I'm Sorry I Forgot To Tell You

(An unrelated picture, just so you'll have something cute to look at.)

So often I'll read a post by another blogger and think, "That would go perfectly with what I was thinking about writing!" The reality is, though, that I forget about it until after I hit publish or Alice is waking up as I'm almost finished and I just go ahead and post it as is in order to get her back to sleep before she's decided she's ready for a late night party. Thus, it's time for a post all about posts I forgot to tell you about. Sorry about that. (And I'm sorry that later on in this post it's all italics. I don't devote a lot of time trying to figure out glitches.)

1. Carol's post about How to Pray for a Home Educator Carol is smart and funny and should blog more frequently. You know, in all that spare time we all have.

2. They Can't Kill Me If I'm Already Dead I'm not familiar with this blog, but someone linked it on facebook the other day and it's worth reading.

3. Tell me again: Why Bother? by Elizabeth Foss (Excuse me while I go clean up some piles...)

"The Flylady talks about CHAOS--the "Can't Have Anybody Over Syndrome." Certainly, it would be a shame to not be able to have anybody over. But a greater shame, I think, is to neglect the people who actually live in a house by being a poor steward of both time and treasure. A greater shame is for a hard working man to have to pick his way around the mess as he makes his way to a disheveled bedroom. A greater shame is to throw a meal at the kids and run to work on an outside project while they eat."

4. The Warmth of Your Smile by Elizabeth Foss (Not that anyone is going to mistake me for a tower of efficiency...)
"Work for the sake of work? I do have days where I barrel through. I go from one item to another, forgetting that the list serves the people and not the other way around. I fall victim to “just a minute” and small faces crumple as I achieve. They don’t want “just a minute”; they don’t want a tower of efficiency. They want a warm lap. They want me to look them in the eyes when they recount the latest teenage drama. They want my undivided attention. They want me. And, truthfully, it is my job to bring warmth and beauty into their lives just as much — or more — as it is my job to be chauffeur and cook."

5. Crafting Home by Elizabeth Foss (If you can't tell, I really like her.)
"We are called to provide for those who come and go a place of gratitude. A place where the habit is a song of thanks and children are ever aware of God’s goodness, even in grief, even in failure, even in sin. Homemakers (whether devoted full time to the task or not), make havens, places of consolation, of new beginnings, of forgiveness."

The Homeschool Meme

I visited Kendra's blog this morning and was surprised to find myself tagged! If you haven't visited Kendra's blog before, you really need to!

1. One Homeschool Book You've Enjoyed
I've said it before, and I'll say it again--and again and again. My favorite homeschool book is Real Learning: Education in the Heart of the Home. Maybe I'll toss it back in my ever-growing reading pile soon.

2. One Resource You Wouldn't Be Without
Maybe it's cheating to count them all as one resource, but I'm going to have to go with my Peggy Kaye game books. (I need Games with Books!) These are wonderful because they have so many ideas for kids at so many levels. I'll probably keep these even when the kids are older in case I end up back in the classroom.

3. One Resource You Wish You'd Never Bought
Hmmm...There are quite a few things I have (mostly from my classroom days) that I don't know if I'll use much now, but I hate to get rid of them, just in case. I can't think of anything that's turned out really badly, though, maybe because I usually go off of recommendations of like-minded people--Heather, Rachel, Kendra, Amber to name a few.

4. One Resource You Enjoyed Last Year
Startwrite has been wonderful! I use it to make daily copywork pages for Jack using sentences from our current Five in a Row story. You can choose many different fonts and many different ways to show them--tracing, arrows, etc. It's also great for creating custom writing and drawing pages.

5. One Resource You Will Be Using Next Year
You'll find some people who know now what they're using next year. The only reason I am one of those people right now is that I plan on sticking with what we're doing for the most part: Five in a Row, Math on the Level, StartWrite. I'll likely add in some more writing resources, but since we just started this year I couldn't begin to tell you what we'll be using next year!

