one thousand gifts

One aspect of homeschooling that I really cherish is how we start our "school" day together each morning.  Around 9:30 a.m. the boys and I (and Lucky!) gather on the couch for our read aloud time.  Lately, I've been reading one chapter a day from the "Jesus Storybook Bible", as well as a chapter from our read-aloud book.  Right now we're reading Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor.  Something I've added recently is that we're making a list of "one thousand gifts" in a notebook I created just for that purpose.  I got the idea from Ann Voskamp and her book of the same name.  It has been a real blessing to be able to share this practice of daily gratitude with the boys.  We are all challenged to come up with new blessings each day.

For our special notebook, I just took a regular spiral notebook that I had on hand and decoupaged some pretty scrapbook on it along with a label I made.  

Below is a glimpse of our first page........the boys are excited that we get to try to come up with 1000 ideas.  I know it will take a while, but will be so nice to look back on.  

Our Little Lucky

We are proud to introduce the newest addition to our family.  On March 17th, we welcomed little "Lucky" into our home.  He is a Japanese Chin and is about 5 months old.  We adopted him through a local rescue agency who had rescued his momma from a puppy mill.  She was pregnant when rescued and gave birth to four male puppies.  I did not know much about the Japanese Chin breed before we adopted him.  I am now convinced it is one of THE best small dog breeds.  Chins are very docile and loving.  They are NOT yappy.  He hardly ever barks and this is characteristic of the breed.  He is so fun and playful, and we are SO glad he is part of our family.   His official name is Lucky, but we often call him Pup-Pup.

A new infatuation............

While my dad was in the ICU for a week, my mom and I spent a LOT of time sitting in the ICU waiting room.  Since Dad was never conscious the whole time he was in the hospital, we had a lot of time on our hands.  For the first several days, I just sat or paced or drank a lot of the free coffee.  On the evening of the fourth day, I asked my husband at about 8:30 p.m. if he had any cash on him.  He handed me a $10.  I thanked him and said I needed to run to the store real quick.  He asked what for.  I sheepishly admitted that I was going out to buy a pair of knitting needles and a skein of yarn.  He looked a bit mystified as I left on my errand.  I've been wanting to learn to knit for quite some time.  In fact, Hubs had bought me a gift certificate to a knitting shop several years ago.  I never used it and within the last 6 months the store closed.  My mom taught me the very basics of knitting when I was in elementary school, so I knew a little bit.  I packed my new ball of yarn and needles in my purse to take to the hospital the next morning.  My mom laughed as she watched me knit a few rows, rip them out, and start over again.  I did this MANY times.  It kind of bothered her that I was ripping it out so much.  (I'm a perfectionist.)  I finally listened to her advice that the knitting gets easier once you have several rows on the needles.  I kept going.  My plan was to knit a little dishcloth.  I used the basic garter stitch.  What I wasn't expecting is that my boys were VERY interested in this new craft.  They both pleaded with me to teach them!  My little boy has helped me knit a row and my oldest now has his own pair of needles and ball of yarn and has been periodically picking them up and knitting with them.  VERY COOL! 

Since the boys were so into the knitting, they were having none of the "dishcloth" plans.  The first dishcloth soon was appropriated as a blanket for my little boy's stuffed bunny.  Of course I then had to knit a blanket for my big boy's giraffe.  With the leftover bits of yarn I knit (or is it knitted?  my knitting vocabulary is still weak!) matching pillows for each animal.  The cool thing about these particular stuffies is that my boys got them in their "memory" bags for Grandpa.  A wonderful nurse named Jean (she refers to herself as "Mean Jean", but I know better!) gave me the bags for when Dad passed.  Each bag contained several resources for helping children deal with grief including two very helpful pamphlets.  They also each had a stuffed animal for the boys to keep.  I love it that they have these special reminders of Grandpa, and I also love seeing the little guys cuddled up under the "blankets" I made.

I think it's safe to say that I'm now kind of obsessed with knitting.  I love it for its portability.  I can sit and knit pretty much anywhere and don't need to drag out a lot of "gear".  I am currently knitting a scarf for my youngest son (at his request) and have a skein ready to knit one for my big boy too.  I also have a scarf for myself in the works.  I have a list of "favorites" on Ravelry too............a great website with TONS of free knitting patterns.

If you are interested in knitting but are afraid to try...........I say, "GO FOR IT!"  I knew a little bit, but everything else I know (which isn't much yet) I learned by watching knitting videos on You Tube.  I had put off learning to knit because I thought I needed a live person to teach me, but I have truly found everything I need to know online.  I do have one question though for any of you who are still reading this non-homeschool-related post and who are also knitters.............what's the deal with "knit 2 together"?  I am trying to make myself a scarf with that stitch as part of the pattern.  I know how to do it, but I am finding that it is SO hard to get my needles through two stitches at once...........the stitches are so tight!!  I realize this is a tension problem, but I don't know how to fix it other than trying to avoid patterns with "K2tog"..............as a sidenote I am ridiculously impressed with myself that I know what K2tog means now.  Knitting patterns used to look like a bunch of gibberish to me.  And the more complex ones still do!!  Any help you could give would be greatly appreciated.  In the meantime, I'll search for a real live person to ask!!  Following are some photos of what I've done so far..........

