  I have been wanting to design my own banner for this blog for a long time, and I finally did.  Let me know what you think.

Other projects in the works:  a new photo gallery, hosted here on my own site.  I have been using Zenphoto, because it’s really simple, without all the bells and whistles that I don’t need and will never use.  If you want to check it out (understand that there are many more photos coming, and it’s not completely set up the way I want it) the link is:  http://morningtower.net/gallery.  It’s really not much different than my Flickr account, except that once I’ve got all my photos uploaded to it, I won’t have to pay for Flickr anymore.

I am hoping to create my own genealogy website sometime soon, too.  I understand that most of my readers are not interested in my family history, but I would like to have a spot online where that information is available for fellow gravediggers!

The kids (Alex and Faith) leave for camp next Saturday.  Usually I try to do NOTHING while they’re gone, but this year we have a couple of fun things planned.  On the 30th, Mom and I are having a jewelry party.  Then, over the weekend of the 4th, Gaylon and I are going to Gatlinburg for a much needed and long awaited getaway!  Gatlinburg has an Independence Day Parade at Midnight on the 4th (or the night of the 3rd, however you want to look at it) and our hotel is right on the main street, so we’ll get to see it fairly easily.  We also have tickets to Dollywood and are planning on spending a day in the Great Smoky Mountain National Park hiking.  I think it’s gonna be an awesome weekend.  It’s been over 3 years since the two of us have gotten to go off for a few days.

In other news, Alex and Faith both did fantastic last Saturday for their presentations at 4-H County Activity Day.  Alex is doing a presentation on “Oil In Our World” about the uses of petroleum products in day-to-day life.  Faith’s presentation is on Fireflies.  Faith got a blue ribbon, and Alex got a red.  The judges told Alex that if he could just lengthen his presentation by a couple of minutes, he would almost certainly take the gold at State Congress next month.  We go to 4-H District Activity Day next week in Brevard.  That should be a lot of fun!

Kendall is enjoying working at the country club again this summer.  He has a theory now that rich people don’t have kitchens, because they all seem to spend all their time eating at the club.  He thinks (and I agree) that it’s ridiculous to drive over to the country club just to order a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch.  But, it keeps him employed, so he can’t complain too much!!  He is also especially enjoying this summer because his buddy, Joey, is now working there with him in the kitchen at the pool.  Now that would make a good reality tv show!! 

Also, on the 8th, we are getting a new priest.  That’s sort of exciting.  When I was growing up, we always had at least three priests, so it is a strange thing to me to only have one priest.  But it does make it much more exciting when we get a new one.  I’m anxious to see what he will be like.

So, that’s the update here.  I will hopefully have more time to post, now that the yearbook is finished.  Again, please let me know what you think about my new header, and if you check out the photo gallery, let me know about that, too.  It will be updated soon, and frequently.

“Ultimately man becomes sick for sheer lack of authenticity; he no longer lives as a subject: he exists as the plaything of chance and superficiality.” ~Benedict XVI~

I think everybody goes through some form of an identity crisis at some point.  I think perhaps the hardest thing any of us ever has to do is to be real, to be authentic.  I have been thinking a lot lately about what I want to be when I grow up.  Which is sort of weird, because it would seem that I have been ‘grown up’ for a good many years.  But for some reason, the older I get, the more I want my life to have meaning.  I want to do things that matter, that have a lasting impact, for the better.

Yes, I firmly believe that Homeschooling is something that matters greatly.  Raising our children in a Christian home with Christian values is the single most important contribution any parent could ever make.  Nothing could ever matter more.  If I didn’t believe that, I certainly would not have kept it up for the past 15 years!  There have been so many times when it seemed it would be far easier to pack everybody up and send them to the government to be raised and indoctrinated!  But, that has never been a real option for me.  However, as my kids get older (and one is already in college) I have been thinking more and more about what I would like to do with my own life now.  Life after homeschooling, as it were.

For a long time I thought I would simply go to school, get my nursing degree, and become a midwife.  But that never really settled well with me, because deep down, I am at odds with the idea of Certified Nurse Midwifery.  Nurses are Nurses.  Midwives are Midwives.  I do not think they are necessarily mutually exclusive, but I am quite sure that one does not have to be a nurse to be a midwife.  But, that is a soapbox I will not go into here and now.  Suffice it to say, that I have realized that nursing school is not something I want to pursue.

So what, then, do I want to do?  I want to write.  I love to write (probably why I have a blog in the first place??) and it is the one thing that I cannot seem to not do!  Writing is the part of me that is always authentic, and yet in the past twenty years, I’ve done very little of it.

I really loved the quote that I put at the top of this post.  It hit me on a visceral level in a way I can’t fully explain. So I wanted to share it, and try to gather some of my very scattered thoughts on that idea.  I don’t want to merely float through life, waiting for something wonderful to happen.  I want to be authentic, in all areas of my being.