6. One Resource You Would Like To Buy
Books. Lots of them. I always want more books!

7. One Resource You Wish Existed
I wish there was a good co-op in the area. In a year or two I think it would be great to have a place where Jack could take a class or two and where I could teach some classes. Alas, there doesn't seem to be anything like this around here.

8. One Homeschool Catalog You Enjoy Reading
The only homeschool catalog I've ever gotten is the Rainbow Resource catalog, which is kind of like War and Peace. I don't think it's actually meant to be read through, but one evening Alice wanted me to sit with her while she watched something on the computer and there it was, sitting on the table. Having seen that episode of Bear in the Big Blue House more than a few times, I started flipping through page by page and found a lot of interesting stuff! I started circling things and tearing out pages and maybe some day I will finish the catalog (I've gotten maybe 10% into it) and order some things!

9. One Homeschooling Website you Use Regularly
Homeschool Share! And for one I haven't shared as much, Mathwire.com. For Alice, I like Making Learning Fun, which I used a lot when Jack was little.

Tag 6 Other Homeschoolers:
If you want to tag yourself, please do, and let me know! Alice is taking a rare nap, so I am ending this one here!

September 11

I hadn't planned to write a post about September 11, but as we waited for dinner last night in the shadow of a World Trade Center look-alike, I was thinking about how little my children will probably know about it until they are older, even though their lives have been so greatly affected by it. And some day, when they are old enough to really grasp it, I will most likely be the one telling the story, so here it is from my perspective.

September 11 started early for me. I had been home sick the day before and I had some copies I wanted to make on special paper (I was that kind of teacher nerd), so I got up early and went to Kinko's before heading to school. I was wearing the new khaki pants and black sweater I had bough two days before. Just before the kids started coming to the classrooms, a fourth grade teacher came in and said, "I just realized that those of you who get here early (I was that kind of teacher nerd) probably haven't heard. Someone flew a plane into the World Trade Center." My response? "How bad of a pilot do you have to be to fly your plane into a building?" Terrorism never crossed my mind, though it quickly became apparent that I was, unfortunately, horribly wrong.

I remember getting news in bits and pieces while my kids were in gym and on the computer. A couple of kids in my class ended up going home within the hour, pulled by worried parents. By lunch, coworkers were asking if I thought Jay would be called up for some kind of duty, and though I was pretty sure that wasn't going to happen since he was still in school and still not on active duty, I wasn't sure how long he would be safe from something like that. After school I stopped to get gas and the pumps were empty. I picked up dinner and watched TV for the rest of the evening. Though we didn't know anyone in the buildings, we had friends who worked in the city and we were glad to hear they were safe.

Obviously, everyone has been affected in some way or another by the events of that day, but one of the earliest moments of clarity came when talking with the dad of one of my students during the fall conference times a few weeks later. This man had lived in New York City for most of his life and still had many family and friends there. As we were chatting, I mentioned that I was tired because I had made a two hour drive each way to have dinner with Jay the night before (he was away on a rotation for a month) and that I would have taken the day off and stayed with him if it hadn't been for conferences. "You should have stayed," he said. "I've been to eleven funerals in the last two weeks. There isn't anything you needed to tell any of us that had to be said tonight. You could have called us later. You should have stayed."

Our lives were already going to change when Jay went on active duty in June 2002, and having no prior military experience before that, I can't tell you how the military experience was much different, but it's really different from civilian life. Having a pimply faced kid in BDUs dispensing your birth control is just weird. Just a month after moving to Omaha, we watched fireworks on the first 4th of July since the attacks. If you've never seen fireworks in a military town, you're missing out, and that year was extreme.

The entire seven years of our Air Force life, deployments were always there, from staff we weren't familiar with to people we knew to good friends. From the beginning, I knew Jay was going to have to go somewhere, and I'm thankful that as far as deployments go, his was an easy one. It's never easy to leave your family, though, and I'm so glad that he was able to go at a time when we could tell Jack that Daddy was going to go take care of people far away and that was all the explanation he needed.