Oh, my soul.............

I don't know how many people are actually reading this blog, but I know there are a few!  So I'm sure a few of you have noticed that I haven't posted in a while.  On October 14th, my father was admitted to the ICU for severe pneumonia.  He died on October 21st.  His funeral was Monday.  Our pastor blessed us with a beautiful service which honored the gentle, humble, self-less Christian man that my father was.  We also had a perfect day on Monday to lay him to rest.  Needless to say, the past week has been very tumultuous.  I was at the hospital with my mom every day, Hubs was trying to hold down the fort (thankfully he was on fall break) at home, and our schedule was entirely disrupted.  I am finding that grief comes in bursts.  I will be totally fine, then something silly like a slight change in plans will bring a rush of tears.  Part of the grieving process, I guess.  I am also VERY tired all the time which is unlike me.

My wise cousin (who also homeschooled for many years) told me yesterday after the  funeral luncheon that I should just take it easy and take the rest of the week off from school with the boys.  I had planned to start up again in full force today.  In some ways it is good for me to get back into a routine.  When she sensed that I needed to start getting on with things, my cousin suggested that I ease into it and perhaps consider taking a nature walk today instead of diving right back into our academic routine.  This turned out to be a perfect suggestion.

So today I took the boys on a hike at a state park about 25 minutes south of where we live.  We have hiked here frequently, but not recently because the park was inaccessible most of the summer due to flooding in our area.  My oldest son has really been asking to go, so I took them today as a surprise.  It was a totally beautiful day and it was so good for my soul to be outdoors.  I took many hikes with my dad when I was a little girl, so the day brought many fond memories of those times together.  I felt close to him and it was like a balm for my soul.  I took several photos to remember our outing.  I'll share a few of those with you now..........I should be back to homeschool blogging soon.

Dreamgirl, whoopie pies, and why homeschooling rocks!!

I just had to hop on here quickly and post about what's been on my mind recently.  I have a TON of things that I should be doing right now, but I never claimed to prioritize well.  ahem........

First of all, the boys and I had "life skills day" on Thursday and quickly whipped up a batch of homemade whoopie pies for Daddy right after he left for work.  Then we rushed up to surprise him with them at work.  His work is about a 25 minute drive from our home.  I brought matches and candles and we sang "Happy Birthday" to him and had him blow out the candles.  I know he was both surprised and touched.  And we would never have been able to pull this off if the boys were in school.

During the time we were at Daddy's office (he's a college professor), my boys were visiting with Daddy's colleagues.  At one point my six-year-old grabbed me, planted a kiss right on my lips and announced to everyone that I am his "dreamgirl".  Words to warm a momma's heart.  I know there will come a day when I'm no longer his "dreamgirl" and that role will be filled by someone who is a.) closer to his age and b.) not his MOM!  And of course that should happen because it would just be weird for him to exhibit the same behavior and say those words as a sixteen-year-old!!!  Still...........I am realizing more and more that homeschooling is allowing me to keep a close connection to my precious boys, one that would surely be challenged and perhaps even strained if they attended school all day.  Inevitably, the influence of their peers would take greater precedence than the influence of their parents.  And I definitely want to continue to nurture our relationship as long as possible.  It's great to be a homeschooler...............especially if you're also a "dreamgirl."  :-)

It's been a while..........

............and boy, have I been busy!  I finally got ready to post again last night and discovered that Blogger was all goofed up.  Apparently, Blogger no longer works with Internet Explorer as a browser, so in the wee hours of the morning, I tried to download Firefox.  Stupidly, I tried to move some things into the recycle bin while Firefox was trying to install and bogged down the whole computer.  So........I went to bed frustrated and without a post.  Dear Hubby got up this morning and got everything going again, and this afternoon I was able to successfully install Firefox.  To my great joy, as soon as I tried to open Blogger to write this post, everything looked "right" again.  Yay! 

I am super excited to start documenting our first year of homeschooling.  I've been busy, busy, busy this week planning and preparing for our first several weeks.  I cannot tell you how great it is to be spending all these hours planning rich educational experiences for my own two children.  In the past decade, I would be spending this time of year preparing things in my classroom for the upcoming year, and dragging my kids along with me while I put in countless hours getting things ready to go.

This morning I spent about 2 1/2 hours meeting with Miss Janet, who is replacing me in my previous Montessori classroom.  It was fun to go up and see how she has everything set up.  She is going to do an AWESOME job and the families are so lucky to have her!!  As I drove down the hill when I left, I paused to ask myself if going there today made me feel at all nostalgic about not going back this year.  I immediately realized that I am completely at peace with my decision to stay home.  I have no regrets!!