Yes, I will continue to homeschool until we hear otherwise from God.  Frankly, I don’t see that happening, and I am very content and happy about that.  But in an effort to be true to myself, I think I may take a class or two, here and there. . . and maybe pursue that Professional Writing Degree when I finally do decide to grow up!

My friend, Jill, has developed an amazing website, and is adding even more wonderful information to it. I have added a link to it in my Homeschool Links section, but here it is again: Homeschool-By-Design. She has done an amazing job of covering all the bases, and I’m really impressed! Check it out.

Things have been really busy around here lately. We have joined 4-H, and while that hasn’t taken up much time yet, I have a sneaking suspicion that it’s going to, and soon! Tomorrow night Faith and I will be helping out with a fundraiser, working the concession stand. But, it sounds fun, so we are looking forward to it. Both Faith and Alex are about to start working on their presentations, and Faith is starting a 4-H Sewing Class next week. Also, Alex is going to start working on writing a script for our club to do for 4-H Entertains in May.

It is also Girl Scout Cookie Delivery Time. So, what that means is that our dining room is covered up in boxes and cases of Girl Scout Cookies. Everywhere! Unfortunately, Faith is a great salesperson, and sold 125 boxes this year, by herself. (I would have been more helpful, but was recovering from surgery, so that didn’t work out too well.)

Alex is staying really busy with Drama and Church. He still does his Drama Reading Group every other week with a group of homeschoolers at the library. They do cold readings of plays, everything from Shakespeare to Arthur Miller. He loves it, and they all have a lot of fun. He is also taking an acting class at the Flat Rock Playhouse. If you haven’t heard of it, it truly is world class. Click their name in red up above to check out their website. Alex has started up a prayer group for the youth group, too. They meet thirty minutes before Youth on Sunday evenings to say the Rosary. He felt very strongly led to do this, and got it set up without anything from me but encouragement. How proud I am goes without saying. The other big news with Alex is that he shaved his head for Lent. Yeah, really. My Mom says that he and Kendall now look like Cousin It and Uncle Fester, because Kendall’s hair is so long, and Alex’s is gone!!

Speaking of Kendall, he is doing great at college, and lately has been staying busy helping his girlfriend move down here from D.C. She is planning on coming down in a couple of weeks, and will be staying with us until she gets a job here and her own place. She is a very resourceful and courageous young woman, and I am very impressed with her. She has saved up a substantial amount of money, and I think is going to make the transition very smoothly. We are looking forward to having her here and getting to know her better.

Gaylon’s job is going well, keeping him very busy. I am getting a lot busier with editing our homeschool support group’s yearbook. It’s a lot of fun, but a lot of work. We have new software this year, so I am also having to learn to use Adobe InDesign, which has a bit of a learning curve, but hey! I love a challenge! I am also now the assistant leader for our Girl Scout Troop. I don’t think I really do that much assisting, but it’s fun. Gaylon and I are hoping to find a weekend to get away for a bit and relax. But that will have to wait until after Easter, I’m sure!

So, that’s the update here. I realized that I hadn’t written anything ‘personal’ for a while, so thought it was probably time! Besides, it’s not every year you get to blog on February 29th! I would love to hear from those of you who are far away! Leave me a comment!! And, since tomorrow it’ll be March . . . Eírinn Go Brágh!!

I’ve mentioned this before, but I am not a morning person.  I used to feel really guilty about this, but something deep inside me ‘clicked’ when I turned forty, and suddenly I quit feeling guilty about a great many things, like preferring to sleep in, hating to eat carrots, and loving coffee. I began instead to wonder why other people were wired differently.

For example, I am going to a Homeschool Support group Parent Meeting this morning.  They have all sorts of wonderful workshops scheduled for the edification and enjoyment of any parent who wants to attend.  Okay, cool!  I am going to be there hawking Yearbook info.  We have almost 300 homeschooling families in our group, and last year only 68 of them submitted pages for the yearbook.  I’m hoping to drum up some more participation.   But after hitting the snooze button on my alarm for the third time this morning, I came to the inevitable thought “Why couldn’t we have done this in the afternoon???”

I dragged myself out of my nice, warm, comfy bed, feeling a great sense of awe for the woman who organized this event.  She has something like five kids, and the youngest is not even one year old yet!  She will have to be there early, and stay late. If I was her, I’d never have even considered scheduling an event: a) on a Saturday at all and b) in the morning! But she is apparently a far more motivated and disciplined woman than I.

I’m thinking it does beg the question about the other 100+ people who registered for this: are they Morning People, too, or just willing themselves to get out of bed at the crack of dawn on a Saturday out of a sense of obligation or guilt?  Could it be that there are people out there who actually enjoy getting out of the bed so early? (Let alone out of the house??) It is an intriguing thought for me. Perhaps I could take an informal poll of anyone who stops by my yearbook table today. . .

But, alas!  I am up at this obscene hour of the morning, drinking my coffee, and (obviously) blogging. I can already feel a nap coming on!