So here we are ten years later and we're back in the same town, but this time with two kids and a house. We've made it through a deployment and Osama Bin Laden is dead. The hassles of this new way of life are pretty routine. Slowly, Jack is learning about what happened. Perhaps it will be fuzzy for him for a long time, as it often seems to be with events that happened around the time you were born. (Does anyone my age really know what was going on in the 70s? I could tell you a lot about the 1770s and a fair amount about the 1870s, but the clearest information I have about the 1970s is that we all wore bad clothes and Jimmy Carter was pathetic.) I'm glad that we don't watch much TV, because I know he isn't ready to see the wall to wall coverage that's sure to be on. In another 10 years, perhaps it will be easier for all of us to digest, maybe just a little more.

~~~~

America was targeted for attack because we're the brightest beacon for freedom and opportunity in the world. And no one will keep that light from shining. Today, our nation saw evil, the very worst of human nature. And we responded with the best of America. ~ George W. Bush

Our Town

This week we've been rowing They Were Strong and Good, and one of the lessons is on how a town changes over time. This was the perfect time for a trip to our town's historical society museum!

The first thing we saw was a cabin that was originally located not too far from our house!

This is the actual cabin! They took it apart and labeled all of the pieces and then rebuilt it--they did have to slightly modify the size for the room, but it is the original structure. I was expecting a couple of rooms of odds and ends artifacts, but I was really impressed by the displays.

Jack liked the jail display.

Alice liked the desks, but she wasn't sure what to think of those kids back there.

They had an area all about coal mining in the town. I wish I had known about this when we rowed The Rag Coat last year!

Alice loved watching the train model. Every time she saw the end she would say, "There's 'boose!"

I am forbidding Jack to ever go to a casino. He was obsessed with this roulette wheel. He said it was his favorite thing in the whole museum!

A World War I memorial quilt with local soldiers' names

An early dentist's office

One room was all about early tribes in the area. Alice loved the music that was playing and danced all over the place!

Jack immediately spotted the stickball display. Ever since he learned about it this summer, he's on the lookout at museums!

A display about Main Street

After the museum, we went down the street to the chocolate shop.

Enjoying some (super expensive) chocolate--next time I will get them a bag of M&Ms!

Our last stop on Main Street was a statue we've driven by many times but have never stopped to visit. This is supposed to represent a family from the time the town was founded, a little over a hundred years ago.

We had a great time exploring our town!

When I Was Young in the Mountains

Last week we rowed When I Was Young in the Mountains by Cynthia Rylant, one of our favorite authors.

We also spent a lot of time with different go-alongs. If you haven't read Mary on Horseback (about the founder of the Frontier Nursing Service), you definitely should!

A couple of others we had on our shelves that came in handy!

After reading about different types of snakes, we measured the lengths of various snakes and compared them to the size of the kids.

After reading about candle-making in Pioneer Children of Appalachia, we decided to make our own candles. Instead of using tallow, though, I melted a jar candle and we dipped our wicks in that. Maybe not completely authentic, but a lot more fragrant.

I don't know that Yankee is going to be beating down our door to market our creations, but we had a fun time!

I Love the 80s

Not those 80s, even though I got to dress like a supermodel.

These 80s.

The 80s where everyone heads to the park, even before the sun has gone down.

The 80s where you don't have to worry about the playground equipment searing your skin.

The 80s where you can eat dinner outside without flies swarming over your meal.

The 80s where you can wear sweatpants if you want.

The 80s where you can run and not worry about passing out from heat exhaustion.

Alice is excited about what she is calling "cold" weather!

And it's going to stick around!

All Work and No Play

We're not too into dull around here. (At least the kids aren't. I could probably adjust quite well to dull.) We've done a pretty good job of keeping up with our school stuff the first three weeks, so we took a play day to enjoy the splash pad before it closes next week.

It was about 100 degrees, but the kids didn't seem to notice.

We spent four and a half hours sitting outside eating, playing, and talking with friends. It was wonderful!

This picture makes me laugh. They look like some kind of homeschool gang, complete with their own toddler mascot.

Enjoy your long weekend!