Although this isn't homeschool-related, those of you who have been hanging out with me for a while might enjoy a glimpse of my newly redecorated craft room.  I spent much of the last week sewing and reorganizing that space.  I am really pleased with the results.  To give you the backstory, I am blessed to have a room all for myself in our basement.  It has always served as my craft room, and also as a guest bedroom as it has a pull-out couch.  All these years (8 to be exact) that we've lived here, I had never done anything to "spruce up" this space.  It was organized, but not "cute".  This summer the craft area has been in disarray as we've had two garage sales and it has been the necessary "holding zone" for all those items.  With great joy, I made a trip to Goodwill last week to haul the remnants away.  Then I looked at my craft area with new eyes and decided to sew up some pretties for it.  It makes me so happy to make things, and I think it will be more important than ever for me to have a place to "get away" this year as I transition to being home with the boys full time.  Without further wordiness, please come along on a little tour........

 This is the view looking in from the doorway.  I was pregnant 10 years ago when we picked out the red pull-out couch.  I now wish I'd gone with a neutral.  But.......since this is what I've got (and I do like red) I found some fun fabrics and pulled in lime green and pink to go with the red and make it a bit more "peppy".  I already had the shelves up, but I added some red wooden crates we had elsewhere and a few other red accents to make them have a little pop of color.  They are still quite utilitarian-looking, but not quite as bad as before.  We also added the rug which was rolled up in the rafters of our garage.  A quick vacuuming and steam-vac-ing and it was good to go.

 

Close-ups of my purty pillows.  I already had 4 pillows on the couch, so I just used the quilting cottons to make slipcovers for each of them.  They have an envelope opening on the back so I can just slip them off to wash.  Like if a cat barfs on them, not that that's ever happened.......... :-(

I love this area the most.  First of all, I sewed a little skirt for the table to hide all the crap craft items stored under it.  They were a real eye-sore in the room and the skirt makes it look so cute.  I also used a pillow that had Silly Putty permanently adhered to it and made it into a little seat cushion for the chair.  I love repurposing!  (And I was so ticked about the Silly Putty!)  

Then, I wanted to add something fun to the boring and bare wall above the table.  A LONG time ago I'd picked up a big embroidery hoop while thrifting and I've been saving it to use as wall art.  I just added a circle of one of my fabrics and Done!  It's hard to tell in this photo, but for the CREATE pennants, I Mod-Podged the different fabrics from the space onto scrap cardboard and used some pre-cut letters I found in my stash to spell CREATE.  I then tied the pennants together with little scraps of black and white ribbon, then hung them with thumbtacks.  I hot-glued little teeny white clothespins on the end of the tacks to hold the ends of the ribbon.  I love this so much.  It's such an improvement!

In the corner just to the left of the craft table is a shelf with more craft supplies.  I whipped up a little curtain on a tension rod to hide everything on that shelf.  Then I hot-glued some pink-checked fabric over the top of the circa-1950s lamp from my childhood home that graces the shelf.  It looks pretty decent from a distance, just don't look too closely at the back, 'kay?  Also in that corner is a little TV and DVD player.  I have my exercise DVDs, weights and step stored down here so when I start getting up early (ahem) next week to work out, I'll be able to do so in my own little space without disturbing the household.

There's also a treadmill right here that I will also use (ahem) regularly.

Here's a close-up of my wall art.  I have a few more wall decor things to add, but for now I'm so happy to go hang out down here.  I've been dragging all my homeschool planning stuff and my laptop down there at night and watching HGTV with my popcorn and glass of wine close by.  Heaven!!

PS:  I know the ribbon end on the left is longer than the one on the right.  Trust me, it's been buggin' me too.  I need to even that out!!

Well, thanks for joining me on my little tour.  I'm going to write some homeschool-related posts tonight that I'll publish real soon so I can share some of the planning I've been doing.  I'm planning to start next Monday the 23rd.  I'm really ready to get back into a routine after the summer and I think the boys are too!  I'd love to hear from you over here, so leave me a comment if you're so inclined.  (Apparently few people wanted to talk about cleaning.   haha...........see previous post)

PS:  I love Firefox now that I can post again.  Blogger was only doing one weird thing while I typed this.  Every time I hit return to start a new paragraph, the cursor thingie jumped to the paragraph above, then I had to manually click to get it where I wanted it.  Kind of a pain, but I'm so happy it was so easy to post photos and that I could actually post without a bunch of incomprehensible gibberish!

Welcome!

Hello!  Welcome to my new blog!  Many of you have followed me for years over at My Montessori Journey.  If you are a MJ reader, thanks for stopping by to see what I'm up to over here.  I'm excited to document my new journey as a homeschooling mama here in this new space.  We won't officially begin our school year until mid-August, so I'm not sure how often I'll post between now and then.  However, I've put quite a bit of time into the pages of the blog, so you'll have plenty to read there.  I'd love it if you'd drop me a quick line when you visit!   It would be great to hear from you!